The Book of Joe (13 page)

sixteen

1986

Things quieted down for a while after the copy machine incident, but Sammy remained inconsolable. I didn't know whether he was despondent over Wayne or still smarting from an assful of Xerox glass, but he walked the halls between classes with a resolute glumness, his normally irrepressible smile nowhere in evidence. He no longer broke into little spontaneous dance routines or serenaded people with Springsteen lyrics. And while Sean and Mouse no longer attacked him physically, they continued to taunt him regularly.
Hey, cutie, how's your ass healing? Don't worry—you'll be bent over again in no time!

Sammy, for his part, seemed utterly committed to being victimized, submitting to each new barb with a sense of tragic resignation, a slave to what he perceived as his immutable destiny. Something about his determined lack of resistance, the stoic manner in which he embraced his suffering, was taken as a challenge by Sean, who became obsessively determined to get a rise out of Sammy, to see him fight back. The two of them became helplessly entangled in a tragic cycle where Sammy's submission served only to enrage Tallon, escalating the level of his cruelty, which in turn caused Sammy to retreat inwardly even more.

Although I tried to be a friend to him, it wasn't very long before Sammy's predicament started to suffocate me. I resented him for so obstinately remaining a loser in the face of my best efforts to help him out. Besides, I had Carly now, and there was only so much time in the day, so much room in my brain. Later I would tell myself that there was nothing I could have done anyway, and that might have been true. Sammy seemed fatalistically determined to follow the course that was charted for him. But there was no getting away from the fact that as time went on, I deliberately saw less and less of him, simply because something in his abject misery made me feel inexplicably guilty, as if I were somehow responsible for his predicament, and I didn't want to be guilty or responsible. Things were finally going my way, and I would be damned if I wasn't going to enjoy myself.

I had a girlfriend and a best friend, which might not sound like much, but it was everything I'd ever wanted. The simple act of walking the school grounds during lunch holding Carly's hand, on display for all to see, filled me with an overwhelming sense of well-being the likes of which I'd never experienced. We would sit together in the cafeteria, stealing little kisses, occasionally sneaking into the deserted backstage area of the auditorium when kissing just wasn't going to cut it.

Wayne was leading the Cougars in scoring that year, and Carly and I went to every game, home and away, where we cheered him on comically, like rabid fans. It felt so good, sitting in the stands with Carly, laughing, screaming, hugging, and throwing high fives whenever Wayne scored, that I forgot how much I'd hated Cougars games up until that point. They no longer felt like a glaring reminder of my failure as an athlete, but just one more place to go and enjoy being a boyfriend. After the games, we'd take Wayne out for a victory dinner, and the three of us would hang out until closing time, giddy from victory, our voices hoarse from screaming and laughing. Later, we'd drop Wayne off and then drive down to the falls, Carly's hands already rubbing and grabbing at me as I drove, her tongue in my ear as she told me to get there already.

I'd always been under the impression that there were nice girls and sexy girls. Carly was an honor student, the editor of the school newspaper, and a favorite among the faculty at Bush Falls High. But she was also capable of grabbing my hand and sliding it down into her opened jeans and pressing up urgently against it, moaning without a trace of self-consciousness as she bit down on my lower lip hard enough to draw blood.

Carly spent the first half hour of homeroom every morning scribbling copiously in a worn leather-bound journal. She was terribly concerned with the general transience of things and the imperfect, random nature of memory. It was the one compulsion in her otherwise laid-back disposition, this notion that particular feelings and thoughts could be irretrievably lost to the vagaries of time and distance. “This is the age,” she explained to me once as we walked home from school, “when we're the purest forms of ourselves we'll ever be. We haven't been complicated by everything yet. I want to keep a clear record of who I am, so that down the road I'll be able to see who I was. Maybe I can avoid losing myself completely.”

Although I admired her larger consciousness, there was something vaguely troubling about it, as if she were an oracle discerning ominous portents to which I remained oblivious. “But you'll always be you,” I said. “Won't you?”

She sighed, biting her lip pensively. “Things happen,” she said. “Small things and large things, and they just keep changing you, little by little, until there's no trace of who you used to be. If I get lost, this journal will be like a record of who I was, a trail of bread crumbs to find my way back.”

