A Good Day for Seppuku

by Kate Braverman

  Tom saves the seashells in his box of mementoes where he keeps the card his mother tapped to the refrigerator, the banana bread recipe with Going to New Mexico written in her hand. He also keeps the postcards of where he’s been.

  Tom thinks his mother is also walking on boulevards and beaches, examining postcards, studying angles of light and shadow. There are questions of dusk versus sunset, and how to distill the details. She’s not satisfied with a sunset lacerating the sky and the waves below bluffs stitched with palms.

  Tom knows there’s a treacherous complexity in sorting stylized images, condensed and tamed. His mother recognizes the conventional but it’s without thrill. It’s overly familiar, simplified and false. When his mother finds the right postcard, the one that explains everything, she’ll send it to him.

  He visits laboratories the size of walk-in closets where post-docs sleep on the floor under saddle blankets. Experiments are monitored every three hours. They hire six assistants for each position. They wait to see who survives.

  He interviews for a job at a Swiss pharmaceutical. He can tell immediately that he’s not who they want. It’s like a chemical reaction. When he mentions cloning and mapping the genome of a virulent cotton fungus, the men wince.

  Captain plays poker with R&D guys from Monsanto and arranges an interview for him. His appointment is at 2. They don’t call him until 4:45. Three men sit at a long mahogany table. The older man gestures to a low metal folding chair. Tom sits there. When he mentions growing protein crystals for X-ray and computer modeling, the two younger men immediately leave the room.

  The older man says, “I’ve got to get the phone.”

  There is no phone. Nothing is ringing. Tom is paralyzed, waiting for clarification or an explosion. Two minutes pass. His organs are leaking out, and he presses his hand to his gut. Another minute pass. Tom picks up his briefcase and makes his way out of the building.

  Captain calls from JFK on his route to Seattle. He has a cell phone but doesn’t use it. He prefers the random and increasingly rare phone booths he finds on highways and on the edges at airport terminals. He’s made the final table at the World Championship of Poker in Las Vegas. Girls in high heels and bikinis carry out trays of cash. He finally won a championship bracelet. Captain has a blog and he’s interviewed on ESPN. Now he’s invited to private games and picked up by limousines.

  “I just played some guys from Du Pont,” his father begins.

  “Did you win?” Tom is alert. He’s interested. He’s at full attention.

  “I got hot cards,” Captain says.

  Their conversation is how they embrace. They talk sporadically, and at Captain’s discretion. His father demands thousands of miles of suffocating mist, gutted nests finches left and mountain ranges to form a barricade between them.

  “Listen. I talked to their R&D boys. Biochemistry is strictly 20th century. You missed virtual reality and A.I. Better transfer to med school,” Captain advises.

  He doesn’t congratulate him on his doctorate. He didn’t come to graduation either. Tom’s accomplishments are too trivial for a comment or handshake.

  “I appreciate your concern,” Tom manages.

  “You’ll wind up an assistant professor at a bankrupt shithole. Broken equipment and no budget,” his father actually raises his voice. “Get off Lincoln Street, kid.”

  His father telephones when he has time on his hands. It might be a break in a tournament, a plane delay, or a bout of insomnia.

  Between them hay is spooled on the edges of fields of pumpkins. There are roadside cemeteries of corn stalks and piled husks. A bloated post-harvest moon rises and consumes the sky.

  His mother goes underground, underwater. There’s a language for this, fluid syllables of rain and thunder and damp chimes. It’s a local dialect of tinny trinkets and obscene bells in corridors of mirrors with lightbulbs that sting and all of it is repeated in glass, in glass, in glass until she is lost.

  His father calls back. His plane must be delayed. “I can get you into Cornell. It’s not too late,” Captain tells him, his tone urgent. Then he abruptly hangs up. They must have announced his Seattle flight. Tom feels slapped.

  Horace Bowen telephones a week later. “I have bad news, son,” his grandfather says. There is an overly long pause. It’s a silence with lead in it. It’s a metal vestibule. “Captain’s dead. Funeral’s on Friday.”

  Thomas doesn’t ask what happened. Maybe Captain was ambushed by rabid raccoons. Or PETA sent assassins. He is still angry.

