“Living Paradox”
Wendy Balconi
Collage
On the evening of my father’s deathday, a cold awareness came to me. Seated in that corner of my living room devoted exclusively to books, I scanned the spines—over fifteen hundred of them—and thought to myself, It’s very unlikely that I will ever read all these. Probably not enough hours remain in my life to get through them all.
To prove the point to myself, I rose, fetched a calculator, and dedicated the next twenty minutes or so to arithmetic. I relied on guessed averages, balancing, for example, the slimness of Steinbeck’s early novels with the swollen bulk of a comprehensive Civil War history. Settling on a theoretical three hundred and fifty page model, I then did a rough count of all the books I owned. Beside the tall bookcases in the living room, I included the few smaller ones scattered throughout the house, and even allowed for the twin stacks of paperbacks that I always keep on my nightstand.
To give myself a fighting chance, I left out the shelves in our bedroom devoted exclusively to my wife’s gardening and spiritual books, as well as the small legion of juvenile books in my kids’ rooms. Reference volumes were likewise excluded. Also, I removed from the equation any books that I’d already read. Using a few sample bookshelves, I came to the disheartening realization that I’d only made my way through perhaps a sixth of the books I owned. I forged on, tallying in the realistic amount of task-free daily hours, lost days due to the unexpected ebbs and flows of life, and my absurd slowness as a reader. Lastly, I predicted for myself a very liberal ninety year lifespan (unlikely according to my genetics). The math confirmed my theory: when my own deathday arrived, hundreds of my books would remain unread, a testament to one man’s hubristic overreach.
Returning to my easy chair, I sat for many minutes staring at the shelves. In time, my wife came in and handed me a cup of tea. Normally, Holly wouldn’t just bring me a beverage I hadn’t asked for, and normally I wasn’t a tea drinker. In the present situation, though, tea seemed the right thing. With an excess of cream.
“How you doing?” Holly dragged over the ottoman and sat beside me. “It’s been a rough day.”
I nodded toward the bookshelves. “The far, unobtainable shores.”
“What?”
“All these books. This multitude of pages. The likelihood of reading them all is like gazing across a wide ocean and…” I trailed off.
“Gazing across an ocean and what?”
“Never mind. It was a shit analogy.”
I took a sip of tea and studied the cup. It was one of the blue floral-patterned ones that Dad had passed onto Holly after my mother’s death. It occurred to me that I hadn’t bothered to count my books after Mom died.
I took another sip and said, “Now I’m an orphan. Promise you won’t let them drag me off to the orphanage.”
Holly gave me a pained little smile and rested her hand on my knee. “Oh, sweetie.”
“I don’t think I could stomach gruel.” I set the teacup on the floor. “Frickin’ bowls of gruel.”
Holly took my hand in hers and kissed it. “I’ll miss Dave too. And the kids will.” She started to cry, softly.
With my free hand, I stroked her hair, but continued staring at the books. Perhaps if I quit working for a year or two that would make the difference. If I devoted most of my waking hours to reading, that might conceivably put me in position to reach the far shore. Of course, I’d have to allow for time playing with my children and making love to my wife, but all the other hours…
“The kids are asleep.” Holly sighed and wiped her eyes. “Cole fell right off, but Lily kept asking questions.”
“Questions? About what? Life and death and the nature of impermanence?”
“Sorry to disappoint, but she mostly wanted to know if Grandpa would be buried in a white tee-shirt because that’s what he always wears.”
“I hope you told her hell yes. Just a white tee-shirt, boxer shorts, and his best silk tie.”
“Did he even own a silk tie?”
“Probably not. Shit, I forgot to stop by his place and pick up his suit for the mortician.”
“Didn’t one of your sisters say she’d do that? Marianne, wasn’t it?”
“Right, right. Marianne. It’s his only suit. The one he wore to Mom’s funeral. Christ, do we have to invite Uncle Barry to Dad’s? He got stagger-drunk after Mom’s. Remember?”
“You don’t really invite people to a funeral,” Holly said. “You just inform them it’s happening. Look, don’t worry about all that stuff tonight. Go easy on yourself. You just lost your father.”
