A MAN WHO IS TOO GOOD by Richard Alwan
Today’s paper tells about a mother from El Paso who takes her 12-year-old daughter to the movies in Juarez. They always go to the peliculas on Sunday afternoon. It’s cheaper in Juarez. Outside the theater, men in black hoods, like bandanas, are standing in the bed of a cherry-colored pickup truck. The mother is in the way. She’s shot dead. The 12-year-old daughter runs but gets in the way, too. It makes you wonder. What has the mother and child to do with any of this? All they were doing was going to the movies. They didn’t even live in Juarez.
But we in El Paso no longer wince so much. As Jack Nicholson might say, “It’s only Mexico.”
Still, we keep reading about heads hanging from lamp posts, or failed killers going to emergency rooms to finish the job, and murdering doctors and nurses as well. Today’s paper also says 2,700 people have been killed in Juarez in 18 months, mostly by being in the way. It’s a good thing the drug gunsels haven’t figured out how to work the Texas side of the river.
When I first came to El Paso, back when everyone seemed young, and everybody I knew was either a journalist or a lawyer, we went to Juarez all the time, even for lunch. Carta Blanca was only 16 cents. The old bridge was small and flat, easy to walk across. Sun-blackened Mexican kids would hold up long poles with cardboard cones at the end to catch the coins we would throw to them. There aren’t many people who remember that.
One of my newspaper pals often said Juarez is the asshole of El Paso, meaning El Paso was the place to live, but Juarez was where you went for fun, including liquor and girls and oversized steak dinners, all cheap and accessible. Besides all that, I loved the Southwest sky. After California, this sky was especially clean and gorgeous. It didn’t turn a sodden orange in late afternoon. It made you feel good. It’s the only place I’ve been where the sky is blue all the way down to the horizon.
Today, I was thinking about these things when the doorbell rang. There were two boys, dressed in the manner of Wall Street trainees. They looked intelligent, the result of some private high school. They seemed to have been nicely bred. There was no apology or lack of will. They held their ground in my entryway, a picture of confidence. They stood tall, no discomfort in coming to me unannounced. They would like to visit with me. It was God they wanted to discuss. God, in fact, was their business, or would be after a few years, I assumed, in some hard and far-away land, a place even God had been willing to overlook. I appraised them carefully. They waited. Still, they showed no discomfort. I could analyze to my heart’s content, they seemed to say.
So it’s God they are after, I thought. The taller lad asked directly: “May I ask if you had been raised in a religious home?”
My answer, I assumed, would provide the pathway to the wreckage of what was left of my rubberized soul. I replied sharply that, thank God, I had been raised without the spirit, and was grateful for my good luck. I told the boys I was clean. It was wonderful! How lucky to have been free of all that!
The lads did not back away, which led me to think they had heard this story before. In fact, for these boys, my resistance would be that slice of rare roast beef Fred MacMurray talked about in Double Indemnity. There was no assault or insult they could not deflect. I asked, as if sincere: “Do you see any sign of God out there? Is God in Gaza, or South Africa? Does God feel bad when Cape buffaloes go down in those fine nature documentaries and are eaten alive by lions?”
I was eager to amplify and went on, with only voiceless encouragement. I told the boys about being witness to every manner of horror done by lions on my flat-panel Sony Bravia, all the more horrible in such technical clarity. How lucky I am, being a viewer and not a victim! Yes, I told the boys, that’s what it comes down to, a matter of luck, being a lion, or not being there when Mexican goons blast away, and above all, being born in the United States and not within the filthy curse of those lean-to shacks down by the riverside. If you’re born badly, without luck, you may well be done for no matter what. So I put it to the lads: “What sort of God would not care about fallen Cape buffaloes?”
What I really meant was this: If He would so routinely forsake buffaloes and Palestinians and rich Juarez drug providers, what chance is there for the rest of us?
The implication was not good. I offered this to the stone-faced lads: “Don’t buffaloes deserve to have a God?” I looked for some sign. There was none. As far as I could tell, I was talking to myself. Then I said: “Are you guys sure about this God of yours? Are you banking on too much, asking a hell of a lot?”
We talked for about 20 minutes. I shot their religion full of holes. At one point, I shook my head. “Who told you all this stuff? Where did you get these notions? Why do you believe the people who tell you these things? Don’t listen to what the system tells you. Think for yourselves!” Then I called up that line by Joseph Wiseman in Detective Story: “Who are you going to believe, them or me?” They would not budge. I suppose they were put off to some degree, but they were solid. They fought well. They said my drivel was old stuff. Yes, they had heard it before. It was shallow and counterfeit.
