Funny Once: Stories

by Antonya Nelson

  8. Für Elise

  “Mama.” Nigel stood beside Holly’s bed. “Mama,” he repeated. She hadn’t heard the alarm, nor the telephone call and message about subbing at her elementary school alma mater, nor the second message, from the nursing home, concerning her father’s antisocial behavior. Her sleep had always been scarily deep; her sister would claim it was the result of having been the family baby, the fact that somebody had always been around to rescue her from whatever she had blithely managed to sleep through.

  But was it reasonable to think her nine-year-old son should be that somebody? Nigel was telling her that he had already called a cab and gotten money from her purse, and would bring her change, that he’d packed a lunch and gathered his homework. “You have to sign the permission form,” he said, holding the paper on a DVD case, pen in his other hand. “Just sign here.” She struggled out of her nest of pillows and did as he requested.

  “I’m sorry,” she told him.

  “Why?”

  “I’m a lame mom.”

  He blinked at her, having no particular response. Some other child might have reassured her she wasn’t a lame mom, or would have forced her to quit being one, but not this child. The cab tooted from outside; they had a favorite driver, Ben, who liked to discuss chess. “Bye,” Nigel called. “I’m locking the door.”

  When she’d first brought him home as a baby, Holly’s mother had come to stay with them, so frightened had Holly been of caring for an infant alone. In their family, Holly was famous for spilling her milk nearly every night at the kitchen table. Who in his right mind would allow her to try to hold on to a baby, anyway? Every time she encountered a hard surface—tile floor, cement drive, bathtub, brick wall, marble counter—Holly was nearly incapacitated, so easily could she see her baby’s head splattering onto it. Her family had named this postpartum depression, but Holly hadn’t really gotten past it yet. And you couldn’t legitimately suffer postpartum over a fourth-grader, could you?

  She didn’t even listen to the message from the drone at the Wichita Public Schools downtown office; she wasn’t up to spending time with other people’s children today, either (swings and monkey bars over gravel, lunchroom choking hazards, crosswalk mayhem). Instead, she called her brother, whose work schedule was extremely erratic and whose hapless existence could sometimes lift her out of troubled feelings about her own.

  “Dad’s being a bad boy,” she said. “Should we do something?”

  “Like what? Ground him? He’s already grounded. Kick him out? Send him to jail? He’s already in lockdown. Every single punishment that exists he’s already suffering. And besides, so far it just seems like getting nakey-nakey in front of the old ladies. They’re calling you now?”

  “Last resort, per usual. Wanna hang, anyway?”

  “You could help me pick a cell phone,” he said, shyly. Holly smiled, taken out of her own vague distress by Hugh’s news.

  “There’s a girl!” she said.

  “Don’t tell Hannah.”

  “Hannah who?”

  He was dying to talk, Holly discovered. In the past he’d dated a certain kind of girl who’d lasted only as long as it had taken her to figure out he wouldn’t move past a fixed degree of intimacy. He wouldn’t bring her home to meet his mother, he wouldn’t go on a road trip with her, there wouldn’t be a ring or a wedding. In the past he’d been known to break up via postcard. These affairs of the heart had lasted, at most, a year, and usually less.

  This, however, seemed utterly other. The beloved was named Stacy, and she was taking a class with him at the U (“I’m on the seventeen-year plan,” Hugh told Holly. “I’ll graduate in the same class as Nigel”). Not until they’d purchased the phone, gone to lunch, then decided to visit Ugly’s—and had to wait for it to open at two, sitting in the parking lot with the other desperate regulars who were watching their clocks—did Hugh reveal that the girlfriend, this fantastic object of his affections, was married.

  “Oh, Hugh.” How could he seem so optimistic? Holly wondered. The married people never left their spouses, never. Well, occasionally, she supposed. They left for the more beautiful, for the better fit, for true love at last. In movies, in novels, in Hollywood, in glamorous celebrity history. But for her brother Hugh?

  He gave her a wan, smitten smile. “She wants me to meet her children.”

  “Children?” Worse and worse. “How old are they?”

  “Nine, six, and three. She says she and her husband mate every three years.”

