Imperfect Solo

by Steven Boykey Sidley

  I visit annually, usually on a long weekend. It is not a burden for me and it is the highlight of the year for him. We eat at a good restaurant or two. See a game. Catch a movie. Go for a drive. I am his last link to the life that he carefully built. When Mom died, he spent a while deciding what to do next. His age, which was seventy at the time, presented a paucity of choice. It was a world of diminished possibilities. He couldn’t go back to work—nobody would have him, despite being a qualified pharmacist. It was unlikely that he would find another partner. He admitted to me that he still thought about the physical warmth of another woman, about sex, but was at a loss as to how to pursue it. I might have suggested the Internet, assuming that this electronic market for all tastes may have some small corner bazaar for older, widowed men, but he wouldn’t have tried it. He was seventy, and looked seventy, and suffered seventy-year-old ailments, none of which he wished to foist upon someone he was wooing, assuming that was even a possibility. Once, when I was commiserating with him, punting platitudes to try to assuage the sting of aging, he said: “It’s not important, son, it’s just a life.” My eyes stung from the depth of that statement—it’s just a life. Anyone who ascribes any more importance to it than that, one life out of billions lived, will surely find death a gloomier embrace. The safe community that we chose for him to live in, with all amenities within close proximity, was surely just a consolation, a place merely to contemplate what was done and what little was left.

  And that was then. He is going on eighty now. A little shorter, a little more forgetful, a little balder, but still robust, considering.

  “Dad! Nice to hear from you. You OK?”

  “Fit as a fiddle. You?”

  “All good. What time is it down there? Must be early.”

  “I’m sort of in jail.”

  Silence.

  “Dad, what do you mean you’re sort of in jail?”

  “Not sort of. I’m in jail.”

  “What are you talking about? Why?”

  “I robbed a department store with a gun.”

  “YOU DID WHAT?”

  “Wait, it gets better. On my way back to the car, a kid tried to mug me. So I shot him.”

  “Oh, my fuck. Tell me you’re kidding.”

  “Nope. And you swear too much.”

  “When did this happen?”

  “Last night.”

  “Dad, I have to ask, what did you think you were doing? WAIT, IS THE KID DEAD?”

  “Nah, just a flesh wound. He tried to mug me. What kind of a person tries to mug an eighty-year-old man?”

  “What kind of eighty-year-old man holds up a department store, Dad? Are you OK?”

  “Never better. They are treating me real nice in here.”

  “Oh, Jesus. Where did you get a gun?”

  “I’ve always had a gun.”

  “What? Why?”

  “In case.”

  “But not for holding up department stores and shooting people. Dad! Jesus!”

  “So how is Innocent? How is Isobel?”

  “Dad! Focus. Do you have a lawyer?”

  “No. They are assigning me a public defender.”

  “Whatever got into you? Why? I am speechless.”

  “I was bored. Not much to do when you’re eighty.”

  “Dad, you could end up in prison.”

  “So? How is that different than now? It’s not like I’m going to get raped or anything. Unless they have some really sick people in there.”

  “OK, just don’t do anything. I’m going to track down a local lawyer for you and I’m flying out on the first flight. FUCK! I CAN’T BELIEVE THAT YOU DID THIS!”

  But actually, I can. I can believe it zealously, to the point that I can see myself doing it one day too. Why not? This is not a society that reveres its aged. Kids are not there to muffle the sounds of decrepitude. Every image on every page, on every screen, on every billboard celebrates that which you are not. Drugs keep you alive and ticking, more to wring every last bit of misery out of every day of your synthetically lengthened life. A quiet and good man, deformed into an armed robber and shooter by the boredom and certainty of an end close at hand.

  Why not rob a store? Shoot a bad guy?

  Why not indeed?

  CHAPTER 26

  AN AGING FATHER in jail for all manner of felonies and a cokehead son. Dread 2: Meyer 0.

  Hyman Meyer is a resident of the GoldLife Jewish Senior Living Center in Palm Beach, Florida. Scratch that, he is currently a resident of a Palm Beach county jail. The first thing I do when I arrive is call the Center and assure them that Dad is with me, thereby diffusing a crisis at the Center regarding a certain missing resident. I fudge the questions and apologize profusely for not informing them that I would be taking Dad on a short vacation.

