Big Bend Read online

  Taughannock Falls

  To fly anywhere at a moment’s notice is my job, very nearly. At Merrymount Hospice, the morning after the afternoon of Japonica’s call (“Stephen has been asking for you”), I have to fill out a form explaining my relationship to the patient. I write, Friends from birth. This relationship occasions no questions, and I’m given a wristband. Visitor. Red letters. In the plane I’ve whipped my hurt and resentment into a froth, but here on the quiet walkways of this elegant factory of mental health I’m calm again, if worried: apparently Stephen has neither spoken nor otherwise communicated for two full weeks, not a peep since June 1, not until yesterday, when he began repeating my name. Which is simple: Bob Smith.

  Japonica hates Bob Smith. This true fact once amused me, brought jokes to my lips, and while the jokes still fight to come, I guess I know more about me now, more of jealousy, and more what a loud and lousy influence I may have been on Stephen, and maybe just the faintest little bit about which of my qualities would have made Stephen so willing to abandon me. He hasn’t spoken to anyone at all these two weeks, but he hasn’t spoken to me for twenty years.

  Japonica (once Janet—but I’ll repress the satire): Japonica worked against me with Stephen, worked hard since the very day of the big party in Santa Barbara that saw my glorious best friend wed, but which she (and so he) wouldn’t call a wedding. And I was best man, but not called best man, that phrase never used. But I accompanied the male-human-about-to-get-lawfully-attached through the days and events and pressures preceding the ceremony, and stood beside him while he made his promises in front of a room full of people seated on two sides of an aisle. A person who was not a religious figure—a ship’s captain, I believe—said the twenty legal words of the rite, and the two of them, Stephen and Japonica, exchanged golden rings and read their invented vows. And we who had watched ate fish under white tents, then showered the frowning results of the day’s work with birdseed, showered them and laughed and screamed till they were safe in a long white California limousine, just a car, really, just a tremendously long car that one wondered what movie star must have sat in, and what ex-president.

  In Stephen’s “pod” at Merrymount, I find the “pod station,” and the “pod nurse” is lovely and gentle and not too young and smiles at me sweetly, with a quick eye to my red visitor’s bracelet. “You’re an old friend of Mr. Massuau’s.”

  “The oldest.”

  “He’s in the Santa Cruz space, just there.”

  And she glides around the desk on a cushion of air and glides beside me past the many potted plants and couches and low marble tables with magazines and through the perfect silence into Stephen’s “space” (she can’t say room, or even podlet), which is costing McDonnell-Douglas Aerospace plenty, at a guess. It’s a hotel room, this “space,” not even a heart monitor in sight, chromium and leather furnishings, million-dollar view through high glass out to the Pacific, only the hospital bed to give it away. Stephen is still as the air in there, seated (good posture) in an expensive modular chair not quite facing the window.

  “Stephen,” I say gently. I’m washed in emotion; it’s all I can do to stand upright and breathe.

  The pod nurse floats away.

  “Long time,” I say, trying a couple of steps around him to look in his blank face. He looks just fine to my untrained eye, fit and tanned and only a little gray at the temples, nicely shaven, brave and trim, athletic as ever, ready to spring, hale and handsome, all fine except brown eyes aimed a little high and just to the right of the window. He doesn’t move, not a blink or twitch or breath, and he doesn’t gain any expression at all, just sits pleasant and expectant, a little remote, like someone waiting for good news.

  “Twenty years,” I say.

  He just keeps waiting.

  “Stephen, twenty years.”

  And waits.

  So I give him, or what passes for him, a speech, as follows, quoting as many of our old jokes as possible, hearing their misfirings even as I speak, using our old high-goof diction, seeing myself as Japonica must have all these years, that is: negatively, inescapably negative, all my organs sinking in the cavity of my chest, pressing on my guts. And through this speech, anger rises.

