Life After Life (21 page)

After a week of Ned lying there at night and their quiet breakfasts together that had become something Stanley looked forward to, he began thinking up his plan. He would slowly start to slip. He would ease himself into character, an actor on the stage. He would be obsessed with wrestling and just rude enough to keep people at a distance. He would not shave every morning and get a regular haircut as he had done for the past fifty years. He would convince his sons he couldn’t remember things like cholesterol medication or taking a shower; he would make them believe with great conviction that he needed to live in one of those retirement places and then everyone would be on his own, and if Ned had any chance of making it in life, he’d have the freedom to do so. It was a project that took many months, but it was successful. At first they were amused by their dad watching television. Other than the news and occasional major sport events, he had never watched television even when Martha begged him to join her. He learned a lot from watching television and he also had Ned drive him to Raleigh when the Wrestling Federation came to town, busloads of people screaming and cheering for the Undertaker and the Hardy Boys. He bought himself an Undertaker T-shirt and started wearing really short shorts around the house. He liked the way the Undertaker looked like Johnny Cash on steroids and so that’s what he thought of himself. He was Johnny back from the dead. He was the Undertaker dressed all in black.

It worked. He convinced them, and here he is—a nice little apartment with a great big bathroom designed for if and when he needs a wheelchair; three good meals a day, great cable television. What’s not to like? Ned still comes every day to check on him so Stanley makes sure to do something that keeps Ned at a distance and believing that this is the right and best choice. When Ned is around he always says rude things, which means he has to do it when Ned is not around as well, which is harder to do but necessary to keep everyone fooled. He has thought that if he had to, he could begin to dress like a wrestler—tight shorts and tank tops and such—but he is hoping he won’t have to go there. It has been hard enough for him to get used to doing and saying things that make people uncomfortable; occasionally, he has enjoyed it, but usually it just wears him out. He points to women with oxygen tanks and tells how he is responsible for their tragic circumstances, how he took their breath away. He burps the alphabet at the dinner table about once every two weeks, usually right after grace has been said over the PA system, which leaves some of the more confused ones staring up as if God himself had said, Eat.

“How far can you get?” Toby asked one night, saying she once burped her way to
m
but it made her throw up so she hadn’t tried it since. “
Z,
of course,” he said, and he told her he is a man who always finishes what he starts.

“We got some new mares in the stable,” he told Ned recently, and waved his arm around the dining room, his pointed finger stopping to rest on that woman from Boston—Rachel Silverman. “There’s a tough broad,” he said, and resisted when Ned tried to shush him. “We got ’em all here on the ranch. A couple of high-stepping ponies, a hell of a lot of nags gone to glue, but that new one’s got some fire in her, haunches like a sack mule, but you can’t have it all now, can you?”

“Dad, let’s go to your room,” Ned whispered, and though Stanley would have liked nothing better, so aware of the young woman who had been Martha’s hospice volunteer in the doorway, to have shown reason at a time like that would have possibly undone too much hard work. He saw Ned and the young woman exchange embarrassed smiles; she knew who he was, but who knew if Ned would remember her. Ned was sobbing like a baby the afternoon Martha died.

“That’s the one I’m planning to mount,” Stanley said, and whispered to Ned, “Here I am, big Billygoat Gruff ready for some action.” He pumped his hips and surveyed the reaction around the room. The young food attendants giggled, something they would probably get in trouble for later. Most of the women just blushed and glared at him, Marge Walker rising from her chair like she was going to take action. Toby was the one who laughed. She was puffing on a fake cigarette and was standing close enough to hear what he had said.

“My money says she’ll throw you right off,” Toby said, and puffed harder, flicked the holder like there might be ashes on the end. She looked at Ned. “This your old man?” Ned nodded. “He’s a hoot.” She turned to Rachel who was wearing what looked like a black business suit with pink tennis shoes; it was her first month there. “Did you hear that, umm, what’s your name again?”

“Rachel. Rachel Silverman,” she said. “And I would most definitely throw him. I would throw him
away.
”

“You hear that, Rocky? She’ll throw your old white ass to the mat.”

