If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair. - C. S. Lewis
I didn’t want him here. He keeps in touch with them, not me.
I barely remember cousin Bobby. He got in a car accident down in Florida. Banged up. I was sorry when I heard about it, but it ain’t my business.
My brother sticks his nose where it don’t belong. He told everyone Bob could come up with us.
A people pleaser, my brother. Mr. Good Guy. He did the right thing when everyone was looking. If you want to know what kind of guy my brother is, ask his ex-wife or one of his kids.
Now a cripple’s coming, and we don’t have a ramp.
My brother remembered everything.
“Ya remembah yo-yo season?” he’d ask.
He gets all mad if you don’t.
“You don’t remembah yo-yo season? We had one every spring.”
“Membah Tupper’s on Flatbush? They wizz 15¢ each. We’d sprint outta there wit them yo-yo’s. Slam em off da sidewalk. Membah when the loop fell off ya finggah? Bounced right inta da sewwah. A red one. Cheerio, right? Ya don’t remembah?”
“Nope.”
“Remembah da smell of Ebbinger’s on a Saturday?”
“Yeah.”
“Remembah goin’ ta see da double features at da RKO Kenmore?”
“Yeah.”
“Remembah da old graves at da Dutch Reformed Church?”
“Yeah.”
“Kenmore Lanes?”
“Yeah.”
“Da dances in Prospect Park?”
“Yeah, I remembah da dances.”
“Remembah when we got dat free meal at Pancake Alley?”
“No.”
“What was da name a dat little record store on Atlantic next ta Brighton Billiards?”
“Dat was on Rodgers!”
“Dat was on Flatbush!”
This would go on day and night, year after year.
One morning, he’d handed me photos from an old Bostonian shoebox.
“Yeah, see dat’s Bob and me and you up in da Catskills when we whizz kids. What whizz da name a dat place?”
I rubbed my forehead.
“Come on! You remembah?”
“Da Pines?” I said.
“No!”
“Da Friar Tuck Inn?”
I just wanted coffee and peace.
“Yeah, dats it! Da Friar Tuck Inn!”
I nodded and prayed he’d leave me alone.
I poured a cup and opened the paper. Again, he hovered. More pictures. I pretended to care. You had to. Very sensitive.
My brother called Bob after his crash. As I said, he’s good like that.
“Stay with us.”
My brother doesn’t ask; he insists. He takes ‘no’ personally. The family knows this. He don’t know they all know.
Then he put me on the phone.
“Yeah, sorry, Bob. Feel better. God bless.”
What the hell else could I say? I handed the phone back. My brother went on and on about his ex-wife, and how the kids didn’t talk to him. Then a few old cop stories, then back to his old lady.
“Get off da fuckin’ phone!” I yelled. “We’ll see ‘em when we see him.”
Three weeks later, my brother, phone to ear, scribbled a flight number and hung up, giddy.
“LaGuardia?” I said.
“LaGuardia.”
“This prick’s really comin’?”
“I guess so.”
“You guess so?”
He was coming.
I walked out of the kitchen, and down the little hallway to mom’s bedroom.
I got boxes up from the basement and cleared the place out.
After, I drove to the medical supply store on Ralf Avenue and bought all the cripple stuff: rails to put around the shitter and the shower, rails for the bed, and those stabilizer things. For all I knew, Bob could have been three hundred pounds. I also got one of those seats for inside the shower. They got everything you need for cripples at that store on Ralf.
When I got home, I set it all up.
As I drilled and screwed, I thought about Bob having to sit down to piss; a grown man—Jesus! Then I wondered how we would get the wheelchair up the steps in front. No ramp.
The day we picked up Bob, I asked my brother if he needed to rent one of those special vans with the lifts.
“Nah. He says he's good.”
“What about the wheelchair? Is it gonna fit in the trunk?”
“He told me it folds right up.”
“They fold dat small? He’s got the bags and stuff.”
“Yeah, if it don’t, I’ll trow it in da backseat.”
My brother drove a big Crown Vic, so I knew there’d be room. Drove it like Willy Sutton.
“What time ya leavin’?” I asked.
“Now.”
“Okay, I’ll see ya, lata.”
When he was gone, I watched the Yankee game. I hate the Yankees, but I like the baseball, you know? The Mets are my team, but they weren’t on till later. By the third inning, it was already 9-0, with Clemens on the mound for Boston. It felt good. Then the Yanks started chipping away and ended up winning 12-11. Wayne Tolleson hit the game-winner off Schiraldi. Stoddard got the win. Mattingly had four hits. It was a good game.
It was early evening when I heard the Crown Vic pull up. I peeked through the curtains. My brother got out of the big car and headed for the trunk. I couldn’t really make out Bob. I wondered how we’d get him out of the car. Then they saw me.
“Dare-e-is,” my brother said. Then he waved me out to help.
Bob slouched at a weird angle in the passenger seat. I put my hand out to him.
