The Living End

by Lisa Samson

  “Sí.”

  I just trust God, Mrs. Laurel.

  Did Joey seek to confuse me? Or did he want me to realize that I can’t know everything, that part of the charm of being human is recognizing that some mysteries are best left unsolved and serve only to be enjoyed, not thoroughly understood? For perhaps in the understanding, we would find we had lost the wonder as well.

  I just trust God, Mrs. Laurel. I don’t have to fully understand Him to love Him.

  That night, we share the evening over glasses of wine. I reach into my pocket and pull out Joey’s silver writing pen. “Here, Jorge, take this. I’d like this to be yours.”

  “But why, señora? This is too beautiful.”

  “It was my husband’s, you see. And he trusted God too.”

  Back to Luray for a visit. Eat ribs with Matthew at Yolanda’s Rib Room. After sucking every bit of meat from the bones and, subsequently, every bit of food from between my teeth, I stick in a nub of nicotine gum.

  I’ve been telling them about my trip and my discoveries.

  “Now why a white man?” Yolanda wants to know. “Why did God send a white man?”

  “You’re white,” I say.

  “On the outside.”

  Matthew sets down the napkin he’s been ripping to shreds. “Maybe him being white would get their attention. You know, make them take notice.”

  Yolanda shrugs. “I guess it would.”

  I flick my hand. “It doesn’t matter anyway, does it? We can’t say for sure he was from God anyway.”

  “Everything matters, Pearly,” Yolanda says.

  Matthew nods as though looking at a coffin. Mr. Sober.

  “So how come you two are in cahoots?” I say. “Good heavens, I introduce you two so that Yolanda can help you out, and you end up ganging up on me.”

  Matthew shrugs. “Then you have only yourself to blame.”

  Yolanda swats his arm. “Good one, boy.”

  Matthew stands to his feet. “It’s time for my set.”

  “What?” I ask.

  Yolanda rubs his arm. “We got us some live entertainment during the dinner hour on weekends now.”

  Matthew blushes. He’s got a crush on Yolanda that’s visible from three miles away. Marvelous! He leaves the table and lumbers to the corner where his guitar case leans against the wall. I lean forward. “How bad was it, Yolanda?”

  She shudders. “I’ve never seen such squalor, Pearly. I’m glad you got in touch with me.”

  “They let you in?”

  “Uh-huh. Nice people, personality-wise. They just got problems. Depression on the mom’s part, I think. The father stays away as much as possible because of the condition of the house.”

  “So where is Matthew living now?”

  “He’s still there, but he stays in his room most of the time, comes here a lot now. Sometimes he sleeps on my couch. My kids love him.”

  “That’s good.”

  “He’s a good kid. We’ll do right by him until he leaves for Lafayette School.”

  “Thank you, Yolanda.”

  “It’s why I’m here. Like I told you that first day.”

  “You certainly have a magnetic quality.”

  “Oh, it’s just the food.”

  I look into her eyes. “No, it isn’t.”

  “I’ve just been given a job to do, and I try my best to do it with all my heart.”

  I tuck that away for later.

  “So where you gallivanting off to next, Pearly?”

  I look at Joey’s watch strapped to my wrist. Still ticking, the pesky timepiece. “I’m running the Virginia Ten-Miler.”

  “Think you’ll make it the whole way?”

  “I’ll crawl the last nine-and-a-half miles if I have to. But I think I’ll do okay. I’m down to two cigarettes a day now. One after breakfast and one after dinner.”

  Her brown eyes crinkle. “Good for you, girl.”

  “Yep. Good for me.” My smile feels smug, but a second later it turns false. Good for me? Why? Why do I think I am so “all that,” as Yolanda would say?

  I want to die. Six miles in and I want to die, die, die! I’m in the back of the pack of geezers. My lungs are killing me, but I’ll be darned if I quit. Not after all the cigarettes I’ve deprived myself of and the fact that I want to tick this off my list so badly I feel it in my throat. That watch won’t go on forever. I’ve got to get through all this as quickly as possible now. Eight months have passed since Joey died. I’ve trained, somewhat, for this.

