Roper had taken to patrolling while using one tall stick he’d found. No carving on it, alas. We all wanted him to start again, even simplest whittling. Only that might be Doc’s ticket to his grand delayed Phase III.
Marge said he now called such long strolls “looking” or “going out looking.” Margie told my Jan that, many nights at dinner, Doc made perfect sense. For up to twenty minutes he seemed to know exactly what had happened, to be up to date. On one subject alone did he stay crazed: his life’s scattered hand-work. He just knew he wanted it back. Did he see his decoys as patients wandered off, needing Doc alone? No. I wish. He wanted wood simply for being the very carved material made valuable by his once having valued it.
MY HEART, ABOUT like Dad’s, had been not-good for decades, then got worse all at once. Flood-inspired adrenaline had fooled me into feeling resurrected for whole weeks. My heart’s tire-patch inner-tube analogy had, for me, been overdone. Soon nothing’s left but balloon, caulking and the stents, seals.
Dr. Gita asked me why I had not been to see her for the checkups lately. Why had I never stayed in touch with certain Duke-UNC specialists? Hadn’t Roper referred me the day I quit my Monday checkups? She told me Doc had made her vow she’d give me special care. The manila-bound notes he’d left were rubber-banded, novel-thick. And poor Gita herself, hadn’t she mailed me a handwritten note, reminding me, remember? But I’d been avoiding her, had I not?
I scratched my head, imitating a former internist. “Well, ma’am, once Doc retired, guess I sort of forgot.”
“Yes. I am hearing a great deal of that, William. Never have met so many thought he worked for them alone. You’ve at least let me keep your prescriptions going. But I’m afraid that, by putting off all appointments this year and a half since the flood—I must be very clear here—you’ve lost a good bit more function. You’re understanding me? At least nod, please.” So I did, nod.
FOUND I DIDN’T much care either way. Found the flood had sucked back every bit of quickening that’d first rafted me through it. That energy got reneged plus a surcharge for its use. Found I couldn’t do all that many “activities” per day anymore. One, tops.
Janet begged me not to drive. But without a car I’d be one dead duck truly finished. I told her, if I felt Doc’s predicted “flutter before implosion” I’d hit the blinkers, pull over pretty darn quick. She always swore I was being selfish. Said I was bound to kill “some fine young family.” Jan feared I’d take out a worthy attractive couple and their several kids. I knew she was only remembering us. Our Volvo station wagon (not unlike the Ropers’) had once been a mess of car seats, bottle-warmers plugged into our dashboard lighter, pink kitty toys spongy underfoot. Jan had made me, an old man, into the enemy of Family Promise. Or maybe Time had.
Post-flood, remembering my own father’s end, I gave up even hanging near the links. The club bar has always been called Hole Nineteen. That phrase took on a grave-side clifflike edge for me. Hell, I’d lately been forced to finally give up even morning decaf! My quality of life? Of what?
I moped around these new-built eleven hundred square feet.
I realized that, for my last four years in the old place B.C., I had been taking daily naps, in Jill’s . . . in my daughter’s girlhood room. Every frilly hand-drawn thing in there I noted, kept just in its place. I wrote notes and paid bills in Lottie’s office. Small spaces I liked best. Less chance of misplacing things with all pertinent objects at hand, in view.
Now I wished for a stellar late-life hobby, very late. I kept mainly watching our animal shows on PBS, rereading WWII, trying not to drive my poor patient Janet mad by my driving too often. But if she visited neighbors or got a long-enough phone-call, I would snitch the car keys. Couldn’t help it. After the flood she’d refused to buy me a replacement car. Claimed she could better monitor the one. Escaped, I often drove downhill into our old neighborhood, roads cracked but familiar. Most toxic houses had been razed per health department orders.
ABOUT THEN, MAYBE a year and a half post-flood, you’d sometimes see Doc walking far off the interstate. Raleigh now sent its traffic and four-lanes clear out Falls’ way. Farm lanes from my boyhood muscled up with off-ramps.
Roper might be near the concrete drainage-trench under some busy cloverleaf. Down there, alongside roadkill beagles, cement’s graffiti, bent grocery carts, you’d spy his windblown head. It’d once been the preferred hood ornament of Davidson, then Yale, that headful of local life-saving was lost to use, to us. To me. His best friend.
