Hob Broun - Inner Tube

I hold out my hand to her. She looks at it as if it were something from an archaeological dig.

A line of explosions, small puffs of smoke. One woman clawing, another hiding. A man with ink-stained hair and a man nestled in roadside trash. But no straight line, or I’m too wasted to tell. Nothing in my stomach to sponge up the alcohol, proud essence of the cactus. Ambushed. A long warm spike hammered through the top of my head. Okay, no excuses. Still, everything looking soupy right now. There, where Ellen was standing, is a jagged black outline of her body. Maybe I should lock my door too?

Better. No security leaks now. I put my ear to the intervening wall, listening for Ellen. She might be one of those silent weepers — fear and loathing without relinquishing control. It wouldn’t surprise me. Very precise in her choices. Don’t I remember her telling me of a museum in the city which insisted its Mona Lisa was genuine, the one in Paris a fake, and that she’d applied for a job there? Or is this an invention of mine? A groove worn into the mind during sleeplessness? It wouldn’t surprise me.

The shoddy remorse of the boozer, the inflated sentiments, could be plotted on a graph. Does that stop me? I lift the phone and punch out Violet’s number. Buzz, buzz, and that’s all. Probably off showing slides in a lecture hall. Early back east, but all I get is Carla’s answering machine. “I’m unreachable now….” Muddy stride piano backing her up. In character, red lips, black pumps, and bobbed hair. I don’t wait for the tone.

“She ain’t here,” Opatowski says.

“How long ago did she leave?”

“No timeclocks here, my friend. Why not try her at home?”

A truly unctuous quality in his voice. This could be the highlight of his day. I picture him sprawled in front of the office TV, fingering a cheroot. I picture him, in lime-green golf pants, on the cover of a chamber of commerce brochure above the legend “Ask Me About the Good Life.”

“Is Mommy home? Can I talk to her, please?”

The child squeals and drops the receiver; a long dead space then, punctuated by barking and the surging audio of a game show. Heidi comes abruptly onto the line.

“Yeah?”

“How’s every little thing?”

“You miserable fucking—”

“Can we meet somewhere for lunch?”

“Get bent. I wouldn’t meet you on top of a diamond mine.”

But I can tell from her seesawing inflection that really she’s glad to hear from me. Takes only another ten minutes to talk her into it. She’ll stick Tasha next door, says she has to go back to the motel for something.

“We can start from scratch. The whole thing, I mean.”

“My mind’s open,” she says.

No more explosions today. All is defused by right thinking. I picture her working spray polish into the Mediterranean finish of her home entertainment console. I picture her bending over the edge of my bathtub with nothing on but her running shoes.

Hot in here. Feel like lead balls are hanging from arms and shoulders. For now, stretch out alongside baseboard. No harm. I have plenty of time. Be there first. Resting up briefly is all. In control. Eyes shut for a few minutes only. Minutes. No harm.

I’M DOZING IN FRONT of the box, light but no sound, when I hear it. There is a vibratory tingle in the glass when I step inside the drapes and tip my head against the window. First thought, what a gorgeous piece of rolling stock — a green-and-white ambulance from Cherry Ames. I see Wade jump out and dash into the office. Right then I snap to who they’re going to be carrying out. Fuck all. I want to stay inside with the covers over my head, but really, I can’t.

The outline under the sheet could be a child’s. They retract the stretcher wheels and slide her on in like a safety-deposit box. Opatowski has no shoes on. The bottled-in-bond Potts-town hard guy doesn’t answer me, fights when I try to sit him straight on the bench. His sobbing is so violent, I’m afraid he’ll throw a seizure.

“Can’t you give him something?”

This is as close to Wade as I’ve ever come. He has the same pitted cheeks as his wife, the same pallor.

“Like what?” he says.

“Like a sedative. Just look at him, for Christ’s sake.”

“Yeah, I see. The man just lost his wife.” He looks to his partner, a burly guy with a cheek distended by tobacco. “We got no liability coverage for that, right?”

Opatowski is choking on grief, tries to get her name out but can’t.

“That don’t make me crazy about it. Hell, I know these people personal, and anything else…” Wade shrugs. “I wouldn’t even be here except for two fellas called in sick.”

I throw him against the ambulance door, jerk him back again by the belt.

“Take care of him now, you jerkoff. Right now.”

He could flatten me in seconds, but I must look rabid enough to alarm them both, convince them to take the easy way. Wade nods, spits, mumbles something about legalities. They hit Opatowski with something from an ampule and take him inside. I ought to stay with him, but really, I can’t.

The sun is high and the road is flat and black as a griddle. I walk over to Boot Hill and subside into a brown booth. Two other thirstys in the place, Virg from the gas station, and the owner’s crooked boy. We don’t say hi. I have a shot and a beer, then two more.

Then come stinging tears, concentrated, as though I’ve been holding them a long, long time.

It was cherry blossom time in our nation’s capital. The Washington correspondents, who were always fighting for air time, searched out bosky spots to film their opens and closes. Ratings for the Evening News had never been better; I thought of asking for a raise.

It was daffodil time in Lake Success, and they were burying my mother in a memorial park spruce as a tournament golf course. The headstone was white marble. The casket was polished copper, a plush capsule that could have been boostered into space.

Three rows of folding wooden chairs had been set out, but it was still SRO. Aunt Rita, who’d been pinned under a horse, arrived in an electric wheelchair, a slit-eyed chauffeur in attendance. Sonia Brooks, whose Christmas cards had been returned unopened, was there without her husband. My mother commanded loyalty, at least that day — her tennis teacher came, her hair stylist, and a housekeeper she’d fired for drinking. And there was the English character actress she’d toured with one summer, who wept and trembled uncontrollably: On her way to the service in an open convertible, she’d crossed the Verrazano Bridge and a rat had dropped from a girder onto the seat beside her.

My father read some Swinburne and a Unitarian minister mused about “interdependence.” A circuit court judge, who, as far as I knew, had never met her, described my mother as a bright clear light. Union workers lowered my mother into ground that belonged to white grubs and blind moles. Flowers were tossed in with her. Strangers embraced me. I felt sick to my stomach but my eyes were dry.

Carla was next to me, silent and still, but her eyes overflowed. She had driven down from Maine, from the cabin she’d fled Boston for, three days earlier, and had barely slept since. Her bloodless face was seraphic, frozen white above a mourning costume improvised from closet depths: black velvet minidress, black tights, pointy shoes with functionless buckles. Back at the house, I spent a long time in the shower.

Gordo said we oughtn’t to sink too deep in sorrow, how she would have been the first to say so. He wanted to take us to the Princeton Club for drinks and dinner. We had soup and toast instead and took turns answering the phone.

“Anything at all we can do,” offered curious townsfolk.