The Book of Joe (26 page)

I half turn to look out over the falls with him, thinking it probably pays to humor him with conversation, and choose my moment to make a run for the guardrail. I just need one step on him, two at the most, and I'll be home free. “This is where your friend Sammy bought it, huh?” Sean says over the din of the falls. I remain steadfastly silent, looking into the thrashing water, unable to see the bottom from my vantage point. “Your mother too, if I'm not mistaken. What is it about you that makes so many folks in your life choose death by drowning?” He stares at me, waiting to see if I can be baited. “You might want to think about that.”

“It's certainly food for thought,” I say, feeling my legs go weak as I peer over the edge of the falls. It's easily a four-story drop, and in mid-October the water will be just this side of freezing. And landing in the water at all is contingent on avoiding the large cone-shaped rocks that jut out from beneath the swirling waters like the horns of a giant submerged beast.

Sean points to a spot somewhere in the woods below. “I was parked down there the night Sammy offed himself,” he says, a genuine look of wistful nostalgia crossing his face. “With Vicki Hooper. You remember Vicki Hooper?”

“Vicki Hooters,” I say.

“That's right,” he says with a chuckle. “Vicki Hooters. Tits like fucking watermelons. They were something, all right.” He pauses, relishing the memory. “There were a whole bunch of us parked there that night, messing around, and the word got out that someone had gone over. Of course, we didn't find out until the next day that it was Sammy, you know? That he'd gone and killed himself. We just knew someone had gone over. I got myself a world-class hummer from Vicki Hooper that night, courtesy of your little buddy. You know, tradition being what it is around here.” He turns and flashes me a malicious grin. “Anyway, I just thought you should know that I came when Sammy went.” His eyes are wide, daring me to react.

“Vicki Hooper was a skank.”

Maybe I see the windup, I'm not sure, but I definitely miss the punch, which doesn't return the favor, connecting with my chin with the force of a locomotive, and I crumple to the floor like a marionette cut loose from its strings. Not unconscious, but definitely somewhere in the neighborhood. Sean crouches down next to me, shaking his head and smiling. “Answer me something, will you?” he says. “You fucked Carly Diamond here too. That's a matter of public record, now that you gave the world all the juicy details in your book. So what is it that makes my girl a skank and yours not? A fuck is a fuck is a fuck, am I right?”

“Whatever you say.”

I roll over and begin standing up. Sean speeds up the process by lifting me by my shirt and holding me up to face him, nose to nose, my back now to the falls, which sound ominously closer than they did a few seconds ago.

“You know the difference between us, Goffman?”

“Oral hygiene?”

Sean smiles and slaps my face, a stinging blow that makes my eyes tear. “Wrong answer.” The correct answer turns out to be this: “Someone pisses you off, hurts or threatens you or your loved ones, you don't do a damn thing except write about it after the fact. It wouldn't even occur to you to take some action, to be a man. Your whole book was just you admitting you were too much of a pussy to stand up for yourself or your faggot friends back in high school. I make my living taking action. There's a building that needs to be destroyed or a mountain in the way of a road, I don't sit down at my computer and write a nice little story about it. I blow it up. Demolish it completely. And if somebody does me wrong, I do the same fucking thing.” He tightens his grip on my shirt and takes a step closer to the edge. I think of how Carly grabbed my shirt in exactly the same manner yesterday when she kissed me, and feel a wave of sadness that momentarily overcomes my fear.

“So what happens now, Sean?” I say. “You're going to blow me up?”

“Nah. But right now I'm seriously considering throwing you off this rock.”

“That's a relief. Because for a minute there I thought you were angling for another world-class hummer.”

All of the color leaves Sean's face and he takes another menacing step forward. I can feel his breath on my nose even as I feel my heels reach the edge of the rock shelf. “You know what?” he says. “I think you want me to throw you off. I gave you every opportunity to leave town, and I think the reason you haven't left is because you're a crazy, suicidal fuck like your crazy, suicidal fuck of a mother. You're just waiting around for someone to put you out of your misery.”

