The Living End Page 8

  “God created the world and everything in it, right?”

  “That’s what I taught you, son.”

  “After the sixth day, He rested and said, ‘It is good,’ right?”

  “That’s what it says in Genesis.”

  “Right. So, I’m a rock.”

  Pop threw a slender birch log into the flames, and I watched its skin curl and blacken and the smoke thicken for a spell. “I’m just a simple green grocer, son. I don’t have your high thoughts. I believe they came from your mother. You need to give me a little more to go on with this rock notion, buddy.”

  I really love my dad. He’s a good father, and since Mom died he’s been my rock.

  “Well, if God said ‘It is good’ it means He didn’t add anything more to His creation.”

  “I’d say I’d agree with that. But how does that make you a rock?”

  “That rock I was sitting on has been in existence, in one form or other, since God pronounced it good.”

  He gave a clap, caught his tie between his hands, then pointed at me. “I’m finally following you! You could say the same about yourself, right?”

  “Right! Everything that forms me, all the stuff that makes up me, has been around since the dawn of creation!”

  “Makes sense to me.” And then Pop reached over and messed up my hair, smiling and shaking his head. “Son, I’m proud of you. Your mother would be proud of you and I’m sorry to admit I don’t do these conversations justice the way she would have.”

  “But you don’t mind having them, do you, Pop?” I asked.

  “Anything that comes out of your mouth is important to me, Joseph.”

  I felt a little shy at that, so I went into the cabin to get some marshmallows. Pop sat back in his camp chair, folded his hands over his belt buckle and closed his eyes. I’m sure my mother smiled behind those lids. Then he lit up a cigarette and stared out over the lake. He reminded me of pictures I see at the camps, old pictures of gentleman anglers, men in ties and hats holding up strings of seven-pounders. My dad may be a simple green grocer down at Cross Street Market, but he is a true gentleman, the kind they just don’t make anymore.

  I arise from my seat on the screened porch, set Joey’s diary aside, and inspect the gold of the evening sky. Imagine thinking thoughts like that at fifteen years old! Thoughts as beautiful and grand as an evening sky, full of depth and wonder and golden linings that catch the breath. I can honestly say that Joey’s thoughts would never occur to me on their own. First of all, the creation story is full of holes big enough to drive a semi through. Six days? Please. That always steals the poetry of it all away from me. Although, I must admit I do love the picture: a hasty, divine creation summons, complete with soundtrack—the Sabre Dance. Can’t you just picture the divine spirit prancing, light-footed yet sure on the steppingstones of substance that poke their heads through the currents of the river of time? A slow, violent shift from nothing to large, small, animate, inanimate, breathing, dead, however, has its own peculiar brand of drama. But no soundtrack. Who’d want to hear the same song playing for millions of years, shifting undetected from movement to movement? And let’s face it, it would sound like Wagner at his most depressing.

  I ration entries in Joey’s journals now, for he wrote not every day of his life but in wonderful, lively bursts. Five pages a day. I found that his journals filled most of that bookshelf by his lounge chair, shelved in no particular order. Not surprising, Joey being the organic soul he was. Most of them, only half-filled, contain memories and mundane tellings of the day’s occurrences, as well as emotional accounts. Already I have found the same occurrence written of twice. The day Joey’s mother died. He was twelve.

  August 15th, 1950

  Pop and I buried Mom today.

  I remember how I felt when I heard the news that Hitler had died in that fire. Mom and I danced around the kitchen table singing Spike Jones’s “Der Fuhrer’s Face” in heavy German accent she’d kept even after escaping the “cleansings.” Those dirty thugs, those filthy beasts! Imagine calling my mother unclean. That’s another story for another day, though, but I must write it down someday because I’ll have children of my own and they’ll need to know about their grandmother.

  And now Rachel lies out at the cemetery, the only child of only children, the last of an entire line of Schwartzes.

  We gave her a Christian burial, Episcopal, which is what she converted over to after she married Pop. She felt that the Jewish version of God let her people down time after time and that maybe He was only trying to get through to them about His Son. Or maybe He left them to their own devices, allowing the devil, who hates them more than he hates any other people, to reign. I think Satan is trying hard to undo God’s covenants with His chosen people. You’d think he would get a clue that God’s not going anywhere.