  This vacation, I explain, will be a “few days,” an answer designed to be fuzzy. My thinking here is that, with luck, I’ll be able to find a lawyer, convince the prosecutor that Hyman Meyer is only a confused old man, and pay the medical bills for the flesh wound, plus a little extra for the trouble.

  I am quite certain that should the word get out about his little aberration, Dad would be banished from community games and relegated to a life of isolation in the shadows of the old-age community. Dad will be released, I will return him to the Center, and all will be well.

  Dad has other ideas.

  “I want to go to trial.”

  We are sitting in a room at the county jail with a prosecutor and our hastily arranged attorney, a pretty young woman from a well-known criminal law firm. I start to object, she shushes me.

  “Mr. Meyer …”

  “Please call me Hyman, young lady.”

  “Hyman, you do not want to go to trial. The prosecutor here is prepared to accept that you were, let’s say ‘confused,’ The department store owners have agreed to drop charges if you write an apology and sign various other paperwork, including a psychiatric report. The young man has apparently disappeared and if he does not file charges then we should be able to get this all behind us. Nobody wants to sentence an eighty-year-old man. OK?”

  My father nods for a long time. For a moment, I think he is going to sleep.

  “I want to go to trial. Please charge me with armed robbery and attempted murder.”

  “Dad, what are you doing? If you go to trial you will end up in prison.”

  “No, I won’t. I’ll win.”

  “You’re guilty, Dad. What do you mean you’ll win?”

  “I am going to plead not guilty by reason of sanity.”

  The lawyer and the prosecutor exchange looks.

  “Dad, there is no such thing.”

  “Of course, there is no such thing. I am going to create one. Muggers should be shot. Price-gouging department stores should be robbed. These are the actions of a sane man. The jury will love it.”

  The prosecutor, a tired and beaten man who is certainly younger than he looks, speaks gently.

  “Mr. Meyer, I am happy to recommend to a judge that the State has no objection to bail or even to dropping charges, conditional on certain matters. But I want you to realize the gravity of what we are dealing with here.”

  “Mr. Prosecutor, I may be old and forgetful, but I absolutely understand the gravity and the meaning of ‘conditional on certain matters.’”

  “You are extremely fortunate that the young man was not seriously injured or worse, and even more fortunate that he seems to have skipped town. He has a bit of a history with the system. You are fortunate that the owners of the department store are part of the Jewish community and are prepared to forgive and forget based on your, um, heritage. I would suggest that you not try to derail your string of good fortune.”

  “Mr. Prosecutor, the owners of the department store are a bunch of gunnifs who deserve to be robbed. Get a taste of their own medicine. As for the young man, he had a knife. I acted in self-defense. I want to go to trial.”

  Both the prosecutor and lawyer look at me.

&nbs
p; “I’d like a few words alone with my dad.”

  They nod and step out.

  “Dad, Dad, Dad … What are you up to?”

  But I already know.

  “Josh, you’ve never known me to do anything particularly irrational, have you?”

  “Nope.”

  “So do you imagine that I have suddenly been afflicted with an age-related, personality-warping condition?”

  “Nope.”

  “So here’s the deal. I am sitting in this old-age home, surrounded by the dying and the sick. I know you offered me a room in your home in California, but I said no, absolutely not, and I meant it. Parents should never be a burden to their children. The Center is warm and safe and the food is reasonable. There are activities to keep us alert and the grounds are nice and there are drugs for pain and sleeplessness and constipation, and I should be grateful. But it is an awful way to die. There are no good ways to die, I suppose, but to slip away under the crushing weight of this daily monotony among the decrepit and infirm seems a crime against life.”

  I start to talk, but he lifts his hand.

  “I know that my life was not exceptional. But it was good. I had middle-class freedoms, some of which I took advantage of, some of which I ignored, to my regret. This is surely true of most people. And the process of aging is grievous, which is presumably true of all people, particularly if your partner is gone before you. This doesn’t mean that I have to accept it.”

