Authors: Jill McCorkle
She wiped down
the car and stepped back to take a look:
CARTER/MONDALE
and the
GRATEFUL DEAD
stickers. In later years she drove it to a Dixie Chicks concert with a girlfriend in the midst of a bad divorce and added
EARL’S IN THE TRUNK
. Parking stickers from all the places she had lived and worked. A single life. A young married life. She got in and leaned back, breathed in the smell of the hard cracked leather, stale cigarette smoke still lingering, an old Bonne Bell lip gloss melted in the cup holder where there had always been a can of Tab.
When she called back to say she would definitely be there, he said: “I knew my dying would get your attention.” He paused. “If only you’d responded sooner I might not have to die at all.”
“You’ve been dying since I met you thirty years ago.”
“But now it’s real.”
“We’re all dying.”
“But not with an estimated time of departure,” he sighed. “And I want all my women gathered for the big show like the big stars, you know. Henry Fonda, Dean Martin, Johnny Carson. Didn’t
they have their women all there in a harem to say good-bye?” pause. “Like Yul Brynner in
The King and I
.”
Billy was sitting
on the front steps when she pulled into his drive. His house was a small white Colonial with an assortment of Little Tikes structures in the side yard —a green plastic turtle and a yellow-and-red slide. Her sons had had those same toys. The wife waved from the front window, then leaned out the door to blow him a kiss, to wave a hello and thanks to Sarah while holding the hand of the curly-haired boy who was trying to follow his dad.
“Have fun,” she called, and Billy told her it was a given, and then when she was back in the house he turned to Sarah. “Can’t believe you still have this car,” he said and climbed into the passenger seat. “Smells the same, feels the same.” He closed his eyes, giving her time to study how much he had changed. “Maybe if we drive it in reverse we can go back in time.”
“Worth a try.” She started the car and backed up a few feet.
“Do you believe in life beyond?” He opened his eyes then and looked at her.
“I want to.”
“Not an answer. Everyone wants to.” They drove in silence to the highway, and then as soon as she sped up to enter traffic and the wind noise filled the small car with a hum, he started talking. “Fate fucked me over,” he began. He explained that he
was supposed to be born much earlier, how if he had been born in the late 1920s then he would be just right. A teen in the ’40s, just missing World War II, and then all settled in the ’50s with a kind of briefcase job and picket fence bungalow. In the ’60s he’d have been protesting and driving his son to Canada, ’70s dressing like Bob Newhart, greedy in the ’80s, doing yoga and Kabbalah in the ’90s, a spokesman for the new century. “I probably would’ve buried a few wives,” he said, “women tired and worn out from serving me, and I’d be looking for a replacement —the latest model or version or edition, depending on what we’re comparing her to. I bet I could get one right this minute, some good-looking young thing to do a few weeks hospice care for all of my money.”
“You wore out a lot of women in this life, they just didn’t die.”
“Is that the voice of experience?” He laughed and propped a bare foot up on the dash, the thin white scar on his anklebone visible. He once called that scar his sister proof, the proof that once upon a time he had her, and then he told Sarah how his foot got caught in his sister’s bicycle spokes when she let him ride on the back fender.
“Where are we now?” he asked.
“Clarkton.”
“How far to the moon?”
“Only about two hundred more miles.”
“How about the beach?”
“Five miles.” She slowed. “Should you call home?”
“No service.” He slumped and closed his eyes. “Didn’t you date a guy named Clark? Didn’t you do something really obnoxious?”
“Called him Kent all night.”
He laughed. “Yeah, you were really pissed. You really wanted to be with me that night, didn’t you? And you said something to him about a phone booth.”
“I said why didn’t he jump into one and become someone super?”
“That’s right,” he said. “I was super. And you wanted super.” He shook his head, slapped a hand on her shoulder and then kept it there, kneading slowly. “Do you remember that song ‘Seasons in the Sun’?”
“Yes.”
“How I made fun of it? And made fun of anybody who liked it?”
“Yes.”
“Hokey sentiment. I still think it sucks.”
“Me too.”
“K-tel presents
Songs that Suck
. You want good-bye?
Man of La Mancha
, there’s good-bye. So much of what’s out there just sucks, don’t you think?”
“Yes.”
