28.

THE SLOUGH OF DESPOND, November 24—Until today, I’ve managed to miss every birthday party Greer has made for the beastly little nephews. But a last-minute inspiration told me to show up and say good-bye to Sis. As a result, I’m wasted and dejected, and my shin is throbbing, possibly fractured. This is what comes of good intentions.

Toys R Us, a hopeless task. What would the birthday boy enjoy most? A radio-controlled Lego Star Wars All-Terrain Battle Station? Spotting some olive-skinned lads swarming around a shelf of dolls, I pushed my way through and grabbed the box on which their longing converged. I find it hard to imagine that the yellow robot man with wheeled feet will thrill young Zachary, but that ranks low on my list of current concerns.

To imagine Greer’s new home—her fourth since she married Craig—just picture a normal house inflated to thrice its size. Multipaned windows everywhere . . . rhombi of sunlight falling on glossy hardwood floors . . . ceilings lofty enough to accommodate a sailboat. This is how she has solved the problem of living: marry a screaming Hawaiian construction executive, double your living space every few years, fill your days with PTA work and gardening, leave your dissertation unfinished. She herself says she took a wrong turn, but doubts she could have done better. It’s an open question.

While the boys chased each other through the house, shooting Nerf balls at each other with a phallic cannon, she took a moment to stand by her brother. “The carnival guy is late,” she sighed. A boy slid in his socks, crashed into a brass door handle, and cried. “See what you missed?” she said, and went to comfort the guest.

We do share certain genes and memories, beneath the differences. We survived the same parents, endured the same schools. I wondered how I might phrase my farewell without provoking a panicked intervention.

The party guests’ clamor made it impossible to think. Was I ever like these boys? Shouting, boasting, doggishly following leaders, taunting their more peculiar peers, frantically manipulating joysticks. When you and I were boys, we built model airplanes and set stuff on fire to see what would happen. These inattentive creatures can’t breathe for five minutes on end without returning to a computer for recharging. But then, every generation is a falling-off. I can’t pitch a tent, which Dad could. He couldn’t cut a dovetail joint, which his father could. And so on, back to George Washington.

A young mother with Jennifer Aniston’s hair (stop! thief!) documented the boyish mayhem with a long-lensed camera, the internal mirror flapping loudly, over and over again. Another mom nursed a newborn on the leather couch in the den while chatting with a friend. Greer was the oldest of these women, by far. I can’t imagine she feels like one of the gang. But there’s so much I can’t imagine.

One thing I’ll say for Craig Pookalani, he keeps a well-stocked bar. Evading the boys and women, I helped myself to a tall party cup of Dewar’s. The lovely amber liquid put me in a contemplative state. What will my obituary say, I wondered. Portly, irreverent, diligent in his personal hygiene, Angus Truax endured ten years in journalism’s subbasement and never complained aloud. He enjoyed solitude, foreign travel (in former years) and frozen desserts.

Among the drifting thoughts, only one merits recording. Looking back on childhood, I could remember only one birthday present, a xylophone with colorful keys. (Olive green, taxicab yellow, faded grape.) The mallets were thin rods with wooden balls at the tips, and one of the notes rang dull due to defective mounting. Nevertheless, I loved that toy more than I ever loved any human being.

Is that really true?

Maybe.

Zachary’s older brother found me in the den with my cup and bottle, munching pretzels shaped like tennis racquets. His hair, above the round, semi-Hawaiian face, reminded me of Moe, the dominant Stooge. “Hello, boy,” I greeted him. “Have a drink?”

He’s a hulking kid, prematurely cursed with facial hair that seems to grow out of his pimples. He snorted to show that he got the joke, then wandered off before his perverted uncle could molest him.

By then, the backyard carnival man had arrived. I watched the party games (wheelbarrow race, tail tag, egg and spoon race) through the sliding french doors, while trying half-assedly to construct a coded farewell, something Greer can look back on a month from now and belatedly understand.

“I see you found the good stuff,” said a pale woman in black slacks, skulking in the doorway. Despite the jesting tone, she seemed droopy and without energy. Her mouth formed a crooked crack; the scarlet smear of lipstick contrasted unflatteringly with her sallow skin. She gave off unhappiness like body odor.

Always a friend to the despairing, I invited her to join me for a drink. “It’s on Herr Pookalani.”

Her sardonic, embittered flirting reminded me of at least three ex-girlfriends. We exchanged words fluently, without engagement. Soon enough, she interpreted my neutral friendliness as rejection, and started emitting little hms. It’s amazing how much a few curt noises can convey: resentment, anger at the futility of her efforts, and simple defeat. (If even he doesn’t want me . . .)