“In that case, could you keep track of me in there too?” I said. “It would be nice to know there's someone looking out for me if I ever get lost.”

“But what if we're not together anymore?” she asked, ever the practical one.

“Then it will mean at least one of us is lost,” I said. “Just get me a copy of that journal, and it will lead me right back to you.”

She stopped walking and hugged me, pressing her forehead against mine, her eyes closed. “It would be nice if it really worked that way,” she murmured.

“Stranger things have happened,” I said.

“All the same,” she said. “I think it'd be better if we just stayed together.”

I kissed her nose lightly and said, “Deal.”

seventeen

Brad and I resume our awkward vigil over my father's bedside as if the previous night's events never happened. He takes in my battered face and bloodshot eyes, and I can see a sentence forming behind his eyes, but some internal censor, the sort I sorely lack, mercifully stops the words before they can get to his mouth. He simply nods and remains silent. We sip at our vending machine coffee, thumb through magazines purchased at the sundry shop downstairs, and take turns offering the odd, flimsy conversational gambit that invariably tapers off into an embarrassed silence, encased by the enduring clockwork hiss of the respirator. The nurse's periodic visits to exchange the full plastic catheter bag for an empty one or record my father's vital statistics are welcome breaks in the monotony, providing us with an outlet, however brief, for superficial inquiry and discussion. Brad arrived alone today, offering no explanation for Cindy's conspicuous absence, and I know better than to ask. If the past twenty-four hours have taught me anything, it's that everything is a trap.

At around one, Brad yawns and announces that he has to go check on something at the factory. He scribbles his cell phone number on the back of a magazine in case anything should happen and then heads out, brow furrowed, lost in his own cloudy ruminations. I am both sorry and undeniably relieved to see him go.

Brad's been gone maybe ten minutes when the door swings open and Coach Dugan steps into the room. Every organ in my body contracts at the sight of him. After last night's episode, his presence here is impossible to process, and I just sit up in my chair and stare at him.

“Joseph,” he says, taking off his baseball cap as he enters the room.

“Hello, Coach,” I say, hoping my voice doesn't sound as shaky as it feels. Dugan is one of those men whose very presence commands attention, even in a crowded gymnasium. In the confines of the hospital room, he is a giant, much too large and powerful for so small a venue.

He walks over to the bed and stares down at my father. “He doesn't look very good,” he says. “What do the doctors say?”

“It's pretty bad,” I say.

Dugan grunts. “He's a good man. And if he knows he's in a coma, I'll bet he's pissed about it. He deserves better than this.” His words seem to contain a shadow of rebuke in them, but I can't quite pin it down. It's too weird to be engaged in a conversation with him at all. Dugan's deep, hoarse voice is designed to address teams and groups, and there's something overwhelming about being addressed by him on a personal level. “Where's Brad?”

“He had to run over to the office for a few minutes.”

“You'll tell him I stopped by.”

“Sure.”

To my surprise, Dugan leans forward and plants a dry kiss on my father's temple. Then he straightens up and steps over to the door, pulls it open, and turns to me. “Sean Tallon can be a dangerous man,” he says. “He's somewhat unstable. If I were you, I'd steer clear of him.”

“A bit late for that, don't you think?” I say, indicating my bruised face.

The coach shakes his head and squints at me like I'm an idiot. “He's capable of much worse.”

“Well then, I guess I owe you one for intervening when you did last night.”

“I did that for Brad,” Dugan snarls at me. “He has enough to contend with without Tallon sending him to the emergency room.”

“It looked to me like he was holding his own.”

Dugan gives me a withering look. “I forgot who I was talking to,” he says.

“And who's that?”

“Someone who doesn't have a fucking clue.” He steps out of the room, closing the door behind him. I'm not surprised to discover that even in the heavily air-conditioned room, I'm sweating slightly.

“Just you and me now, Dad,” I say somewhat self-consciously, and sit back with an
Esquire
magazine. A little while later I move on to
Newsweek,
and then, somewhere in the middle of
Us Weekly,
I doze off. I dream about Carly, as I often do, something warm and sweet and ultimately sad, and wake up to find my father staring at me. I sit up with a start, my elbow upsetting the Styrofoam cup resting on the windowsill, which falls to the floor, splattering my Rockports and the cuffs of my khakis with tepid coffee. “Dad,” I say, my voice still thick with sleep. “It's me, Joe. Can you hear me?”