  Oh my knees! My muscles. I am so old and tattered. I must look like an idiot out here. Why this race, Pearly? Why not some bike race or even some “walk for the cure” type of thing? I am dying.

  And would that be such a bad thing?

  I pick up my pace. Hey! Now that’s a thought. What would it feel like to die from running too hard? What would happen? Would I have a heart attack? And if I keep on going, pushing myself through the pain, would it take on steadily more massive proportions? Would I even be able to keep running once it began? Drat this low cholesterol. But I do have years of cigarette smoking in my favor. Still, dying here in Lynchburg, Virginia, among a throng of people in great shape, doesn’t seem like the best way to go. On the other hand, no telltale signs I was purposely killing myself would remain. Brilliant! Cheeta and Peta will say, “Well, at least she went on her feet.” And Shrubby will bring over some oysters, ones he had to buy at the grocery store since he’s abandoned ship, and they’d slurp down the little suckers with some spicy cocktail sauce made from my mother’s recipe and they’d talk about me, and they’d talk about Joey, and they’d say, “Isn’t this fitting, though? Less than a year later she goes. They always did do things together.”

  I slow down a bit and gather more air. No, I won’t give them the satisfaction. I hope that watch lasts at least until this coming October. Only six items left now. Drat, I wish I knew when he changed this blasted battery! I’m trying, Joey. I’m really trying.

  I ran the Ten-Miler in, well, quite a bit more than record time and bought a pack of cigarettes on the drive home. The general shape of the mountain before me brought back my stay in Mexico.

  Standing at the top of the ziggurat pyramid at Chichén Itzá in Mexico (I had no idea Joey was so fixated on those ancient Indian cultures), I wondered about jumping to my death. It seems like a good way, especially if you dive and smash your head against the base of wherever it is you’re diving off of. But on second thought, I would want something that ensured death—a jump from the Eiffel Tower, or into the Grand Canyon, or perhaps even a skydive—not some awkward fall that might render me a quadriplegic with no wherewithal to take my own life afterward. I’d have to rely on, God help me, Dr. Kevorkian, which means I may have to meet that obnoxious, shaggy-haired lawyer of his who always makes my teeth hurt with his emotional rhetoric and sloppy ties. No, not the pyramid. That would definitely be injurious, but not certain. Anyway, with my luck, I’d have slipped on the way down, and there would go all my plans for finishing the list.

  Lately I’ve grown comfortable with this sense of purpose. Hopefully one sense of purpose won’t lead to another, though. Ah, but the watch! The watch assures me this will not happen.

  But I made it safely back down, having deposited a picture of Joey and me at his graduation from JHU with his M.A. degree.

  It is June. Shrubby’s still living in my house, and he and Maida are quite the number. He got a job at the school—said working on the water was too painful—as a janitor and they take all their breaks together. Pumpkin ran away but returned three months later looking fat and happy. That tomcat.

  I’m spending the month here in Luray reading War and Peace. Halfway through. I can’t tell you what’s going on; I’m just determined to finish the rotten thing. So I rock on the porch of the Mimlyn Inn where I’m staying, drink coffee, smoke, and read. If I realize my mind has been wandering and not one word of the last few pages has sunk in, I don’t go back. The watch still runs, and I don
’t have time to read War and Peace five times just to get through it once. Silly, yes. Just plain silly. But I will meet this goal, for in having done so, I’ll be more than halfway through.

  The phone rings, waking me from my afternoon nap. I push myself up to answer it. It is Matthew.

  “Can you come get me?”

  “Of course. You at home?”

  “Uh-huh.” His voice shakes.

  “Are you all right?”

  He sobs once. “I’ve got to get out of here before I kill myself.”

  Oh no! “Hang on, I’ll be right there. Hang on!”

  I hang up and realize I have no idea where Matthew actually lives. I speed over to the Rib Room. “Yolanda!” I yell as I push open the door.

  “Yeah?!” she hollers from the kitchen.

  “It’s Matthew! He wants us to come get him. He says he’s got to get out of there.”

  She appears, brow plastered flat, eyes wide.

  “I don’t know where he lives,” I say. “Car’s running outside.”