Then the taller lad – the one in charge – put a question to me, intended as the turning of the key in the lock of my disarray. Perhaps this would be the moral equivalent of the lad’s final exam. Straighten me out and he could scale any churchly assignment. Get me shaped up and Dakar or Angola would be next, or whatever depleted land his church would select. I had heard these boys must do two years in one of these sorry places before getting a soft touch back home. College would be delayed. But I knew a better place was never meant for me. Only a religious deficient would let me in his temple. Like any opportunist needing a change of luck, I would vow this or that, but sooner or later I would backslide. It’s my nature. Still, the lad pressed on. This is what he asked: “Have you ever wondered what purpose there is in life?”
I went for the kill. “Who says there has to be purpose? Where did you get such an unlikely predicate? Who told you that? Why must there be purpose? It’s living that counts, getting better, surviving, evolving! Yes, evolving! That’s what makes us what we are. Take a one-cell organism drifting in some primordial ocean. Three and one-half billion years later, it’s Marilyn Monroe! What a change, Marilyn Monroe! That’s evolution. Give it enough time and evolution becomes a miracle. That’s why all the mice at White Sands are white, why hawks can’t find them for lunch. Oh, how clever it happens, this evolution! Look at it this way . . . why don’t vultures have feathers on their necks and heads? If they had these feathers, they wouldn’t be so ugly. But ugliness is not an issue. They have to stick their heads inside the dead things they eat. Feathers on their heads would soak up blood. The blood would rot. Rot means disease, not a healthy condition. Sick vultures die out. As a result, no feathers! Did God really know about blood rotting on feathers? Well, here’s how it was done, trial and error. When you have billions of years, amazing things happen, even miracles. By the way, you boys should read about the beaks on finches in the Galapagos Islands. Because of Darwin, those finches are famous! Also, go back to Dostoyevsky. Say, when’s the last time you boys looked at The Grand Inquisitor? When’s the last time you did Henry Miller?”
I watched the boys carefully. I was enjoying this. But the boys did not move to leave. It was as if I had been trying to get a tree into an argument. How much could they take? Then my cell phone rang, a chilly intrusion. What a pain, I thought. The spell was broken. I had hoped the boys would keep fighting back. You had to like these lads. They were so polite, no matter what. But the phone in my pocket kept ringing. “The outside world,” I told the boys.
Stanley Ayer was on the phone. He’s a tax lawyer, a casual pal from the tennis club. He knows his tax law and he knows his Bible. I had often assumed the two don’t mix. He wasn’t exactly a friend. He was odd, a gifted child who grew up a little crooked, a savant or idiot in some ways, but dead smart about making money. That was his gift. His father had done well in land but was prone to beating Stanley excessively when Stanley was small. The father was an alcoholic and a lawyer as well. When the father died last year, and left all that property to Stanley, and none to Stanley’s sister, Stanley would not go to the funeral. Few people did. Perhaps that fortune was apology for the beatings. After law school, Stanley was an alcoholic for a time, but the fever passed. He married twice, each for a decade, and both marriages broke down. Along the way, he accumulated a number of children, most by adoption, all good looking, especially the girls. He was committed to the children, except a boy who had come with the first wife, and whom he detested. The boy used drugs and was not salvageable. In any event, it occurred to me just then, with Stanley on the phone, how much he seemed a grown-up extension of these lads in my entryway, these good-looking children now pretending to have come of age, sublime and willing! But the lads, being so young, were still sensible. Stanley and I had talked about religion occasionally. Of course, I had always wanted to know more. I would tell him: “Let’s have lunch so you can explain it to me. I don’t want to be one of them. I just want to know how it works.”
I suppose what got my interest up was the basic idea of religion, a brilliant and improbable scheme to explain all commonplace horrors, including what must happen to each of us, even Charles Foster Kane, even Cape buffaloes. The way I see it, if the promise of religion helps, what’s the harm in it? This thought never went down well with Stanley. You were supposed to take religion to heart. But Stanley was always too busy. There was never time to discuss anything. Occasionally, at the tennis club, between sets, he would bring it up. When I would suggest lunch, he would only smile, as lawyers do, committing to nothing. We never had lunch. I would always offer to treat, an offer he probably took as a stratagem. He would always look at me in that half-moon way, his version of a smile. Whatever you said had to be decoded. As a result, most people, if their taxes were in good shape, did not care for him. He was strange, they would say. I frequently promised Stanley the best $1.99 breakfast in town. It was a joke, of course. But he really was okay in my book, no matter what people thought. Stanley had bad asthma, and would have to rest during our tennis matches and hold some device in his mouth. I would always beat him easily. He would phone me now and then, mentioning religion by happenstance. I assumed his religion was a topic which could be discussed fleetingly, only at a distance, especially since he was always taken up with business. Being a lawyer, he never tipped his hand. So I was never sure he cared about my spiritual doom. Possibly he did. But I doubt it.
