A Rock and a High Place

by Dan Mooney

  “Oh, anything you like,” Frank replied graciously. “Might read actually, or do some writing maybe, if you don’t mind?”

  “Want me to turn it down?” Joel asked helpfully.

  “Not at all,” Frank told him conveniently, reaching for his little journal. “I’ll hardly even notice it once I start.”

  And that was the way of their conversations.

  It was all day painful. A considerable improvement on the dreadful isolation of Monday morning, a happier, less anxious world for him to live in, but this was not his relationship with Frank. This was an uneasy thing of their joint creation, and Joel stayed awake for some hours that night desperately trying to think of a way to break through the wall. To no avail.

  He tried the following day too, and the day after, but he had broken it. He had broken the whole thing with his stubbornness. His refusal to talk about anything more relevant than the television or the nurses or the books they were both reading, and on Friday night, he realised grimly that what stood between them was the very thing he had been running from, the very thing that terrified him since he had seen Nurse Angelica tried to pound the life back into Mr. Miller.

  Between them, invisible, silently and patiently waiting for his turn, was death. Specifically Joel Monroe’s death.

  Their relationship could never be fixed while Joel was waiting for the moment to end his life. It would remain broken as long as Frank knew that, at any moment, Joel might walk out of life.

  There was nothing profound about it, nothing momentous and nothing worthy of statement; it was no more than a grim and deeply awful urge to be free of fear, free of the feeling of uselessness, and now that secret that had once bonded them together was what kept them at arm’s length from each other.

  It was particularly painful since Joel found himself in such doubt. The certainty of wanting to die had been replaced by an uneasy but growing desire to know more about his grandchildren, more about Una Clarke, more about Frank. He wasn’t sure if he could leave them behind anymore, and the only person who could help him sort it out was sitting in the room with him.

  Except they weren’t talking. Not in any real way.

  The solution to his problem, which at the time he didn’t realise was a solution at all, pulled up in the car park of Hilltop on a sunny Saturday afternoon, one week to the day since they had slipped out for Frank’s birthday.

  It was a small little car, a neat little thing that Lily drove, and from it came both of his grandchildren. In his misery and idleness all week he had hardly thought about them, about how they might have been caught up in the storm. Did Eva know they had met him? Did she know they had spent the night drinking with him and dancing with him and that they had brought him to a kebab shop?

  As he saw the car pull up he realised he didn’t much care; he was far too glad to see them to care what they had come for. That they were here to see him without being cajoled, and he was happy to see them instead of bitter and resentful. How much nicer a world it was when he had that little thing to warm him. He knew that Frank was responsible for that, for unlocking in him that sense of something nice, for reaching out to him and leading him away from his isolation. He smiled at his friend, pleased to see a similar smile of delight on Frank’s face.

  Lily came through the door first, smartly dressed as always. It was some kind of a dress, Joel knew that, and a fancy dress to boot, but he was guessing at that. He also thought it seemed very sophisticated but was blunt enough with himself to admit that he had absolutely no idea what sophistication in women’s fashion looked like. She also had on her customary smile, charming and open and friendly.

  Chris followed after. His look was unsophisticated. Borderline sloppy actually, with a jacket too large for the sunny day that was in it and jeans and sneakers, and for just a second his socks peaked out and they didn’t match. Joel didn’t let it get to him. At some point over previous months and years that might have occasioned comment, but this time he simply smiled at his grandson. Chris smiled back, and from inside his overlarge clothing produced a bottle of whiskey, which he promptly handed to Frank.

  “This is the one you said you liked, isn’t it?” Chris asked.

  “This is the one I like, all right, but I don’t remember saying it…” Frank told him.

  “Really?” Chris asked, turning his eyebrows up in surprise. “You talked about it for ten minutes.”

  Joel laughed out loud; they’d get to know Frank a little better. Ten minutes was a short time for him to talk about anything.