  The cemetery is surprisingly crowded. He instinctively searches for his mother. She isn’t there. He’s found 60 Bowens in Manitoba. None of them have come. But the sheep and goat farmers from the pasturelands are here in their church clothes. And all the dairy farmers, the mayor, and president of the Democratic Club. The head of the county health office and her assistant have brought a wreath. The new young doctor from Colorado, probably working off med school debt with two years of rural service, offers his condolences. Mrs. Rakov, the librarian, asks if he’s seen his mother. She remembers her; of course, no one could forget her.

  Thomas recognizes two CON PA lawyers in black suits and red ties taking notes. They’re no doubt on assignment, making sure no student pet abusers are posthumously charged. Men in jeans, baseball caps and sunglasses lean against the fence at the back of the cemetery. Town cars are parked on the street. Thomas assumes they’re poker colleagues.

  His neighbors from Lincoln Street stand near his father’s grave. Mr. Brody, the retired math teacher who lived next door, pushes his walker across grass. He pats him on his shoulder. Phil Cossink, the pharmacist, with his added-on sunroom and attic turned into a playroom for his three children has come with his sons. They’re college students now and wear suits. His wife reminds him that she brought him Christmas dinner in a blizzard when he was alone.

  A developer places an arm on his shoulder. The stranger has a ruddy face and he’s breathless. His father’s property up to 5 Hawk Creek was sold at auction. The developer plans to build 40 Cape Cod houses with swimming pools on 30-acre parcels.

  “I respect natural environments.” He is hearty, almost festive. “I’m not considering blading.”

  That means he’s going to chop the forest down. Thomas turns his back and walks away.

  Sheriff Jim Murphy, in his black dress uniform and white gloves, stands at his side, their shoulders brushing. Thomas notices Jimbo is wearing his purple heart. He hasn’t seen it before. The velvet is vibrant and George Washington is depicted in the center in gold. No clergy preside. There are no eulogies.

  The sky is the brilliant untarnished blue of intelligence, prophecy and magic. It’s the sky of an earlier time when brutality was confined and sporadic. The cobalt sky is naked, not a blue humans know, but the blue of tapestries, epics, and cities still bearing their ancient names. Syracuse, Ithaca, Corinth and Thebes.

  Then he chances to look directly at a woman wearing a black hat with a long veil and a black dress past her ankles. She looks like Central Casting sent her for the role of a Greek widow. She slowly approaches and introduces herself.

  Samantha Markowitz is from Erie. She has fair skin with freckles that blend in together, turning her cheeks a moist peach. She embraces him and trembles in spasms. Her 12-year-old red-haired twins sob. Then Lillian Johnson is weeping in his arms. She doesn’t have a horse farm. She lives in a brick house half an hour north of Harrisburg. She’s a nurse. Her sons, Joshua and Justin, are red-haired dermatologists in Philadelphia. They’re at least 6’3. They shake hands. His father’s other sons have excellent eye contact and their business cards are linen and embossed.

  Samantha and Lillian are sturdy, handsome women, 40ish he guesses, and fleshy. Their voices are soft and their words sparse. Of course, Captain wouldn’t want women who dazzle. The spotlight must remain fixed on him, the narcissist.

  “You all squared away?” the sheriff asks.

  “Nobody’s all squared away,” Thomas remark
s in his father’s tone.

  “I hear you,” the sheriff replies.

  “See much of him?” Thomas asks.

  “Captain got more social when you went to college,” the sheriff says. “That euthanasia crisis dragged on. He knew the clinic was doomed. He expected malpractice suits and he wasn’t ready for the tournament circuit. Made his depression worse.”

  Thomas remembers. His father had flown to California to discuss it in person. He shared a house with two other students and his father had ignored them.

  “This euthanasia craze gives me pause,” Captain said. “It’s a plank of the PETA doctrine. They’re symbiotic. Point is, the fundamental principles are unsound.”

  Tom asked how and why. He enjoyed his father that spring California day. Outside, layers of magenta Bougainvillea embossed the bamboo backyard fence. Four hummingbirds drank sugar water. He poured Captain coffee. His father’s hair hung in a braid halfway down his back. It resembled copperheads and milk snakes he found near 5 Hawk Creek at Cistern of the Sage.

  His father wore a new hat, a black Stetson, blue jeans, his size 16 Doc Martin work boots, and a Grateful Dead T-shirt. He’d bought one of their cd’s.