I look at his face, only scant inches from my own, and try to get a handle on just how much danger I might really be in. Despite our world of differences, Sean and I grew up together, were invited to each other's birthday parties when we were little, and played in countless games of playground basketball together until his position on the Cougars made it unseemly for him to play with boys of my inferior skill. We can certainly hate each other, maybe come to blows, but it seems to me that our common past precludes such radical violence as throwing me off a cliff, to certain injury and possible death. All my instincts tell me he isn't planning on actually throwing me over the falls. It's incumbent upon me to say something submissively conciliatory, something that will acknowledge his upper hand and give him the wiggle room to back away without a loss of face. “Sean,” I begin. He shakes his head and casually pushes me off the cliff.

The speed with which I am suddenly airborne is blinding. One moment I'm standing there, breathing in his stale cigarette breath, and the next I'm flying over the falls. I hit the icy waters on my side, and for a few seconds everything is silent as the pressure from the waterfalls sucks me down into the depths of the river. Time loses all meaning, and then meaning loses all meaning and all that exists is the low, soothing throb of the waterfalls fifteen feet beneath the surface. Everything appears to me in varying shades of the same muted green, the rocks, the muddy floor of the river, the backs of my eyelids when I blink. There is no sense of panic, although on some level I know that will come when the shock wears off, but for now there's just the powerful sense of an elemental peace, and in this frozen instant I understand the desire to stay beneath the surface forever, to embrace the dark, undulating peace that seems to so easily and completely shut out all other considerations. I think I even briefly consider it. And then, with the same force with which they have sucked me down, the churning waters spit me out of their throat and up to the surface, where I gasp desperately for air, the freezing temperature of the water belatedly jolting me into paralysis as the current sweeps me along, numbing my legs and back as they scrape against the rocks and branches that lie just beneath the surface of the roiling water. The river widens as it curves and then empties into a second, shallow pool, where the current briefly slows, and I am able to get to my feet and stagger over to the water's edge, shivering uncontrollably but feeling ridiculously elated at being alive. Cold water drips down my body, and it's Sammy's greeting, my mother's embrace, and I'm overwhelmed by a euphoria so intense it's almost blinding. I am baptized and renewed, and it's as if all the purpose and balance, missing for so long from my life, have been divinely restored. Cheating death is a milestone, I think, a springboard for untold possibilities. Then the thick, brackish waters I've swallowed rise in the back of my throat and I vomit copiously, my body racked by spasms that continue unabated even after the last liquids have been purged from inside me. I fall to my knees in the dead, browning grass at the water's edge and then over onto my side, where I summarily succumb to a shivering state of semiconsciousness, my earlier euphoria gone.

An indeterminate amount of time later, a pair of hands rolls me onto my back and I look up to find one of Jared's friends peering down at me curiously. “Mr. Goffman?” he says.

“Mikey, right?” I grunt.

“That's right.”

“What are you doing here?”

There is a hissing sound and then a soft pop and Mikey staggers back a step, a flash of red paint splattering across his sweatshirt. “Ah, fuck,” Mikey says.

I'm alive,
I think, and smile as I pass out.

thirty-five

Wayne is studying his fingers again. He holds them up in front of his face, flexing and extending, opening and closing, pressing their dry tips against each other. He's become infatuated with the various parts of his body, fascinated with their unhindered functionality, which seems to fly in the face of his imminent death. “It just seems like such a waste,” he says to me without looking away from his hands as I enter my father's den, which Carly and I have converted into a bedroom for Wayne. “They're still so . . . capable.”

I rub the last bit of sleep out of my eyes and sit down at the edge of his hospital bed, the one that arrived in a large moving truck along with all the other equipment Owen sent. In typical Owen fashion, my agent had gone overboard, sending up enough equipment to outfit a small hospital.

