Tarp Shack

Tarp Shack

Richard A. Dominico

Copyright 2006 by Richard A. Dominico

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Smashwords Edition 2014

This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Dedication

For our three children, Paul, Julie, and Alysha, who continue to teach me the meaning of fatherhood; for my wife, Christine, the master of the dance called family. And in memory of my own father, Fred, whose life teaches me the same lessons about what matters. All five of them dance daily, sometimes hourly, in the landscape of my mind.

Contents

Prologue

Part I

Part II

Part III

Part IV

Part V

About the Author

Synopsis of Tarp Shack

Other Books by the Author

Contact the Author

One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever. Ecclesiastes, 1:4.

Prologue

I was going out to meet someone at the tarp shack. There was smoke coming from embers in the fire pit.

I called out April’s name. No one answered. Again: "April? You here?

Again, no answer. I walked closer, called out again. Nothing. Then I lifted the curtain door.

I saw what no parent should ever see: my father’s old shotgun and my son, both lying on the red earth, blood pooling all over the place.

I was trying to scream but no sound was coming out, which just made me try all the harder.

Part I

My birth was not a blessed event, seeing as it killed my mother. Cursed might be a better word. I suppose that’s what comes of sticking a piece of metal up your womb, to wit, a coat hanger. My father’s aunt advised her how to do it, an aunt who wasn’t big on having children. Babies played hell with the female figure. That this aunt had a kid herself was something. My grandmother didn’t like her sister very much. It was my gramma who told me about the coat hanger.

Andrea died three weeks after she birthed me. My father now had a three- week-old baby and no furniture. He’d sold their table and chairs and I’m not sure what else to buy her nursing care as she lay in the hospital turning black. Yeah, gramma told me that detail, too.

I don’t know whether it was peritonitis that killed her. Someone said it was.

Maybe.

Whatever killed her, I’m not sure about a lot of things when it comes to my mother. That is, my biological mother. I never knew her. She never knew me.

Just like Jessica, she never knew me either. That’s a whole other story. My dad remarried sixteen months after I was born. He married Julia. As far I’m concerned, Julia’s my mother. She cleaned my dirty diapers. Julia raised me. She may not have carried me, but she sure as hell brought me into adulthood, kicking and screaming.

From what I heard, Andrea did as much kicking and screaming about birthing me as I ever did being born. She didn’t want to die, or so she told a woman on the street one day. I got that detail from the woman’s sister. I guess you can’t blame someone for not wanting to have a baby when she has a premonition that the birth’s going to kill her. If that were really true, her decision to abort me makes a kind of sense…… I guess.

I’m not much into blaming her anyway. But what happened to my biological mother makes the whole pro-choice/pro-life debate kinda personal for me, seeing as I am the product of an unwanted birth.

Death by a coathanger. Did that really happen? I don’t know. I just wonder about it.

No, I don’t know a lot about Andrea. That she birthed me, yeah. That she died in May after I’d been born in April. There are probably other things I’ve heard. That she and my father had a stormy courtship. Dad once told me they fought a lot. Their fighting was likely stupid because wars in marriage are like any other war. You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake. Jeannette Rankin wrote those words. I don’t even remember who she was.

They married when she was very young. She suffered from anemia. My father had taken her to speak with the parish priest. I was never sure what he wanted the parish priest to say to her; not to abort me? Is that a detail he never told me?

At supper one time, I was about sixteen I think, when we had company, I heard a guest say at the table, Dad was in one of his lighter moments,—a rare thing, believe me—Love is an ideal thing, marriage a real thing; a confusion of the real with the ideal never goes unpunished. Someone quoting Goethe to my old man. Imagine. That was the first time I suspected there might be more to my father than I ever knew.

I heard more than once that Andrea was a looker. Yet the photos reveal thick legs and a chunky kind of figure. Allowing for different ideas of beauty in another generation, I am still puzzled by how so many of my relatives speak of her wonderful figure.