  “Which one?” Tom was curious.

  “The one with Dylan covers,” Captain replied.

  Then Captain explained that euthanasia was a terrible death. His father was restless and distracted and his eyes seemed cluttered. He paced, chainsmoked, and stared at the floor as he talked.

  “You can’t fool some critter you’ve had for fifteen years. They recognize the carrier and the sight of it induces pure terror. In the clinic, they’re assaulted by the stench of critters in pain. They smell death.”

  Captain said it could take him three days to give them a lethal shot. By then, the critters are sick with shock. Their owners don’t realize they’re consigning their pets to three days of abject suffering. In winter, maybe longer.

  “What do you suggest?” Tom asked. He realized that if the clinic closed, his father would have an awkward transition.

  “It’s a town of 3,400 with 8,870 registered weapons. They love that critter for fifteen years, sleep with it in winter, feed it from their plate. It’s their responsibility to end it,” Captain said. “Take the critter out back and put a bullet in his brain. Wait for a pretty day, sun shining. Let him see some robins. In a microsecond, it’s lights out.”

  “You don’t have an ethical problem,” Tom ventured. “And who knows? Maybe you’re right. You’re senior faculty, Captain.”

  Later his roommate asked, “What’s your father do? Is he a roadie?”

  “He’s a vet,” Tom answered, a bit off-balance.

  “Gulf War?” his roommate inquired.

  “No. He’s a veterinarian,” Tom replied, his tone crisp. “And a professional poker player.”

  “So he’s a professional liar,” his other roommate offered.

  Tom smiled, uneasy, and rode his bike to the library. He hadn’t thought of his father that way before. A professional liar.

  The Con weekly, Galileo, devoted a three-page article to his father. They included Captain’s allegations of conspiracy, and undue and misguided influence from PETA in Pittsburgh. His account of the plague of kittens and puppies criminally deserted by students was vivid. What did they imagine happened to critters dumped out of cars? Some magical intervention? Maybe Jesus would feed them? It was animal abuse and punishable by imprisonment and fines.

  “I’m not an innkeeper,” Captain stated. “And I’m not an executioner.” The Galileo quoted him and put his statement in bold.

  “That was his finest moment,” Sheriff Murphy says. “It had a kind of grandeur.”

  Thomas agrees.

  “Captain had a restless nature. He was cursed. Born bipolar,” the sheriff says. “He was lonely. He’d stay here for days.”

  Thomas is surprised. “What did you guys do?”

  “Smoke pot, watch TV, drink some and talk. He tried to teach me Texas Hold ’Em. I didn’t have the math for it. Plus, Captain was plain out lucky. You have to go the river, he’d tell me. It’s a game of blood. Every hand is seppuku. Captain had the statistics cold, and cards just came to him. Only two outs and he gets one. Flushes, full houses, trips. It was uncanny. But he was obsessed with law suits.”

  Thomas remembered the quiet sustained furor in Wood’s Hole. His father closed the clinic a year later. By then he was playing professionally. He was on the circuit with men barely twenty-one, and constantly moving across the county, often by himself. Captain called him from airports. He’d come in second at the Commerce Club in L.A. and was going to Palo Alto next. Then Vegas, Atlanta, Houston and Miami. He’d take off a few days before going up the coast to Atlantic City and Foxwood Casino in Connecticut.

  “I talked to Lily and Sam,” Sheriff Murphy says. “Good stock and hardworking. Agreeable. And he sure put his mark on those kids.”

  “Accommodating,” Thomas decides. “Easy come, easy go.”

  They are driving to the wake at the sheriff’s house. He notices Jimbo has the Governor General’s Gold Crescent on his key ring.

  “I wanted a token,” Jimbo says, uncertainly. “You mind?”

  Tom shakes his head no.

  “Want something? Lawyer in Vegas has documents and keys for you.”

  “He ever file a missing person report?” Thomas asks.

  “No,” Jimbo says, after a pause. “He did not.”

  “Captain didn’t have a single friend,” Thomas realizes.

  “I wouldn’t say that,” the sheriff replies.

  “I looked around. All I saw were people who paid him,” Thomas concludes. “And the ones with his chemistry. The ones he contaminated. Blood captives and customers.”

