Mr. Bones (37 page)

 

Black Runs

 

I was unhappily married and living in Connecticut, your typical bored housewife. Then I took a course: radiology. X-rays, CAT scans, MRIs. Two years. I got my diploma and left my husband and came here to Maine. There's a lot of work in radiology, and the hours aren't too bad. I chose Maine because of the winters.

I spend the whole winter skiing, except last winter, when I had some medical procedures. I have five screws in my shoulder and a permanently damaged rotator cuff that screams in damp weather. I've broken both arms, my collarbone, and my left ankle. I need to have my knees replaced. That'll be fun. Basically, they make lateral incisions, sever your legs, put in metal, and give you some kind of ID so you can go through a metal detector in an airport.

The ankle was something else. I read my own CAT scan and opted for ankle replacement. Basically, they got me an ankle from a cadaver, and they removed my bad ankle and fitted me with this donor ankle. But it's too small. I'm getting pain. They might have to redo it.

I hate cross-country skiing. My ex was huge on it. I hated hearing him say, “Oh, look at that yellow spruce,” or “Oh, look, a rose-breasted grosbeak,” or “Oh, gosh, let's sit on that log and have a bagel.” Cross-country is for, I want to say, fairies.

He didn't understand that pain is pleasure, if properly applied. What I want is black runs, all-day black runs. I want to ski straight down on black runs with my legs banging and the tears streaming out of my eyes and freezing on my face. And snot pouring out of my nose and streaking on my cheek, and my whole face burning from the cold. I am hardly able to breathe on a black run, which no man I have ever known can understand, which is also why I fired my husband, I've fired every boyfriend I've ever had, and basically it's just me and my dog.

 

A Real Break

 

Mother and Grace—let's just say they weren't best buddies. So as the elder daughter, and single, I began to look after Mother when she began to fail. And she was a wreck. Got confused in stores, left the oven on, real muddled about time. I made her stop driving, so of course I had to take the wheel. God, the hills. I wrote Grace that I was moving in with Mother. The big Polk Street house had been in Mother's family for years; Mother was lost in it. Grace understood completely and said she was relieved. She had been in a Minnesota convent since taking her vows, though she sometimes spent extended periods in Nevada and Florida as a hospital worker, “and doing spiritual triage too,” on Indian reservations. We seldom heard from her, but Mother sent her money now and then. Because of the strictness of her religious order, she was never able to visit us in San Francisco. “And just as well,” Mother said.

It got so that Mother could only manage with my assistance. I resigned from my secretarial job, lost my retirement and my medical plan, and became Mother's full-time caregiver. I updated Grace on Mother's condition and mentioned the various challenges we faced. Grace wrote saying that she was praying for us, and she asked detailed questions because these infirmities were to be specified in the prayers, or intercessions, as she called them.

About three years into my caregiving, Grace called. She said, “Why not take a few months off? My Superior has given me special dispensation to look after Mom for a while. It'll be a break for me. And you can have a real break. Maybe go to Europe.”

Mother wasn't overjoyed, but she could see that I was exhausted. Grace flew in. It was an emotional reunion. I hardly recognized her—not because she had gotten older, though she had. But she was dressed so well and in such good health. She even mentioned how I looked stressed and obviously could do with some time off.

I went on one of those special British Airways fares, a See Scotland package. It was just the break I needed, or so I thought.

Long story short, when I got back to San Francisco, the Polk Street house was being repainted by people who said they were the new owners. Everything I possessed was gone. Mother was in a charity hospice. She had been left late one night at the emergency room of St. Francis Hospital. There was no money in Mother's bank account. Everything she had owned had been sold. I saw Mother's lawyer. He found a number for Grace—the 702 area code, a cell phone. Nevada.

“I'm glad you called,” Grace said. I could hear music in the background and a man talking excitedly, a fishbowl babble, aqueous party voices. I started to cry but she interrupted me with a real hard voice. “Everything I did was legal. Mother gave me power of attorney. I never want to see you again. And you will never undo it.” Unfortunately for me, that was true.

