The Tao of Apathy

by Thomas Cannon

  Chapter 37

  “My name is Yolanda, Father. I would like absolution.”

  “Fine, have it.” Father Chuck stared out the window without glancing at the gaunt black woman standing at his table in the Butt Hutt. She leaned on her IV pole.

  “No. I would like to make an act of reconciliation. Could we go to the chapel?”

  “No. It’s being remodeled. Why, I don’t know. So it’s either here or not at all. If it’s not at all, I’ll understand. Really.”

  Yolanda sat down, squeezing between the table and an extremely fat man sitting at the next table. “Bless me, Father for I have sinned,” she began, facing the interior of the room as Father continued to look out the window. “I haven’t been to confession since high school-”

  “So this is going to take a while?”

  She hesitated. “I don’t think I’ve led a very good life. I spent many years drinking and smoking. I don’t like going to church. I didn’t go forth and multiply. I don’t ever give to charity.”

  “Listen,” he said, tracking his hand as he flicked his ashes in the ashtray. “I have half a cigarette here and then I want some lunch. Don’t sweat the small stuff. Just give me a synopsis of what you want forgiveness for because so far your sins have pretty much described me.”

  Yolanda looked around the room. There was a group of nurses and a separate group of housekeepers sitting around tables. They were loud and chuckling a lot. Watching them smoke, she feared for them. That they would end up like her.

  “Come on. Hurry this up.”

  Yolanda pulled her gown down under her jacket. “You know what? Forget it.” She strained to get up.

  It was then that Father saw her really for the first time. He saw her thinned out hair and her sunken eyes. He jumped up and rushed to help her. “You know, I am just a little on edge here. I think I smoked a whole carton of cigarettes this morning. Let me help you back to your room and I’ll give you reconciliation as we go, but no silly stuff.” He grabbed his coat off the back of his chair and put it on while she shuffled to the door. “I mean, listen, have you ever killed anyone?”

  “No.”

  “Have you ever abused kids?”

  “Certainly not. I am an educator.”

  Father raised an eyebrow.

  “Still, I didn’t.”

  Father stepped out into the sunlight and had to shield his eyes for a moment. Then he held the door open for Yolanda and carried her IV pole as he helped her down the first step. Father did not know what more you could hope to accomplish. “Did you try to live the best life you could?”

  “No. And that’s what bothers me.”

  “Ah-h. Hmm. You know what?” Father asked as he raised his hands up and wafts of smoke drifted out the open door and swirled around him. “I am going to absolve you of your sins anyway. For what its worth. There. You’re absolved.”

  “Thanks, Father.”

  “Did this help?”

  “No.” Father steadied her IV pole on the salt-covered sidewalk and swung it around for her as he took her arm. “Well, it was better than nothing, I think. But I am one of those people that need a sign. Do you think I will get a sign?”

  “Anything’s possible with God.”

  “You really believe that, Father?”

  He sighed. “No. It’s just something we priests say.” They walked along the sidewalk. “But I’ve heard of such things.”

  Chapter 38

  Bigger unlocked the door to the apartment with the baby slung over his hip, sweating now from carrying the child up the flight of steps with his winter jacket on while following his three year-old boy who took forever because he was walking his Transformer up the stair railing. Inside, he tripped on the boy’s jacket that had been instantly flung on the floor. He dropped to the couch and undid the zipper of the baby’s snowsuit.

  Lying on a stack of newspapers on the coffee table was a list of things to do from the wife. The first on his list was clear the newspapers off the coffee table. He did that by stacking them in the corner of the living room. Under the newspapers was a box of Cheerios, so he grabbed a handful for the baby. Second on the list, was put the baby in the high chair. Then, feed the baby actual food and not just Cheerios.

  Bigger put the baby in the high chair and got out two jars of baby food. She cried while he warmed the carrots in the microwave and left the pears unheated. He steered a spoonful towards her, then stopped. Now, while she cried harder he got out a bib and put it on her. Then he looked on his list and said, “Ha.” Put a bib on the baby was the next thing on his list.