“No offense, but I hate when people say that. I didn’t lose my father. I know perfectly well where he is—on a slab at Portelli’s Funeral Home.”
“Oh, stop it.”
“Know what else I hate?”
“You seem to be hating a lot right now. That’s okay, you’re entitled.”
“I hate that someone will come up during the wake and say, well, at least now your dad’s together again with your mother. Up in heaven, reunited. Just watch, ten-to-one, some cousin or old neighbor will march up and grip my shoulder and say those very words. How the hell do they know that—that my parents are reunited? If someone says that to me, know what I’ll respond? I’ll say, really, do you have documentation? Was there a security camera set up on Heavenly Boulevard? I’d love to see the footage. That’s what I’ll say.”
Holly’s little smile returned. “Really? That’s what you’ll say?”
“Verbatim.”
I went quiet for a few moments and thought about the wakes I’d attended. The last one I’d been to was for a coworker I had nominally liked. He had died too young and too obese, and a priest with a limp had come in to say a prayer over the coffin. The priest was leaning on a polished black walking stick with a brass lion’s head at the top, which had struck me as ostentatious and wonderful. I scanned the bookshelves again. There it was: Finnegan’s Wake. I shouldn’t be forced to count that, should I? True, I hadn’t read it, but for God’s sake, had anybody read it? Wasn’t that the point of the damned thing, that it was epically unreadable? What if I managed to plow through every other volume in the house except for Joyce’s migraine-triggering acid trip of a novel—would I have failed in my endeavor?
“Do you want me to call Marianne?” Holly was asking. “To check if she got the suit?”
“No, I’ll do it. I want to tell her not to forget the handkerchief.”
“Handkerchief?”
“My father’s red handkerchief. Whenever he wore his suit, he’d stuff it in the breast pocket. It gave him a bit of flash.”
“I don’t think of Dave as the flashy sort.”
“Only when he wore the red handkerchief. He should be buried in it.”
I got up and spent a couple of minutes hunting for my phone. This gave me an opportunity to grumble and curse, which was a good distraction. I found it in an idiotic place—on a shelf in the pantry—and called my sister.
“It’s me. Did you get Dad’s suit?”
“I did.” Marianne sounded weary and a little pissed off. “I already brought it over to Portelli’s. Mr. Portelli wasn’t there, but his son was. You know, the bearded one who keeps checking me out? Jesus, I’m there to bury my father and that prick’s eyeing me up like it’s last call at the Bimbo Bar and Grill.”
“Did you remember to get the red handkerchief? The one Dad would wear in his breast pocket?”
“Red handkerchief? That doesn’t sound like Daddy. Nobody said anything about a red handkerchief.”
“I thought maybe you’d think of it. Whenever he wore his suit, he’d have it in his breast pocket. It was a part of the suit, really. Like an accruement.”
“Accruement?” Marianne managed a laugh. “Daddy wouldn’t be caught dead with an accruement.”
“Well, he has been caught dead, hasn’t he? And I think he should get to wear his goddamn red handkerchief.”
There was silence then.
After several moments, I said, “I’m sorry.”
“It’s alright…”
“I shouldn’t have expected you to notice the handkerchief.”
“I honestly don’t remember him wearing one. Are you sure?”
“I’m sure. It was red.”
“What, bright red? Fire engine red?”
“I don’t know. Just red.”
“I guess I can go back and see if I can find it.” Marianne didn’t sound enthused at the prospect. “If you think it’s important.”
“No, that’s crazy. It’s an hour and a half roundtrip for you. I can swing by there in the morning. Is the key still under the brick?”
“Yeah. Are you sure you don’t want me to—”
“It’s fine, Marianne. I’ll get it to Portelli tomorrow.”
“Okay.” My sister groaned softly. “I hate this, Tim.”
“Of course.”
“I’m not going to cry anymore tonight. My eyes actually sting. I know they’ll be more tears tomorrow, so I’d better pace myself.”
“Lo, there shall be moaning and lamentation.”
“Huh?”
“I think it’s from the Bible. Or possibly Shakespeare.” I knew I had a Bible somewhere, all twenty billion verses of it. And a mercilessly thick Complete Works of Shakespeare that had shadowed me since my college days.
