Michael Thomas Ford - Full Circle (2 page)

Given this closeness, it was no surprise when both Alice and Patricia went into labor within minutes of one another. On a particularly torpid Thursday afternoon, while searching for potential ingredients to put into the fruit salad recipe they'd clipped out of the Ladies' Home Journal earlier in the day, Patricia was in the process of thumping a honeydew melon to test its freshness when she felt a wetness on her legs and realized to her dismay that her water had broken right there in the produce section and that her good shoes were most likely soiled beyond repair. Turning to alert Alice, she discovered her friend looking at the apple in her hand with an astonished expression that suggested that she, too, was engaged in something more significant than simply admiring the quality of the fruit. Moments later, they were on their way to Mercy Hospital, Alice at the wheel of the Nash Rambler Leonard had purchased for her use in May, but which she'd rarely taken out of the driveway. Patricia, in the passenger seat, clutched the door handle and called out directions. By the time they reached the hospital, both women were breathing heavily and barely able to remember their names to give them to the attending nurse. It wasn't until they were installed in beds next to each other and receiving simultaneous injections of scopolamine that they realized they'd forgotten to inform their husbands of their impending fatherhood.

As it turned out, there was no immediate hurry. Both women would be in labor for some hours, giving Leonard and Clark time to arrive at the hospital and take up stations in the waiting room, where they sat nervously and passed the hours waiting to hear their names called. For Clark, the call came shortly before midnight, when a nurse arrived to tell him that he was the proud father of a healthy baby boy. He had hardly finished receiving congratulations from Leonard when an almost identical nurse appeared to announce that the second birth had occurred at exactly one minute after twelve. And so it was that Jackson Howard Grace was born on August the 10th and I was born on August the 11th. As for my name, had it been up to my father it would have been Phillip, for obvious and unfortunate reasons. My mother, however, stood her ground and I became Edward Canton Brummel. My father's disappointment at this turn of events faded later in the year when the Phillies won the National League pennant for the first time since 1915 in a nail-biter that came down to the last game on the final day of the season and a 4 to 1 win against the favored but despised Brooklyn Dodgers. And although they subsequently lost the World Series to what my father referred to for the rest of his life only as "that other team from New York," he continued to view his Whiz Kids as the greatest team in baseball history. The next several years passed quietly, as Jack and I did the requisite growing up and our parents duly noted every coo and giggle, every burp and bowel movement, each more glorious than the last. Our days were spent together, as were most holidays, our grandparents living far enough away that regular visits were difficult. Our mothers even dressed us alike, so that we were often mistaken for brothers, despite Jack's having his mother's fair hair and blue eyes and me having inherited my father's darker looks.

Thankfully, my mother's preoccupation with the North Korean army waned as it became apparent that although the war was not going to end as quickly as my father had believed, it was highly unlikely that our small house was going to become the base of operations for Kim Il Sung's militia. And once it did end, in the summer of 1953, she and Patricia celebrated by throwing Jack and me a third birthday party, complete with matching cakes and a pony upon whose back we were posed for numerous photographs. In an age where most of us move fairly frequently to accommodate changes in schooling, employment, romantic involvement, or just plain boredom, it seems inconceivable that both my family and Jack's remained in the same houses for more than fifty years. Yet they did, and for the two of us it meant that neither knew a time without the other. From the time I can remember, Jack was there, as present and as constant as the sun.

The differences between us first emerged when we were old enough to begin talking. Jack discovered early on that adults found him charming and irresistible when he spoke, a trait he was quick to use to his advantage. I, on the other hand, preferred to remain quiet, observing the world around me and trying desperately to find in it some sense of order that would explain the reasons things happened the way they did. Our mothers joked that while Jack's first word was "more," mine was "why."

These contrasting personalities extended to the ways in which we explored our surroundings, beginning with the shared lawn between our two houses and extending in larger and larger circles to include first our street, then the neighborhood, and eventually the whole town. Where Jack threw himself headlong into life, expecting someone to be there should he happen to fall and assuming that everything would be okay, I wavered before every step. Jack wouldn't hesitate to climb a tree or attempt to ride a bike, and even when he fell or scraped a knee, he laughed, delighted at the many ways in which the world could surprise him. I was more likely to be the one encouraging caution, to which Jack's reply was always a playful,

"You worry too much."