  I say, “I missed you, brother. You move out to the land where plastic plants grow wild, and never again do I hear from you. Oh, I know you must have wanted to stay in touch. I know this, and I know that Janet’s to blame—Japonica, I mean, sorry, sorry—but twenty years, Stephen? You deserve some of the blame, too, rocket boy. I hear about your kids from Billy O’Rourke, I hear about your big promotions from the fucking Wall Street Journal. I send Congrats. I send stuffed toys. I send a check for sweet sixteen to Miranda, a pretty name, your daughter, Stephen, a pretty young woman, no doubt. I send birth announcements for my kids you’ve never met and never a note back from you, Stephen. And I know what it is. It’s her. What’d I ever do to her? At worst, what? Maybe put her down to you and occasionally made fun of her to you, and okay: impugned her, indicted her, maligned her, denounced her, spoofed her? Twenty years back, though. I was just jealous, I was, I understand that now, I see that about myself now. I was jealous and felt abandoned, I suppose the therapists would say. In fact, I had a therapist and that’s what she said, exactly. And I talked about you pretty much the whole three sessions. Yes, only three because it was all just talk (also, I had a dream wherein the word therapist was broken in two: the rapist). And the talk did make me realize what a hole you left. Oh, Stephen. You look great. You look just great to me sitting here. You look like the last time I clapped eyes on you. Not a day older. But Stephen, come on, no note, nothing when Linda passed away? Nothing when my wife you never met died? I didn’t send you a note, was that it? I know my father did send you a note, a quiet tasteful note, and not a word from you. But all that’s forgiven. All that. Twenty years. Was my contempt at the surface of those letters I wrote? Did I brag too much, trying to impress you? Was I nothing to you? Did you ever even think of me?”

  Long pause. He’s impassive. The stillness invites calm. I settle down, change gears, give him news: “My girls have a car each now. Can you imagine our folks buying us cars at that age? Not a chance. And Sarah is gay, she thinks. Can you imagine a parent copping to that when we were kids? She has a partner who’s big as me, and tougher and I let them sleep in her room together. What the hell, right? It’s their lives, and I like having smart women around. I told them your joke from college: What’s the difference between a whale and an Ithaca lesbian? Fifty pounds and a flannel shirt. Is the punch line. Now they want to go to Cornell. And with her grades and her girlfriend’s connections they’ll get in.”

  Where the newlycommitteds went after the ceremony, I can’t quite remember—never heard details. Because that was it, that hug between Stephen and me just before the clunky ceremony in the little side room at the mansion Japonica’s chilly folks rented for the nuptials (I believe is a fair word). That hug lasted so long that the synthesizer player had to come back and ask us to come on out and join the party, unless we weren’t invited, ho ho. She was a funny one, that little synthesizer player, and played the Wedding March despite being instructed, even commanded, not to by Stephen’s new legal life partner.

  Not a movement from my old friend. Not a blink of the eye, not a nod of the head, not a tear on the cheek, not a tap of the foot, not a twitch of the lip. He looks tremendous—healthy and wise, clean and brave, courteous and kind. The room is sparkling, pinks and ivories; the curtains billow with sweet Pacific wind. I keep talking. His presence is so human and electrical somehow that I start to believe he is listening. I go on and on, interrogating the past, trying to build something firm, a temple of friendship in which we might meet.

  I fire questions: “Did we hike in the forests, you and I? Did we drink in the bars? Did we study till morning, side by side? Did we eat LSD and stare at snow banks? Did we sleep with brilliant women, sometimes the same one? Did we wrestle and grapple and fistfight and hug? Did we eat me
thamphetamines on long drives and talk nonstop and confess our beautiful Platonic love for one another? Did people not refer to us as Steve and Bob? Or Bob and Steve? Were we not closer than twin suns bound by gravity eternally (or at least till supernova did us part)?

  “Did we not finish college and finish well despite all? Did I not move to California with you when the time came for graduate school? Did you not make fun of me for taking yoga classes? Did I chastise you for seeking and finding high-end work in the Military Industrial Complex? Did we handle this, too, and all things? Was it not I who introduced you to Janet from yoga class? Yoga class, Stevie! We used to shout with laughter, you making fun of me for yoga. But I found you a girl, I did.”

  Not a twitch.