“I came across a Biblical passage today,” Stanley told me on the phone. As usual, he was in a hurry. “I think you should see it. I’ll have my girl make a copy. She’ll send it to you.”
“Fine,” I told Stanley. “What a coincidence! I’m outside the front door, right now, talking about religion! What’s going on? Are you sending all your angels at me, all at once?”
“Who are you talking to?” Stanley asked.
“Two boys, Mormons I think. You see them all the time. They’re always in ties and dark suits. You know, Awake! Sometimes they ride bicycles. They’re in front of me, right now.” I glanced at the boys. Then, to Stanley: “They’re good kids.”
“Oh, yes,” Stanley said. I sensed a change in Stanley’s voice. It was his legal voice. He was uncommonly indirect. I could tell Mormons were apparently not quite right. This change of voice reminded me of the way Rosalind Russell spoke her lines in Craig’s Wife. She could say good morning and make it sound like a bad day.
“Oh, don’t bother with a Xerox,” I told Stanley. “Give me the chapter and paragraphs. I’ll look them up.”
“Do you have a Bible?” Stanley asked. I suppose it did seem strange, a Bible in the house. The Wall Street Journal, yes, stacked up on the dining room table. There was hardly room for my coffee. But a Bible?
I spoke to Stanley as if being reasonable: “Yes, I have a Bible. Believe it or not, I read it now and then. It’s good reference. So let me have the chapter and paragraph numbers. I’ll get it on the Internet. It’s easier.”
“This passage applies to you,” Stanley went on. “Read it carefully, please. You’ll see what I mean.”
“Fine,” I told him. “I know my goose is cooked. But I can take it.”
“Romans 2: 12–16,” Stanley said.
“Okay, I’ve got it,” I said. “Romans 2: 12–16. I won’t forget.”
“Let me know what you think.” Then he turned away from the phone. I could tell he was looking down the hallway of that big office. His voice came back to me. “Listen, I’ve got to run now. A client just came in.”
“Yes, I know,” I said.
The boys had been listening. Romans 2: 12–16? Was this a joke? I couldn’t blame the kids for smelling a rat. The timing was perfect. But these lads could not be won over easily. They had seen many tricks, faced clever turn-downs. It was like selling life insurance. You had to keep plugging away. If anyone puts up an argument, ignore it. Get a pigeon by the throat and never let go.
“A friend of mine, a lawyer,” I explained to the boys. They nodded. I went on, as if to apologize: “I don’t know him well. He likes the Bible. He calls from time to time. I like hearing from him.”
The taller of the two boys said coolly, “The Lord calls to you from every side.” His sarcasm was evident. Who does this heathen think he’s kidding, getting a phone message about the Bible?
“I don’t mind talking about religion,” I said. “It’s interesting.”
“Maybe we’ll talk again,” the boy suggested. “Please think about what we discussed.”
“I certainly will,” I said.
But I knew there was no hope. If you want to believe, you need to start out believing, when you’re young. That’s how Hitler did it. He had gotten the idea from the Catholic Church. But the lads in my entryway were okay. I liked their business sense. First, you do the recruiting. Then new money comes in, a sensible plan, the way business works. Along the way, people like me would be cleaned up. If there’s no catch, what’s the loss?
The smaller boy glanced across my property. “I like your lawn, so many flowers and trees.”
“I like things to grow,” I said. “But it takes work. No weeds, that’s the trick. I like everything right. You have to put the right plants in the right places.”
“I can help you,” the boy said. He seemed to mean it. I had the impression he would do a good job. “You would not have to pay me.”
“Oh, no,” I said. “I have a gardener. He comes every week.”
That was a lie. He comes every other week, cheaper that way. It’s good therapy, mowing a lawn, which is what I do. I have a Sears tractor. It cuts the grass and then mulches the cuttings. Mowing a lawn makes you think you’re getting somewhere. Also, you save money. The gardener does all the edging and blow-sweeping. That’s the hard part. But the boys didn’t have to know all this. Their lives were complicated enough.
So there we stood, facing one another, a silence broken when Margaret came to the door. She said in a scolding tone: “If you’re going to talk to these boys, bring them into the house. It’s cold out here.” It was not like Margaret to talk so directly. But I did not want to bring the boys into the house. Perhaps Margaret was not ready for visitors, considering all she had been through. Also, the boys might assume I could be a prospect. I knew talking to me was hopeless.
“Well, we’ll be on our way,” the older boy proposed.
