Behind Calvert Cliffs (3) “Really? How so?” Jason felt the tenseness in his face dissipate. He thought the woman’s tone oddly familiar, yet he felt strangely at ease. “Nobody could stand her before she got cancer. She was a miserable old bag before it.” “How’s that?” “You know how old people are—they live to complain. They’ve outlived their usefulness and they just sit around.” “So, anybody without a purpose should just die?” “It’s not so much that…. It’s just, some of them sit around waiting to die, hoping to die, really.” “You’re grandma was like that?” “I guess.” “I see you’re a man of few words, Jason.” “Well, ya know…yeah, she was a mean old bag of bones, always starting fights in the family and talking behind people’s backs and shit.” “She talked about you?” “No, she pretty much made my uncle her personal punching bag to vent her frustrations on account of her having such a miserable and lonely life.” “Really?” “Yeah, she used to call him a worthless son-of-a-bitch right to his face, which always made me laugh because, you know, seeing as how he was her son and all.” “So, cancer made her see things from a different perspective?” “No, not so much that. It just pretty much just ate her brain away until it changed her personality. She was suddenly happy all the time and she quit bitching and moaning and ragging on everybody. Of course it screwed up her memory royally—after a while, it got so bad she started carrying on conversations with friends of hers that weren’t there, friends that’d been dead for years, friends that never existed.” “Really? She changed that much?” “Yeah, she got real weird all of a sudden. I remember my cousin’s wedding reception about a month before the doctors diagnosed her. She kept calling me JJ and telling me that if she weren’t being tailed by the FBI, she would ‘have taken an attractive young jungle bunny TV star like myself to the back of her father’s Studebaker to bump uglies’.” “That’s pretty far gone,” observed Jackie, smiling bemusedly and nodding her head. Jason smirked and laughed aloud, recalling an image he hadn’t thought of for some time. “Yeah, later in the reception, she joined in on a conga line, artificial hip, walker and all. Everybody thought that was kind of weird, but it only got worse from there. Two songs later, she gets out in the middle of the floor and drops to the ground, stomach-first in the middle of the crowd. Everybody rushes to her side, thinking, ‘oh my god, grandma’s having an aneurysm or a heart attack or something—she’s gonna die, you know, this is it.” So, they’re crowded around her and somebody sprints off to call 911. While they’re hovering over her, she starts convulsing a little, so everybody thinks, ‘oh shit!, she’s having a seizure’, ‘fucking hell, she’s gonna croak right here on the fucking dance floor’. Well, all this time the DJ is standing in the crowd with the rest of the gawkers, and the CD changer switches to RUN DMC’s ‘Walk this Way.’ Well, all of a sudden, she starts convulsing in time with the beat. Turns out, she’s trying to do the worm!” Jackie laughed raucously, coughing up phlegm midway through. “Was she any good?” “No, she took break dancing to the literal level that day. She shattered her hip right there on the dance floor in the middle of the song.” Jason’s laughter reached a higher pitch. “She died of complications from hip replacement surgery two days later!” His eyes now shut and watering from hysterical laughter, Jason doubled over, facing the ground until his guffaws petered out. He breathed deeply, looked up, and saw that Jackie’s face had turned semi-stoic. A hush overcame the room and Jason looked around, embarrassed. Calmly, Jackie broke the silence. “Well, it’ll be awhile before the cancer eats my brain that thoroughly, but, I hope I get to be half as entertaining as your grandmother before I check out.” Jason looked down at his shoes. “I’m sorry, I should think about what I say. It wasn’t funny,” replied Jason sheepishly. “That’s okay, you’re a kid. To you, it was funny. Besides, you’re honest; I like that.” Jackie paused for a moment. “So, I’m gonna assume that you really don’t want to be here.” “Honestly?” “I’m told that’s the best policy.” “No, I don’t.” “I can understand that. Look at it this way, though. You have to get this over with to get on with the rest of your life, and I’m pretty much gonna go loonier than a geriatric breakdancer here without any human companionship besides my visits from the hospice nurses and doctors for the remaining months of my existence. So what say we make the best of this here bad situation? Seems like you’re a decent enough kid, so let’s muddle through this the best we can, ‘kay?” Jason smiled. “Sounds good by me.” “Right now I’m kind of tired, though, so why