The Flicker of Old Dreams Page 14

  We are here. Again. In this small room. At this small table. The windows covered in tinfoil. Snow sprinkling down, but who would know unless you’d been outside?

  “I want to know you,” he whispers.

  I set down my fork.

  “Whenever you see the real me,” I say, “you’re disappointed.”

  I head upstairs to brush my teeth. The bathroom has been ravaged by the man without his suit. Towels and clothes dropped behind the door. A sticky tumbler on the back of the toilet. Another on the windowsill. The sink stained with coffee and the dried gunk he spits up each morning.

  Pop follows me and lingers in the hallway, his reflection in the mirror. I can see him thinking of things he won’t say. How did we get here again? his face seems to ask. Are we better off if I stay quiet?

  Paint curls along the ceiling in the shape of dangling leaves. Some have dropped to the bathmat, ground up by our feet. How many bills away from collapse is our business? I spit out the toothpaste, wash my face, then the sink, including his mess. I dry off with a towel. And still he waits, even as I pass him, as though he might say something. But, of course, he doesn’t.

  I walk, still woozy, to my room, and close the door. With only the bedside lamp on, my room glows pink like the inside of a seashell I held once at school. Someone had purchased it during a vacation to Florida and we all put it to our ears and listened to the ocean most of us would never see. I sit on my bed, mice tunneling through the walls behind me, one more fix-it project my father plans to get to when the weather warms up again.

  I can hear him, still in the hallway, wondering if he should knock or leave me alone. Decades ago, I felt so close to him when he read storybooks to me here, and to make me laugh, he’d slap the wall with the palm of his hand to wake the mice. We came up with names for them and welcomed their return year after year. I can’t imagine Pop laughing like that anymore. Or me.

  I lay my head on the pillow and watch the shadow of Pop’s feet outside my door. I can tell it will be a long while before I’m able to sleep. The bed feels like it’s swaying, sloshing the peas and meatloaf.

  Finally, the shadow of his feet moves back down the hall, and a door clicks shut. I’m sorry it’s this way with Pop. I don’t remember how to be close. We don’t know how to be grown-ups together. We set aside the children’s books but what goes in their place? All night, I imagine the conversations that might bring us closer, if we only knew how to begin.

  22

  The TV blasts in the den, Pop out cold in the recliner. Soon he’ll hear the morning news program, its opening theme always jolting him like an alarm clock. I’m already dressed for the day, needing a long walk. I just have to find my warmer gloves.

  “You headed somewhere?” my father asks in a ragged voice that hasn’t yet coughed up the morning phlegm.

  “I thought I’d hike up to the rims,” I say. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

  “Mind if I tag along?”

  “If you can keep up,” I say.

  I’m trying to pretend last night didn’t happen so today doesn’t have to feel so serious. I wait for him to change out of his pajamas.

  “Trying to find a clean shirt,” he calls from behind a half-closed door. “Give me a couple more minutes.”

  When we’re both bundled up, we head into the crisp morning.

  “This cold sure wakes you up,” he says, adjusting his cap so it covers more of his ears. His words come out as white clouds.

  We pass Doris at her window. Pop waves, but she is busy dipping her brush into the next color. I open my mouth to say something about Robert and realize that I had only wanted to say his name.

  “Well, that’s worth getting up early for,” Pop says as a small herd of mule deer run across Main Street and into the open space below the rims.

  “Maybe we’ll see them again when we get to the top,” I say.

  Our carefree talk becomes a long silence. I notice our breath, the crunch of frozen stubble beneath our boots, specks of sunlight dancing along the hill we’re about to climb.

  “I didn’t mean to upset you last night,” Pop says, breathing harder.

  “It’s okay,” I say.

  It’s easier making peace with our eyes facing the rimrocks rather than each other.

  “Forgive me for what feels like prying about your mystery man,” he says. “It’s just that I’d love to know what he’s like.”

  I don’t mean to answer but can’t help myself.

