An Ocean Without a Shore

by Scott Spencer

  “I’ve been thinking about you,” I whispered.

  I could not keep myself from noticing the look of uncertainty on his face; he waited for his misgivings to subside and finally said, “Yes. I know.”

  “All this time apart,” I said. “Wasted years.”

  “Not good,” he said. He kissed me on the mouth. His tongue was hefty, vaguely bumpy, like a washcloth. He wanted me to stop talking. And then he ravaged me. Meaningless sex has a bad reputation, but unless you have a heart made of granite there’s actually no such thing as meaningless sex. Before he left, I got him to give me his full name and address. He wrote it down for me in a very careful hand, and left soon after, without asking me for mine.

  He smiled in a kindly way and said, “Sweet dreams, Mr. You.”

  * * *

  “You think you could move any slower, you stupid jerks?” Marino said, more or less under his breath, but willing to be overheard.

  “Guys,” Thaddeus called out. “We’re losing him.” He tried to strike a collegial tone.

  There were six EMT volunteers, including Jennings, dressed in a tan Carhartt jacket, jeans. He was wearing rubber flip-flops, his feet bare, as if he had been on his way to a shower when the call came in. The nail on his large toe, right foot, was black and appeared to be dying.

  “Who’s hurt?” he asked Thaddeus.

  “It’s my father,” Thaddeus said. “I think he’s had a stroke or a heart attack.”

  “Why is this taking so long?” Marino asked, making no attempt to hide his disapproval.

  “Well, let me walk you through this, Mr. Marino,” Jennings said. He said “Mr.” as if it were a taunt. “We’re volunteers. The call comes in. Each of us in our own home. We drop whatever it is we’re doing, if we’re sleeping, or eating, or changing a diaper, we drop it as soon we hear there’s an emergency somewhere, and we get in our own private vehicle and drive as fast as we can to the garage where this here meat wagon is waiting for us, and we get the address where we’re supposed to be going. You did not even give an address so that slowed things down.”

  “Can we not talk about this now?” Thaddeus said, his voice rising.

  “I’m with you,” Jennings said, patting Thaddeus on the shoulder. “Let me see what I can do to get things rolling here. Okay?”

  Of the six EMT workers, one was a woman who years before had worked at Orkney as a nanny. She was delivering information to the hospital through a walkie-talkie but it appeared not to be working. She spoke and then held it away from herself and shook her head. She had once commented upon Grace’s work, calling them “pitchers,” and David, not even four years old, had corrected her pronunciation. Thaddeus had admonished the boy but that had made matters worse.

  “Hey, Laura,” Thaddeus called out, raising a hand in greeting but either she didn’t hear him or she chose not to reciprocate.

  Two of the other volunteers were taking the gurney out of the back of the truck. One of them pulled it by the grips while the other stood to one side. There seemed some impediment to getting the gurney out and the second volunteer watched while the first tried to shake it loose.

  “What in the fuck are they doing?” Marino said.

  “I don’t know, I don’t know,” Thaddeus whispered.

  The second volunteer got into the back of the wagon. “Give her a yank,” he called out, and a moment later the gurney was on the ground, its back wheels spinning.

  As yet, none of the EMT workers had set foot in the house. The gurney was righted, the straps tightened, though the usefulness of that was mysterious since they would only have to be unbuckled again. There seemed to be certain procedures and they went through them, as impervious to logic or human need as the ticking of a clock. Before the gurney was picked up, both volunteers put on their gloves, tugging at them carefully. “It would have made me laugh if I hadn’t wanted to strangle him,” Thaddeus later told me. Another of the volunteers, a ponytailed guy in his thirties with an orthopedic boot on his left foot, was peering into an enormous bag of medical supplies, and doing seemingly meaningless things, like picking up a roll of gauze, holding it to the light, turning it this way and that, and dropping it back into the bag. Next came a towel, scissors, a suction bulb, on and on, each viewed for a moment before being dropped back into the bag. Finally, he fished out a stethoscope and looped it around his neck. The volunteer who had driven the ambulance walked over to the gurney and engaged in a brief conversation with the two in charge of getting it into the house. For the life of him Thaddeus could not understand what needed to be said, or why this was taking so long. Were the EMT workers taunting him? Was this some kind of slow-down strike, like baggage handlers at the Rome airport?

