Revival House (3 page)

I cannot believe my ears. I expected to be knocked into the park by his cane.

He sighs, sounding like a punctured air mattress.

His air of resignation, though, wallops me more than any physical blow. Something must be done to resurrect the family business, surely he knows that. Where is his trademark tenacity? I cannot assess my uncle’s apathy toward my latest non-sale. Quite interesting. Not to mention, unnerving. This situation will require some investigation on my part, since we do not have the type of relationship that will allow me to just ask him outright what his problem is. He’s raised me since childhood, due to my parents’ murder-suicide, but we’ve never been what you would call close.

My eyes wander across the eerie antique post-mortem photographs that hang on the wall adjacent to my desk. Something in those sepia-toned images whispers to me. I wonder if they hold the key to resurrecting our business. I see potential.

“Well, she’s waiting for us,” Uncle Sterling says, heaving himself up from the chair, dissipating a thought that had begun to form in my head like fog rising from the early morning marsh. He seems deflated, defeated, but at least one iota of his passion remains intact: I feel his bulging eyes burning into my chest.

He still loathes my emerald green tie.

I had chosen it quite deliberately this morning.

For our visit.

Chapter 4 – Caleb

‘The Home,’ as we refer to it, is out on Wilmington Island, next to the most exquisite golf course. I’ve played at Wilmington Island Club on a number of occasions. I use the term ‘play’ loosely, of course. My idea of playing golf is rolling around in a cart, sipping Tanqueray and tonics while wearing polyester and catching up on the latest gossip, such as who’s had a stroke or a heart attack, who’s been in a drunk driving wreck, who’s been killed in an unfortunate boating accident— networking, you might say. Boring, but necessary.

In any case, rush hour on the Islands Expressway is murder, as usual. You wouldn’t think of Savannah as having a “rush hour” like the bigger cities, but we do. The main difference being that we maintain a certain level of decorum about it. For example, horn-honking and vulgar gestures are frowned upon, whereas sipping any beverage of your choosing (although it must be from a plastic cup) while idling in line is perfectly acceptable. (Not necessarily legal, but always acceptable.) Perhaps it’s the average Savannahian’s blood alcohol content which lends the city its trademark civility.

By the time we make it over the Wilmington River Bridge, I have a bitch-kitty of a headache, likely stemming from a lack of nicotine paired with the Gilbert and Sullivan show tunes played at too many decibels in order to penetrate Uncle Sterling’s Miracle Ear. I shall never again listen to the ‘Yeoman of the Guard’ soundtrack. Not that I ever have, not of my own accord anyway. I feel dangerously close to delivering a savage kick to the burl walnut surrounding the Jaguar’s CD player. But, truth be told, it isn’t just Uncle Sterling’s choice of music or my own lack of cigarettes that has me in a violent mood; it is my uncle’s lackadaisical attitude and behavior. The savage kick should really be delivered to his great bald pate. Had I failed to close a significant sale in the past, a sale to lifelong acquaintances like the Davis family, I could expect not only to be screamed at about my own lack of concern for the future of the family business, but I would also receive that resounding smack on the head from Sterling’s cane. Not that I miss the abuse, but, at present, he doesn’t seem to care about the Davises, or anything else.

Over the past several weeks he’d been crankier than hell— whacking me with that cane, snapping at suppliers, being short with clients— but he has been less combative than usual, arguing with me less despite the whackings. I find the situation most unsettling. Is it depression? Hopelessness? If he is hopeless, then our business must be a whole lot closer to spinning down the toilet than I’d imagined. I don’t know what, if anything, to do. I stare at the gray ribbon of road and recite the periodic table of elements within the confines of my head. This is a little trick I use to calm myself in moments of what you might call rage or extreme anxiety. I learned it from some therapist years ago. By the time I get to germanium, number thirty-two, the dark cloud centered in my frontal lobe dissipates. I uncurl my aching and blanched fingers from around the steering wheel.

