Oedipussy (21 page)

My eyes focused on Chad - no, Chuck; it is Chuck - as he unhooked the ports on my broken bags and figured out how to replace them with the new ones from the neat vinyl stack in the towel closet.

My eyes rolled.

He lifted me, and eased me into the warm tub. I dozed in my womblike warm water.

He gathered the towels.

I dozed.

I heard the washing machine running.

I heard the cup cup of the bathwater on the corners of the tub, and my body.

I dozed.

I woke to the tinkle of the unplugged electric guitar being played on the toilet.

I dozed.

The water came to my chin. For what would normally be a fatal bathing choice for a paralytic, I hadn't felt this relaxed in ages. Warmth. Total, encompassing warmth.

My modesty didn't bother me. I felt trusted, respected, and cared for. It was the first time I had been this comfortable since my parents lived in this house. I wanted it to last.

I looked around. Chuck fiddled with his guitar and wrote in a notebook, oblivious to my consciousness and the penis bobbing in the tides.

A glass of sweaty ice water stood with a straw on the lip of the tub. I took a sip. It made my burning throat feel better. My headache leaked a little farther down my spine from its nest on the crown of my head. It leaked away to my sour stomach, and sloshed in my feet.

I studied Chuck over the lip of the tub. His hair hung over his face as he moved the pen across the page. He would write, strum or pick a few notes, and write.

I remembered. He came to pick up his pedal. Then he saved me from choking on my own vomit. Then he used his time to work. His optimistic youth bled from his body like the condensation that collected on the side of my glass. It atomized. I could breathe it.

There was something so beautiful about watching him work, unaware that I was watching. The same young man in the same moment of his life as I was. He wanted to push against the world, in hopes that he could break through the other side in the same way I did. This young man had no idea about the arrogance and ignorance that I could see in myself in hindsight. He was ready to put everything he had into his work because that’s all he knew.

I wondered. His pristine, unbroken heartbeat. Was there a Jenny in his life? The game is fixed for him, as it was for me. But, there was something for him to achieve. I wasn't holed up in an estate of despair, wanting to ruin him to make everyone as miserable as I was. He had a chance. My estate and my prison were built on these legs and that chair.

There was such potential energy stored up in that brain, in those strings, in that hand, and through that pencil. We were almost there.

I opened my mouth to say something, retched, and threw up yellow into the water.

"You really don't need to do that," Chuck said as he buttoned my flannel at the kitchen table.

He got me out of the tub, dried me off, helped me situate and dress myself. He managed to keep me from hitting my head and drowning in a shallow puddle, and I learned relatively quickly that Thom's PT and OT neglected extreme drunken stumbling.

"Chuck, I have time and I have money... Just, allow me." I wanted to pay for his college. I wanted to do anything he needed. I saw more than myself in him. What teenager spends a night - a school night - changing and cleaning a man after his colostomy bag burst all over him.

New band name: Devil’s Piñata.

"Okay, okay," I changed the subject, talking slowly. "When are you guys coming over for practice, again? I am ready to put copy together for you and get some press kits going..."

"I think Friday was the plan. We've been getting together every night this week so that when we came - hey, are you still okay?" My stomach felt a sponge squeezing out green, but I nodded and powered through it. "The idea was that when we came Friday, we'd have a show together and you'd just give us improvements. I didn't say anything because I wanted to be professional about it and come with a whole set."

"Perfect. I could even start to try to get you guys a show. Don't forget that I'm here to take care of anything you need."

The conversation paused, and we looked at the table. Chuck tossed his pencil across the page.

"What time is it?"

"Eight-thirty."

"When did you get here?"

"Four thirty, quarter of five. I texted mom and said I wasn't going to be home until later - that I was here."

"You hungry?"

We ordered Chinese food and Chuck helped change the laundry and clean up my bedroom before the driver came.

We ravenously tore into the delivery. The fatty, caloric food settled my mind and my stomach. It was perfect.

"So if I hear you guys on Friday and everything sounds good, do you want to set up some dates in a week somewhere? Would you be ready?"

"Absolutely."