  “He was a big man,” Jimbo notes. “What was he? 6’5”? 6’6”? Lot of terrain inside. Low lands and peaks and marshes.”

  “Ever read Conrad?” Thomas suddenly asks.

  “Dennis Conrad?” the sheriff replies.

  “Tell me, Jimbo. What did he die from?” Thomas wants to know.

  “One 9-millometer to the back of the head. Instantaneous. Robbery. Kid killed him for the poker bracelet,” Jimbo tells him.

  Mourners mill around the living room and sit at a picnic table outside. He stands with the sheriff in the kitchen.

  “Did you know about them?” Thomas glances in the direction of the living room. Lillian and Samantha sit on the sofa, one child on either side, like human bookends.

  “No clue,” Jimbo says.

  “Think they knew about each other?” He studies the sheriff’s face. He’s grown a gray moustache that suits him. Sunlight turns it silver. He’s handsome, not distinguished, but a man who’s seen his share. A man with stories, rugged and confident. And worldly.

  Jimbo says no.

  “Figure there are others?” Thomas wonders.

  “I’d bet on it,” Jimbo says.

  “Clinic’s a worthless outdated shambles. It’s a tear-down,” Thomas tells the sheriff, and shrugs. His father didn’t have an appetite for money. He ran on some other and more exotic alien fuel.

  “I remember when they built it. Just Captain and your mother. I lent them the tools. Your mother enjoyed painting. And she was terrific with a hammer. She did the whole roof,” the sheriff said. “What was she? 17? She carried you in a big blue wicker Easter basket. She sewed the curtains. Went to Philadelphia for the fabric.”

  “What were they like then?” Thomas is interested.

  “Different. They stood out. Looked like they’d stepped out of a painting. Clothes all velvet and embroidered. Regal. Called themselves beatniks. They were intense. Truth is, they had crazy eyes. Both of them,” Jimbo told him.

  Thomas considers their crazy eyes. “What happened?” he asks.

  “People were scared. Crossed the street to avoid them. Captain so tall, your mom tiny, but feisty and mule-stubborn. First few years, Captain seemed to take hold. Then he hit the wall. Your mother twisted in t
he wind. Did a year of nursing school at the Con and quit. Carried notebooks of poems and threw them away. Started the theater group,” the sheriff remembers.

  “You were in that?” Thomas is surprised.

  “Thought I could meet women,” Jimbo admits. “Can’t meet them in church or a bar.”

  The dermatologists from Philadelphia sit on the floor with the twins. They’re playing Monopoly. Lily and Sam have managed to brush their hair and rub rouge on their cheeks. Samantha has removed her veil. They’re going to meet halfway in Briarwood for Sunday brunch. They’re sisters now. Lily passes a plate of cheese and grapes around the room. Sam pours lemonade into paper cups.

  Thomas squats beside his half-brothers and half-sisters. He notices the twins have all the hotels on the board.

  “See much of him?” Thomas directs his question to the older boy, Joshua, the dermatologist with his father’s name.

  “Hardly saw him after he turned pro,” Joshua said.

  “We’d watch him on TV,” Justin, the younger brother, offers.

  “So what you’d do together?” Thomas wants to know.

  “Went to Red Lobster in Oakdale mostly,” Joshua says.

  “We went to a movie once,” Justin says. “And we played Frisbee.”

  “Maybe twice,” his older brother says. It’s a correction.

  Thomas nods and walks back into the kitchen. The sheriff hands him a beer.

  “We did Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. That’s a play by Tennessee Williams,” Jimbo says.

  “Right,” Thomas nods.

  “After a week, your mother hung it up. Said she didn’t want to live inside someone else’s architecture,” Jimbo remembers.

  “What did she mean?” Thomas asks.

  “She could see all the pieces. And it lost its meaning. She saw the whole and the ending,” Jimbo explains. “Captain the same way.”

  “Was she depressed? Maybe angry?” Thomas wonders. “Just seventeen with a baby? She resent it?”

  “Captain was a roller coaster. Your mother started novels and burned them. Then astronomy. Captain went to New York. Got her a real telescope. But she’d see the schematics and get paralyzed. Said her mind was full of corridors with thousands of doors. Open a door, there’d be another corridor of doors. She got tangled in complexities. Said her head was a house of mirrors.”