Fiona Maazel - Woke Up Lonely

Buzz had cracked the transom above the back door in the kitchen, but this did little to exhaust the room of smoke. Sissy said, “You know, my family was raised similar to the type of Amish with no electricity. But all of us girls has turned out to be terrific girls. We are six, except until the Helix caught hold, and now we’re two dead. So you see—” But then her boys tornadoed through the room and Sissy was up after them with a dishrag. The effort took her breath away, and she was back on the couch before long. “Buzz don’t know apples about rearing kids,” she said. “He ever had a thought in his head about them, it a-died of loneliness.” She peeled a potato. “He left me once. Right after we got out of the Helix. Then thought better of it.”

Olgo blinked at her slowly. He’d been confused and afraid and then confused all over again, but now he was something different. Bigger. His heart grew ten feet. He did not think it was an accident, him being shepherded from the Helix House and into the arms of — well, he didn’t know what these people were except that maybe they were God-gifted to tell him something.

“Anyway,” Sissy said, “my sisters took up with Thurlow, and one suicided for him not liking her enough, and the other got an abortion, which was afoul of God, so she died. We had such ideas, too. Just yearning to be a part of something. Stupid in backsight. But the thing is, you never knowed what you was signing up for. It all happened so subtle-like. Me, I’m not fancy-educated, okay, but half the people who talked me in were Harvard.”

“Amen to that,” Jerry said. He was sitting on the couch with two kittens in each hand. “So little,” he said. “Helpless.”

“Yep,” Sissy said, and she looked on her boys. They were slamming each other against the wall to see who could do it harder and to more lasting effect. George had a cut down the side of his neck but would not cede the game.

“They was born Helix,” she said. “We been out a year, but I still give ’em lots of rope. They’s still learning how to be just boys. Most horrible mistake of my life. They daddy could be anyone, though probably it’s Buzzy.”

Olgo sat forward. His voice came out low. Reverent. He was stuck eight thoughts back. “Thought better of it?” he said. “Left you and came back?”

“Yessiree. Wasn’t gone too long, neither. Sometimes, though, you can’t wait. So don’t you worry none.”

Olgo leaned way over the table like he might clutch the billows of skin come down her shoulders and said, “When he left, did you feel like he’d taken all the colors of your life with him? All the water, the light, the air? Like he’d left you for dead except being dead would have been better? Did that happen to you?”

She laughed. “That’s hokey talk. I grew up on a farm. I know how to fend for myself. Plus the Helix made me confused about Buzzy, like I weren’t married to him but just to the group.” And when Olgo did not return to the couch but just hung there as though waiting to be slapped, she said, “You oughtta see your face. You look like you left yer guts in the john.”

“Oh, leave him be,” Jerry said. “I’ve seen that face. I’ve worn that face. All hopeless and ruined. Eleven months in a shit-hole jail in North Korea, you bet I seen that face.”

“Umm-hmm,” Sissy said, and Olgo sat down. He got the feeling that though she’d heard this story a thousand times, today it was actually germane to something transpiring in their lives.

“Eleven months,” Jerry said. “You know the slits wouldn’t even let you sing in your room? I was never much for singing before, but just for being denied”—and he blew out another show tune that sent the cats tumbling from his chest.

“Terrible,” Sissy said. “Man’s just gone afoul of God.”

“Our captain near got beat to death. Others too. And whenever there was free time, which was pretty much never, but when there was: no football, ’cause the huddle meant plotting. Like we was plotting to escape. Stupid slits. I still have nightmares.”

“And they still got the Pueblo, ” said Buzz.

“Correct,” said Jerry. “Like some trophy. Not that we tried too hard to get it back. Day we was released, a hospital in Seoul gave us each an ashtray souvenir. You believe it? Eleven months of turnip soup — and eyeball was a treat, mind you — and they give us ashtrays. I mean, this was in ’sixty-eight, so we was no one’s favorite army. But still. I hate this country, I really do.”

Olgo could not fathom where this was going, but he was decided to go along with it. Left and came back were the only words that mattered now. He glanced up at Sissy, waiting for more.

Jerry sank into his chair. “I know it’s an awful thing to say.”

Sissy patted his hand. “We all of us been disappointed.”

Jerry spat into a napkin. “Second I heard Thurlow was in with those same who took the Pueblo —man. What was I thinking? Sissy’d done lost her sisters and there I was still going to meetings and saying my heart’s broke ’cause of my wife and kin. Well, I had my eyes opened. And got my son out. But it didn’t feel like enough, so I been biding my time, jus’ hopin’ I’d get the chance to do more. And along comes you four. And along comes you.” He laughed and just as suddenly coughed up something with such force, it might have come from his colon. His face was twice its color, and his eyes were clear in tears. “It’s stupid, I know, but even at my age, I’m still looking for a hero. So maybe that hero is me.”

Olgo heard him — a hero, yes — though he kept his eyes on Sissy.

“Anyway,” Jerry said, recovering himself. “Here we are. You gotta figure everyone finds his own kind eventually. We’ll eat and then get a move on. We got a long night ahead of us. I best put my jeans on.”

Sissy lifted her paring knife and said, “It’s not like I’m okay with this, Dad goin’ back in and all. But he’s strong. He knows his up from down.”

Jerry smiled and looked at Olgo. “Plan is for you to show up like you been invited, like you’re interested. You’ll have ’em all over you, so while that’s doin’, I’ll swing round back. Best way is to isolate and ambush. Guy who used to do this in the seventies was called Black Lightning. I kinda like that. Even m’ jeans are black.”

Olgo nodded. He still had no idea what they were talking about.

“Try to look a little more excited,” Jerry said. “Who came for me in North Korea? Who came for you? You seen the news? Hostage Rescue blew up the place whether you was there or not. So fine. No one came for us. But you know what? We’re sure as hell gonna come for your wife.”

And like that, the energy that was clotted in Olgo’s body dispersed while something like old age moved in — fatigue, apathy, or maybe just a set of revised priorities. Suddenly, this all seemed very hard.

An hour later: Olgo and Jerry were in the station wagon en route to an abandoned factory, a box on stilts at the mouth of a floodplain that burbled with sewage now and then, where Olgo’s wife would sooner spend her time than with him.

“And the RYLS?” Olgo said.

“A front group. Dating Service snatches you in, you think it’s gonna be something nice, and next thing you’re saying your life before was shit, you were so lonely you wanted to die, but this, this talking and sharing and crying, is a whole lot better.”

“How do they get you to do it?”

“Dunno, really, but the exit counselor said it was thought control and just wanting to fit in, and maybe just ’cause the most of us is kinda sad and lonely anyway, they was workin’ that for gain.”

Olgo shook his head. “My wife isn’t lonely. She hasn’t been lonely since the day we met.”