Bodies and Souls (58 page)

No salt, no sex. It really did not seem fair that the joys of both the top and bottom of his body should be lost. His mouth, his penis, organs of tangy, greedy gladness, were now relegated to functions of bland maintenance. It made him mad and sorry for himself.

He was ashamed of himself for this petulance. At least he was alive. Ron Bennett was dead. When Norma told him about Ron’s death, three weeks after it had happened, when Wilbur had been pronounced in good shape and she thought he could take the news without too much stress on his heart, Wilbur had been stunned. Blown away, as the young kids said, by the news. Blown away into other spaces of the mind, vast gray areas where he roamed in confusion, searching through the fog of wonder for one solid grit of truth. It seemed to him that a mistake of enormous proportion had been made in his favor: the Angel of Death had been hovering over Londonton, and had accidentally swept up into her arms the wrong man.
He
should have died, not Ron Bennett.

Wilbur did not believe for a minute that Ron’s death had been accidental. Ron was an excellent driver, and the strip of road he’d been traveling on was so flat that a rolling ball couldn’t gain the momentum to cross that stretch of pavement and drop down that embankment, let alone a heavy car with brakes. He felt certain that Ron had committed suicide, but he could not figure out just why. Norma, who sat by his bed each day, giving him each ounce of Londonton gossip she could think of as if she thought it
were some kind of medicine, the more for him the better, reported that the majority of Londonton assumed that Ron had been on his way to a clandestine liaison that night; what else would he be doing driving around by himself that time on a Sunday night? There were no meetings going on then, he hadn’t been to the movies, he had finished a routine conference about the rec center with Gary Moyer and Reynolds Houston at his own house earlier that evening—this bit of factual information they had gotten from Gary, who reported that they had gotten together at eight that evening to go over some rec center details. So he hadn’t been out because of his work, and Judy hadn’t been with him, so it couldn’t have been a social engagement. Gary Moyer had advanced the theory that Ron had been out looking for Johnny, who hadn’t come home all day, but the townspeople didn’t believe that. Johnny was not an adolescent just learning to drive; he was a grown man, entitled to stay out late. The people of Londonton surreptitiously concluded that Ron must have been having an affair with someone, and that he had been in such a state, such a hurry to get to her, that in his blind passion he had driven off the road.

Wilbur tended to agree with part of this. He didn’t tell Norma, but he knew better than anyone else that it probably was true that Ron had been having an affair. Still he knew from all the conversations he’d had with Ron that Ron’s affairs were of the body, not of the heart. He could not imagine Ron so overcome with desire that he would drive off the road.

As he lay in his hospital bed, Wilbur had plenty of time to think about Ron, and he finally concluded that Ron must have been having an affair and his lover had threatened to tell Judy, or had pressured Ron to divorce Judy and marry her, and Ron, whose obsession in life was the happiness and respectability of his wife and family, had driven off the bridge in desperation, trusting that his mistress would not be cruel enough to cause trouble when he was dead. It was not a totally satisfactory conclusion, but it was finally the one he settled on. Everyone in Londonton waited in their various social clusters for this mistress of Ron’s to announce herself in some way; to be overcome with grief at the funeral, or not to appear at all. People longed to know who she was: A married woman perhaps? Or a divorced woman like Leigh Findly? Of course
not
Leigh Findly, she was too flaky; Ron was too conservative. On the other hand, they say opposites attract, and Leigh was a pretty woman. The town buzzed and watched. The fact that Judy Bennett hid herself away in her house for the first few months after Ron’s death
strengthened their belief that Ron had had a mistress. Many people called to invite Judy over for dinner, but she refused every time. Poor woman, she was undoubtedly so embarrassed.

Wilbur didn’t worry much about Judy Bennett, for he didn’t know her very well, but he did miss Ron. He mourned him. He realized that he had come to think of Ron as almost another son; he certainly had gotten on better with Ron than with his own sons. Both sons had flown in from their various homes off in other places of the United States in order to be at Wilbur’s side for a few days after the heart attack, and Wilbur had been glad to see them, but he wished he could have seen Ron, too.