We shook hands. As I turned away, a thought came to me, nothing important, only a flicker. One of my brain cells was beginning to fail. There it goes, I thought, just like Hal in 2001. You can feel it. That happens when you get old, a conking out of one microscopic brain cell, a speck among millions. But when it goes, it takes a few bytes of memory – such as the chapter and paragraphs Stanley wanted me to read. He had sounded serious. Also, he had called from his office, interrupting his business. I remembered that sea of white nothingness when the neurologist called up Margaret’s brain scan on the big LCD in his office. About Stanley, though – what the hell was it, anyway? Rome or Romanians or what? But I was lucky. The two boys were only starting to leave. What a joke, a know-it-all like me already turning to the kids for help.
“Say, do you guys remember that passage I was supposed to read?”
At once, both boys called out: “Romans 2: 12–16.”
They waved to me as they left. I assumed they knew that blasted Romans by heart. But there was no victory in their eyes. I wondered if any enjoyment was left in these lads. What a shame, living all the time in the shadow of eternity, and having to eventually put in missionary time in Ghana or Sierra Leone, or even worse, Juarez. I felt sorry for them.
I went back into the house. Margaret was waiting, standing in the den, as if undecided which way to turn. She had one of those canes with four legs at the bottom but would not use it.
“Margaret, please stand up straight,” I said.
“What did those boys want?”
“We just talked,” I told her.
“They wanted money for their church, didn’t they? Well, don’t give them money. I know how you are.”
“Why should I give them money?”
“You think you’re a big shot. You think people like you more if you give them money. That maid, when the children were small. What was her name?”
“Luz,” I said. “That was a long time ago. I thought you had forgotten.”
“Yes, Luz. She needed that operation in her stomach and you were the big shot. You had to pay for it.”
I smiled, as I usually do when Margaret brings up Luz. I said, “How long will it be before I’m allowed to live that one down?” That’s the line Captain Dynamite Holmes used against Deborah Kerr.
“Mexicans have their own hospitals,” Margaret resumed. “Why do you have to pay for them when they get sick? I know that wasn’t the first time you went behind my back to pay for someone. And that gardener who cut his hand when he was planting your trees? He wasn’t even your real gardener. And my brother, Conrad, the drunkard, all the wine he drinks. So what do you do? You send him money for Christmas!”
“I won’t do it any more. How about some lunch? Can I fix you some lunch?”
“Luz cost you thousands and she never came back,” Margaret said.
“I made a mistake.”
Margaret watched me. But whatever irked her seemed to pass. After a while, she said mildly: “You think people will like you more if you give them money. It makes you think you’re doing good. Well, there’s such a thing as being too good.”
“I won’t do it anymore,” I said.
She was getting tired so I led her to the La-Z-Boy. She sat down carefully and clumsily. I waited to make sure she was secure. She would watch TV hour after hour, and never remember what it was about. Her memory had always been weak, even when she was young. She could never keep a pair of shoes together. Keys were always missing. I stopped buying wedding rings. But when you’re young, the brain makes up the difference. When you’re old, it’s too much for the brain. Bits of memory get tangled up. The circuits flicker, weaken, go out. Generally, they come back. But those millions of images may not go back in the right places. They stay mixed up for a time, a pack of cards sorted badly, as if the brain needs a little time to re-boot itself. One misplaced memory can come out wrong by forty years. As Brando once said, “It’s a mess.”
Namenda helps, but not much. I wrote a spreadsheet for all those pills, what she gets, when and how many. The list includes Lisinopril, and Caltrate, and Fosamax, and Metoprolol, and ferrous sulfate and baby aspirin, and Nitrofurantoin and others I can’t remember. When you’re old, everything goes weak, even the insides of your head. Margaret will probably get a valve implant. It goes in the forehead, high up, just passed the hairline, to one side, and drains fluid when this fluid is too much and presses on the brain. It’s what they call normal hydrocephalous, although I can’t see anything normal about it.
The neurosurgeon, Dr. Mazursky, is supposed to call. He’s ready to make up his mind. The odds are good, but when the surgeon goes into your head, it’s terrifying. That’s why I hate phone calls. I remembered that Russian proverb about all bad news coming in the mail. Now, it’s the telephone. Anyway, if you think about this shunt implant too much, you’ll go nuts. So instead, I think about what Raymond Massey once said: “This too will pass.”
At times, Margaret looks at me oddly, as if needing to be sure. There is no alarm in her eyes. She knows I belong there but may not be sure why. Once, in a neutral voice, the way you talk to a stranger, she asked: “Have you lived in El Paso long?” The first time she said that, it was a blow. But you get used to it.
Lately she’s been asking if I have children. Occasionally, at night, she wakes up and asks me to call her husband, who would need to take her home. He’ll be worried about me, she says. After a while, things pass, and those memories go back into place, another correction in that deck of cards, not right but good enough.
