The Living End Read online

  “Pearly?”

  “Listen, the doctor should be calling you any minute, okay?”

  “Well, okay, but you know—”

  I hang up, picture her phone ringing again and the doctor filling in the details.

  Crossing the road, I decide to sleep in my car for a bit, gather a few groceries come morning, and then decide where the road will take me. Maybe I’ll find some hidden avenue, some twilight-zone route that leads me back to my real life.

  Have many people convinced themselves that someone who’s died actually isn’t dead at all? For instance, do they tell themselves that he’s really away for an extended sabbatical or something where he can’t write letters or call? And can you write letters to him destined for some imaginary address?

  I slam the dishtowel onto the counter.

  “Look, Joey! You knew I wasn’t a Jesus Freak when you married me! If it was that important to you, why did you marry me in the first place?” And why didn’t I use something louder than a dishtowel to get my point across? What a waste.

  “I thought maybe you’d get an interest.”

  “We’ve been married three years, Joey. Don’t you think it would’ve happened by now?”

  “Yes.”

  “So get a clue, smarty-pants.”

  He turns around and walks into the bedroom of our little apartment.

  I yell, “I mean, when I got cancer I was going to swing one way or the other!”

  “But you’re still alive,” he hollers back. “God kept you living.”

  “Yeah! Without a uterus!”

  The bedroom door clicks shut. The snow falls outside the kitchen window, the Bay is quiet, and the timer at Concord Point Lighthouse has signaled the nightly illumination to begin.

  I feel like dirt. Joey deserves better. I can be so mean sometimes, and I don’t know where I get it from. Mom certainly wasn’t like that. But in my defense, I’m twenty-two years old and will never achieve the pinnacle of womanhood. Oh sure, I know women like Bella Abzug and Gloria Steinem would say otherwise. But honestly, what do they know? Who bestowed on them such clout anyway? I was given ovaries, a uterus, and a birth canal for a reason. Not putting them to use is like wearing clown makeup and never being funny.

  I wash up our lunch dishes and continue staring at the falling snow.

  Joey emerges. “I’m sorry Pearly.”

  “Me too. This is one area we have to be different, Joey.”

  He nods. “Can I ask for one compromise?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Just Christmas Eve. Will you just go to church with me on Christmas Eve?”

  “Okay. But it’s just for you.”

  “I know.”

  He hugs me and kisses me tenderly. He wants to tell me something, but he holds back, and I am grateful.

  I stop in Salisbury, only thirty minutes from the cabin now, and head into the Giant grocery store. We stayed at the cabin only a week and a half ago, so I won’t have to clean. I buy a big bottle of root beer, a box of granola, some skim milk, which I loathe but use anyway since Joey started on the low-fat kick, a pound of ham, some rye bread, and tomatoes. I buy a carton of Marlboro Lights while I’m at it. Black lung has already erupted from those Reds, and the thought of bringing one to my lips makes me want to throw up. Next I head to the liquor store for a case of Shiraz and a bottle of Bailey’s for my nightcap.

  I sit outside the store on a bench formed from recycled store bags. I recall the little white wrought iron bench and cocktail table my grandmother arranged near the weeping willow by the Bay, at the western edge of the farm. Lighting up a cigarette, I remember family life. Not a large family really; we were, however, dovetailed together by hard work and an appreciation for common genetics. Only four of us remain: me, my brother, Harry, and my cousins, Cheeta and Peta.

  Peta inherited Grandma’s name. Cheeta’s real name is Concheta. Her mother, my Aunt Sally, just liked the name. “So much more exotic and substantial than Sally,” she said many a time. They’re older than I am by ten years and consistently top the list of the strangest people I’ve ever met in my entire life, a high honor considering that during my freshman year at Hopkins I met Tiny Tim and Andy Warhol through bizarre circumstances that included an ice storm, a car crash, and four boxes of silver tinsel. My cousins live on the property in the old farmhouse where I grew up. They don’t know I’m coming. Cheeta will have an all-out fit, and Peta will boss me around and shower me with all sorts of unasked-for advice.

