A Rock and a High Place

by Dan Mooney

  “Good lord, no, you’re at your very worst in the mornings. If it wasn’t for my endless charm we’d have no visitors at all.”

  “I liked it fine enough when we didn’t, actually.”

  “Liar,” Frank replied immediately.

  There was a tone in his voice, something that lacked his usual merriment. Joel wanted to be indignant about being called a liar, but it was true. He knew it. He liked the people coming and going. Something about their presence distracted from whatever it was that had taken hold of him lately. He didn’t want to like their presence; he wanted to be fine on his own, but there it was. Frank sensed something in the silence.

  “Was she pals with your wife?” Frank asked tenderly. It was in his tone, something from inside him, from underneath the masks and the performance. It was “real Frank,” if such a thing existed.

  Joel scanned his new friend’s face for a sign of mockery. He couldn’t have borne mockery, not when discussing Lucey.

  “Yes. She was,” he said eventually. “Still wears some of the clothes that Lucey gave her. Hurts me to look at it sometimes.”

  “Might hurt more if she stopped,” Frank told him astutely.

  “It would,” Joel replied, feeling a lump coming to his throat. He missed Lucey. He missed Miller. What a ridiculous thought. He missed Miller. A man who had never spoken a single word to him.

  “It’s just so fucking pointless without her,” Joel snapped after a moment.

  “What?” Frank asked, clearly surprised by the outburst and the vehemence behind it.

  “I fucking hate it. Pardon my language. I hate the room without her. I hate seeing her clothes on someone else. I hate that we sold our home for this. Can you believe that? Sold our old home so that we could retire here? I hate that walking in the garden for half an hour is somehow part of my day. You want to know why it’s part of my day, Frank?”

  Joel’s intensity levels had crept up now. It was the week before all over again, startling Una the way he had in the hallway. Frank didn’t look startled, though. He looked excited.

  “Tell me,” he almost whispered.

  “Because it kills half an hour. No other reason. That’s all I’ve got without her. Time to waste and to throw away because what’s the fucking alternative, pardon my language, but what the fuck is the alternative?”

  “You could play chess against Jim,” Frank told him, but Joel knew that statement for what it was, provocation. He wanted more. And fortunately for Frank, Joel was in no mood to stop.

  “This is what I spent my working life building for, to be shunted off to the side, to be stuck playing chess with an imbecile, to have them nurses and The Rhino tell me when to eat, when to sleep, when to empty my bowels, when to take my damn pills. What am I taking the pills for anyway? To prolong my life? Why the fuck would I even want to? Pardon my language, but why the fuck would I want to prolong this fucking life?”

  “Maybe you just have the wrong perspective…” Frank started.

  “Shove your perspective up your arse, Mr. TV Star. I built a business, a home, a marriage, a family. For what? So I could end up here with some scarf-wearing smart arse, pardon my language, making jokes about my balls and sleeping in the bed that my wife used to sleep in. I once went to the bookies, on my own, met my colleagues, went to the beach with my wife. I did things. I went places. I didn’t sit here rotting. I was in charge of my life, you know?”

  He ran out of steam toward the end, and his near-shout trickled down into a murmur. He checked guiltily about the gardens for some sign of one of the nurses. He knew he was being watched after the outburst just a few days before, but there was no one in earshot.

  “No one can hear you,” Frank told him, reading his mind, but he also checked.

  He looked a little shook himself, as though he hadn’t just poked the bear for a response. Joel just ambled on, regretting the outburst now, regretting shouting and telling Frank all about how much he hated his life. He barely knew the man, knew almost nothing about him. Someone had told him once that a problem shared is a problem halved, but Joel trudged along the garden path feeling as though the burden had doubled. When they reached the small bench near the bottom of the garden, just alongside the long driveway to the gate, he sat himself down heavily and sighed.

  “I want to tell you it’ll get better,” Frank told him. “But I don’t think you’d believe me.”

  “And you’d be right. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have told you any of that. It’s not your problem.”

  “A problem shared is a problem halved,” Frank said, reading his mind again.

  “Bullshit,” Joel replied.

