The Living End Read online

  “Will do.”

  “And I know you will need me eventually. So if I don’t hear from you by tomorrow, I’m coming over.”

  “Yes ma’am.”

  Later today, when I invite her to the funeral, she’ll offer to make food for the gathering afterward. And I will accept.

  “Can you call the school for me?” I ask.

  “Will do.”

  “And State Farm?”

  “Sure.”

  “Hey, what’s happening with Brock?”

  Brock fills the role of king of the heartthrobs on the soap opera Maida would mainline if possible. Loves, Lies, and Lifetimes. Last time I heard, he and the show’s main vixen, a platinum blonde named Shelby, had traveled back into their past lives, back to ancient Egypt where she is Nefertiti and he a young slave named Jahi. Heartsick with love for his queen, he puts himself in danger every other day merely to touch the hem of her garment. Finally, the Egyptian palace guards throw him into prison.

  Maida taps the receiver. “Are you sure it’s the time for mundane conversation?”

  “More that you can believe.”

  “Well”—she lowers her voice as though she gossips about living souls—“Shelby-slash-Nefertiti has visited the prison in the middle of the night to see if the reports of Brock-slash-Jahi are true. She sees him wasting away and takes pity on him, and she kisses him on the lips. Well … his eyes open, and she’s smitten because she sees the love in them—isn’t that romantic—and she kisses him once more and leaves quietly. But … that night she can’t sleep, and she’s smiling like crazy there in her bed on her Nile boat.”

  “I see an affair coming!”

  “Of course! But it’s going to be difficult considering he’s a prisoner now.”

  “But she’s the queen, right? What’s her husbands name again, the pharaoh?”

  “Who cares?”

  “That’s for sure, Maida.”

  “Be nice, Pearly. But get this … back in present day, Shelby’s being investigated by this private detective!”

  “Why?!”

  “Her dead husband, Rafe—remember that slime bucket? Well, he isn’t really dead!”

  “But he was ground up by an industrial meat grinder last year! I actually saw that episode.”

  Maida sucks in air and whispers, “I guess it wasn’t him after all.”

  “It sure does make you wonder about your ground beef, though, doesn’t it?”

  Maida laughs. “I’m glad you haven’t lost your sense of humor, Pearly.”

  “Sometimes it’s all a person has.”

  “That’s the truth.”

  “I’ve got to go on down to the city soon. It’s time.”

  That’s all. Just … it’s time.

  I’m fifty years old and standing before her casket, looking down at a farmer’s wife’s hands now cold. Still dry, though. Mom’s hands were always so dry and cracked. They smelled of Lubriderm and dish soap. They spent countless hours smoothing my head as it lay in her lap during evening TV viewings.

  Pop died three years ago. My Mongoloid brother, Harry, who went to live at a boarding house in Princess Anne when Mom got cancer, stands here holding my hand. Only six of us attend the viewing, the funeral, the interment. My cousins Peta and Cheeta as well as our old neighbor from childhood, Shrubby Cinquefoil, stand in silence. We don’t know the priest, and he didn’t know Mom, so we tell him to skip the eulogy. He sighs in relief.

  The priest intones some Bible verses and then we stroll away, hand in hand in hand, Joey, me, then Harry, to our car. My feet feel much too light, as if some foot fairy changed them from flesh and blood to Styrofoam. “I’m glad her suffering is over.”

  Joey squeezes my hand. “I enjoyed having her around. You’ll have more free time on your hands now. That might be difficult.”

  He opens the car door, and I slide in, looking into softened eyes. “Will you get the rental company to come for the bed and all?” I ask.

  Joey nods and shuts my door. We deposit Harry at the home, drive an hour to the ocean, and sit near the breakers until the horizon tops the sun. I sleep the entire way back to Havre de Grace and I dream about my mother, only she isn’t sick, and she laughs as her dark hair blows in the wind, a tendril sticking into her bright pink lipstick. She laughs more and doesn’t pull it free.

  Joey’s always enjoyed reading poetry to me, and I pretend to understand. Sometimes I actually do. But always, no matter how cerebral or lofty the words and thoughts, the sound of his voice is enough.

