Drowning Lessons (5 page)

“Christ,” says Geordie, shaking a banana slug from a Budweiser can. The slug clings to his arm like a hypodermic.

I turn a few somersaults, then surface to inspect the island. More beer cans and bottles, what's left of a campfire, a defunct rubber, and a few hefty turds, origin unknown. My hypothesis: wolf shit. It seems unlikely, I know, but Nonnie's family of wolves had to go
somewhere
. Why not this pleasant little island, where no one can harass them save a few old high school chums who don't even know if they're still friends?

“Albert, Geordie — check this out!”

Clyde points down from the lighthouse. “There — in the shallows!”

The carcass of a dead snapping turtle, tangled in fishing line, its head the size of my foot. Flies spin around it.

“Imagine if that bit your dick off?” observes Clyde.

“Fucking fishermen,” says Geordie. “They must've killed it and left it there. Bastards.”

I say, “Maybe the wolves got it.”

Geordie spins around. “What?”

“The wolves,” I say. “Maybe it was the wolves.”

Back on the rock, Geordie stacks cans and bottles and wanders off who knows where. Lenny asks me and Clyde to take his kid for a while. He straps the papoose sling on Clyde's back and slips the baby inside. “Get the little bastard out of my sight,” he stage-whispers, then forces a laugh, ruining the joke. He needs to concentrate on Bible verses.

Me and Clyde joke about taking the kid “for a ride.” We say it like Edward G. Robinson in
Little Caesar
. Meanwhile, the kid — who looks like Eddie G. — makes gooey faces. For a while everything's fine. Then the kid starts crying again. His cries echo across Bennington Pond. He cries like he's being tortured. Clyde tries making gooey faces back at him, but it's no use. “Let him cry,” I say. “It'll do him good.” His screams fill the woods, bounce off the clouds. Suddenly Lenny comes charging down the path. “Are you out of your
fucking minds
?” he says. “What the fuck's the
matter
with you? Don't you hear him crying? How can you be so goddamn
stupid
?”

“What should we have done?” says Clyde.

“You should have brought him back to me, that's what!” says Lenny, his hands curling into fists. He squeezes them open and shut as if squeezing a pair of rubber balls. For a second I'm afraid. He takes the baby back; the baby stops crying. Clyde looks my way, shrugs.

All the way back to the car Lenny clenches and unclenches his fists. He still hasn't found a Bible passage. Geordie, back from his wandering, has entered one of his monklike silences. For the next hour he won't say a word; he'll just look preoccupied, like St. Augustine on a bad day. Clyde keeps shrugging his all-purpose shrug. The silence nags me. It ages me. I run my fingers along my hairline. We're twenty-eight, all of us, going on middle-aged, going on dead. I swear I can't take this shit anymore, all these funerals and babies. I prefer to live in a war-torn city, in a country where they kill you for talking. I want to crash-land a spy plane somewhere in the Sahara, ride crowded trains full of people burning with dysentery, be nursed by a she-wolf, found Rome. Is that
asking too much? Instead I'm coasting along on my last paycheck from Corbinger's, looking forward to twenty years of carting mail through rain, snow, sleet, dark of night, etcetera.

At Boston Rotisserie, Lenny and I stand in line while Clyde waits in the Rambler. Geordie has gone to bring our mother home from the hospital. Why I have no idea, but it's always me Lenny wants with him, whether to bring home chicken or keep him from punching priests. While waiting I notice this item in the local free paper:

WOLF REPORTED AT TOWN RESERVOIR

The Barnum Police Dept. has reported sightings by local residents of a wolf in the woods surrounding the town reservoir, in the area adjacent to the old Bennington property. Authorities have not been able to verify the reports, though Canine Patrol Sergeant Vincent Pomerance believes the animal in question may be a misidentified German shepherd or other wolflike stray dog.

Back at the Wolff home, which seems doomed with Mrs. Wolff gone, Mr. W. has reverted to his T-shirt and green work pants. His asthma is acting up. He makes locomotive-like sounds while shoveling mashed potatoes into his mouth. The rain has stopped. Still, water drips into Tupperware pails, as if a cloud rents space in the attic. Every five minutes or so Mr. Wolff breaks with a choking sound. Though he doesn't say so, I know he wishes we'd all get the hell out of here.

