Bodies and Souls (46 page)

“Hey, Mom,” Mandy said as they all walked out to the car, “you didn’t ask the one question all mothers are supposed to ask if their daughters say they want to get married right away.”

Leigh stopped in her tracks. “Mandy,” she said.

Mandy laughed delightedly, as if she had just made a wonderful joke. “No, Mom, I’m not,” she said. “But I thought I’d give you a thrill.”

“Listen,” Leigh said, sliding behind the wheel of the car, “you’ve given me all the thrills I can take for one day.”

“Well,” Michael said, sliding into the backseat next to Mandy, slamming the door heartily, “forward into the fray!”

Goodness, Leigh thought, pleased, he knows the word “fray.” She smiled, and
headed the car toward Peter Taylor’s house.

“Wilbur, are you all right?”

Wilbur opened his eyes, stared up at the nurse who was leaning over his bed. What was her name? “Selma,” he said aloud.

Selma held his hand and looked at her watch, checking his pulse. “I thought you were choking,” she told him. “You gave me a scare.”

“I think I was laughing,” Wilbur said, and began to make the low chuckling sound that had frightened Selma. “I was thinking about a friend who died. His widow, actually. Want to hear the story, even if it’s a little racy?”

Selma gently replaced his arm on the bed and leaned companionably against the bars. “Sure,” she said.

“Well, Norma and I have been friends with the Watsons for oh, I’d say thirty years now. Horace and Flora Watson. He’s a plumber
—was
a plumber, he’s passed on—and we got to know them through church. You couldn’t meet a nicer couple, but you never would think that either one of them was much to write home about as far as looks go. Just nice plain New England folk. Well, Horace is about my age. Was. He died about six months ago. For the past two or three years he’d been ill, and he’d sort of shrunk, you know how you do when you get older. But he was always too stubborn to admit it, or I guess he didn’t want to face the truth about how old and sick he was. But he used to go around looking so damned awful. All his clothes were too big for him. The sleeves of his jackets hung to the middle of his hands and his pants bagged and trailed on the ground; he looked like an old tramp. He’d lost all his hair and most of his teeth; he was sixty-eight, and not what you’d call a pretty sight. Well, he died, and we were sorry to see him go.

“About two weeks after his funeral, Norma and I had Flora, his widow, over for dinner. She was still grieving, of course. So after dinner, while we were having coffee, she said, in her sweet little old sad voice, ‘Well, I went through some of Horace’s things before we buried him. I came across a picture of me that Horace always did love. An 8 ½ x 11 photo, just of my face. It was his favorite picture of me, I think. I took the picture down to the funeral home and went in to where Horace lay in his coffin and placed it face-down on his fly. He was buried that way; that’s why we had a closed coffin. You don’t think that was sacrilegious, do you?’ ”

Selma burst out laughing. “My, my,” she said, “what a sweet story. They must have been happy together right till the end.”

“Yes,” Wilbur said, “it makes you feel good to think about it, doesn’t it? Though I’ll tell you, Norma and I had a tough time keeping a straight face when Flora told us that. Norma finally composed herself and said, ‘No, I don’t think so, Flora, and I’m sure Horace would have liked it.’ What else could she have said?”

“Would you like me to get Norma for you now?” Selma asked, fussing with Wilbur’s covers.

“No,” Wilbur said, for his eyes were closing in spite of himself. “I’m feeling a little sleepy. I think I’ll just rest a little first, a few minutes. Then I’d like to see Norma.”

“Whatever you want,” Selma said.

Whatever I want
, Wilbur thought, closing his eyes, letting go of his grip on the world so that he seemed to float. If only that were true, whatever I want. What would that be, if I could have just one thing right now? One thing. I won’t ask for my youth back, for my liver spots and wrinkles to disappear, for Norma and me to be young again. I won’t ask for Ricky never to have died. What would I ask for if I could ask for whatever I want—but something reasonable? To see God’s face? No, I’m not that brave. To see Ricky when I die? Well, if everything I’ve believed all my life is true, I’ll see him anyway, somehow. Not to die? Everyone has to die.

I know what I want.

