Legacy 1 - 6

by Michael Woodworth Fuller

ONE

Peterjohn.  Carlyle.  Morrison.

He had a name. And a body.

And some kind of hands and face.

Maybe.

His breath burst upon the windowpane then evaporated, revealing himself reflected by the bed lamp behind him.  Gauzed lumps at the ends of his arms reached out for his swaddled face, its blanched, infant wanting pierced by three black holes.  He closed the one that was his mouth.  The other two stared their undeniable truth.  Grinding the sobs rising between his teeth, he swallowed them unsounded and turned away into a broken landscape of sleeping, wounded men. 

Yanked up from their blistered shadowland, they hung, splayed upon pulleys, splints, and slings, tarnished sculptures of brittle metal inked upon an infinite, ashen slate.

Burned.  They had all been burned.

A screaming sea flung him toward their fractured shore, arching him to the height of its myriad small moons whose rigid silver soldered his maimed silhouette to the wall.  He hung there with them, a crucified bird etched in the light of eternal winter, the red pages of his flesh ripped to their last chapter of agony whose final word was a high-pitched, inarticulate syllable he had never heard, not even from the dying.

Maggots swarmed in his veins, hatching into long, transparent worms writhing in the air above his head, sucking out his life pulsing colorless inside them.  He beat at them, but they bound his blanched, padded pods to their boards and wound around his ankles, spread-eagling his chromed skeleton bouncing upon tendons of wire.  They snapped.  He hugged the worms to his belly and plummeted the ten-octave return to the screeching, linen tide.  He flailed, trying to walk on water, but the worms dragged him under to the vinyl snake gnawing its way inside his penis to bite his genitals and pop them.  They fell away, taking the snake with them.

He drifted, directionless, in a white void so compressed that pain was bliss.  Who was that child, crying?  It was with him everywhere.  A child crying for its mother.  She floated to him, holding it.  He flicked his cigarette lighter at her and yelled for her to get out of his way.  Her child cried louder.  She put her breast into its mouth, silencing it.  He yelled at her again to move from her doorway, but she continued to nurse as if he did not exist.  He pointed his weapon at her head, and screamed.  She hefted her baby, and looked up, her child-mother’s eyes deep and dark upon him, waiting.

His chest turned over upon itself.  Had he been hit?  A backward rush was filling a sudden hole.  Her trees were still growing green here, and her sky was blue above the flames of her village.  It was afternoon, not a numbered time of day, its warmth hemorrhaging the thick tenderness of his life from the cleft beneath his wishbone where he had crammed it with his guts, dark and forgotten.  He dropped his lighter and lowered his weapon and stood in the ruin of her livingplace, the colors of its earth sopping up the confession of his lost, child’s soul’s innocence whispering at her feet. 

And was he running?  Yes, he was running.  Running in relief from her eyes’ claim upon his conscience, running with his brothers pumping rounds point-blank into the bodies of flat-slanted faces in helmets charging from the jungle, his blood pumping with the white joy of orgasm upon seeing them die.  Planes came in, low over the bouncing earth bouncing from rockets and guns, and dropped dark shapes that skipped through the village, forming pools of fire.  He flung himself down behind a tree, slamming his hands over his ears. Burning.  They all were burning.  Every name and face he had known and loved.  Their cries were everywhere, crying the plea of the dying: don’t leave me, don’t leave me, don’t leave me: crying for their mothers. 

His arms and legs were pumping. Running. Among his burning brothers. O, Vaxter!  O, Miller!  swathed in smoke at the child-mother’s feet, the hole in her floor betraying the cache of arms that had been hidden there, she rocking maternal to them all, her charred child nestling in her smoldering lap, black milk pouring from her evacuated breasts.  O, child!  O, Child-mother!  O, Miller!  O, Vaxter!  He threw aside the glowing thatch, his brothers’ flesh united with the child’s and its mother’s, scorching his lungs.  He could not touch them.  He could not touch any of them.  The cawing of their names surrounded him.  He duck-walked through the flames, flapping flannel wings, trying to fly.  Grotesque claws rent his camouflaged skin. 

His hands!  Oh, Jesus Christ, his hands!

Jesus Christ.  Oh, Jesus Christ.  Stat.  Stat.

Yes, stat, O, Stat of Christ, O stat, these white brides of Jesus, their virgin dresses rustling through country churches bright with the dandelions of summer.  Running after them through colonnaded corridors, he found them in the nave.  Their veiled faces gathered around him, singing his nuptial mass, Peter and John and Peterjohn. Wrapped in fresh robes of innocence, he stretched to lift their veils and receive their kisses of confirmation, but they placed his hands upon the altar, sibilating sacred secrets of the spirit, raising him to the dancing lights of Eden.

Flashing up that effulgent longshaft with them, he repeated their catechisms in a voice he had all but forgotten, but just as he was about to accompany them into the joy of being painless, bodiless, and free, he was clamped back down that spasmodic tunnel and wrested to the white cry of complaint.