I mutter a hello to Aunt Billie when we enter her room ten minutes later. I bend to kiss the air next to her withered cheek, as if she can hear me or is even aware of my presence. She lay motionless in her hospital bed, a thick semi-transparent white snake taped into her mouth like some kind of rigid plastic intestine, forcing air into and out of her wasting lungs. Her head is bald and flat on top, over to the right-hand side. Directly beneath her scalp lies a steel plate secured to her skull with titanium pins. That is from the accident, of course.

Uncle Sterling takes her long-nailed talon in his own fat paw and smiles into her unseeing eyes. “Oh, darling, you look beautiful,” he says, eyes wet, his words barely audible over the rasping of her breathing machine.

I reckon you’re curious as to what happened. I am not proud of it.

Seven years ago, Aunt Billie had woken early to prepare a pitcher of mimosas and to bake a breakfast casserole to bring over to the Farthington Inn Bed & Breakfast, just down the block from 121 Hall Street. The Howards, who owned the B&B that overlooked Forsyth Park, held an annual sumptuous St. Patrick’s Day breakfast, which commenced promptly at seven a.m. Aunt Billie had never missed it.

St. Patrick’s Day is a huge celebration in the city of Savannah. The schools are closed, fountains are tinted green, and everyone in the city is Irish, if only for the day. And, as family tradition dictated, Uncle Sterling and Aunt Billie rode on their very own Sterling Exley & Sons Funeral Parlor float each and every year. I, myself, had been a fixture on the float since the year I was born. It became my job to drive the vehicle the year I turned sixteen.

I recall drinking Bloody Marys with Uncle Sterling that morning, as there is no such thing as underage drinking in Savannah on St. Patrick’s Day (well, there is, but as long as you don’t stand naked in front of the police station hollering obscenities, and you’re with your legal guardian, it is not a problem). Both of us were dressed in emerald green suits and ties, gluing artificial lilies to the sides of the float and joking about the number of fatalities the day’s festivities might generate. Aunt Billie showed up, trailing the Howards and some of their guests behind her like so many overinflated balloons. We all stood around, waiting for the parade to begin, drinking and talking. Finally, we got the signal and started rolling down Abercorn Street. We threw strings of green beads, green doubloons imprinted with the funeral parlor’s name, and green-dyed artificial lilies. We waved and drank and speculated on the participation of Sinn Fein and whether that participation would ever bring any untoward attacks to the annual event.

Before we knew it, we had passed the big art deco SCAD library building and theater on Broughton, nearing the middle of the parade route. For some reason, floats ahead of us were veering toward the left-hand side of the street. We’d had a particularly cold winter that year and I suppose it had taken its toll on our streets. Our float, fashioned from an old hearse, hit the enormous pothole that everyone else had avoided. I did not see it until it was far too late to dodge. My Bloody Mary spilled all over my lap, ruining my best green trousers. Uncle Sterling and Aunt Billie had been sitting in the extra-large sunroof we’d cut in the top of the vehicle, and when the car lurched and I spilled my drink, we lost Aunt Billie.

She fell to the right as I yanked the steering wheel hard to the left. The orange traffic cone that had been set up in front of the hole flew off the float’s front bumper and into the crowd, breaking some woman’s green-painted nose. Aunt Billie tumbled off the roof, her legs scraping the hastily-finished left edge of the hole, ripping massive runs in her beige pantyhose, stripping the skin from her left shin, vegetable peeler-style.

I don’t remember much after that.

I was later shown the entire accident on video at the police station. Billie had fallen in slow motion. She flailed, upside down hovering at the rear passenger window, her left leg snapping, sharp ragged bone tearing through her considerable flesh, face freezing in a desperate scream. Then, she quite simply fell to the pavement, landing on her head. I’d stopped the car, but she’d still been dragged about ten feet or so, leaving a pasty red and hairy trail behind her. The smear was surprisingly dull under the glaring sun. A hush fell over the raucous crowd. Someone said ‘dude.’ Someone laughed. Someone covered Aunt Billie’s face with their lime green coat. Uncle Sterling threw the coat back into the crowd with an animal roar.

Aunt Billie was brain dead.