  Marino muttered, “This is like a slow-motion murder,” and began to shout at the EMT workers. “Hey, you guys, there is an old man in there on my floor. On my floor! And you’re standing around with your dicks in your hands.”

  None of the volunteers gave the slightest indication of having heard Marino. They spoke quietly to one another as they filed into the house, gazing up and around for a moment to take in the splendor.

  Jennings was the last one in. He clapped Thaddeus’s shoulder and said, “Don’t worry, we got this.” He paused, and gestured toward one of the EMT workers—the one with the stethoscope. “You know Larry, right?”

  Thaddeus shook his head no.

  “Oh man, you do, you do. He’s been over to the property a million times.” He called out to his old friend Larry Sassone. “Hey, Larry. Come here for a sec.”

  “I can’t now, Jennings.” He unzipped his jacket and tucked in the chest piece of his stethoscope.

  “Does he know what he’s doing?” Thaddeus asked.

  “Nope. We’re just a bunch of good old country boys who like driving that truck and whooping the siren.”

  The metal guardrail of the gurney clipped the dark blue molding around the doorway and a little chunk of wood dislodged like a peach pit spit onto the floor.

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake,” said Marino, but no one paid attention to him. Shaking his head and making no attempt to conceal his extravagant frown, he took his place with his guests as they silently watched Sam being lifted onto the gurney. For the moment, the EMT workers seemed at last efficient. Larry Sassone listened for his heartbeat as Sam was being strapped securely in. Marino’s cook emerged from the kitchen, drying her hands on a dish towel. She was a prim-looking woman in her fifties; blind in one eye, she moved her head in odd angles, to take in the room.

  “Hi, Mom,” said the EMT worker who was steadying the back end of the gurney.

  “You drive carefully,” the cook said. “The roads are a mess.”

  “Don’t worry, Mom. See you later tonight, okay? Love you.”

  Grace gestured with her eyes, letting Thaddeus know that he needed to follow behind the gurney and get into the ambulance with his father.

  “What are you doing?” cried Libby, to no one and everyone. “Can’t you see? He’s already dead. He’s gone, he’s gone. This is ridiculous.” She gripped the back of a chair for balance. She breathed heavily but her face was neutral. She surveyed everything that was happening in front of her as if she were watching a film of it for the fifth time, looking for little details she might have missed.

  Jennings, noticing Grace’s gesture, told Thaddeus he could ride along with them.

  “I want to come, too,” Emma said. “With Grandpa.”

  “You can’t,” David was quick to say.

  “Listen to your brother,” Jennings said. He pulled off his glove and lifted Emma’s chin with two fingers, peered into her eyes. “You stay right here, okay?”

  “Okay,” she said, in an obedient whisper.

  Thaddeus followed Jennings outside and waited while they put Sam in, secured him. When it was time, Thaddeus climbed in, trying to ignore Jennings’s helpful hand on his elbow. In his cashmere coat and loafers, he felt foolish. It was not easy to climb in. He had to get on his knees; the icy
metal floor radiated through his trousers.

  Here in the back of an ambulance, with its oxygen tanks from which the green paint was flaking, and the ominous coils of amber tubing hanging from the ceiling, and the discarded blood pressure cuff on the floor, and the metal containers of medical supplies bolted to the metal walls, here in this box of disaster and its aftermath was the unlovely strenuous and terminal truth of the world.

  Jennings and Larry Sassone hoisted themselves in and pulled the doors shut with a mighty boom. Thaddeus found a place to sit that minimized the chances of his being in the way, while Sassone hovered over Sam, replacing the oxygen mask and then carefully turning on one of the tanks.

  “Is he breathing?” Thaddeus asked. “He doesn’t seem to be breathing.”

  “We don’t do final assess. We deliver the patient.”

  Jennings sat next to Thaddeus and patted his arm. “Hang in there, buddy,” he said.

  Thaddeus was acutely aware they were not yet moving. They were parked in front of Sequana like a bookmobile. What was keeping them? He heard voices and then the sound of a truck’s door closing. More voices. Laughter. Another door slamming shut.

  “You start the tanks yet, Itchy?” Jennings asked Sassone.