“I think cancer sucks.”
“Me too.”
“Losing people sucks.”
“Yeah.”
“That wasn’t convincing. What about losing me all those years ago?”
“Sucked.”
“But was it right?”
“Who knows?”
“I will soon. They’ll tell me at the gate. They’ll say, list all your mistakes on earth, and I’ll tell how I wish I had told my mom how good she smelled, how I could find her right now in a thick dark cave like a bat. I once dated a girl for that smell and it took me forever to figure out why I liked being with her. The only thing she had going for her was a bottle of Halston cologne.”
“If I’d only known.”
“You didn’t need it. Had your own good smell.” He took her hand from the wheel, sniffed, and then kissed her wrist. “But you did interrupt me the way you’ve always done. It’s rude and it pisses me off.”
She zipped her lips and then held up her middle finger, beckoned that he continue.
“Well, then I’ll say I made a mistake when I missed a throw to third that would have won my sixth-grade Little League championship, and that I was sorry I picked on Howie Thompkins, bleeding chicken of the neighborhood I grew up in who later took himself out. I shouldn’t have gone swimming the afternoon my grandfather was dying; everybody told me I needed to stick around and I didn’t. I told my kids, in fact, ‘No swimming till I’m
gone.’ It’s a really long shitty list and I’m pretty sure losing you is on it.” He paused. “Aren’t you going to say something?”
“Only when you’re all finished. Don’t want to interrupt.”
“All done. I ended by saying I was pretty sure losing you was way up on the list of shitty things I’ve done.”
“Every woman’s fantasy. So is this what you’re doing? Last words for everyone like party favors? Do you tell your kids that you have mammoth amounts of money stashed away for them? Ponies and cars for future grandkids?”
He didn’t laugh but stared straight ahead, the skin of his neck pale and goosefleshed. “Do you think I did something to bring this on? Is it because I’m such an asshole?”
“You’re not an asshole.”
“What am I?”
“Corny, immature, unfaithful.”
“The truth comes out.” He moved his hand to her neck and massaged as he talked. “Remember that story about Brother Moon and Sister Sun, the great incest story about eclipses? Remember how I wanted us to act it out for science class?”
“I remember well. And it’s not
just
an incest story. It’s a rape story, too.”
“Kinda sexy.”
“Kinda creepy. It ends with her doing something really awful like mutilating herself.”
“Remember making those boxes to see the eclipse?” he asked. “Peep boxes.”
“They said we’d go blind if we looked.”
“That’s what I was told would happen if I jerked off.”
“So you made me do it for you.”
“Made?”
“Yeah.”
“Can I make you again?” Nothing.
“Would you believe that’s the morphine talking?”
“Yes, I would.”
“Yes, you would oblige me or yes, you would believe?”
When she didn’t answer, he pushed her shoulder, nudged until she laughed with him.
“You know,” he said. “This is the best day ever. Who knew I’d have to be dying to get it.” He closed his eyes again, hand limp on her shoulder. She wanted him to be faking, to pick this time to tell her it was all an elaborate joke, that here in his fifties he had figured out illness would be a great way to get women.
“If you weren’t . . .” she paused.
“Circling the drain? Knock-knock-knockin’ on heaven’s door? Croaking?”
“Yeah all that. If you weren’t, I’d —”
“Kill me?”
“Slap you.”
“Do you ever wonder why there aren’t more apocalyptic acts performed by cancer troops? You’re dying anyway, can’t go to prison. Hell, in our system you wouldn’t even live to have a hearing . . .”
“The good side of man.”
“I forget there is one.”
“Everyone has a good side.”
“And a dark one. Think of it —the cancer mafia —skinny people dragging IVs. Go ahead, make my day. You talking to me?
Hasta la vista
, baby.”
They were passing
a small churchyard, and the stark white of the headstones was a shock to the soft green background. Already she could see the skeletal structure of his face. His plan long ago was cremation, some of which was to be scattered around the crash site of his family, but when his grandfather died, he had said that he couldn’t let go of the old guy’s body so easily.
She pulled off the highway and back toward his neighborhood. The closer they got, odometer creeping, the quieter he was. He fiddled with the old radio knob, getting only static.
“I hope we haven’t been gone too long,” she said.