  “Pardon your language,” Frank finished for him.

  Joel barked a short laugh at that. The mask was back on again, the little twinkle in the eye, the pretend person covering the real one.

  “How come you hate Nurse Liam?” Joel asked. He wanted to change the subject. And to satisfy his curiosity.

  He saw a flash of him as he was caught off guard by the question. Joel knew there was something he was missing, and that Nurse Liam was key, but the mask didn’t stay slipped. Frank was a practiced hand at faking how he felt.

  “You know yourself, old pal,” Frank said casually, “these kids and their youthful exuberance. Gets under my skin.”

  “Now who’s the liar?”

  “I haven’t the slightest idea what you’re talking about,” Frank said, dismissing him, but he was blushing.

  “Yes, you do,” Joel asserted, sensing a weakness. If conversation could be chess, he was boxing Frank in, cutting off his avenues of retreat.

  “Playing the psychotherapist, are we? Going to ask me about my feelings? I thought better of you, old pal. I thought this mushy crap was beneath a man of your stature and dignity.”

  He was trying for casual offhandedness, but it wasn’t working. What was more was that Joel sensed something else about Frank, a sort of duplicity. He had something he wanted to say. He just didn’t want to say it.

  “He’s a nice young chap, you know, but stuffy maybe from time to time, but not a bad old sort,” Joel continued, prodding.

  “Wow. Coming from Joel Monroe, that’s quite the compliment.”

  He had a sort of mocking smile on. A disconcerting sort of smile.

  “The other inmates love him.” Joel used the word inmates without even thinking about it.

  “Well, why don’t you all just get a room with him, then?”

  “Go on, you may as well tell me. I’m not going to let it go. You got your kicks provoking me a little while ago. Turnabout’s fair play. Why do you hate Nurse Liam so much?”

  The mask slipped again; his best efforts to preserve it had been insufficient from the moment the question caught him off guard, and it was pointless to try to pretend otherwise. Instead he sighed deeply and stared out the gate of the nursing home and into the quiet street outside.

  “I don’t hate Nurse Liam,” Frank told him, in a voice that Joel had never heard before. A real Frank voice.

  “You absolutely…” Joel tried to cut in.

  “Let me finish, you vicious old bastard,” Frank snapped.

  It was one of only three times that Frank would ever call Joel vicious in either of their lives.

  Joel wanted to be insulted by the word, but found a strange kind of attraction to it; there was an energy about the word vicious that he had been lacking in his life. He almost smiled at it, but instead just waited for Frank to finish. They sat in silence for a moment.

  Joel watched Frank wrestle with something. He was practically squirming with the need to say something. Joel waited for it.

  “I don’t hate him,” Frank said eventually, and then, more quietly, almost whispered, “I like him. I like him quite a bit actually.”

  It took Joel a long minute to realise the implications. The subdued tone, the grim, determined facial expression, the defiant tilt of the head. Frank was a homosexual. Joel didn’t have anything particularly against gay people,
but he had never had a gay friend. It was a very uncomfortable feeling. This is what you get for asking fool questions, he thought to himself through the shock.

  The two of them continued to sit there staring straight ahead, out of the gate, at freedom denied.

  “You’re gay,” Joel said eventually. It wasn’t a particularly clever thing to say, nor was it in any way profound, but it was literally the only thing that Joel could think of.

  “And you’re a genius,” Frank told him sarcastically, still staring straight ahead.

  “You’re not gay about me, are you?”

  “No, you shriveled-up, cranky old bastard, I’m not gay about you.”

  “Been gay for long? Like, when did you decide?” Joel asked.

  “For fuck sake,” Frank muttered in exasperation. “You don’t decide to be gay, you imbecile. You just are.”

  “Ever tried not being gay?” Frank asked. He regretted opening the line of questioning. He was massively uncomfortable. The mask of Frank de Selby, he decided, was better on than off.

  “All my life,” Frank replied seriously, and Joel felt like a proper fool.

  Frank sat there staring straight ahead, peering through the bars on the giant iron gate at the front of Hilltop, his lips pursed, his face rigid. Joel thought he could see small tears forming in his eyes.

