by James King
The marines. The word had fascinated Nick. He’d associated it with his favorite color from his box of crayons: aquamarine. He imagined his father in a light blue uniform, standing in the snow. As he grew older, he started reading about the marines. His admiration for his father grew. The descriptions of boot camp were incredible, and they frightened him. He tried to imagine himself standing at attention with a drill sergeant screaming in his face; crawling under barbed wire; running an obstacle course; climbing walls and hauling himself up ropes. He knew he’d never make it. And somehow he knew, although he tried to dismiss it, that his father didn’t think he would have been able to make it, either.
He’d make it in other ways, then. He forced himself to play sports and tried to convince himself that he enjoyed it. But he hated the cut-throat competition among both the kids and the parents, the pranks in the locker room, the ridiculousness of jockstraps and the humiliation of having your mother launder them. He was a fixture on the bench. He’d stand by the coach, hoping the coach would put him in, hoping that he wouldn’t. He usually got game time only when his team was too far ahead to lose. One time, the coach actually pushed him aside, saying, “Come on, Warrington. You’re in my way. Sit down, willya?”
There was one glorious moment, and it had happened way back in Little League. One day, he wasn’t sure why, the coach put him in at center field. He spent the half-inning punching his mitt and praying that the batter wouldn’t hit a high pop to him. In the bottom of the inning he came up to bat. With two called strikes, the catcher was hollering, “He’s a looker, he’s a looker, he’s not gonna swing. Easy out, easy out.” On the next pitch, Nick closed his eyes and swung. He felt something hit his bat; at first, he thought he’d hit the catcher’s head. He opened his eyes and there was activity out beyond second base. The second baseman was running, the center fielder moving to his right, and all of a sudden people were screaming at him to run. He ran to first base, his legs moving furiously, as if in a dream. But unlike a dream, he was actually moving. The first base coach, one of his teammates, was windmilling his arm, the signal to go for second. When Nick neared second he heard people screaming at him to hold up, hold up and he stopped. He made sure his foot was on the bag and the relay came in and the second baseman tagged him even though he was safe by a mile and the ump yelled, “Safe!” and there was another crescendo of cheering. Nick looked over to the dugout and saw that everyone was standing and cheering, including the coach. And then Nick looked over at the bleachers and he saw his father standing and clapping and whistling. He saw his mother looking up at his father, and then out at him, smiling. She understood him. Thinking about it now, Nick had the strange sensation that even back then, as his mother smiled out at her son standing on second base, she knew that someday he’d be driving along, thinking about nothing and everything, and this moment would be relived.
Nick’s eyes welled. They usually did when he thought about his mother—even more, perhaps, than they did when he thought of Marilyn. They all had idealized the woman, and though he was aware of the rose-tinted perspective brought about by her dying young—faults and idiosyncrasies forgotten in favor of more saintly reminiscences—Nick was hard-pressed to recall any flaws or even weaknesses. The only one he could think of—and it would be grossly unfair to call it a weakness—was her uncharacteristic complaining during her final days. But what could she do? Bone cancer, he’d read, was an extremely painful type of cancer. If she didn’t have the right to complain, who did?
One night he was in his room, recording songs from the radio with a tape recorder he’d gotten as a Christmas present. He would spend hours taping the songs and keeping meticulous notes of the titles and artists. He used the machine’s numerical counter to locate whatever he wanted to hear, but on this night, while recording “Stairway to Heaven,” he heard his mother cry out. His bedroom was across the hall from his parents’ bedroom. His parents were having an argument of some sort. Nick was furious with his father for arguing. Now, armed with something to document this transgression, he might have proof of his father’s cruelty. He turned the radio down and let the recorder run until he heard the door to his parents’ bedroom open and close and his father’s footsteps recede as he walked down the stairs.
Nick punched rewind, then stop, and, putting in an earbud, listened to his parents’ distant, muffled voices. His mother was sobbing as he’d never heard before. It’s too much, Bill. The kids will only remember this. I never ask you for anything. But I’m asking you to do this. He also heard more crying. But it wasn’t his mother. He ejected the tape and put it in the top drawer of his desk. He sat for a long time, trying to figure out what they had been arguing about.
After the funeral, he took the tape down to his father’s workbench in the basement. He grabbed a hammer and, before he could change his mind, smashed the cassette. He grabbed some grass hand-clippers and cut the tape into tiny pieces, then put the whole mess into the garbage. He never mentioned the recording—or its contents—to Mike or Marcy.
“We’re not going to be there in time, are we?” Marcy asked. The sun was rising and they were still in Illinois.
“How long have you been awake?” Nick asked, caught off guard, as if his sister had been listening in on his thoughts.
“Don’t dodge the question,” Marcy said. “We’re not going to make it in time, are we, Nick?”
“Sure we will,” Nick said, not at all sure.