O!  There was such tenderness in the Peterjohn whispered behind the veil with the blue eyes.  Was he a Peterjohn?  Was there enough left of him to be a Peterjohn unto her whose face he had never seen, whose voice was of all the voices of all the girls he had ever wanted?  He reached out for her maiden breasts swelling with sweet milk to cool his pain, but she took his hands and held them, weaning him to her white world of waking.

Morrison!

Which one of his brothers had spoken his name?

The pat on the shoulder.  

The turning away.

The gliding of gowns crisp in the starched silence.

Triage.

Had they left him to die?

Peterjohn.  Carlyle.  Morrison. 

TWO

They took off his bandages, taking with them the Peterjohn Carlyle Morrison he had been beneath them.  Whatever was left of him had that name, now, and whatever it was had a mouth whose corner grimaced to where left ear should have been, the flesh of its arms, crusted wax twisting to its shoulders,  the second and third fingers of its right hand, webbed, the three middle ones of  left, gone.

The doctors were pleased.

Could be worse, they said.  Still has a hand, they said.  Little finger and thumb could curl and touch.  Hooking action, they called it.  Hooking action makes it a hand.  

You can keep it, Bud, one of them said, and they left him with it.

Rachel came, then, walking indigo in sunlight through windows, her ginger curls clinging to her maroon neck bent in its professional pose. Rachel, exposing his weak and deformed self  helpless as a baby in its tub, the blackened bits of himself floating away into the waters of constant washing. The  unburned parts of himself  -  ‘donor sites,’ Rachel called them, -  peeled like an onion and then pasted – ‘grafted,’ Rachel said.  Rachel, holding his hands in hers , demanding what she called their ‘measured excursion’,  making him do his daily isometrics of flexion, extension, and contraction, insisting he name his fingers with her, naming them phalanges as she manipulated them into new positions that made him scream, naming them with her through the gritting pain, turning his wrists, exposing the posterior and palmar-anterior surfaces of both hands, flexing, extending, contracting, turning, naming to hold Rachel’s azure-eyed beauty close to the frightened, unfolding center of his lost, child’s soul, her encouragements spoken in the pillowed words of the ethnic South, sifting, sulfa-like, deep into his insulted and humiliated self. 

Rachel, O, Rachel, never disgusted by the dead weeds that used to be called hair patched upon his skull and face,  never flinching at the blotched bundles  sewn by scars to his arms reflected in the therapy room mirrors, O, Rachel,  teaching him what to do and how to do what he had to do it with, stretching him as the tool of torture she referred to calmly as an “expander,’ stretching his new skin stretching into days into weeks into months toward tomorrow when he would be able to use one hand and what was left of the other, to grip with them, to protect himself with them if he had to - to love with them?  And maybe if he shaved himself hairless and used only his right hand, he could caress the smooth skin of some loving girl without repulsing her. 

Tomorrow floated way up there somewhere on the surface of today, but today was therapy, the continual clamping of his teeth before mirrors, grinding his shame into the granuled rage of cure.

And then there was Mother

Except for the war, there had always been Mother.

Before, during, and after therapy, she was there, sitting beside his bed, staring at the left hand she held in her lap, her deep blue eyes almost black in their devotion and despair.

Awake?  Gentle.

Nodding.  Hi, Mom.

Feeling better?

Nodding again.  His hand still in her lap.

And then the crying.  O, Pedejohn, O, My Peedee Boy, my son, my son.  Moving his hand up and down in her lap so that his arm moved.

Looking away to the window, muttering it’s okay,  Mom,  it’s okay.

Mother.  Feeding him as when a child.

Feeding. 

A creature act, not human.  To eat, he needed hands.  Without them, he was a tube, a hollow, wet, puckering tube that made noises at both ends that other people wiped.  

Pedejohn. Open your mouth. Please. It’s good for you. Opening hers so that he would mimic her. 

Opening. His mouth once again the primal center of their mutual consciousness. Closing his eyes, giving private thanks she only involved herself in the feeding end, knowing she would wipe the other if necessary.

Peristalsis.

The rhythm of the life cycle between mastication and excretion.  The rhythm of the will forcing him to live.  To submit.

“I found an apartment.”

“An – apartment?”

“Yes.  Now, don’t make a face.  It’s very nice.  It’s not as big as I’d like, but it’s bigger than my single.  It has a bedroom.  And a nice view of the park across the street.”

Nodding, knowing nodding was not the answer she wanted.

Mother looking around the visitors’ lounge. Looking down.  Biting lip.  Looking up.  “Only for a little while.  Until you’re better. Where else are you going to live?  You can’t live here.”

Rescued by Rachel.  “It’s time, Petahjawn.”

Mother standing up for Rachel, holding out her hand.  “I’m Jerilynn, Peterjohn’s mother.”

Rachel taking his mother’s hand.  “Nice to meet you, Ma’am.”

“Thanks for what you’re doing for my son.  And all the boys.”  Trying not to cry.

“You’re welcome, Ma’am.” Removing her hand, turning to him.  “Time to go, Petahjawn.  Say ‘bye now.’”