He’d be striding along depending on his guide-stick. You’d see Roper poking through piles of drifted leaves. He’d move along, overturning garbage, always alone, prodding, on the stalk for something. My Janet had spotted him wandered way out past Red Oak Grange. Doc was poling himself along a roadside gully, his tennis-shoes resembling cinder blocks of mud. She told how he dragged forward, head-down, scanning the way certain poorer folks hereabouts once hunted Coke bottles for selling back to stores.
Surely he was seeking one of his Manhattan-worthy artworks. Or was he looking for one real live duck, to be a new model, to inspire him? The sight of Roper’s quest felt so sad it grew half-sickening. He’d never been one to sit still.
You reach an age when you open your morning newspapers not to Sports, the Funnies, but Obits. At our age, Jan and I knew dozens who had “preceded us,” as morticians must say. Such acquaintances became your own silent majority of friends. But it wasn’t that. That in itself is strangely not so tough on people of our given vintage. It’s not the lost; it’s the lingerers that slay you! You don’t usually have to see the deceased up and out walking.
With him in motion, Doc’s white hair now looked rat-nest flyaway as Einstein’s. White eyebrows, once sleek as otter fur, now coiled with stray white hairs overshooting everywhichaway. Try as Marge might to tidy them, Roper’s clothes looked bunched as burlap, ditch-colored, flecked with sticky seeds.
Doc had been the last one you’d expect to go like this, with all his skills and couth and looks. His dad a cardsharp, his mom a pianist, his superb digits a birthright. A dead loss now. Had we ever been fair to him? Had he volunteered to save those of us who stayed? or had we drafted him the second schoolkids made Marion go “Doc”? Roper’s hands had left on us his best sort of signature: no trace of scar. All those binding little surgeries, ending with his Swiss-watch stitches, they’d long since gone invisible. For forty years, no need to put a © on any of his living creatures. Doc had tied the black catgut knot as he said: “No mark likely. You’ll see. Good as new in no time, pal.”
These few words still felt sure, short, as sunk clear into us as his sutures!
OF COURSE MARGE tried to get him carving again. Everybody did: “With all this water, bet you’re inspired, huh?” Margie even risked the humiliation of buying him a Bobbitt’s Hobby Shop napkin-ring kit. Maybe something simple would make him remember? But now only his own finished products drew him. Decoys. They were lures, okay.
Till the flood, simply owning had bored him. He’d told those big-spender Texans in Bermuda he cared nothing for buying; only making held him. Now he’d lost his talent for that, Doc Roper turned miser. He was a man fixed solely on gathering the work of one boy-wonder Marion! He’d become no better than any other of our country club’s decoy-buyers. No better than me, than I, the poor bugger!
After forty years, Doc had left his job of saving us. All that huffing to warm a stethoscope, his personal-courtesy heat. That’d been Monday morning’s first best medicine, lost. He’d left the healing task with no seeming regret. Even with all the forty-odd thank-you parties in his honor, Roper had never given what you’d call a farewell-speech. We did it all for him. He hadn’t felt pressured to prepare a different “Goodbye, I love you guys, too” for each big barbeque.
I would’ve. I probably might’ve written it out on three-by-fives then memorized it so I could sound more . . . you know, more grandly offhand . . . more, well, like him.
But, hey, D
oc didn’t need to endear. Man already had us all curled right there in his hands. Talent! At base, its uneven distribution is so unfair in a democracy.
(Me? when I retired, my staff of five gave me one potted chrysanthemum, a bottle of drugstore champagne, the giant greeting card signed by our entire secretarial-and-paralegal team. Plus, “Hey, Bill, can I help you tote that box of your desk stuff to your car? You sure? Well, don’t strain yourself right here at the end, guy. I mean ‘at the starting-line.’ Life’s just getting cranked for you, you ole frat-boy party-animal. Get out the hip flask and a list of 900 numbers.” (What were 900 numbers? I laughed, pretending to know.) Basically, over and out. From an agency long ago renamed for me! No particular praise. Certainly no formal speech about me and, God knows, none requested from me. Till now. Is this my own self-administered funeral oration? Who else is left to give or hear it?
DOC HAD GONE on to reclaim, even dignify, his unfair handle “Marion.” Strapped with a liability, he made it famous. That’s the idea. That’s American revenge!
