Onward Toward What We're Going Toward (50 page)

“I was afraid you weren't going to be here,” he said.

Mary started the minivan and put it in gear.

“I've got two stops before we get on the road. Take a right here at the stop sign.”

She took a left instead.

“I said right.”

“Sorry.” Focus, the loud voice said. You need to focus.

He'd said right, and she'd taken a left. He looked over at her. Every morning, in Florida, he'd be staring at her from across the table while she sipped her coffee, and he would he see this, this running away, in the dead of night, leaving her husband behind in a wheelchair. He was fooling himself. Nothing was going to change. He was who he was and that was who he was. For some reason, he started thinking about his brother. He'd made a life out of a lie, though he didn't know it was a lie. The one truth he did know was that Lijy had cheated on him. And that beat him over the head. He sold his house. He stopped collecting coins. He pulled him out a window. Then, somehow—
somehow
—he accepted it. He forgave her. And him. Somehow. His brother had forgiven him. Them. That was really something. He felt a little tingly. A rush of something moved through him. Tears sprang to his eyes.

“Stop,” he whispered. They were headed farther into the cornfields, the minivan's headlights illuminating the two-lane road ahead.

“Stop,” he said, more forcefully this time.

“Did you say something?”

“Turn around.”

“Tell me you didn't forget something. We can't go back. I'm not going back.”

“Pull over.”

“But, we're going. I thought . . . ”

“Stop!”

They came to a sudden stop in the middle of the road. Chic couldn't look at Mary, so he looked out the window over the cornfield, toward the lights of Middleville.

“This is a mistake,” he said.

She didn't say anything.

He made himself look at her. “I can't do this.”

She hadn't seen this coming. You should have seen this coming, the loud voice said. This is for the better, the whisper voice said. For the better? Are you kidding, the loud voice said. This is a goddamn dead end. What was she going to do now? She's going to keep going forward, the whisper voice said. But she liked Chic, the loud voice said. No way, the whisper voice said. She liked the idea of him. He was her excuse. This wasn't the end. Chic Waldbeeser was not the end. You were going to have the same thoughts about him that you had about Green. But she hoped, the loud voice said. You had hope. You have hope. You've never stopped hoping. Remember Green. The diner. You were playing footsie with him. That footsie was hope. Or Chic, that afternoon you slid onto his lap. Hope motivated that, too. And desperation, the whisper voice said. But where there's desperation, there's hope, the loud voice said. Dig deep enough and you'll find it. It's not going to get any better, the whisper voice said. You will always be the person trying to do better, but you'll never be able to do better. That scared the hell out of her.
It's not going to get any better.
She didn't want to think about that.

“Are you breaking up with me, Chic?”

“Oh geez. No. Don't say it like that. It sounds so . . . don't say it like that.”

“It's okay,” she said. “Really. It's fine. I'm not upset.”

“Well, you don't have to be . . . I mean, you could be a little sad about it.”

“This isn't coming out right. I'm sorry.”

“I mean, you did kinda like me, right?”

“For a moment. I always do. There's always so much promise at first.”

Chic reached out and put his hand on her leg. She put her hand on top of his.

“Can you give me a ride back?”

“Can you walk? It's only . . . ” she looked over her shoulder, “maybe a mile, probably less. If I go back, then . . . I don't know what will happen. I'm already on my way. I've come this far.”

He understood. She couldn't go back there. If she did, then she'd probably . . . she'd come this far, like she said.

He opened the door and stepped out of the minivan. He didn't know what to say. What did you say in moments like this? “I don't really know what to say,” he said.

She smiled.

“Remember me.”

“I will,” she said. “Of course I will.”

Chic woke up, and Morris was sitting on the edge of his bed, his hand underneath the covers pinching Chic's leg.

“What are you doing? What time is it?” Chic found the clock on the nightstand: 5:00 a.m.

“I need twenty bucks.”

Chic put his pillow over his head. “I'm not giving you any more money.”

“In that case, don't get mad at me if the new guy finds out.”

“I don't care if he finds out,” Chic said from under the pillow.

“Look, I'm just trying to help the new guy. Can you give me twenty bucks or what?”

Chic removed the pillow. “What are you doing with the
new guy?”

Behind Morris, in the dull light of the hallway, he could see Green sitting there in his chair. When he saw Chic looking at him, he turned the wheelchair around so that his back was to him.

“There's twenty bucks in my wallet on the dresser.”

“Thanks, Waldbeeser. You know, you're not such a bad guy after all. Hey, aren't you supposed to be . . . ”Morris made a face, not wanting to finish the rest of his sentence.

“It didn't work out.”

“Then, should I?” He motioned to Green in the hallway.

“You should go through with whatever you're doing.”

“I got him a 7:00 a.m. flight to Vegas.”

“Well, you better get going.”

“All right, then. Thanks for the money.”

Morris pulled the door quietly shut behind him.