Our partnership had benefits for both of us that extended beyond the simple joys of friendship. As we advanced in school, my studiousness meant that I was able to help Jack with his assignments, which held little interest for him. He, in turn, was the buffer between myself and the social world of public school. Shy and awkward around other children, I dreaded the daily social interactions that Jack took for granted, in fact looked forward to. Popularity came naturally to him, where for me it was almost completely unimaginable. Yet due to my association with him, I was spared a number of humiliations that otherwise would have assuredly befallen me. In the cafeteria, I always had a place at his side, and when the time came for choosing teams for kickball, I was always Jack's first pick. Whether Jack was aware of what he was doing for me, I don't know. I think for him it was simply a matter of my being his best friend, and he was doing for me what best friends did for one another. Certainly we never spoke of it, any more than we spoke about how I did his math problems and helped him cheat on the occasional test. It was just the way things were, and the way they continued to be as year followed year.

I recall having only one fight with Jack during this time, in the summer we turned nine. It was over superheros. We were in Jack's bedroom, sprawled on his bed reading the latest issues of our favorite comics, which we'd just picked up from the drugstore, along with an assortment of sour drops, bubble gum, and licorice. Turning the pages of his Superman comic, Jack posed the question of who would win in a battle between Superman and Batman. "I mean, if one of them was a bad guy," he clarified.

"Batman would win," I said without hesitation.
"Batman?" Jack asked, clearly ready to disagree.
"Sure," I said. "He's smarter. Superman is strong and all, but he's not as smart as Batman." "You don't have to be smart to win a fight," Jack told me, shaking his head. "What a dope. Everyone knows it's more important to be strong than smart."
"What do you know?" I shot back, suddenly angry and not sure why.

"Don't get sore at me," said Jack, surprised by my outburst. "I just said Superman could beat up Batman."

 

"He could not!" I shouted. "Take it back."

 

I felt myself shaking. I stood up, hands balled at my sides. "Take it back!" I said again. Jack sat up and looked at me as if I was some new creature he'd never encountered before. "No," he said stubbornly. "I'm not taking it back."

I threw myself at him, all fists and anger. He fell back on the bed, momentarily caught off guard. I was on top of him, pinning him with my knees. I raised my hand to hit him, but stopped. He was looking at me with a confused expression, making no attempt to cover his face or otherwise protect himself. I felt my heart beating wildly in my chest as I struggled to understand what I was doing. Beneath me, Jack's body rose and fell as he breathed, waiting to see what I would do. I scrambled off the bed and stood in the middle of the room, glaring at my friend. Jack didn't move. The comic book was crumpled at his side, the pages torn. At my feet, Batman's face looked up at me. My cheeks burned with shame and lingering rage.

"You go to hell!" I told Jack.

His mouth fell open. Although Jack was proficient at cussing, I'd never sworn before, and the shock of hearing it must have taken him by surprise as much as my attack had. I could sense that I'd grown some in his estimation, and the knowledge thrilled me.

I turned and ran from his room, unable to look at him. Back in my own room, I shut the door and threw myself on my bed. Tears came hot and thick as I sobbed, letting out the emotions that roiled inside of me. Suddenly I didn't know who I was or what I was feeling. The world had turned upside down, throwing me off balance in a way that at the same time filled me with both fear and excitement. In Jack's room, for just a moment, our roles had been reversed, and for the first time I'd seen that perhaps neither of us was exactly what we appeared to be.

Eventually I slept, and when I woke, it was to hear my mother calling me for supper. I went down and joined her and my father at the table, where I ate my meatloaf and green beans silently while my parents talked to one another about their days. When I was done, I asked to be excused and slipped out the screen door to the backyard.

Jack was there, as I'd known he would be, sitting on the back steps of his house. He was holding a Mason jar in his hands and looking at a firefly he'd caught. I went over and sat next to him.

"Hey," he said.
"Hey."
"Want to sleep over tonight?" he asked.