She had what they call a depressed skull fracture. Bone splinters that had shattered off of her skull surrounding the point of impact impaled her brain, requiring extensive surgery. The covering of her brain, the meninges, more specifically the dura mater, was torn. Surgeons worked for hours, first monitoring her intracranial bleeding and pressure, then closing up her skull with a stainless steel plate. So much of her scalp had been cut away during the debriding of the wound that she’d had to undergo a skin graft to cover the plate. The doctors removed a square of skin from her posterior and stitched it onto her head.

That is the reason Uncle Sterling hates my emerald green tie. He hates everything green.

I maintain, to this day— contrary to popular opinion— that the accident was not my fault.

We visit her three times a week, Uncle Sterling and I. Sometimes, I drag Four along. He enjoys going around stealing desserts from the residents, surreptitiously slipping them into his pockets like some kind of devious magician. Four is like that, though. For the life of me, I cannot figure out why. A pilferer of the highest order, from one of the richest families in town. In any case, he would be distraught that he’d missed today’s visit. Paula Deen, whose brand new culinary compound sits just on the other side of the golf course, brought macaroni and cheese, deep fried Snickers bars, and sticks of salted butter for the enjoyment of all.

I vacate Aunt Billie’s room so she and Uncle Sterling can enjoy some privacy. Taking a seat in the crowded community room, I try not to think about what my uncle may be doing to his wife in that dark and stuffy room filled with hissing and pinging machinery. Against my own will, I imagine him struggling to lower the bed rail and stepping on the plastic guest chair to mount the raised bed. I shudder and realize my head hurts.

Plenty of interesting geriatrics, along with a bottle of Uncle Sterling’s Klonopin, divert my attention.

Seated on a plastic-covered floral patterned club chair across the dark cherry coffee table from me is a lively old gentleman who repeatedly asks some apparition what has happened to his socks. I do not hear any answer, of course, but whatever he imagines makes him cackle like a tickled witch. I casually bend over, holding an ancient copy of
Southern Living
in front of my face, and check out the man’s ankles. He is wearing socks. One blue, one gray— mismatched, but socks nonetheless. Clearly psychotic, this octogenarian. I feel a sudden urge to pull out what little white hair he still has by the roots, shoving his ill-fitting dentures down his throat. Then, I consider slipping one of my business cards into the pocket of his moth-eaten cotton robe. But, I had probably done that on an earlier visit. Everyone in The Home has at least one of my cards. They probably dread my visits, now that I think about it.

Next time, perhaps I’ll wear a long black hooded robe and carry a sickle. Just for laughs, of course. On second thought, maybe that would help business. Perhaps I could visit other retirement communities, too, dressed as the Grim Reaper, scaring people to death. These are desperate times, and Uncle Sterling sure as hell isn’t doing anything to save our skins.

An unpleasant-looking stocky woman, dressed all in white, paper crown to orthotic shoes, drifts through the room distributing small paper cups filled with various medications. I assume she is a nurse. I hope so, in any case. She looks more like a prison warden or perhaps that nurse character in
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
. She wears no nametag or any other form of identification. I think about questioning her position within The Home, but I’m not that interested. Perhaps I will get lucky and someone will ingest an overdose or be dealt the wrong meds and require my professional services. Wouldn’t that be convenient? My head throbs and I think about rushing the white behemoth and pilfering some narcotics, something stronger than Klonopin. My Seroquel and Imitrex are just not enough these days. I feel like someone shot me in the head. I feel like gouging out my own eyes.

I wonder if anyone has a cigarette. Perhaps the woman with the tracheotomy, who is engaged in some complicated-looking card game with two other animated cadavers. The thought causes me to laugh aloud, though I do not mean any disrespect to the unfortunate tracheotomized, of course. I bite my lip and straighten my silk tie. The Sock Man stares at me, his mouth hanging open, grizzled cheeks pocked and concave. He looks like the men who beg for change down on River Street. I almost tell him to get a job, but then I remember where I am. I think he’s trying to tell me something. Telepathically.