Looking at Mother, relieved to obey.  “’Bye now.’”

Yeah. ‘Bye’ now. 

‘Bye’ to Rachel.  

It was after supper.  That’s what they called dinner here – supper.  He had become accustomed to supper – and dinner, what he had used to call lunch.  Breakfast was still breakfast.  Tomorrow he would have breakfast.  But no dinner or supper.

Release to the sharp city would not be release but eviction. The lobby’s ceiling-high, plate-glass windows were dark. His distorted image encased in glass was waiting for Rachel, part of it wishing she would not appear, the other half that she would.  Limbo was so comfortable. There was no obligation to be anywhere.  Or anyone.  It would be so much simpler to simper between the sliding doors of elevators and join the phalanxes of wheel chairs and gurneys to peaceful death sitting in lounges, talking of forgotten wars.

Rachel’s image emerged from the elevator behind him, an ethereal figure gliding appropriately from his right to his left, disappearing off the pane that, in spite of its size, was too small to contain her, leaving him forever domiciled there.

“Rachel!”

She stopped abruptly and looked over her shoulder.  Had he screamed?

He was walking to her and she to him in that way she had, oh, so nice and slow and easy.

“Hi, ya, Petahjawn, what’ choo doin’ heah?”

He moved his shoulders, trying to pull up words.  Finally, they came.  “Looking out the window.”

“’Lookin’ out?’ It’s dark out theah.”

“Yeah,” he said.

She took his hands to look at them, but he squeezed hers so that she had to look at him.

“You’ve got a strong grip, Petahjawn.  You workin’ as hard as evah.”

“Yeah.”

“Careful you don’t hurt yourself now.”

“Sound just like a therapist.”

“Tha’s what I am.”

“I didn't know therapists worked nights.”

“I worked late today.  I got so many patients, now, with this war goin’ on the way it is.”

“Is that why I didn't see you this afternoon?”

“You don’t need me now.”

“I do!”

“Unh-unh.  You’re ready to go home.”

A car pulled up in front of the doors.  He indicated it with his head.  “Like you.”

“Uh-huh.”

“With Ruben?”

“’Roo-bin’?”  She laughed.  “You funny, Petahjawn.”

“I am?”

“Yeh.”

“Rachel . . . ?”

“Yeh?”

He could smile with her now.  “Thanks.”

“Well,” she said, delicately removing her hands from his, “y'all take care.”  She went through the sliding doors and got into the car and leaned over to the driver to give and get a kiss.

He watched her drive off into the life after hospital. For all he had seen and done, she was braver.  She had dared to go through those doors.

It was all a matter of doors.

Some slid shut, some open.

They had slid open for her, leaving him cocooned behind glass, but the sea air no longer chilled courage. He would follow her example.

And go where?

An apartment.  I found an apartment. 

THREE

“Like it?”

Windows all around.  Airy.  View of park across street.  Green.  Like the jungle.

“Like it?” she asked again.

“Nice, Mom.  Nice.”

“I fixed up the living room for you.”

Living room. Fourth floor this time. Another living room of another apartment of all the apartments she had moved him in and out of when he had been her Peedee Boy. And his father’s Son.

“We’re near State College.  The bus stops right out front.  I know because I checked before I took the apartment. You could study at the table there and look out at the trees.1

Table. Antique with drawers beneath windows. Bed with spread but no headboard beneath tapestry hanging on wall above, more like armless couch to sit on than bed. At foot (or was it head?), roll top desk with shelves behind double glass doors full of her metaphysics and astrology books. Mahogany. Color of rosewood chairs and oval dining room table that had been handed down. His mother’s continual attempts to make a home in places they had never owned. Familiar furniture arranged in familiar patterns of a familiar life. Familiar. From the word family. The furniture welcomed him home. It had been waiting with his mother for him all this time.

It held him.  

He could not breathe, but therapy had taught him what to do.  Flex.  Contract.  Extend.  Yes.  Extend.  Into the pain.  And so, it was here, with him, unsought, unstoppable.

Standing in the dark in that horrid little house across from the golf course, its green the green of the country his mother had forced him to leave,  peeping around the door, watching his father rummage through his mother’s papers, slamming the roll top open and closed, laughing a laugh not a laugh, chanting The Bitch, The Bitch, The God-Damned Bitch.  

Looking back over his shoulder into the black hole of his mother’s bedroom, remembering with relief that she was out so that she could not hear The Bitch, The Bitch, The God-damned Bitch, his father’s chant telling him there was some connection between The Bitch, The Bitch, The God-damned Bitch and his mother sleeping in the bedroom and his father in the downstairs room built at the end of the garage, some connection between The Bitch, The Bitch, The God-Damned Bitch and his parents’ pain he did not want to connect to.

His mother saying I know it’s smaller than the house in the country, but it’s all we can afford.  It only has one bedroom, but there’s a nice room downstairs.

I noticed that.

I thought Pedejohn could take it.  It’s perfect for a boy his age.  And I’d take the bedroom.

