by Shawn Inmon
Dr. Graham leaned forward, said, “Now, Mrs. Hart. Push!”
Tears of effort, relief, and frustration coursed down Chandra’s reddened face. She breathed deeply, gathered her strength, and pushed.
The room, which had been a minor cacophony of instruments jangling, feet shuffling, and voices overlapping, stilled instantly.
Coming back to something approaching full awareness, Chandra noticed the sudden silence. “My baby. Is my baby okay?”
“Yes, yes,” Dr. Graham said. His voice had lost its normal imperious edge. “Just a bit of an unusual birth. Baby was born with a caul on, and... well, never mind. Everything is fine.”
Chandra’s eyes rolled back in her head. With an effort, she focused on the doctor. “What?”
“Born with a caul on. It’s an old phrase. It’s unusual. I’ve never delivered a baby with one before, but it’s completely harmless. It’s a part of the amniotic sac that has adhered to the baby. In old wives’ tales, it was thought to be good luck. We’ll take baby out, clean him up and bring him back in a few minutes. Nothing to worry about.”
“Him? It’s a boy? Can I see him?”
Nurse Bunting stepped between Chandra and the baby. “All in good time. You’ve done your job, now you must let us do ours.”
Chandra craned her neck, but couldn’t see around the imposing form of Nurse Bunting. The other, younger nurse had a bundle in her arms and carried it out of the delivery room.
Dr. Graham pushed down on Chandra’s stomach, which caused another nauseating wave of pain.
“What? What are you doing?”
“Helping you deliver the placenta, so we can get you cleaned up, too. You want to see your baby, don’t you?”
Sometime later, Chandra laid back, wan and exhausted, but aching to see her son.
The younger nurse pushed through the door, followed by Dr. Graham.
The nurse was carrying a wrapped bundle, but didn’t hand it to Chandra.
Dr. Graham approached, solicitously. “We’ve got a good, healthy boy here, Mrs. Hart.”
“Oh, thank God,” Chandra cried. “When everyone got so quiet, I was worried something was wrong with him.”
“Technically, there’s nothing wrong with the baby. But, well...” He groped for words that he could not easily find.
Chandra, fed up with the delay, threw the sheets back and moved to get out of bed. Dr. Graham held up a hand to stop her and nodded at the nurse, who handed the baby over.
She pulled back the blue blanket and gazed into the deep blue eyes of her baby.
“Oh, he’s beautiful!”
“Yes. Well...”
Chandra noticed a rough red patch on the left side of the baby’s face. When she peered more closely, she saw that it ran from his forehead all the way to his chin. She smoothed at it, but it didn’t go away.
“What’s this?” she said, curiously. “Is it dry skin? Do I need to get a special lotion or something?”
“No, that’s what I was attempting to tell you. He’s been born with a rather substantial hemangioma.” He noted Chandra’s blank look. “A birthmark. It’s somewhat faint now, but in all likelihood, it will deepen and become more obvious over time. I’m sorry.”
“Sorry? What in the world for?” She gazed down at her newborn. “His name is Joe, and he is absolutely perfect.”
Chapter Two
As the doctor predicted, Joe’s birthmark deepened with time. By his first birthday, it was his most noticeable feature. At age three, he noticed that other children didn’t have markings like he did.
One day, as they rolled through the supermarket, Joe pointed at another boy his age, then pointed at his own face. “Why, Mama?”
Chandra leaned close to him until their noses touched. “Because you are special. You were born special, and you will always be special.”
By the time Joe turned six, that explanation was no longer acceptable. Over a dinner of Salisbury steak and potatoes, sitting around the dinner table of their ranch-style house in Middle Falls, Oregon, he asked again. “Why do I have this? Other kids don’t.”
Chandra considered for some time before she answered. “Everyone has a mark. Most people wear theirs on the inside. Your inside is perfect, so you have yours on your face. It’s part of what makes you who you are. It’s one small reason why I love you the way I do.”
In between bites of steak, he asked, “Where’s your mark?”