  “Then she’s just about due for another,” Holly noted. Which made Hugh frown. The neon light buzzed on in the barred window and everybody in the parking lot jumped into action. “You know what Hannah would say,” Holly couldn’t help mentioning. “She would say this is because you’re thirty-nine. Because now Dad isn’t at home anymore. Because it’s time for you to grow up.”

  “If I wanted to know what Hannah thought, I’d ask her,” Hugh said. This was as rude as he ever got, so Holly apologized. Their bartender brought them their usual drinks and they sat not talking for a while, finding their way back into the subject, into friendliness. It was not Holly’s job to argue with Hugh; she’d never been that sister. And she hated that she’d knocked the wind out of his sails. But seriously? She loved her brother, he was a great person, and maybe this Stacy appreciated all those qualities that made him who he was, but as for being husband material, not to mention stepfather material . . . “Has she been to the house?”

  “Several times,” he said primly.

  “What’d she say?”

  “She likes it.” And then, because he was in love and because Holly was the first person he’d told about Stacy, he gave up his grudge against her and went on at length about some misadventure with the woman’s dog. Holly was fascinated. She hadn’t been on a date in more than a year, yet sitting around naked on the kitchen floor with a sick dog didn’t sound in the least bit romantic to her. Maybe this woman was wackier even than her brother; maybe she was the perfect soul mate for Hugh. Even though she could hear her sister’s skeptical voice pounce on the notion of a “soul mate.” This, despite the fact that their very own parents had been modestly happy together for roughly half a century. The evidence was solid—genetic—that it could happen, but it hadn’t, not for any of the Panik offspring.

  “I don’t like it that Hannah and Thomas are separated.”

  “Hannah’s always been hard to live with. And I can see moving in with your mom. Sometimes it’s nice to live with your mom. She probably cooks. Moms make great roommates. I still miss ours.”

  “I hope Nigel feels that way about me. I get the impression he’s counting the days until he can go to college and be with his true tribe, the other geniuses who’ve had to tolerate life with morons all these years.”

  “So Stacy and I have been trying to figure out how I can meet her kids without making a big deal. I could rent a clown suit, maybe.”

  “How about you rent a clown suit and we go to the nursing home? Little shot in the arm?”

  “How about two clown suits, and we rob a bank while we’re at it? I mean, as long as we’re renting clown suits. Might as well get our money’s worth.”

  His new cell phone suddenly broadcast a song from his shirt pocket, right over his heart. Für Elise. Stacy had mentioned it was the only thing she could play on the piano. “My first call,” he said. They’d copied all of Holly’s contacts into Hugh’s new device. “Hannah,” he noted. “Not like we’ve ever been able to pull one over on her, is it?”

  “Not once,” Holly agreed.

  9. Goodbye, Sam

  Sam Panik had been evicted from the nice nursing home and now was at the not nice one, the large place that more closely resembled a hospital than a house, whose operations were modeled on factory rather than family dynamics. Patients here wore name tags because otherwise the staff would not know what to call them, and wristbands that identified their wishes concerning emergencies. DNR, some said. Their beds were lined up
like trays containing parts, labels at the foot of each to identify exactly what parts were therein contained.

  Their father’s La-Z-Boy had been returned to the family house, back alongside its companion chair, two decrepit empty seats.

  “For fuck’s sake, stop crying,” Hannah said tiredly to her sister. It was a refrain with Holly. “You’re gonna get everybody all mopey,” she said, then conceded, “Not that they aren’t already.” The place leaked despair, reeked of hopelessness and the dread and promise of death. And like Vegas, it seemed timeless, as much going on at three in the morning as at three in the afternoon, the clock on mortality a relentlessly noncircadian one.