There is no response, but his stare, while somewhat dull, appears to contain some fragile semblance of clarity. I grab his hand, so much bigger and rougher than my own, and give it a soft squeeze. The hand remains limp, but I now see that his eyes are opened wider, his thick eyebrows raised inquisitively in two congruous arcs. I reach over him, rising slowly on my feet, afraid of breaking the spell, and thumb the nurses' call switch repeatedly. His eyes never leave mine, even as I move, and when I return to the edge of my seat, there is a large, bulbous tear, trembling and bulging as it forms on the red membrane of the inside corner of his left eye. The tear achieves critical mass and descends in a lazy diagonal across his cheek, being absorbed into his pasty skin as it goes, until it finally fades just shy of his sideburn. “It's okay, Dad,” I say dumbly. “It's going to be okay.” I reach for the call switch again and press it frantically. “Just stay with me. Someone will be here in a minute.” But even as I say it, I can see his eyelids starting to close again, his eyeballs rolling upward in his skull. “Dad!” I shout at him, but his eyes remain closed, which is how the nurses find him when they come scurrying in a few moments later.

Dr. Krantzler, the young, tired-looking resident who shows up soon thereafter, reviews the folded rolls of printouts from the EKG machine and seems utterly unimpressed. He quizzes me for a moment, his eyebrows never once falling from their skeptical perch. “I'm not necessarily saying you didn't see what you saw,” he says, although that's clearly his implication. “But there have been no fluctuations on any of his vitals. And you did say you'd been sleeping.”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

He smiles condescendingly and rubs his eyes. “It's not unreasonable to think that given the monotony of waiting and the emotional stress you're under, you dreamed you saw him open his eyes, or experienced a brief optical illusion. It's quite common, actually.”

“I know what I saw,” I say hotly.

“Well then,” he says huffily, backing out of the room, “let me know if you see it again.”

         

I call Brad's cell phone and he arrives twenty minutes later, slightly out of breath, despite my repeated disclaimers that medical science has not embraced my version of events. He looks at me intently as I retell my story, frowning and shaking his head in frustration. “Why didn't you call the doctor immediately?” he says.

“I rang for a nurse,” I repeat defensively for what seems like the twentieth time. “I was scared to leave him.”

“Did you talk to him?”

“Yes.”

“Did he give any sign that he knew what was going on?”

“He seemed to be somewhat aware.” I don't mention the lone teardrop that I witnessed. A section of my brain is still replaying that in a continuous loop, and it feels to me like something personal between my father and me. Besides, I'm starting to get pissed. Brad seems thoroughly convinced that things would have happened differently if he'd been here, as if it's a direct result of my general failings as a son that our father has slipped away for a second time. “Listen,” I say. “He opened his eyes and he closed them. That was it. There was no time for me to do anything else.”

“I should have been here,” Brad says, shaking his head and turning away in disgust. My newfound ambivalence toward him is fast dissolving into the old, familiar resentment as I come face-to-face with the older brother I remember, arrogantly superior and egocentric.

“I'm sure the sight of your face would have made all the difference,” I say sarcastically.

“At least it would have been a familiar face,” Brad says bitterly.

And there it is. A day late, but perfectly timed just the same. “Nice,” I say, heading for the door, my voice uncharacteristically thick and bending under the weight of some as yet undefined emotion. Brad snorts, but makes no effort to stop me.

I walk quickly down the hall, struggling to regain my equilibrium even as I feel the improbable tears coming. I find my way to an abandoned stairwell and sit down with my head in my trembling hands, wondering what the hell is going on with me. Things are coming apart inside me, tearing loose from their foundations and scraping my innards as they fall. I need a plan, something to give me direction, but I can think only as far as the parking lot, which is where I'm headed when I run into Carly in the lobby.