  “Come on! I’ll go with you. Ray! I’ll be gone a while. Hold things down for me!”

  “You got it!” the cook yells back.

  We hurry out the door. “I’ll drive,” she says.

  We buckle in, and she throws my car into first, peeling away from the curb.

  “He says he needs to get away before he kills himself,” I tell her.

  “Mmm. I thought he was falling into a depression.”

  “Is it any wonder? Living that way?”

  “Not at all.”

  She heads down Main Street.

  “Just prepare yourself, is all I can say, Pearly.”

  “That bad?”

  “Probably like nothing you’ve ever seen before.”

  Nothing grows in Matthew’s yard. Not really. It’s more a collection of various weeds and wildflowers without much bloom. One large clump of daffodils sprouts right next to the sidewalk, obviously planted many years before. Perhaps Matthew dug the hole himself (with a spoon because houses like this don’t keep trowels handy), having made a bulb arrangement for his mother in school, knowing it would die where it sat atop the refrigerator next to a pile of five-year-old bills, two rotted stuffed animals, and three boxes of long-expired cereal, not to mention a ball of yarn, a box of toothpicks, and an old black soft-foam sponge, cracked long ago and crumbling. A can of silver spray paint too.

  Maybe. It’s what I picture, although judging by what Yolanda says, mine might be a bit too antiseptic. The rotting sponge is a nice touch though.

  I’m a little nervous about ringing the bell, but Yolanda steps right up onto the small cement pad and knocks five quick hard raps of the knuckles on the back of her hand.

  My breath comes quickly now.

  “Don’t be scared, Pearly. They’re all right. They won’t hurt you.”

  The door opens. Matthew. He’s been crying. “Thanks for coming. Hi, Yolanda.”

  “You okay?”

  He shakes his head. “I gotta get outta here.”

  “I know, baby.” Yolanda rubs his arm. “Your mama home?”

  He nods. “Mom! Can you come talk to Mrs. Laurel and Yolanda?”

  “Tell them to come on in!”

  He reddens. Oh, Matthew. He pulls the door wider. “Oh well, I guess you’ll have to see for yourself sooner or later.”

  Boxes stack up in the entryway and on into the dim living room, towering in front of the windows. Only little rat trails run in between, and those are covered with papers, disposable plates and cups, crumbs, flattened and creased clothing, and Kleenex. Cats lounge everywhere. There must be ten of them in plain view. The stench grabs my stomach.

  “I’m back here in the kitchen!”

  “Keep following that trail there,” Matthew says. “I’ll go grab my duffels.”

  He picks his way carefully up the stairs.

  I turn to Yolanda. “How did he try to keep this neat before?”

  “Beats me.”

  It’s so dark and dusty and such a wide variety of items is strewn throughout this place: playthings large and small, furniture, car parts, large cans of ketchup and the like, evening gowns, shoes, hats, appliances. “Do they go to yard sales a lot?” I ask.

  “All the time, Pearly. At least that’s what Matthew says.”

  “Good heavens. Pack rat disease.”

  “Yes.”

  Dirt and grime and grease lacquer the kitchen. The faucet drips, the refrigerator door stands slightly ajar, and Matthew’s mother sits at a table piled with bowls, papers, mail, and craft items: yarn, pipe cleaners, pompoms, googly eyes, silk flowers, glue, and only the Lord knows what else. A Big Gulp cup sits in front of her, filled with soda. Another large plastic cup, this one bright red and sporting a NASCAR logo, overflows with smelly cigarette butts. She’s smoking and reading a joke book. 10,000 of the Funniest Jokes EVER. It’s obvious she’s been laughing.

  She appears neither heavy nor thin and her housedress, five sizes too large, twists around her middle, highlighting a small potbelly. Her graying hair is scraped into a frizzy ponytail.

  “So you’ve come to take Matthew for a while?” she asks after we’ve said our hellos and such.

  “With your permission,” says Yolanda. She reaches for a green pipe cleaner and begins to bend it around her index finger.

  “Oh, you’ve got that. He’s been unhappy for a long time now. He blames this place.” She looks down. “I guess I can see his point. I think they make fun of him in school.”