  “You are my friend,” I say. “Twenty years cannot change that.” I get up and look out the window. This is too painful. Far below us the ocean is rough and roiling, one surfer out there paddling around, no wave to catch. But the breeze is strong, rattles the stout jade plants outside the podlet window. I live in Virginia, for lovers. I work in Washington, D.C., for lawyers. There is no ocean upon which to gaze in those precincts. I’m a lobbyist for anyone who will hire me, except Tobacco, War, Gross Polluter, Fundamentalist. Which leaves almost nothing.

  “You little fuck,” Stephen says distinctly.

  But I’m staring out the window at the ocean. When I look back Stephen’s as still as before. I’m not hearing things, I know; I never hear things, I know a voice when I hear it, and I know Stevie’s fond voice, too, the voice of old.

  “Stephen?”

  His face is composed and fresh and just the same as when I first walked in, but for a stronger smile.

  “I see you grinning,” I say

  And the grin grows and the eyes flash with fire and he rocks in his chair, all youthful energy, and says, “Get me out of here!” And he’s giggling, tittering, trying to hold it back, snorting, spitting. He manages a stage whisper: “Jesus, Bobbo, what happened to me?”

  I sputter. It’s all a joke: “You were, uh, catatonic for a few weeks there.” And we just roar like little boys, like when together we went to his synagogue and he couldn’t control himself at the sight of goyim me in a yarmulke: junior high school.

  “Sounds great” he says. And he’s up on his feet—no stopping him, looking at his clothes, looking at me. And looking at me, he’s taken aback. Our laughter just dies. “How long’ve I been out?” he says. “You look fifty years old, you fucker!”

  “I’m forty-five,” I say soberly.

  “Rip Van fucking Winkle,” he says, examining me closely, as if to understand my disguise. “Political satire. A critique of the new vulgar America.” He’s quoting something wryly verbatim from our sophomore English class, something a middle-aged engineer ought to have forgotten. Then, “Two minutes ago you’re passing me a bong of red Leb, turn around and you’re fat and you’re gray.” He is making fun of me in his oldest style, but at the same time he’s shocked by my appearance, trying unsuccessfully to hide dismay with laughter. He’s one of these never-let-’em-see-you-sweat guys, and he’s always been damn good at it: Your friends are suddenly middle-aged? No problem.

  “I’m not so goddamn fat,” I tell him.

  He leaps to his feet, limps around the room clowning to hide any panic, gets in front of the mirror, examines himself, clutches his thighs in real pain, slumps to the floor, loose as a college kid. “Okay,” he says seriously. “What happened?”

  “Well, you seem to be missing a few years, Stephen. Probably it’ll all come back to you. Japonica and your daughter and McDonnell-Douglas Aerospace, the works.”

  “Accident?”

  “You just went blank, apparently.”

  “Japonica?”

  “You know: Janet?”

  Nothing.

  “She is your wife.”

  He takes this news calmly, looks at me a long time. He’s going to make do with what he’s got. He says, “Last I remember is you at Taughannock. Oh! That fucking shale! You had my wrist, right? Oh, shit, oh my God, that fucking shale! I fucking fell!” He’s terrified suddenly, feels his head where the brutal split was twenty-five years back, but there’s no split there now. He fell, all right, fell in a shower of shale ledge that no one smart would have climbed ever, not to 200 feet. But we did, having argued its safety, me on the side of climbing, I regret to say. Bounced all the way down to the creek, he did. Split his scalp, cracked the skull, bathed himself in blood, head to foot. Broke both thighs, his two femurs, the heaviest bones in the human body. To hear the cries that preceded the silence! To climb down in the growing dusk! To have to leave him to climb back out and sprint for help!

  “I’ll get a nurse,” I say.

  “No way,” he says. “Get a wheelchair. No one’ll think twice. We’re out of here.”

  Word for word and tone for tone, this is precisely what he said in the neurological unit at Tompkins County Hospital when we were twenty. I mean exactly, and with the exact look in his eye, and the same hand on his head, only now there is no shaved skull, no bandage. At that age and all those years ago I was game, baby, and I wheeled him out to my disintegrating station wagon and off to the Falls to show him where he fell, and to spend the night with him in the woods there by a big fire with two girls, one named Chrissy Miles, one forgotten. Next day the doctors didn’t think it was funny, but they released him. His folks, they never forgave me.