  “Mama,” said Nigel, putting his hand into Holly’s. The middle of the night; all Paniks had been summoned to the patriarch’s bedside. Hugh smelled of beer and had failed to zip his pants. Nigel had deep purple circles beneath his eyes; he was a kind of living reproach, to Hannah; her own sons would never be so sensitive to the plights of their elders. Never. Had she roused Leo from his stinking teenage comatose slumber, he would be standing here like a bear pulled from hibernation, surly and snarling. Nigel’s lovely slender fingers, his graceful lithe attention to his mother, his fragile tragic beauty. Hannah wanted to shove him over, for some reason. Sensitivity in men was starting to infuriate her. Was this the beginning of menopause, the disappearance of those syrupy hormones responsible for tears and sympathy and compassion, the end of love? Was this the next step on her journey, further scorn for softness, sissies, sentimental fools?

  She’d always been accused of being cold; how much chillier could she expect to become? Woman: begun as mammal, moved through amphibious stages, landed eventually a leathery reptile, rolling dispassionate eyes from a rocky perch . . .

  Her father appeared reptilian, now that she thought about it; maybe the evolution wasn’t strictly female. Desiccated, tongue prominent, fingers crimped as if for clinging to a less substantial piece of ground. His lucidity had slipped; he no longer could be counted upon to come back from his purely private landscape to join his family in a shared one. Hannah kept thinking about the dozen highlights that Hugh had suggested she find in her daily life, those twelve ways to predictably be made happy. What might those be for her father? What, now, gave him any pleasure whatsoever? If it was difficult for her to locate her own joys, assuming that drinking only counted for one, how on earth would her father find his? At present, he was muttering a long monologue to himself, the kind of thing one observed on street corners and at bus stops, the unmedicated crazies of the world who created around themselves the force field of invisible companions, antagonists.

  Into his grandfather’s circle of anger stepped Nigel, saying, “Papa?” in his clear child’s voice. Which seemed to penetrate whatever dispute had been going on, cut right through the crowd to the deeply submerged version of singular Sam Panik. He blinked as if coming to. “Papa,” the boy said again, “are you having a bad dream?”

  “It’s terrible,” his grandfather croaked, clutching at Nigel’s hand. He’d been shouting for hours, the staff had said; no matter what drug they tried, he came out from under it at full volume once more, flailing and furious. He’d punched one of the nurses in the throat. Despite his emaciated condition, he was still fierce, his bones heavy, his right hook impressive. The woman had pulled down her scrub top to show the Panik family the bruise. Hannah wouldn’t have let her own sons anywhere near the man, despite the restraints on his forearms and chest, despite the sedative drip. Watching Nigel, she had a terrible presentiment: he would die young, like Hamish. He carried the aspect of ghost in his graceful limbs.

  “What’s the bad dream?” Nigel asked.

  “They tied me up, so I couldn’t save him,” said his grandfather. “I could see him but I couldn’t save him.” He’d stopped struggling against the very real belts that had been secured across his chest and legs and arms. Nigel was holding the old man’s hand.

  “Tell him about the prize,” Holly coached her son.

  “What prize?” Hannah demanded. “Chess again?”

  “Something something humanitarian,” Holly said. “It had to do with fundraising, I think? He wrote an essay? I didn’t even know about it until the newspaper called. His picture’ll be in there tomorrow.” She shook her head in astonishment; this kid of hers was always surprising her. And not because she received phone calls from the police.

  Effortlessly, he went around doing good deeds, like some kind of fucking saint.

  “Maybe we could turn off some of these lights?” Hugh said. “No wonder he’s having nightmares.”

  “He’s talking about Hamish,” Holly said.

  “Hamish,” agreed their father.

  “Hamish,” echoed Nigel. “I like to say it.”

  From the moment he’d moved into the new home, he’d refused sustenance. A kind of vigil was established, a member of the family or a hospice volunteer always present. But Hannah was alone with their father when he died. She thought it was a gift, that the person best prepared to accommodate a death was the one who did, in fact, show up to take on the task. Oldest sister, bossy little stand-in mother all her life. Only Hamish had been able to challenge her, only Hamish, long dead brother. Who would she have become had he remained where he should have, above and beyond her, that boy who skipped ahead mere inches outside her reach, taunting her authority, brazenly disobedient, naughty fox to her clucking hennishness?