An hour later, they stopped for a bathroom- and-coffee break. While he was waiting for Marcy, his cell phone rang. It was Mike.
“Not sure where you two are, but you may as well turn around,” his brother said.
Nick almost laughed. Mike wasn’t one for small talk. Since they’d talked just yesterday and exchanged cell phone numbers, Mike probably figured they were up to speed—or at least as up to speed as Mike wanted to be.
“We missed them?” Nick asked. “I thought he said noon.”
“He did,” Mike said. “My flight last night got canceled. I was rebooked on the first one out this morning. I decided to call April to make sure they would be there. She didn’t have any idea what I was talking about.”
“What do you mean?”
“Just what I said. I think the old man is keeping her in the dark.”
Nick tried to digest all this while thinking about how he would break it to Marcy. “I don’t get it. Where the heck are they?”
“I’m not exactly sure,” Mike said. “But it sounds like they’re almost through Nebraska.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
April studied the road map while her grandfather was in the restroom. They had started early and already driven five hours. Her grandfather had slept most of the time. But at exactly noon, he’d opened his eyes and announced, “I need to piss and eat.”
She was tired, but pinpointing their location on the map revived her. They were just about at the Wyoming border, finally free of Nebraska, just two states away from California. She couldn’t believe how much time it was taking. During her long hours behind the wheel, April considered creating another list: STS—States That Suck. The people were friendly, though. The waitresses didn’t seem as hurried or as angry and frumpy as they were back home. She wondered if people got friendlier the farther west you went. That would make San Francisco the friendliest place on earth.
She also liked the thought, if not the actual experience, of having traveled through several different states. Now, if Heather said something about, say, Iowa, April would be able to say, Oh, yeah? Have you ever actually been there? No? Well, I have. And let me tell you . . . Over some backstage phone call after his desperate and heartsick confession that he loved her and missed her, she would say to Keith Spinelli, Listen—I’ve got to do the next set. You want to be with me? Do what I did. Break free.
But as April studied the map, she started getting nervous. She was proud of the increasingly adult role she played in checking into roadside motels and using her grandfather’s credit card to p
ay for gas and meals. She had no problem driving on the highway now and along the wide roads off the interstate. But what would happen when they reached San Francisco? It was a big city with hills and those strange cable car thingys in the middle of the road.
Whenever she asked her grandfather what they’d do when they got to San Francisco—where they’d stay, how she’d meet someone to introduce her to a band—he told her not to worry. He knew cities. I didn’t get to be an old man by being a rube, he’d say.
Whatever that meant. She often got the feeling there was something he wasn’t telling her. A hidden agenda, her mother would say. Always a hidden agenda with him.
“You by yourself?”
The man addressing her, a fat guy wearing a cowboy hat, boots, and butt-crack jeans, stared at her from the counter stool.
“No,” April said. She returned to her map.
“Who you with?” the man asked.
Great, another pervert. She used her finger to follow I-80 from Green River to San Francisco.
“Miss?”
April couldn’t ignore him any longer. “I’m with my grandfather,” she said, not trying to disguise the contempt in her voice.
The man nodded amiably. “That him out there?” he asked, pointing to the window behind her. April turned and saw her grandfather walking toward the divided highway.
She bolted out of the diner. The parking lot was unpaved, and the wind kicked up a fine white dust in her face. She had to stop and rub her eyes. Her grandfather was getting closer to the highway. A semi roared past just as she grabbed him by the arm. He looked down at her. His eyes were unfocused. He was working his mouth slowly, as if trying to form words.
“I thought . . . I was trying,” he began. Then his eyes sharpened suddenly. “Where in the holy hell have you been?” he demanded.
“I was waiting in the diner. We were going to have lunch. Don’t you remember?”
“Of course I remember. You’re always asking me if I remember. I remember everything—don’t you worry.”
“But where were you going, Grandpa?”
“Never mind. I’m here, aren’t I?”
April looked at her grandfather. “That makes, like, no sense,” she said.
“Maybe not to you. I can’t account for your piss-poor education.”
April tried to guide him back to the diner, but he shrugged her off whenever she took his elbow. When they got into the restaurant, the waitress and fat-assed cowboy gawked at them. April stared back defiantly until they went about their business. Her grandfather announced he wasn’t hungry.
“But it’s lunchtime, Grandpa. You said you were. Besides, I’m hungry.”
“I thought you were in a big hurry to get to Seattle,” he said.
“San Francisco.”
“Whatever, like you’re always saying. So what are we doing here? Let’s go.”
Her grandfather walked out of the diner. April paid for his untouched coffee and for her Coke. The waitress shoved a huge oatmeal raisin cookie at her. April almost cried.
“Tell me a story about Grandma Clare,” she said a few minutes later, back on the highway, trying to get her grandfather focused. He was sharpest when he was telling his stories.
