The Indestructible Man (22 page)

       
The children are gone now, away to homes of their own, so there is no danger that their play will wake you, and when our grandchildren climb over your bed you do not seem to mind.

       
Though I found it endearing at first, after a while I came to find your bouts of snoring intolerable, so as soon as you start I simply turn you on your side and go on about my tasks in peace. You talk in your sleep sometimes, asking a dream-version of me for an extra pancake for breakfast, another beer. “Get it yourself,” I say, but if you cannot be waited on you would just as soon go without. Eventually your dream-self is satisfied, and you settle back into quiet sleep. Your dreams must be quite boring—from your sleeping lips I hear snippets of everyday conversations with old friends, talking about work, cigars, women. I sometimes wonder if I am in them only to serve you.

       
I often wonder why you kept the family finances from me for so long, hunched secretively over your contracts and ledgers as if there were some mystery to them, tucking them away whenever I might look over your shoulder, as if you feared they were so far beyond me that I would go blind from a single peek. They are my responsibility now, and there is really no mystery to them at all. They are only numbers.

       
Because you cannot work I had to find a way to support us, so since you left us I have taken up work as a seamstress. The children have all offered to chip in, but it is not necessary; I am very skilled, and the men in town now come to me for custom-made suits, the young girls for wedding gowns and sundresses. My designs have lately become fashionable even among the wealthier townspeople. I have taught my skills to a few of the village girls; they work for me now. The money is good, and it seems we take in more and more every week—more than you ever brought home in a week of carpentry. Do not be jealous; if we take into account the money you spent buying drinks for yourself and the young women you tried to impress, things might even out.

       
I could leave this place, of course, buy something larger, better. But this is still home, and I know every creak and moan of this old house. Still, I have made a few changes to keep myself from growing bored with these same, familiar walls—the paint is new, as are the blinds and the hardwood floor in the children’s old bedroom, now our guestroom. I think that, when you finally wake, you will find it a very different place. You may even like it.

       
I have taken lovers
from time to time—not many, just a few young men from town. They mean little to me. But once the children were gone the house seemed
echoey
and lonely and so quiet that I could barely sit inside, coming in only to sleep. The children do not know and do not need to. We are discreet, respectful enough to retreat into the upstairs bedroom rather than writhe under your snoring nose. If you notice, you do not say.

       
Since you need so little, I have taken to going off with our children for a few days at a time—never more than that, and always with someone to check on you to make sure you are safe and undisturbed. I have seen the sun set behind the mountains, dangled my feet in the surf of the coast. I will never understand why you always refused to leave home, why you insisted on remaining in your old ugly rocking chair at home before the fireplace, or at the tavern with your business friends and poker mates. I must remember to ask you one day.

       
And I have run with our grandchildren in the open grassy field behind our house—we have four, with another soon to come. To them you are more a piece of furniture than a grandfather, a warm sleeping statue stretched out in the corner of their grandmother’s house. At Christmas they climb over you and play with your limp arms and fingers. Last New Year’s, the youngest crawled up on the bed next to you and yelled “Happy New Year” in your ear. We all watched as you turned over and groaned, but then you stopped moving and resumed your silence. Keeping them from crawling on you, putting small sticks and fingers in your nostrils, painting you up like a clown with bits of chalk, has become a chore in itself. It is very hard not to laugh. Keeping up with their play has made me fit again, and I feel as if ten years have fallen away from me. Once you are with us again it will take a long time for you to catch up. But I imagine you will, eventually.

       
Because of the time I spend with them I sometimes fail to tend you as well as I should; at times I find your graying beard grown bristly and wild, a coat of dust on you thick enough to write on with my finger. Forgive me; they take up so much of my time now it is difficult to think of anything else.

       
In the past few days your sleep has grown restless, and you shift from side to side, groaning in protest of waking. It will be soon, I think, so I try to remain near your bedside. I would not have you waking alone in an unfamiliar place, bewildered, calling for someone, anyone to explain what has happened. When you do I will be there, so when you open your eyes my face will be the first thing you see. It is not the same face you last laid eyes on twenty years ago, when, grumbling after an argument over cold potatoes, you wandered into the woods alone. But I imagine it is still recognizable. If I am alien to you there is nothing I can do, nothing I
care
to do. I cannot be who I was before you left us, do not even wish to; if you will not like what you see it might be better that you remain asleep. It will at least spare you the shock of seeing what has slipped away from you these past twenty years. But I cannot control what you will think. I can only watch carefully as you stir and wonder, as your eyes begin to open, what they are about to see.

         
 
William
Jablonsky
was born and raised in Rock Falls, Illinois. He received his BA and MA in literature from Northern Illinois University, and is a graduate of Bowling Green State University’s MFA program in creative writing. His short fiction has appeared in several literary journals, including
Artful Dodge
, the
Beloit Fiction Journal
, the
Southern Humanities Review
, and the
GW Review
, among others. He currently lives in South Milwaukee, Wisconsin with his wife and three cats, and is at work on a novel.