don’t you go home and I’ll see you in a couple of days.” Jason nodded and walked out of the room. * * * Awoken from a deep sleep by the rising sun, Warren peered out of his glass-encased prison from his rocky bed. The familiar world outside his four walls stood, as always, tantalizingly close, yet impossibly far away from his webbed grasp. He dove headlong into the brackish water below, swam vigorously to the far end of the tank and butted his smooth, green and yellow face repeatedly against multiple spots on the wall, hoping against hope that this time the glass would finally give way to freedom. Still no luck though. He tried another wall, butting and straining over and again, legs paddling furiously, still unable to comprehend after years of trying why he could see through to the mysterious and expansive world around him but was continually denied the ability to feel it. Exhausted now, he finally surrendered and floated to the water’s surface, peaking his head out to take long, deep breaths, floating suspended in mid-water. He now slowly swam back to his rock, perched himself upon it and stared into the outer space again. His attention was caught by the movement of an enormous edifice at the outermost reaches of his universe. Dim light poured in and a large figure came in. Terrified, Warren shrunk his head and legs back into his shell, observing from its safety. By the time Rich had walked into the modest one bedroom condominium he shared with his wife, Reggie, the sun had completely emerged from the horizon and had begun the slow work of melting the snow’s tight top layer. He quietly and carefully approached her so as not to wake her, then squatted on his hams beside her. After finishing a night shift, Rich liked to examine his wife in her sleep; when her curly, graying auburn hair, carefully brushed during the day, was matted with sweat to her cheek and temple; when her eyelids and cheeks twitched with dreams and her teeth ground softly against the plastic retainer she wore to sleep. Suddenly, Reggie inhaled a gulp of air, shot her arms out to stretch and struck Rich in the nose in the process, knocking him backwards, whereupon he struck his head against the dresser. Startled, Reggie got out of bed and rushed to her husband’s side. “Are you okay, baby?”, she asked. Embarrassed, Rich replied, “Yes.” “What were you doing there?” “Just admiring my peaceful, yet apparently dangerous wife.” He got up, walked to the side of the bed, and knelt down before the bed. “Well that’s what you get for being so sneaky, I guess,” Reggie said, slyly “I guess so,” Rich replied, smilingly. “So, what’s up?” “Not much, just getting off work.” “Okay.” “Yup.” “Alrighty, master of the art of conversation, so how was your day?” “Same old shit, different day.” “How eloquent.” “You know every day’s the same for me.” Rich’s mind went back over the events of the shift in his mind. “I set some traps on Route 5 and 235, caught a couple of early morning Mario Andretti’s, gave a sobriety test to one. He failed so I booked him and he cussed me up and down the whole way to Leonardtown, spitting on the window and the floor, and himself. That’s about it.” “Good job, now was that so darn hard?,” Reggie asked as Rich lay in bed beside her. Rich kissed her on the forehead and embraced her. “No it wasn’t,” he said into her ear as he tickled her sides. Reggie let out a squealing laugh. Rich continued until she could take no more and punched him in the gut. Rich grabbed his stomach and let out an exaggerated moan. “Oh, please, you little pussy.” Rich laughed at the revealing of his thinly veiled ruse, then embraced Reggie who jokingly tried to wriggle free. Rich now buried his face in his wife’s hair. They sat in silence a few moments and their minds wandered. Rich ended the quiet. “So whaddaya say we start lookin’ at adopting?” Reggie sighed. “What was that for?” “You know damn well what that’s for, Rich.” “No, I don’t.” Rich took his arms from around Reggie and got up from the bed slowly. “You know I don’t feel like I’m meant to have kids,” she responded, still facing away from her husband. “Why? Just because you can’t physically have them? That’s a blessing in disguise. This way we can adopt some kid that’s never known real parents, that needs somebody to take care of them.” Reggie now turned around to brusquely face her husband. “I know baby, but we’ve been over this and over this. I don’t want the responsibility. Not now. It’s too much.” “But the responsibility’s the whole thing.” “I don’t wanna talk about it right now.” “Tough… I mean, I’m out there everyday, and this ain’t Baltimore or D.C. or nothing where there’s armed robberies and murder and drugs, but I see some shit out there. “Rich, baby…” “When I’m at that courthouse