  That was what the mask was for. Frank de Selby was a gay actor, a one-time minor television star, a flamboyant, carefree, debonair senior citizen. Frank Adams was a man who wished he wasn’t gay. Joel had guessed at something in the man’s personality, something hidden. He had not expected this.

  “So you really don’t hate Nurse Liam, then?” he asked finally.

  Frank burst out laughing.

  “No. I don’t hate him. He reminds me of someone I knew once…” The laughing trailed off. “I’m sorry, I suppose I shouldn’t have told you that. It’s not something I tell people about.”

  “A problem shared and all that bullshit. Pardon my language.”

  Joel was trying to reassure Frank, but he knew it wasn’t working; he knew Frank could sense his discomfort. He slipped his de Selby mask back on, and with a broad, forced grin he stood up and dusted off his trousers that didn’t need dusting.

  “I think that’s a sufficient amount of time killed for me. I think I’ll retire to the retirement home,” he joked.

  “Well, I’ve not finished my walk, if you want to…” It was a halfhearted effort to cover his uneasiness, and Frank sensed it for what it was.

  “No, no, you go on ahead, roll that boulder up the hill. I’m going to watch some soaps.”

  With that he nodded once more and made his way back up the long driveway, head held high, chest out, performing the part of a man not even a small bit heartbroken and alone.

  Joel felt like a fool and a coward. In Frank Adams there was a very lonely man, an isolated, vulnerable creature, just like himself, and in the moment that the man reached out, Joel had recoiled out of a sense of disquiet about the man’s sexuality. Lucey would have berated him, but it was too late now. Frank was a shade more spritely than Joel and had covered half the length of the driveway in his long purposeful stride.

  They were pathetic. Both of them. Joel hated how pathetic they were. Lonely and isolated and terrified. But underneath the contempt Joel felt something warm, something unexpected. He felt kinship. It had been so long he almost didn’t recognise it for what it was. Without knowing how, without seeing it coming, Joel had bonded with Frank. He had seen the de Selby mask and the Adams underneath it, and he had felt something give in himself in the unloading of his own anger, then something else entirely in the unloading of Frank’s guilt, and Joel realised that he had a friend. A new friend. At seventy-six he didn’t think that was possible, but there it was. And he had driven that friend away by being a vicious bastard.

  Joel sat on the bench at the bottom of the hill and let the regret gnaw at him, even as he marveled at the idea that there was a part of him left that still knew what a friend looked like.

  That evening, and for the first time since Frank had moved into Hilltop, he didn’t eat his supper with Joel, preferring instead to sit at a table with Una, Mrs. Klein and Mighty Jim. Jim seemed to have finally become aware of Frank’s existence and babbled at him incessantly; Frank nodded good-naturedly, though clearly not understanding, and cracked jokes to make the two women chuckle. Joel watched all of this from a table on his own across the room. He wore his best cranky face to discourage others from joining him, so that he might figure out how best to proceed with his new and faltering friendship.

  It worked a treat, they all avoided the cranky face.

  Nurse Liam watched from the door, his blue eyes scanning the room and noting Joel’s isolation, Frank’s decision not to eat with his roommate.

  “Anything the matter?” he asked, approaching Joel and ignoring the look.

  “Nothing at all,” Joel lied.

  He studied Nurse Liam a little more, noting that the young man was handsome in his own way. He wore his uniform well. He had a little pin on that Joel had never noticed before. Or if he did, he hadn’t cared. The pin was in a rainbow.

  Liam was gay, too. Joel had missed it.

  “Should I be worried about you, Joel?” Liam asked earnestly.

  “Absolutely not, and let’s not start all that pill nonsense again. I’m taking the damn things, aren’t I?” he said, to cover up his shock.

  “It’s not about the pills, Joel. It’s about your mood. I just…”

  Whatever he wanted to say trailed off in the face of Joel’s flat, unfriendly, uncompromising stare. Joel hadn’t time for this. He’d hurt his new friend, isolated him, and it was bothering him. Nurse Liam nodded after a moment.