 

Giulio and Paulie

 

Giulio was recommended to me as a hard worker, a good man, very skillful in all sorts of building. This proved to be the case. When I praised him, he said, “I come from Sicily. We build the whole house there—foundation, brickwork, framing, plastering, carpentry, roofing, shingles, tiling, plumbing.” He could do anything. He worked one whole summer, first brickwork, then replacing shingles, then glazing the cracked windows, then painting—every job I'd put off at last getting done.

He was seventy-seven years old. He asked for $40 an hour—a lot of money, the weekly bills were high—but he earned it.

After the second week, he brought his son Paulie, a big, boyish fellow of forty-three, tattooed, potbellied, very funny, not a good worker but strong. He could heave the big sacks of cement, he dug holes, he lugged the bricks. He was also to get $40 an hour, but some days he didn't show up. “He's goofing around,” “He's sick,” “He's sleeping,” Giulio would say, seeming both dignified and somewhat ashamed of having to make excuses.

Then, one day: “Paulie's in jail.” It turned out he'd been in jail before, spent several years inside for theft, credit-card fraud, and receiving stolen goods. What astonished me was the contrast between father and son: the honest old man, so talented and hardworking; the lazy son, who was a petty thief and a druggie.

Time passed, Paulie stayed in jail, but as I got to know Giulio better, I realized that he was cheating me on his time sheet, charging me for tools he bought or broke, not quite truthful about the work, carelessly hiding the scrap wood and the mistakes, a subtle thief. And I began to see, first faintly, then powerfully, how prideful Giulio the sly worker was more like Paulie the jailbird than anyone could ever guess.

 

Bigot on Vacation

 

I left my small village in Norway as a young man—I was hardly seventeen—and became a student in the USA, first in Michigan, where I had an aunt and uncle, then in Massachusetts, where I attended MIT and where I eventually settled. My life's work has been in developing radar sensitivity—defense work, but I justify it to myself by saying that I was creating a shield, not weapons of destruction. This was not entirely true. Missiles are guided by radar. In this work, my colleagues were from India, Pakistan, China, Korea, Japan, and many other countries. I must emphasize the diverse nationalities and how well we got along—it is important to this story.

I lived through the 1960s in the USA, working on defense projects. Of course, I was seen as one of the bad guys. I married an American, raised two children. I am proud of the life I have made here. My interests are sailing, skiing, and gardening. I am now retired—a happy man.

Here is the strange part. About every four years I go back to my village, which is near Bergen. It is always a horrible visit. I become enraged when I see what has happened. It has gotten so bad that I dread going home. The visits disturb me, because I see that I am a bigot. My lovely village is now the residence of Pakistanis, Indians, Africans, Vietnamese—brown people, who have come there as refugees, so called, because Norwegians are so happy to provide houses and welfare.

When I was a boy, we had one religion, one language, one culture—one race. Now it's a filthy mess. Skullcaps, shawls, smells. There is crime. So many languages. A mosque! A temple! Not refugees but opportunists. I am so angry when I am there: my lovely village spoiled. I think I will never go back again. I know I am a bigot there, and I hate myself when I am home.

 

Mrs. Springer, Old-Timer

 

Mrs. Springer, a longtime resident of our facility, was born in 1900. She was vain about the date, being the same age as the century. She clearly remembered the First World War. “I was at school. The school bell rang when the war ended, and we were given the day off.” She remembered talk of Al Capone and Prohibition, the Great Depression and Lindbergh's flight. She was married to a science-minded German, living in Munich when the Second World War started. Her husband's family was wealthy—Springer was their name. She volunteered for war work, knitting socks. She told us all her stories. She had met Hitler. “He had very fine hands, small and pale, like a woman's.”

She became a refugee after the war. She went to Los Angeles; her husband followed her later, and he became a metallurgist for Hughes Tool Company. He died. She lived alone a few years and then entered our facility.