  “I don’t know,” I say. “He has a funny little smile that turns up on only one side of his mouth. He’s interested in my thoughts. And he likes to spend his afternoons out in nature when he can.”

  I stop there. If I say more, I may give away some detail that identifies Robert.

  “And he has a good job?” Pop asks.

  He seems to be worried that my mystery man might be unemployed. For now, that’s a level of disapproval I can live with. Also, I never thought to ask what kind of work Robert does.

  “Now you’re prying,” I say.

  “Well, I’m glad you have someone,” he says and pulls me close.

  My father is not a natural hugger. No one in his family hugged when he was growing up. He and his parents and siblings shook hands when they greeted, but even that looked uncomfortable.

  He learned this skill for me, the way he learned to put my hair in clips and check under my bed for monsters. Every time he places an arm around me or gently tugs at my ponytail, I know he is reaching beyond all he’s been taught, beyond all levels of comfort.

  His arm drops back down to his side as we walk past rusted corrals and a sagging barn. There is only one road up to the rims but soon we cut our own path, closer to the giant letter P, our footsteps swishing through tufts of grass and stunted yucca plants with their thorny leaves. We breathe harder, making the last push to the flat top of the butte.

  The wind is a low hum in my ear as we walk across the powdery earth, stepping over slabs of brittle sandstone, animal tracks and droppings. This land still takes my breath away, the sound of birds waking, the far-off mooing, the grass swaying, nothing ever truly still.

  At the crumbling edge of the rims, we look out over the town and the broken rock below. I watch the movement of men and trucks and cattle.

  “You think we’ll get a big storm this year?” I ask, kicking at a coyote track.

  “I think it’s a good thing we got all our canning done this summer,” he says. “Did you get it all labeled?”

  “And alphabetized.”

  He palms the top of my head. It feels like he’s saying, Thank you, and also, Oh dear, what did I do wrong that made you this way?

  In the distance, children leave the hotel in hats and gloves and scarves, walking quietly with good posture, hands to themselves unless they’re in charge of younger children. Minnow scuffles behind them in a too-small coat, all legs.

  “We should do this more often,” Pop says. “Spend time like this.”

  “I’m always happy to hike up here,” I say.

  “Maybe we could catch a basketball game together,” he says, looking right at Minnow. “Next home game. Does that sound good?”

  I don’t want to ruin this attempt he’s making to smooth things over. I want to say yes to something.

  “If I’m free,” I say.

  “Your schedule should be pretty light now that everything’s sorted out with the Goldens.”

  I put my hands deep into my pockets and push till the fabric strains.

  “Pop,” I say. “I didn’t give him those original papers.”

  “But you told me you had,” he says.

  “I dropped off blank paperwork, same as I would for anyone else. Robert doesn’t even know the others exist.”

  “Well, this is a real mess.”

  “I couldn’t make sense of giving him paperwork you filled out,” I say. “He’s next of kin.”

  “Mary, there are a lot of people expecting to be involved in Doris’s service.”r />
  “I know.”

  “Her old singing group’s been preparing hymns,” he says. “They’re going to be very upset.”

  “They might,” I say.

  “What if someone’s already prepared a speech?”

  “Pop, you put those plans together when there was no next of kin. Now there’s next of kin.”

  “You don’t understand, Mary. This is the kind of thing that makes people choose a different place to do their business.”

  “Pop.”

  “If we hurry,” he says, “we can make this right.”

  “His mother’s dying,” I say, reaching out to a nearby juniper shrub to pluck a seed. “People might be mad, but you always tell me that planning a funeral helps a person to grieve and let go.”

  “Show him the plans I came up with,” he says. “I can’t think he wouldn’t like them. I’ve organized singers, a speaker, casket bearers. This saves him a lot of work. He probably doesn’t even know these people who’ve been so important in Doris’s life.”

  I split the juniper seed open with my thumbnail to release its piney scent.

  “I’m comfortable with my decision, Pop.”

  “Mary, I don’t want to fight.”

