Losing Julia Read online

  The-Woman-Whose-Name-I-Can-Never-Remember looked like Glinda the Good Witch wrapped in various pink gauzy things with her blue hair shaped like topiary while Mitzie wore a long purple evening dress with a great big purple scarf swirled pythonlike around her shoulders. “You know what this is, don’t you?” she asked me conspiratorially. Her front teeth were covered with lipstick and her breath smelled of Kaopectate. “It’s a soirée!”

  Howard’s hands trembled at first as they hovered over the keys, as though waiting for some signal from on high. We sat silently and then nervously, eager for him to drown out the rasp of Oscar’s labored breathing. Then Howard leaned forward, closed his eyes tight and began, breathing deeply and swaying back and forth as he gathered speed. He played seven encores that evening as we sat in a circle around him sipping our brandy from Dixie cups and humming and clapping. I wondered if anyone else saw the young boy perched on the piano stool and radiant with pride but I couldn’t be sure. Anyway, I think he was about nine.

  SOME DAYS music is the only thing that makes sense to me, the only experience that confirms what I’ve never been able to articulate even to my closest friends. I wonder if music is the only expression of the soul that is not hopelessly compromised in communication. I think so. In fact, I’m quite certain of it.

  Damn. I should have been a musician. Better yet, a great musician married to another great musician, and in the mornings we would leave scores on each other’s pillows.

  That would be love, or more precisely, the pure expression of love.

  I remember sitting at the symphony in Boston in 1947 and feeling as though I were partaking in a mass seance with the crowd, the music filling in the tremendous gaps between us until it was possible to travel from one to another as though walking on water. Alone in public each of us shared the most intimate and ineffable feelings, feelings that we also shared with Handel and Mozart and Beethoven. It felt, momentarily, as if we were all holding hands somewhere deep inside, bound at our strongest point. When the music stopped, all hands let go. I walked quickly out of the concert hall, desperate to avoid conversation.

  MAYBE WHAT life needs is a good soundtrack, especially during the long stretches when nothing interesting is being said. A soundtrack might dignify things a bit, ennobling us with the proper drama and tension and pathos.

  I stroll the hallways, shoulders back, chin up, humming softly. “‘People stop and stare, they don’t bother me, for there’s nowhere else on earth that I would rather be… ’”

  Andrew Lloyd Webber and Rodgers and Hammerstein and Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim and Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe and Jerry Herman and Maurice Jarre to the orchestra pit now please, Patrick is on the march. Something inspirational, electrifying even, if you would. Thank you kindly.

  If life were cast to music, I fear we might all drown in our tears.

  I’VE VOLUNTEERED for patrol tonight. With Daniel and Tometti. We head out in fifteen minutes to repair our wire, cut some German wire and with luck bring back any Germans we find doing the same thing. Orders lately stress the need for prisoners to interrogate. We all assume that means an offensive is imminent, though whose we are not sure.

  We blacken our faces with burnt cork, which seems to make the whites of our eyes unremittingly obvious; luminescent, even. Then we work our way along the duckboards down to the end of a sap. Page is on sentry duty and nods at us as we pass. Tometti crawls out first, carrying the wire cutters. I follow right behind, my face trailing the worn soles of his boots. Daniel is right behind me, pulling a coil of wire. We slide down the front side of the parapet and through the opening in our entanglement, a secret passage that zigzags through twenty feet of wire. At the other end Daniel motions for me to grab one end of the wire he is carrying, which we stretch in front of a gap in the entanglement caused by a shell.

  The noise of the wire scratching the dirt seems overwhelming, and I feel my ears ringing so much they hurt, as though I were holding my nose and blowing as hard as I could. SHHH… THUNK! A German star shell hurtles skyward. We slither into a shell hole twenty feet ahead just before the shell ignites and hovers like a hawk circling in search of prey. Then silence; miles and miles of enormous silence blanketing hundreds of thousands of men dug into the earth. We are perfectly still, frozen like mice trying to creep between two very large cats when one suddenly stirs. I smell decaying flesh to my left but do not turn my head. Instead, I slowly bring my left hand closer to my body.