  “Don’t know what you’re giggling at,” Chris told Joel with a smile. “You tried to teach my twenty-year-old girlfriend to waltz, you old pervert.”

  Joel flashed back to the previous Saturday. He remembered. The poor girl already knew how to waltz, but he wasn’t having it; he was going to teach her anyway. He cringed at his own stupidity and nearly pulled the covers up to his eyes in embarrassment.

  “Not to worry, Grandad,” Chris told him. “She still thinks you’re great.”

  “Everyone thinks you’re great,” Lily told them.

  Joel saw Frank resist the urge to preen himself in the bed.

  “In fact,” she continued, producing something from her wallet, “the bouncers asked me to give these to the ‘two elderly gay men’ that I was hanging out with.”

  She had two cards of some kind.

  “What are they?” Frank asked.

  “They’re VIP passes to the club, Mr. de Selby.”

  Joel guffawed loudly at the hilarity of that, and Frank burst into a long and loud laugh, the belly laugh that Joel had heard on Frank’s first day. It bounced off walls and set Lily and Chris to laughing, too.

  Lily handed the cards to Frank to keep. Joel wondered if he’d ever get to use them. He would have liked to be a VIP in a fancy nightclub. Get all dressed up this time, fancy as he could make himself, and go to a trendy nightclub. He imagined that people would be staring at him and Frank; never mind that they’d think he was gay—what did he care whether they thought him gay, or straight or bisexual or whatever the other letters stood for? They’d be looking at an elderly man doing as he pleased on a night on the town, getting to go where they couldn’t, instead of it being the other way around.

  “And what brings my two lovely grandchildren up to Hilltop on a Saturday?” Joel asked. “You’ve surely got better things to be doing?”

  They looked at one another uncomfortably for a moment.

  “First of all,” Lily said, “we want to say sorry.”

  “For what?” Joel asked.

  He didn’t want her to say it. If she apologised for making him do something that he had done all on his own, he’d scream in frustration. If she took that moment away from him…

  “For any part we might have had in you getting in trouble,” she replied, and he nearly sighed with relief.

  “Not at all,” Frank told them dismissively. “We’re old enough and long enough in the tooth to know very well what kind of trouble we were getting ourselves into.”

  As usual, Frank saw right into the middle of it.

  “Did we get you two in any trouble at home? Does your mother know that you were out with me?” Joel asked.

  They looked uncomfortable again.

  “No,” Chris said eventually. “But we kind of want to tell her.”

  “Why so?” Joel asked. He didn’t want them to be in trouble.

  “Because,” Lily interjected, “it was nice. She’s worried about you, really worried. We think she’d be less worried if she knew that you’re having fun. Enjoying yourself. You know?”

  She trailed off a little. Joel looked at them both for a long moment.

  They looked like their mother, and their grandmother. He supposed there must have been some of their worthless father’s genes in there too, but he couldn’t see where. Perhaps they had run off, as well.

  They were so clever, and friendly, and lovely. How had he allowed himself to let the distance between them become
so great? Why hadn’t he been more like Lucey? Why hadn’t he cared enough to try harder?

  Chris had wandered by his bedside locker, and he absently picked up the sign: My Tools, My Rules. He smiled at it.

  Joel looked at it for a long moment, and then his gaze moved to his lucky penny. He remembered the trebuchet and the bored-looking workers in their mock-up stands. It seemed long ago now, that first time out of the nursing home on his own. Really it had only been a matter of weeks. He realised how his friendship with Frank had, since then, blossomed into something profound and powerful. That lucky penny was a reminder of good times, but more, it was a reminder of Frank in his life.

  Joel looked over to the Royale badge sitting next to it. He hadn’t worn it since the week before. There had been something bittersweet about it. Save the Royale. The Royale had been doomed and didn’t even know it. Doomed like Joel thought he was. Watching his grandson smile at him as he replaced the My Tools, My Rules sign, Joel felt that perhaps the Royale could be saved after all. Not the theatre, which would remain outside his realm of control, but he himself could be saved. Enough people cared. He was sure of it.