Marianne told me she loved me, and I told her I loved her and rang off. I found Holly in the kitchen, loading the dishwasher and listening to some pop siren on the radio.
“She’s indiscernible,” I said.
“Your sister? Indiscernible from what?”
“No, I mean this singer. They all sound alike, these teeny-bopper chanteuses.”
“Teeny-bopper? My God, Tim, did you just slip back five or six decades? When did you turn into an old geezer?”
“Maybe this morning. With my father gone, I’m on the front lines now. There’s no one between myself and the great finality.”
“The great finality? Is that anything like the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown?”
“Do you think this is the right time for levity?” I passed Holly some dirty plates from the counter. “While Dad’s being pumped full of formaldehyde as we speak?”
“Oh, please don’t say that. I don’t want to think of him like that. I want to think of him reading the sports page or making that clam chowder of his.”
“Or telling the kids some borderline inappropriate joke?”
“Sure, even that. I want to remember him in those ways. Not like…”
She didn’t say any more. The tune had ended, and a new songstress was plying her trade. As far as I could tell, this one’s voice bore no difference to that of her predecessor. When we’d finished cleaning the kitchen, Holly asked if I’d like to go for a walk or watch something or just sit and talk. I declined all offers and went off to the spare room. I’d left my laptop there on the same narrow, beat-up old desk that I’d once written my school reports at. The year before, I’d discovered one third-grade opus crammed in the back of a drawer. “Daniel Boone, Big Man of the Woods” had earned me a B+, though my work, rendered chiefly in construction paper, seemed lackluster.
I sat and fired up the laptop. In a document of old contacts, I found the numbers of a couple of Dad’s longtime cronies and jotted them down. These guys would want to know that yet another of their number had vacated the planet. One crusty hombre in particular, Harry Tarkle, would probably take the news in the best of ways. I could imagine his response: Well, guess ol’ Dave’s heading to hell now. Sure, that sumbitch will be there in time for last call. Yes, I’d definitely want Harry at the wake and funeral—to counter the your-dad’s-with-your-mom-now contingent.
I checked my e-mail, then dedicated myself to a time-murdering game of internet hopscotch. Starting with hula hoops—Lily had recently seen a hula-centric street performer and was pestering us for one of the classic toys—I somehow found my way to 9th century Viking raids. How I made that journey, I don’t fully remember. I think there were stopovers at kaleidoscopes, light polarization, and early navigation methods. Then I checked the news. A celebrity fashion designer had died in a car accident in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, a place which didn’t strike me as a fashion epicenter. A popular actress was quoted as saying, “We’ve lost a famous icon.” Apparently, no one had the heart to point out to her the redundancy of that statement.
The tragedy in Arkansas reminded me of the fashion designer I had once aspired to be—for all of five minute. I was ten years old, sprawled on the living room rug, drawing crude superheroes of my own imagination and coloring them in a variety of gaudy hues. I was thoroughly enjoying myself. It occurred to me at that moment that when I reached adulthood, there was a certain occupation I knew of to which I might apply my skills and passion. My father entered the room just then, newly home from work and holding a can of Ballantine beer. He greeted me and asked what I was doing.
With enthusiasm, I told him my fledgling plan: “I think I might like to make women’s clothes someday. I mean like design them, the colors and patterns and all that.”
Dad studied me for a moment, a strained little smile coming to his lips. He said, “You know, son, that’s not a very manly profession.”
Then he pulled back the can’s tab—the hiss of released air acting as a sort of punctuation—and left the room. He said what he’d said not to humiliate me, I’m sure, but to dissuade me. Firmly. It worked. I’d let that dream pass immediately.
Holly came in and rested a hand on my shoulder. “It’s been a long day. I’m turning in. Coming?”
“No. I’m not tired. I think I’ll drive over to Dad’s and get that handkerchief.”
“Tonight? Why not wait till tomorrow morning?”
“Just feel like doing it now. You don’t mind, do you?”
“No, but you should get some sleep. Don’t stay up all night angsting.”
“I don’t angst. I reflect.”
