This Kind of Man, page 17
You had to hand it to Catholicism: they got to you early and often, and no matter how quickly—or successfully—you recovered from those formative scars, there was always the shame you could never shake.
Should he have eaten less red meat? Maybe. Avoided alcohol? Okay. Never placed a cell phone in his front pocket? Probably. Worked at a computer? Walked outdoors beneath a power line? Where does it end? How do we even know what causes cancer? Everything and anything, or nothing at all—just a dead end engineered into a faulty system. If not the Big C, it could have been a car accident, or a stroke, or a heart attack like the one that felled his father just after his fiftieth birthday.
Having cancer was unlike anything, other than just what it was: your body turning against you (against itself?). You couldn’t hate your body (hate yourself?), but you could abhor the way it becomes a host for everything awful, a conduit for the thing trying to kill you. This was useful, because when regarded in its purest terms, you could isolate the pain and associate it with a proper cause. If not for this malignancy, this...invasion, your body would be fine.
Except it wouldn’t be. Even by forty, his downward slope had been in full effect: sore knees, chronic neck pain, hangovers that lasted three days, the sudden concentration of unwanted weight in his mid-section. Way before those first symptoms, which he ignored until it was no longer possible, he had looked—and felt—increasingly less himself, the person he’d grown accustomed to being.
Okay, fine, he drank too much.
The longer, and harder, he continued hitting the bottles, set up in a seemingly ceaseless row, the more crucial it became that he’d quit smoking. Not necessarily for health-related reasons, but rather to become his ace in the hole, however unheroic. He could, at least, always look his primary care physician in the eye once a year, as they surveyed the mounting wreckage of unkept promises and unheeded warnings—the cholesterol count, those blood pressure numbers, the weird hairs sprouting like mutant weeds in the worst possible places—and confirm that he had not backslid on the cigarettes.
Not smoking? Shit, he now wished he’d gone full Marlboro Man. If something’s going to get you, but you enjoy it, why not let it ride? Go all-in and never second guess yourself. Our bodies probably sense that caution anyway and punish us, accordingly.
What else? He could have read more. He should have. He could have watched some foreign films or tried harder to appreciate classical music. Or been a more adventurous eater. Travelled. But life’s cumbersome enough, why give yourself homework? It’s like the retired men and women he’d see jogging. What did they think, they were going to trick death? Did they hope they were changing anything? Sure, you can still fit into your wedding dress; enjoy that cottage cheese and skim milk. Great, same waist size as high school; you’re like a sports car that sits in the garage, immaculate and immobile. Handicapping mortality was merely a different form of denial—doing everything except what you were designed to do.
Your mileage may vary. One of the most galling concessions he’d been obliged to make, after suppressing it (mostly successfully), was that he’d become a carbon copy of his father in all the worst ways. Metabolism of a hummingbird all through the first three decades, despite the staggering abuses during college, the sheer tonnage of shitty beer and processed foods, a fetid river of grease and saturated fat. Still, nothing; if anything, too thin. Then, his system turned on him like a mob informant, that cocksucker suddenly half-assing it like some government stiff watching the calendar until retirement.
But what was the alternative? Don’t all these vegetarians and teetotalers feel the most cheated? Stretched out, at last, on the operating table, another slab of meat, however finely marbled, about to be butchered and, eventually, discarded.
He looks around and his sister is there. Yes, his eyes are open and it’s her. This is bad. If she’s there, this is it, it’s over. No daughter? Either it’s not that bad (yet) or she’s on her way. Or she’s not coming.
(He’d only stayed with his daughter once, back when there was some hope and enough time to...what? Make amends? Make up for lost time? No, just to have someone there, bound by blood if not love, to help him through the worst days—and nights—no one’s ever fully prepared to face.
It made a difference, and while she never necessarily said her house wasn’t an option going forward, it was his decision not to go back. He couldn’t stand seeing his grandchildren afraid of him. He was, and for the entirety of their young lives had been, Grandpa, the one who tossed the ball, who went to their little league games, who took them out for ice cream. He was funny, he was fun, he was...Grandpa. That’s how he needed them to remember him, not the half-monster in the guest room, throwing up in a trash can or losing his balance in the bathroom.
It was excruciating, but in the end an easy call. He’d rather be alone and unmoored as opposed to ashamed, in front of those kids, on account of what his body was doing to him.)
His throat feels like a burlap sack. When he tries to speak it’s like pulling that sack, in his mind, through a sink while the garbage disposal grinds away.
He sees the look his sister and the nurse give each other and feels the first rattle of real panic. He closes his eyes, just in time. His sister has never seen him cry, not even at their parents’ funerals, or at his daughter’s wedding, or during the phone calls, bringing her up to speed on the latest diagnoses.
Nobody but his father had ever seen him cry, and to remember that you’d have to go a long way back, back to childhood.
As an altar boy, he would occasionally be called on to serve a wedding and, less frequently, a funeral. Weddings of course were preferable: happy events, pretty women, typically a few dollars for his trouble. The funerals, obviously, were different in almost every way.
