Carry Me Home

by John M. Del Vecchio

  Tony clings to Linda. He has dreaded this moment, this day, dreaded it because it again smashes Jimmy’s death into his face; dreaded it too because it is his coming out, his first family reunion. He’d hidden in the apartment through Christmas and New Year’s and though Linda had told Jo and John Sr., they had allowed him to hide, had not mentioned him to the family, agreeing he needed time to adjust. Tony would like not to be sick but sick is the only justification, in his eyes and theirs, for his behavior. His eyes are red, swollen, sunken, dark. His mouth is dry. He keeps his head bowed as if to hide between his shoulders. He thinks it is better, here, now, to be perceived as a naughty child than as husband, father, cousin of the deceased, Marine. He wishes to leave, to hide. He does not look at his brothers, cousins, does not meet their eyes. Still the double dose of diazepam he has taken has taken the edge off; and clutching Linda, being close to her, bolsters him, bolsters not his spirit but his self-righteous feeling, unverbalized—if she, whom I have so betrayed, accepts me back, so too must all of you. And Linda, like Jo, like Maria Annabella, is stolid, solemn, dignified.

  The young priest is preparing the Eucharist, praying over the gifts. Tony has never understood this—this mystery of faith, this essence of the religion in which he was raised. The congregation is singing “All Saints Hymn” but Tony’s mouth is too dry. He cannot even hum. “... may your soldiers, faithful, true, and bold; Fight as the saints who nobly fought of old....” He tunes out, thinks he cannot go to Communion, cannot consume the Eucharist, the body and blood of Christ, with diazepam in his stomach. His thoughts flow quickly. He feels the change, the brain numbing, the shutting down. He is holding Manny, who is wounded. His mouth is trembling. He is telling Manny, “It’s cool, Man. It’s cool. Not bad. Grab your ass and haul it off for like six weeks of R n R. There’s a soul sister at the evac gonna do sweet nasties to your bod, Bro.” Tony jerks Linda’s arm. She jerks back, glares from the corner of her eye. He sees Manny’s chest erupt, feels the impact through to his abdomen, feels Manny’s splattering spittle and blood ... Linda jerks her arm again, first forward, then back, hitting him with her elbow. John Jr. glances, glares, pretends to ignore. Tony cowers lower. He can smell the dead gook, the rotten meat, the goo drooling on him as they pull the body, the club being jammed into his face, he is panting, diazepam or not, drooling from the corners of his mouth, dry mouth or not, and then they are outside the church.

  “That’s incredible.” The voice is behind him, soft, sad, concerned. He’s not sure how, why, he heard it. Another voice. “He’s like a zombie.” “She said it’s the drugs. They’ve got him all drugged up.” Tony turns. It is Maxene and Annalisa. They turn away as he looks. The sky is light gray, winter overcast, yet to him, bright, making him squint. The words hurt, anger him, he who has protected Annalisa, he who has ... He cannot think. In deep, below the deadening, he is enraged and the ire splits layers like magma squirting through mantle cracks reaching the lower strata of crust but not breaking through.

  More voices. John Sr. to Aunt Helen. “It’s a temporary phase. I went through it too.” “Not like that you didn’t.” Like fuckin hell. The words are in his mind, in his throat, trapped. If they acknowledge it, if they deny it, it makes no difference—both piss him off. “We’re working on it,” Linda says. More anger. Standing in front of the church on a cold, threatening winter morn as if it were some kind of party and not one of them speaking Jimmy’s name because that’s been left inside with the priest.

  More anger. He wants to go to Linda’s apartment, he does not think of it as home—but he is helpless. Since the ride on Christmas Eve he has not been on the Harley, has not driven. Linda has taken over all the duties, all the driving. She is so very capable. He wants to go to the apartment, watch some TV. He has taught his daughters to laugh at cartoons though they are too young to pay attention for any length. Still, it is his only chore. Entertain the girls while Linda makes breakfast or dinner or washes the laundry or readies for work where she’ll bring the girls with her and he can watch TV and smoke Pall Malls and don’t forget your noon meds and I’ll be back between five and six depending on how many people are in Morris’. More anger. More anger. His head is throbbing. Gina is crying. These idiots, he thinks. They think they know all the answers. They don’t know shit. Jesus Christ, at least with goddamn Darvon I could function. Fuck this Thorazine-diazepam shit.