  “I think I’ll have a little more of that broccoli salad. Would you like something else?”

  Yes, I’d like something else. No kidding I’d like something else!

  I’d like you just like you were. I’d like to feel your feet under the sheets near my calves, and I wouldn’t tell you your toenails need clipping. I’d like to see the mug you could have easily placed in the dishwasher yourself sitting in the sink. I’d like to observe you when you don’t realize it as you read or play your guitar. I’d like to watch you eat a failed meal on my part and pretend it’s a Julia Childs masterpiece. I’d just like to watch Julia Childs with you. Even that would be enough.

  I circle around the yard in my black pants and shirt, a cup of coffee in my hands. I stroll into the small, wooded portion in the back east corner. The moss I planted years ago cushions my bare feet, and the newly decaying autumn leaves insulate me from the sound of town traffic two streets over. Decay seems plain nervy right now. People really should die in spring, when at least you’d have the comfort of new life erupting all around you like the first laugh of a baby.

  Rocking on the bench swing we placed here this past summer, I light up a cigarette. Joey guaranteed a smooth installation, but we ended up enlisting the help of Maida, who laughed like Phyllis Diller almost the entire afternoon. I can’t sit here. I can’t sit still. I walk back through the yard, look at the pool. This time I don’t see Joey. I only see the cigarette smoke curling in front of me, the rest of the world blurred and remote. I throw the butt into the planter I filled with sand and bury the burning end, feeling sorry for it somehow, to be extinguished so soon. I decide maybe another nap would be prudent. I have yet to sniff Joey’s sneakers.

  Back in the kitchen I call the doctor. “I’ll be in early this afternoon. How is he?”

  “His kidneys are beginning to shut down now.”

  “Then I’ll be there in an hour or so.”

  “Just have the nurse page me, Mrs. Laurel.”

  “Thank you.”

  Only a little time remains to drink him in. I begin my search for Joey in the kitchen.

  Green tea in bags. Early morning, rumpled Joey.

  Salted cashews. Reading the newspaper Joey.

  Five corkscrews. The better mousetrap Joey.

  A bottle of Australian merlot. For our anniversary Joey.

  Bamboo skewers he’s never used. I’ll do dinner for you Joey.

  Skippy peanut butter. Hey, it’s for the students Joey.

  Fresh ground coffee. Bought it for you, lover Joey.

  A mug fashioned during his pottery phase. Can’t get rid of anything Joey.

  A clay ashtray he sculpted with his first-grade fingertips. Can’t imagine kids making ashtrays at school nowadays Joey!

  His grandmother’s stoneware tureen. We always use it for Irish stew, sweet and sour meatballs, cabbage and noodles, and the soups I love to make when the weather turns.

  Soup is the freshly washed down comforter of food. That’s what Joey always said.

  I examine the box of tea, then set it on the counter near the door.

  A few minutes later the bathroom throw rug, a huge sunflower, cushions my feet. I only bought it last week. It made me feel so delighted, so sunny and at home with my world.

  Straight razor in a shaving mug. Fluffy bristle brush. Cake of shaving soap. Relics of a bygone era. My father’s razor, his father’s brush.

  Contact case and solutions. Extra pair of glasses. />
  Polo cologne.

  Dark blue Oral B toothbrush, bristles fountaining out to the sides.

  Colgate. Almost empty. No other tube in sight.

  Listerine. The green kind. Almost empty. No other bottle in sight.

  My goodness, I’ve been lax in the toiletries shopping! Did I instinctively know he wouldn’t be needing them?

  Prescriptions. Toprol. Rocaltrol. Baby aspirin. The high blood pressure cornucopia of ailment blockers.

  Spots from shaving soap on the mirror.

  Before I realize what I am doing, I find I am licking them off the reflective surface. I do not open my eyes for fear of what I will see.

  The tang constricts my tongue.

  I grab the closed straight razor and run from the room into the hallway. I cannot raid the bedroom yet.

  So I crouch on the floor against the wall of the upstairs hallway, right beneath a photo of my brother and me taken thirty years ago. Hugging myself, I rock a bit, willing my arms to belong to someone else. Mother? Father? Grandma Peta? Joey?