  Jennings calling Sassone Itchy jogged Thaddeus’s memory. Of course! Him. He had already closed the door in Sassone’s face. Jennings had brought him around. Jennings had always been good about keeping hunters off Orkney’s grounds, but he had asked for special dispensation for Sassone, who was called Itchy because in high school Sassone had loved Nietzsche and his friends had gleefully corrupted the weird name to a comic book handle. At the time, Thaddeus had decided not to make an exception to the no-hunting rule, and he had given the matter no further thought until this very moment, when it struck him that in all likelihood Itchy had hated him ever since and this was Sassone’s revenge for being deprived of his two does and a buck. Yet there was more to it. Sassone alone hadn’t manufactured the delay. They were all in it, the lot of them.

  “You sitting there?” Sassone asked Thaddeus.

  “Yeah. Is that okay?”

  “Sure. I’ll ride up front.” He stooped as he walked to the front end of the interior. He must have realized how he looked because he turned toward Thaddeus and dangled his arms and made ape noises. Laughing, he turned away and banged his elbow twice against the glass, letting know whoever was in the cab that he was sitting up front.

  “Thank you,” Thaddeus muttered as Sassone left the back of the truck. But thought, for nothing, you sack of dirt.

  Sassone slammed the double door behind him and Jennings began to cough, suddenly, violently. He opened his mouth and, bowing, shook his head, as if trying to dislodge a stinging insect caught at the back of his throat. A strand of spittle hung from his mouth, swinging back and forth like a trapeze ring after the acrobat has fallen. He gathered it in with his fingers, looked at it for a moment through narrowed eyes, before rubbing it into the rough weave of his trousers.

  Where he had expected to find pity or at least concern for his old friend, Thaddeus found only anger. Not just with Jennings, but for all of them, the entire crew. Knuckle-dragging fucking bastards, he thought. He hated the tenor of his own mind, but it was too late to silence it. All the time wasted while the life drained from Sam. The murderous meandering even after they arrived. Marino was right, it was a slow-motion homicide. And Jennings was at fault as much as any of them.

  Finally the ambulance started to roll, very slowly at first, the gears grinding. Sam’s stretcher began to roll but it had been tethered to metal rings on the wall and it only moved an inch before suddenly jerking to a halt.

  “Is that all right?” Thaddeus asked.

  “No problem,” said Jennings.

  “How come no siren?” Thaddeus asked, but he was unable to wait for an answer. His stomach churned. “And what the fuck, Jennings. What the fuck. It took you forever to get there—and now look at him.”

  Jennings glanced toward Sam, shrugged. He reached back and fished out the ends of his seat belt, fastened it. “Belt up, Thaddeus. We’ll be picking up speed.”

  “If he dies, it’s on you,” Thaddeus said. He waited for a response. The siren whooped on and then off. It grated on Thaddeus. The siren burst sounded celebratory. Who were these men? Really, truly. Who were they? Jennings’s silence, rather than coaxing Thaddeus into silence himself, only served to goad him. He looked at his hands. They seemed to belong to someone else. As did his mind, his thoughts, his fury.

  Thaddeus stood just as the ambulance was making a turn and he stumbled forward. He wanted to take the oxygen mask off his father. It was absurd, it was a mockery, like putting a hat on a dog. But was he dead? How could you tell for sure? How, he wondered, how in the world can I be a man who does not know for sure if his own father has died?

  Sam’s lips were parted, and Thaddeus could see the pale gray tip of his tongue, lifeless as a bookmark.

  “Hey, Pop,” he said. “Pop?”

  The EMT truck took another sudden turn. Thaddeus was in too much disarray to maintain his balance and he tripped over his own feet and fell directly onto his father. The skin was cold and oddly sticky, like unbaked bread slowly rising in its tin. Thaddeus made a desperate sound.

  “Sit down, Thaddeus,” Jennings said. “We’re almost there. Take it easy.”

  “Take it easy? Really? Is that your suggestion? Can I ask you something? What were you doing all that time while he was just lying there on the floor?”

  “I could ask you that, too. What were you doing?”

  “Waiting for you,” he said, reattaching his seat belt.