Back home that same evening, I give leftover mashed potatoes to my mother, who claims she hasn't eaten a thing since I brought her to the hospital yesterday. She sits up in bed.

“How was de funeral?” she wants to know.

“Tomorrow,” I say. “The funeral's tomorrow. Today was the wake.”

Geordie, having excavated his old co
₂
pellet gun, stands in the dusky backyard shooting beer cans, planting his feet and squinting like Clint Eastwood. I wonder how his congregation would feel if they knew their minister was a closet assassin.

“Geordie?” I come up behind him. He turns with the gun propped on his shoulder a la 007. He's got this cold look in his eyes. I swear he saves up all his meanness for trips home. “Did you say hello to Mom?”

He goes on shooting.

“You didn't, did you?”

He feeds another co
₂
cartridge into the gun. “Let me tell you something about our dear old habitually dying mother,” he says. “To her way of thinking,” he aims at my face, turns me into a beer can, “there are two types of people in this world. Thieves —” he fires into the aluminum siding, “— and Sufferers. You're either one —” he shoots a window, the same window Nonnie used to see wolves through, “— or the other.” The window now has a small glass asshole in it. “To be a good person, according to Mom, is to be a Sufferer, since one can hardly imagine a Heaven of Thieves, but one can easily imagine a Heaven of Sufferers. Follow me, little brother?”

I hate it when he calls me that. I'd hate it if I
were
his little brother. I nod.

“To enter the Kingdom of Heaven, one must be pitiable. The more pitiable, the better. The pope honors his most industrious Sufferers with sainthood.” He loads the damn gun again. “And so, via mysterious fever and migraine, Mother groans her way to
paradise.” Another pellet fired; another glass asshole. Geordie takes pot shots: at a downspout, at the barbecue pit, at the bench of a collapsed swing set.

I ask, “Where do the Thieves come in?”

“The Thieves are everywhere,” says Geordie. “Take Mrs. Wolff, rest her soul. She turns out to be a Master Thief, stealing the suffering right out from under Mother's nose. Mom doesn't know what hit her. I bet she's been lying in bed for days. Hasn't she?
Hasn't she?
” He looks at me.

“You could still say hello.”

He loads bullets. “Have you ever tried to have a sincere conversation with her?” He shakes his head. “It's not possible. Our mother doesn't speak English. Or Italian. She speaks Innuendo.”

“So what?” I get up the balls to say. “So what if she's like she is? What
difference
does it make? She's our mother. Get over it, already.”

Geordie smiles. It's the first time he's smiled at me during this visit. “Why should I get over it,” he says handing me the warm loaded gun, “when I've got my brother to do it for me?”

Families are strange things, especially when they're not really families but just odd mixtures of people living under the same roof. Still, it worries me to think I may never cry over my own mother's death, that at her funeral I might just stand there, dry eyed, not feeling a thing. Already I hadn't cried at my father's funeral, or Nonnie's, or Stewie's. And I'm sure not going to cry at Mrs. Wolff's. When
will
I cry? When do I get to join the great parade of Sufferers?

The day of the funeral it rains. We stand, umbrellas touching
(except Geordie, who either forgot his or likes getting soaked). I see Mr. Wolff, a fire hydrant heaving under a yellow sou'wester. I watch Lenny clench and unclench his fists as Elaine holds their baby. I see Clyde leaning on his cane in soggy seersucker. I hear the priest, Father Moynahan, droning under an umbrella that protects him as much from divine inspiration as from bad weather. I try to cry, but it's like trying to pass the world's biggest kidney stone. I want to cry for Mrs. Wolff and her fist-clenching son. I want to cry for Clyde and his various ailments. I want to bawl my brains out for Mr. Wolff and his leaky roof, for bedridden mothers and bitter twin brothers, for Nonnie and fried spaghetti, for hollow tombstones and the rotting corpses of snapping turtles. But mostly I want to cry for the family of wolves that once lived under the guest cottage but never will again.

Suddenly Geordie takes my umbrella, folds it up. Rainwater sluices down my face, tickles my eyelashes. He grabs my hand, gripping it hard, squeezing to crush bone. Soon I'm crying real tears. Finally, he lets go. I look up and see him wet faced, his eyes on the casket going down.