  He knew then that he couldn’t do it.

  He couldn’t leave them behind.

  There was no way now that he could kill himself. There was no way he could deprive himself of whatever time he had left with them. For them he would find a way to resist the urge to leave it all go.

  It seemed as simple as that. He had wanted it. Hungered for it even. He had been so alone, so thoroughly bored and so scared all at once that he wanted to end his own life. Now he was not alone. Now things seemed less boring. Now the fear wasn’t so strong.

  With Frank by his side he had walked farther and farther away from that person, and what he had become no longer wanted death. No longer saw it around the corner. He still wanted it. He still wanted to go, but now he had something he could fight the urge with.

  “You’re good kids,” Frank Adams told them seriously.

  Frank saw what they were doing. Their little part in rescuing their grandfather. A grandfather who had been cold and aloof and cranky with them. All they needed from him was one spark of something, and they were coming charging to the rescue.

  Frank had done that for him. Frank had reconnected him with the real world; with each day in his friend’s company he had walked farther away from the void inside himself.

  There was no way he could leave Frank either. He would find a way to fix what damage he’d done to their relationship. He wouldn’t leave him behind.

  The silence had stretched on too long. Joel sitting there in a sort of bemused wonderment.

  “Say something, you ass,” Frank commanded him.

  “What do you need me to do?” Joel asked. He was all theirs now.

  “We don’t like seeing you fight,” Lily told him. she looked so much like her mother that Joel got a lump in his throat looking at her.

  “Well, I don’t like fighting,” he told her, trying not to sound choked up.

  “Ha!” Frank commented from the bed next to him.

  “I don’t like fighting with real people, Frank,” Joel told him acidly. “You don’t count.”

  “I don’t count as a real person?”

  “Court jesters aren’t real people.”

  “Oh, so that makes you the king, does it?”

  “You’re only figuring that out now? Little slow on the uptake aren’t you?”

  “Wow. Joel Monroe is calling me slow. Pots and kettles everywhere rattle in protest.”

  Lily and Chris were smiling again, and Joel had to restrain himself from heaving another sigh of relief. They might not be broken, he and Frank, they might be okay, as long as this wasn’t just another “de Selby Show.”

  “Carry on, love,” Joel told Lily.

  “We want you to apologise…” Chris told him in a rush.

  “For what?” Joel asked flatly. It was one thing to decide not to kill yourself, but apologies might be a step too far.

  “For scaring her, for making her worry and most importantly, for telling her that she preferred Grandma to you.”

  Joel had forgotten that.

  A nasty little dig at the tail end of a nasty little argument. He hadn’t really meant it of course, and whatever truth there was to it was likely more his fault than anyone else’s. He had passed the buck of his only daughter’s emotional well-being on to his wife. How could he possibly expect there to be a stable and worthwhile relationship when he had abdicated that responsibility so thoroughly?

  “Told you about that, did she?” he asked, embarrassed.

  “She’s really upset about that, Grandad,” Lily told him.

  The idea that she might be upset was startling, and he felt unpleasant about it. She was typically so strong, so capable, so enduring that he doubted that any of his words might have an effect on her thick skin.

  “Well, might have been a touch over the line,” he mumbled, still uncomfortable with the position he had managed to place himself in.

  “Will you come out and say sorry?” Chris asked.

  He had to. If he could save his relationship with them, then maybe he could do the same with Eva.

  “I will,” he promised. “When?”

  “Tomorrow suit you?” Lily asked.

  “Tomorrow’s fine.”

  “And you, Mr. de Selby?” she asked Frank.

  “I might just let Joel take this one. I don’t think your mother is terribly fond of me,” he said with a smile, still appraising his bottle of whiskey and his VIP passes to the nightclub.