“You angst. In deadly silence. I know you, you’ll stay up worrying about the cremation and the caterer and your Uncle Barry’s alcohol intake.”
“Barry! Right, maybe I should—”
“Maybe you should just let things go tonight. And grieve. You haven’t even cried, really.”
“I did. This morning. You saw me.”
“It was more of a sputter.”
“Well, I’m not a big weeper.”
“You cry during The Great Escape.”
“Sure. A lot of good men die in that film.”
Holly smiled. “Whenever you watch it, you always tear up at the same scene. The one where the English POW—”
“They’re almost all English POWs.”
“The bald, soft-spoken one. The bird watcher. When he’s told by the senior officer that he can’t take part in the planned escape because his eyesight’s failing, and it would be a liability to bring along a blind man. And James Garner’s character steps forward—this cocky American who has nothing in common with the bird watcher—and he says something like—”
“He says, ‘Colin’s not a blind man as long as he’s with me. And he’s going with me.’”
“Right. You always cry there. Because of the nobility. Maybe you should watch that scene now so you can access your sadness.”
“You think I’m not sad?”
“No, I know you are.”
“I just want to get this handkerchief thing out of the way.”
Holly studied me for several moments, then bent and kissed my head, like a benediction.
“Alright,” she said. “When you get back, wake me if you need to.”
“In case I need physical stimulation?”
“Or conversation. Or someone to cry with.”
“I cried this morning.”
“So you said. Good-night, hon.”
Holly left the room and I checked the time. Having gotten distracted by Viking conquests, it was now too late for me to call Harry Tarkle or any other cronies. Instead, I would go to my father’s now-deserted house.
It was a half hour drive. A mile short of Dad’s, I pulled over at an all–night convenience store. Earlier, I’d halfheartedly picked my way through dinner and was now craving something quick and unnourishing. The store was empty except for the clerk. I made my claim to a bag of pretzels and a pre-made egg salad sub that was flirting with its expiration date. I ended up waiting at the counter while the clerk, a skinny kid with three earrings in one ear, jabbered into his phone about some concert he’d attended. The band, apparently, was “sick.” The set list was “sick.” So was the venue, the light show, some girl in a leather halter top—all sick, sick, sick. In the throes of all that remembered sickness, the clerk didn’t seem to notice me.
I slammed my hand on the counter. As soon as I did it, I was aware how cliché the action was. Like in some broad comedy where an irate customer is demanding service. Well, what the hell, that’s what I was. The kid stopped mid-sentence, stared at me, and mumbled a good-bye. Pocketing his phone, he conducted our business in chilly near-silence. I left the store. Back in my car, I unwrapped my egg salad only to find it inedible. In an uncharacteristic burst of littering, I flung the sub out the window. I heard my father’s now terminated voice: Your mother makes the best egg salad. It was a meager enough compliment—gushing praise was never Dad’s way—but it always made Mom blush.
I was about to drive off when I glanced across the road and noticed the little rundown bar there—Gentleman Joe’s. I’d passed the place a thousand times on my way to my parents’, but had never gone in. I knew Dad stopped by from time to time and had once mentioned meeting a retired roofer there who was the spitting image of Dwight D. Eisenhower.
On an impulse, I decide to go get a drink. I found three other customers in the barroom, none of them Ike. The bartender was an unshaven little brooder in a crumpled shirt. If this was Gentleman Joe, there was some serious false advertising in play. I sat at the bar and ordered a Ballantine, a brand I never liked but had been Dad’s favorite beer. Glancing around the place, I saw that it was small, grungy, and indistinctive. Not unlike the barkeep. In a couple of minutes, he disappeared into a backroom. Soon after, two of the patrons drained their beers and exited. I was alone now with a large, middle-aged man at the end of the bar. He had thinning black hair combed severely back from his forehead and a mustache that drooped down his jowls. He was drinking Dad’s brand too. Our eyes met and I felt compelled to say something.
“Slow night, huh?”
He took his time in responding. “Never really busy here.” His voice was as deep and guttural as you’d want it to be. He didn’t bother smiling.
“Just regulars, I suppose.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“That’s okay though,” I said, as if he needed my approval. “Seems like a nice quiet place to have a beer…”
“I guess.” He was staring again at his bottle.