  Who?

  The clock over the fireplace downstairs thunks the quarter-hour. We purchased that clock in a dim, dusty London antique shop ten years ago. Had the greatest laugh with the owner, a froglike, woody-scented man named Gavin, over the Royal Family and whether or not their teeth are to the manor born or if they surgically give themselves those overbites to make up for their lack of a chin.

  Even now I smile at the memory and allow my feet to slide out from beneath my rear until I sit with my legs straight out. Oh, dear, but my knees have become knobby over the years. So much living we’ve done, Joey and I.

  I tap my toes along the walnut shoe molding anchoring the other side of the hallway. I slide my hands through the dust as though I’m making an angel. I chuckle now, a slide show of winter days with Joey projecting behind my eyes. The man always slipped and slid—and with absolutely no grace. He reminded me of a cartoon character at times like that, a thousand arms waving up and down at his sides, a protracted “Oh, nooooooo!” blowing from between his lips.

  I climb to my feet, feeling positively arachnoid as all twenty digits make contact with the floor.

  I groan.

  I heft.

  Through the doorway, my sight catches on the skirt of our four-poster bed. Its white Hardanger embroidery dusts the floor, reminding me of my embroidery phase that lasted for the decade between 1975 and 1985. Joey even tried his hand at a little needlework during that period. Did well too, but he soon tired of it and moved along to something else. I can’t quite remember whether it was model boats or wood-burning.

  I rise completely and finally enter the pale blue room. Plate shelving encircles the entire room, Delft pieces resting along it. I pull the stepstool leading up to my side of the bed over to the wall and pull down a tiny porcelain frog that belonged to Joey’s mother. I kiss its cool surface and place it back on the shelf. Dust clings to my lips. I rub it off with the back of my hand, but my tongue still seeks the remainder. I grimace at the grit and climb back down.

  My eyes circle the room like a radar scanner, blipping on Joey’s things:

  Tortoise shell reading glasses. Very William F. Buckley.

  A man’s jewelry box lined with dark green felt.

  A compartmented teak tray littered with odds and ends—one each of the new state quarters, paper clips, cuff links, and an old two-dollar bill. “Someday, I’m going to spend this on something really special, Pearly,” he’d say. “I don’t know what it is, but I’ll know it when I see it.”

  “Two bucks isn’t much, Joey.”

  “Maybe not. But I’m sure it will be all I need.”

  I slip the bill off the tray.

  Truth is, we never spend much time in the bedroom. Just sleep and make love here. Oh, Joey is such a tender man. He treats me like the diamond tiepin that glints in the tray. I saved up for five years to buy that piece of jewelry. Five years of stuffing extra bits of change and dollar bills into a ginger jar proudly displaying the words Harford County, Maryland in calligraphic-style letters on its belly. He wears that pin every time he wears a tie. I grab this too.

  Downstairs once again, I place the razor and the two-dollar bill next to the box of green tea on the kitchen table.

  I close the door on Joey’s study. I cannot enter the room that for the most part he alone inhabited.

  Finally, the sunroom floor at the back of the house splays beneath my feet. The late morning sunshine streams from windows on three sides and warms the room. We sit out here together more than any other place. For three seasons of the year.

  Faded red lounge chair.

  Pipe holder/ashtray combo nearby. Never been used. Joey just likes the idea.

  Small oak bookshelf he bought at a yard sale on Harford Road a few years back. I remember it well. “Handmade, Pearly! Five bucks!” And he smiled his purity upon me. So untouched yet so instinctive. I’ve never lost my amour for Joey. Oh, the amour.

  1966

  I walk down Charles Street. Finishing up my freshman year, I’m set on being a photojournalist someday, traveling to places like Vietnam and exposing the evils of the war machine. Right now though, I am tired. It’s Saturday, and I worked all day downtown waiting tables at Burke’s Restaurant. The bus dropped me off a few blocks back from my apartment near campus.

  Something’s happening over on the lawn near the Carroll Mansion, the centerpiece of our campus.

  Music. Singing.

  Well, that’s not too strange nowadays here at Johns Hopkins. All this war stuff brings out all sorts of creative urges in people. Self-expression, you know.