You going to put both beds in the bedroom?

Yes.

Saving one for Sam?

I said I was sorry.

Yes sorry is what you said.

Can’t we try to be friendly?

I wasn’t the one who stopped being friendly.

I – just need more time to adjust.

And where am I supposed to sleep while you adjust?

I thought – the dinette.  There’s plenty of space.  I’ll put a screen around.

This isn’t a marriage.

Maybe it could be.

Not with me sleeping in the dinette.

You take the bedroom then.

I’ll sleep downstairs in the Rat Hole.

That’s supposed to be Pedejohn’s room that’s why I got this place.

Pede

don’t tell your friends you sleep in the dinette

don’t say

that’s your bed

say

that’s the guest bed

say

your room is downstairs

say 

your room.

My room

not my room.

Kids can’t know I sleep in dinette 

Mom in bedroom 

Dad downstairs in my room not my room.

No one can know

my fault

no one know

your fault.

The Bitch The Bitch The God-damn

You.

  Old Sam.

Throwing toys over fence into Old Sam’s backyard from big bedroom in their flat in the city before they had had to move to the country because Nasty Old Mrs. Gould, the landlady, had kicked them out because she said he was too noisy but really because she could make more money renting to nurses because there was a war on that had a funny name beginning with a ‘k’, the letter between ‘j’ and ‘l’. 

O, so fun being so big and strong throwing toys so far.  Old Sam making a big fuss and running around picking up the toys and throwing them back, making him laugh, and Old Sam laughing, too.  One day, making both Old Sam and Mommy laugh when he threw his underpants into Old Sam’s yard because without any clothes on he was even bigger and stronger because underpants weren’t as heavy as toys, so he had to be extra big and extra strong to throw something so light so far.  Old Sam waving up to what he had thought had been him.  Mommy waving back while leaning against the door of the balcony in a way he would understand when he got older, leaning in the same way she had leaned against Daddy once upon a time ago when they had held each other laughing at the way he had played with the funny red building blocks with bumps on them learning to call them bricks, building bigger and bigger brick houses, building them better as he got better at it, building bigger houses for Mommy and Daddy and him to live in happily ever after just like in those fairy tales he read while Mommy helped Daddy paint funny looking chairs made from stools, painting them a bright, shiny red while he ate Mommy‘s soup from his favorite bowl with the handle on it, comfortable in his soup and Mommy’s and Daddy’s painting together as he read about Peter Pan and Wendy and Tinkerbelle and Captain Hook, getting all excited about the big picture showing Captain Hook losing the swordfight with Peter Pan and falling into the water where he would get all chewed up by the alligator, chewed up into little pieces.  Captain Hook.  And Old Sam.  

Old Sam.  And his wife, Old Emma, wearing funny little hats and black shoes with laces. Old Emma babysitting him sometimes, sometimes in the middle of the day, and then more than sometimes. Funny Old Sam always laughing.  Old Emma never laughing.  

Funny old Sam. 

Always around when Daddy wasn’t. 

Funny Old Sam.  

Making Mommy laugh in a way she never laughed when Daddy was home. 

Funny Old Sam.

Just popping up out of nowhere downtown where he went with Mommy, and Mommy always oh, so surprised and laughing at Funny Old Sam tipping his hat and playing with his moustache in a funny way with his fingers. Funny Old Sam suddenly sitting on top of him while he was waiting for Mommy in a department store or downtown hotel lobby, and jumping up and saying oh, excuse me I didn't see you, making him laugh, too. 

Funny Old Sam not so funny any more because Daddy could not make Mommy laugh like she used to and look at him the way she looked at Old Sam.

Standing one babysitting afternoon in Old Sam and Old Emma’s kitchen that was always ice cold and smelling of mush, telling Old Emma Old Sam loves Mommy and me more than he loves you. 

Standing on car seat, waiting for Daddy to take him to school, seeing Old Emma through the windshield, her jaw snapping like his pet turtle’s, talking, talking, talking to Daddy, saying things someone inside him older than he understood but could not tell him but knowing anyway that Daddy’s face looking funny that was not funny was his fault because if he had not told Old Emma in her kitchen where she had stood in her ugly black shoes with laces how much better he and Mommy were than she, Old Emma would not be hugging herself in her old black coat and her silly little black hat would not be almost sliding off her silly little pointed head and her snapping turtle’s jaws would not be going up and down so hard, and Mommy’s and Daddy’s voices would not be going way, way up, and doors would not be slamming, and Daddy would not be taking nighttime naps in his room while he slept with Mommy, waking to see Daddy tying his tie in the doorway, staring at Mommy staring back, he feeling so warm and so good about taking Daddy’s place as Daddy had taken his room, but Mommy and Daddy saying words he could not understand in tones he had never heard making his feeling good all wrong, wrong, wrong, so wrong that the only thing to do with the wrong was to take it from them so that they would never again feel wrong about what he had done to them by saying what he had said to Old Emma and store it in that hollow place behind his breastbone and crush it into little pieces like the crocodile had chewed up Captain Hook.