“My father used to come here.” I couldn’t seem to stop talking. “From time to time. Dave. Dave Clayton. You might have run across him.”
“I know a lot of Daves.”
“Right, it’s common name. He wore glasses and was kind of burly. That is, sort of solidly built.”
The man looked back at me. “I know what burly means.”
“Sure, I just meant—”
“There’s a burly guy with glasses comes here sometimes. Might be named Dave.”
“Maybe that was him. Remember anything else about the guy?”
Nearly a minute passed as I waited for my companion to answer. He kept shifting his gaze between his bottle and my face. When he finally spoke, it was to the bottle.
“I do remember something. I remember that the guy’s an asshole.” He turned back to me and smiled, thinly but pleasurably. “Sure, a real asshole.”
I kept looking at him, saying nothing.
“Kinda guy who’s begging to get his teeth plowed in.” The smile didn’t let up. “That kinda guy.”
I still kept quiet.
He raised the ante. “Sound like your Dave? Your old man? Think that’s him?”
I felt my throat muscles tense. “What’s your problem?”
“My problem? My fucking problem?” He laughed weirdly and climbed off his stool. He was taller even than I’d calculated.
“You’re the one with the problems. You’re the one with the questions about burly guys.”
He took a step toward me and I got off my own stool. Was this going to be the barroom brawl that I’d never gotten to experience? A gift of chance violence on the heels of my father’s death?
“You’d better back off,” I said. It was a night of clichés.
The large man let go another laugh, one of the unhinged variety. If I’d had any doubts as to his mental stability, they were now fully dispersed. Big and crazy was a bad combination.
The smile finally vanished. “I could plow in your teeth.” He seemed fixated on that notion. “I could do that. Just for the hell of it.”
“Bob! Bob! Bob!” The little bartender had returned. He shoved the larger man back onto his stool. “What did I tell you about antagonizing customers? You want me to throw your ass outta here for good? Is that what you want?”
Big Bob stared down at the bartop and shook his head slowly. He suddenly looked like a chastised child.
The bartender turned to me. “Sorry, buddy. Bob’s got difficulties. Complications, ya know? He’s had some injuries.” He pointed to his head.
“Don’t…don’t…” Bob was speaking now in a half-whisper, his eyes still lowered. “I’ll just drink my beer.”
“You do that. How ‘bout you, buddy. Want another on the house?”
“No, I’m fine,” I said.
“Sorry about Bob. He’s got—”
“It’s okay. Really. I should get going.”
I left and walked back across the street to my car. I drove on to Dad’s. I parked in his driveway and sat there for a while, eating pretzels and staring at the darkened windows. It was the house of the dead now. A house of ghosts…Dad gone, Mom gone… and the memory of two stillborn babies, the brothers I never got to know, come and gone before I even existed. I ate half the bag, delaying my entry.
Something rapped on the driver’s window. I flinched and let out a soprano yelp. Backlit by a streetlamp’s weak glow, a face had appeared, deeply wrinkled and framed by a freefall of long gray hair. With some hesitation, I rolled down my window.
“Oh, I’m so sorry!” The old face was now distorted with remorse. “I shouldn’t have snuck up on you like that.”
I assumed that she was some neighbor of Dad’s, though I didn’t recognize her. Not surprising—the houses on the street had changed hands several times since my parents first moved here
The woman brushed her hair back from her face. “You’re Dave’s son, aren’t you?”
“I am.”
“I live right across there and saw you pull in. I just wanted to say how sorry I am about your father’s passing”
“Thank you.”
“He was such a nice man. We moved in a couple years back, and Dave has always been very helpful. With little fix-up chores and all. You see, my husband Wyatt has some mobility issues.”
Mobility issues… I imagined an ancient, grumbling Wyatt airing his grievances regarding the concept of motion: It’s best if things stay stationary! I don’t hold with none of this newfangled moving from one spot to the next.
I kept my fantasies to myself and just said, “Oh?”
“Yes. Your father had a good heart. A very good heart. But, of course, you knew that.”
After pondering this for several seconds, I said, “Why, yes, I suppose I did.”