“I love nothing better than a good bucking.” He winked at her, feeling so self-conscious and ridiculous he had to fall back on something he had planned to do at awkward times, which was to raise his arms and imitate that silly dance people used to do to that song “YMCA.” He could not count the number of times in his life when he had watched grown intelligent people do the alphabet to that stupid song and look like a bunch of silly idiots.

“Me, too,” Toby said, and laughed great big, kept puffing. “Buck away.”

“Dad, really.” Ned pulled Stanley on toward his apartment and Toby followed. “Yesterday he said he wanted to do a wrestling demo,” she said. “He says if he does I can be his manager. Name’s Toby. Toby Tyler.” She put her hand out and went back down the hall. Clearly she is his best audience member, not to mention a really good person.

“That’s one of my good friends,” he told Ned. “They say she’s queer but who knows and who cares? You know the Village People were queer. Remember that dance I was just doing?”

“Yes, Dad.” Ned said, and gripped his arm tighter.

“You aren’t queer, are you, son?” Stanley asked. “Been a long time since I’ve heard of you gettin a piece.” He knew he had gone too far, but sometimes he had no choice but to make him leave. “I’ll be damned. My son is a queer.”

“Would it matter?”

“Not if you’re happy. Mighty slim pickings in this town, though.”

“I’m not gay, Dad. I was married, remember?”

“Lots of gay people get married,” he said, and stopped to adjust his belt, avoiding going into his apartment. The show is so much harder to pull off when it is just the two of them. “They call it a beard.”

“I like women. I just haven’t met one.” Ned’s vein in his right cheek was showing, always a good sign that he would have to leave very soon or else lose his temper, which it seemed he had made some kind of pact or oath not to do.

“Well, there’s a cute one works here. Go on over there and find her. She’s the one who came when your mom died.”

Ned turned and Stanley realized he had sounded way too sane. “She tries every day to get me to fuck her and I keep telling her that I’m only interested in old pussy.”

“Dad.”

“Really. Someday when you get to be old you’ll understand, but what I have told her is that I got a young son who I bet would like to pin her to the mat. Oh shit, look at the time. It’s time for the rumble. I taped it. The Royal Rumble so either you got to go now or you have to promise to sit and not speak for the whole time.” Stanley stopped making eye contact and turned on the television as loud as it would go. Ned stood in the doorway a few more minutes and then finally said he would be back later. “I love you, Dad,” he said, and closed the door. And every day is the same. Same show. Same ending. He will have to do it again later this afternoon, but at least it is getting easier and it seems Ned does talk to more people these days; he’s a little more outgoing and one day the hospice girl even asked Stanley how his son was doing.

Stanley is glad Ned has finally bought his own place, a little house on the way to the beach. Still, he knows that the boy’s real idea of home is locked up in that house on the corner of Fifteenth and Winthrop. His heart is locked there, too, even though that house is gone as of a year ago, a Food Lion in its place. The boys were furious at him for selling so quickly and everyone lectured him about how he knew better than anyone how a person shouldn’t make major decisions like that in the aftermath of death, but he knew he couldn’t stand to look at it; he knew it would make it even harder for Ned to find his way, that he’d be like some old alley cat making his way back to the door again and again and again. The place felt terrible after Martha died, like he couldn’t even breathe, so he did everything quickly. He had her prize rosebushes lifted and given away, her favorite planted at her grave, which he has not visited since going there with Ned to plant it. But now, ever since Sadie Randolph invited Stanley to close his eyes and wander his own home, he has not been able to stop the journey. There is not a night to pass that Stanley doesn’t make his way through that house, the afghan and television and peace lilies. Martha always wanted a greenhouse, an expanse of light and glass to brighten the dark hallway. When she got sick he almost did it but then didn’t.
Why bother now?
he could imagine her saying, and wouldn’t that have been an awful ending?
Why bother now that I won’t live through winter, now that we need all the money for this awful oxygen machine and the morphine that keeps me looped and reaching for things nobody else can see.

But now he lets himself imagine the joy he might have seen if he’d surprised her with what she really wanted, unasked, just given—a gift.

