Good Times Bad Times

by C.P. Kemabia

  It was Zoe’s first time to ever set foot in the old man’s apartment. Somehow, she found its vacancy, its emptiness, agreeable. And because of that, she thought of doing up the topsy-turvy deco of her apartment as well, moving stuff around, and clearing some things out.

  “This place now looks like the bottom of an empty chest,” she said casually, her gaze drifting across the drawing room.

  Mr. Bagley paused as he was heading to another room:

  “You’re not wrong there, you know,” he said, running his fingers across the wall he was standing next to. “I could never find the treasure map though, and God knows how long I looked for it.” He added with a smile, “I still do…”

  “Truth be told, we all kind of do… Just let me know if you happen upon it.”

  Amused, Mr. Bagley stepped to the next room.

  “Just give me a minute.”

  Zoe stayed put, wedging her hands together behind her back and rolling her eyes up to the ceiling to skip time. A spider web was hanging off a wall corner. She winced at it, because spiders used to be her fear as a child; but she had long since overcome her arachnophobia. The drywall looked off-key, due to patches of flat squares breaking its pattern. Zoe figured the place could’ve used a homier, smoother texture, like spongy circles or something to punch up its inviting value.

  However, Zoe sensed that Mr. Bagley wasn’t really a people person. Therefore, inviting people over was probably out of the ordinary. Seeing a landline phone lying around, she wondered how many phone calls the old man had received in this room. Not many, she supposed.

  Very sad, Zoe thought. Such an interesting character.

  She glanced again at her watch. Forty-five minutes had elapsed since she had left Jeff and the children. By now the twins were probably reveling in the amazing rides and attractions of Legoland.

  And Jeff…?

  She dispelled the thought of him and let her eyes roam lazily across the drawing room. They locked on an old Polaroid photograph sitting on the floor. Zoe moved to pick it up.

  It was a candid portrait of a woman. She looked youthful and awfully pretty. She had a naïve trait about her, despite her smart attire. The photographer had captured her loitering in front of a drive-in. And through the way she was carrying herself, you could tell she was of a conservative nature. Though there was this thing in her eyes that immediately made you feel sorry for her.

  “Her name was Lillian.”

  Zoe looked up. Mr. Bagley was there, standing right by her side and holding a rolled canvas. She hadn’t even heard him return from the other room.

  “Is she your daughter?” she asked, handing the photo back to him.

  “No,” the old man said staring intently at the woman’s face, which now stood ageless, timeless. “Just a girl I knew.”

  Zoe waited, but Mr. Bagley didn’t say anymore; and after a moment, because her mesmerizing of the pictured woman had curiously increased, Zoe engaged him rather casually.

  “She is very beautiful,” she said.

  “Yeah, she was ––” the old man said absently. “She’s now dead... She died a very long time ago, shortly after this picture was taken.”

  “That’s terrible…”

  “She was kind; she was full of life,” Mr. Bagley hesitated. “She was the love of my life.” He looked at Zoe but his gaze seemed faraway. “On that day, I had a chance to tell her. But I didn’t seize it. And I was never given another chance. Fate took her without any kind of notice. Her sudden death felt like a sucker punch to the gut. Sometimes, I still feel it hemorrhaging in my diaphragm.”

  “How did she die?” Zoe asked, impulsively. Then realizing her inconsiderate lapse, she quickly began apologizing. “I’m sorry, you don’t have to…”

  “It was an accident,” the old man said. “Just a car accident.”

  “I’m so sorry to hear that.”

  Zoe felt compelled to lay her hand on Mr. Bagley’s shoulder in a gesture to demonstrate her empathy for his relatable experience of loss. However, she abstained. The old man’s body had asserted itself with a rigid reaction to her compassionate statement. And for a broken moment, Zoe detected within the old man, an incredible quiet and yet moving force. And when his eyes flashed upon her with brisk intensity, she knew her intuition was right.

  “No need to be sorry, Zoe,” Mr. Bagley said. “When you get to be my age, you’ll realize that it’s quite all right. That there’s actually something to be learned from this kind of arbitrary death, which is: the world has fallen from meaning, slipped from reason, and there’s nothing you or I can do about it, except live and do what must be done, when it must be done.”