  Jennings had the slow, easy smile of a gambler who knows he is just about to show winning cards. “Yeah, I guess you were. We’re just lowly volunteers, brother. We don’t get paid. You know that, don’t you? We just do it best we can. We’re not doctors or race car drivers. We hammer things and fix things. You know. I don’t have to tell you.”

  “You’re all murderers, and I swear to God, Jennings, I don’t care what kind of history we’ve got, or how many times our kids played together, none of that means anything to me anymore.”

  Furiously, Thaddeus undid his seat belt and Jennings undid his, and they did their best to stand and face each other. The ambulance made a turn and they staggered, trying to keep their balance. They were practically touching. Jennings placed his hands on Thaddeus’s shoulders. And that’s when Thaddeus tried to hit him, as much to his own surprise as to Jennings’s. When was the last time he had hit a human being? The main reason he knew how to make a proper fist was that he’d researched it for a screenplay. He closed both of his hands, squeezed and squeezed until his thumbs touched the knuckles of his ring fingers. But the blows never landed. Jennings swatted the first swing away and quickly closed the space between Thaddeus and himself and enveloped Thaddeus in an overpowering embrace.

  “Shhh, it’s okay, it’s okay, shhhh shhh shh,” he whispered, as if to calm a spooked horse, a frightened child.

  Thaddeus slowly unfurled his fists, dropped his hands so they hung at his sides.

  “I know,” Jennings whispered. “There’s nothing like a father.”

  They both shifted their weight to keep balance as the EMT truck made another turn and picked up speed.

  “You were good to my father, Thaddeus. And I would never hurt yours. You know that, don’t you? We understand each other, right?”

  Thaddeus’s shoulders were shaking.

  “Neighbor,” Jennings said, in his deep voice. And then he whispered it over and over. “Neighbor, neighbor.”

  Thaddeus took a deep breath.

  “It’s okay,” Jennings said. “Let it out. You have to let it out.”

  Thaddeus took a step back. He grabbed his hair, pulled it. “Fuck.”

  “I know, man. Your dad.”

  “My dad.”

  “I know.”

  “That sweet, sad man. He never raised his voice to me. When he was pissed of
f he’d sigh and puff out his cheeks.”

  “You’re going to fall if you don’t sit down, Thaddeus.”

  “He hated bullies. And cheaters. He wanted life to be fair.”

  “He seemed like a real nice guy, Thaddeus. He’s with God, no bullies there, no cheaters.”

  “He had these eyes, dark, sad eyes. I can’t believe I’m never going to see them again.”

  “Your eyes are just like his.” He placed a steadying hand on Thaddeus’s shoulder. “And David’s got them, too.”

  “I tried to make him happy, you know, I tried and I tried.”

  “Look at what you’ve done with your life, man. He must have been so proud.”

  “You think?” said Thaddeus. He eked out the smile of a man who never really expected things to go his way. “Well, I guess that’s that.” Or maybe he said, Oh well, or So it goes, fuck me with a chain saw. Whatever he said, there was some little verbal flag of surrender before he could take the advice that Jennings had offered and then he let it out, yes he did, he let it all out, and Jennings gathered him in and held him securely as Thaddeus wept, sobbing out the grief that came from the very core of him, a grief and an aloneness that had no beginning and no end.

  * * *

  At which point, Mees was gone and I could no longer bear being in the bed I had briefly shared with him. I made my way to the sofa. The chilly satin upholstery came as a small relief. As I drifted off, I thought, This isn’t even a sofa; it’s a fucking love seat.

  Chapter 25

  Places, Everyone!

  Jennings and Muriel along with Jewel and Henry were in their small yellow house, one chimney, one bath. Thaddeus and his family were in the mansion, five chimneys, six baths. Jennings left a basket of apples from the mini-orchard on the porch of the big house. Muriel, in her worn jeans and flowing Indian blouses, scoured forest and field for little objects with which to decorate cakes for a local baker, her hair pinned up in those Princess Leia buns that look like earphones. Every now and then she’d leave one of the bakery’s concoctions in the foyer of the main house, which made Grace furious, mainly because she didn’t want Emma to have cake. Thaddeus was not so lost in his fraternal fantasies to fail to notice that when an old locust tree uprooted after a soaking rain and took off a portion of porch as it fell, it was Jennings and Henry who dragged the tree away and cut it into lengths so it could season and be used in the future for fence posts.