“Hey, Bob,” I said. “How da hell ya doin’?”
“How do I look like I’m doing?” he said.
“Ya look good.”
He looked like shit. Old. Dirty. Broke. Crippled. I had to look away. Some mope stared from across the street. My brother wheeled the chair to the passenger side.
“How ya wanna do this?” I said.
“Swing his feet around.”
“Will dat hurt em?”
“No,” Bob said.
I pulled his legs out of the car, nearly puking from the sour rancid stink coming from his crotch. But I stuck in. Grabbed his dirty white Velcro sneakers and pulled them out of the car.
“Now get under his armpits and pull him up inta da chair,” my brother said.
It was all too much. I stepped away and watched my brother bury his face into Bob’s sunken chest. Somehow he ignored the awful smell, pulled him from the bench seat and into the chair. I don’t know how he did it.
I stared and hated them both.
Now we had to get him up the fucking steps without a ramp, a brutal ascent to our four rooms.
“How ya doin’, Bob? Hangin’ in there?” my brother asked.
“Sure, sure. All good. All good.”
My brother started to push. Bob almost went ass over.
“The brake!”
Bob looked down, trying to explain how to unlock the brake.
“There’s tension to it. Hold it there and pull it toward you. No, the other way!”
Thick bastards. Pathetic. When I looked up, I saw that Pakistani.
“Take a picture, ya fuck!” I yelled.
“Neighborhood’s changing, huh?” Bob asked.
Somehow the brake released, and my brother pushed Bob toward the steps.
“Let’s get dis big lug inside for a beer.”
“Sorry, we ain’t got no ramp,” my brother said.
“Oh, don’t worry about it,” Bob said.
Bob didn’t have to worry.
We dragged him up the steps. I thought we’d die. We took a blow after each one.
Next, we had to get him through the door. It was tight, about half an inch on each side. Somehow we made it. We took another blow in the four-by-four foyer.
“Well, here we are.”
“Thanks, guys.”
“Family’s family,” my brother said.
We wheeled Bob into the living room. Now the Mets were on. Kiner explained how Philadelphia scored three runs in the second and three more in the third and how Lance Parrish hit a two-out bomb off of El Sid, and Johnson yanked him and put in that bum Doug Sisk.
“Fernandez been pitchin’ like a mamook all month,” I said to nobody.
“They let ya drink, Bob?” my brother asked.
“Sure,” Bob said.
I grabbed three Schaefers from the icebox and handed them out. We watched the game in silence. Fine with me. Then I felt bad, so I asked Bob a question.
“So how were things goin’ down in Florida before ya had da wreck?”
Bob looked away and tapped his wheelchair.
We stayed silent for a whole inning, including commercials. Fine with me.
I stared at Bob as he watched the game and drank his beer. What a mess. Those dirty khakis a hundred times too big, and a stained (ketchup, mustard, whiskey) and wrinkled white Oxford with a terrible Eisenhower-era paisley tie. He looked like a crippled, defrocked, pederast priest who dressed up for a plane ride. He’d failed shaving too: nicked up, dried blood everywhere, patches of thick grey stubble. His dilapidated wheelchair looked North Korean, all rusted tin and dried rubber. But old Bob didn’t seem to mind. He had my brother, a beer, and the ballgame.
I gulped my Schaefer. Bob saw me and did the same. I got up and got another round.
HoJo homered. I yelled from the kitchen. Nobody said a word.
“Ya boys don’t smoke no more?” Bob asked after the game.
“No, we quit,” my brother said.
“Oh.”
“Why? Ya need smokes?” I asked.
What was I saying?
“Well,” Bob shrugged.
I couldn’t believe this fucking guy.
“I’ll make a run,” I said.
“No, no, that’s not what I was sayin’. I was just askin’, you know, like if you had em around maybe. It’s no big deal.”
“I’ll go out and get ya a pack,” I said. “Whatta ya smoke?”
“Lemme give you some money.”
I was gone quick, and I knew that made him feel bad, which made me feel bad.
I headed over to O’Bannon’s on U and drank a glass of Bud with a Dewers on the rocks. The 10 o’clock news was on.
“What’s up?” Jerry nodded at me. “Ya see da game?”
“They gotta get rid a dat fat bastid.”
“Come on! He’s been pitchin’ great.”
Jerry won the novice Golden Gloves at 152 in 1959.
“Cousin’s in town,” I said.
“Jimmy?”
“No, Bob.”
“I don’t think I know Bob.”
“Thank God.”
Jerry shrugged. “Hey, family’s family.”
I watched the news and finished my drinks.
“Lemme get a pack of Lucky’s.”
“You back smokin’?”
“Nah, they’re for Bob.”
He slapped the pack down on the bar and took my ten.
“Lights?” I asked.
“Sorry.” Jerry slapped the matches on the red circle.
I left the change and took off.
“Take care, Jerry.”