“Oh, Stanley, it’s beautiful,” she says. “It’s what I’ve always wanted.” And the sound of her voice in his head is more painful than anything he has ever allowed himself to imagine. He winces and is glad to open his eyes and find Ned gone. He doesn’t want Ned to get to the end and feel bad, sorry for all that he missed in life. He wants him in there with the thick of it—swimming, diving, claiming his own life and giving to it with all the gusto he has. Ned has done his time. He has more than earned a new life.

Stanley turns down the dark hallway where the greenhouse would have been and he stands in the doorway. There is the dog he promised and never got. The notebooks of numbers that would say when they could afford to do this or that—the stack of travel books on Martha’s bedside table, carefully marked with a Post-it to remind him of all the places they never went. Bermuda. She just wanted to go to
Bermuda;
you can practically see Bermuda from here and yet they never got there.

Just yesterday Toby knocked and popped her head in, Rachel Silverman right there behind her. “Stanley? Where are you? Outer space?” Toby is one of those people who is always cheerful and he can’t help but wonder when she breaks. What does it take to bring that old girl down? He knows there is something. You can’t live this many years and not know the weight, the pull of some regret.

“Yes. Outer space,” he said, too tired for the show. Just too damn tired.

“You look sad.” Her voice was so level and calm—a depth that sounded so good to his ear. The last thing he wanted was for someone to see him cry, to blow his hard-earned cover.

“Of course I’m sad,” he said, and went to open his bathroom door. He stepped in and took a deep breath. “I’m sad there’s no guns in this goddamned place so I could pick off some old assholes who need a mercy killing.” He left the door open while he peed.

“I told you he’s testy,” Toby said. “But I still like him. We’ll come back another day, though. Sadie says if anybody in town can answer all your questions, Stanley is the man.”

“We’ll see,” Rachel said. “He’s not very dependable and not very nice and truth be told, I’ve probably had enough drama for one life.”

He had his hand on the knob to steady himself. He likes her. He doesn’t want to like her, but he really does.

“Well, I don’t have many friends here,” Toby said. “So I figure if I get the people I like to get to know and like each other maybe we can have a movie group or a book club other than that shitty book club they have here on Thursday night. I taught English literature for forty years and I am sick and tired of reading romantic sagas and inspirational how-to mess. Break out the good stuff.”

Rachel laughed and Stanley leaned just a little to the left so he could see them in his mirror, still waiting politely in the doorway. “I would love to join your club,” she said. “You and Sadie are the only sane people here as far as I can tell.”

“Don’t I know it?” Toby asked. “Do you ever chew or dip?”

“Chew or dip
what
?”

“Snuff, cigar. Sometimes I take a little dip or a chew, get a good buzz. I know it’s not very popular or ladylike, but I used to smoke like a stack—three packs a day and I still love to get something going in my system, you know?”

“Actually, I do know,” Rachel said. “I smoked a hundred years ago.”

Stanley wanted to open the door and say,
You’ve come a long way baby,
but even he was tired of his own show, so he just flushed and waited for them to leave. He eased the door shut and turned on the radio. He likes to listen to NPR. He likes the news and Garrison Keillor and he likes listening to classical music, the notes swaddling his mind without words, sopping up all that haunts him as he eases his tired aching body into his chair. And now he’s here again. Rachel Silverman passed by earlier going wherever it is she goes every single morning and every late afternoon. He watches her move across the parking lot and then dip into the shade of the arbor. He watches until he can’t see a trace of her and then he closes his eyes and allows himself to enter the house on Fifteenth and Winthrop. He walks down the carpeted hall to Ned’s room, pale blue walls and the heavy pine furniture Martha picked out for the boys; he finds Ned in there studying and tells him he should take a break, they should do something fun, something they’ve never done before. And when they pass by his toolshed and Stanley sees where Ned has painted an airplane and written his name, he says:
Wow, would you look at that?
And he doesn’t get angry at all. Really, when you back up and take a good hard look at it, there is nothing to get angry
about
and the way Ned looks at him from inside that soft kid body—a cowlick in his sweaty boy hair and a laugh that shows his teeth growing in at all angles—breaks what is left of Stanley’s heart.