I nodded, watching the firefly blink on and off and wondering if its light would burn my fingers if I touched it.

 

"Sure," I told Jack.
CHAPTER 2

For those of us born at the dawn of a new decade, life can take on the feeling of being trapped in the ever-advancing undertow of an unstoppable time line. Tied inexorably to the zero year of whatever period we happen to have been born into, we enter (or are dragged kicking and screaming into) each successive stage of life just as the world around us discards one worn-out cycle of years for a shiny new one. While amusing when one is young (how exciting to be in one's twenties during the Roaring Twenties, say, or to turn 30 just as 1969 passes into 1970), this can quickly grow tiring, particularly in the later stages of life when many of us prefer not to be reminded that as civilization's weary past is exchanged for the thrilling potential of a new decade, our own journey is winding down to its inevitable conclusion. (I imagine it is particularly vexing for those unfortunate enough to be birthed along with a new century, as the obvious challenge to live at least into the first year of the next one must be overwhelming indeed.) Still, it is a remarkable experience to accumulate years hand-in-hand with the society in which you live. And it's most interesting, I think, for those of us born, as Jack and I were, during a time when the world was on the verge of being completely upended. Born in the first year of the '50s, we, along with every other citizen of the planet, were about to be plunged headlong into a period of extraordinary change that none of us could have foreseen.

The year Jack and I left the single digits and reached the magical age of 10, the adult population of the world had its attention fixed first on Fidel Castro, the charismatic yet worrisome Cuban leader whose willingness to purchase oil from the U.S.S.R. was causing more than a few sleepless nights in Washington, and later the spectacle of a sickly Richard Nixon debating fresh-faced John F. Kennedy in the first televised presidential debate. For those of us just completing our first decade, the year's highlights were somewhat less historic, although to us just as memorable. For Jack and me, it culminated in meeting Chief Halftown, the star of our favorite daily television series, at the Buster Brown shoe store one perfect Saturday afternoon. After an hour's wait in line we came face-to-face with our hero and he presented each of us with a personally signed photo and made us honorary members of his tribe. For weeks, we went nowhere without the eagle feathers he'd given us as tokens of our brotherhood, and we talked endlessly of leaving our terminally boring neighborhood and joining the chief and his painted braves in their secret western encampment.

The world seemed to only get more and more fantastic, with each passing month bringing new adventures for two boys with few worries. We felt like Tom Swift, whose encounter with the Visitor from Planet X and battles with the Asteroid Pirates I read aloud to Jack in all their dramatic glory as soon as I could check each new book out from the library, the two of us safe inside the fort we constructed—badly but proudly—from scraps of lumber my father picked up for us. Jack, in turn, perfected his impersonation of Roland, the pale vampire host of Philadelphia's own Shock Theater , which we watched religiously during sleepovers in the family room of his house. "Good night, whatever you are," Jack would intone ghoulishly, imitating Roland's trademark line as the credits rolled forth Creeping Hand or whichever spine-tingling movie we'd just watched. A makeshift cape over his shoulders, he would advance upon me in my sleeping bag, eyes widened in a hypnotic stare. I obliged by feigning enchantment, maintaining my composure until Jack's teeth were almost grazing my neck, at which point we would both collapse in hysterical shrieks, pleased beyond words. Those are the mile markers of that time for me, those seemingly small memories that have remained in the files of my mind while others have been discarded. The events more commonly noted on official time lines—the Bay of Pigs invasion and the resulting days of fear, the shooting of the first person trying to cross the Berlin Wall, the death of Marilyn Monroe—were things I heard my parents talk about. To me, they happened in another world, not the one I lived in, and therefore were of no consequence. The exception, perhaps, was the launching of the first man into space. What boy—what child—isn't captivated by the magic of the stars? Who among us hasn't stood gazing up at bodies whose silver light reaches us from millions of miles away, and wondered what secrets are cloaked by the darkness of frozen, swirling galaxies? Even now, waiting for Sam to finish his last voiding of water before bed, I sometimes stand in the yard beneath the spreading arc of night and imagine the worlds beyond worlds waiting to be discovered.