“Pedejohn, are you all right?” 

That fucking goddamned roll top desk was still there. Grind that fucking goddamned roll top desk into small pieces that never would again abrade that raw sucking wound in his chest, never mind his father’s failure to forgive his mother’s foolish act, never mind his parents’ forcing him at fourteen years of age to choose which one to live with, never mind standing between his parents in yet another fucking goddamned apartment after leaving that horrid little house with its Rat Hole, knowing that to choose his father would destroy his mother, and to choose his mother would demean his father even more than he had been already irremediably demeaned, and so to save himself from them and they from him he blamed the ruin of their lives upon the woman who became his father’s final wife, calling her a skunk to free his father from his shame, and his mother from her despair, knowing that what had been once upon a time was condemned far beyond his capacity to save any of them. 

“Peterjohn!”

“I’m okay, Mom.”

“You don’t look like  it.  Are you in pain?”

“Pain?”

“You don’t like the apartment.”

“Sure, I do.”

“It’s the best I could do on your father’s Social Security. If she hadn’t married again, we wouldn’t even have that.”

“It’s fine, Mom.”

“Would you rather have the bedroom?  I could take the living room.”

He closed his eyes against it all.

She began to cry.  “Ohhh, I told myself I wouldn’t.”

“Don’t.  Mom,  please.”

“I can’t help it.”

He left her and went into the hallway. 

It held him even tighter than the roll top.

Looking up from Daddy’s leather slippers, following jammy stripes disappearing beneath bathrobe tied so high above, tilting head back to see beyond thick belly and chest, past wide arms sunk into pockets to see Daddy’s face pressed into the dark dread of the ceiling. 

Your Mimi doesn’t love me, any more.

Why, Daddy?

I don’t know.  Go ask her.

Running down hallway.  Daddy says you don’t love him any more.

He never should have said that.  Go tell your father to be decent.

Running down hallway.  Telling him to be decent.  Running back and forth between them, delivering their messages, running lengths longer than his life, running so  that they would love each other so that they would love him together so that they would forgive him the irreparable damage he had done them by being born.

Her voice at his back made him jump. 

“I need to go to the store. Then I’ll fix lunch.  Lettuce and tomato sandwich?  With chocolate milk? Like you used to? Come with me.” She walked by him back into the living room and took her coat off a chair.

He moved behind her to help her.

“I can manage.”

“Quit worrying so much about me, Mom.”

“You always overdo!”

He yanked on a sleeve, forcing her arm through it.  They tussled with the coat and knocked her purse to the floor.  He gritted his teeth and picked up the candy wrappers, lipstick without a lid, keys on safety pins, and other bits and pieces of her life.

Bits and pieces of a life.  Fragments of a person. Putting two left feet into a bag.  “Here!”  He rescued himself with the word and dumped loose change into her purse then shoved his hands into his pockets so that she could not see the shaking.

“We’ll be all right, we’ll be all right.  Go get your coat so you don’t catch cold.”

Picking up his coat from the sofa where he had put it when he had first entered the room, he turned, gripping its collar between the thumb and little finger of his ruined hand, the sleeves straight down to the floor like a hanged man’s.  

He did not know how to tell her he could no longer be her son.  

FOUR

What was he doing in the closet?

It was large with a window looking out upon the roofs of other people’s houses. 

Windows in the day are dark, Son, from the outside.

Okay, Dad.

The trick is to stand back far enough so you can see without being seen. Remember that.

Yes, Dad.

Stand too close, you can be seen.

Yes Dad.

At night, never look out a window with a light on behind you. Got that?

Yes, Dad.

Good.  Might save your life sometime.

It had. In the war city.

Take care of your mother.

Why didn't you, Dad? 

No answer. 

His mother had put in a bureau (‘chest of drawers’, she had called it). Yellow. A few children’s books were lined up on top. Why had she put them out?  When We Were Very Young. Now We Are Six. Winnie The Pooh (yes, he remembered what ther meant). The House At Pooh Corner (the ending with Christopher Robin saying good-bye to Pooh, leaving with the promise to return and say hello, had always killed him). He had not read it since he had been six.

Weeping wasn’t crying, was it?  

No.  

Then, weeping was okay, wasn’t it?  

Maybe. 

  If no one saw you. 

You didn’t weep when somebody got killed. Or disappeared into thin air because they had been blown up. There wasn’t time.  

And what did you do when there was time?

Something was bubbling up. It was beginning to come out of his mouth. He bit it, pressing his forehead against the doorjamb as tightly as he was grinding his teeth. 

A laugh?  A sob? 

A laugh not a laugh. 

For whom, then?  

Whom?

Yes, whom! Whom, then? Vaxter? Miller? All his dead brothers?

No.

Himself?

No.

Mom?

No.

Dad?

No.

The Child-mother?

No.

Winnie-ther-Pooh.

Whatever had happened to Winnie the Pooh left alone in the circle of trees?

He was weeping for Winnie the Pooh! 

And Christopher Robin Milne.  He had become a World War II RAF fighter pilot.  