We went to her ninetieth birthday party. We predicted that she would live to be a hundred. She accomplished this, but it was a decade of failing health. She lost most of her hearing. Her sight dimmed. At her hundredth she needed to be steered to the cake. We shouted for her to blow out the candles, but she couldn't hear us or see the candles. Even so, she smiled and said it was a great day.

Her hundred-and-first she spent in her room. We were away a lot after that, and each time we got back, we were surprised to see her still alive. Her other friends were less attentive too, even a little irritated when they had to run an errand for Mrs. Springer. We missed her hundred-and-second birthday. That year I saw her once. It seemed inconvenient and somewhat unfair, her living into another century. Her nurse called and complained that no one bought her medicine anymore. Her son died, not of any specific cause. “He was getting on,” someone said.

We forgot about Mrs. Springer, we guessed she had died, and we were astonished to hear that she had a hundred-and-fourth birthday. We were not invited. Only her nurse, her cleaning woman, and—somehow—the plumber were there. She kept to her room. People said she was alert, that she asked about elections and the weather. No one visited her. We were embarrassed and, I'm sorry to say, a bit bored by her, and none of us saw her again until her funeral.

 

The Cruise of the
Allegra

 

It was my first winter cruise. I was a waiter on the
Allegra,
most of the passengers well-to-do people who spent part of the winter cruising in the warm waters of the Pacific, from Puerto Escondido to Singapore and back, including stops in Australia and New Zealand. That winter we stopped along the South American coast too, from Guayaquil to Santiago, and then to Hawaii via Easter Island. Often the passengers did not bother to go ashore—just stayed on deck and looked at the pier and drank and made faces.

Ed and Wilma Hibbert avoided the others. They were in their mid- to late seventies, from Seattle. Always dined alone, did not socialize, Ed very attentive to Wilma, who seemed the frail type. I heard whispers. “Snobs,” “Stuffed shirts,” “Pompous,” “Cold.” They must have heard them too.

Wilma fell ill at Callao, stayed in her suite, and was taken to a hospital in Lima, where she died. Ed Hibbert left the
Allegra
but did not vacate his suite. His table was empty until Honolulu, where he rejoined the ship.

And then the invitations began, one widow after another inviting him to dinner, to drinks, to the fancy-dress ball. They were not amateurs but persistent and alluring seducers.

Amazingly, Ed obliged. He seemed to welcome the attention, not like a bereaved spouse at all but like the most discriminating bachelor. The same women who had made demeaning remarks now praised him and competed for his affection. And I had the feeling that in obliging them, dallying with them, without committing himself, he was having his revenge, perhaps revenge on his wife, too.

He went on two more cruises, same routine, didn't remarry.

 

Eulogies for Mr. Concannon

 

I did not know Dennis Concannon. I was invited to his funeral by a friend of his son's who needed a ride. As it was a rainy day and I had nothing else to do, I stayed for the service, sitting in the back. The whole business was nondenominational, according to Mr. C's wishes. The turnout was very large—the church was filled. A reading of his favorite poem, by Robert Frost, with the memorable line “That withered hag.” Several sentimental songs. Then the eulogies. One man got up and said, “I never met anyone else like Dennis. I worked for him for almost twenty-five years, and in all that time he didn't even buy me a cup of coffee.” He went on—people laughed.

A woman: “I used to tremble whenever I was called to his office. I never knew whether he was going to make a pass at me or fire me.”

Another man: “The salesmen put in their expense reports that they'd had their cars washed. ‘Salesmen have to have clean cars.' But Dennis said, ‘This was the fourteenth of last month. I compared the car washes to the weather report. It was raining that day. I'm not paying.'”

Someone else: “His partner, George Kelly, would be sitting next to him at some of the meetings. One would talk. Then the other, but saying the same thing. It was terrible. We called it ‘Dennis in Stereo.'”

There were more speakers, with equally unpleasant stories of this man. At the end of the funeral I knew Dennis Concannon as a mean, unreasonable, bullying bastard who had gotten rich by exploiting and intimidating these people, the attendees at his funeral—not mourners but people who were having the last word.

 

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