runnin’ security, I see bruised kids whose parents don’t give a good goddamn about them and use ‘em for the extra welfare they get out of them. I see drug pushers who I know sell to kids. I see junkies, zombies who throw their lives away and risk throwing other people’s lives away driving idiotically high or robbing convenience stores.” “I understand that Richie, baby, but there’s nothing you can do ‘bout all that stuff. It’s always been there and it always will be there. There’s just a portion of folks who’s bad from the inside out and ain’t nothin’ you or me can do about it.” “I don’t believe that. I don’t believe folks are made this way or that. They aren’t bad because they’re made that way.” “Rich,…” “They’re that way because there’s something missing from some part of them. Somewhere along the way, something in their, you know, what’s the word?... You know, their foundation. Something wasn’t laid right when they were being raised that caused ‘em to be the way they are; to hate themselves, to hate the world, to hate everybody. We have the chance to give that to some kid, to some human; to play an important part in their life and in the world.” Reggie looked at her husband and her eyes began to well up. She blinked and two tears streaked down her face. “God, you’re such a beautiful and naive man that it fills me with wonder and pain just to be near you sometimes.” Rich slammed his fist onto the night stand. “Goddamnit, Reg! That’s not fucking naive. If you’d seen what I’ve seen and what I’ve been through, you’d know how tough it can be for people in shit situations to be decent. You’d see how people… how bad people can drag you into their little… their fuckin’ cess pools. You’d also know that no matter what type of shit the world throws your way, people can pull themselves up; they can will themselves way into becoming something better. You have no fucking clue and you just want to sit by and… and ignore everything around you.” Reggie got up and threw her arms around her husband, holding him tightly. “Okay, okay, we’ll think about it some more.” Rich bit down on his trembling lower lip. After several seconds, he embraced his wife tightly. * * * “What am I doin’, what am I doin’, what am I doin’?,” Albert whispered inaudibly to himself as he sat on a bench outside Rich’s school, hunching forward with his elbows on his knees, staring at a crack in the sidewalk. He pulled out his pack of Camels and lit one, drawing deeply. As he exhaled, a breeze carried the puff into his eyes. The sting forced them shut immediately. Albert’s now red, watery eyes slowly followed the crack up and down, scrutinizing every bend in its path. He pursed his lips tightly and bit his teeth down hard, grinding his molars. The bell rang and a flood of students poured out of the scratched-up Plexiglas doors of the brown brick building. Albert searched the crowd until he noticed his son. “Hey, there, Richie-boy.” Rich was puzzled. His father hadn’t picked him up since grade school. “What are you doin’ here, Pop?” Albert put his arm around his son’s neck and smiled. “Can’t a father pick up his boy from school? Say, you wanna drive?” The two walked to Albert’s blue Chevy truck and got in. “What’s goin’ on, Pop?” “Nothin’ much. Say, let’s go pick up Donnie in Park Hall.” “Donnie? The kid who works for you?” “That’s the one.” “Why are we gonna hang out with him?” “We’re not gonna hang out with him. We’ve got a little project to do with Don.” “A little project?” “Don’s alerted me to an opportunity.” “You’re talkin’ in circles, Pop. What’s going on?” “Anybody ever told you you’re a nosy little cuss?” Albert mussed his son’s hair as he had a thousand times before and rested his arm on the boy’s neck. “Just drive, Richard.” Donnie lived in a red brick duplex with overgrown, patchy grass and mangy shrubs. The carport was littered with engine parts and sawdust and faintly smelled of engine oil and cat urine. The main door was open, so Albert knocked on the frame of the screen door, eliciting a shrill howl from Donnie’s blood hound/beagle mutt, Anne. The dog rushed to the door, a trail of piss following her all the way, then back-pedaled to the center of the kitchen, shuffling her feet frantically and bouncing up and down on her hind legs, howling at the ceiling in nervous excitement. Donnie walked toward the door. “Goddamn it Anne, shut the fucking hell up!” He booted the dog, knocking it into a side cabinet. It ran whimpering into the bathroom. “Rich-eeeeee; how’s it goin’, you little shit?,” Donnie shouted, like a used car salesman greeting an old customer. “What’s it been, like six months since I seen you?” “Thereabouts.” “Well, you’re just growin’ like a little weed, ain’t ya?”
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