The Postmortal (18 page)

He let out an exhalation that lasted a minute, blowing his spirit out of his body. His fate was his own now. His eyes opened wide, the whites now a yolky color. He took both our hands and spit out his last words. “Thank you. This is good. This is good.”

He lay back and let go.

That was it. I sat there with Polly for forty minutes, still as the body in Dad’s bed. It’s a funny thing when someone you love dies. You spend all your time with them, caring for them. Then they die, and you’re left with nothing to do. Your obligation to them is fulfilled. There’s no more consoling or hand-holding to do. There’s just this gigantic, yawning space of free time, which feels at once liberating and unnatural.

We heard the front door of the house open and Alison and the boys stepping back inside.

Polly rushed to tell the kids. I went out into the family room and looked at Alison. David was sitting on the floor, chewing on a board book. She could tell from my eyes. She ran to me and buried her head in my chest. When we’d talked about marriage a few weeks back, I’d told her I was certain I could stay married to her forever. Yet there remained, deep in the back of my mind, the tiniest shred of doubt. It was that eternal male instinct recoiling from the idea of anything other than total sexual liberation. I had waited for Alison all this time. I had dreamed beyond my wildest hopes of the day that she would be mine. And now she was. She was mine. All mine. No one else’s. Forever, if I chose. Yet the little animal in my brain was dissatisfied even with that, still yearning for blondes with impossible bodies and unknown motives. I wondered then if it would ever go away.

It did. As Alison embraced me and my dad lay dead down the hall, that last vestige of irrational boyhood was extinguished. Gone. There was no doubt anymore. Everything I wanted was clear.

Toni opened a bottle of wine and offered me a glass. I took it and sat down on the sofa in front of the TV. She picked up David.

“You mind if I play with him?” she asked.

“Not at all.”

She wiped David’s mouth clean and pushed his nose in. He let out a joyous wail. He looked around at his surroundings and pushed off of her chest. He wanted to get down and explore everything. Grab everything. Stick it all in his little mouth to get a better feel. He turned and stared at me as only a baby can. Everything is a puzzle they’re trying to solve. Hope and terror are the same emotion.

“He looks just like you,” she said.

“Like his grandpa too.”

“Well, he’s a cutie. Yes you
are
.”

I gestured to my wine. “Would you like a glass?”

“No no. I don’t drink. I’ve got grandkids waiting for me at home.”

“Shut up. You’re a grandmother?”

“I have three grandkids. And I’m due again at the end of January.”

“That’s amazing. You are the youngest-looking grandma I’ve ever seen.”

“And I’ll be the best-looking great-great-grandma you’ve ever seen. If there’s one thing I know how to do, it’s produce children that have children. The more the merrier, as far as I’m concerned. God gave me the energy to do it, so I’m gonna take advantage. I’m gonna make a family so big that it’s gonna need its own government. I told my husband I don’t want a family tree; I want a family rain forest. I’ve watched my kids raise their kids, and I’ll watch their kids raise their kids, and their kids raise their kids, and on and on and on. That’s the miracle.”

“That sounds pretty solid.”

I looked at Alison. David bounced on Toni’s knee and let out a squeal.

 

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Alison took me out for beer and pizza after David’s birthday party, and it was the first time since Dad died that I’d found myself in a convivial mood. With enough beer poured straight down my gullet, I was able to actually interact with everything around me. I noticed the copper tops on the restaurant tables and the gruff Italian waitress (who was clearly either the owner of the joint or at least married to the owner) barking orders at the Mexican cooks in the back. I saw two other kids who were also having birthday parties. This was at nine at night. As a father, I did not approve.

I ordered a bourbon. “I always used to do this,” I told Alison.

“Drink bourbon? I don’t remember you stopping at any point.”

“No, I always used to order it at the tail end of a meal. My dad would sometimes come into town and buy me dinner. Whenever he did, I’d order a bourbon at the end of the meal, and he’d roll his eyes because he thought I was being Mr. Fancy Pants. Then the drink would come and he’d say, ‘What bourbon is that? I better have a taste.’ Then he’d drink half the glass. He’d never order one for himself. He always preferred to have the pleasure of drinking half of mine and giving me crap for ordering it. He was a devious old man.”

“Well, now I have to drink half of yours when it arrives.”

We lingered there for a bit while we shared the drink. I felt that gratifying warm burn in my throat after the last sip. I got up, took Alison’s hand, and escorted her out of the restaurant and back onto the street. We crossed over to East End Avenue and loitered a little bit more, along the railing overlooking the river. A handful of night joggers and drunken prep schoolers passed behind us. I was drunk myself and spent our moment there happily not giving a shit about anything. We turned and began walking back to First Avenue. The area had cleared. No one was around—a rare occurrence.

I noticed a solitary figure walking down the street with his back to us. He was bald. As we got closer, I could make out his green scalp.

“It’s a Greenie,” I said.

“Let’s just turn around.”

I refused. The beer had made me rambunctious. “HEY, ASSHOLE!”

The Greenie turned and saw me. He wasn’t a random one. If I had picked him out of a lineup, I wouldn’t have been lying. He pulled up the corners of his mouth and flashed his big shark whites. “How you doing, birthday boy?”

Since the attack, I’d always slip the Texan’s gun into the back of my waistband whenever I’d leave the apartment at night, careful to hide it from Alison. She helped keep my fear partially shrouded, but the feel of the Texan’s gun served to eliminate it entirely. It replaced fear with a compulsive desire for correction. Sometimes when I was walking on the street at night, I’d reach back and clandestinely wrap my hands around it. Grasp it, squeeze it, daydream about having the chance to take it out and exact a toll on those who would fuck with me. It was a joyful kind of paranoia, in which you believe they’re coming to get you, and you very much look forward to them trying.