  He touched the spoon to her lips, but the baby was so busy crying that she kept throwing her head back and forth and dragging a line of puréed carrots across her face. Finally, he managed to dump enough carrots into her mouth to get her to stop crying, which she did instantly. He glanced down at his list, skipping down to number twelve. Number twelve was Where is Cody? Go check on him. “Cody,” he yelled. “Cody. Cody. CODY!”

  “Yes, daddy,” the boy said from his parents’ bedroom.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Well, at least you haven’t been killed or maimed.”

  “I’m not allowed to get killed or lamed until Mommy gets home, right Daddy?”

  Bigger gave the baby most of her carrots and then let her on her own with the spoon and the jar of pears which she ate by jamming her hand in the jar and sucking the puréed fruit off her fingers. He went to the medicine cabinet to find some aspirin. His head throbbed as he tried to undo the child safety lid. He banged it on the bathroom sink, and then finally pried it off with his teeth.

  It was empty. He cursed the kids, then the wife, then realized he was the one that had been too lazy to throw the empty container away. In desperation, he ate eight baby aspirin and went back to the kitchen to find the jar of pears upside down on the floor. Just as he was about to get the vacuum cleaner to suck up the mess, the doorbell rang. He gave the baby a few more Cheerios and answered the door.

  His mother came through the door, looked at the coffee table and sat her armful of files down on the floor. “I can’t stay for long,” she said. “I’m taking a night class and then your father has this function we have to go to.” She sat down, grabbed a pen and opened a file. “So let’s talk.”

  Ethel's little boy tried to figure out what he had done wrong. “About what?”

  “About what you need to talk to me about.” Ethel replied as her eyes scanned a document. “Gregg said you needed talk to me about something. He said it was urgent.”

  “I can’t believe he asked you to come over here.” Bigger dropped to the couch again and rubbed his forehead. “I didn’t decide that I needed to talk to you yet.”

  “God, I hate this furniture,” she said looking up. The couch and chair were a brown plaid with a green moose stitched on each of the head cushions. “Where did you ever pick out such homely stuff?”

  “From your den when you remodeled it two years ago. Would you like to go hate our bedroom set? Under the dirty clothes and Legos is the bedroom set you and dad got when you were first married.” Bigger was seething. “You have never gotten the tour. Have you? Come see the kids’ room. It’s decorated in early rummage sale.”

  Ethel did not look up again. “Well, you better get a good job soon, because I am running out of rooms to remodel, sweetie.”

  Bigger heard the rain of Cheerios on the floor and he knew that now he had the pears and a box of cereal to vacuum up. For the moment, Bigger could only listen as a little more cereal got dumped, but it was that moment that Cody raced into the kitchen and wiped out on the pears with a thud.

  “Mom, get the baby,” Bigger yelled as he staggered into the kitchen. Both the kids were screaming in terror, making the dog bark as she came out from under the kitchen table to lap up the pears.

  Cody continued to scream as Bigger picked up the pear and cereal-coated boy and sat with him on the couch. He held his son to soothe
him. In response, Cody cried until Bigger wanted to punch him.

  “There you go, Eva. Let Grandma wash you all up.” Ethel was handily washing the baby’s face while holding her and reading a case file. Bigger had picked the wrong kid as Eva was now laughing.

  Eva cooed as Ethel brought her into the living room and looked over a file. “Where’s Jenny?”

  “Working overtime,” Bigger said over Cody’s whimpering.

  “Are you guys really that hard up?”

  “No. We’re doing fine. Just fine. No problems.” The phone rang and the machine picked up. “This is the Steiffys. Leave a message before the phone company disconnects us. Beep.”

  “Hello.” a computer voice said, “This is Citi bank concerning you account. In order to protect you credit rating, please contact the delinquent accounts office at 1-800-” Bigger pulled the plug on the answer machine.