  When they’d removed Sam Panik from his home, he’d declared that Hamish would have prevented it. Maybe. He lay now deprived of fundamentals, by his own design. He’d stopped eating a week earlier, spitting the water and food from his mouth, unresponsive to any words or actions. Holding his hand, she had a strange wish: that her nephew Nigel was with her, the image of his spatulate fingers in her father’s gnarled grip a lasting one. It appeared to her in a kind of vision, that the boy was the only other human available who would have appreciated the moment, the instant, of passing from among the living to the not. Nigel. That strange boy who shared in Hannah’s bloodstream. Who gave her long penetrating looks from which she, by dint of pride, did not avert her gaze, although she wanted to. He was daunting. He was like her dead brother, she realized. “Who have you assigned him to, in the instance of your death?” she’d asked Holly. Who’d, predictably, burst into tears. “Make plans,” Hannah had ordered, hoping that those plans would include her, yet assuming that it would be Hugh, bachelor alcoholic hopeless Hugh, given the gift of wise Nigel, reincarnated version of their beloved brother.

  “Papa,” she said softly. She had watched a litter of kittens die once, born too early; their mother had not been interested in them, dropped them from her body like excrement, then abandoned them to their fate, knowing they wouldn’t survive, were not worth nursing. And they went like this, one at a time, tiny wet black chests heaving up and down, and then not at all, Hannah helpless witness. Her father’s breathing had lengthened. It was something to focus upon, the long pauses in between, in and out. Not believing in anything beyond the here and now, it might be peaceful to enter death’s chamber. The end of labor. The last difficult willed or unwilled drift into sleep, his daughter still helpless, yet there, here, to see him out.

  10. Hello, Ivan

  One day Nigel’s father, Ivan, showed up on Holly’s doorstep. It was the beginning of January; snow was falling; spring was ages away; Holly was an official orphan. “I saw the picture!” he shouted when she opened the door; she’d forgotten that about him, his overloud voice. “But you aren’t in the phone book.”

  “Unlisted,” Holly said; her number had been too close to a doctor’s, and she’d grown tired of fielding messages. She smiled at Ivan. He was a nice man, and he looked exactly the same as he had ten years ago. He was far too nice to be her boyfriend; that had been the problem. Too nice, too serious, too reverent in his affection toward her, which was the kiss of death, finding her worthy. Too innocent and too worldly, at the same time. He liked to talk about politics and h
istory; Holly had always felt like a spoiled idiot next to him. And also a cynic. Also? Bored. And then ashamed of her boredness. Making love with him, she’d been able to imagine their future arguments, which would end with him being profoundly disappointed in her, and her being ashamed, American ashamed, fat ignorant privileged shame.

  “I could not remember the street, so I drove around and around knocking on doors, your neighbors might find me tiresome. I am sorry, the houses are so similar. But finally here you are!” He’d seen Nigel’s photograph in the newspaper, had read about the award the boy had won for his Christmas essay, which had been used to raise money for hurricane victims. He’d first recognized himself in the image; next he had recognized Holly’s name. He had done the math. At any rate, he wanted to meet the boy, whom he did not call “my son,” which Holly appreciated. Men: they could have children they did not know about. How preposterous! An American man, Holly thought, would have sent a lawyer, or done nothing, hidden in fear of Holly’s sending a lawyer, her brother-in-law, in fact, was a lawyer, to collect support. But Ivan merely wanted to meet the boy. He was not going to make any claims. His new girlfriend, he said, had children of her own, and he had, a few years earlier, gotten a vasectomy, frightened of what his homeland experience would wreak upon a next generation. And so his offspring, this accidental, incidental, unknown-till-now child, was a complete gift, in his mind, a miracle, amazing! Exclamation mark! He had landed on Holly’s doorstep with gratitude, solicitude, an homage rather than a court summons. He greeted her by holding her close, murmuring his thankfulness into her ear. He said, “He is exactly like my brother, exactly like Roman, who is gone. I couldn’t believe it, when I saw it, I just looked and looked at my face, at Roman’s face looking at me from the newspaper!” And Holly remembered how Ivan had always smelled faintly of raw onions. And had gray teeth. And hadn’t known how to properly kiss her.