I went to the new Dell computer, printed out Romans 2:12–16 (New International Version), then moved over to the dining room table and pushed aside that tilted stack of Wall Street Journals. Also, the two Henry Miller books, plus the Churchill biography, plus that 1973 anniversary issue of Esquire with all those great stories, including Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Faulkner and Steinbeck. I shoved aside those gray padded envelopes from the V.A. with all my pills.
Of course, I kept the wireless phone at hand since Dr. Mazursky would be calling about Margaret’s implant. Either way, I didn’t like it. If he decides to do the implant, I would start worrying. If he says no implant, that would be worse, the end of hope. At times, he had told me, the results are remarkable. Other times, no change, or unspeakable problems. But the odds were good, 9 out of 10. I would think about it later. First, there was Stanley and his Biblical homilies. I looked at the printout:
12. All who sin apart from the law will also perish apart from the law, and all who sin under the law will be judged by the law.
13. For it is not those who hear the law who are righteous in God’s sight, but it is those who obey the law who will be declared righteous.
14. Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law.
15. Since they show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts now accusing, now even defending them.
16. This will take place on the day when God will judge men’s secrets through Jesus Christ, as my gospel declares.
I called Stanley’s office. “It’s okay, I’m a dear friend,” I told the girl.
As I waited I remembered the way Stanley would sit at that huge wooden desk, the one he got in Mexico, rich with fancy trim, a pretense of having been hand-carved. I assumed the wood had not been effectively kiln-dried and would eventually crack. The desk made Stanley look even smaller. Often, he would be in his office in tennis clothes, talking to clients, giving orders, saving their lives, keeping the IRS at bay.
When Stanley got on the line, I said: “I read those Biblical paragraphs. I could be dead wrong, and you’ll probably chew me out. But the way I see it, I’m safe.”
“That’s right!” he replied, pleased I had gotten the problem right.
“I love that part about all who obey the law will be declared righteous,” I said. “As a matter of fact, that’s me all over, about the law written on my heart, and my conscience bearing witness.”
“I agree,” Stanley said.
“Anyway, I appreciate your letting me know about this.”
There was a pause and I sensed a problem. Was I kidding again, only pretending to have come around? Was I pulling his leg, as I usually do about everything except taxes?
“I worry about you,” he said. “But it’s a joke on you, isn’t it, if there really is a heaven and an after-life . . . ?”
“You’re right,” I said. “But I don’t think about it that much.”
“Well, I do,” he replied. He seemed inclined to assume an evangelistic tone. But he laughed as his sarcasm returned at once. “I’d hate to see you left out.”
“I’ve gotten used to the idea.”
Perhaps he was starting to think my respect for his Biblical judgment was fading. “If I find another passage to help you, would you read it?” he asked.
“Of course.”
“How’s Margaret?”
“She’s fine,” I said.
“Does she have any pain?”
“Never,” I said.
“When I talk to her on the phone, she doesn’t seem to know who I am.”
“You know, Stanley, when people get old, all those cells wear out, and they’re replaced by new cells, and finally the whole person is changed, and it’s a different person, not the one she used to be. It’s bad, this oldness. At night, she gets up, and walks around the house, quietly so you don’t know where she is, a wandering spirit floating in the darkness. That’s why I sleep in a different bedroom and keep the door locked.”
There was a pause. Perhaps a client was waiting outside Stanley’s office. I did not mean to bring up that image of Margaret drifting in the night. But it had been on my mind.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Stanley said.
“You get used to these things,” I told him.
“You’re a decent person, the way you care for her.”
I decided to change the subject. “That reminds me,” I said. “When Margaret was in intensive care, and everything was bad, and they were considering a pacemaker to save her, and I was waiting in the hall, a Catholic priest came up to me. He was an old fellow shuffling along. He told me he spends all his time in hospitals and might he say some prayers for Margaret? I told him we were not of the faith. Prayers were not needed, but I appreciated his stopping by, and might he sit down so we can talk a while? I would like to hear more about his work. But if there were no prayers and blessings to be done, he could not stay. He shuffled off, an old-timer doing his rounds, and somehow, I felt sorry for him. I wanted him to sit down so I could cheer him up. But there he went, drifting into the halls of that big hospital, that giant house of pain, looking for sorrowful people in need of benedictions and prayers and magic and all the other things this old fellow would do in the name of decency. I wondered which of us was more lost. But you know, Stanley, it was interesting, an opening scene in a Fellini film, an old fellow, his life about over, wandering through hospital corridors, seeing the worst of things. What those eyes must have seen! That’s what Rutger Hauer said in Blade Runner . . .”