  “He can come stay with me for the summer,” I say, “and then I’ll take him up to Lafayette School for the term.”

  “Go ahead. I think he’ll be glad for it. He’s been so down in the mouth lately. But what can you do?”

  I shrug, tongue-tied, then I nod, to add an extra bit of concern. But I don’t understand. I’d have given anything for the chance to raise a child like Matthew, a boy that came from this unproductive body I’ve been given.

  August 26, 1995, Ocean City, Maryland

  I believe I could observe enough people to provide a lifetime of fodder right from this bench at Trimper’s.

  I saw the monster first. Oh God, how did your creation fall so far? Oh God, why this sort of thing? Why let Lucifer have this much victory in one situation?

  Some sort of palsy afflicted the boy. A boy? I suppose. His handicaps shuttered his age from the accidental voyeur. Eyes averted quickly as he pumped his palsied legs up the asphalt incline that led from the Middle Eastern Delights fun house into the building housing the kiddie rides and the bumper cars.

  “Bad boy! Bad boy!” a haggard man dressed in work khakis, a black T-shirt, and a tight denim jacket hollered, practically driving the child forward. Large warts covered the poor thing’s head, hair sprouting like onion grass in wild profusion from around the lumps. Dear God, they reminded me of giant, flesh-colored ticks, burrowing into his damaged brain, sucking what little intelligence lay therein.

  This human being bleated, its garbled speech neither human nor animal. Bile filled my throat. Pearly looked the other way, watching the children on the balloon ride. I couldn’t call her attention to the scene as the man grabbed the boy’s arm and yanked. “Come on! Bad boy! Bad boy!”

  The boy bleated again and moved backward, resisting his father’s intentions.

  Oh Jesus, I cried, I don’t think I’ll ever forget this. Indeed, I know this is one of those moments I’ll hold on to forever, a moment I can pull forth when I need to feel the pain of the world, to coax some life into myself, some sense of justice and mercy when I’ve become numb by the newspaper, the movies, the way things have become.

  “Bad boy! Bad boy!” the father yelled again. The boy pranced his palsied gait further up the slope, advanced in his crablike ambulation, hands curving in and down, head painfully askew, large and addled.

  Somebody obviously needed a miracle here, and one hadn’t come.

  I always remembered Trimper’s as a collection of amusements,
rides, games, a mirrored funhouse, an antique carousel inside. Apparently Joey’s view encompassed much more there in Ocean City, right in the spot where we moldered almost every Friday night during the summer.

  Joey didn’t realize I saw that boy. I’m sure he was actually in his late twenties or thirties, but truly, it was hard to tell. I felt sorry for the child. Personally, I felt sorry for the father, too, wondering what being saddled with that kind of macabre responsibility for the indefinite future must be like. Made me thankful for Harry that day, I can tell you. I remember thinking this was just a mess-up of nature, a big stinker in the genetic doings of the human race. But not Joey, obviously. Joey always made everything so deep and so big. And he always assumed I shared the same feelings, tucked way inside me.

  I am a bit ashamed of myself, I guess. I just accept these pops and jerks of human genetics as a statistical thing. I mean, the odds are things will get messed up every once in a while. Who knew what happened to that boy? Did his mom take some kind of medication during the pregnancy? Did inbreeding, drug usage, or a fall play into it somehow? Did the doctor use forceps? So much can go wrong not only when a baby is being formed but during birth and childhood, it’s a wonder so many of us turn out relatively normal. Maybe a miracle even. Had Joey comforted himself with that thought after he finished questioning God? Did God draw him outside again and say, “Look around you, Joey, there’s more right than there is wrong.” And did Joey agree? I’d have to say I would agree. But then I’ve always been more of an optimist than anything else.

  Oh brother! Did I really just say that?

  Why I let Richie talk me into this full-body scan, I don’t know. It’s annoying to say the least, and honestly, I don’t want to know what’s wrong with me. What’s the use? Our good Dr. King just sounded so excited about the new technology that, as usual, I couldn’t refuse. He sounded so much like Joey. So here I sit at Johns Hopkins, waiting. I’m thinking of the exact words I’m going to use when I give Richie King a piece of my mind.