The Greenie flashed a knife. I took out the Texan’s gun. It was the first time Alison was made aware of its existence. “John, don’t.”

The troll shifted his eyes to her. “She got a birthday too?”

I broke. Immediately, I burst into a full sprint after him. He turned tail and ran away from me. Alison tried to keep up with me, to hold me back. I felt the grip of the pistol sweetly nuzzle against my fingers as I drew it upward. The Greenie turned into a small alley between two houses, stumbled on an uneven slab of pavement, and fell sharply to the ground, the knife flying out of his hand and hopscotching well out of reach.

I pounced, jumping on the troll and pressing his bald head into the little raised pebbles in the asphalt. I pressed the gun to his temple. “How’s this? Is this funny to you?”

“You don’t have the balls,” he said.

“Look at me.
Look at me!
”

He turned his head and faced me fully, still smiling. I hated that smile. Hated it, hated it, hated it. So I decided to destroy it. I turned the gun in my hand and brought the butt down right through his big, stupid veneers. They shattered on impact, like china falling out of a cabinet. He recoiled in pain, blood gushing from the corners of his mouth. I grabbed his jaw and twisted his face back in my direction, bringing the butt down again and again, breaking every last tooth I could find inside his hideous mouth. I broke and I bashed. I unleashed every hateful whirlwind that had ever gusted up inside my being. Whip, whip, whip. In no time his smile was gone. I grinned at him, his blood spattered across my face and oozing between my fingers. I kept grinning, trying to impress on him the absolute drunken joy I felt in crushing his face.

“If I ever see you again,” I told him, “I’ll cut out your eyes and shoot off your fucking ears.”

He fell unconscious. I let his head roll back on its side, cheek to cheek with the ground. I turned to Alison. I had forgotten to stop smiling. She saw it. She saw the demented joy. She stepped back away from me. And back. And back.

“Alison.”

Another step back. Then another. I tried to get closer to her. She kept backing away, in a daze. She backed to the end of the sidewalk, farther and farther out of my reach.

“Alison, please. Alison.”

The gap between us grew ever larger. She didn’t hear the truck coming down the street. She never saw it in her periphery as she stepped down from the curb and into its speeding path. She never turned to look as it plowed decisively through her in a single effortless sweep. It all happened in a blinding shot, as if meticulously choreographed.

I ran to her and cradled her body. She was a loose bag of bones, like holding my son when he was first born. I could feel assorted parts inside her, but I couldn’t feel any structure to them. I turned her head so we could be face-to-face, but it was too late for any kind of touching goodbye. She was gone. My heart made a fist. I looked to the alleyway. The gun lay there. The troll was gone. I looked down the street and saw his head disappearing again into the darkness, slowly shrinking like the blip of an old television set when it’s been turned off.

The sirens cruised into my skull and bounced around dreamily, like a conversation you overhear when you’re half-asleep. I saw paramedics rushing toward us. They tried to pry Alison from my arms, but I instinctively refused to surrender her. I had waited so long for her to be in my grasp. I pressed against her, trying to absorb her. They took her away. The best part of my life is now over. A wisp of beautiful reality that I’ll spend the rest of eternity desperately trying to hold on to, as it floats away like a speck of dust in time’s ever-expanding black chasm. All that’s left of her is the feeling—the memory of finding her again and telling her I loved her and hearing, at long last, her tender reciprocation. I love you. I’ll love until there’s nothing left. That was the moment I should have perished, and not one second thereafter. All was right then. Nothing ever will be again.

While the police questioned me, I realized that what I’d done to the troll would be considered a death-penalty offense in Texas. I wish I were a Texan. I have become unhinged. I have to leave here. I have to get away from the world I’ve made for myself, lest it engulf me. I need to get away now, so that all that remains is a quickly dissipating apparition and nothing more.

(TWENTY-EIGHT YEARS LATER)

The address on the slip of paper led me to a garage door that was painted green. It was one of several garages littering the B side of the street—the alley that runs behind the storefronts. At first I thought I had the wrong address, since most of the garages were plug-in body shops. I double-checked the number on the scrap paper.

I knocked on the door. No one answered. I took out my WEPS and punched in the number I was given. After half a ring, someone answered.

“Yeah?”

“Yes, is this Matt?

“Yeah.”

“My name is John Farrell. We have an appointment.”

“Well, where are you?”

“I’m outside your door.”

“Why haven’t you come in yet?”

“Because no one answered the door when I knocked.”

The door opened. Standing before me was, presumably, Matt. He had orange hair mussed atop a big round head. He had an orange goatee. He had a bright-orange shirt and orange clogs on. He looked like a goddamn orange. He was tall, yet somehow still managed to appear schlubby. He peered at me over his orangeframed glasses. “Dude, I don’t have time to be answering the door all day long. Get in here.”

I walked into the space. In place of cars and auto lifts was an open bullpen with three mismatched dining room tables lined up on each side. Odds and ends littered the tables and shelves: old Coke machines, ancient stereo equipment, very large red-painted springs, woodblock carvings, and the occasional dusty toy. Four people were using the tables as work spaces, typing and iFacing. No two of the work chairs were alike. A pair of very small dogs immediately rushed at me and began licking my knees. Matt snapped at them, “Pepe! Daisy! Knock it off!” They retreated. Matt yelled to everyone in the room, “Everyone! This is John Farrell.”