  An uneasy feeling overpowered Zoe all the way to the extremities of her toes. She had to forge a smile to reclaim full control of her nerves.

  “That’s, um –– that’s very deep,” she said nervously.

  “Never mind an old man’s ravings,” Mr. Bagley said in a light and uninflected voice. “It’s a thrill for us to dole out our two cents for the betterment of the younger generation. But again… Here ––”

  He held out to her the rolled canvas and with his other hand, pocketed the Polaroid photograph. Zoe grabbed the canvas proffered to her. She unrolled it, and with an unthoughtful marvel, widened her eyes. Her facial expression was fixed, trance-like, as if petrified momentarily in a great delight.

  On the canvas was an imagery of expressionistic style that exhibited five totem-ish masks of angular and grotesque shapes. A dusky color palette rooted the artwork into a subjective reality –– some sort of fading mossy nether –– which was reinforced by the fleetingness of the brushstrokes. These shrunken, primitive heads, each depicted with frozen smiles of mischievous bravado, seemed to incite the viewer to join in their mad laughter.

  “Mask Still Life III,” Zoe murmured, incredulously. There was a romantic affection in the way her eyes were feasting on the painting. “This is definitely something to lose your breath on!”

  Content with the desired effect provoked by his surprise, Mr. Bagley nodded then added with a groovy tenor, “I knew you’d fall for it.”

  “But how did you know I fancied the work of Emil Nolde?”

  “I spotted you on two or three occasions at the Art Museum. And you were always contemplating one of his paintings.”

  The explanation quickened something in Zoe, and she said, almost reproachfully, “You should’ve come and said hello then. That’s what good neighbors do.”

  The old man nodded his head, approvingly.

  “Well, shall our paths ever cross again in an art museum, I won’t be shy. You can count on that.”

  Zoe eyeballed him. She had caught a trace of insincerity in the old man’s voice. And she wondered whether he’d really make good on his words should the case arise.

  The canvas still spread in her grasp, she worked herself a couple feet away from him, without any real intent other than to stretch her legs.

  “At any rate, this painting is just gorgeous,” she kept saying. “Just gorgeous ––”

  “I want you to have it,” Mr. Bagley announced.

  Zoe paused and turned a confused eye on him. “Have it?”

  “Yeah, I want to give it to you,” The old man explained. “Obviously, it’s an old replica. It was my father’s. During one of his travels across Europe ––he was a drifter in his young and foolish years –– anyway, he befriended an artist-restorer who worked for one of the Basel Museums in Switzerland. And thanks to him, my father took a liking to art and its history. Before they parted ways, the artist offered him the painting as a gift.”

  At this point, Zoe slightly shook her head just like she always did when on the verge of objecting fervently.

  “I’m sorry, but I can’t accept this, Mr. Bagley” she said, rolling up the canvas promptly. “Seriously, this should stay in your family and ––”

  “Please, Zoe ––” the old man interrupted her. “I don’t have a family. And this painting deserves to be in
the care of someone who’s got a better appreciation for it. So please take it.”

  “But, still ––”

  “If my father had known you,” he pressed on, “he’d rather you have it instead of me. Now I know he’s watching us; and he must finally be proud that I am, for once, doing something right. You wouldn’t want to deprive him of this posthumous satisfaction, would you?”

  Zoe looked at Mr. Bagley and said nothing. She still had her reservations. But somehow, the old man’s imploring manner had compelled her to yield.

  “Alright, I’ll take it,” Zoe finally said. “But only as a favor to your late father.”

  The old man thanked her, again and again. He then moved back a little, his shoulders rocking, his ankles unsteady. There was something pitiful in the movement. As if his whole body wanted to give in at last to a locked-away grief, but at the same time was cringing against it out of a defensive reflex.

  “I’ve been thinking a lot about my father, lately” Mr. Bagley said, though Zoe wasn’t sure whether he was talking to her. “And last night, I had the…strangest dream about him.” He turned to her. “Would you like to hear it?”

  Zoe hesitated. She had that caught-by-surprise look in her eyes, as if a homeless man she’d showed kindness to had repaid her by tossing her banknotes back in her face.

  “I’m sorry ––” Mr. Bagley added before she could speak. “I’m taking up your time and you said you were in a hurry…”

  “It’s quite all-right… hum ––” Her head tilted a little. “Yeah, I’d like to hear it.”