  I light up a cigarette and slip out the bottle of Coke I pulled from the cooler near the register. I’ve disappeared for all practical purposes, so there’s no hurry to get to the cabin. Actually, I know that once I arrive, only crying and smoking, drinking wine and eating ham sandwiches, and staring out at the water will consume me for days and days.

  Goodness, but that sounds so good.

  After taking one more pull on my smoke, one more slug of my Coke, I head back to the car. This is Joey’s first full day dead. It is my first full day alone. It is only ten in the morning.

  But maybe the miracle happened. Maybe he continued to breathe on his own! Right? Couldn’t that have happened?

  I rush to the pay phone and call Maida. The answering machine clicks on. Must be at work. I call the school.

  “Maida, please?” I disguise my voice.

  “I’m sorry,” some volunteer manning the phone says, “but she’s not here.”

  “Can you tell me where she is?”

  “She’s busy planning the funeral of Dr. Laurel.”

  “So he’s really dead, then.”

  My voice loses all shine. I hang up the phone, sagging against the booth, breathing deeply, realizing that something deep inside me had hoped in and had been utterly disappointed by both God and man.

  I luck out. Cheeta and Peta have apparently deserted the farm until tomorrow afternoon. I learned this from Shrubby Cinquefoil, a waterman with property north of the farm on the Bay. Shrubby’s skin reminds me of those dried pigs’ ears people give their dogs to gnaw on. His colorless eyes, bleached by years of “drudgin’ ” for oysters or tending his crab pots, convey his general distrust of humankind with a spaghetti western squint.

  “Do you know where they went, Shrubby?”

  “No, and I don’t wanna know.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Cheeta’s been making googly eyes at me lately.”

  “Cheeta? Really?”

  “Durn right.”

  I don’t have the heart to tell him she switched to contacts recently.

  “Not only that. I ain’t no gossip. What them ladies do is their own durn business. I got enough troubles of my own.”

  I sit in my car, window rolled down, breeze across my face, sun in my eyes. Such a beautiful day, and it’s a miracle I even noticed. “Well, I’ll be at the cabin if you need me.”

  “You stayin’ long?”

  I can’t tell him about Joey. “I’m not sure.”

  “You know, you’re the only Kaiser I could ever stomach.”

  Poor everybody else. Still, “Thanks, Shrubby.”

  Plus, Shrubby, my age almost exactly, remembers the time I caught him skinny-dipping with Margie Carruthers on the same day I caught him making out with Debbie Phillips. He’s been married four times and divorced three. They managed an annulment on number two, which has become fodder for many a speculative conversation in these parts ever since. Shrubby remains mum.

  “Hang on a minute,” he says and hurries off to his shed by the water. I scan the September Bay, feeling Joey’s approval with me here at his favorite spot on earth during his favorite month of the year. Perhaps coming here is a more fitting tribute than sticking around Havre de Grace.

  Har har.

  Shrubby returns with a pail hanging from the bony fingers of his right hand. “Here’s some oysters for ya. Need me to shuck ’em?”

  “No way, Shrubby Cinquefoil! Don’t be insulting.”

  He salutes.

>   “Thanks for the oysters.”

  “Get outta here, Pearly. A man’s got work to do.”

  I drive across his property and onto ours, forsaking the driveways.

  I am rich. I’ve found an old notebook of Joey’s here at the cabin, right on the built-in bookshelf next to the fireplace. He looked and looked all over our Havre de Grace house for this thing several years ago and, sighing, finally assigned it to the category of disappearing socks, lost safety pins, and missing ballpoint pens. Then he brightened, rode his bicycle over to the drugstore, and purchased a red, three-subject spiral notebook.

  Inside this volume, a hardbound book with a red plaid cover, Joey’s character sketches splay as though between glass slides, the embryonic remains of his short stories, long abandoned but still viewable. No manuscripts of his stories exist. Joey always sent them off to periodicals and publishers with only one safety copy left at home. After he received the published piece—out even that would go. I loved that Joey wasn’t in love with his work. He loved people and saw his work as a tribute to humankind, not the other way around.