  “Well, we better not do that,” I say. “I’ll go get that pod nurse.”

  “Is she sexy?” Stephen says. He’s twenty. He says, “God, I haven’t gotten laid in weeks.”

  “She’s sexy,” I say. I haven’t gotten laid in longer than weeks, is what I’m thinking, till death do you part notwithstanding.

  “Get me out of here,” Stephen says, and we can’t help it, we laugh and laugh and laugh and laugh. And laugh.

  Japonica is civil with me, and I’m careful not to call her Janet. She doesn’t invite me over to their canyon home, nothing like that, but the two of us meet in the Main Pod Lobby of Merrypod, which is very comfortable, like a hotel bar without the bar, leather club chairs and many plants, sun from the skylights high above.

  She’s still good-looking, still with the slight cast in her eye, but now she’s behind giant designer eyeglasses. She’s tall as ever, but thinner than I recall, which was too thin always. Her lips are puffed unnaturally and her mouth, really, it’s gorgeous, oh my, still gorgeous. I can picture her in a bikini and also topless on Muir Beach all those years ago and also naked in my bed (baby talk) and in hers, two weeks of good fun. I can remember her laughing with me after yoga class, cruel laugh. I can remember introducing her to Steve at the beach party I brought her to. And I remember the mechanism by which my hot and hopeful fling became Steve’s girlfriend over the next several days: We’re just not right together. Stevie missing at night for weeks, nothing said till my old girl Jill turned up for an extended stay, then love in the open, Stevie and Janet, a thin wall away.

  My jealousy, my God, it was like horses inside me, horses reined to the very posts of my heart, their snorting breath escaping my mouth snidely, restrained fury writing my joky, mean script, my lips smiling, always smiling, never saying the central thing. Jill said I’d changed, and then she left me, too.

  “Remember that little minuscule Yogi?” I bark.

  “Can a person be both little and minuscule at once?” Japonica answers, not kidding.

  “I used to sit behind you in that class to smell your perfume,” I say.

  “I cannot handle any more of these tests they’re putting him through,” she says. But her gaze has flickered: she loved me briefly.

  “And that’s how you and Steve met,” I say.

  “Oh, Bobby, one minute he was fine, the next minute he was sitting stock-still out by the pool with the phone still in his hand. And poor Miranda thought, Well, he’s joking! And she’s out there laughing at him! Giving him tickles! Poor child. She’s devastated. Blames herself, irrat
ionally.”

  “It’s that little smile. That makes it seem like he’s kidding.”

  “He asked for you,” she says for the tenth time in ten conversations, in a tone as if to say I should agree that this request of his was preposterous and a sure sign of worse affliction than any of us want to imagine.

  “He thinks he’s back in Ithaca,” I say for the tenth time in ten conversations. Then add fresh material: “He wants to escape from the hospital like we did back then. He wants a bong hit. You know, that kind of thing.”

  “You two were such thorough reprobates.”

  “We were very close, Japonica.”

  “Dr. Smolkins doesn’t buy your theory.”

  Which is that Stephen’s old injury has come back, is all, and somehow the brain damage from back then has suddenly decided to erase everything that happened since. Smolkins says it’s a stroke, which he calls an episode—but he hasn’t actually denounced my theory, not at all. That’s an exaggeration. He’s only cautious about it.

  Japonica sighs mightily, looks at me accusingly. “Stephen doesn’t remember me at all,” she says.

  “That must hurt,” I tell her softly.

  Dr. Smolkins is not sure at all what to do with Stephen, who is awake now, and very polite with everyone who comes to visit, but doesn’t remember them, not a glimmer. I come every afternoon, just after five, so as to briefly see Japonica, who must fetch their daughter up from field hockey practice daily.

  Stephen says, “I can’t believe I married that chick. She’s like my mother. She’s a bitch. She’s awful. And she hates you. What did you do to her, fucker?”