The room was dark. Chic heard the squeak of Green's wheelchair, and then the whole place was quiet. He rolled over and closed his eyes. He thought about Mary out on the road, probably somewhere in Iowa, the dawn sky beginning to open up on the horizon behind her. His thoughts skipped to Lijy, that time in her kitchen, how he had tried to seduce her. He wished he could take that back. He thought about his wedding, Diane on the dance floor kicking her legs out wildly while a guy played an accordion. She looked so happy. Lomax. Poor Lomax. He'd be forty-eight now. Balding, with crow's feet around his eyes. Probably fluent in German. Maybe he'd be a high school German teacher. Maybe he'd be an architect. A poet. Something. He'd be something. His brother. Maybe people could change. Maybe that 's what he had been missing all this time. Why hadn't he seen it? He had changed. Everything had changed. Everything. He hadn't let himself see everything changing. But it had

When Chic woke up a few hours later, the sunlight
streaked into the room. The cafeteria was closed, so he had to settle for a package of peanuts and an orange Gatorade from the vending machine in the hallway. Most of the residents were in their rooms taking their mid-morning naps.

Carol Bowen-Smith came out of the pool area in a hurry. She consulted her clipboard. She looked puzzled.

“I thought you were going to be somewhere.”

“My nephew's.”

“So, what are you doing here?”

“A change of heart.”

She marked something on the clipboard. “Have you seen Mr. Geneseo? He's unaccounted for. And your roommate, too, Mr. Potterbaum.”

Chic shook his head no. “Haven't seen either one of them. Morris's bed is made though. If that's any help.”

“He's probably at the Pair-a-Dice. It's Mr. Geneseo I'm more worried about. Just vanished. Didn't even come to breakfast this morning.”

Chic shrugged.

“If you see him, tell him his wife called.”

“His wife?”

“About an hour ago. Left a message. Kinda cryptic. Said, ‘It's not playing in Peoria.' I don't know. Maybe they were going to go to a movie.”

He watched her walk down the hall. “I have poetry inside of me,” he called after her. He didn't know why he had said it. Maybe he wanted to believe it. Actually, he did believe it, and he wanted someone else to believe it, too.

Carol stopped. She turned around slowly. “We all do, Mr. Waldbeeser. The trick is letting it out.” She turned back around and pushed through the double doors into the cafeteria.

He stood in the hallway. The door next to him was ajar, and he could see a fully dressed man in slacks and a flannel
shirt lying on top of his bedspread, his hands folded across his stomach. Down the hall, Janice Galbreath and her yo-yo string of saliva were nodding out in the common room. Around the corner is the end. Look out where you're going. As I said to my friend.

The trick is letting it out.

This book wouldn't be the book it ended up being if it wasn't for many people who pushed me to be a better writer and a better person, so I want to thank them all, starting with my editors Elizabeth Clementson and Robert Lasner. Thanks also goes out to my teachers along the way—both at Columbia and Iowa—Binnie Kirshenbaum, Ben Marcus, Alan Ziegler, Sam Lipsyte, Ellen Hildebrand, Amber Dermont, and Julie Orringer. Then, there are my friends, Eric Maxson, Ryan Effgen, Dave Reidy, Mike Harvkey, Johanna Lane, Mikey George, Nazgol Shifteh, Stephen Johnson, Farooq Ahmed, John O'Conner, Christopher Swetala, Claire Gutierrez, Alex Cussen, Mark Gindi, Jessica Roake, Di-naw Mengestu, E. Tyler Lindvall, Manuel Gonzales, Jonathan Blum, Josh Weil, Nic Brown, Cara Cannella, Bobby and Cara Finnegan, Mike Messier, and Brad Causey, who, even after I shoved my writing on them, still remained my friends. Of course, thank you to my mom and dad, and to my sister, Rachel. When I told you I wanted to be a writer, you began treating me like I already was one. Lastly, Rene—a long time ago, I sat across from you in a fiction workshop, and that has made all the difference.

Copyright © 2013 by Ryan Bartelmay

All rights reserved.

 

 

 

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

 

Bartelmay, Ryan.

Onward toward what we're going toward / Ryan Bartelmay.

pages cm

Summary: “Postwar newlyweds Chic and Diane Waldbeeser are determined to carve out a life for themselves and their son, Lomax, in Middleville, Illinois, but when ten-year old Lomax dies, Chic and Diane take refuge in religion, haiku poetry, doll collecting, food, and bowling as they try to make sense of their overwhelming grief and guilt. Paralleling their story is that of Chic's older brother Buddy. Haunted by the suicide of his father, Buddy struggles to make a life with his exotic, naive wife, Lijy-who is hiding a devastating secret of her own-while attempting to introduce the residents of Middleville to vegetarianism and Ayurveda massage, an unusual endeavor in midcentury Middle America.”-- Provided by publisher.

eISBN : 978-1-935-43981-3

1. Families--Fiction 2. United States--Social life and customs--20th century--Fiction. 3. Domestic fiction. I. Title.

PS3602.A838455O59 2013

813'.6--dc23