Telling Time

by Austin Wright

  Misunderstood.

  Hardly what you’d expect in this academic jungle pit of vipers cobras and rattlesnakes, a mongoose among the moccasins.

  Plumb the deep mysteries of the heart, many thanks and may you long prosper and prosper long in your island of retirement.

  ANN REALM: Diary

  Sunday, May 18. DESC fog out reluctant clouds low dark damp, air = sea.

  Church goers w/o AR. PK Cath, news? PK = PK. HW waddle. “Waddle” = bloat fat depress.

  Lunch LW dizzy so many children forget why.

  Absent GW doghouse. LW: Canada, Maytime woods? Brr. LW mod world: “If George camp, + nice young lady?” Nice: afterthought. Protection. LW adapt 70 yrs ago inconceiv. Learn youth 20 yrs, unlearn 50, imposs. Nice young lady = wanton hussy whore share GW sleepbag vs healthy still budding woods, mountain streams, moral fish, good moral trout and bass. Compare PW/me learn/unlearn in 20 + 20 yrs, if GW “nice young” not lady but man? If say GW + n.y.m. see LW relief (“oh well if with friend”) versus own numb dreary tired usual.

  Hospital alternate visits tho TW talk everybody 0 except PW: Old Doc W, assault/dream? Rankle papers, get busy there.

  PAPER SNOOP: PW + AR OK then PK nose butt OK OK fam peace, read3 hunt skeleton. Find HUSHNEWS, danger. TW nar (Code: Killdog) scandal? Do? dele? hide? steal? OK steal tomorrow. X PW.

  PW fear, show letter/sons tribute TW like no brothers/sisters, TW perfect Fount Virt, risky PW danger fall, what say? + fulsome papers Wow3. Well, hide & pat back, okay, no blame, stick together, poor PW need TW, need bleed, not know need bleed, bros sis mutual boat.

  PART FIVE

  MONDAY

  THOMAS WESTERLY: As composed by Lucy Monday morning in the car

  About this drive you are taking around the Island without me. Because of the change in the weather. How the rain last night, blurring the streetlamps as the wind blew. Which looked like the end until this morning when the rain stopped, and you saw how clear after the cold front, sharp and distinct the trees and roofs and the glimpse from upstairs of the harbor between the maples, and the white trim on the houses across the harbor. On the grass before breakfast and the bud-green like a veil with tulips, you took the weather for a sign of how much better I am, which is why I write to you now.

  Even Henry has hope, the weather joy driving you around the Island without me. Past the flower trellises, lobster sheds, mansions whose widows are remembered in rooftop balconies. You forgot me, but I forgive you, with Ann driving and you, and Patricia in back with morose Henry and Melanie. Philip didn’t come, nor William. The road joins Shoal Point Road at the junior high school, then by the shingled windmills and golf course to the sandy plateau, with crests of naked sand and miles of dune grass above the beach. Tell me how the sea trembles in the irritating light. From the lighthouse down the back side of the Island, miles of beach facing the ocean, full of history and pre-history drowned in the unbroken sea between here and Europe and Africa. While on their own beaches Europeans and Africans watch you.

  Tell me also your return across the middle island past the reservoir and scrub woods to the crest where you see the ferry with its yellow stack turning the buoy and you skirt the town back to Shoal Point Road past the Truro house with a single policeman in a parked car, and into town past the old hotel and the hospital where I can’t see you because the road is on the other side from my room. You write this letter from me not because you are thinking of me and everywhere you go you hear me in the cold frontal air but because if I die I will forget it all myself.

  Philip came out to meet you when you got back. You are wanted at the hospital.

  PHILIP WESTERLY: Anticipating a memoir

  We six march to the hospital, two abreast through spring streets by lilacs and hyacinth, a bright morning with a cold breeze, wrapping sweaters and spring coats not enough to keep warm. Interpreting the nurse’s telephone voice, You folks’n come over soon’s you can come over.

  So to the hospital, the plain brick rectangle facing the street, the automatic doors. The usual information desk and usual elevator, yesterday’s waiting room with the table and the vending machines, to stop at the nurse’s station for news. Plump Miss Hansen down the hall, Oh here you are, hi there. What’s the matter, is he worse? Mr. Key’s with him.