  “Then let it go,” I say. “You made plans and they aren’t needed anymore.”

  We stare over the rims at the town, back to where we started. Children continue on to school, some hurrying to get there before the late bell. A group of boys playfully pushes and shouts as they cross into the schoolyard.

  “Do you hear that?” Pop asks.

  “It’s just some boys horsing around before school.”

  “No. Down the highway,” he says.

  Now I hear it, too. A radio, maybe? We see a number of our neighbors come out of their homes and businesses, their heads also turned toward the highway. Soon I see Pete’s white Ford way in the distance, heading toward Petroleum, lights flashing. On TV shows, sirens are common, but not here.

  “What’s going on, do you think?” I ask, but Pop only shakes his head.

  The siren moves closer, and we hurry down the hill, taking long side steps.

  23

  I keep my eye on the white Ford as it turns from the highway onto Main Street, then drives slowly, block by block, siren blaring. Pop and I have rushed down from the rims and cut through the back alleys toward the flashing lights. The people of Petroleum—the busy, the unemployed, the curious—come out of their homes and businesses, caps pulled down over their faces. A cramp forms beneath my ribs, and Pop is breathing too hard.

  Pete turns onto Crooked Hill Road, and many are now walking behind his truck, shielding their faces from the dust. Something big is happening and they want to be part of it. Some of the ranchers have also followed the noise, driving pickups and tractors down the highway and back into town. I don’t know why we’re running, only that it feels as if we must.

  “I think he’s going to our house,” I say.

  We take the quickest route. I’m beginning to sweat, though I can see my breath in the cold.

  Pete has pulled into our driveway, and most of the others have gathered there, too. My father and I are out of breath. Pop maneuvers between neighbors to greet his friend. They talk privately for a moment and then Pete opens the back of his truck. My father, still winded, takes over, sliding the draped body out. Every face in the crowd is solemn, stoic.

  “God bless Albert Purvis,” Pete says to those assembled, and the men take off their hats and hold them to their chests.

  I look at the bowed heads, still trying to slow my breath. I touch the white sheet. The man on the Wall of Heroes. The man who let a fourteen-year-old boy hang in a harness for hours.

  My father and Pete carry Mr. Purvis down to the basement, and I follow. The way they keep the sheet from slipping off, the way Pete gently puts his hand on the old man’s shoulder as they set him on the metal table, says what they think of him.

  I slip on a plastic apron, grab latex gloves from a box. Slowly I pull back the sheet, revealing hair that is thin and coarse, a color neither brown nor gray; eyelids opening like faulty shades; cracked lips set in a relaxed frown. This body, still dressed in the hospital gown that I will mail back, has held all his prominence and all his secrets. In the end, he is not a hero so much as a man. It is the case with all who come here—flawed, vulnerable, human when they hoped to be so much more.

  I fold the sheet down only as far as his collarbone. That’s enough when I have company. And even this may be too much for Pete before I’ve done my work. But it is the scar on Mr. Purvis’s cheek that he and Pop need to see—a bluish-white indentation left by that ember from the Great Rimrock Fire. A final reminder of his sacrifice and their shame.

  Pete looks more at the sheet than the man, his weight resting on the stronger leg, his hands retreating to his pockets. Soon, Pop leaves, then returns with a large plastic bag containing Mr. Purvis’s glasses, a photo, and a neatly folded blue suit. He puts his hand on my arm, a gesture, it seems, of warmth, of words we couldn’t find on the rims or last night.

  “Take good care of him,” Pete says.

  I wait until the men have gone to the kitchen, where they speak in solemn voices. I hear the sound of dishes being taken from the cupboard, the jar of pickled eggs being opened, metal tongs reaching inside.

  Alone now, I remove the sheet. Mr. Purvis is yellow and dry like crepe paper, purple veins running beneath his sharp shoulders and hips. The white hair on his chest is sparse, his belly distended, eyes yellow where they ought to be white, milky where they ought to be brown. I close them gently with my thumb, but slowly they open again as if he’s curious to see what happens next.