  The old man smiled, quite content because he sensed she truly meant it.

  Hence, he said, “In my dream, I think I’m ten. No, maybe twelve or maybe thirteen. I’m scaling this big, outer stone wall, that is broken by a line of Victorian-style windows. And as I confidently rise, I can feel the pull of gravity beneath my feet. I must be some thousand feet above ground, but I’m not scared because my father watches me. He stands atop the wall –– the tower –– with my mother, and I’m climbing up to join them in the sun. Then what happens next happens so fast that fear sets in with a delay. A wet rock comes away in my hand; I lose my grip and try to be quick about finding another one. But I’m not quick enough. And I can feel myself falling, my body being sucked down by a gaping pit, which I cannot yet see at the bottom. And as I helplessly glance up to call for my father, I hear this unending cry of terror from my mother. And it strikes me… she’s not just crying for me, she’s crying for my father too, for he has just jumped off into the void –– to catch me. Three or four times, his fingertips graze mine, but the velocity of the drop runs counter to his attempts to get a lock on me. And so we fall together. I know with his build, my father stands a good chance of breaking his fall by grabbing hold of one of the window ledges flashing past us on the wall. But the idea of saving himself doesn’t cross his mind. He simply doesn’t want his son to die alone. Cowing from our inevitable end, I shut my eyes. That’s when a curious shift of consciousness happens. I open my eyes again only to realize they’re no longer mine. They’re my father’s. And I can feel his arms ––my arms –– desperately reaching out to grab those of the scared little skydiving boy I was one moment ago. I can only assume my father must be that boy now. But I’m not sure. And as the ground swiftly comes up to break us, I consciously decide to cling to life. I shoot my hand upward, grope for a cornice over a window, and let my father down because I’m afraid to die…”

  Zoe had been listening with care even though the old man’s voice sounded faint and far off, like it was fluttering straight from the dream he was recounting. After his eyes came back from where they had been, Mr. Bagley peered at Zoe.

  “When I woke up this morning,” he continued, “I was filled with shame. And no matter how many times I keep telling myself it was just a dream, the shame is still there, like a wet cloth over my head that’s deteriorating my health ––”

  “I –– huh, don’t know what to say,” Zoe started. “But if I had the same dream, I’d probably wake myself up the moment I slipped.”

  Appreciating her nice attempt at humor, Mr. Bagley asked, “Do you think it means something? I mean the dream… the fall?”

  “It could mean a lot of things,” her voice was deep. “Like finding the strength to cling on, you know?”

  “Cling on to what’s really precious?”

  “That’s right; life is precious.”

  “I see,” the old man nodded. “Obviously, you’re in the right.” Then he thanked Zoe for her insight with another nod.

  “You know, ever since I was little, I wanted to have a family,” Zoe said in a sort of unexpected way which surprised the old man because he’d figured that was the end of their little chat. “It was kind of a special thing for me––”

  “You have a beautiful family, Zoe.”

  Her eyes shunned Mr. Bagley’s so he wouldn’t see the hint of dissatisfaction present in them.

  “Well, sometimes I wonder if I’m going to be strong enough to hold it together.” After a moment, she added, “Sometimes, I think it’d be easier to just –– let go, you know.”

  “You’re right, it’d be easier. Though I can tell family is everything to you, right?”

  “That’s right.”

  Mr. Bagley added with heartfelt concern, “Is everything all right, Zoe?”

  “I don’t know –– Earlier today, my husband and I had an argument over our impossible daughter.”

  “You’re talking about Solene?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s hard to believe she’d cause you any trouble; she’s quite adorable. Never minds to give me the time of day. Such a sweet little one.”

  Sweet little one...

  The words were like a knife thrust in Zoe’s ears. Yeah, she was sweet when she was little, Zoe thought. And she found herself blaming time and its swift passing, that had left her unprepared to cope with the radical change in her daughter’s behavior.

  “Trust me; right now she’s quite the opposite of sweet,” Zoe told Mr. Bagley. “She lives only to break my heart. And at times, I wish I didn’t have one, you know.”

  The old man said nothing.

  “I sound like a terrible mother, don’t I?”

  “Children… they’re indeed the most wonderful thing in the world,” he said. “If you have the patience and a bottle of Rye to help you through their restless years.”