Where was he now?

Standing alone in his closet weeping for his Winnie the Pooh? 

He was crazy!

He had to get out of there.

Where?

Here.

You mean this closet.

No.

When?

Just in time.

She came in. “You left the front door open!”

“I did?”

“It’s not safe.”

“’Safe?’” a part of him he did not want her to know, laughed.

“You all right?”

“For sure.”

“What’s funny about not being safe?”

“Depends on how you look at it.”

“Now you sound like your father.  Maybe you should  see a doctor.”

“You mean maybe a doctor should see me.”  Her laugh made him uneasy.  It had been a little too high-pitched.  He had meant to be funny but not that funny. 

“Did you register for classes yet?”

“Not yet.”

“Well, when are you going to?”

“I don’t know.”

“You still have time to apply to State.  You have to go to school.”

“’School?’”

“Well!”  She raised her eyes to the ceiling and laughed a short laugh.  “College, then.”

“I guess.”

“But that’s why I got this apartment!”

He held his breath to stop the yelling.  

“You have a chance, now, to start over -  make some friends.  Get a girl.  You’re a perfectly normal young man in spite of what’s happened to you.  You go to college, you’ll find  one.  Where’re you going?”

When had he moved to the doorway?  Or had the doorway moved to him?  Laughter kicked his guts. “Out.”  

“Away, you mean.  Again.”

“No,” he said through thick spit.

“Yes.”

She was in the doorway with him. Her eyes were as they had been in hospital.  She laid a hand upon his cheek.   Terrified, he said, .  “What day is it?”

“Saturday.”

“Is that all?”

“I’ll fix some eggs,” she said, going into the kitchen. “ Just the way you like them.  Boiled, in a cup.  Toast and bacon.  And some orange juice.”

“What time is it?”

“A little before noon.” 

“Too late for breakfast.”

“Lunch ,then?”

“Lunch?”

“What would you like?”

“Dinner.”

“Now?”

“I didn’t mean supper.”

She insisted her hands into his, tugging upon them, sitting him down with her at the kitchen table.  “I know you’ve been through a terrible ordeal.  But at least you have hands. So many boys don’t.  Or arms or legs.  Or faces. I don’t know why their mothers don’t bring them home.” She caressed his hands. “I’m glad they’re  working so well.  I have some cold cream I just made.  You put a little on and rub it in.  That’s how I keep mine so soft.” She went to a cupboard and took out a jar. Sitting across from him, she massaged his hands with the cream.  “Would you use some of this cream if I gave you some?”

“Sure.”

“You’re smart enough to go to college.  As smart as anyone.  Smarter. When you were four, you came into my bedroom and pounded your little fist on my bed and said, ‘I want to learn to read!’ I picked you up right then and there, and we started.  Later, you and your father read together, and then you and I, and then all three of us – it was the only thing we ended up sharing.  You finished all the ninth grade books by the time you were in the sixth.”

“I’m not him any more.”

“Yes you are.  Underneath all those scars is that deeply spiritual, sensitive little boy I birthed. Remember what I taught you?  In spite of all the depravities and cruelties of this world, people, way down deep inside, are beautiful in the purity of their spirit.” She stopped massaging.  “You’re looking away.  You’re always looking away.”

He turned back without looking.

She pushed the college catalog toward him but only a little.  “I picked this up for you the other day. The spring semester starts in a couple of weeks or so.“

“Does it?”

“Don’t you want to register for classes?”

“I don’t know.”

“You can’t just stare out the window all day feeling sorry for yourself. There are many boys who’ll never have the chance to go to school. They’re all stuck away somewhere where no one can see them.”

“They’d be better off dead.”

“That’s something you father would say.”

“He didn’t say it, I did.”

“It’s the same thing.”

“No.”

“You’re saying no, but you’re nodding your head.”

“Pretty good, huh?  I can do two things at once.  See?”  He patted his head and rubbed his tummy.

“You’re more like him than you know.“

“I bought a car.”

“A car? They’re so expensive!”

“Used, not new.” 

“Even so!”

“They’re going to pay me plenty for these hands.”

“Oh!”  She sucked in air and held it.

“Mom.”  Her face looked like a balloon.  She seemed to be floating.  “C’mon, now.”  She whooshed at him. He thought she would take off out the window.

“How can you possibly drive?  It’s too dangerous!”

“Dangerous?” A flat, dead sound came out of his body.

“Now that you have a car, you’re going to run away again like you did when you lied to me to get me to sign those papers so that you could go into the Army before you were eighteen . “

“Airborne.”

“Airborne’s Army, isn’t it?”

“Airborne’s Airborne.”

“Is that what that little black beret means that you’re always wearing?”

“Recon.”

“Ree-con?”

“Reconnaissance.  You go looking for things.”

“You’re not in the army now, so why do you still wear it?”

“It’s not Army. It’s a real  one I bought.  Larger.”  He pointed to where his beret angled over where  his left ear once was.  “I feel better with it on.”