Stanley laughed. “Well, you’re a tough one to help! But God has a special place for people like you.”
“That’s what I’ve been told,” I said.
Then, more serious than I’ve ever known him to be, Stanley said: “I’ll leave you with this. When my mother died, I was a child and she was still young. I never got over it. I think about her all the time. But I talk to my mother, almost every day . . .”
I was surprised. “That’s something,” I said. “Do you really talk?”
“You won’t understand,” he told me. “It’s a kind of talking. But it is talking. We talk to one another, plainly, almost every day, generally at night. I don’t want to explain it any more. But I can tell you, it’s a tremendous comfort.”
“I’d like to know more about it,” I said.
“You would not understand.”
“I suppose not,” I told him. “But let’s have lunch anyway.”
A while later, the phone rang. I winced, as usual. It was Dr. Mazursky’s office. The girl seemed official and smart, having long ago assumed a correct and chrome-plated voice. She said: “The doctor needs to talk to you.”
I could feel my insides going weak. Well, this is it, I thought. You get a phone call from a stranger and your life is changed. The girl said: “Please call Dr. Mazursky tomorrow at 10 a.m. He will be here for fifteen minutes. He’ll wait for your call. His secretary will put you through at once. Don’t be late. That’s 10 a.m., exactly 10 a.m.”
“Won’t he talk to me now?” I asked.
“He’s in surgery and will be in surgery for the rest of the day, probably past midnight.”
“I see,” I said. I was not surprised. I had heard some of his surgeries take eight hours. Well, I thought, if there really is a God, Dr. Mazursky must be his right-hand man.
I put this to the chrome-plated girl, tentatively: “Please, can you tell me, has he decided to do my wife’s shunt implant?” The question did not seem inappropriate. A shunt implant only takes an hour.
The girl did not answer at once. Then, in plain lingo: ”Sir, call Dr. Mazursky at 10 a.m. tomorrow morning!”
“I understand,” I said. “Can you tell me what’s going on?”
“I’m sorry?” she asked. Sorry for what? Not doing the operation? Why must I wait for tomorrow morning? Why must I be tortured? How would I get through the night?
But I gave up and told the girl: “Well, tomorrow morning then.” I remembered Grace Kelly’s line about having to wait a half-hour to know if she’s going to be a bride or a widow. Lucky for her, she didn’t have to wait for Dr. Mazursky. She only had to wait a half-hour.
I sat for a time at the dining room table. The silver Panasonic phone was nearby. Well, I might as well calm down. I decided to have a drink. I had some bourbon, Jim Beam Straight Kentucky Whiskey from Frankfort, Kentucky, as it said on the label. When I had bought that bottle six months ago, I had joked it used to take 10 years to finish one bottle. Now, I can do it in a year. I mixed the bourbon with club soda and ice cubes. I never did like the taste of liquor. But it warmed me up. Perhaps I would calm down.
I finished that drink and had another. Margaret was in the den, in her La-Z-Boy, watching A Shot In The Dark, staring vaguely at the high-def Sony. Nothing seemed to matter, not even Peter Sellers.
Finally, she called out: “Who was on the phone?”
“No one,” I said.
“Who was it?”
“Someone selling something,” I told her.
“Oh,” she said.
I was on my third or fourth drink when I remembered a line by Edward G. Robinson in Five Star Final. Things were going badly for Robinson, a newspaper editor. He leaves the newsroom and goes to a next-door tavern where he gloomily tells the barkeep: “God gives us heartache and the devil gives us whiskey.”
Next, I thought about Jean Harlow in Hold Your Man. Clark Gable is a small-time crook and he tells Harlow about a scheme to steal a truck filled with booze. The truck is in a nearby garage. There’s only one guy in the garage, and this fellow will be distracted by Gable’s pals. All Gable has to do is start the truck and drive it away. It’s a cinch, Gable says. But Harlow is worried. Won’t the guy who watches the garage hear the truck?
“Naw,” Gable says. “This guy is deaf. He won’t hear a thing. Believe me, this plan is perfect.”
Harlow tells Gable, “Don’t do it.”
Of course, the plan fails. Gable is caught. Harlow goes to the city jail to see him. They talk through a wire mesh. Gable, still woozy, asks Harlow: “What went wrong?” She says, “You know that guy who’s deaf? Well, he isn’t deaf enough.”