Thanks to his old-school pull in medical circles years back, I’d finally worked my way to the top of the list for a transplant. But by now, see, I was too old to really qualify. I didn’t “have the heart” to claim an interchangeable human part, not when ruddy kids the Bixbys’ age lay waiting!
I could think to say that, sure, I’d loved Doc. I could say I had wanted to be the man. But had I also wanted to, what? massage or maybe “touch” or “ease” the fellow in some other way? Had I turned that way? Had I, without knowing, become one of those—wearing their matching vest, tie and pocket hankie of the same priss-pot plaid? Was I another bachelor at another party gushing instead of speaking, making too much drama out of his dietetic childless life? Cute stories of his Yorkie’s antics? Had I been miscast as husband-dad or maybe just faked it? Had I got myself rolled into Falls’ city gates like the Trojan horse? himself a kind of decoy maybe. A wooden horse stuffed full of waiting warriors, male. Close quarters, beards, smells, a most macho silence.
I held on to the memory of a young doctor’s clutching my hand so hard just after Dad died. Roper, tears in eyes already scarily blue, he’d squeezed my right paw while swearing that, having just let his patient slip off on the fairway, I would live forever-after in his care and hands. “I’ve got you, Bill!”
Who, except Doc, had ever promised that?
MAYBE I WANTED more. Had I wanted to “do it” with him or whatever? This is painful. There, I said it. But, really, where intimate contact with another male’s concerned, I swear I wouldn’t know how to go about it. Where would a fellow even start? A kiss? To kiss a mouth with stubble all around it? Nahh.
But even so, at my age, I’ll admit to wanting anything that might’ve once been true. (Whether I later remember such a wish is quite another matter!) I know: I did hope for a bit more than I got. That is all I can now think to say.
With Doc finally downgraded into looking like some ole leather door hinge, I can maybe finally speak. But no longer actually to him, see? That chance appears lost. Odd but, for me, he doesn’t even seem quite “old” yet. I still consider him all ages at once, since I myself seem to daily hopscotch across most of those same surplus annex decades.
But I confess that it was excellent—every year and day of our overlapping life spans—living just across the road from one another.
7
ONCE, A.D., I talked Jan into going for a country drive. Secretly I hoped to find a little property near some lake. A cabin maybe? Zero upkeep. Just let wildflowers grow. Nice porch.
But unlike Falls, devastation out there stayed uncleared. We passed flooded fields littered with Falls’ refrigerators, house roofs, brand-new swing sets. The idea of enduring a deluge alone, no neighbor to fetch you off your roof, that sent us right back to our blank new place contented. Our condo still smells of drywall. So much the better.
Jan hates even going near our old neighborhood. “Nothing’s down there but the river, a false friend.” But I missed what I called “our lot in life”: the mold-growing brick foundation where a mighty fortress stood for sixty years.
To even get near the place I must sneak the car keys now. Either my driving is getting worse or Jan’s more critical or both.
THE FORMER PRETTIEST ride in eastern North Carolina now means ignoring the health department bulletins.
CONDEMNED OFF-LIMITS STRUCTURES, TRESPASSERS
CONSIDERED LOOTERS. RAT BAIT POISON, DANGER TO
UNLEASHED DOGS.
Oh it’s a barrel of laughs down there these days. That badland border between Heaven and Hell must be riddled with just such vermin, smoke and signage.
Turning onto The River Road, I still feel a sort of quickening. Poor Janet can’t even bear to see snapshots of our old place. But even the newish station wagon parks itself right where it should, the horse knows the way. Somehow, being here doesn’t make me only sad.
I sit in our driveway and overlook the underpinnings of a house no longer here. Location, location, location, all that’s left. Do you believe they still charge me property taxes? if at valuations greatly reduced. How fast Virginia creeper has claimed the north chimney, poison ivy’s scaled the south.
At my wheel, arms crossed, I pose as Security. Some cocky boy-guard Colonel Paxton might’ve hired. But the kid’s now minding the Old Mabry place. Like Doc, these days I feel my mission here is simply “looking.”
Alone, I can admit that I have always been secretly insanely ambitious. But, for what? Shouldn’t I know by now? Waiting, staring idled downriver, looking clear through what was Roper redwood deck, I spy a stretch of sandbank once public park. Its evergreen planting got swept away by current that first night. New saplings have taken root there. Mostly weed trees—sumacs and hackwoods. The river knits and braids along, all innocence. Who, me? after its rampage.