  I am angry today.

  Rachel grieved for her people to the end. They threw her out of the family, what few of them were left. Just some distant cousins and an aunt or two. Four days ago, some dirty thug threw a bottle of beer out of the car window, aiming at her, and hit her right on the head. He yelled, “Kike!”

  I didn’t recognize him, but I recognized a boy from my class, Johnny Mosmeller, pale-cheeked and bug-eyed in the backseat. I told the police. They got the driver and the guy who threw the bottle because Johnny was afraid not to say anything. They were thugs from down near Pittsburgh come to visit the Mosmellers.

  “Shucks, Joey,” Johnny said at the funeral today. “I’m awful sorry.”

  I told him it was okay, it wasn’t his fault and I thanked him for coming. But the hollow thunk of the bottle hitting Mom’s head, smashing her skull, doesn’t stop ringing in my head. I see her head jerk wildly to the right, her dark hair swinging around her cheeks and jaw, the waves springing and jumping like a marionette, a happy motion. As I jump forward to catch her, I fall over a tar strip in the sidewalk, and I see her heels wobble to the right, I see the scuff on her gas pedal foot, the wearing away of the mild chocolate-colored leather to reveal the creamy center. I see the shoes leave the ground altogether as Mom falls, her head landing with another watermelon thud on the edge of Mrs. Bauer’s bottom front step.

  Blood pools quickly and she won’t respond to my gentle shakes. I cry, “Mom!” But there is nothing but her pale face, waxy and still. And the blood. I hold her hand, limp and fair, the same hand that sometimes held onto the back of my neck as we would walk along Light Street, window shopping or stopping into Epstein’s for some socks for me or a new blouse for her. I keep screaming “Help! Help us please.” Somebody comes and gently removes me from her side.

  Pop and I, and Pop’s sister and brother, Stanley and Esther, stood crying as the casket was lowered into the ground, Johnny Mosmeller and his mom stood nearby. I could hear them shuffling in the grass. As we walked to the car she said to me, “I’m sorry, Joey. Honest-to-goodness I am. I hope they throw the book at those guys. I was trying to help their Ma, you know. They were giving her fits. Thought I could maybe straighten them out. I guess it’s true what they say about no good deed going unpunished.”

  I wanted to respond, but all I could do was nod and raise one side of my mouth in what I hoped was taken for a smile.

  “Come on, Johnny,” she said, pulling him to her side. “Let’s leave these poor folks to grieve.”

  I watched them walk down the street whole and together, and all I could do was swallow hard and follow my father’s lead.

  We ate a meal together at Haussner’s afterwards. Dad had Wiener schnitzel and I ordered Sauerbraten. Mom’s two favorites.

  Neither of us ate much.

  He’s gone, to bed now and I’m still sitting at the kitchen table, marveling that the curtains at the window overlooking the alley are in exactly the same position as they were four days ago when Mom pushed them back to let in the morning sun.

  I never knew Joey was half Jewish! Not that it would have mattered. So why didn’t he tell me? And I didn’t know Joey’s
mother was murdered by some skinhead. Not that they called them skinheads in those days. He’d always said, “She was killed in an accident. Massive head injury. She died on the way to the hospital.”

  I am irate on Joey’s behalf. Then on my own. I now realize Joey probably kept many things from me, that he rationed out bits and pieces of himself like a mother in a small neighborhood rations out her children’s Halloween candy to make it last until Thanksgiving. This, however, is not what angers me most right now. A black rage at the person who stole Joey’s childhood, who stole pieces of Joey from me, stifles my breath.

  I watched Looney Tunes this morning as I smoked my breakfast and drank my coffee. Bugs Bunny took on the form of a manicurist as he fooled the red “Heart Monster,” as Joey and I called him.

  “Monstahs must lead such innnnn-terestin’ lives,” Bugs said as he filed the yellow and black nails of the beast in Chuckie Taylor’s.