The knowledge came to him as he lay in his hospital bed waiting for his body to recover that he would have liked to give his poems to Ron when he died. Ron wasn’t particularly the sort to like poetry, but they had spent so much time talking together, more time than Wilbur ever spent with his sons, that he thought Ron might see the poems as just another way of continuing that conversation. Now Ron was dead, and Wilbur didn’t know what to do about his poems. Phrases and images occurred to him from time to time as he lay there staring at the ceiling, and when he could sit up in bed, he attempted to write these things down, but it was too exhausting. Humph, Wilbur had thought, it’s a fine state a man’s in when just thinking up a line of poetry is too exhausting!

He had told Norma about the poems the first day after his heart attack; it had seemed an urgent matter then. “They’re up in the attic in my old fishing-tackle box,” he told her. “If I die, I want you to read them, then you can do whatever you like with them. They’re probably no good. I don’t know why I wrote them.”

“So that’s what you were doing up there,” Norma said. “I was beginning to wonder. Poems, huh? My, my. Wilbur, you’d better get well and live a long life. I think there’s no end to the things you want to do.”

There was no end to the things he wanted to do, but Wilbur was afraid that in spite of his desires, his energy was failing him. He tried walking short distances every day during the summer, tried to build up his energy level, but it didn’t seem to work. He was always so tired. It was as if his body had always operated off of two powerful motors and now one of them had shut down. He didn’t have the endurance or stamina. And his mind was playing tricks on him, though he’d never tell Norma; he didn’t want to worry her. One moment he’d be sitting on the back porch with her, drinking lemonade and watching her weed her flower garden, and suddenly he’d be back in his dry-cleaning shop
when he had just opened the business. He could see skinny, lank-haired Gretchen Hardt in her blue flowered shirt pressing the cleaned clothes with a flatiron. He’d blink his eyes, and Gretchen would disappear; he’d find himself in the shop as it was when he sold it a few years ago. He’d be standing by a big drum of DuPont Val-Clean, the fluorocarbon chemicals they used to clean the clothes now, and Amy Vaden would be laying the clothes out on the hydraulically operated press and pushing two buttons to get the work done. “It’s amazing how technology has changed things,” Wilbur would say.

“What?” Norma would ask, and he would find himself staring at his wife, back on his porch on a summer day.

These flashes of vivid memory were not unpleasant. Still he hoped he’d die before he somehow got lost in them and ended up scaring Norma by mentally living in the vast reaches of his mind. She’d think he’d gone mad.

No, it was necessary to hang on to his sanity, his sense of reality, for all it was worth. It was necessary not to eat salt, not to have sex, to drink only one cup of coffee a day, and to get moderate exercise. Living could be an effort and a bore, he was discovering, and he knew he was losing his sense of humor, or at least it seemed now that when he made a joke it always had a sardonic cast to it, and this shamed him. He was alive. He still had Norma and two sons living and five grandchildren. He still had friends and a whole world to watch.

Days like today, of course, made it all seem worthwhile. If death was the price of life, he’d gladly pay it, to earn such a day. The sunlight flashed and glittered through the windows with such brightness that it seemed it must be made of angels’ wings, and the opulent beauty of all the flowers made his soul expand. The matter of the earth was miraculous. He and Norma had arrived early, so that he could take his time getting settled in the pew. They sat toward the back so that Norma could get a good long look at everyone as they entered and went down the aisle. Wilbur enjoyed looking at the people, too: how wonderful they all looked, dressed up in their fancy best, smug as flowers, pleased as youngsters on a holiday. Wilbur forgot to think of salt. He stopped turning inward and was satisfied to sit and gaze and reflect on this portion of mankind with whom he had spent his life. It surprised and strangely depressed him that after all they had been through, the Bennett family looked exactly as they had a year ago. Judy had not gained or lost weight or gotten one gray hair. She seemed untouched by the tragedy of her life, and Wilbur wondered if what was superficial was also real, or whether she was
just very crafty at deception. He was glad to see that Reynolds Houston was back; he’d missed his presence. He didn’t know Reynolds well, and seldom talked with him, except briefly at coffee hour, and yet he felt the town needed Reynolds, who seemed to move through their lives like a headmaster passing quietly through a schoolroom, causing everyone automatically to correct his posture or his thoughts. They might not like him, but they were better people because of him.

“Look,” Norma whispered to Wilbur now, “Pam and Gary Moyer aren’t sitting together. Do you suppose they’re having trouble? Actually, I’ve heard rumors that they’re getting separated.”

“Well,” Wilbur said, “they’re certainly separated here and now.”