“Havva, good one, pal.”
It was late now.
That gap-toothed moron was on. Bob chain-smoked like Gleasson and drank five more Schaefers. He hadn’t pissed, yet. That worried me.
“Well, guys, I think I gotta take a piss.”
“Ya think, or ya do?”
“I do.”
My brother gave me the ‘you take him’ look. I nodded toward the cigarettes.
“I’ll show ya to da can,” my brother said.
My brother wheeled Bob down the tight hallway and stopped at the bathroom. There was no way the chair would make it through that door. I watched my brother squeeze past Bob and into the can. The lights went on, and then my brother’s big head poked out. He hooked his arms under Bob’s pits. He was going to drag him over to the shitter.
How many times a day were we going to have to do this?
Bob wrapped his arms around my brother’s neck, and then, though I couldn’t see, he must have shimmied him on the toilet. I heard grunting and giggling, then a few seconds later, I heard the sound of piss hitting the water. Gallons of it. It went on for ages. When he finished, he somehow tossed him back in the chair and rolled him to the living room.
“I feel like a million bucks,” Bob said.
I wanted to go to bed.
Bob lit another Lucky.
The show went into a commercial, and they both went back down memory lane.
“At this hour?” I yelled.
“What’s with you?” my brother said.
They went on and on. The past is the past. Let it go.
I got up and put on channel 13. They showed a program about the Erie Canal. I wanted to watch it but couldn’t concentrate. They kept talking. I turned up the volume. My brother got up.
“I’m off. Goodnight, men.” He put his hand on Bob’s shoulder.
“The room’s all made up,” he said.
I made it up, not him.
Bob lit his seventieth cigarette.
We sat in silence. I could hear my brother snoring. Bob looked drunk. I knew he was going to have to go again. I didn’t know what they did in there. Would I have to shake it and put it back in? Would there be tubes?
I don’t like touching people. I never have. And I don’t like being touched. I like being left alone.
I panicked. I thought I might cry. I never hurt anybody. I think I’m good, but I know what they think of me. People can’t mind their own business. Always poking. He brought him here, not me.
I looked around: empty beer cans, the old plastic ashtray from the Concord Hotel filled with wet butts. The smoke back in the curtains.
“Hey, you okay?” Bob said to me.
I turned to him. “I still got my legs.”
“Yeah, good. You think you could use ‘em to get me another beer?”
He waved the empty and smiled. He was trying to be funny, so I wouldn’t feel so bad about what I’d said.
I grabbed the last Schaefer from the icebox, handed it to him, and sat back down.
The TV flickered. The narrator’s voice spoke over an old painting of somewhere in upstate New York by the banks of the canal. In it, a guy in a top hat held hands with a broad in a bonnet. All around them were trees and green rolling hills and, some kind of party, and fireworks over the canal.
“Work was completed in October of 1825, and there was much fanfare. Cannons were fired in succession for the entire length of the canal, from Buffalo to New York City. A flotilla of boats led by Governor Dewitt Clinton sailed the route in ten days aboard the Seneca Chief. When he arrived, he poured a glass jar of Lake Erie water into New York Harbor.”
Bob dropped his beer. The foam rose on the carpet. I could smell it.
“You all right, Bob?”
“I gotta go to the bathroom.”
It all went fuzzy. I remember I shut off the TV, then wheeled Bob toward the can.
There at the narrow door, as my brother had, I squeezed past Bob and flipped on the light.
I opened the toilet lid. Dabs of yellow piss were all over the seat. I wiped it off.
“Sorry,” Bob said from the narrow hallway.
My hands shook. Old Bob slumped in the chair, helpless. I took a deep breath and hooked my arms under his armpits as my brother had done. I could smell his sourness, beer, cigarettes. He grabbed me around my neck. We were cheek to cheek. In one motion, I dragged him from his wheelchair and dropped him on the bowl. My heart pounded. I struggled to catch my breath. Bob unbuckled his cracked leather belt, and I unbuttoned his pants. The room stank of Bob.
“Could you give me a hand?”
“Okay.”
I pulled his pants down to his white hairy ankles. I saw a forest of grey pubic hair. I looked away, into the mirror, and saw myself.
“I’m good now,” Bob said. “Can you give me a minute?”
I retreated. The light slipped out from under the door and shone dull on my tube socks. I wept as I stared down at dry paint flakes, yellow and faded. I remembered painting this hall with my brother for mom, years back. Every part of me was lonely then, too. I leaned thickly against the wall and crossed my arms as I drifted and swooned and tried to think of a time when I didn’t feel like this.
His piss ended, and I went back in. Bob’s khakis pooled around his hairless ankles.
I did not hesitate, but went directly to him, knelt on the tile floor, and pulled his pants back up. Bob grabbed my shirt and whispered in my ear.
“I’m sorry for all this.”
I stood up.
“Don’t worry; tomorrow, we’ll get some lumbah and put a ramp in.”