She nodded, as though she knew that question was coming. She answered quietly, “Mine is inside. I’m not as special as you are.”
Chandra and Joe Hart were a complete unit. No one else was needed, or wanted. Since Rodrigo had died, Chandra had never bothered to date anyone else. Rodrigo had been it for her, and looking for another would only frustrate her and disappoint anyone she brought into her life. Chandra’s own mark—her mourning at the passing of her soul mate so early in her life—deepened for her as well. She was twenty-seven years old on the day Rodrigo died and Joe was born. Before she turned thirty, she had begun to self-medicate with alcohol and whatever she could talk her family physician into prescribing her. The drugs she was prescribed changed from year to year, but alcohol—clear, easy-to-disguise vodka, to be precise—was ever-present.
She was the perfect alcoholic. She didn’t have to work, so she was able to just maintain a nice, mellow drunk, all the time. No blackouts or binges for her, just a steady influx of vodka that started with her first cigarette in the morning and was ever-present until she closed her eyes at night.
Chandra Hart didn’t need to work because, in the end, Rodrigo provided for her, even if he never knew it. During their marriage, she and Rodrigo had struggled to get by financially, and although he was moving up the ranks of singer-songwriters making their mark in the late fifties, he hadn’t fully arrived when he died in that frozen North Dakota field.
Rodrigo’s one and only album, called This... is Rodrigo Hart!, sold well after his death, as fans are attracted to the macabre idea of a singer reaching out to them from beyond the grave. Rodrigo Hart started a sad tradition that Janis Joplin and Otis Redding continued years later when they had the biggest hits of their careers after they died. For Rodrigo Hart, that song was Beautiful Tomorrow, an ode he wrote to Chandra celebrating a life they never got to live. The royalties from that song and album gave them enough on which to live modestly for a few years. They didn’t buy new cars, and they ate a lot of casseroles, but they got by.
Just when that small stream of income was drying up and Chandra was perusing the Want Ads for jobs as a secretary or waitress, she heard from Rodrigo’s agent. He handled any remaining business items for her, and called to tell her that Paramount Pictures had inquired about using one of Rodrigo’s songs over the end credits of a movie.
That movie—Christmas with the Smiths, starring Jimmy Stewart and Maureen O’Hara—became a smash, and it vaulted the song—When Christmas Comes Again—onto the upper reaches of the pop charts. As a holiday song, it became a staple, and resulted in enough airplay to more than cover their expenses every year, casseroles or not.
The windfall was good for their financial health, but detrimental to Chandra’s overall well-being. With no need to work, and no desire to leave the house if she didn’t have to, she slipped into a routine that continued without end, until her chickens inevitably came home to roost.
In 1977, Chandra Hart was forty-four years old, but looked a decade older. Her hair was brittle and gone to a mottled gray. The skin around her eyes and chin had started a race to the floor that appeared to be a dead heat. The years of steady alcohol consumption had destroyed her once-perfect complexion. In a word, she looked like death.
When the symptoms of alcohol abuse and potassium deficiency began to show, she ignored them as long as she could. Until a doctor told her what she was suffering from, she wouldn’t have to pretend to change any habits she never intended to change. Eventually, she looked so poorly that Joe himself insisted she go.
Joe was
a handsome boy, aside from the purple-red blotch that discolored the left half of his face. He wore his hair in long bangs to cover some of it, but that was akin to using a squirt gun on a three-alarm fire.
When Joe dragged her to the clinic, the doctor told Chandra that she was killing herself. “But,” he insisted cheerfully, “if you’ll stop drinking and take the supplements I’m prescribing for you, you can recover.” She took the supplements, but never bothered to sober up.
Like a bookend to his birth, Joe’s graduation coincided with another life-altering event. On the day he graduated from high school, Chandra woke up feeling poorly. That in itself was not news. She woke up feeling poorly every day. Her morning drink usually eased those symptoms. This day seemed a little worse, though, as her words slurred, and she staggered a bit more than usual when she tried to move from bed to couch.