“Oh, dear,” Norma said. “I wonder what’s happened. Poor people.”

Poor people? Wilbur thought, looking at Pam and Gary. No, not really, he replied to himself: they are only in their forties, they are young, and they can eat salt and have sex. Their lives are full.

“Hats are coming back,” Norma whispered.

“Who?” Wilbur asked.

“Hats,”
Norma said. “Women are starting to wear hats again. I’m so glad I’ve saved mine, up in the attic. I think I’ll go dig them out this afternoon. I hope I saved the one with pheasant feathers.”

Wilbur smiled and patted his wife’s hand.
Hats
, he thought, and he was pleased at the thought of Norma’s pleasure.

The organ music swelled. Peter Taylor walked in, regal in his black robes and white stole, followed by Michael and his best man, his brother Will. The congregation whispered in anticipation, then were still, as they turned to watch Mandy Findly walk down the aisle. Wilbur felt lifted up on a wave of music. He was overcome with joy; he wanted to laugh out loud; for one moment he seemed to rise above the congregation, to hover there looking down; and he was exhilarated by this illusion. He grabbed up a program that had been left in the pew rack from last Sunday, and took a pen from his pocket, and quickly wrote a poem. He wrote:

Mirrors reflect the sun’s light so that the warming glow
Is magnified, expanded. Prisms refract that light
Into a dazzle past our one sun’s art. This is right.
Even God needs humans if He wants a brilliant show.

Just so, yellow roses shimmer in a crystal bowl.
My friends glitter in this church, a varied, lovely crowd
That gladdens me. If I were brave, I would shout out loud
To all who gather here: I love you, body and soul.

Then he folded the program, put it in his pocket, and turned his attention to the wedding. He hardly knew where to look, everyone was so beautiful.

I’ve got the best seat in the house, Peter Taylor thought, though he wasn’t sitting down. He had just entered the sanctuary and from where he stood he could see everyone clearly: the jubilant congregation, his wife, Patricia, in the first row in a beautiful dress that made her look too young to be the mother of a groom, and, coming up to stand in front of him, his sons.

Will was fourteen now, and in the past year he had suddenly, thank God, started growing, so fast that they hadn’t been able to keep him in clothes or shoes that fit. He was wearing a rented black tux and he looked handsome and almost manly, as long as he kept his mouth closed over his braces. Also his crutches kept him from moving toward the center of the church with the appropriate grace and solemnity. He’d practiced furiously, but he just hadn’t had enough time to get used to them. A month ago he had gone to the new skating rink for a roller disco party, and in a fit of abandon while showing off for his new girlfriend, Will had leaped, twirled, and crashed to the floor, breaking his right leg. Peter wasn’t there to see it happen; he had been called to the hospital during the evening. When he arrived to find his son in the emergency room, the ambulance attendants and the cluster of friends who had followed Will to the hospital had informed Peter that Will’s major worry was that now he wouldn’t get to be best man for his brother’s wedding. “I’ll kill myself if I can’t be his best man, I’ll really kill myself!” Will had sobbed, crying like a child. After his leg was set and he was settled in his hospital bed, they had called Michael in Northampton. Peter had listened casually as Will, trying to seem cool, told Michael what had happened.

“But listen, Michael,” Will said, “I still want to be your best man. They said I’ll be on crutches by then—would you still let me be best man if I’m on crutches?”

Peter couldn’t hear what Michael answered, but he saw the look of relief and joy pass over his younger son’s face. When he hung up the phone, Will told him that Michael had promised he could still be best man, and that furthermore, if Will wasn’t able to walk by September 4, they’d just put off the wedding until he was able to walk. Will had been delighted, but Peter had been stunned. Since when had his sons developed such devotion to each other? All this intense love his children were involved in amazed him.

Look what love had done for Michael. In the past year he had moved to Northampton with Mandy, gotten straight A’s in all his high school courses, graduated from high school, and at the same time made a good living. He had worked after school from three till eight at night five days a week and all day Saturday for a man names Lars Larsen, who ran his own wallpapering and painting business. Lars liked Michael’s work so much that he gave him three raises in the space of eleven months, and Michael learned a lot of useful information as well. This morning, when Michael came down for breakfast after spending the night in his own bedroom, he suggested that he come up some Sunday and redo the bedroom for them.