  Many definitions of monsters exist, I suppose. I just never knew they lived so vibrantly in Joey’s memories. Yes, they must live very interesting lives. I hope God got those villains. And maybe Joey had faith enough to know that He would. Divine revenge suddenly seems like reason enough to believe in His existence.

  March 25, 1995

  Havre de Grace, Maryland

  Been thinking about Mom lately. I went back into my old journal and read the account. Amazing how I’d forgotten that she’d hit her head on the stoop. I only remembered the beer bottle. Mom came to mind today when I walked home to a yard full of Pearly’s daffodils. Pearly’s garden fills me the way Mom’s endearing motions did when I was a child. The way she’d swipe her hair aside as she peeled vegetables. The way she’d always make a toast at every meal. How I loved that woman. There could never be a woman more suited to motherhood than Rachel.

  I am cheated.

  For better for worse, richer or poorer.

  I’m a little angry at Joey, too, now. I fire up a Marlboro Light, searching the innards of the fridge for some supper. November blew in a while ago, and all I feel like eating these days is cold cereal and milk. I’ve allowed myself the luxury of eating any kind of cereal I choose. With whole milk. With only three years left—I figure it will take me that long to complete the list—I don’t have much time to eat a box of each. Right now, my cupboard holds Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Reese’s Puffs, and Franken Berry. I pull down the Franken Berry. I bought the box on Halloween, accompanied by Count Chocula and Boo Berry. I saved the pink stuff for last. Pink milk delights me in much the same way as squirt cheese, Slim Jims, and maraschino cherries.

  Joey’s list still sits on my coffee table. I say, “Darn it all.” Why do I feel the need to continue his life when I didn’t know the half of it? Why raise a tribute to the unknown?

  It’s the sanest thought I’ve had since I wiped that Jell-O salad off Joey’s face. After all, he not only hid the murder of his mother, he never told me about a fiancée that died, the miscarried sister, the fact that he had to repeat the eighth grade because he couldn’t cope after his mother died. He actually had the audacity to write, I should destroy these journals someday soon, but the way Pearly smokes, I can reasonably say I’ll outlast her.

  Of all the nerve!

  And yet, my heart still belongs to him. I still ache for him, yearn to feel his body next to me, to feel him inside of me as he completes me. I’m nothing but an empty shell in a pair of old boxers and a T-shirt, a locust shell of a woman flying around nowhere in a flapping plaid shirt. I needed him so badly. Didn’t he know?

  With a fresh case of marital bliss in my pocket, I float on the breeze from my gown. I am Mrs. Joseph Laurel. I have a fresh case of marital bliss. I am basking in the love of my family and my girlfriends from college. Ready to begin forming the receiving line, I feel Joey’s tap between my shoulder blades. He grabs my hands and pulls me around the side of the house.

  “I have one more vow to make, Pearly.”

  I allow him to pull me close, I feel his lips on my ear, and I shiver at the touch of his breath. “What is it?”

  “I vow to keep the ‘worse’ to a minimum.”

  I stare at him.

  “I mean it, Pearly, I’ll make a conscious effort to do that as long as you’ll have me.”

  “I vow that too, then.”

  He grins. “This thing might work.”

  Oh my. So that’s what he was doing? Keeping me from as much “worse” as possible? Or didn’t he give me enough credit? Did Joey think me incapable of shouldering a sliver of the cross he was forced to carry?

  No. He wanted to protect me. It had to be that. He loved me. If I doubt that now that he’s gone, my whole life will have been wasted. Yes, I lived for love. The poets and lyricists of the world would applaud me even if Helen Gurley Brown would beg to differ.

  Shrubby Cinquefoil knocks on my screen door the Wednesday before Thanksgiving.

  “Oysters?”

  I nod. “Always, Shrubby.”

  He hands me the bowl. “Makin’ your oyster dressin’ this year?”

  I nod again. “Me and the girls are having the family dinner tomorrow as always. No sense in breaking tradition because Joe’s gone.” I always call Joey Joe to other men.

  “That’s good, Pearly.”

  “What’re you doing this year, Shrubby?”