  Daniel signals with his hands: wait five minutes, then we move toward the German wire. I look at Tometti’s boyish face, which is pulled tight. I see glimpses of panic in his eyes and turn away quickly before it overwhelms me. I feel my own lower jaw quaking and wonder if my teeth are chattering. I press my chin against my rifle and concentrate on my breathing, which feels difficult, as though I have fallen down into a great big black maw and the earth is closing up on me. Yes, that’s it, I’m sandwiched between the two angry halves of the world like a coal miner on his back in a two-foot seam miles underground when the earth gives way.

  Daniel taps me on the shoulder. My head rises slowly out of the shell hole as I crawl forward, my helmet tipped low over my eyes. Swivel left, swivel right, like a baby wiggling across the floor.

  A sniper’s bullet is the best way. A popping, thwopping sound that explodes the cranium like a watermelon hurled at the pavement. Better than being blown apart, torn limb from limb by shell fire, splattering your friends. And better by far than a bayonet. All that cutting and slicing of the intestines and trying desperately to stop it with bare hands and the look on the face of the German when he knows he’s got you.

  I crawl around a stinking pile of dirty khaki, bracing, bracing, bracing. My jaw aches and perspiration stings my eyes. Will I feel it? Not a head wound. Some men don’t know they’ve been shot, right? I don’t feel anything. Did I hear a shot? No, but the silence is so loud. We are closer and closer. Ten feet to the wire. Down the German line I hear a cough. We are at the wire. Tometti moves gently, gently, cutting the wire as he goes.

  Daniel and I point our rifles into the darkness. Can I see? I feel blind, not sure whether my eyes are open or closed. I rub them. Another cough. It sounds closer.

  You should see this, Father. Damn! Your son, Patrick, right up against the German lines! Goddamn, Father, would you believe it? Your son! Look at me, Father, look at me dangling both feet over the edge of the universe, jumping the moon, soaring up and up farther than anyone has ever gone.

  I’ve gone too far, haven’t I, Father? How do I get back I want to get back. I remember being a boy and climbing to the top of a neighbor’s tree and I couldn’t get down, I couldn’t find any footing below me and my hands were getting tired and I screamed and screamed and I remember Father running and I could just barely look down over my shoulder and see him looking so small staring up at me and telling me to hang on. I remember how he climbed the tree and I felt his hand on my shoe guiding it to a branch and then on my other shoe guiding it down until he grabbed me and I buried my face into his shirt and the damp smell of his chest and the sudden feeling of safety made me cry even harder.

  Father?

  Snip. Snip. Cough.

  Daniel jerks his thumb back toward our line. Tometti hands me the wire cutters and I slide them into his pack. Then we turn on our stomachs and head back, and I wonder if anyone is behind us but decide not to look.

  SHHHH… THUNK! We roll down into a shell hole, which has a foot of cold, pasty water at the bottom.

  SHHH… THUNK! We press against the dirt, hiding from the glowing eagles that hover overhead, searching. Pop pop. Pop pop. Sniper fire down the line. And farther, the whine of a shell. Whhizzzzz BANG!

  We wait. Daniel’s face, made ghostly white under the flare, is expressionless. I don’t even see him in his face and wonder if he stayed back in the trenches, perhaps to write poetry. Tometti’s face trembles the way my grandfather’s did in the months before he died. His pupils are shoved toward th
e top of his sockets as they scan the sky and he has one hand pressed down hard on the top of his helmet.

  If I die and all my friends die, then who will carry the story of my death back across the ocean? I’d much rather that someone who knew me lived. Somehow my extinction wouldn’t seem quite so complete.

  Pop! Pop!

  Sometimes the expectation of violent death is so painful that you want to lunge toward it and be done with it, like the child crouched behind the couch in a game of hide-and-seek when the seekers are drawing closer and closer until the tension is unbearable and the breathless child jumps up and surrenders, gasping with relief.