There was a game I played when I was seventeen, just finishing high school. We all thought we were so worldly-wise then, so smooth. I hadn’t met Norma yet. I mostly hung around with the guys—Virgil and Henry and Luther. I wonder what happened to them. We had a club, what did we call ourselves? The Yankee Clippers. We were the smoothest guys in high school. That was 1928. Hmm.

One Saturday night in early May when we were all feeling full of piss and vinegar because school was almost over and we all knew we were going to graduate, we had a party over at Virge’s house. What did we drink—beer? We thought we were pretty wild. And those girls were there, hanging around in their cotton frocks, looking shy and brash all at the same time. The moon was shining; we were all outdoors. I can still remember how the world had that green smell of new grass and spring.

We all sat on Virge’s big front porch drinking beer and smoking cigarettes and showing off to the girls. There must have been about twenty of us there. Then George
Wilson’s older brother, who had been off to college for two years till he flunked out, got us going on this game. I suppose teenagers nowadays would think it pretty silly, but back then it was exciting.

All the boys went behind the house. In the backyard the house blocked off the moonlight, so it was darker there, and the grass was taller. It felt wild. One by one we’d get a girl, tie a blindfold on her, and gently lead her around to the back. Then we’d tell her she could join the Yankee Clipper Club if she played the game right.

“Take off one item you’re wearing that you won’t wear to bed tonight,” we said.

Well, they’d giggle and titter and wrap their arms around themselves and look silly, but they all wanted to join the Yankee Clippers—no girls had ever joined it before. So finally they’d take off a shoe. We’d say, “Now take off another item you’re wearing that you won’t wear to bed tonight.” Off would come another shoe. “Now take off another item you won’t be wearing to bed tonight,” we’d say, and then they’d start to get worried. If they wore jewelry, they’d take that off, and if they had sweaters on over their blouses, they’d take the sweater off. But right about then was when they’d panic and say, “Well, I don’t think this is a very nice game, and I don’t want to be in your stupid club!”

Bobbeen DuPont was one of the girls who wanted to be in the club, and when my turn came to go around to the front yard and bring a girl to the back, I knew I just couldn’t stand to put her through it. It seemed mean to tease them like that, and even though it seemed to us they could easily guess the secret, no one ever did. I suppose those girls were too frightened to think straight. But I didn’t want to put Bobbeen through all that worry, so after I tied the blindfold around her eyes and was leading her around the house, I put my arm around her and pulled her to me and whispered, “It’s the blindfold. Take off the blindfold.”

What I want is for someone to do just that for me: to come put his arm around me, to whisper just a few words that give me a hint, a clue. I don’t just want it. I expect it. I don’t know if the guide will come in the shape of a man, a woman, or an angel, but I do expect a human shape, for we are created in the Lord’s image. I would hope that it would be Ricky. It would be so nice if I could hear Ricky’s voice saying, “Come on, Dad, it’s all right.” But there’s got to be someone. “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me.” That’s what He promised, and I’ll be damned if I’ll die without some kind of guide at least touching my arm, at least giving me some kind of sign.

But all I can hear is the beeping of those medical machines and Selma’s whispery noises as she fiddles around the bed. I guess my time hasn’t come yet, after all.

It was as if he had become a ghost and was floating in air slightly above his body, looking down, watching. The fire and the brandy had no power to warm him. His own skin seemed made of the same clear glass as the snifter he held in his hands, as if he had stopped being human. He was so still, so cold. He looked down upon himself, sitting there by the fire, and felt pity for himself, and regret, and a great fondness.
You damned fool
.

All of his life he had worked hard, so hard that it seemed to him he had achieved as much command over his fate as any man could. Looking back at his life, it seemed to him that only once had he lost control so swiftly. It had been so long ago, and now Ron knew that it had not been significant—but then,
then
it had seemed overwhelming, not merely the most important thing in life, but the only important thing. Had he ever really been so young?

He had been in high school, playing center on the varsity basketball team. His senior year they’d had a great team, one of the best, and they went to the state semifinals. With the score tied and just six seconds left in the game, Ron had taken control of the ball, dribbled down court to
his
spot, and with the cool perfection attained through a thousand and one practice shots, sent the ball spinning straight up and over to the basket. Unbelievably, this one time, the ball did not go in. It wavered on the rim and fell back, down into the hands of the opposing team’s star player, and the next few moments seemed to move in slow motion to Ron. He was too dismayed to move, except to turn and watch as nine other men raced back up court and, while the crowd in the bleachers roared in ecstasy, Tommy Henderson made the final score of the game, winning the semifinals for his school and his team with that one shot as surely as Ron had lost it for his.