  Zoe looked at the old man, as if to gauge the level of his fatherly instincts. He may have been without offspring all these years, but you could tell the instincts were quite well preserved.

  She said, “Well, I don’t drink unfortunately. I mean, except socially.”

  “Listen,” Mr. Bagley said. “You don’t have to feel that way, I mean about Solene. Just talk to her. Use the language she uses. You’ve been her age before.”

  “Well, I can’t really talk to her when she does everything she can to avoid me.”

  “All the more reason to make the first move.”

  The intention passed over Zoe’s face, then faded almost immediately. After what Solene had done, if any move were to be made, it wouldn’t be a move toward indulgence. A punitive action was more like it.

  “I’d make the first move,” Zoe conceded to humor the old man, “if I knew where she was. Today’s her birthday, and so she went out with a friend of hers.”

  “Then today is a perfect day.”

  “Perfect for what?”

  The old man winced. He suddenly seemed ignited by an invisible fire, that may have risen from within his unsuspecting fiery old spirit.

  He said with volition, “It’s an important day in her life, Zoe. A day you must be part of in order to bring yourself into better terms with her.”

  “I planned a family picnic. She avoided that, too.”

  “Maybe because you let her.”

  Zoe took in the remark quite harshly and was about to reciprocate bluntly, but before she could, the old man said again,
“It’s easy to let things follow their course Zoe. I know; I’ve been there.”

  “When it comes to teenagers, things are a little more complicated than that.”

  “Then un-complicate them,” insisted the old man. After a moment he said, “Is she really avoiding you or are you, in fact, avoiding her, Zoe?”

  The question drilled its way hard into the back of Zoe’s head. Somehow, it hurt just to think about it and admit that the old man had certainly struck a chord there with his perspicacity.

  “Thanks for the painting,” Zoe mouthed glancing at her watch and acting surprised. “But I must be on my way now; I’m awfully overdue for work.”

  She turned her back to head for the door. Mr. Bagley touched her arm, nonchalantly.

  “Wait ––” He said. “Last thing I want is to upset you and I apologize if I did. It’s just that I would hate to see you and your daughter at odds with one another.”

  “I appreciate your concern, but…”

  “That’s why I only suggested that you take this day –– this special day –– to work things out with her.”

  “In a perfect world, I’d probably do just that!” Zoe said, hiding the bit of aggravation creeping behind her eyes. “But I’ve got to go to work though; you know how it is, right?”

  “Do you wish to lose your daughter’s affection; lose her altogether?”

  The voice of the old man had become almost objectionable. And this sudden tonal shift stumped Zoe to the point she had to keep calm to ease her nerves.

  “What are you talking about?” she said. “I’m not going to lose her –– Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “Zoe, I tell you, you’re making a mistake putting this off now.”

  “I don’t believe it,” Zoe shook her head. “Would you just stop, please? You make it sound like it’s a now-or-never kind of deal, when it’s not.”

  Increasingly upset, her grip had tightened around the rolled canvas she was holding. The surface beneath her fingers was now all wrinkled.

  “Ah, Zoe… Zoe,” Mr. Bagley sighed disappointedly. “I’ve always admired you, because I thought you knew better about things like family.”

  At these words, Zoe felt strangely insecure; like when, in her childhood, she used to believe there was a boogeyman hiding in her bedroom closet, but that was a long time ago and she was no longer a child. As an adult, though, she had conquered that fear... So why was that feeling back?

  “Listen,” she told the old man. “Obviously you care about Solene. But I’m her mother. So I think I can handle her better than you think, okay?”

  Mr. Bagley said nothing.

  Zoe continued with feeling, “She –– she wants her space, I guess to express herself or something because she’s not a child anymore, and she’s way too eager to fly out of the nest. And yes, when things started to go downhill between us, I pulled back, too, because I was angry.” The realization made a knot in her heart. “I’ve been resenting my daughter for acting her age, which is stupid. I get it now; that was my mistake. But I’m her mother, and I’m going to be better than that and make sure our rapport is different tomorrow.”

  “What if there was no tomorrow?”

  Again, the words provoked the same uneasy feeling. They fell upon Zoe, heavy and grave, like a judge’s hammer falling upon a sound block after passing a sentence.

