Paul Theroux - Mr. Bones - Twenty Stories

Mother and Grace — let’s just say they weren’t best buddies. So as the elder daughter, and single, I began to look after Mother when she began to fail. And she was a wreck. Got confused in stores, left the oven on, real muddled about time. I made her stop driving, so of course I had to take the wheel. God, the hills. I wrote Grace that I was moving in with Mother. The big Polk Street house had been in Mother’s family for years; Mother was lost in it. Grace understood completely and said she was relieved. She had been in a Minnesota convent since taking her vows, though she sometimes spent extended periods in Nevada and Florida as a hospital worker, “and doing spiritual triage too,” on Indian reservations. We seldom heard from her, but Mother sent her money now and then. Because of the strictness of her religious order, she was never able to visit us in San Francisco. “And just as well,” Mother said.

It got so that Mother could only manage with my assistance. I resigned from my secretarial job, lost my retirement and my medical plan, and became Mother’s full-time caregiver. I updated Grace on Mother’s condition and mentioned the various challenges we faced. Grace wrote saying that she was praying for us, and she asked detailed questions because these infirmities were to be specified in the prayers, or intercessions, as she called them.

About three years into my caregiving, Grace called. She said, “Why not take a few months off? My Superior has given me special dispensation to look after Mom for a while. It’ll be a break for me. And you can have a real break. Maybe go to Europe.”

Mother wasn’t overjoyed, but she could see that I was exhausted. Grace flew in. It was an emotional reunion. I hardly recognized her — not because she had gotten older, though she had. But she was dressed so well and in such good health. She even mentioned how I looked stressed and obviously could do with some time off.

I went on one of those special British Airways fares, a See Scotland package. It was just the break I needed, or so I thought.

Long story short, when I got back to San Francisco, the Polk Street house was being repainted by people who said they were the new owners. Everything I possessed was gone. Mother was in a charity hospice. She had been left late one night at the emergency room of St. Francis Hospital. There was no money in Mother’s bank account. Everything she had owned had been sold. I saw Mother’s lawyer. He found a number for Grace — the 702 area code, a cell phone. Nevada.

“I’m glad you called,” Grace said. I could hear music in the background and a man talking excitedly, a fishbowl babble, aqueous party voices. I started to cry but she interrupted me with a real hard voice. “Everything I did was legal. Mother gave me power of attorney. I never want to see you again. And you will never undo it.” Unfortunately for me, that was true.

Giulio was recommended to me as a hard worker, a good man, very skillful in all sorts of building. This proved to be the case. When I praised him, he said, “I come from Sicily. We build the whole house there — foundation, brickwork, framing, plastering, carpentry, roofing, shingles, tiling, plumbing.” He could do anything. He worked one whole summer, first brickwork, then replacing shingles, then glazing the cracked windows, then painting — every job I’d put off at last getting done.

He was seventy-seven years old. He asked for $40 an hour — a lot of money, the weekly bills were high — but he earned it.

After the second week, he brought his son Paulie, a big, boyish fellow of forty-three, tattooed, potbellied, very funny, not a good worker but strong. He could heave the big sacks of cement, he dug holes, he lugged the bricks. He was also to get $40 an hour, but some days he didn’t show up. “He’s goofing around,” “He’s sick,” “He’s sleeping,” Giulio would say, seeming both dignified and somewhat ashamed of having to make excuses.

Then, one day: “Paulie’s in jail.” It turned out he’d been in jail before, spent several years inside for theft, credit-card fraud, and receiving stolen goods. What astonished me was the contrast between father and son: the honest old man, so talented and hardworking; the lazy son, who was a petty thief and a druggie.

Time passed, Paulie stayed in jail, but as I got to know Giulio better, I realized that he was cheating me on his time sheet, charging me for tools he bought or broke, not quite truthful about the work, carelessly hiding the scrap wood and the mistakes, a subtle thief. And I began to see, first faintly, then powerfully, how prideful Giulio the sly worker was more like Paulie the jailbird than anyone could ever guess.

I left my small village in Norway as a young man — I was hardly seventeen — and became a student in the USA, first in Michigan, where I had an aunt and uncle, then in Massachusetts, where I attended MIT and where I eventually settled. My life’s work has been in developing radar sensitivity — defense work, but I justify it to myself by saying that I was creating a shield, not weapons of destruction. This was not entirely true. Missiles are guided by radar. In this work, my colleagues were from India, Pakistan, China, Korea, Japan, and many other countries. I must emphasize the diverse nationalities and how well we got along — it is important to this story.

I lived through the 1960s in the USA, working on defense projects. Of course, I was seen as one of the bad guys. I married an American, raised two children. I am proud of the life I have made here. My interests are sailing, skiing, and gardening. I am now retired — a happy man.

Here is the strange part. About every four years I go back to my village, which is near Bergen. It is always a horrible visit. I become enraged when I see what has happened. It has gotten so bad that I dread going home. The visits disturb me, because I see that I am a bigot. My lovely village is now the residence of Pakistanis, Indians, Africans, Vietnamese — brown people, who have come there as refugees, so called, because Norwegians are so happy to provide houses and welfare.

When I was a boy, we had one religion, one language, one culture — one race. Now it’s a filthy mess. Skullcaps, shawls, smells. There is crime. So many languages. A mosque! A temple! Not refugees but opportunists. I am so angry when I am there: my lovely village spoiled. I think I will never go back again. I know I am a bigot there, and I hate myself when I am home.

Mrs. Springer, a longtime resident of our facility, was born in 1900. She was vain about the date, being the same age as the century. She clearly remembered the First World War. “I was at school. The school bell rang when the war ended, and we were given the day off.” She remembered talk of Al Capone and Prohibition, the Great Depression and Lindbergh’s flight. She was married to a science-minded German, living in Munich when the Second World War started. Her husband’s family was wealthy — Springer was their name. She volunteered for war work, knitting socks. She told us all her stories. She had met Hitler. “He had very fine hands, small and pale, like a woman’s.”

She became a refugee after the war. She went to Los Angeles; her husband followed her later, and he became a metallurgist for Hughes Tool Company. He died. She lived alone a few years and then entered our facility.

We went to her ninetieth birthday party. We predicted that she would live to be a hundred. She accomplished this, but it was a decade of failing health. She lost most of her hearing. Her sight dimmed. At her hundredth she needed to be steered to the cake. We shouted for her to blow out the candles, but she couldn’t hear us or see the candles. Even so, she smiled and said it was a great day.