  I set the book down for a spell, remembering my tote bag. In the bedroom, furnished with rugged furniture and decorated in shades of green and burgundy, I slip off all my clothes and stand naked and chilly. Yet I enjoy the feeling of nothingness, the sensation that only air clothes me and I am in much the same state I was at birth. I stand for several minutes, eyes closed, remembering my mother, remembering my baths and the way she’d dry me with a towel straight from the dryer, always singing “The Bear Went over the Mountain.”

  But enough. Who can go back? No one. Even God Himself can’t go back. In fact, one of the few Sunday school lessons I ever heard only gave credit to God for making the sun stand still. Going back is an option for absolutely no one. I reach into the bag and pull out Joey’s clothes from the hospital. I slide his boxers and his undershirt over my bare flesh, then slip into the plaid shirt, its softness gliding over the hair on my arms.

  Noon already. I am hungry. I make myself a ham sandwich on rye with mustard, pour myself a cold root beer, and set my meal out on the deck. Dragging a lounger pad from the screened porch, I breathe through my nose, sucking in as much of the breeze as possible. I throw the navy blue cushion on the redwood lounger and plop down on it.

  The sandwich tastes good, bringing back memories of my mother, Valerie, who hailed from Baltimore city. She loved ham sandwiches. I eat them to remember her.

  Joey loved her so much. “You have a good mother, Pearly.” It was his idea that we care for her after she was diagnosed with lung cancer.

  I raise my sandwich to Valerie Kaiser. Maybe she is with Joey right now. But I don’t know. Mom wasn’t attuned to spiritual things the way Joey was. I know little about any of this stuff, and to be honest, right now is not the time to worry about it. I just want to eat my sandwich, drink my root beer, smoke my cigarettes, and feel the breeze. I don’t even want to cry right now. I just want to sit here in Joey’s clothes and read about Joey’s people.

  5 January 1971. Havre de Grace.

  I met a man named Chervil Williams today. He reminds me of a picket from a weathered beach fence. He said he forgot how old he was but remembers the Civil War because he had two older brothers who died. He sat down on the shore at the confluence of the Susquehanna and the Bay, near the lock house. Despite the cold, his old coat was opened and his shirt unbuttoned. Ribs showed above the neckline of his guinea undershirt. I asked him about this, and he said, “It’s my secret to long life. Get a little cold air into the lungs whenever you can.” He spent his life down in the shipyards in Baltimore but moved out here with his daughter years ago. The daughter is long gone, but Chervil remains. He doesn’t know why. I asked him what his story is. He said, “I don’t have muck of a story. I just try to survive each day without hurting anybody.”

  Down at the Chat ’n’ Chew during breakfast, a young woman walked in wearing a torn denim jacket and a long velvet skirt. Army boots magnified her feet. Brilliant really, the whole getup. Already a story forms regarding this woman and Chervil. Perhaps Chervil will really be a spirit. But his message? Too soon to tell.

  I run my fingertips over the dried ink. Joey’s own handwriting. He touched this book. Is there a cell or two of Joey’s that my fingerprint will sponge into one of its crevices? Please. I hold the notebook to my chest, then rub the binding up my neck and beside my ear, and there I rest it, allowing it to pillow my pain as the afternoon wanes and the sun slants its rays, further defining the yellowing leaves on the maple trees by the driveway.

  I awaken beneath the stars. Something’s eaten the crusts of my sandwich. I remember Pumpkin. Poor Pumpkin!

  Inside, I call Maida on the kitchen phone.

  “It’s Pearly.”

  “Where are you?”

  “I can’t say. I need to be unreachable.”

  “Well, I can just push *77, Pearly.”

  “Okay. I’m at the cabin.”

  “I figured as much.”

  I’m so annoyingly predictable. I flip on the kitchen light, squinting as it illumines the tiny room. “Can you feed Pumpkin?”

  “Of course. He’s already over here.”

  “I should’ve figured as much.”

  There is a space of dead air.

  “Burial or cremation?” Maida says suddenly.

  “Burial.”

  “Where now? I didn’t catch the location before.”

  “We have a plot in Churchville. Harford Memorial Gardens.”

  “I know it. I’ll call to make arrangements. I take it you’re not coming back for the funeral?”

  “…”

  “You know, Pearly. Not seeing him dead, or in a coffin or anything funeral-like isn’t going to make him any less gone.”