This isn’t real, this can’t be true
, Ron had thought, standing dumbfounded as the rest of the gym went into a frenzy of noise and action.
This isn’t fair, this isn’t right, this isn’t how it is supposed to end
. He had not been able to think that life could continue past this point. For all he knew or cared, the whole world could come to a halt right then. There was nothing else to live for. It had not seemed to him that
he
had done anything wrong: he had stood where he always stood, and tossed the ball with the exact gentle
force he always used—no,
he
had not made a mistake. It was only possible that the world itself had moved minutely, the basket, the court, the fieldhouse, shifting imperceptibly just a half inch to the left. He had stood rooted to the boards, struck dumb with amazement at the arbitrary movements of the world, until finally another team member had come over and wrapped his arm around his shoulder and led him off to the locker room.

Now the same sort of thing had happened. This was truly important; it was grown-up real life, it was life-and-death; but it was the same kind of thing: it was an error made not so much by Ron as by the mysterious shiftings of the world, and this time he had really lost the game. It was not fair. But he did not see how his life could continue past this point.

It really was as definite as that—as that long-ago ball wavering on the rim of the basket, then falling back. The action was complete and irreversible. It had not occurred to Ron then that he could miss; it had not occurred to him now that he could get caught. It had never been arrogance on his part, though, but more an acknowledgment of the way the world was run. It was as if, all those years ago in high school, he had made a tacit agreement involving the rules of the game of basketball, the Newtonian laws of mechanics, and the precise discipline of his own body—yet something had gone awry. Now, after all these years of playing at the game of grown-up life among the complicated and often contradictory rules of men, he had once more missed his mark by just that hairbreadth—that invisible and fatal dividing line. He did not know if it was a whim of Fate that had brought him to this point; or the result of years of choice which had ever narrowed as he chose, but it seemed to him that with each choice of his life, he had chosen on the side of good. Yet ultimately he had failed.

When Ron was a little boy, he often saw pictures of his father in the Boston newspapers. In the photographs, his father was dressed in a tux or a three-piece suit, with his thick black hair perfectly brushed; he would be presenting an award or a check for some charity or opening some theatrical night. Because he was so young, Ron had trouble connecting this grand gentleman with the sly, unshaven drunk who cried at the dinner table and slept in the living-room chairs.

By the time he was a teenager, he was not troubled by the contrast, for his father’s alcoholism by then had ruined him; he was no longer photographed on evenings out because he no longer went out. He lived in the downstairs study, drinking, holding long
nonsensical conversations with himself, coming out occasionally to look at Ron and say genially, “Well, you’re turning into quite a handsome boy, aren’t you? I was handsome once myself!” Sometimes he was gone for months to clinics or hospitals that promised to dry him out, but it didn’t make much difference to Ron’s life whether his father was around or not. Ron was an only child; his mother’s main concern was for her husband. So Ron learned to take care of himself. The house he grew up in had belonged to his mother’s family. His mother had been born there, as had her mother and grandmother before her. It was a tall Victorian mansion full of splendors, but as the years passed, the house deteriorated and finally became a drafty shell. There was no money for repairs and Ron’s mother began to sell off the furnishings to pay the bills. So Ron got used to things vanishing from the house: oil paintings off the walls, rugs from the floors, antique furniture from the rooms and halls. Finally, his parents also vanished from his life: his father died of cirrhosis of the liver, and his mother of cancer a few months later. His mother’s house, such as it was by then, was put on the market and sold, and that money, combined with the trust fund his grandmother had left him, saw him through college. He mourned his mother, because he loved her, and because he had been so powerless in his childhood to change her life for the better, but on the whole he felt relief to be free—set free of the spell of his parents’ foolish sad lives, and just as surely free of the ever-pervasive drifting-out smell of alcohol he had lived with in his tall, beautiful, deteriorating home.