  “Ma.” It is John Jr. “I gotta get to work. Are you and Pa goina be at Aunt Izzy’s?”

  Tony does not hear the answer. Pewel Wapinski is standing before him. “Time to get the maple taps ready, eh?”

  “What?”

  “Syrupin time, eh?”

  “I ...” Tony looks to Linda, who is rocking back and forth trying to keep Gina from crying so that she can finish her conversation with Dr. Joe, Joey.

  “I’m counting on you,” Pewel Wapinski says.

  It is. It is going to be okay. It’s going to be a good year. Like I promised her. Tony is in the sugarbush collecting the first of the thin sap, picking old buckets and new plastic milk jugs from the taps, dumping a cup here, a few drops there, a whole quart—wow! so early—into the larger bucket that he then carries to the tractor and empties into the tank.

  In the house Linda is washing dishes as a lasagna, Nonna Pisano’s recipe, bakes and fills the house with its aroma. The girls are napping. Pewel is in the barn office designing a “pipeline filter system” so the sap tank on the tractor can be drained into the pipeline which will direct the sap through a series of ever finer filters and deliver a cleaner product to the evaporation tank in the sugar shack. It has been a good few weeks, she is thinking, an amazing turnabout. Together she and Tony flushed the last of the Thorazine tablets down the commode in their apartment. For days he was nauseated, afraid, from withdrawal. She held him, reassured him, read him the Thorazine withdrawal symptoms from her PDR. Then she took the diazepam, and he’d agreed, and she meted it out, one each evening, only if he asked. She is happy to be helping her man. He is gaining back his health. If he is still secretive about his absence, about his hospital stay, that’s okay. Someday, she thinks, he will tell me. She smiles as she sponges the counter and drapes the dish towel over the rack so it will dry.

  It is almost her fantasy come true—almost like being a family nurse practitioner—caring for the elderly, the adult, the infant. And in the setting of the High Meadow farm. She feels like a country doctor. She looks out the window wondering if Grandpa W. will be in early, if she should make him a snack. Dr. Simon Denham, along with seven other doctors, is planning to open a small medical office complex in the late spring. He’s offered her a job. But, she thinks, I’ll only work two days a week so I can still work here. This is paradise. Linda has even suggested to Tony that he should think about returning to school.

  In the high meadow Tony is trying to get the old tractor started again. It is dusk. His hands have gone numb. His toes sting. “Come on mothafu—” He clams up. No way, he thinks. I am not going back into that frame of mind. He opens the side cowling. His arms are quivering. He doesn’t want to have to walk in, maybe have to leave the sap in the tank—it’ll freeze overnight—have to thaw it in the morning before he unloads it. Not enough choke, he thinks, or flooded? “Come on! Damn!” Again he tries to start the engine. I can deal with it. I can deal with it. “Start, you motherfucker!” I can deal ... Now he does not notice the cold but feels his arms, stomach quiver with anger. He edges out the old choke knob. The motor coughs. “Come on, Babe, you big blue snot.” Ba-da-lumb ba-da-lumb. Then nothing. “You motherfucken scumbag whore!!!” He is trying to control the volume if not the words. The motor catches. He laughs. “In we go, Babe.”

  It is now three weeks, three good weeks, each week a little better than the one before. Tony is in the living room with Gina and Michelle and they are “watching” Leave It to Beaver. Linda is on the phone with her mother, Norma’s third call since Christmas. She has called collect. Henry has been promoted, is in Dallas on busin
ess; has been away at least one week each month.

  “You don’t have to,” Linda says. “We’re really glad you call.”

  “I insist. I’ll send you the money. It’s my call. I just can’t let your father ...”

  “I know. I just wish”—Tony walks into the kitchen, opens the refrigerator, takes a can of beer, returns to the TV—“he could accept ...”

  “It’s his nurses thing,” Norma says. “That and how rude Tony was to us ...”

  “What nurses thing?”

  “Oh, you know.”

  “What?”

  “About only sluts being nurses. Oh, I can’t believe I said that word.”

  “Mom!”

  “Well, I don’t feel that way. Really, Linda, I’m glad you and Tony are back together. Ruthie told me everything. I wanted to call you every day ...”

  “It’s okay. Things are going great. I know Daddy ...”