"...I'll make posters and get the bass head done. Everything will be clean. I already have some logo ideas."

"That sounds great - we have a ton of stuff up on Twitter and Facebook and YouTube already - we have a few thousand followers, but I'm pretty sure they're mostly our classmates. Anyway, they know our sound and our music already. We've been filming everything, taking pictures, editing down our recordings. Can I take a look at your logos?"

I rode over to the desk off the living room and grabbed my notes. I created a logo that looked somewhat like our old one, an octopus with snakes for tentacles and at its center a head with bloody eyes. It was a little Octopussy, a little Oedipus, a little Dawn Ego.

Chuck's eyes lit up.

"It's perfect. I can't wait until they see it!" he took out his phone, snapped a picture, ant tapped on the device. "Can I take this and have a friend get it on the computer and clean it up?"

"Of course!" I couldn't believe the effort he had put into everything. His resourcefulness surpassed mine. My 1994 marketing strategy was no match for what he was doing online. Was I even helping? I was a newspaper advertisement for their appearance on Laurence Welk.

"We'll still come on Friday. I know you'll have some notes, but we want to make sure it's perfect. Really. We want to show you a new set with only a few seconds between songs, and a performance so tight we can say that we have exactly whatever minutes of music. Just like you said.

"We’ll be ready to play a week from Friday, though," he continued. "If you set something up, we can be here every night next week to get ready. Is that okay?"

I smiled and nodded.

We drank the soothing oolong tea bags they sent in the bag. This young man came into my life exactly when I needed him, and perhaps that’s why people have children. If I had a kid in my mid-twenties, he would be around this age. He was a companion, someone to guide and watch over, and someone to teach me things about the world that I knew nothing about.

"I listened to the radio the other day," I began, "and I couldn't believe the junk that was on there.  Where do you guys-"

"No one listens to the radio. It's all on the Internet. The radio has always been run by what other people think you should listen to, right? It is old technology. On the Internet, anyone can be successful."

"True. So, an old guy like me? I mean, I went to the library and took out some CDs."

"I’ll make you a CD, how's that?"

I paused.

"You're a really good kid, Chuck.

"When you came tonight, I was... I went to the library today to get a new library card and check some things out, but..." I wasn't really connecting any of my ideas and how to communicate what I was trying to say.

"Before I got into my accident I had a band, and a girlfriend Jenny." He nodded. We had been over this. I choked back emotion. "I found out today...that she was dead. It happened while I was in my coma. So didn't my parents. Everyone I love. So, as I stared down at her head stone... I had some whiskey and made my way home.  Drunk. The world spun, and my chair fell in the street, and I didn't give a shit.

"I forgot you were coming over. You're so selfless and for a kid your age to take care of me is just - I was never like that. You are really an incredible young man, Chuck. I look forward to everything."

He listened, and nodded. He was silent. Humble.

We cleaned up from dinner, and Chuck left.

Over the next three days I called around to set everything up. Posters and shirts with a day's turnaround once we had final logos and layouts were all set for Friday. I called possible venues, and set up a show the following Friday at the Shanghai Chinese Food Restaurant and Buffet, a large restaurant that was coincidentally built in a development a block from the bridge of my fateful accident. The Shanghai had a bar with a stage and a PA system, and all we’d have to do is show up with our gear.

I managed to get another gig for them in two weeks at another bar and restaurant called The Strand. I also called three venues in Boise and invited them to the gigs to see if they were interested in a booking.

It was easy selling people on something that doesn't exist when the product is already perfect, especially with a few white lies and the Internet.

On Thursday, Thom and Susan came for my appointment, and the three of us sat around the table in the kitchen.

"What the hell happened to your face?" Thom was rightly concerned as he examined my fresh bruises and lacerations.

"I was trying to navigate my way on the sidewalks to the library. My chair tipped and I face planted into the pavement. Those sidewalks are terrible, but I was already on my way back, so-"

"Why were you doing that?" Susan replied. "I am supposed to bring you wherever you need to go."

"I can't rely on everybody all the time, Susan. I’m here alone most of the day. But, I’m grateful. Thank you."