The drinks went right to my head, as Richard Dreyfuss would say. Still, I mixed another highball. I wanted things to stop for a while. That’s a good line. I forgot who said it. Robert Redford, probably. But that feeling from the Jim Beam brought back the old days, when we were young, and Margaret and I would go to the best bullfights, because I was doing the publicity for Plaza Monumental, and it was a grand time, and after the bullfights, we would eat in Juarez, the best restaurants, including Martino’s and Virginia’s Comedor, waiting for the bridge traffic to clear so we could get back to El Paso. We had Bifstik Mexicana with green chile strips, and huge baked potatoes with mushrooms and sour cream and pico de gallo, and wonderful garlic salads, even though we were not supposed to eat anything uncooked in Juarez. We never got sick because we were young, and we could afford everything because Juarez was amazing, cheap and accessible. We never worried about cholesterol or being too careful, and gasoline was 19.9 cents, American. We drank Dos Equis and wine Margaritas at El Alcazar, and Miguel, the guitarist who pretended to be from Spain, would do a trick with his wine sack, holding it above his head, and the wine would run down both sides of his face and go into his mouth. The tourists loved it. Margaret and I loved it, too. She was quite a looker then, a wonderful shape, before her hysterectomy and mastectomy and before her hearing started to go, before those tiny brain cells began draining away. She had her own cars, and her own credit cards, and raised the kids, and made wonderful dinners at Thanksgiving and Christmas. Before leaving El Alcazar for the night, I would make a show of secretly slipping Miguel a five-dollar bill. That was big money then, a time when girls at Noches de Oro were only four dollars. Once I slipped Miguel ten dollars, making up for those Army days when I was broke, and had no pretense of someday being a phony big shot. Well, Margaret was sure right about that. Once during my Army time I spent a whole night in Juarez, drinking five-cent shots of tequila, and joking with the boys who wear watches up and down both arms, and work the tourists, and when the night was over, I had spent only fifty cents. As I said, Juarez was amazing back then. They even had big medical operations. That’s where Steve McQueen went to save himself, but he died anyway. As it turned out, the Juarez medical cure was a fake.
I needed fresh air. My head wasn’t right and I was tired of Jim Beam. What good would it do? I would still have to face that 10 a.m. phone call. I had never put much store in liquor, not after what it had done to Ray Milland, even with Jane Wyman trying to save him. She was really beautiful back then. I was a kid in Brooklyn, right after the war. That film impressed me. I learned never to lose control. So I put down my Jim Beam and went outside to look at my lawn. I do that a lot lately, especially since Margaret got sick. A man who loves a lawn can’t be all bad. That’s how W. C. Fields would put it.
I stood by the mailbox, looking down the street. In the background, the Franklin Mountains, gaunt and eternal, loomed like a scene in a John Ford movie. Then I spotted the two missionary lads. This time, they were working the other side of the street. Deliberately, like good soldiers, they were going to the doors of those big houses. Not many people were home. I watched as they persisted, taking their time, doing their good work, getting nowhere, and it brought to mind that 1930’s song by The Carter Family, about how bad it would be if the light has gone out in your soul. Well, these kids were doing more than their share to keep that light going.
I waved to the boys and they came over. “How’s it going fellows, catch any live ones today?”
The older lad nodded, not displeased to see me. I guess he had assumed I meant well. Since the pickings were slim, I was better than nothing. The younger lad smiled willingly and shook my hand. The older boy stood back and watched.
“Sir,” he asked, “have you thought about what we discussed?”
“Yes, I have,” I said. He could tell I was a bit distracted. I hoped he could not smell the Jim Beam.
He waited again before asking: “May we come by again? I have more thoughts I would like to share with you. I think I can help you.”
“Yes, that would be fine,” I told him.
“Tomorrow morning?”
“That’s not a good time. Let’s say, in a week. We’ll have time to talk and do it right. As a matter of fact, we’ll have breakfast. I’ll buy you boys the best $1.99 breakfast in El Paso!”
They watched me oddly.
“That’s a joke,” I said. “What we’ll really do, we’ll have that fancy Mexican lunch at Leo’s, or perhaps that buffet at The Texas Road House. I hear it’s quite a lunch.”
With that, the elder boy relaxed. Perhaps he liked me a bit. Perhaps I was worth saving. At the least, I would be good practice. Anyway, I’ve always liked people who don’t let people like me get under their skin. Next week seemed a far-away time. It was nice to plan ahead when it did not pertain to doctors.
“You’re a good person, that’s obvious,” the taller boy allowed. “I would like to discuss the joy and peace in knowing Jesus, and knowing you will spend eternity in heaven. . . .”
I pretended to be paying attention. But my mind was on that surgery, if only Dr. Mazursky would do it. I imagined how much better Margaret would walk, no longer tethered to those baby steps, no longer wetting herself every night. We would walk together, once again, all the way around the block. It was nine-tenths of a mile. I had measured it once while recovering from back surgery. Talk about an eternity. That’s what you think about when you go under. It’s not like sleeping. It’s like time disappearing, or never happening, a time which never takes place. Even in a mysterious place without time, somebody’s God might still be there. That’s what the lads seemed to be telling me. I liked the idea.