  “…”

  “I won’t have a viewing, then. Just the graveside service. I’ll call Father Charlie, and he can arrange things.”

  “Thank you, Maida.”

  She sighs. “I’ve got to tell you, Pearly, that I don’t understand any of this. Not one bit.”

  “I don’t either. But I can’t face this. That’s all I know.”

  “This isn’t good. You’re going against everything they say is healthy about grief.”

  “I know.”

  “I’d even venture to say it isn’t right either.”

  “Joey’s dead. He won’t care either way.”

  “Oh, Joey knows, Pearly. I’d bet my job, my house, everything I own on that one.”

  Is Joey haunting our house? Oh my, I’d never even considered that!

  “I’d better go call Father Charlie,” she says.

  “Thanks, Maida.”

  “I guess you’ll want me to close up the house for the time being?”

  “Please. Could you go by the post office and have my mail forwarded here? I’ll have the phone turned off myself.”

  “What if I say I won’t do it? I mean, the guidance counselor at school talks about this enabling business. That’s what I’d be doing. Enabling you to run away from life.”

  That really describes it!

  “You’ll do it, Maida. You can’t stand to see stuff undone.”

  “Well, that is true. But promise me you’ll be in touch every so often.”

  “I will.”

  We hang up, and I pour myself a glass of wine. I down it in three swallows there at the kitchen sink. At this time I cannot possibly sip wine and act civilized. I pour another and another right there at the sink, eating oysters, smoking like crazy, silently, grimly cursing the night, yet begging it to never end.

  I made it through full day number one. And I cannot pretend to understand it. The sun rose as expected, the morning breeze let up a bit by noon, and here I sit on my lounge chair once again looking at the water, flip-flopping between goose bumps and the sweats.

  My hangover may have something to do with it. I haven’t been hung over since Mom died.

  Cheeta and Peta should be arriving home
any minute. I parked my car around the other side of the house so they’d only see it if they decided to walk down to the water. I hope they won’t notice; I’m still wearing Joey’s clothing, and I haven’t brushed my teeth since I left my house two mornings ago.

  After pouring myself another cup of coffee, I settle into the lounger in the living room. My feet rest comfortably on the ottoman, and I look up at the beamed ceiling of our cabin. It’s actually a one-bedroom A-frame with a sleeping loft. I berate myself for forgetting Pumpkin. He loves running along the beams up there.

  A vicious knock vibrates the side screen door. “Hey, Pearly! You in there?” It’s Peta.

  “Back here in the living room!” I holler.

  She swings into the room. Peta inherited most of her mothers Blackfoot genes. Her heavy salt-and-pepper hair is pulled back into a long braid. She wears suede sandals, wool socks, a western shirt, and a long, full denim skirt. She is a Libertarian, which really gets Cheeta’s goat. I find all their politics incredibly funny, as I haven’t voted in eons. “Well, I can’t believe I had to read about it in the Sunpaper obits!” Hands on hips.

  “Joey?”

  “Of course, Joey!”

  God bless Maida. I’m sure she placed the notice.

  “And what in blazes are you doing here, Cousin? Go home!”

  “Thanks for your sympathy, Peta.”

  She crosses herself, though to my knowledge, unless things have changed, Peta isn’t Catholic. “He was a good man.”

  “Yes, he was.”

  “So you’ve got some explaining to do.”

  “Not going to talk about it, huh? Well, that’s fine. Just tell me when and where the funeral is.”

  Thank goodness Maida called me earlier. “Tomorrow, Harford Memorial Gardens in Churchville: 9:00 A.M.”

  “All right. We’ll go.”

  She turns around and leaves.

  Not two minutes go by until Cheeta arrives. “Thanks a lot, Pearly!”

  Gold jewelry is Cheeta’s vice. She wears at least seven bracelets, ten rings, and five necklaces of varying length that get caught in her ample décolletage. She is a sun goddess, and to be honest, the thought of counting her moles, freckles, and liver spots gives me the willies. What her hair looks like these days is anyone’s guess, because she took to wearing turbans two decades ago. A committed Democrat, she’s been a delegate to the national convention and everything.