  Tometti starts over the lip of the shell hole. Daniel and I crawl behind him. Now the gravity of fear shifts. What if our own troops misidentify us? A frequent tragedy. Who is on sentry duty besides Page? I strain my eyes toward our line.

  SHHH… THUNK! How many seconds until the flare ignites? One, two, three… We rise to our knees and crawl as fast as we can and then to our feet falling stumbling clawing forward toward our trench when everything goes white then POP POP POP POP as we run though the opening in our wire and tumble into a rifle pit gasping.

  Daniel yanks my shoulder and I turn and stare at the hole in Tometti’s throat which is foaming and bubbling. Daniel runs off to find a medic and I hold Tometti who is staring at me expectantly only I don’t know what to do for a throat wound. I unbutton his shirt and hold him and rock him and he keeps staring at me demanding with his eyes and shit Tometti breathe breathe breathe what do I do for a throat wound shall I press my hand against it so you can stop leaking air or are you breathing from your throat now? Which is it Tometti nod or something Christ BREATHE TOMETTI BREATHE TOMETTI BREATHE MEDIC GODDAMN IT MEDIC OH SHIT TOMETTI I’VE GOT YOU I’VE GOT YOU I’VE GOT YOU…

  WE BURIED Tometti with Teresa’s photograph placed on his chest. It was Daniel’s idea. It was there in his breast pocket, where he always kept it. Only no one wanted to look at her now.

  On the back she had written: “So you’ll never forget me.”

  I have changed terribly. I did not want to tell you anything of the horrible lassitude which the war has engendered in me, but you force me to it. I feel myself crushed… I am a flattened man.

  —Marc Boassan, French Army, in a letter to his wife.

  Killed in action, 1918.

  EVERYONE TALKS about the midlife crisis but not the one after that, the latelife crisis when it’s too late even to get divorced and buy a motorcycle, though I must confess that I have lingered over the leather jackets at Henry Shay’s Store for Men, which might at least restore the shoulders I once had.

  Why didn’t I ever buy a motorcycle? I could have afforded one. And after the kids were grown, who cared if Dad was smeared across Route 66 like a wayward possum? But by then I felt too old to buy a motorcycle, which in retrospect seems rather stupid.

  This morning during rehab I asked Hanford if he knew anything about motorcycles. “My kid brother has one,” he said. “One of those real loud ones, you know that high, whiny scream that announces testosterone from three blocks off. What do you want to know about motorcycles for? You going to buy your son a motorcycle? I’m telling you, don’t buy him no damn motorcycle. Donorcycles is what I call them.”

  “I wasn’t thinking of my son,” I said.

  “Oh,” he said, stretching my left arm back over my head.

  “I was thinking about me.”

  “You?” He laughed. “What are you going to do with a motorcycle?”

  “Well, I was thinking of riding it, for starters. You know, travel Highway 1 from Canada to Mexico with a leggy lass on the back, arms wrapped around me. Think of it as unfinished business, Hanford.”

  “I knew you were kidding me,” he said.

  “No, I’m not kidding. I’m thinking about buying a motorcycle.”

  “No shit?”

  “No shit.”

  “They won’t allow you to have a motorcycle.”

  “I won’t keep it here. I’ll keep it in town.”

  “I see,” he said. “What kind of motorcycle?”

  “Well, like I said, I don’t know much about motorcycles, but I think a five hundred CC should do it. Used, probably. Maybe I’ll bequeath it to you.”

  “No thanks,” he said. “My wife would kill me even before the bike did. What do you want with a motorcycle?”

  “Same thing your kid brother wants,” I said. “I had this friend, must of been about thirty years ago, who told me that riding his motorcycle was better than sex. I’ve never forgotten that.”

  Hanford was silent as he finished stretching my right arm. Then as I sat up he said, “I’m not sure you’ve got the strength to handle a motorcycle.”

  “Only one way to find out,” I said.

  “Maybe my brother could give you a ride,” he said.

  “No, I’m not that crazy,” I said, waving good-bye as I headed out the door.