The boy went on: “Sir, I was sorry when you told us you had never known the Lord, and it seemed so sad, living a whole life with nothing to believe in.”
“Listen, I need to explain something,” I told the boy.
“You’ve never had the church, nothing to lean on, never any spiritual support to show you the way.”
“I can explain that,” I said. “When I was growing up in Brooklyn, my friends were Irish and Italian, meaning Catholic. They went to church all the time. I went to the movies. I used to feel sorry for them. When I was doing Beau Geste or Saps At Sea, they were doing Holy Communion, or taking oily sacraments, or whatever it is they did in those dark churches. When you went to the movies in those days, you learned about life. I’m not kidding. You learned what’s right and what’s wrong. The movies weren’t like they are now, with bad talk and trashy women. . . . “
“Oh, come on,” the boy said.
“The movies were different in those days.” Then I smiled to let him down easily. He waited for the punch line. Possibly, I was telling a joke. But how might I get out of this jam?
Nonetheless, I sailed ahead: “For example, when the cops threw those gas bombs at James Cagney in Angels With Dirty Faces, and he had to cover the bombs with garbage can lids, and he began coughing, and the cops were closing in, and the jig was up, that’s when I made up my mind. Never break the law! Never go to jail! Being in jail is awful. So I swore to live a good life. Being good is better than being in the slammer.”
Well, that’s how I explained it. It seemed clever enough. But the older boy was not amused. I couldn’t blame him.
“I know you’re kidding,” he said.
“Perhaps I am,” I told him. I put my arms around both boys. I held them close to me and we started walking down the street. It was as if I would go with them on their chores, knocking on doors, bringing Jesus and sunlight into barren lives. But another thought was creeping into my head, and I wasn’t kidding. There were no more smiles.
“Listen to me, there’s something important I need to tell you. I’ve been thinking about it.”
I kept holding them close to me. Oddly, they did not seem worried. They did not move to pull away. I went on carefully: “I know you have to do your missionary work in foreign places, and I know you will do a fine job, and you’ll be the better for it, and your church will be pleased. But here’s what I must tell you. It’s important. Under no circumstances are you to do any missionary work in Iraq or Afghanistan. Do you understand?”
I stood back to look at them. I stared directly into their eyes. For once, the older boy was silent.
Then I continued: “Above all, you don’t do missionary work in Mexico, especially Juarez, which is a hell hole, ugly and dangerous. The world has changed. Juarez has changed. Even God wouldn’t go into Juarez. He needs a lot more time to clean it up, especially with the cops a big part of the problem. There is no God in Juarez, and that’s a fact. Listen to me! Whatever your bosses say, no Mexico! Is that clear?”
“We know that,” the older boy said.
“Okay, then.” I watched them closely, waiting. They were now being released to do their work. “Remember, no missionary work where they kill people, especially Juarez!”
The boys appeared to agree. Of course, I wasn’t sure. I went on: “Next week we’ll have lunch, and you can tell me what I need to know in case I want to be saved.”
I watched them walking away. What a joke, I thought. Possibly, they might never come back. But I did try to help them. It was a good feeling.
The younger boy turned back to me. “Sir?” he called. “Who was that writer you told us to read?”
“Henry Miller,” I said.
“Okay, I’ll remember. Thank you.”
“Hold it a second,” I called. “Miller could be a little rough. Make that Joseph Conrad.”
“Thank you,” the boy said. He waved to me. I watched as they went up the block.
After a while, when that Jim Beam had worn away, I went back into the house. Margaret was still in the La-Z-Boy. The TV was on but she was not watching it. I could see Constance Bennett and Roland Young. I knew the story line. Cary Grant had gotten himself killed (car wreck, living it up) but he was still in the movie. He was invisible and had a lot of good lines. Anything is possible in the movies.
“What’s going on? Where were you?” Margaret asked. Perhaps I didn’t look right.
Carefully, she got up from the recliner. She came to me, moving in those baby steps. I could tell her mind was clear. She put a hand on my forehead.
“I had a little headache,” I said.
“Well, take an aspirin and lie down for a while.”
We stood for a time, holding hands, and I was touched by the worry in her eyes. How nice to have her worrying about me again. It had only been a matter of chance, I thought, about which of us would become sick and which would become the helper. I remembered Fred Astaire’s amusing line about chance being a fool’s name for fate.
“Please tell me the truth,” Margaret asked. “Are you worried about something? Is something wrong?”
I kissed her forehead.
“Everything is fine,” I said.
“Are you sure?”
“I’m positive,” I said.
This is Richard Alwan’s first short story published in a national literary magazine.