  The room shaded from the bright morning. My father lying in the bed on his side, back turned. William Key in an armchair by the window with a newspaper, looks up. I went for a walk and decided to drop in, he says. This looks like it.

  HERMAN EASTCASTLE, M.D.: What to tell the family in the waiting room

  Hours, maybe minutes. You should have been called before. Someone lapsed in her responsibility. That won’t do.

  Not that it would make a difference. He’s been unconscious since one o’clock this morning. Someone should have told you.

  Last night about midnight, he got out of bed. Got up and went for a walk. Right out of the hospital he went, right out into the street. No one noticed. He unhooked himself from the IV and climbed out of bed. Went out into the hall, escaped and was never missed. It’s not supposed to happen. He got past the nurse’s station, where was everybody? Midnight, three people on duty, and nobody saw him. Tending to patients in the middle of the night? Coffee break, I don’t know. Reading the comic strips most likely. Down in the elevator and right out the front door, nobody to stop him. No one’s at the information desk at that hour. Maybe the security guard was having a coffee break too.

  A policeman brought him back, one of those men watching the Truro house, which is where he went. Why he went there rather than home is a mystery I won’t attempt to crack. The policeman noticed him in his hospital tunic, not even a bathrobe. Confused. Didn’t answer questions. The policeman got him into the car; no resistance as if glad to be told what to do. The policeman brought him back. No one in the lobby, but he found the security guard, in a neighborhood bar I presume, who got a nurse, who was doubtless waking up from a nap. He hadn’t even been missed. They put him in a wheelchair and he passed out. Would have fallen but the guard caught him. He’s been unconscious ever since.

  Before he passed out he apologized. They tell me he apologized a lot. He apologized to the policeman and to the security guard and to the nurse putting him into the chair just before he conked. I’m sorry. I don’t mean to put you out. Sorry to be such a trouble. That’s what they tell me.

  They called me and I came over. There was nothing I could do. It won’t be long.

  MELANIE CAIRO: Dialogue

  They’re two at a time in Thomas Westerly’s room. Now it’s Henry and Philip and I in the waiting room.

  Henry: Twice. Twice he went to see Truro and twice he got a stroke. Which was the cause, which the effect? Did he get the stroke because he went to Truro or did he go to Truro because the stroke was coming on? What did Truro mean to him?

  Philip: Looks like you’ll never know.

  Henry: He meant something to him.

  Philip: Which you’ll never know.

  Henry: Are you on my back?

  Philip: You never could accept fatality.

  Henry: I have a better sense of fatality than anybody in this family.

  Philip (laughs): Do you remember this, Henry? Riding out to the Indiana Dunes on a hot summer day, looking forward to swimming. Dad was telling you about death. You didn’t like it. Everybody dies, he said. Everybody dies. I remember him. Every living thing: bird, dog, lion in the zoo, the great elephant, the whales in the sea, the flicker killed by the cat, the flies on the wall, mosquitoes on your arm, squirrels in the street. And people. Old people. Young people, if they don’t die young they grow old and then die. Well now, you thought that was unfair. There ought to be exceptions for good people. You wanted to know if I would die. Yes Philip will die, he said. But Mommy won’t die, you said. Alas, she too, he said. And you too? you said. I too, he said. When? you said.

  Henry: I don’t remember any such thing.

  Philip: I do. I won’t let you die, you said.
Oh but I will, he said. You don’t remember?

  Henry: No.

  Philip: You saw the logical conclusion. I won’t die, you said. Sorry, no exceptions, he said. You asked, isn’t there anything we can do about it? It’s how things are, he said. After spring there’s summer, then fall and winter. Then spring again. Does that mean you’ll come back, you asked? No, he said, it means you’ll grow up and have your own children. And someday you’ll tell them the same thing. I’ll never tell them a thing like that, you said.

  Henry: So I never had any goddamn children. You’re making it all up.

  Even now Henry thought he was being put down like the little brother and was probably right.

  Suddenly there was a blaze of light exposing everybody’s skeleton, and Dr. Eastcastle came in.

  Chorus: Oh Doctor Eastcastle, there you are.

  Eastcastle: He won’t last the day. But he doesn’t feel a thing. It’s the best way for him to go.