  I sit with him for some time, just holding his hand.

  Mr. Purvis was the oldest resident of Petroleum. Though he was not much of a talker, he could, if pressed, tell you about the earliest homesteaders in this area. He could tell you what it was like when there was a bank and a filling station. He could tell you about shooting wolves back when the law still allowed it. He was the last of a generation, and now there is a sense that the town is turning over to a new era—if it survives—in which its people did not build the homes they live in and do not remember the reason their families sought out this untamed land in the first place.

  My fingers trace his small, dry veins. The backs of his arms are mottled with spots and gristly nubs. I smooth my thumb over his wrist as if releasing the sting of the hospital’s needles and tubes. The palms of his hands are blotchy, bruises under his nails. I untie and remove the hospital gown. My eye goes to the liver, bulging, as I expected, under the right rib cage. If I open the belly, I know I’ll find walls of scar tissue and the hard liver, covered with what look like Rice Krispies.

  I flick a switch and the machine chugs and pulses in the background while I run a wet sponge over the loose skin of his arm, the discoloration on the back of his hand from the hospital IV. I bathe his concave chest and his tight, pregnantlike middle. By the time of his viewing, when he is dressed in the blue suit his family supplied, there will be no more sunken eyes and cheeks, no trace of jaundice or the sores from his intense itching, his cirrhosis a secret between his widow, his doctor, and now me.

  I turn off the machines, and when they have quieted, I study the photograph. In it, Mr. Purvis holds a true whopper of a fish. Pop would know what kind. I study his smile—mouth closed, laugh lines on the outer corners of his eyes and something about his mouth looks as if he’s holding in a joke. I’m determined to capture this happiness, as I pull the wax string tighter, then pad his mouth with bits of cotton to get the expression right. I will make him the man his wife wants the town to remember, going back and forth with the photo, adjusting the cotton and the tension in the string until I can almost see a smirk.

  Finished with Mr. Purvis for now, I wheel him into the fridge, then wash my hands and start a load of wash. I find my father and Pete at the kitchen table. They have eaten a good number of eggs, one still on my father’s
plate, drips of pickling juice speckled across the table. They had been talking rather intensely as I came up the stairs; I know by the sudden hush that my father has already told Pete about our talk on the rimrocks.

  “He’s looking better,” I say and sit with them at the table.

  There is no sound, except for the scrape of the chair leg against the linoleum tile as I pull my seat closer. And then the sound of the chair leg scraping again after, realizing I feel too close to the table, I move myself back. Pete sweeps crumbs into his hand and claps them onto his plate. Finally we sit still—the last egg uneaten, the last word unsaid.

  24

  I spend much of the night with Mr. Purvis, inserting the spearlike trocar into an incision just above his navel. Then I puncture each organ. It’s the only embalming step, after all these years, when I still need to hold my breath. But I also find it incredibly satisfying to vacuum out the gases, juices, food, and sperm until only loose sacks are left.

  Somehow, seeing the stringy, rancid contents move out of his body makes me feel as if I’ve freed him. Helped him let go of cravings, worries, earthly desires. The pressures he tried to drink away, the years of underemployment, the changes in Petroleum and the world beyond it, all of that, in whatever form it was held by the body, can now slip out of the incision and disappear down the drain. When I pump the empty cavity full of formaldehyde, fill it with cotton, and suture it closed, it’s like I’ve made him clean.

  Sometimes I imagine myself on the stainless steel table. Fingers without rings. Skin without the damage or pleasure of sun. You think a life is built of dreams when, really, a life is made up of daily to-do lists. Take out the trash. Wash your hands. Make breakfast. Go to work. Wonder what to make for dinner and if you have all the ingredients you need. Eat. Wash again. Try to sleep, or maybe just go back to work.

  How you spend your day is how you spend your life. Dreams, at least for me, are those things at the bottom of the to-do list. After: Fix engine. After: Make dentist appointment. And who ever gets to the last thing on the list?