“I already told you my stories.”
“Not about Grandma Clare,” April said. “What did you like most about her?”
Bill squinted at her. “What kind of question is that? I liked everything about her.”
“Well, then, what didn’t you like about her?”
Bill looked at her again. “Now, that’s a much better question,” he said. He looked out the window. “But I’m not gonna answer it.”
But he did—practically nonstop through Wyoming. None of the stories were bad, though, despite his promise. This was the thing she noticed about her grandma Clare. If all you had to go on were the stories that her grandfather and her mother told her, then Grandma Clare was right up there with the Blessed Virgin Mary, maybe higher. This seemed to April to be one of the good things about dying: A sort of amnesia sets in. People forget your faults, or at least they stop talking about them—unless you’re a school shooter or a pedophile or a Hitler of some sort. Would her mother remember her grandfather this way? Would she stop calling him old man and Billy Boy and suddenly start talking about “my father” or “my dad” or even “Daddy”? April thought of her own father. Would her mother stop saying nasty things about him if he died? And what would she say about him? “Yeah, he walked out on us, but he was actually a really good guy. A really great dad. Really.”
She shook her head, trying to ward off the bad karma that thinking about death—especially the death of people you know—is sure to bring on. Good topic for a song, though. She played with some lines while her grandfather talked.
Did you die to escape your lies?
Now that you’re dead, it’s an empty bed.
When you could breathe, you cheated with ease.
But now that you’re gone, it’s your touch that I . . . long?
She’d have to work on it later. Her grandfather was now distracting her, he was talking so much. He talked longer than April had ever heard him go on before. She started to get the feeling that she didn’t even need to be there. But she knew it was good that she was, because if they weren’t there together, driving to a place neither of them had been, he’d be telling the same stories, but he’d be telling them back in Ohio, sitting in his ratty brown chair in his dumpy little house, smoking his smelly pipe and picking at the gross gray hair in his ears, talking and laughing at the peeling wallpaper.
She felt her throat tighten and her eyes well. What was with the crying, April wondered as she gripped the steering wheel. They were getting close to San Francisco; she should be ecstatic. Why did a free cookie, or the thought of her grandfather alone, have such an effect on her? Sad stuff, she supposed, but enough to get all teary? She got emotional about being emotional. Ridiculous. She concentrated on her grandfather’s stories.
“Graduation was her goal,” her grandfather said.
April realized she’d lost the thread of whatever story her grandfather was telling her. “Grandma went back to school?”
“No . . . no . . . She wanted to see Nick, your uncle Nick, graduate from high school,” he said. “She knew she’d never see Marcy graduate, but she tried to hold on for Nick.”
Then, all of a sudden, he grew quiet. Another black-hole moment, and she tried to think of something to say that wouldn’t sound stupid, a question to ask that wouldn’t sound nosy. She saw a roadside memorial: a small white cross, a splash of color at its base.
“The doctors?” her grandfather said, as if answering someone else’s questions. “They said she might hold on for quite a while, or there could be a sudden turn and she’d go quickly. They need a fancy degree to tell me that? And then she didn’t even make it to Mike’s graduation. She gave up.”
April’s head snapped up.
“What do you mean, she gave up?”
“It was too much for her. The cancer.”
“Yeah, but you say it like—I don’t know—like you blame her. She had cancer, Grandpa.”
“I know what she had, believe you me.” He said this quietly. He apparently wasn’t in the mood to argue. “And I didn’t mean anything by it. She was in incredible pain. Incredible.” He paused. “Let’s change the subject.”
But for about thirty miles, there was no change of subject. In fact, there was no discussion at all.
Then he spoke up again as if he’d been talking all along. “Reminds me of the time Nick ran that touchdown,” he said.
April tried not to get freaked out. “I thought it was a baseball game,” she said. “You told me he hit a double in a baseball game.”
Her grandfather frowned. “Am I repeating myself?” he asked.
“Only every story,” April said, laughing.
Her grandfather laughed, too. A good sign.
“Whatever it was,” he said, “I was relieved,
I can tell you that.”
“Relieved? Why?”
“I was worried Nick was a little . . .” He stopped. “What am I doing? Never mind.”
“A little what?” April asked, trying to think of the word he had apparently forgotten.
After another pause, her grandfather said, “Well, in the marines we used to say that some guys spent a little too much time polishing their buttons.”
April inhaled loudly. “Grandpa! You thought Uncle Nick was gay?”
“No!” her grandfather said quickly. “I mean, you never know for sure, right? Until they start going out with girls. Or they hit a home run or something.”
“Grandpa, that is so Neanderthal! There are lots of sports people—”
“I know, I know, don’t get all—whaddya call it—PC on me, okay? Remember, I’m talking about thirty years ago. Things were different back then. And it doesn’t matter anyway. He married a beautiful girl. Poor thing.”