When the doorbell rang, I seized the chance to escape—partly because she had just said, “You remind me of someone.” I preferred not to be there when she realized whom.

“Don’t answer the door,” Greer called from the kitchen, “it’s Jehovah’s Witnesses.”

Sorry, Greer, I make my own rules.

Greeting the missionaries cordially, I accepted their literature. “You’ll find this family open-minded,” I told the leader of the pair, a wrinkled gentleman of color, wearing a somber gray suit with a green shirt and plum tie. “I’m just a visitor, but you should come back another time and share your message.”

He shook my hand, only partially skeptical. I believe his was the most prune-like face I’ve ever seen. “We’ll come again.”

His nostrils narrowed when he picked up the Dewar’s on my breath. I figured he would leave that alone, but he leaned in close to warn me privately, “Alcohol is a dead-end street. I know whereof I speak.”

Though it came from a man who had dedicated his life to a bizarre cult, I appreciated his counsel. “You’re right,” I said. “I vow that, starting one month from now, I will never take another drink.”

“I hope you’re serious.”

“I hope so, too.”

My depressive drinking buddy had eavesdropped. “That was interesting,” she said.

I fled again, this time to the backyard, where I enlisted in the sack race.

My difficulties climbing into the pillowcase provoked snickers among my puny rivals, which woke in me a determination to crush them. Defying Greer’s “Please be careful,” I willed a longer hop than was wise. Landing reminded me that my suffering ankles can barely support my weight when standing still; momentum made it impossible to stop, however, and my second hop ended with the sound of bones cracking, or so I thought. The distraction cost me my balance. Down I went; the earth shook.

Noticing the rock beneath my shin, and the pain that went with it, I howled. There was nothing to do but roll over on the new sod, watch the clouds travel past, and contemplate my suffering. In a way, the agony was interesting: something new. The grass smelled thickly sweet, with undertones of dirt. It made me think of horses grazing. If I were one, they would have shot me then. I had no idea how I’d make it inside the house, let alone back to Belleville. Choosing not to worry about that, I turned my attention to the father in the next yard. This dad was throwing his son grounders, then holding out his gloved hand for the peg to first. His contentment was absolute—leading to the conclusion that getting what you’ve always wanted actually does yield happiness.

Greer and her pale friend lent me their shoulders. They escorted me inside and dumped me on the leather couch in the den. The friend sat with me, sideways in the corner of the couch, one knee pointed my way. Responding to this legible sign, I told her, “You’re thirty years too late.”

Her smile looked inexplicably fond, not bitter. “Can I just sit here for a while, so I don’t have to go back out there?”

Her hair was scrizzly, limp, uncooperative. She had deep striae in her forehead. I decided I liked her.

“You’re an outcast among the mothers? Divorced?”

“Obviously.”

“Puzzled to find yourself living this peculiar life?”

“Not puzzled. Outraged one day, grief-stricken the next.”

Suddenly, she remembered the celebrity I reminded her of: “Orson Welles, on those old wine commercials!”

My first impulse was to strike back—And you look like Morticia Addams, many years later—but you’ll be proud of me. I mastered my inner child, and instead delighted her with a Wellesian, “Indeed.”

Craig Pookalani’s scotch caught up with me around then. I hope she didn’t take my falling asleep personally. It really had nothing to do with her.

The guests had all gone. Greer was collecting Nerf balls and empty cups. From another room, John Madden called football plays. “Look,” a nephew laughed, “my guy ran right through your guy. Replay!”

“Did you know about Dad’s heart attack?” Greer asked. “I should have called you—it happened a few weeks ago. Apparently it was a bad one, but he’s fine now.”

“Whew,” I replied. “Close call. We almost had to fly down there.”

She squatted, knees far apart, and sponged a puddle of cola from the floor. This is how I’ll remember her. For twenty-eight days, anyway.

“Ironic, isn’t it,” I said, “that the daily exerciser has a heart attack while I’m the picture of health.”

She knocked on the wooden coffee table, a little joke that also expressed a certain solicitude for her elder brother, which I didn’t know what to do with.

From the other room, the boy who had laughed a moment before shouted, “You stupid idiot!” A younger voice shrieked, “I hate you even more than you hate me!” Reverberations ricocheted from the bare white walls and stone-tile floors. Greer went gloomy.

A memory: she was in trouble in the schoolyard, a kindergartner with dandelions in her hand, dragged by the arm because she’d ignored the signal ending recess. Eyes wide, alarmed, not really comprehending, while I stayed on line, afraid that, if I went to comfort her, I’d be—what? Shot?