  “Nothin’ I guess. No invites from the exes!” He laughs. His fourth divorce came to a very unnatural conclusion only recently. All anybody knows is that it involved a cult, odd food, and the all-out brainwashing of his wife. Not that she wasn’t an utter kook all on her own. For one thing, she changed her name from Nancy to Lynx. And if that wasn’t enough, she tattooed Save the Razorheads just below the hollow of her neck. We’re still not sure what that was supposed to mean. Shrubby’s better off without her.

  “Wanna come eat with us?” Shrubby would never ask on his own. “Really, Shrubby, they won’t mind.”

  Shrubby hacks out a cough and raises his eyebrows.

  “Okay, maybe they will,” I say. “But if you don’t care, I don’t care.”

  “Shoot, I don’t care ’bout much.”

  “Me either.”

  So that’s settled.

  I tried to tell Peta that I’d make homemade cranberry sauce, but she said, “We’ve always had it out of a can, Pearly. Why go changing things now? Now get on over here and help me peel these yams.”

  “They’re sweet potatoes,” Cheeta yells in from her tanning bed.

  “Stuff it, sis!” Peta yells back.

  I laugh and pull up the sleeves on my green wool sweater. “You two never change.”

  “And it’s a good thing, too. You’ve done enough changing in your lifetime for everybody in this family.”

  What? “Oh come off it, Peta. I’ve lived the same life for the past thirty-five years.”

  She obviously doesn’t hear me. “First in high school you go off to France for that exchange student nonsense, where you meet that French boy who gave you more of an education than was necessary.”

  “He wasn’t French. He was an exchange student from Madrid.”

  “Oh, pardonnez-moi! Like that makes any difference.” She inhales. “Then you go off to college, lugging all that camera garbage, bent on seeing the world. Then barely a year passes and you’re getting married to a graduate student. Then you quit school and devote your life to him.”

  “I always thought you liked Joey.”

  “I did. Best thing that ever happened to you, that man. Who knows where you would have ended up?”

  I grab a potato and peel it as though it were Peta’s head. “What’s that supposed to mean?” This feels like a conversation that should have occurred years before now.

  “Oh, don’t take me for a blind fool, Pearly. I heard you sneaking out of the house all those nights, sneaking off with Shrubby or Marsh Cinquefoil. I knew you were off getting high and who knows what else.”

  “Why didn’t you try and stop me?”

  She smiles. “I did the same t
hing a decade before you. Only it wasn’t the Cinquefoil brothers, it was the Purnell boys, and it wasn’t marijuana, it was Southern Comfort.”

  Sure, I have regrets. We laugh though.

  Peta runs her peeled potato under water, cleaning off the remainder of the dirt. “Yep, you weren’t exclusive, that’s for sure.”

  “You mean I was easy?”

  “If the shoe fits.”

  “Joey knew and he didn’t hold it against me.”

  “Oh really? Did you tell him the wide reach of your fishing net?”

  “No. But he knew I wasn’t a virgin when he married me.”

  “Well, we all have our secrets, then, don’t we? Joey’s was just a little less ugly than yours and that’s really what makes you mad.”

  Leave it to Peta to take away my right to feel anger at Joey. Not that I could be mad at him forever. Dead or alive, Joey’s still Joey, my lovely Joey. Dead people have a kind of glow, don’t they? It’s actually nice.

  “Well, if it makes you feel any better, Peta, I regret those times.”

  “Oh, shoot, we all have regrets.”

  “What are yours?” I finish up my potato, slip it beneath the stream of water and slide it into the bowl of cold water nearby.

  Peta takes her time answering, and I immediately regret the question. Still, it’s Thanksgiving Eve, gateway to the holiday season, and I can’t help but be glad I’m back in Grandma’s kitchen. They’ve changed nothing over the years except to add another coat of paint or two to the glass-front cabinets along one wall. So many layers of the stuff hugs the wood it’s impossible to shut the doors all the way anymore. It is possible, however, to actually leave fingernail marks in the creamy surface if you press hard enough. Same porcelain sink, bleached yet stained. Same old gas range Grandma had installed new in the early ’60s. Wood floors, soft pine, nicked and buckled, shine with wax. I love this house, which is why we built our cabin so close. Not to mention the view. I came to the right place to heal.