Joe decided to skip his graduation, which was not a terrible loss to him. He hadn’t been bullied at school, but he had never quite felt like he fit in, either. He had two friends he hung out with from time to time, named Bobby Stuckey and JD McManus. Beyond them, he thought it unlikely that he would ever spend time with anyone else from his school. He admired any number of girls from afar, but he never let himself fantasize about being in a relationship with them. He believed that no girl would ever be interested in him.
Chandra would not listen to the idea of him skipping his graduation.
“Thirteen years, Joe. Thirteen years! We’ve already got your cap and gown. I’m so sorry I’m sick and won’t be there, but you are going. Take the car. There’s plenty of gas, just promise me you won’t drink tonight. It seems like every year some kids get drunk and get in an accident.”
Do as I say, not as I do, right, Mom? Got it. After watching you drink yourself almost to death, I have no interest in ever touching the stuff, so no worries.
Joe looked at Chandra, lying on the couch, head lolling slightly to one side, eyes semi-glazed. Oh, hell, she’ll probably just sleep the whole time I’m gone.
“Okay, Mom. I’ll go, but I’m coming straight back here afterward. I’ll stop by that new Shakey’s that just went in out by the freeway and bring a pizza home for us. Canadian Bacon and pineapple okay?”
“Yes, if you want to be permanently disowned. You know what I like.”
He did. At some point in the previous eighteen years, Chandra had stopped taking care of Joe, and Joe began taking care of her. By twelve, he had become at least as capable of making dinner as she was, and one by one, he took over the responsibilities for running the house. By fifteen, he was paying bills, balancing the checkbook, doing the shopping, and enabling her to slip further into her own oblivion.
Joe kneeled down in front of her and kissed her cheek. “I love you, Mom.”
She focused her attention as much as she was able. “You are my beautiful boy, Joe. Now, go make me proud.”
THE GRADUATION CEREMONY drug on for hours, a seemingly-endless litany of clichéd speeches, prayers, and exhortations to go and make the world a better place. By the time Joe shucked his robe off and got to his car, he was worried he wouldn’t get to Shakey’s in time to get their pizza.
Bobby and JD caught up to him just as was climbing into the Oldsmobile.
“A bunch of kids are ditching the Senior Party and heading to a kegger out at the lake. Bobby and I are heading that way. Come with us.”
Joe shook his head. “Mom’s sick at home, gotta head that way.”
JD nodded. They were used to Chandra being sick. She was often under the weather, but had always been great about keeping them stocked with pop and snacks when they were having their all-weekend Risk tournaments or Saturday night poker games.
“Okay, man,” JD said, offering a hand for an “up high” hand shake and shoulder bump. “If you change your mind, we’ll be out at the beach. You know where I mean, right?”
“Yeah, of course,” Joe lied. “I’ll think about it.”
He didn’t think about it, but he did make it to the pizza joint in time to get his and Chandra’s usual order—a large pepperoni, bacon, and ham pizza—and made it home by 9:45. He walked through the front door and into the living room.
“Ladies and... well, Lady, please welcome Middle Falls High School’s newest graduate, Joe Hart!”
He held the pizza box high, but froze when he saw his mother.
Chandra Hart had rolled mostly off the couch. Her eyes were closed and there was blood trickling out of her ears and nose.
“Mom!” Joe kneeled beside her and lifted her onto the couch. He patted her cheeks softly, an unknowing echo of the slap the nurse had delivered eighteen years earlier. He stepped on the forgotten pizza box as he rushed for the phone to call Middle Falls’ newly installed emergency 9-1-1 number.
JOE FIDGETED IN THE uncomfortable waiting room chair. It was a few minutes past 3:00 a.m., and he had been waiting to hear something for so long, it felt like the wait would never end. He waited alone, because he and his mother had always been alone. From the moment his father died, the Hart family had been comprised of only two people. Joe wondered if that number was about to be reduced in half.
Finally, a man in a white coat walked toward him. He was not smiling.
“Son, I’m sorry,” the doctor began, but Joe didn’t hear the rest of what he said. No matter how kind the words were, how comforting their intent, he still knew the truth of it.