  “There are other alternatives besides running around shooting guns, Dad.”

  “Yes, I’m sure that there are many, but that was the one that came to mind at that moment. I’m eighty, for God’s sake, I am not capable of that much planning. We were playing cards and out of the corner of my eye I was watching an old woman, Sophie, I think her name is. She is infirm and suffering from extreme dementia. Every day they wheel her to the sun room and put her in front of the TV. Her head lolls to one side. She drools. She certainly does not watch the TV. She has no idea where she is. She does not recognize her one and only visitor, a daughter, I think, quite old herself. There is nothing to signify that she is a sentient human being. Except one thing. Every few days I see her start to cry. Her bottom lip trembles, the tears drop, and she sobs. For a few minutes only. But it is the saddest thing I have ever seen. She is crying for what she has become. She is begging tearfully for death. I am sure of this.”

  He stops. I wait.

  “So yesterday—while we were playing a card game in which I had no interest, and never will—she starts crying again, this time accompanied by a whimper, which I have never heard. And then she says, ‘Isaac.’ She says it twice. Whimpers more. And then stops. I do not know who Isaac is or, more probably, was. A husband? A child? A brother? But I do know this. Isaac was the person she wanted, right then, at that moment. If Isaac had appeared, she would have been whole again. If your mother were with me, I would be whole again. I am not whole, I realized. I will never be whole again. I am just disappearing while I play canasta. So I stood up, got my gun, and climbed into my car. And I robbed a store of $20. And I shot a mugger. And I am in jail, which is infinitely more interesting than the sun room. And I may go to prison. And I am a little more whole than I was yesterday. And everyone wants me to go back and play canasta so that one day I can end up like Sophie.”

  I am unable to respond.

  CHAPTER 27

  BAD THINGS HAPPEN. I know this.

  My twin sister died when I was eleven. She looked nothing like me. She was tall and blonde and athletic and quiet, a contrast to my short, dark, noisy self. I adored her.

  I like to imagine that we spent nine months chattering and cackling and musing comfortably in the darkness and warmth of the womb, formulating our views on the world to come, hatching strategies, proclaiming fealty and mutual protection.

  And when we emerged, me mewling and bewildered a few seconds after her silence and surety, we kept our pact. Sleeping in the same bed, chest to back, our childhood smells and breathing in perfect sync. Wearing the same clothes even, until she drifted into the mandates of her gender. But we were as one, a telepathic wonder of simultaneity. Hungry, angry, sad, good humored, and wild at the same time. Finishing sentences. Laughing before a joke was finished. Finding endless comfort and constructing an impenetrable bulwark against loneliness.

  Her name was Rebecca. My dad called her Rebbe, cleaving to the Hebrew name for teacher, notwithstanding its insult to ancient Jewish patriarchy (at which my father scoffed anyway). She was smarter than me. She was better looking than me. She was taller than me. And she was my sister. My pride was immeasurable.

  It is hard now to imagine the impact of this slight and willowy girl at my side while I struggled to navigate the exigencies of childhood. Most children want to please their parents. I wanted to please my sister. Most children are selfish, as any parent can attest. I was too, with the caveat that my selfishness included Rebbe. The world owed us. I could not even contemplate a me without her.

  She was good at sports; I was klutzy. So she often remained after school to run or swim or toss, hit and slam balls of various sizes while I headed home to my books, looking out of the window every so often, imagining the sound of the bus that was soon to come. And when I heard that diesel purr I would stop what I was doing and run down to the gate, open it wide, and step onto the sidewalk, where she would turn the corner and see me, the smile planted on my face launching her own. Perhaps at this remove my memory is romanticized. I surely forget petty jealousies, territorial scraps, short tempers. But this is what remains now, the chaff shed from wheat. This is what I choose to retain.

  An incident at school. I am walking to the bus at the end of the day, which is a short hop from the front gate. I am eight years old. My path is suddenly blocked by three older boys. Even an eight-year-old knows things. I am going to get my ass kicked and my stuff stolen, not that I have much.