An old girlfriend is a gun in your belly. It's no longer loaded, so when you see her, all you feel is the hollow mechanical click in your gut, and possibly the ghost of an echo, sense memory from when it used to carry live rounds. Occasionally, though, there's a bullet you missed, lying dormant in its overlooked chamber, and when that trigger gets pulled, the unexpected gunshot is deafening even as the forgotten bullet rips its way through the tissue and muscle of your midsection and out into the light of day. Seeing Carly is like that. Even though we haven't spoken in almost ten years, it's an explosion, and in that one instant every memory, every feeling, comes flooding back as fresh as if it were yesterday.

She's carrying a small, elegant bouquet of tulips and baby's breath, and as soon as I see her, I know she's here to see me. She hasn't yet noticed me, and I have to fight the overpowering impulse to duck back into the stairwell and hide until my stomach stops its nervous acrobatics. Dressed in a white pullover blouse that's tucked into a short gray skirt emphasizing her trim waist, she looks pretty much as I remember her, the only change being her hair, which she always wore short and off her face. Now it hangs at a luxurious shoulder length, framing her face and somehow emphasizing its simple, graceful aesthetics. When she sees me, her tentative smile falters as she takes in my bruises and reddened eyes, still a bit raw from the absurd crying fit I just had. For a minute it appears as if she's ready to turn on her heel and flee, but she waves the bouquet at me, her face breaking into a small, wry grin as she approaches. There seems to be some genuine warmth behind her smile, and as I look at her, registering with satisfaction that her eyes still contain those little flecks of yellow, I feel a familiar flutter in my chest, a highly irrational burst of euphoria. Before I know what I'm doing, I step forward and hug her tightly.

I want the hug to last forever. I want it to be one of those intense, slowly building movie hugs that start out awkwardly but then, on some nonverbal cue, come into their own as the feelings behind them are suddenly released, and we just melt into each other, all the distance and bad feelings between us unable to withstand the epic nature of our universal connection. A nothing-matters-but-this-very-instant hug. Within a second or two, though, it becomes evident that this particular hug has maxed out at awkward.

Carly exhales softly, clearly taken aback, but recovers quickly and hugs me back. “You look great,” I say, stepping back as I release her.

“You don't,” she says, still grinning as she hands me the flowers.

We smile, and it's comfortable for a few seconds, just like old times, but then it gets weird, so I look away and thank her for the flowers.

“They're for your dad.”

“Yes. Of course.”

“Of course,” she repeats awkwardly, and now I can feel every day of the years that we haven't been in touch. “How's he doing?”

“Not good,” I say. Even under the auspices of a genuine medical crisis, the small talk is offensive to me, a yardstick for the immeasurable distance between us, pebbles dropped into a bottomless well while you wait to hear the faint splash from below. “I think of you,” I say, my voice, so unreliable lately, tripping on the threshold of the last word. “A lot.”

“I have that effect on many men,” she says, and we smile, not at her joke but because of it.

“How have you been?” I say.

“Fine, I guess,” she says, simultaneously shaking her head and flexing her eyebrows at the abject worthlessness of the question. As if ten years could be encapsulated into short answer form. As if she would even want to try.

“I guess what I mean is, how are you. Really?”

“I'm good,” she says. “Hit a few rough patches here and there. 'Ninety-eight was a particularly gruesome year, but these days I'm okay. And you?”

“Apparently, I'm a controversial novelist.”

She laughs. “You, of all people, should know not to believe everything you read.”

“Did you write the article?”

“I edited it. The first draft was . . . strongly worded.”

“I can imagine,” I say. “They're throwing books at my house.”

Carly laughs. “That would be the book club. They met last night and decided to return their copies to you en masse. How many have you gotten?”

“Three or four.”

“There'll be more.”

“Hey,” I say. “Did you ever get the one I sent you?” I'd sent her one of the first copies of
Bush Falls
to come off the presses.

“I did,” she says. “I read the entire book that weekend.”

“Oh. Good.”

“I meant to call you afterward,” she says, her voice trailing off.

I wave my hand dismissively. “I didn't expect you to,” I lie. “I just wanted you to have one, from me.”

“No, I really meant to. I was going through something then, something bad, and I don't know, nothing seemed very real to me at the time.”

I nod as if I understand. “We should get together,” I say. “Catch up and everything.”

“Okay.”

“Good. I'll call you tonight.”

“Only if you want to,” she says. “Don't feel obligated.”