“Look at this,” Wayne says, lifting up his covers and peering beneath them. “I have a hard-on, for god's sake.”

“Hmm. An erection and a perfectly good hand with nothing to do. Maybe I should leave you two alone for a little while?”

Wayne leans back against his pillow and grins, affording me a glimpse of his black, wasted gums, the mucus-colored teeth protruding from them like driveway gravel. Everything about Wayne is dying fast, but his mouth seems to be leading the charge. “My mother told me that it had been medically proven that jerking off could lead to blindness,” Wayne says.

“It was nice that you guys could talk so openly about sex.”

“I know, right? And what were Mr. Goffman Senior's thoughts on masturbation?”

“He said if I messed my sheets, I'd have to do my own laundry.”

Wayne smiles and returns to the obsessive contemplation of his fingers. “It's just such a waste,” he repeats sadly.

There's a knock at the door and Fabia, the stout Jamaican nurse who also arrived courtesy of Owen, steps in quietly and begins preparing some pills for Wayne. “I got to give you your bath now,” she says in her thick, musical voice, her daily cue for me to take my leave.

“Where's Carly?” Wayne asks me.

“Still sleeping.”

“In whose bed?”

I shake my head at him as I head for the door. “She's in Brad's old room.”

Wayne shakes his head right back at me. “Joseph, Joseph,” he sighs. “You're killing me.”

I pause at the door and we look at each other seriously as the irony in his choice of words dissolves slowly into the room around us. “See you in a few,” I say hoarsely, and leave the room.

         

Carly and I moved Wayne into the house the day after my ignominious trip over the Bush River Falls, from which I'd somehow emerged miraculously unscathed. Mrs. Hargrove glowered at us the whole time we were there, but raised no objection as we carried Wayne's things out. When we were walking Wayne out, Carly on one side and me on the other, he stopped us at the door and turned to face her, his eyes wet and his jaw quivering. “Good-bye, Ma,” he said. “I just want you to know that I love you and I'm sorry for what I put you through.” His mother nodded, and I was sure that she would break down right there and beg him to stay, but she just said, “I'll pray for you,” and continued to nod mechanically until Wayne finally turned away and we headed down the stairs. He paused one more time, just before we got into Carly's car, to get one last look at his childhood home, and then we left. What must it feel like, I thought, to look at something, anything really, and know that it's for the last time?

I sat in the back with Wayne while Carly drove. As we rode through the neighborhood, Wayne stared out the window, determined to take in everything on what would surely be his last view of the Falls. From my seat behind Carly, I could see the small convulsions of her shoulders as she cried silently to herself. “It's okay,” Wayne said softly, maybe to Carly or maybe to himself; it was hard to tell, since he was still looking out the window. “It's okay,” he said again, and all I could think was
It's pretty much as far from okay as it can possibly get.

         

Once we arrived at my father's house and safely deposited Wayne into the hospital bed and the aggressive care of Fabia, Carly and I worked together in silence to unload Wayne's things. We did not discuss our current state of discord at all, but she summarily disposed of her anger, the two of us instinctively understanding that we would not sully Wayne's final days with our trivial differences. I was forgiven by default, which left me with a vague sense of dissatisfaction, because with the process of making up having been circumvented, we were robbed of the fresh intimacy that comes with a hard-fought resolution. When we were done unloading the car, I stepped outside to find her pulling a small overnight bag from her trunk. “Don't give me any crap about it,” she said self-consciously. “He's my friend too.”

I nodded. “No crap.”

Carly came up the stairs and stood in front of me. “He's very close,” she said, speaking softly as though she feared Wayne might overhear from inside.

“I know,” I said.

She nodded pointlessly, swallowing back her tears, and rested her head briefly against my chest. We stood that way in the dwindling sunlight for a full minute as a noisy fall wind tinged with the first steel hint of winter blew the auburn and yellow leaves in a circular dance across the sidewalk. “I'm glad you're here,” Carly said.