“I know you don’t have an ear.  They had to cut it away.  You’re not deaf on that side, are you?”

“No.”

“You have nothing to be ashamed of. You’re a war veteran.  My Uncle Burt was in World War I, your father in World War II, and your godfather Larry in Korea.  They weren’t ashamed.  The only ones who should be ashamed are the stupid bastards who make these stupid wars and make you go.  I hate them.”

“They didn’t make me go.”

“No.  You reenlisted for a whole other year.  You didn’t have to do that.  And if what happened to you hadn’t happened, you would’ve reenlisted again. I don’t understand why you did. “

He did not know how to answer her.

“It’s all my fault. If I hadn’t divorced your father, you wouldn’t have run away.”

“It had nothing to do with you, Mom.”

“It has everything to do. I hurt your father terribly. Neither of us was equipped to cope with that. I wasn’t wise enough to know what was right.  We had you too late in life.  We didn’t know who we were or where we belonged in this world. Stupidity and war are terrible legacies.  You should not have to suffer them any more.“ She held her head. “Ooh!”

“Mom . . . what?”

“I have a headache. I get them more often than I used to. I’m going to lie down for a little while, then I’ll take us to lunch.  Like we used to when you didn't want to go to school. Remember that day when we had hamburgers right around the corner from your grammar school when everyone else was in class?  Wasn’t that fun?  Remember?”  

“I remember.”

“And you can take us in your new car.”

“Used, Mom.”

“It’s still new because you didn’t have it before.  It’ll make it easier for you to go to school.  You-must-go-to-school.”

“My treat,” he said.

“Where’d you get the money?”

“”Disability.”

“Oh.”  She blinked at him several times.  “How thoughtful of you, Pede.”

FIVE

She took them to the Fairmont Hotel where she had taken him in the days before he had told his father and Emma about Old Sam . Old Sam settling next to him on one of the round seats in the lobby. When he turned around, his mother was walking into the coffee shop just off the foyer.  He caught up with her.

“This is my son,” she said to the waitress who had come to greet her.  “Pedejohn, this is Nell.”

“Nice to meet you,” Nell replied. “Your usual table, Mrs. Morrison?”

“Oh, that would be very nice.  Thank you, Nell. We’re going to have hamburgers with everything.  I’ll have coffee, and Pedejohn will have a chocolate milkshake.” 

He pulled the chair out for her then sat across from her.

“I’m glad you still remember the good manners we taught you.  I don’t expect you to take off your hat.”  

Her loving smile hurt.  Far better if she had wept. “Thanks,” he said.

She fluffed her hair.  “Like the color?”

“Is it different?”

“Different.  I don’t like it.  Too dark.  I’ll go back to honey blonde next time even if I am an old hag.” She laughed.  

Nell brought the hamburgers and his milkshake, and his mother’s coffee. The hamburger was perfect in its roundness, its bun light brown and puffed, balanced perfectly atop its patty and cheese and lettuce and tomato and onion and pickle, its juices nurturing the french fries cuddling next to it.  He looked at it, wanting to grab it with both hands and bite off a big hunk, but he could not do that. To do that would be to spill all the goodies all over the plate and table like his mother was doing, oblivious – or perhaps uncaring –unaware?  – yes, unaware! - of being so – awkward. But there would come a time.  He had seen too much of that kind of time not to know it would eventually come, that time when awkwardness was the only act left you. In the meantime, there was only one thing left for him to do, so he did it.  He picked up the knife in his right hand and laid the blade on top of the bun.  Then, he placed his left palm on top of the back of  his right and cut the bun in half. That done,  he turned the plate one hundred eighty degrees and repeated his maneuver.  The hamburger was now in quarters. He felt a great accomplishment He put the knife down and picked up one of the quarters and put its corner into his mouth.  His mother was watching him, trying not to cry.

“It’s good, isn’t it, Pede?”

His mouth was full, but that was not why he could not answer her.  To do so would be to lose the reason he had lost his fingers and his ear in that war he had gone to, so he nodded, chewing harder and longer so that she could see why he was not answering, chewing the tears for her lost motherhood and for that day when they had played hooky together, when hamburgers had a meaning meant for mother and son, when she had leaned across the table and wiped his mouth with her napkin saying, ‘it’s good, isn’t it, Pede,’ but now, O, now, he prayed, praying she would not do that, each bite a prayer she would not do that.

Finally, she said, “What have you decided about school?”

“I haven’t.”

“You must.  What else are you going to do?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“You must do something.”

“I’ll do that.”

“What?”

“Something.”

“That’s something I would say.”  She laughed .  “I just said it.”

“What?”

“Something.”

She laughed again.  A bit too shrilly, he thought. 

“I didn’t like school either,” she said.  “My friend Deenee and I used to play hooky and go to the movies. I wasn’t a very good student. Yet, I had plays produced.  Little theater, but produced! Reginald Travis produced and directed one of my best - Temporal Companions. We hoped The Curran would pick it up.  They didn’t.  God damn them, the sons of bitches.” She took a huge bite of her burger, speaking through her chewing, spilling tomato, onion, and meat onto her plate.  