  ON THURSDAY morning I rode the bus into town and walked five blocks to Ray’s Motorcycles. The glass door chimed as I opened it and a young man in jeans and a black T-shirt emerged from a back room. I nodded at him and walked over to the motorcycles lined against the wall, their front ends all pivoted to the left in perfect formation.

  “Can I help you?” he asked, looking distracted. Did he think I had meant to enter the pharmacy across the street? Maybe I should act like I think this is a pharmacy and see what he’s got for piles. Or perhaps I should just slam my wallet down and ask for the biggest, fastest damn hog he’s got. With chaps.

  “Oh, just thinking about buying a bike for my grandson. Thought I’d take a look,” I said. I noticed a bikini-clad blonde staring down from a calendar tacked up behind the cash register. She was Miss June, which, given that it was August, suggested that she was better looking than July or August. I wanted to ask to see August, just to compare, but decided against it. Do pretty women really sell motorcycles? (“Yes, I’ll have whatever she’s sitting on. Same color, same style, everything.”)

  “How old is he?” asked the salesman.

  “Ah, about twenty-five.”

  “An experienced rider?”

  “No, not really.”

  “Is the bike for commuting or just recreation?”

  “Mostly recreation.”

  “On or off road?”

  “On road.”

  “A lot of highway riding or just local stuff?”

  “Local stuff mainly.”

  “How much you looking to spend?”

  “Couple thousand, I guess. Haven’t really made up my mind yet.”

  “Well, they go from real light to real heavy,” he said, motioning toward the bikes.

  “What’s a good light one?” I asked. “Just for short trips. Kind of a knock-around bike.”

  “A knock-around bike? Try this one here.” He slapped the black leather seat of a bright red Kawasaki.

  I put a hand on one handlebar and turned the front wheel. “May I sit on it?” I asked.

  He studied me briefly, then pushed the bike forward and into the center of the room. He held on to one side as I worked my right leg over the back and then sat on the seat, which was firmer than I had imagined. Then I grabbed both handlebars and swung them left then right. He stepped back and smiled. “You look all right, man,” he said, nodding his head up and down. I tilted the bike a few inches to the left, then a few inches to the right, getting a feel for the weight. Balanced properly, the machine was almost weightless. I imagined igniting the throaty rumble between my legs. Then, as I leaned the bike to the left again, it went a few inches too far, and suddenly its weight surged against my left arm and leg. As I pulled the handle with my left hand the front wheel swiveled left and I felt myself and the bike falling when the salesman lunged forward and caught me.

  “Careful there! You all right?’

  “Yeah. It’s heavier than I thought.”

  “You ought to try some of those monsters,” he said, pointing to the much larger m
otorcycles at the other end of the row. “If they fall over, it takes two men to pick them up.”

  “And four of me,” I said. “Thanks for your help. I’d like to think about it.” My left wrist was beginning to throb.

  “No problem, we’re open Sundays too.”

  The door chimed again as I opened it and in the reflection of the glass I caught just a glimpse of Miss June before heading across the street to the pharmacy.

  THE FOLLOWING Saturday I took the bus back to town and paid twenty-one dollars to a man who rented me a little red moped for three hours on the assurance that I would not go too far too fast. I mounted it gingerly and then sat there in front of the shop, trying to look preoccupied with my watch and my pockets as I waited for the owner to go back inside before I attempted to ride. But he had no intention of missing my departure so he preoccupied himself by sweeping the sidewalk over and over again. After examining the controls and testing the weight and the brakes, I finally gave it a little gas and raised my feet, uncertain if I could maintain my balance. Once on the street I made a wide turn and then, after some searching, my feet found the foot rests. More gas. I was flying.

  I crossed Fourth Street and headed west out of town, then followed a series of rural roads that looped back around behind Great Oaks, where I made a full-speed flyby just as Janet was walking to her car. (She did a double take but never said anything. I think the idea that I might be scootering past my own nursing home was just too much of a stretch.) Then I drove past Sarah’s house (I had long ago plotted her address on a map), pausing to imagine that it was my home too and wondering which room was her bedroom and what it looked like. I was one hour late and offered to pay the difference but the owner waved me off.