         

That was two weeks ago. Since then, Carly and I have fallen into the pleasant routine of eating breakfast together every morning while Fabia bathes Wayne, who is adamant about our not being present to witness the less dignified necessities of his care: the sponge baths, the ass wiping, the emptying of bedpans. I don't blame him, and I don't mind one bit. So we sit in the breakfast nook, with its picture window overlooking the backyard. Often we eat in silence, watching the wildlife, which consists mostly of squirrels hurriedly humping one another and scurrying about in search of provisions, and the occasional stray cat sunning itself on the patio. The only sounds are the random groans of the perforated straw seat bottoms of the Workbench kitchen chairs we sit in, sagging under our weight. That sound, more than anything else in the house, conjures up images of my mother as clear as photographs. I sat in these chairs for the better part of my life, wolfing down Honeycombs and milk under her watchful gaze as she leaned against the counter in her bathrobe, sipping her coffee serenely from the
#1 Mom
mug I'd bought her in the third grade for Mother's Day.

Carly sits nibbling at her cinnamon toast with one leg pulled up, her chin resting pensively on her knee. There's a raw elegance to her pose, an easy grace that is as much a function of personality as posture. Sitting like that, in her faded jeans and gray hooded sweatshirt, she looks remarkably like she did in high school, the only deviation being the light shadows under her eyes, the drawn expression of someone who isn't getting nearly as much sleep as she should. Her gaze is fixed on something outside, and so I am able to watch her intently for a few seconds as I sift through the jumble of emotions she evokes in me, trying to isolate exactly what it is I feel for her, which is like untying a severely knotted rope, where all you end up with is more knots in a different configuration.

“What are you staring at?” she asks without turning to face me.

“Nothing.”

She smiles at the lie. “Just checking.”

“Can I confess something crazy to you?”

Carly gives me a suspicious look from the corner of her eye, clearly concerned about the direction of this particular conversational gambit. I am still finding her somewhat panicky reactions to me unsettling. The Carly I knew was direct and fearless, and the intermittent nervousness in her eyes now seems to indicate a depth of damage I don't fully comprehend. I consider the possibility that her asshole ex-husband is largely responsible for this transformation, but I wonder if I'm simply passing the buck because the alternative is too depressing to consider.

“What?” Carly finally says in a tone of advance regret.

“I have a great apartment in the city,” I tell her. “I really do. But I've lived there for over three years and I haven't once stopped thinking of it as my new apartment. Living in this house, with you and Wayne, has been the first time since I don't know when that I've been waking up every morning and feeling at home. And I feel guilty as hell about it because of the whole premise of the arrangement. I mean, Wayne's dying and it's horrible in a million different ways, but at the same time, part of me is so grateful for this time we're all sharing.” Carly has gone back to staring out the window, but I notice that her expression has relaxed, and a small, sad smile is curling the bottom of her mouth. “That's pretty self-absorbed, isn't it?” I say.

“Maybe.” Her voice is a delicate pillow embroidered with butterflies. “But I know exactly what you mean. I feel the same way.”

“I'm glad. That makes me feel better.”

“It doesn't make you any less self-absorbed.”

“I know. But at least I'm in good company.”

We smile at each other like we've just shared an intimate secret, and the unguarded nature of her expression makes me tremble momentarily.

After breakfast I bring my laptop into Wayne's room and work on my novel while he drifts in and out of sleep. I've gotten into the habit of writing in his room because it makes me feel close to him, and I think he likes the idea of being in the presence of a work in progress, something that won't be finished until after he's gone, as if he'll somehow go on living through the pages of its narrative. My first novel was about Wayne. This one has no character remotely resembling him, and yet it feels as if every page is infused in some way with his essence. And those pages, I am pleased to see, are starting to add up to something substantial. I've been working on it for less than three weeks, and I already have over two hundred pages. What's more, I think a lot of them are keepers.