  “Please know that I’m here if you need to talk. What happened last week…”

  “Happened and so be it,” Joel cut him off. He was sick of thinking of the rough hands all over poor, silent Mr. Miller.

  Nurse Liam took the hint and moved off. Joel considered sitting at the table where Frank and the others sat, but he had little energy for dealing with Mighty Jim, or with whatever it was he felt for Una Clarke. Instead he took the small plastic cup of jelly he had been given with his dinner and walking over to Frank, placed it by his tray.

  “Didn’t fancy mine,” he said gruffly.

  “Awwww,” said Mrs. Klein. “Isn’t that nice?”

  Joel found himself blushing a deep red. Frank, the real one hidden underneath the false, nodded at him, and Joel left.

  He’d never given a man jelly before. In retrospect it seemed a somewhat ridiculous sort of apology for being heartless.

  When Frank finally made his way to bed that evening he found Joel sitting up reading. He moved stiffly, almost formally. The fundamental change in him was apparent. Once he’d shown what was under the mask, he knew he could never get it back, and in his isolated vulnerability he tried to cover that with what he felt was left of his dignity. Joel felt tremendously sad for him. He recognised in Frank’s behaviour a mirror of his own. A cold aloofness that would do in place of feeling lonely. It wouldn’t do, Joel decided, for them to continue like this, and to even the scales he decided to tell Frank.

  “Frank?” he said quietly.

  “Joel,” Frank replied seriously.

  “I have to tell you something.”

  “No, you don’t. Look, earlier on, I shouldn’t have…”

  “No, you look, this is serious. I want to tell you, because I like you.”

  It occurred to him that what he was saying could be misconstrued, and he flushed with embarrassment. When Frank cocked an eyebrow at him, he blushed even deeper.

  “Not like that,” he assured his roommate. “Not in a gay way or anything.”

  “Jesus fucking Christ,” Frank muttered.

  “No, really. I need to tell someone.”

  The immensity of what he was about to say hung in the room between them, and Frank couldn’t but feel it. He sat down on the edge
of his bed, slipping his shoes off with a grunt.

  “Go on…”

  Joel took a deep breath.

  “I want to kill myself,” he said.

  It was a perfectly profound and deeply unsettling moment for them both. Joel had finally vocalised it, and in doing so confirmed to himself that he really wanted it. It wasn’t an idle thought dredged up by the death of Mr. Miller and the continued mourning for his wife, but a concrete and real desire. He no longer wished to be alive. He wanted out. Frank sensed the gravity in it, the sincerity, the resolve of his new friend. He paused, his shoes still half off, and stared across at Joel.

  Joel thought back to his imagined suicides. His hanging, or his overdose. Maybe Frank could help him with it. Whether he did or not, Joel desperately hoped that the other man recognised Joel’s need to confide for what it was. He did like Frank. He didn’t understand how it might be possible for him to like anyone, much less the eccentric that shared his room, but there it was. He liked him so he told him. To balance the scales.

  Joel had exposed himself completely, and in that moment the awkwardness and discomfort between them vanished. The playing field was level, each man now as honest with the other about themselves as they possibly could be. Frank tried not to reel under the weight of the moment, tried not to blink as his friend held his breath waiting for a reply. One was required. He had to say something. Joel tensed.

  “I think that’s a wonderful idea,” Frank told him.

  For the second time that day Joel found himself at a loss for words.

  “You what?” he asked flatly.

  “I think it’s a wonderful idea.”

  Joel hadn’t known what to expect in reply to his simple ambition, but it certainly wasn’t this.

  “You do?” he asked, confused now.

  “Absolutely. It’s a powerful expression. You hate where you are, you want change, no one will let you change now, not in here, not in our circumstances, so why not? Take control. Master of your own destiny. Captain of your own soul and all that.”

  Joel sat back in his bed and pondered that. He found the thought exhilarating. It was the first time he had felt exhilarated in a great many years. His heart was pounding in his chest; he tingled at the thought. Master of his own destiny. It was an alien concept to a man who didn’t know the four-digit code to get out of his own bedroom at night.