  “What if something unpredictable happened,” Mr. Bagley continued. “Something terrible, and you were robbed of the chance to express to her what you told me just now?”

  Zoe looked at the old man silently. Something about him had changed, though she couldn’t put her finger on it. After a moment, she said plainly, “Well, don’t they say everything happens for a reason?”

  “And you believe in that?”

  Zoe did not answer, because her gut told her not to. Though she knew herself to be a good Christian who always placed her faith in God’s will. That was all.

  “Listen,” Zoe said, “I must really go. Take care of yourself.”

  But Mr. Bagley did not react to the parting words. He merely stared at her as though staring into the soul-crushing vacuum of a dark abyss. His eyes seemed not to blink at all, and this oddity made Zoe’s heart turn icy in her chest. He wasn’t the same; Zoe felt it. Maybe his mind was gone; or maybe he was having one of those absentminded moments attributed to senility that were commonly frequent among senior citizens. Either way, it spooked her all the same.

  Zoe turned and moved towards the door. In the old man’s mind, the decision was made in a split second. And it took another split second for his age-challenged body to carry out the murderous command. In one single motion, his hand clutched the cordless landline phone and yanked it off the cabinet it was sitting on. Falling from its housing, the handset clattered to the floor. Zoe spun back to the noise and went stiff all over when she saw the old man’s figure, drooping over her like a rapacious bird over its prey. She opened her mouth to scream, but what came out was less than a whine, for the first blow had violently sealed in her lips. Then, before the stroke could bring her down, a powerful hand clamped Zoe by the neck and she saw the telephone, wielded like some lynching stone, rise and fall.

  “You just don’t get it, do you?” The old man kept saying, his mouth moving under the bitter-looking mask of death he had become. “None of you ever got it!”

  And he pounded Zoe on the head with sheer brutality, his makeshift weapon crashing full on her face like a bloody mace, over and over. By that point, Zoe was already seeing red from her own blood. And with each vicious attack, a particular feature of her beauty was being stamped out.

  The last blow drove her to her knees, then flat on her stomach. Instinctively, and with whatever force remained in her, she tried to drag herself away from the mad old man. But Mr. Bagley stood astride her, his mind gone for sure, and something else – something evil – functioning in his body.

  “You should’ve known better, Zoe,” he said, his voice thick with contempt and self-loathing. “Look at what you made me do.”

  He rolled her onto her back, and seemed to dislike his work when confronted by the sight of his victim’s extensively damaged figure. Zoe really looked terrible. Her face was a bloody pulp with her nose ruined, her left eye swollen the size of a plum, and her skull splintered. White tears and hot blood ran together down her bruised mouth. The mixture tasted like oil spilt in seawater.

  “Oh, Zoe,” Mr. Bagley said again, his eyes half closed. “Look at you. Just look at you… You should’ve known better!”

  “Please… stop…” Zoe managed to get out, feebly.

  “Do you see now? Do you understand? The future is not guaranteed; tomorrow may never come. The now is all there is. The now, Zoe! The now…”

  “Please…”

  “I’m sorry, Zoe,” the old man said, his eyes expressing flashes of genuine humanity. “I’m so sorry, so sorry…”

  The old man grabbed her hair and lifted her head a few inches from the floor. Zoe wanted to cry, but the pain prevented her. Mr. Bagley brought the telephone-turned-weapon up, and Zoe, powerless as a newborn, closed her eyes to receive the blow that would kill her, no doubt.

  Then, from the abyss, she heard something.

  A knock on the door.

  At first she thought her tattered consciousness had dreamt it. However, her right eye slightly opened and caught a glimpse of the old man pausing in his windup motion and peering toward the front door, annoyed. So there was indeed someone behind that door.

  For half a moment, hope filled Zoe like water fills a goblet. Please… she thought. Please… My God… Please, come save me… Don’t let me die in here… My little babies… Oh, my God…

  The knock on the door persisted and so did her hopes.

  The last thing Zoe Greaves saw was the black metal of the telephone base obscuring her vision. And the last thing she felt was its cold crushing stroke as the old man bludgeoned her across the face with it, thus taking the light right out of her good eye.
>
  Chapter XVII

  ON MR. BAGLEY’S ADVICES…

  THE WORDS THAT REKINDLED JUSTIN’S FLAME