  RUPERT NEWTON: News as read by Henry in the waiting room

  The Sam Truro case entered a new phase Sunday afternoon with Truro’s demand that a former handyman and schoolbus driver be brought to meet with him. The shy scholarly-looking bank teller who has been holding his wife and child hostage telephoned police late today to announce his new conditions. Apparently withdrawing his previous request for money and a safe conduct, he asked now “for one thing only,” a meeting with a man whose name he said was Angel Vertebrate. The Vertebrate referred to is a former schoolbus driver, believed to have left the Island some weeks ago.

  Police said Truro would not say why he wanted to meet with Vertebrate, except that he wanted to negotiate his demands through him. His words, as quoted by Sheriff Haines, were, “You get him and let me talk to him.” When informed that Vertebrate had left the Island, Truro replied, “Find him and bring him back. I won’t negotiate with nobody but him.”

  Police sources have no knowledge of a connection between Vertebrate and Truro. Vertebrate, a mainlander who came to the Island about two years ago, is believed to have worked in Gordon’s Hardware, and he drove the schoolbus last year. His address while on the Island is unknown nor is it known when he left or why. Asked if they intended to track him down, a police source said, “It’s pretty hard to find somebody you don’t know where they’re at but we’ll try.”

  LUCY WESTERLY: To Thomas

  When I came in after our drive around the Island, you were on your side, head raised, back to us. The nurse said you were unconscious, not asleep. The difference is that you can be wakened from sleep but not from unconsciousness. I’ve seen you asleep often, your hair which used to be dark and wavy but I got used to it white and thin with scalp showing through.

  The nurse said you’d been like this since she came on at seven. The doctor showed up and said it won’t be long. You don’t feel a thing, be glad for that. A matter of hours, maybe minutes. I don’t know if I was relieved.

  All morning by your bed. Others took turns, not I. You didn’t notice or couldn’t say if you did. Two nurses turned you over. They pulled the curtain and one had a big ass pushing the curtain when she bent, and they grunted like a sack of coal, huffing and leverage, and when they came out you were facing us, propped with mouth open, eyes closed, a long slow rasping breath, making it easy to believe you were dying, though not easy.

  I tried to tell you I was there if you needed me, though I suppose your thoughts were gone. If you were not having nightmares, you were thinking about file cabinets or politics or Mother Goose and the candlestick.

  I told myself Thomas is dying and this is a big moment, but it didn’t seem that big, like I had resigned myself long ago. For forty-eight years I’ve known one of us would die first and I used to wonder who. With both of us healthy, no serious illnesses, no heart attacks or cancer; all the talk about old age and care was hypothetical until three months ago. When we moved to the Island I thought maybe we were destined to live to a good old age. I really did.

  I never did know, still don’t though I’ll find out soon, how grief stricken I’d be if you kicked off first. Not to disparage our marriage, but I thought there might be some ratio between grief and relief. How much? Seventy-thirty? Eighty-twenty? Maybe even fifty-fifty, it’s so hard to know. Don’t mind, old friend, for I suspect you felt the same. We knew each other well, and though there was love, it wasn’t all love, as you know.

  Lately it’s different, though. The old issues are dead and not interesting anymore. I’m sorry I criticized you. You criticized me too long ago. Somewhere, at some point, criticism stopped. I hardly noticed. It happened about the same time that we began to share our most humiliating physical problems, also without noticing. Bowels. Smells. Itches. Hemorrhoids. There’s little we don’t know about each other.

  The death that do us part caught me by surprise after all. You’re seventy-two. Your open mouth, faint and weak breath, closed eyes frowning, not feeling a thing, you did look like a dying old man. That’s what you looked like to the rampant young nurses in and out. Perhaps also to your children and certainly their mates gathered to watch you go. By any objective standard. Not to me though. You looked like Thomas disguised. Thin white for thick dark hair, chalk whitewashed on the naive pretty face. But the shape of your shoulder unchanged for forty years gave the disguise away and made it impossible to believe.

  The nurses turned you back again. The doctor returned. A matter of minutes. Eleven thirty. I wondered about lunch. I wasn’t hungry but I would be soon, and the others would be. The question was whether a matter of minutes was enough minutes for shifts to the cafeteria and back in time.