“I hope
you
haven’t been gone too long,” he said. “Does your husband know we’re meeting like this?”
“Yes,” she lied, though a part of her wanted to tell the truth,
to tell how her husband was jealous of him and always had been. How at the height of one argument he had said, “But you would leave me for Billy,” the name bitter on his tongue, and she had not stepped forward to assure him that she wouldn’t. She had never let go of the idea that someday they
would
have a future. Even now, she couldn’t stop believing. Her husband’s greatest rival was disappearing before her very eyes.
In front of his house, cars lined the curb. His kids were outside in the sandbox with a young girl who was being paid to watch them for awhile. They both wore cowboy hats and carried small plastic rifles. The girl had on pink boots and purple shorts.
“People are coming and praying. Please, let’s keep driving. Remember
Thelma and Louise
? You loved that movie. Let’s do it! We can drive off the overpass.”
“I didn’t like the end.”
“You did at the time, and if you were them you’d know there’s no other choice —the ultimate sacrifice.”
“Been there.”
“You talking ’bout me?”
“Yes, Narcissus, I am.” Now Sarah felt anxious to get him back inside, and then to get herself home and to the grocery store. In all her haste she had forgotten to feed the dog and imagined him sitting there at the back door confused and feeling abandoned. She had not told anyone where she was. She had turned off her
phone hours ago. His wife came out to the car and stood waiting for him to get out. She held his arm and then motioned for Sarah to join her, the two of them helping him in where he collapsed in his chair. He looked like an old man wearing Billy’s eyes.
“You know what I’ve always fantasized about?” He looked back and forth between the two of them, his life split like a walnut shell. His wife laughed and turned to the door to greet yet another person bringing in a dish of something.
“The buzzards are swooping in,” he whispered. “Say nice things. Lie to my children.” But as he spoke, he touched the crystals, the tea cup, the books on the table. “Somebody’s been fucking with my feng shui,” he said. “Don’t go fucking with my chi, now. My yin and yang, especially my yang.”
The wife returned in time to hear him and laughed. She was so tired she was ready to laugh at anything. She had had a holiday. An hour all alone and a glass of wine. The empty glass was on the mantel and there was music playing —not from Broadway —but pop music, oldies, the music of their generation, much of which he greeted with such disdain.
The wife asked Sarah to stay just another minute while she tried to get people to clear out so she could cook some dinner and get the kids settled. “My brother will be here soon,” she said, seemingly avoiding Billy’s eyes.
“She’s afraid to leave me too long at a time,” he whispered and
then reached out and patted her on the bottom. She caught his hand and he held on tight, holding her near until she kissed the top of his head and then pulled away.
“That’s right,” she said and nudged his shoulder the same way he had done Sarah’s in the car. “He misbehaves.” She thanked Sarah and went back into the kitchen, where there were murmurs of conversation.
“You heard it. We got her permission,” he said. “So what do you want to do?”
“You tell me.” She sat in the chair right beside his, their arms close enough to touch.
“Well, I’m feeling too tired for sex,” he said. “Maybe in a little bit.” He fished in the basket beside his chair, where there were all kinds of other crystals and herb bundles and what looked like rosaries. “Bob?” He held up a DVD of
The Bob Newhart Show
, a program they had watched faithfully on Saturday nights in high school. “How about the one where Bob gets drunk and orders all that Chinese food?”
“Okay.”
“And maybe this time he won’t drink too much. Or maybe this time, Emily won’t leave and go out of town.” He was about to stand but she took the disc and walked across the room to the television. “Do you remember how when his other show ended, he woke up and was back in bed with Suzanne Pleshette in the
first show like it was all a dream?”
“Yeah.” She put the disc in and came back over beside him.
“I almost called you. I kept thinking how that might happen to us except that you’d probably still be pissed off about whatever that girl’s name was.”
“Her name was Amie, and I would have been.” She hit play and the episode began.
“I never tuck in the sheet because of what happened. My wife wants to and I just can’t do it.” He grins and shakes his head. “I don’t want history repeating itself.” The familiar music began playing and then there was the skyline of Chicago, Bob Newhart racing to catch the train. “And history does repeat itself,” he whispered. “Like how my kids are about to go through what I went through.”