  “All right life. I’ll do it,” Bigger said on his hands and knees in front of the phone. “Mom, Mr. Seuss must have had you come over to talk to me about my new promotion to team guider.”

  “A promotion,” Ethel said, with gladness in her voice as she bounced Eva on her knee without jostling the file on her other knee. “Let’s clear a space on the floor and do a little dance. Here, better, yet,” Ethel said flipping her tablet of paper to a new sheet. Let me make you a list of exactly what you need to do for your new job.”

  “No.” Bigger screamed. “No list.” Cody stopped crying and wiggled to get down. Bigger began to pick Cheerios out of his hair but then gave up and let him run away.

  Ethel closed her file. “I am just so proud of you, Bigger.”

  “What? Really? Mom, you put aside your work.”

  “I want to talk about your new job, Bigger. Tell me about it.”

  “Really?” Bigger looked at his mom. “We can do that. But first, we’re going to have to maybe talk as a fellow management personnel about the union.” He looked at his mom again to see her reaction. Still pride, he thought. “The talk at the management meetings is that unionization is really going to hurt the patient’s rights.”

  “You’ve been to management meetings already?”

  “That seems possible. I was wondering. I was just wondering what maybe you thought. About that.”

  “I am worried about my patients. I think it is likely. But what can I do about it? When something like that comes up, I will just work longer hours and fight a little harder. Unless, the newest team guider in management has any suggestions.” She looked up and gave him a smile of encouragement. It took him a while to figure out what kind of smile it was.

  “Well, actually-”

  Ethel’s pager cut him off. “Oh, That’s your father. I was suppose to pick him up from Volvo dealership. Here Eva, let me put you by your toys,” she said putting the baby down in front of her. “ I gotta go. But I’ll come talk to you tomorrow. Will you be in the kitchen around two?”

  “Either in the kitchen or on the roof.” Bigger said.

  Chapter 39

  The gray and blue squares of the carpet pattern complemented the light blue walls. Even the colors in the large pastorals bolted to those wall in large metal frames accented the decor of the hallway. The hallways of Saint Jude’s created a sense of security and spoke the lie, There is no asbestos in me. The dark, thick carpet told the patients that the hospital was successful and high class. It also made moving carts and wheelchairs down the halls as fun as pushing a baby stroller along a sandy beach.

  Bigger grabbed the cart with the dirty dishes from 2B and pushed and yanked it into motion as the early afternoon sun streaked through random windows. This was the first cart to bring down and he wanted to be done with all his carts. He still was not sure if he even wanted to ask his mom to go against the union, but the possibility of the promotion made his current sucky job suck even more. He was just about as pleased with his job as Jenny was with him to come home and find pureed pears all over and her list not done.

  He got about ten feet with the cart when a nurse ran after him eating an extra crispy chicken thigh. “Food cart. I hope that food cart is not leaving us. We didn’t get no chance to pick up all the dirty trays,” she said with a greasy mouth. “We have been too busy and you always go down too early, you stupid cart.”

  The rage of having a bad day after a bad night and of having to be around people like this nurse bubbled to his fists and to the back of his neck. His face was still red from the slap in the face of being told that he was a model food service employee. It was a deep red now because that was what he was aspiring to be. He wanted to curse this nurse. He wanted to strike her. He wanted to follow this nurse home and kill her dog. He wanted to give Seuss the information he wanted, so that this nurse and the others like her wouldn’t get their union. He pulled the cart a few more feet and then let go of it and walked off.

  “She wasn’t busy, she was eating,” he told Joe while he stood in the kitchen and waited with crossed arms. “Then, of course, because of my invisibility, she just talked to the cart instead of me. I hope her greasy fingers slip off the handle.”

  Bigger’s body began to shake. “I am going back to get that cart. I don’t care what she thinks.” Bigger stomped out of the kitchen. He took the stairs two at a time and walked right up to the cart and grabbed it angrily.