“Listen to the words,” his father told him as he prepared for his first funeral mass. “It’s actually a very beautiful service.”
Incredibly, his old man was correct. The mass, while somber, also included much of the love and grace from the typical Sunday service, without the preachy or frightening parts.
It had been a sweltering August day and as he knelt, off to the side from the priest and assorted family and friends, he began perspiring through his heavy robe.
He leadeth me beside the still waters, He restoreth my soul...
Sweat mixed with tears as he experienced something he’d never associated with any church: something beyond awe, beyond peace, a sense that he was connected, in some way, to everyone in the world, all the people who’d come before and had yet to come.
He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for His name’s sake...
He woke up in the sacristy, his father smiling (his father never smiled) down at him. “You fainted,” his old man said. Before he could respond, the priest bailed him out. “That happens all the time in the heat. It’s even happened to me once or twice.”
He cried and he allowed himself to cry (he was never allowed to cry), and his father took him for ice cream and told him he was a good altar boy, a good son.
Later in life, he could never recall the exact direction their conversation took, but it was most likely about sports, or the upcoming school year. It was, he knew, most definitely not about the funeral, or anything that happened in the church, and especially not the way he felt, or what he wanted to say but couldn’t express.
No one was there. No wife. No daughter. No sister. No doctors. No nurses. No one. Nothing.
All right, let’s review the record.
Best moments?
Marriage, first car, first house, first whatever, insert milestone here. Perhaps that one promotion? Not properly appreciated, because he was human. He foolishly counted on it being the first of many, each bigger, better, more significant. No clue that it would stand apart as the high point of a forgettable career; no idea that the pinnacle, such as it was, would occur with twenty plus years still ahead of him, two more decades of clock-punching and ass-kissing for...what? A paycheck, a purpose, a life. That’s all? How could he have known? Nobody knows.
What about Bentley? Yes, his one and only dog, acquired post-divorce and pre-cancer. He loved that spoiled, lazy brute more than anyone, including his family, and that’s something he’d take to the grave.
Bentley was a good dog, like all dogs are, but he was definitely a handful. That rascal would eat anything not locked away, or that he couldn’t swipe out of your hands or off your plate. Shitting in the house with impunity, nothing to be done with him. In fairness, those early days were tough times, newly single with mornings where he slept through his alarm. How do you expect an eighty-pound dog to hold it in when you can’t even leave the bed long enough to let him in the backyard?
He had a patience for that dog that he never possessed for his daughter and certainly none of his colleagues (extended family? Forget about it). He couldn’t explain it and was too old to question it, but that dog made him want to be worthy of love. There were times when he looked at Bentley and saw, well, not himself, but his best self, the person he was, at his best, capable of being. Had he known this sooner, he would have made it a point to own dogs his entire life.
Bad moments?
There was that time at the company picnic: a drunken fist fight right on the softball field, in front of everyone. That embarrassment was regrettable, for all involved. Of course, it had happened during an extremely rough patch in his marriage. But still, you never quite recover from a spectacle like that, even if such things, in those days, seldom involved sit-downs with HR or, thankfully, immediate termination.
What else? The day he had to call his daughter, at college, and explain to her that he had moved out. And why.
Mostly, too many things he had said, or should have said, or never knew how to say.
Proudest moment?
Well...even after everything anyone could have predicted came to pass—older, alone, chronic illness—he resisted all urges to contact his ex-wife. He was, at least, man enough to avoid pulling her into the pathetic vortex of his final failure. At the end of a mostly decent, if unexceptional life, he figured, in the final analysis, he could take a modicum of pride in facing his pitiful end, alone.
Last confession?
Having processed everything else, he’d contemplated paying someone to cut his nails after it was over. A single idea tended to torture him: his toenails, still growing, crowding up against his newly shined wingtips, or his fingernails, stretching from his chest to his chin. But what were they going to do, dig him up? Delay the burial? Out of the question. Plus, if everything went according to plan, he wouldn’t know or care about anything, anyway.
Wait! It’s working, finally! I can feel it...I’m going to sleep!
No. Even in the darkness he can’t turn it off; he’s still at the mercy of the gray matter in his mind, corrupted before he ever had a chance.
He hadn’t expected, much less hoped for any type of epiphany. Yet, there is clarity. He understands, at last, why so many people fight so hard to believe in something: it’s the one commitment they could—and would—dedicate their lives to keeping. Even after diets, marriages, sobriety, fidelity; all those things almost everyone tries and fails, confronting the consequences of oblivion is...redemptory? Why hadn’t he been able to fathom this? He doesn’t know.
Yes, he does. It hadn’t mattered to him until this moment because this moment had never actually occurred, until this moment.
He sees the light. Everyone is there.
All of them, including his daughter, even his ex-wife. And wait, how is his mother there, and the priest from that first funeral? Was his old man making his way through the crowd that somehow filled the room, spilling into the hallway?
He attempts to speak but he can’t feel his face.
He reaches for the button, but he doesn’t have hands.
He tries to close his eyes, but they’re already shut.
He can still see them all, watching him, all deep in thought, or praying, or just...waiting.