I'd hoped we'd go back to Bennington's for another swim, but it rains. Anyway, it seems we've had enough of water and one another. The four of us say good-bye, hug, and that's that. Later, as I fold his shirts and watch him pack, Geordie doesn't say a word. He packs the co
₂
cartridge gun, tucking it under socks and underwear. Our mother, still in bed, calls to him. We stand at her doorway, just like old times.

“How was de funeral?” The Death Voice is back.

“Fine,” says Geordie.

“Wet,” I say.

“I should have been there. Ebene, sarebbe stato meglio fossi morta io. Hai capito?” Geordie and I look at each other.

“We understand, Mom,” he says, going to and kissing her on the forehead, looking up at me deadpan while doing so. “Don't we?”

Weeks later I'm visiting Mr. Wolff at the pump house.

“C'mere,” he says. “Want you to see something.”

A hundred yards behind the pumping station is the town dog pound. Mr. Wolff knocks. Canine Patrol Sergeant Pomerance answers. He leads us into the kennel where, in the last cage, a wolf whimpers, a gray female with a white snout. Her teats sag on stained concrete.

“Caught it on the far side of the reservoir,” Sergeant Pomerance explains. “Must be sick or dying. Possibly rabid. Didn't even growl.”

I gaze into the wolf's eyes — seeping, yellow, cataracted — glowing with primeval forest light. “What are you gonna do with her?” I ask.

“She's endangered, so we can't destroy her,” says Pomerance. “I'll find a zoo or someplace. Meanwhile, though, I'm not gonna argue with her.”

He and Mr. Wolff repair into Sergeant Pomerance's front office to sip bourbon-laced tea. I wait for them to go, then press my nose through chain links. “Yeah, yeah,” I say, getting licked. “It's okay, it's okay …”

Tell me about loneliness.

At one forty-five in the morning, the sky, the sea, and the horizon were all the same greasy black. Andrew Shields lay stretched out on a life-preserver casing, smoking a Lucky Strike, the dieseltossed wind curling his hair, the ferry's engines throbbing below him.

When we have arrived, you will tell me, yes?

Other passengers slept indoors, on stiff chairs, on carpet stained by sea salt and cigarette ashes, in sleeping bags, their clothes rolled up into pillows. Andrew felt separate from them all, as if he belonged to another landscape, a world belonging to the stars and the sea.

Promise you will tell me?

The Brazilian woman — Karina was her name — slept below, perched against her backpack. They'd met on the dock. The ferry was late. Like Andrew, she traveled alone. She stood out from the ranks of tourists. In place of cutoffs or baggy shorts, she wore a
breezy peasant skirt. A gold Star of David hung in the tip of the mild shadow between her breasts. She had an oval face of pale skin with sharp, boyish features and wore her black hair in a bun. She seemed constantly to lean away from or into things. They'd stood close together scanning the horizon. Andrew lit a cigarette. “Do you mind?” he asked.

“Why? What should I mind?”

“The smoke,” he said, waving it away.

“You Americans.”

A moment later she said, “Do you get lonely traveling alone?”

Andrew shrugged. “I guess, a little,” he said.

“You are lying. I bet you get very lonely.”

Andrew was about to reply defensively when suddenly Karina pointed. “Look,” she said, clasping her hands together like a seven-year-old. “The ferry!” Seconds later the ship filled the harbor with light and noise. Without warning, Karina grasped Andrew's hand. “I have never been to sea. Only once, when I was little, and then I was sure the boat would go into the water. I fell asleep and dreamed that I woke up underwater and could not breathe. I swore I would never go to sea again.”

“What made you change your mind?”

“I was a little girl — it is time to grow up.” A crewman tossed a thick hawser that landed with a thump on the dock.

“Look how big it is! It is not a ferry at all; it is an ocean liner!”

Still holding hands, Andrew and Karina pressed forward near the head of the crowd. When their luggage was stowed, Karina stretched out on a bench with a towel for a pillow and said,
“When I wake up, we will be in Crete, and you will tell me about loneliness, yes?”

An old woman in a black shawl, with no upper teeth and a silver crucifix, tugged at Andrew's sleeve. She wanted his section of floor for one of her dozens of grandchildren. The crone fired words, made faces, gestured, implored. At last Andrew gave up his spot, saying, “Okay, okay.”