  The nurse snipped the IV tube. They were letting you go. I didn’t protest. Did you want me to?

  Were you aware who was in the room? I guess not. At ten after twelve, I looked at my watch. I saw it first. Barely perceptible like the poem about the good man passing mildly away while sad friends argue has the breath gone yet, the sign of your shoulder, lift and fall, which I had been watching. It stopped. I asked Ann, whispering because it was a big thought. Maybe, she said. Henry, Not yet. Melanie, Yes. Call the nurse. The others from the waiting room, Patty, Philip, William, stood looking along the wall, while that shoulder rose slowly once more and paused even as the cheerful little plump nurse leaned over you, and the doctor entered, looked, nodded, and left.

  Before you died I went and touched you. You probably didn’t notice. I thought if I don’t, I’ll never touch you again. On the bony shoulder, then the emaciated hip. The forty-eight years moved like an electric current. Your back was turned. I thought of kissing you, but in front of the others that would have been a display. So I put my hand on your shoulder and hip and the forty-eight years passed back and forth between us.

  I looked again after you died. You frowned, your eyebrows dark, mouth open. I thought how rare to die with eyes closed, then realized the doctor or nurse had closed them when leaning over to see.

  My grandmother, my father, and my mother all died with the mouth open. Each time the time ended and new time began, but nothing like when I saw you looking just like them. I thought, You are dead. The words kept saying it: Thomas is dead. Repeating and repeating, stuck, trying to make something of it. Then someone added the number forty-eight years. That helped get them moving again, since the finiteness of that number reduced to zero the infinitude it had been. My whole life was changed in that instant moth-like from life into episode. My marriage was reduced to an episode. That was a help, to be able to say that, better than being stuck in the same words all the time, at least.

  So I decided to write and tell you. I expect to feel grief, for the notion that you and I are a finished episode will be hard to bear. It hasn’t hit me yet though and in the meanwhile there’s the house and the visitors and all the business I have to attend to.

  PATRICIA KEY: To Pete Arena

  Just finished watching my daddy die. Another stroke. We took a ride around the Island, which is one of the conventional things we do when we visit. We w
ere riding around the Island when he was dying and we didn’t know it.

  He was on his way when we got there and never woke up in mortal body again. I watched for several hours to observe his struggle with mortality, but I couldn’t find much hard evidence. He made chalky sounds and crackling noises. Death rattle, I thought, but it sounded like phlegm in his throat.

  Nurses turned him over. I studied his face, which showed discomfort or eternal agony, depending on your point of view. Mouth open for oxygen or God or both: Dear God, help me breathe the oxygen of heaven. Like that. Like birth, the shift from umbilical nourishment to outer air, only quieter.

  I thought dying people struggled more. My cat and dog both got a case of the shakes before they passed away. Which really is like birth if dogs and cats have souls, which I haven’t decided about yet. So I was waiting for Daddy to scream like Ivan Ilyich or Dean Harrison of the graduate school. But it was quiet, how gradually he faded, the breathing subsiding slowly until there was none.

  I considered three possibilities: One, if the soul eased out of the body peacefully because he was a good man despite his faults, God sparing him agony as a reward. But I never approved of God punishing and rewarding in this world, however much He may have done in the past when His lessons had to be taught. If the reward is given in heaven, why should it also be given on earth?

  But maybe the agony was inside where we couldn’t see. Sealed off in his mind, pains and visions and horrors. Why do people think dying in one’s sleep is peaceful? How can it be when sleep is so unpeaceful? Dreams are horrible things full of life, especially dreams about dying. I hope I won’t die in my sleep, considering what a thicket of wilderness my sleep usually is.

  Third and worst, if the stillness of Daddy’s passing meant there was no passing. No birth pangs, because no birth. If only selected souls are saved, and Daddy was denied because he had no faith, which he didn’t.

  I tried to find with my nerves some manifestation of liberated soul in the room. I found nothing. Of course I shouldn’t. That’s the essence of soul: it’s immaterial. If it’s separated from body it should not be perceivable by another body like me. So be not distressed. But that’s not wholly true, for faith depends upon intuition beyond body. Intuition of my soul and others transcends the body, how else could I be so sure of these intangible things?