So much I do not know, maybe even how I really feel about her. I’ve been to the cemetery more than once and stared at her grave. I’ve felt nothing, and I’ve felt everything. No, that reads better than it rings true. I haven’t felt very much at all. Curiosity in spades, yes! Who was she? Would she have liked me after all?

I went into a funeral home one time. My dad told me about someone who’d died. He said I might want to drop by, pay my respects. I did. I think now it was her sister. Some of the people at that wake made a big fuss when they saw me. Said I looked just like her. She didn’t want me but I look just like her.

My dad didn’t have much to do with her family after he remarried. I suppose thinking about it now, that made sense to him. His new wife was his life now, not his dead wife’s family. So I never got to know them very much. And I never thought about Andrea very much, as a consequence.

I’ve also heard that some of Andrea’s family were big drinkers. My father was never very fond of booze as a way of life. When Andrea died, he was more than happy to close with them. Anyway, life goes on, people drift in and out of our lives. Including your dead wife’s family, I guess.

I inherited her family’s enjoyment of alcohol. This did not help my relationship with my father.

I’ve been told that I must come to terms with her rejection of me. Really? To terms with what? Do I have feelings inside that others know about and I’m not aware of? I’ve admitted to curiosity but I’m not into the manufacture of feelings just so I’ll fit a mandatory profile. But still, how important are the details of one’s background? Even the details one never knows till after a personality is formed? What about the details one never does know, the shit our parents never have exposed?

Would knowing these hidden details explain a lot about ourselves? Where did she go to school? How much of high school did she see? Not everyone went to high school in those days.

Will I see her one day? What will she and I say to each other? Is she friends with Julia, now also dead? Are they both aware of me? Is there anything after? Are the dead only memories?

I like some of the psalms. One I like very much, because of these words: "As for man, his days are as grass; as a flower of the field, so he flourisheth.

For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone; and the place thereof shall know it no more."

I worry about those lines a little as I watch my father get older. Does he think these same thoughts? That the place will know him no more when hedies? Am I worried more for my own self?

Yeah, I realise I’m not the first to ask these questions but when the questions are asked of your own two mothers, somehow they rise above cliché. I’m allowed.

My father was a printer, a very good printer. When he retired it was said about him that he was one of the last of the old-school printers, before computers…in the days of hot type…when the printing trade was a respectable occupation.

I have a son. His name is Jason. Rita, she’s my wife. My dad’s name, by the way, is Phil. He’s in the Beach Bay Nursing Home, in his seventies now, angry as hell and wanting to drop out for good. Says it isn’t fair that he’s lost two wives. Lonely as a guy can be, I figure. Not much to look forward to. It depresses the hell out of me when I go there, which I do at least once a week. I know I owe him so much but damn it, that place really gets to me. Seeing him there is hard.

My name is Fern Lukenda. Yeah, I’m Italian. No, wait! Italians won’t let me say that. My father won’t even let me say that. I wasn’t born in Italy; can’t even speak it. I love Italian food but that doesn’t make me Italian. Everybody loves Italian food. Still, I’ve always seen myself as Italian.

I have the hot-blooded Italian temper, like my father. Dad’s more Italian than me, but he wasn’t born there either. His parents were born over there. Spoke the Calabrese dialect. Their house and my father’s house smelled Italian, lots of garlic, sauce cooking all the time.

Water dripping on the lupini in the laundry tub at Christmas. Fried bread dough with grape jam on Christmas Eve. Squ’leel, turdili, pita filiata, matsa sole—here I’m limited to phonetic spellings. Meatballs every Sunday, and if I was lucky, on Thursdays too.

Picnics with the relatives. Veal cutlet sandwiches. Spitting watermelon seeds at the cousins. I loved those cousins. Loved those family picnics. Loved Christmas.

But, yeah, I’m Canadian.