  I reach into my bag for the little Instamatic I keep with me all the time, because you never know what will pop up in front of you. And I’m learning to do all sorts of groovy things in the darkroom. Someday, Pearly, someday people will actually pay you for your pictures. I am determined to give them their money’s worth. I’m going to be the best. And not only the best but the boldest. I will go into the line of fire. I will turn around and grab that shot while the rest of the world runs away.

  As I cut across the lawn toward the gathering, the music clarifies, and so does their garb.

  Bogus.

  Jesus Freaks.

  Kumbaya. Kumbaya.

  Put your hand in the hand of the man.

  As I said, bogus. It’s all bogus.

  Who knows, though? Some good pictures might surface. Maybe somebody’ll get mad and act like one of us heathens! That would be rich. A fight at the Jesus Freak meeting. Oh, yes, I can see it now—and can’t help but chuckle.

  Standing before them, I’m thinking I’ll at least capture some interesting faces here. Lots of closed eyes and enraptured expressions. Don’t often see that out in the open for public consumption! Too bad I don’t carry my 35mm with me all the time. I’d like to zoom in on some of them.

  My mind photographs the group before my camera does. A dozen or so sit in various positions, cross-legged, legs stretched out in front, one girl on her knees, together composing an oval. Several young women, much like my own circle of friends in appearance, sing a high descant of alleluias. Pretty, even I admit. One woman, much older than the others, at least forty-five, wears a lavender suit with a cameo pin on the lapel. Her long hair dips from her crown into a thick bun.

  Weird in this crowd.

  She lightly taps a tambourine, face clear of concern, smoothed by some cosmic, inner peace, I guess. Hey, whatever works, you know?

  But what’s an old lady doing in a group like this?

  Young men fill in the rest of the circle. I have a feeling some of these people are graduate students because they look a little less self-conscious.

  Next to the woman in lavender sits the guitar player. He’s beautiful. Definitely a grad student. Hair, prematurely white, waves back from his smooth forehead into a ponytail at the nape of his neck. Eyes closed, he finger-picks delicately, prayerfully, I guess, at the strings. His voice rises only slightly above
the others as he sings, “alleluia to the king.” He intrigues me. I am a voyeur suddenly, peering like a Peeping Tom into someone else’s Holy of Holies.

  I snap one picture only. Of this man. I feel shame. I’ve become one of the exploiters. But I cannot leave without this.

  I rest for a moment in Joey’s chair and lean down to examine his bookshelf. The sun illumines the dust particles in the air, my breath moving them in mad circles like tiny rockets. I lean back into his chair, lay my hands on the small stack atop the case. A prayer book, a New Testament, and a diary. Breathing through my nose, I try to smell him. Oh please, Joey. Be here. Please, just be here now.

  Grabbing all three books, I run from the room, shutting the glass door behind me, allowing the dust to settle back into its own comfortable existence. I hope it takes a long time to do so.

  Placing the books on the counter with the rest of my collection, I walk into the pantry behind the kitchen. I’ve been threatening for years to turn it into a darkroom. But something has always stopped me. Fear? Anxiety? Reluctance to find out that I really didn’t possess what it takes to succeed, to make a stand for the glory of the picture, to be brave enough to be in the right place at the right time?

  Maybe some cereal now. Maybe that would go down. I grab a box of Joey’s cereal—I’m a fried-egg-on-toast type myself—and step back into the kitchen. I loved this place yesterday, its warm, barn-red walls and wrought iron light fixtures. And the armoire desk Joey bought me for my last birthday. I’d been wanting one ever since they came out. My photo albums rest on top. I grab my special album. Only my very best pictures of Joey reside there. I sit down at my polished table and look through, all the while chomping on Grape-Nuts and wondering if the demonic nuggets are doing a number on my tooth enamel.

  Not many pictures, really, fill the album pages. But they fill my heart to bursting with the love I’ve borne for this man for over three decades. He was so handsome and striking as a younger man, so carefree looking and intelligent. And in his later years now, he still has that Swiss, too-steeped-in-life’s-wonders-to-notice-what-others-think air about him. Well, he used to anyway.