It was too awful to dwell on. “I remember when you used to worry that you’d never meet someone and have children. Things worked out in the end. In the larger sense.”

Rumple-faced, with jowls beginning, she pulled back the corner of her mouth skeptically. The leaning stack of multicolored cups in her hand made her look like a sad-sack clown who might surprise me with a feat of juggling.

I wonder if this face is why Craig works on weekends. If that’s really what he’s doing.

“But on a lighter note . . .” I’m not planning to stay alive much longer.

Something plastic broke against stone nearby. The younger boy screamed, a wordless eruption of rage and grief.

“I’d better clean that up before their father comes home.”

“Will he abuse you if he spots a stray shard?”

“Only verbally. I probably deserve it.”

While I digested this disturbing new information, she offered to let me sleep over. The implication was that I shouldn’t drive just yet.

The prospect of dining with her and her husband, the burly Hawaiian bully, was unbearable. This would probably be the last time we ever saw each other. I wished she could have left room for a good-bye, but she was too deep in her own woe to notice anyone else’s.

It’s pointless to complain, though. What is she to me? We grew up in the same house, but that ended almost forty years ago.

I tottered out of the house, having failed in my mission. Mainly, I was glad to be alone.

My last words to my sister, fraught with hidden meaning: “Toodle-oo.”

Cold rain fell on a dark planet. The Van Ryper Funeral Home caught my eye.

Entering the narrow driveway, I imagined the funeral director recording my information on a printed form, his pen’s tip pausing when I explained that I would like to set a date.

Green grass, red mulch, baby shrubs lined up like cabbages. Something about the place wilted my audacity. I only got one foot out of the car before I changed my mind and drove home.

By comparison with Greer’s grandiose subdivision, Belleville looked positively slummy. The houses on my street are so meager and shoved-together, there isn’t even room for a driveway between them.

Coming home to all this tarnished aluminum siding for twenty years may have stained my spirit a bit. What might I have become, somewhere else?

Brave, handsome, and thin: yes, Angus, whatever you say.

How does a man end up in a hole like this?

Simple. Just keep doing exactly what you’re doing, and let the years pass. Eventually, you dig your own grave without even noticing.

Last chance I’ll ever get to go wild, and what do I do? Drudgingly account for my days, hour by hour, and moan miserably. This needs fixing.

Possessed by an impulse to wreck something, I visited the Hendricks House website just now. The ladies were chirping over the latest doings of Dr. Gerard Jones, chairman of the board. It seems the good doctor paid a visit yesterday and harmonized with the ElderSingers, helped the Safe Harbor kids with their homework, and donned a smock to finger paint with the tots from Tanya’s Room, where battered moms can rest in peace, or something like that.

Let me explain, Bobby. I wouldn’t have a job if not for Dr. Jones. My column was his idea, and he recommended me for it; therefore, I hate him. He’s exactly my age, but his résumé makes mine look like a hobo’s. Chief of Neurosurgery at St. Dominic’s; inventor of the Jones collar, a helmet attachment that protects motorcyclists from head trauma; accomplished violist and watercolorist; faithful husband for thirty years, father of three Ivy League graduates, major donor, and tireless volunteer. He won’t be satisfied until they call him Mahatma.

The comments read like fan club minutes. He painted Georgia O’Keeffe flowers with our special needs kids last month. What a gracious, attentive man . . . I’ve served on several boards with him. You’d never know he’s done all he’s done, he’s so unassuming . . . If we could just clone him . . . One Tami D. (whose profile picture showed a leaping terrier) wrote, It’s such a pleasure to talk with him. He makes you feel more interesting and intelligent than you really are. A rare gift!

Like a dog in a chicken coop, I enjoy rousing these females into a flap with my noisy barking. It’s my sole remaining entertainment. Signing in as Masked Marauder, I posted this tale:

Dr. Jones treated my wife for her incapacitating headaches two years ago. In the course of examining her, he fondled her nipples and delivered a lewd lecture on the penises of the animal kingdom, from the two-inch nub of the gorilla to the corkscrew-tipped pig’s member to the eight-foot bazooka of the blue whale. She kept the incident secret from me until just before she died, five months later—with an undiagnosed glioblastoma the size of a clementine. I hope the doctor’s admirers will take this story to heart. In fact, I hope you’ll ask him about it the next time he visits. “What do you have to say about poor Ilse von Hochschmeck?” See how gracious and attentive he is then!

You disapprove, Bob. I can feel it from here. I won’t try to defend my behavior. I’m just a bloated jerk, pocked with failings. No argument there.

For a few minutes, though, I enjoyed myself.

Not sure what to do now, however.