Carly has set up a temporary office in the living room and spends most of every morning on her cell phone, checking in with her staff and reviewing layouts and e-mails on her frighteningly large laptop. Whenever Wayne wakes up, she comes in and the three of us have long, streaming conversations about nothing and everything, reminiscing and telling stories about the lives we've led up until this point, as if our entire adult lives have been nothing more than filler until we could be reunited. We laugh a lot, sometimes strenuously, our combined laughter always tapering off into identical wistful sighs and averted gazes. It's just too hard to know how to feel. No one wants to dampen the mood, but the upbeat sounds of our conversations, reverberating conspicuously against our silences, can sometimes seem callous and disrespectful of the situation at hand. Is it better to laugh in the face of death, or cry? In the absence of any evidence pointing in either direction, we vacillate randomly between the two, hoping that the compromise we arrive at is serving Wayne well.

Later in the afternoon, Jared stops by to say hello. He's developed a liking for Wayne that borders on fascination, and has been coming every day to sit on the edge of his bed and listen to our conversation. Wayne, for his part, seems to relish Jared's company, often interrupting us in the middle of anecdotes to include Jared. “Wait till you hear this one,” he'll say sardonically to my nephew as one of us starts to tell a story from our shared past. “I think you'll agree your uncle was quite the wanker.”

I tell the story of the night Wayne and I, with nothing else to do, drove his car up and down a nearby stretch of I-95 that was home to a slew of gas stations, stopping at each one to ask for the bathroom key and then driving off with it. By the end of the night, we'd collected seven keys, which Wayne kept in his glove compartment so that we'd always have access to bathrooms when we were out driving. Wayne tells about the time the three of us went into Manhattan to see Elton John playing at Madison Square Garden. We paid eighty dollars each to a scalper on the corner of Thirty-third and Eighth, only to find, when we tried to enter the arena, that we'd been sold years-old soccer tickets. Wayne and I were thoroughly disgusted with ourselves, but Carly managed to somehow sweet-talk the ticket taker into letting us in anyway.

Carly surprises me by relating how she and I, desperate for a place to have sex, climbed the fence and infiltrated the Porter's campus one cool spring night and got naked on a picnic blanket. We were well into the act when the automatic sprinklers suddenly came on, soaking us and drenching our discarded clothing in a spray of freezing water. She cracks up Wayne and Jared by describing how we tried in vain to soldier on in spite of the continuous onslaught of the sprinklers. The fact that I'd forgotten about it shocks me into a thoughtful silence, and while the three of them laugh it up, I flash back to that night, the feel of the grass, and the smooth, slippery surface of Carly's soaked skin as we slithered hungrily over each other, reveling in our slickness and the sudden lack of friction.

“Joe?”

I snap out of it to find everyone looking at me, Wayne and Jared with amused grins and Carly with a funny, questioning look. “Should I not have told that story?” Carly says.

“What? No, no. It's fine,” I answer too quickly, looking to put everyone at ease. “I was still finding blades of grass in my crotch two days later.”

“Didn't all that cold water make it hard to maintain your . . . concentration?” Jared says.

“I was eighteen,” I say. “I shouldn't have to tell you of all people that when you're eighteen and in love, there's just about nothing that can ruin your concentration.”

Jared and Wayne snicker, while Carly holds my gaze for another few seconds before shrugging lightly and letting me off the hook.

While many of our group reminisces are from the time we shared back in high school, Wayne seems equally intent on sharing experiences from the years he lived in Los Angeles. He tells us in carefree tones about his failed auditions, the slew of odd jobs he worked in order to pay his rent, and the occasional celebrity encounter. In all of these stories, there is no mention of any friends or lovers, confirming my suspicion that those were exceedingly lonely years for him. Beneath the surface of his narrative is a quiet deliberation as if, through all of those solitary years, he had comforted himself with the promise that at some point in the future he'd be in a position to share those years retroactively, and now, with the clock winding down, he is fulfilling that promise to himself.