And I, here in my starter position as father-husband-neighbor, I do hope the police will come with questions. I’m spoiling for a challenge from far younger men. That way I can show my license—1526 River Road still written on it bold. Parked here, with no pressing business appointments, I try recovering whatever Riverside I liked best. This is a luxury peculiar to my age. The living and the dead make up your quorum and are all on call.
So I go back, before marriage, pre-ownership, to my much-missed Red, his introductory-offer. We’re a family, back before Paxton gave us our free pass.
Dad’s tour of the stars’ homes commenced as soon as Sunday service ended. I would claim the Studebaker’s flannel backseat. We had just worshipped at Second Methodist, while guiltily considering buying up toward First Presbyterian. Red pulled past First to check out how many new cars it had. And for Episcopalianism? That might only be achieved in our next generation.
At preachers’ last Amen, town believers scattered, starved. Bound for delicious-smelling home roasts; to reservations at Chez Josephine or Sanitary Seafood. But Dad, unswerving, aimed the waxed red Studebaker riverward. Our lunch budget might prove limited. (Chicken salad sandwiches today featuring a hen past steady laying.) Even so, a grand tour awaited.
Studebaker whitewalls? Dad had Cloroxed those as clean as Astaire’s spats. Strangers, we took The River Road’s first S-curve. Leaving much of summer’s heat behind, we soon banked, cooling and downhill, past yonder little vest-pocket park.
There, Red (the boy) had made a French picnic from two hard-boiled eggs. And now, with the doxology fresh behind us, he called to order truest worship. “Will you lookeee at all this back up in here?” Red asked us and the world generally. Enter into His gates with thanksgiving, His courts with praise.
Their houses already looked beautiful to us. Lawns stretched too wide to be anything but show-off meadows. Beyond those, vertical homes, caulked with fresh face-paint, lined like beauties about to be confirmed. Striped awnings trapped coolness back of second-story window. Homes soon appeared almost a single sawtoothed stage-set, painted just so. For luring humbler folk right down into this river shade.
That Sunday mid-July, home-places of the rich all seemed only made of shady porches, steep foyers. Once you stepped over welcome mats, would there even be a place to sit or sleep? Such beautiful Victorian valentines, homes might prove depthless as birdhouses.
But us? we’d not get far enough indoors to check. We’d just enjoy the sight of carpet yards. We could enjoy our safety, being hicks out on a public road. From here, such places looked lovely as all promises well-kept.
Why had riverfront-living so spoken to the bowlegged contractor driving us? Red wanted it for us. That Sabbath, he chugged along at twelve mph. Dad pointed out heart-shaped goldfish ponds, the engineering of a Queen Anne turret. And I, in his backseat, slouched ever-lower.
None of my country classmates would see us ogling here. But our car already drew smirks from neighbor girls on bikes. They were beauties wearing shorts. They had hair so blond, it wasn’t even yellow like our best farm girls’. Here, it shone toward a silver that no store-bought home-slopped dye could fake.
I saw girls as pretty as girls should ever legally get to be this side of intentional international torture of such farm boys as Dad and me! But why were they wearing short-shorts on the Lord’s Day? And why outdoors, goofing around at this post-church Sabbath-dinner-hour? Their smiling at our poker-faced tourism made me wince like someone burned. I felt a mixture: pity for myself, desire for them, and one huge secret wish not unlike Dad’s. Did I want to live among them or punish them from afar for their vanity and luck and legs?
But he was hollering into his rearview mirror, “Set up straight, son. Show ’em that posture. Gals your age’re out here grinning a big River Road greetings. Gals sure get ‘developed’ fast in town. And you? scrunched-down a-hiding! Sit up. You’re a good-looking whippersnap. You covering your face!? Why, if I’d of had your looks . . . I might could have got somewheres with our life. —See yonder? Since laist week the Eatman Battles have had a whole new flagstone terrace laid. Leading to their dock. Probably fine Dovetail Construction work. It just appreciates their property value. Like I always say, ‘Why not enjoy your money?’ Imagine, son. Your bike would be parked alongside our own house. Your Sunfish boat, the sails up, docked out back! How’d you like them apples, hunh, Billy?”