“Mom.”  He rubbed his chin with the fingers of his right hand.

“Oh.”  She wiped her mouth. She signaled. “Nell.”

Nell came over.

“I’ll be finished in a minute. Would you please bring a large vanilla sundae?  You know just the way I like it – with a little more whipped cream and an extra cherry.  And one for my son, too.”

“None for me thanks.”

"You don’t eat enough sweets.  It would help your disposition."

“I already had a milkshake.”

“But you finished it.”

  “Can’t eat any more, Mom.”

“Well, I will!  And more coffee, please.  I suppose you don’t want coffee either.”

“No, thanks, Mom.”

“Whatever am I going to do with you?”

“Your sundae’ll be up right away,” Nell said.

He watched his mother continue to chew, swallow, and chew again, its repetition too immediate,  immobilizing him, and he thought of his father as  immobilized in his Rat Hole as his mother in her bedroom, and himself in  the dinette. The silence of this meal was almost the same as it had been when the three of them had sat together at other tables in other restaurants.   Almost. It was almost that made it not quite the same.  What did you do with almost? 

Nell served the ice cream and coffee.  His mother ate silently as if he were not there, opening her mouth wider than necessary to insert the spoon. She dumped ice cream into her coffee.  Out of nowhere, she said, “I’m going to buy you some candy.”

“I really don’t eat candy, Mom.”

“What you don’t want, you can give to the boys.”  

“Boys?”

“In the hospital.”

“I don’t go there any more.”

“Don’t you want to visit them?”

“I don’t know them.”

“Maybe you should go.  Make some friends.”

He watched her dig into her ice cream and sludge it around with the spoon as though trying to find something lost.  She spilled some.

He reached over with his napkin to wipe it up.

She did not seem to notice.  She kept on sludging and slurping.  His napkin was soggy.  He did not know where to put it.  Finally, he just left it near the corner of the table.  She brushed it to the floor without looking at it.

“We can go now,” she said.  “Nell!”

Nell came and left the check. “I’ll get the tip,” his mother said.  

“I got it.”

“It’s the least I can do.”  She put down two quarters then struggled out of her chair.  

He stood to help her.

“No.  I can manage.”

He remembered that time in the living room.  He sat back down.

“I’ll meet you in the lobby,” she said. 

Nell came with change.

He pointed to the quarters. “Sorry,” He held out two dollars.

“It’s really all right,” Nell said, looking sympathetically at his mother but not at him too directly.  He did not know whether she was forcing herself not to look at his scars or at his mother.

“Please.” He waggled the bills at her.

“Your mother’s really very nice,” Nell said.

“Does she come here often?”

“Often.  She always sits at this same table. “

“She ever come with friends?”

“Always by herself. Calls me Nell.  That’s not my name, but I don’t mind, it makes her feel good.”  She took the tip.  “Thanks.  You take care now.”

He looked around.  His mother had disappeared. He ran out of the lobby and saw her walking up Sacramento Street. He ran to catch up to her.  She was still a good climber.

“Where did you go?” she said,  “I’ve been looking all over for you.”

“I’m right here, Mom.”

  “Yes.  Now you are.”

Their journey to the car was not a walk but a swim.  Her arm locked into his was a stone pulling him beneath that sea of Peter Pan and Captain Hook. 

At the car, she looked up at him and said, “I had a wonderful day.”

He stood in her loving smile, doomed.

SIX

His coffin had no lid. 

It was made of grass, tilting toward the sea. Beyond the tops of his shoes on the other side of the strait, the unblemished hills curved confidently from their perfect heights into the channel.  Indifferent to the currents churning to disfigure them, the cliffs chided the recalcitrant waters under the Golden Gate Bridge where the fresh rush of the Sacramento River disciplined them to the deceptive calm of the bay.  

To his left, the inlet below the hospital was a gaping wound constantly worried by the white fangs of water grinding to the bone.  He was grateful he was not close enough to hear the surf.  He had heard too much of it when  inside that building.  The hospital windows threw the glare of the morning sun to the back of his brain, illuminating the truth.  His eyes fled to the jumbled city of his birth.  His mother was in one of its buildings, waiting.  He had escaped the maze of his parents’ lives only to be returned to it.  Three missing fingers and tainted flesh were the only proofs he had ever left.  He was twenty-two going on fifty-eight.  Or was it sixty?. While he had been at war, his mother’s mind had started to go, leaving only enough for her to continue to claim his life.  He could not unclutch her any more than he could have freed himself from the death grip of his brothers. His days were hers, a sameness where nothing happened and no one entered. And no one ever would if he did not go that college. So he would go there and have the government pay for his education as it would for his hands the rest of his life.

Wind moved the grass.  He rose, not from death but back to it and saw a naval transport heading toward the bay.  Was it bearing those, who, like him, had come back?  He watched the ship pass beneath the bridge.  Soon, there would be more of them killed at home here than had been killed by the war there.  

He knew that because he was one of them.