  “He’s checked—how do I say this?—he’s checked with his attorney for you.”

  “Checked what?”

  “About divorce. If you divorce him you can come home. Henry agreed—”

  “That’s enough! How can you even say that?”

  “Now Linda, you are our daughter first ...”

  They talk on, Norma sympathetic to Linda’s plight, Linda not wishing to say anything the least negative that Tony might overhear, unable to detail or defend her situation.

  For the twins it is late and they are cranky. Tony, before the optical tranquilizer, is oblivious, as stupefied by the commercials as he is by the programs. There is a patient on Ben Casey who is beautiful. Tony stares, his eyes focusing on her neck, her chin, hair, face, following the camera’s sweep, she is lying on a gurney, her breasts peaking the hospital gown. For Linda and Tony, February, now into March, has been good but it has been sexless. Tony is afraid to sleep with Linda, afraid he’ll hurt her, afraid, if she tries, he won’t be able to perform, afraid he’ll be as he was in the hospital. And Linda’s body is no longer taut. He spies on her when she dresses. He sees the dimples on her thighs, the stretch marks on that once perfect abdomen, the heavier breasts with their long nipples which Gina, with her first tooth, has scarred. Still, the more his health returns, the more desirous he is of her. He does not know how she feels. He does not know that she is depressed by her body, her weight, thinks she’s gotten ugly. He does not know that she is tired of being touched by others, the nursing babies. He does not know if she will ever be willing, will ever forgive him.

  Now he rises. Linda has nursed the girls, changed them, put them in the crib. He does not remember her coming in, taking them. The Avengers comes on. He gets another beer, checks the door, windows, looks down back into the lumberyard, out front across and along the street. He goes in, checks on the girls, returns to the TV. Linda sits beside him, puts her arm behind the small of his back, holds him. He has not done this in a long time, not passionately, but he now kisses her, smiles, laughs, the happy-go-lucky Tony there, at least on the surface. Linda giggles too. He kisses her neck, kisses down her blouse, nuzzles between her breasts. He is more erect than he’s been in a year, still he is afraid. He pauses, looks back at the TV, is captivated by an image. Linda runs her hand through his hair. She feels his fear, doesn’t understand, still she whispers, “It’s okay, Babe. We’ll take it slow.” He does not connect her words to him, to The Avengers, to anything at all.

  More time passes. Syruping is over. The lower fields, then the high meadow, are turned, fertilized, turned again, planted. Pewel instructs Tony in every aspect, careful at first not to inundate him, but soon finding him eager to learn, eager to do. Tony has never been a good student but now he reads every article Pewel gives him, devours issues of Farm Digest. He arrives on the Harley at five, paces until Pewel gives him something to do, works feverishly until Linda and the girls arrive, breaks briefly, then again attacks his chores. March passes; 17 April, the second anniversary of his discharge, goes by. He no longer takes diazepam but has found in Lenny Shepmann a source of weed, marijuana, and yellowjackets, street amphetamines. He is sure these are good drugs. He again feels alive, positive, in control. Still he hides the grass, the yellowjackets, from Linda. When he can’t get yellowjackets he substitutes Benzedrine or Dexedrine—even over-the-counter diet pills. And when he is exhausted, coming down, he drinks beer and smokes grass, sucking smoke to mellow out without the catatonia of the Veterans Medical Center drug cocktail. Most nights he paces the apartment like a caged animal.

  Linda is baffled. He was easier to manage when he was helpless. Still there is no sex. Tony can sit, lie still, only when watching TV. But he is positive, playful, occasionally irritable. He talks about another baby, a son, how wonderful it would be to have a son. He caresses Linda, whispers, “How’d you like a dick up your ass? How’d you like me to lick your entire body?” He comes in from the field, fondles her in Pewel’s kitchen, holds her from behind, kisses her ears as she squirms to get away. The work is good for him. His arms are hard, sinewy, his stomach flat, strong. But at night he paces or passes out.