  “Joshua Meyer fuckshitcuntface. You dissing me?”

  I stop. Consider a run. But I’m too slow. I stay silent. My heart starts to hammer. I’m scared. Their faces are twisted with cruelty. I am in a phase of my young life where I have discovered war stories. Books and graphic novels, left over from some parent or cousin. I devour them. The heroism knotted into the stories only occasionally causes me to wonder—weren’t they scared? All the time? Of dying? Of capture and torture? Of horrible injuries? How awful it must be to be scared all of the time.

  My young life had taught me that fear was temporary. An injection. A noise in the night. A spider. A lie carelessly told and due to be uncovered. They had short lifespans, these moments of fright, of anxiety. The fear either disappeared (its half-life depleted) or was banished by my bemused mother, my smiling father, or was mitigated by a lecture, a warning, a wake-up. Everything always turned out OK.

  My well-being was threatened in short sharp jabs, but I always knew that soon, real soon, it would pass. Not so in the war stories. How awful to feel that cold hammering for days, for weeks, for years, forever. I was barely even able to articulate this thought. Could one live with fear forever?

  And now, with my chest tight and my persecutors dripping with leering anticipation I was aware in a moment beyond my years—looking down at myself from some other existential plane—that this boy is scared. This boy is not having fun. Please make it stop.

  * * *

  Much later in my life, long after Rebbe’s memory had slowly seeped its energy inanimate, like color leaching from a watercolor painting in the rain, after my loss and grief were camouflaged by the long journey to adulthood, and in a wild moment of spontaneity, Grace and I went to Zimbabwe for ten days to announce our marriage plans to her parents. This was followed by a trip to a game farm, a rite of passage for a young American city boy visiting this unspoiled place. Accommodation was sumptuous and exotic and in the early morning and late afternoon we were driven around in an open vehicle, along with about ten other tourists—Russians, Indians, Germans.

  The calm and earne
st black driver-ranger had a weapon, a large-bore rifle, holstered and racked against the dashboard. His neck and cheek were shockingly scarred. He saw me staring. “Leopard,” was all he said, and all he needed to say. On the second day, he spotted a herd of elephants on the horizon and with a curt, “Let’s track,” he raced off at an angle, parking at the bottom of a rise under a tree, awaiting their arrival.

  And arrive they did. Some thirty or forty of them. Gray, mountainous, and, to my eyes, disturbed and irritated. Mostly because there were calves sheltering near their mothers’ legs. They stopped at the top of the rise, sensing the vehicle below, perhaps a hundred yards’ distance between us. The babies backed up into the shadows of their mothers’ gigantic bellies. And then the ears, those massive wrinkled evolutionary throwbacks, first twitching and then flapping in alarm. Trunks, awful and serpentine and alien, starting a series of warlike sinusoidal dances. Front feet, massive and unforgiving, pawing the ground.

  I saw the driver’s hand move slowly toward the rifle rack. The tourists were snapping shots, exclaiming, praising, awash with noisy awe. Only I noticed the unblinking stillness of the driver.

  “Please. We must be quiet.” A harsh whisper, like a lash.

  The effect was instantaneous. Looks of wonder morphed into quiet discomfort, which increased markedly as the ranger very quietly unholstered the rifle. One of the cows suddenly bolted forward with shocking momentum and barreled toward us, an unearthly sound roaring from some deep and practiced place. The ranger lifted his rifle with his left hand, but dropped the right outside the door, banging loudly against the solid metal, and yelling, “STOP! STOP!”

  As I envisaged the inevitable carnage, tipped vehicle, tourists stomped to death, all I could think of was how the ranger could assume that the elephant understood English. I heard screaming as bodies leaped to the far side of the vehicle and Grace buried her head in my shoulder. The elephant stopped a few yards from the truck. I could see the oily excretions from its eyes. I could smell it, mud and musk and dung and sunrise. It backed slowly away. The silence in the truck thundered and the smell of fear rose fetid, the sort that only can come from humans faced with a situation in which their self-proclaimed evolutionary advantages—reason and rationale and sentience and language—mean shit.