That’s it. I’m alone.
Chapter Three
Joe sat numbly on the couch—the same couch where his mother had lapsed into unconsciousness. The after-death details had been neither extensive nor difficult. Chandra Hart had not been religious, and effectively had no friends, so there was no need for a funeral, or even a memorial service, so she had been cremated. Joe had picked up her ashes and they sat in a plain box on the coffee table in front of him.
“You didn’t ask for much, but you did ask me if I would put your ashes in your flower bed when the time came, so you could feed the plants. I guess I should get to that.” He walked to the living room window that looked out over their fenced back yard.
When she had still felt strong, Chandra had loved to work in the yard. She had three beautiful rhododendrons in the front yard, a small rose garden in the back, and another flower bed where she had planted daffodils, dahlias, delphiniums, and tulips. She had not been strong for at least five years, though, and Joe had been focused on other things. The yard had been neglected. The roses were sad and covered in black spot, the beds were choked with weeds and grass.
That’ll give me something to do, I guess.
Joe was no gardener, but he was young and strong. He hoed and weeded, tore out grasses, and turned soil in the back yard for two days. When there is nowhere you have to be, time becomes irrelevant.
The roses were a lost cause, so he pulled them out and made more flower beds. He drove his mom’s car—his car, he reminded himself—down to the nursery and told the nice woman behind the counter that he wanted to build a flower bed for his mother. He didn’t bother to tell her that it was literally for his mother, as in, her final resting place. Some stories don’t need to be shared with strangers.
The kind woman was impressed with Joe’s attitude, and, as everyone was upon initially meeting Joe, a little shocked, then saddened by his birthmark. She helped him pick out a number of perennial plants that would be low maintenance, and loaded them in the trunk of his Oldsmobile.
Once he had everything planted—he soon discovered that planting was easier than the preparation—he brought the box with Chandra’s ashes out to the yard. He set the box on the ground, then sat cross-legged beside it.
“Looks pretty good, doesn’t it, Mom?” He held his hands, still blackened with dirt out to the box for inspection. “Don’t know why I didn’t keep up the yard for you. Just never thought of it, I guess.” He turned his face up into the warm early-summer sun and felt it warm him. “I miss you, Mom. I don’t know what to do without you.” He laid a hand on top of t
he box. “I guess I’ll have to figure it out, though, won’t I?”
He stood and dusted off the butt of his jeans, then opened the cardboard box. He had been afraid that the contents would be grisly, and in some ways they were. There were pieces of bone that hadn’t been consumed in the fire, but in the end it was still her, and Joe loved even this part of her.
He sprinkled the ash and bone down into the soil until it was gone. He didn’t like the way it looked, laying a dusty gray on top of the rich soil, so he retrieved a hoe from the garden shed and worked it down in.
“That’s better. Mom, I have no idea where you are, but wherever it is, I hope you and Dad are finally together. You deserve that. I’ll be there someday, so I can meet him, too.”
Joe went back into the quiet house, took a shower and washed the dirt down the drain. He was too tired to cook, so he opened a can of Spaghetti-O’s, but didn’t bother heating them up.
I can’t get into the habit of eating like this. I’ve got to keep on top of things. Stay active. Otherwise, what is life for?
He sat on the couch, turned on the television and saw that The Carol Burnett Show was on.
“Just what the doctor ordered. Thank you television gods, for providing a little comedy when it’s needed most.”
Before he knew it, the evening had slipped away.
A month.
A year.
A decade.
His life.
Chapter Four
2004
Forty-four year old Joe Hart sat on the couch. Not much had changed since the day he had spread his mother’s ashes, but at least he was sitting on a different couch. The first one had sprung a spring right into a sensitive area of Joe’s anatomy in 1986. Joe had called Coleman’s Furniture and had them deliver a new one. He had seen it in an ad in the newspaper the week before. He hadn’t particularly liked the couch, but he very much liked the idea of ordering it over the phone and not having to leave the house.