"Honestly Todd, we could set you up with the Trans and their handicapped shuttle. The state pays for all this."

"I'm fine. I just want to learn how to manage."

"You are stubborn as hell, you know that?" She paused. "I brought your groceries - I put them on the landing there when I came in. Do you need anything else, or do you want to just start seeing how many shopping bags you can pack onto your chair before it tips over and you hit your head and kill yourse-"

"I'll be fine, Susan. Thank you for the groceries. I don't think I need anything else."

"It smells like liquor," Susan said to me as Thom looked at the ceiling.

"I'm sure it does."

She stood, collecting her purse and her windbreaker.

"Well, I will see you next week, and in the meantime don't kill yourself? I guess I'll call you every day to see if you need anything, and we can go from there. I need a record that you are taking care of yourself and that at least I'm trying..."

She turned and made her way out.

Thom's bulk at the small Formica table in the kitchen was comical. I would almost need to remodel the entire house to get it out of the seventies, but it was utilitarian, and it worked.

Thom started to put the groceries away for me.

"Did you drink all of that whiskey I brought over?"

"I - I had a bender the other day - on Monday - but I have an excuse.

"Remember when you told me to write letters, especially those I didn't plan on sending? When you brought the mail in the other day, you brought in my letter that I sent. It was returned.

"I went to the library. The librarian looked my parents up and told me the funeral home where they were taken, and then she was able to take the envelope and look Jenny up. I learned Jenny was dead. The love of my adolescent self was dead, and then everyone was dead around me, and everything was shit.

"So I got drunk. I fell over. I promise, the sidewalk part was real." I tried to be honest and forthright.

"No, I believe you on that."

"Yeah, the only thing is that when you land on your face, this happens."

"So what are you doing besides trying to kill yourself?"

"Did I tell you about the kids in the band?"

"A little."

"Coincidentally one of them came over after my chair crash and helped me get my shit together, literally. My bag broke, and Susan would have been a lot of help cleaning the shit off of me, but..." Thom laughed. "Thankfully, the boy from the band is this really nice kid. He cleaned me up and got me together - which was fate considering he accidentally left something at my house. I bought us some Chinese food and we had a good night after that.

"I'm getting them ready to play a show. I would love you to be there if you aren't busy. It’s a week from Friday at the Shanghai."

"I think I'll do that. Friday and Saturday are the music nights in the bar?" Thom asked.

"Exactly. Friday night at eight. Bring everyone."

Thom slowed down and looked at me as if to ask everything was really, truly, okay.  I hope I communicated back with my eyes that it wasn't, but that I would survive.

"Well, at least you have someone to keep you in bourbon for a while," he finally said.

"True." The sneaking suspicion that I shouldn't be drinking as much as I have rose in my gut. I wasn't much of a drinker for my first forty or so years. Thom's approach to taking care of me as a man and a peer was much more effective than what everyone else did. I had a spinal injury two decades ago, not a brain injury.

"You're taking the initiative, man. Following your passions again," Thom continued. "That’s the quickest way to normal that exists. Your spirit is stronger than ever. You want to survive, and you are proving it by taking up your work again. That works better than any of the exercises and skills I am paid to do with you, and way better than any treatment, medication, or chemical. Passion."

"I'm trying," I responded.

"If you feel like I am too much, just let me know."

"Susan is a bit much. She'd be fine if she didn't talk."

"I know."

"You are great, Thom. I look forward to our visits. You have a lot of great things to say."

"Thanks."

"Can I ask you an easy favor?" I continued. I handed him the obituaries. "Do you think you could swing by here and ask about my parents, where they are buried, whatever information they have? Tell them they can call me at their old number if they need permission, or anything. I don't think I can bring myself to do it."

"I will. I need to leave, but I’ll call you if I need anything for your parents." Thom stood and put his jacket on. "You probably learned more in that one field trip to the library than I could teach you in six months."

"I think you're right. I learned a hell of a lot."

"Take care, Todd. Don't hesitate to holler if you need anything else. I'll see you and your boys at the show on Friday."

Thom left.

Silence.

There was so much to do, and all the time in the world to do it.