Andrea was…you know, I’m not too sure here…I’ve heard Scots. Anyway, does it matter? Maybe it should but it hasn’t.

I had a pretty normal boyhood. Yeah, there were…incidents. Like the time I ran away at about thirteen because my father insisted I go get my hair cut. I got on my bike and decided against the barber shop and opted for the open road. Defiance big time. And my first quest for independence. I dragged the bike through the ditch into the bush somewhere along the bypass where I was going to spend the night before the next day’s part of the journey to freedom. Fifteen minutes after contemplating the reality of my situation I dragged the bike out its hiding place, through the ditch, pedaled to the barber shop, and home, my father none the wiser that I had run away from home. Independence costs a hell of a lot. I didn’t have the necessary currency at thirteen. It’s why I sell real estate now. I love the independence.

I had this phenomenal memory that made me the go-to guy when the teachers needed someone to recite at Christmas concerts. But a good memory will only carry you so far in life. The wheel of fortune goes downhill quickly. Not that I’m into seeing myself as any kind of tragic hero. More like Prufrock. Then how should I begin to spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?

Please don’t misunderstand me. I’m no scholar. As the Preacher said, And how dieth the wise man? As the fool. I actually think an aunt of mine wrote Ecclesiastes. She hates books, and she’s always saying, just like the Preacher in that most famous of interpolations: … of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh.

Were there that many books when the Preacher’s words were recorded? Or is this an anachronism which is proof-positive of the later editing of sacred texts? To those who still believe that the entire Bible was faxed by God to man, my deepest regrets.

Though I do fear God and keep his commandments, the whole duty of man. It’s just the word his which bothers me a little. And the word God is a kind of problem, too. But let’s not go there.

And I didn’t always keep those commandments. I didn’t always honour my father and my mother. Nor my parental substitutes, my teachers. Yeah, I’ve had a lot of trouble with authority figures. One day, when I was a little boy, I did battle with a student teacher. Not sure why. We clashed. My emotions took over my behaviour, a pattern I’d seen before and too many times since. It’s why I still collect books on anger. The student teacher told on me, told my regular teacher, who told my father, who gave me trouble at home.

The incident in the classroom had gone something like this: Fern, just try colouring it the way I’m showing you. Student teachers often did arty things late in the afternoon, our reward for being good. I hated art, especially Friday afternoon art. At first I’d be excited to have art. But after I screwed up whatever we were making, I just wanted to get home. Give me columns of number to add, give me words to parse. To hell with creative shit like Spiritual Bouquets for our mothers on mother’s day, and special cards on fathers’ day. Mine would be nothing but smudges from too many erasures by the time it was to be carried home, a little holy card sometimes pasted crooked on the front. We used white glue I mostly got all over me.

Some days it would be waxing autumn leaves. Or cutting shit out. I liked printing. Crayons were all right but I never stayed much within the lines, a trite little cliché, a metaphor for my life. But it’s tough to be original in a world where there is no new thing under the sun.

I’d been trying to do what she told us to do but couldn’t. Now she was at my desk trying to help me. I don’t remember now what the project was. A lot of kids, especially the girls, would be right into this stuff.

No! was what I replied to her that afternoon.

She was surprised by the intensity of my no, probably not used to having her authority challenged. She’d likely been told to react quickly to such behaviour. Today, she’d be told not to react at all. What did they tell them at teachers’ college in those days? What do they tell them at teachers’ college these days?

She came on stronger then. It ended with me saying, Go to hell. She didn’t go anywhere but all hell broke loose.

My turn to be surprised…by the trouble I’d started for myself. My regular teacher marched me into the hall, where I was told to stand. Don’t remember what happened after that except I got a lot of shit at home.

Art has left a bad taste in my mouth ever since. No wonder I can only draw stick men these days. Does that too say something symbolic about my relations with others? That I can’t really see anybody? Yet I’m a pretty good judge of character, or rather, I’m quick to judge character.