  His hand slipped off the chicken-greased handle. “All day long I got to walk behind and get out of the way for wide-hipped, motor-mouthed, gibber-jabbering, gossiping, sneering, facial hair-having temperature-takers,” Bigger muttered to himself as he stood in the middle of the hallway. Then he developed a facial tick as he saw the nurse carrying one last dirty tray, waving at the cart to wait. “God,” he asked, “why are you making me so miserable? Why does everything bad happen to me?”

  “There is no particular reason, I guess,” Yolanda said from her room, clutching the phone to her head. “I just wanted to call.” Yolanda’s hand trembled. “Yeah, I know we haven’t talked in eight years, Dad.”

  “I am just calling now.”

  Bigger stood motionless as the nurse made her way.

  “Actually, I just wanted to see if you remember when I was ten and you and I went to see the movie “Summer Magic” together.”

  “I-Dad, please listen. I have just been thinking about that day a lot lately. For some reason, I wanted to see that movie really bad.” She paused. “It had Burl Ives who helps a poor family and sings. I think I wanted to see it because we were poor and I thought maybe I could learn what songs we were supposed to be singing.”

  “Yeah, I was kind of a strange kid. Anyway, you took me there and you let me pick the front row to sit in. You sat hunched down next to me and let me hold the big tub of popcorn that we shared.”

  The nurse set the tray on Bigger’s cart.

  “I want to thank you for that day. I loved it. That’s all…. There’s no trick. I would give anything to be back in that theater…..with you. You took me there as a reward for my report card. And. And it was the last time I felt worthy to get good things. I haven’t seen it since, but thought of that movie many times over the years.”

  Yolanda held onto the phone with both hands. Bigger could hear the emotion in her voice. “Actually, there is something I should tell you- Oh….. I understand. I can let you go.”

  “Bye, Dad.”

  Bigger turned and began walking without the cart. Bigger had noticed Yolanda’s name on a menu card many times. He had seen her walking in the hallway with someone supporting her and had heard the nurses talk about Yolanda. He knew. He knew that he should just be thankful that he was luckier than she was, but the scene had only colored his world and the whole world more bleak. Life was sad. The world was full of abused kids, lonely people, abandoned elderly, and a large number of un-neutered pets according to Drew Carey. His own life was filled with bills, dead end jobs, honey-do lists and a condescending ass for a boss and Godfather. Bigger veered into the stairwell to collect himself.

  Tomorrow, Bigger knew he
would be more optimistic. He would be able to see the things he lived for, the only things to live for: his children, his wife, his parents, and his dog. But tomorrow, he would still know that he and that patient would be one day closer to death without really having lived and that more days than not would be filled with pain, lunacy, frustration, anger, and boredom. And only if they were lucky.

  Chapter 40

  A workman in a hard hat with his tool-belt slung over his wide shoulder lumbered on to the elevator pushing a wheelbarrow of cement. The workman held up the wheelbarrow and waited patiently as a frail man in a hospital gown shuffled out of the way. The door closed and a nurse opened her mouth.

  “You know, I am getting pretty damn sick of you construction guys all over the hospital. I know you’re doing your job, but do you guys have to make so much noise knocking down walls and drilling and stuff?”

  “We were told those rooms had to get remodeled toot sweet.”

  “There are patients still in them, though. Doesn’t that seem like a problem?”

  “Nah. Most of them just lay there real quiet. Hey, I remember you from the bar last night.” He squinted at her name badge. “Mary. You and this guy were hanging on each other like my dog hangs on my leg.”

  Dykes raised his hand up from his corner of the elevator in a slight wave.

  The door opened and everyone looked at Father Chuck to stare him into taking the next elevator, but when he pushed on, everyone shuffled against the wall to make room. Father pushed his button and slid into a corner where he began to rub his forehead and look at the floor.

  “What’s the matter, Father?” the nurse asked.

  Dykes did not look up, but thought, they tried that with me too in the beginning, but don’t let it get to you Father. Don’t even answer them.