  It made sense for Joel to go, and for him to go alone. There was no way he could take his own life, if he still even wanted to, while his daughter was angry with him. Things would have to be said, things that he didn’t know he could say, words that had eluded him for a long time but were necessary and overdue. Whatever happened next he would make sure that at the very least he got back on terms with his daughter. He loved her, dearly and without reservation. She might look like her mother, but her standout traits and qualities were picked up off her father; he saw himself in her resolve and her determination and the grit in her eye.

  “What time are we thinking, my dears?” Joel asked, suddenly warmed by their presence. He would leave them with something to remember fondly at the very least.

  *

  Joel spent that Saturday night in quiet contemplation. Given recent complaints about his mental ill health, he hoped that no one would mistake his silence for some kind of seclusion. He was, in fact, practicing what he would say to Eva the following day. Soft words had never come easy to him. He’d never known them in his own childhood, but that was paltry enough as excuses go.

  Several times as Joel rehearsed his clumsy words, Frank would look at him sideways from across the room and scribble something into his journal. He did this conspiratorially, dramatically, and Joel knew that the dramatist desperately wanted to be asked what he was up to, so Joel smiled to himself, said nothing, and continued practicing his speech.

  When Sunday rolled around he dressed himself well. Better than he had done in a long time. He showered and gelled his hair and spit-polished his brown leather shoes, and when he was done he appraised himself in the mirror.

  “I’ve seen worse,” Frank told him in a lukewarm declaration of support.

  “It’s okay?” Joel asked.

  “Better than that. It’s very nice.”

  Joel adjusted the collar of his shirt and the suit jacket lapels. Frank was still looking at him askance, their tentative creeping efforts to return to their friendship were still strained, and Joel vowed that he’d take care of that after he’d spoken to Eva. Frank had filled all the roles of all the friends that Joel had somehow missed out on in life. Joel felt he owed him more than he could repay, but at the very least he would make it clear to the older man that he was grateful.

  For Frank’s part, he seemed to realise that something important was stirring in Joel. That this was more t
han merely putting on his suit and sprucing himself up. This was no mere dinner with the family; this was going to be a seminal moment for his friend. He was heading into mostly uncharted waters, and the first steps of the journey he had begun taking with Frank only weeks previously were now becoming huge leaps, leaps of faith and leaps into the unknown, but important to the old man in ways that he was only beginning to understand.

  Frank climbed out of his bed and fixed the collar that Joel was struggling with. He smiled broadly at his friend, patted him on the shoulder, and climbed back under his covers.

  *

  The children escorted the prisoner through the halls of Hilltop that afternoon. One of the consequences of displeasing the Warden was his more or less constant supervision. It had been deemed that neither he nor Frank were trustworthy. Which Joel accepted was probably fair enough, since he didn’t intend on giving up his lovely rock just yet. There was time, not much, but just enough for one more night on the town if his plan went the way he expected it to.

  Nurse Angelica smiled a weak smile at him as the trio made their way out the door. She was still wary of him. Fair enough as well, Joel thought; he had earned that one, too. It was, in its own, slightly watered-down way, a liberating feeling driving through the gates of Hilltop and out into the wide-open society. It looked different now; the bus stop had significance it had never had before, and the walls of the grounds of Hilltop looked smaller from the outside than he had remembered them being. They passed the front of the houses that lined the road up to Hilltop. He had seen some of their back gardens as he trailed along the path under the trees to his rock.

  He wondered if The Rhino was at home today, playing with her child, her hair down and normal-looking, human-looking.

  “Does your mother know I’m coming?” Joel asked.

  “Yep,” Lily told him, her voice chipper, upbeat, hiding something.

  “She’s not happy about it,” Joel ventured.

  “Of course she is,” Chris chimed in from the back.

  Joel tried to twist in his seat to fix his grandson with the look, but couldn’t, so he settled for a loud harrumph instead.