Come and Get My Gun
“Do you know how fast you were going?”
Not fast enough, you don’t reply.
You have somewhere to be, and you can’t get there quickly enough. It’s not your own bed (that’s where you just came from) and it’s not her bed (that’s where you won’t be coming again, anytime soon); it’s the house you’re usually driving away from at this hour, hoping to find the way home through half-shut eyes.
You’ve seen this little piggy before, you think, as he holds his flashlight expectantly in your face. And not just in those recurring nightmares where you manage to be the good guy and the bad guy; you recognize him and hope he doesn’t recognize you. Maybe it’s a blessing in disguise, you think, as he asks the question you never thought you’d want to hear.
“As a matter of fact, I have not been drinking,” you say, so self-assured you start to second guess yourself, on principle.
Maybe you should bring him along—just in case—you think, as he takes your 411 to the squad car to make sure your references check out.
Maybe this is divine intervention, you think, forgetting for a second that it’s been a long time since you remembered to believe in that kind of crap.
Maybe it’s best to keep the law out of this, you know, signing on the thin black line. That’s the last thing anyone needs: a man with a badge busting in on a desperate man with a gun.
***
There are certain elements that must fall into place in order for a mostly grown-up man to become friends with his best friend’s father. First, the best friend needs to no longer be a best friend, or at least be out of the picture—say, in another part of the country. Second, his father must be recently widowed, or divorced, or otherwise apart from the best friend’s mother. Third, and most important, your own folks must either be far away, or nothing at all like friends, or perhaps both.
Take a guy, like yourself for instance, and put him in a bar, alone on a work night, feeling sort of sorry for himself, and eventually he notices another guy, an older guy, also on his own, who has resorted to sweet-talking something on the rocks. That could be me, you think, and before you have a chance to follow that thought someplace you’re not comfortable going, you realize: the reason he looks so familiar is because you know him. It’s been several years since you’ve seen his son, but you used to know him like you knew yourself—in a neighborhood you came to outgrow the way you outgrew games, and bikes, and friends, and exchanged them for jobs, and cars, and co-workers.
Yes, that’s him all right, the man who was an alternate father back in the day. Actually, he was always more like an uncle, letting you sneak those first sips at a time when there were only two types of beer: Heineken for special occasions; Budweiser for all the others.
“Buy you a drink?”
You don’t mind if he does.
So, what brings you here, you don’t need to ask.
Got nothing better to do, he doesn’t bother to reply.
Instead, he talks about how his son has decided to stay out in California, because he realized he liked the seasons, so long as they were all summer.
“I know how you feel, sort of,” you say. “My parents just joined every other retired couple down in Florida.”
Then you joke about whether an earthquake will put his boy in the Pacific before the fulcrum of old folks breaks the southern tip into the Atlantic.
“I was gonna catch a cab,” he says, after you’ve managed to toast some of the things you usually make it a point not to talk about.
“No, I can take you home,” you say. You remember the way.
“So...what happened?” you say, after accepting the invitation to come inside for a nightcap and awkwardly hearing about the thing he couldn’t tell you earlier.
“She’s gone,” he says, knowing it’s not enough.
“Gone?”
“Well...she left. Six months ago.”
You’re not sure what’s more uncomfortable: what he’s just confessed, or how obvious it must be that you haven’t spoken to his son in so long that you hadn’t heard his wife was no longer a part of the picture.
“Can you believe it?” he asks, later, after a lot of other forgettable, forced things have been said.
As you reach for your keys, after respectfully being able to refuse one more for the road, you walk away convinced of two things, one worse than the other: you probably shouldn’t come back; you know you’re going to anyway.
Besides being your best friend’s father, he was the only adult you were allowed to call by their first name. When you watch the re-runs in your memory filed under Childhood, he’s a featured player, looming larger than teachers, coaches, and even those literary characters that are often among the best friends any sullen adolescent learns to find. Unlike your extremely careful, caring, and Catholic parents, he seldom seemed to say the word no: he always made popcorn during the ceaseless string of slumber parties, he took you to movies—back in the day when Rated PG actually signified something, he mixed up Shirley Temples with extra cherries and, later, virgin strawberry daiquiris—back in the day when saying the word virgin was more scandalous than the idea of a cocktail sans alcohol. Best of all, he was an unabashed smoker, which meant that stolen cigarettes—back in the day when sneaking menthols was cool (back in the day when people smoked menthols, for that matter)—comprised a crucial part of your coming-of-underage.
So: you begin going over once a week. He hasn’t lost his touch in the kitchen—the same touch you never found—and he masterminds meals just like he had a thousand other nights all through the ‘80s. You eat, you listen to old blues albums, you watch movies, you embellish adventures from the good old days, and try to avoid any mention of the bad new days. Most of all, you drink. He makes a mean martini; he makes a nice martini too. He knows his wine, he knows his single malts, he even has beer from countries that haven’t discovered electricity. Always obligatory cigars and cognac before last call; the host slumped over in his leather chair, snifter safely empty in lap, scorned Cuban smoldering in ashtray.