The woman looked at me oddly, perhaps thinking I’d taken too long to respond. “I just wanted to offer my condolences.” With that, she turned and aimed herself across the street.
It was time to enter the ghost home. From under a brick near the front door I removed the extra key and let myself in. I walked through the house, flicking on every light switch I passed. As everyone knows, light is a great deterrent to phantoms. In the bedroom, I glanced at the bed: crisply made, top of the sheet folded sharply back from plumped up pillows. Hotel housekeeping quality—certainly not Dad’s work. Probably one of my sisters had made this superfluous effort.
As luck would have it, our father hadn’t died in bed, or the mattress might have been ruined by postmortem release. Conveniently, he’d expired on the back lawn, reading the morning paper and sipping black coffee. Not an awful way to go. Certainly better than dying in the muck of the Korean Peninsula, gurgling blood and clutching his bullet-pierced gut—which is how he might have died if a Mexican-born corporal named Alvarez hadn’t found him and dragged him to safety. Dad liked to tell us how he’d never had much use for mexicanos before, but from that hour onward he sure goddamned loved ‘em. At least Alvarez.
I began hunting through the clothes bureau for the handkerchief. I started with the socks drawer, guessing that might be a semi-logical choice. No success, but what I did find was a scarf of Mom’s that she’d wear on special occasions, a green silk number. I’d thought that my father, boastfully unsentimental, had passed on all of her belongings to Holly and my sisters. Apparently, I’d been wrong. I continued my search. The underwear drawer also proved a bust, as did the pants drawer. Incongruously, the flashy red handkerchief appeared among the stacks of identical white tee-shirts that dominated Dad’s retirement wardrobe. It was neatly folded, and I transferred it carefully to my shirt pocket.
Mission completed, I turned from the bureau, and my eyes settled on the nightstand and the book resting there. I walked over and picked up the hardcover—Sea Tossed: Tales of Ocean Peril. It was one of mine that I’d lent to Dad a couple of weeks ago, a collection of true stories concerning men stranded at sea. I myself had only read about half of it when I’d passed it on to him. I wondered if he’d gotten farther than I had. Opening the book at its stalled bookmark, I read a sentence. On the thirty-first day, with the eating of our final pear, we finished the last of the provisions that we’d salvaged from the Randy Rita. I remembered this story, an account of an air crew downed over the Atlantic and set adrift on a flimsy raft. I read on: Two days after that, we lost our third man. Perhaps Dad had read this passage and learnt of that third fatality, the plane’s navigator. Perhaps he hadn’t. If I remembered right, several more men would perish before the survivors were discovered by a passing trawler. So, by dying today, Dad never became aware of those further deaths. In a sense, he’d been outlived by any man who died after the navigator.
I closed the book. After returning it to the nightstand, I took a final glance around the room. Here’s where my sire had spent his final night on earth, his mind probably adrift on that tiny raft in the ocean, waiting for salvation or a merciful death. I sat on the edge of his bed and, finally, without restraint, gave way to the weight of the day. I wondered if Holly would feel cheated, not getting to see me in full, untempered grief. I cried for young Dave Clayton, who had risen bloodied from the Korean mud to marry my mother and become my father. And maybe there was a tear or two for the navigator and his companions. And, too, for the gentle bird watcher who had escaped from the stalag only to be shot down on a German hillside. He died in the cocky American’s arms, whispering, ‘Thank you for getting me out.’
After a while, I drew a sleeve across my eyes and rose. I was about to leave the room when I paused, returned to the nightstand, and looked down again at Sea Tossed. It would have been easy to just leave it there, thus lessening the already formidable number of volumes I needed to complete before I died. But, after all, the book was mine, my responsibility.
I picked it up and left the room.
Michael Nethercott: “I’m the author of two suspense novels, The Séance Society and The Haunting Ballad (St. Martin’s Press) and a past winner of The Black Orchid Novella Award, the Vermont Writers’ Award, the Vermont Playwrights Award, and the Nor’easter Play Writing Competition. My writings have appeared in numerous periodicals and anthologies including Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, Best Crime and Mystery Stories of the Year, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and Vermont Magazine.”