  Linda worries. She feels like a janitor in a candy shop who isn’t allowed to touch the goods; working her ass off but only able to stare into the case. She gets headaches. They become more frequent and more severe and only when they are very bad will he stand still. But her worry drives him away and after work he stops at the White Pine Inn where he makes new friends, biker friends, shooter friends, acid-head friends, flipped-out friends. Gina and Michelle’s first birthday party is held at his folks’ house and he is so proud of his daughters and his wife and that night he is zinging on yellowjackets and mellow on grass and he makes love to Linda but immediately after ejaculation he leaps from bed so sensitive to the touch even a fold in the sheet is unbearable. He is happy, thrilled, delighted that his dick stayed hard, is still hard, would probably stay hard if he slammed it in the bedroom door. He feels cured, free of the fear of impotence. For a week they make love. He is cured, freed, free to attack.

  “Babe.”

  “Um.”

  “You could do that.”

  “What?”

  “Be like Ben Casey.”

  “Huh?”

  Linda is smiling. She is barefoot, in shorts and a loose shirt, standing between the living room and the kitchen. “Like your brother. You could go back to school.”

  “Don’t like bein a farmer’s wife, eh?”

  “Oh, it’s not that.”

  “Rich doctor’d be better than a farmer, though, huh?”

  “Tony! That’s not what I mean and you know it. It’s ... you always said you wanted to go on with school. You were a really good paramedic. You liked it.”

  “Phaaftt. Those people wanted to sue me, remember? I’d be crazy to—”

  “What people? Who wanted to—”

  “Aw, nothin! Let’s just drop it.”

  She stands in the archway to the kitchen, glares at him sitting, watching Ben Casey. He sits there hurt, rigid, feeling a failure, unable to earn beyond his dole from Pewel Wapinski, unable to promise Linda, his daughters, a future. Become a doctor, he thinks. What a fucking pipe dream.

  Mid-June: The Pentagon Papers are heavy in the news. Jo and John Sr. have celebrated their thirty-first wedding anniversary. Linda has dressed Gina and Michelle in identical yellow-and-orange sunsuits they received from Norma for their birthday and is about to head over to the Children’s Free Clinic run bimonthly by Simon Denham and his new group in their new building.

  “No fuckin way.”

  “What?!”

  “What do you think?”

  “What’s the matter with you?”

  “Nothin’s the matter with me. Free clinic! Goddamn welfare.”

  “We qualify.”

  “That’s because Wapinski pays me cash. Don’t you dare take them there.” His voice is harsh, loud, the babies begin to cry. “What’s that goina teach em?”

  “That I care,” Linda screams.

  “Care! That’s shit!�
� He storms out. She hears the Harley start, hears him run through the gears, blast down Route 154.

  The early July sun blazes, bakes the ground, soaks into the tiers of new shingles already halfway up the barn roof. Tony is shirtless. He has a green bandana tied about his head, soaking up the sweat, holding back his long hair. He has carried up the ladder every bundle they’ve nailed down, all the bundles scattered to the ridge. His right thigh aches from the ladder, from kneeling, nailing. Sweat drools through the bandana, rolls to his left eye, stings. He holsters his hammer, pulls the bandana off, wipes his eyes. His third of the roof is way ahead of Jeffery Mitchell’s, who Pewel has hired to help, is ahead of Mike Pritchard’s third too. Son of a bitch, Tony thinks. The heel of his right hand and the side of his right thumb are beyond blistered from the hammer, the skin broken, sweat stinging there too. Tony looks over to see how Jeff and Mike are doing. They are not on the roof. He stands, looks over the edge. Linda is walking back to the house. Jeff and Mike are drinking ice water from quart jars, eating potato chips. Fuck, Tony mumbles. He turns, kneels, nails in another three-tab shingle, slides, aligns, nails, again, again, quick, rhythmically.

  “Hey, Tony,” Jeff calls up. Tony ignores him. “Hey, Tony, that line’s getting crooked.”

  Tony backs up, sights his line.

  “It’s got to be up a little more toward the center,” Mike calls.

  Yeah, right, fuckhead, Tony thinks. He nails another course. The sun is beating him. His nail belt chafes his side where it is already bright red from the sun.

  “Hey, Tony. You’re just about a half-inch down.”

  What the fuck? You stupid jerk. What is this shit? Tony turns. “Hey, fuck you.”

  “What?” Jeff and Mike simultaneously.

  “You heard me.” Tony flips his nail apron dumping a pound of nails on the roof, the nails rolling, bouncing, flying off.

  “What’s the matter?” Jeff moves to the bottom of the ladder, looks up, climbs six, eight rungs, turns, says to Mike, “Steady it for me, okay?”