Yeah, face it, I’m a pretty judgmental kind of guy; that’s getting closer to it. I don’t tolerate fools easily. Is there a kind of self-rejection in this admission?

No, nothing too significant about my early days, just those little incidents which are interesting only for their indication of my lifelong struggle with emotional control. A teacher said that once about me; life’s been a self- fulfilling prophecy ever since. Powerful feelings are the most conspicuous part of my life. I don’t see them coming. They just seem to explode out of nowhere. Whammo! I’m in shit with somebody. True then, true now.

I prefer to call it living life with passion, though sometimes it does feel as if I’m a character in a novel by D.H. Lawrence. One friend said recently that he saw me as an excitable fellow. You know the type of guy who says this kind of thing about someone else, the kind whose blood pressure is so low he’s borderline dead, what I’d call your phlegmatic mind-set. The kind whose eyes fix you in a formulated phrase. The kind who advise others not to take it personally. Or who’s quick to say about someone that he’s too sensitive. Till the shit lands on himself. And then it’s not just the next guy who’s insecure.

I’ve long believed we’re all insecure in some area or other.

The four humours would say I’m your classic choleric, or, in a more recent schemata, a type-A personality, a joke to be pitied by the sanguine among us, those of the rose-coloured glasses persuasion.

I see my father as another choleric man. Yet lately he’s been trading in some of the anger for a deep sense of melancholy. I want to cry for him sometimes. Bring back the rage, Dad. Don’t go quietly, gently, for fuck’s sake. Hey, what am I saying here? I’ve always feared his anger.

Adolescence was a little bit more interesting. Or maybe I just remember more. We were to do homework during our spares in a large room called study hall. I once saw a guy doing homework in there. Might be two or three different classes in there at the same time. Grade 13s and grade 9s all mixed up together.

I had this one talent which was death to hide, lodged with me, useless. I used to burp and talk at the same time. Very loud. Guys would laugh like hell. Part of my growing class clown routine. Winning my place by acting the idiot. Typical pattern for short guys, I’ve since learned. Class clown. Big mouth. Compensations all. For short stature. For the middle-aged crisis there’s the sports car. Or the earring. For the small penis there’s the low handicap on the golf course. Compensations—all of them. Preserving the places we’ve fought hard to win. At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—almost, at times, the fool.

If the guy who did that does not own up to it by the time I count to te , this entire study hall will be staying after four. It was the last period of the day. And a priest had shouted the question after walking into the study hall.

Silence. I was shitting my pants. Now I would have appreciated the bushel to hide under.

Do you think I should give myself up? This I whispered dangerously, keeping my head down, to the grade 13 sitting right beside me, the same guy who had encouraged me to burp and talk for the benefit of his buddies around him. I was a niner. I got good affirmation from the older guys when I acted the clown.

No way. Keep your mouth shut.

I remember we had to stay after four and he kept us for about five minutes and let us go. He probably had better things to do. No one gave me shit for not admitting it. And I escaped the wrath of John Leonard Hanks. Still feel good about that.

Crazy, huh? Because one day many years later I became a teacher and got to see things from the other side. More about that later.

My father was unimpressed about the drinking I did in my early teens. But I was having the time of my life. Till it began to catch up with me. In the way I thought about myself when I looked in the mirror. You can learn a lot about how your life’s going by looking into a mirror—figuring out how much you approve of what you see.

Sometimes the mirror wasn’t on the wall. It was in the way I saw adults looking at me, adults whose opinions I cared about but could never admit to giving one shit about. In the way some of the girls began to look at me as something not quite parlor-broken like an untrained dog. It took awhile for me to realise that all this drinking was not perhaps my greatest personality trait.

When I say awhile I mean three years of idiotic debauchery, from fifteen years of age till I tried to smarten up at eighteen.

My 1957 Pontiac was a casualty of those days, driven hard into an oak tree on the third night of a three-day binge. That I’m here to tell this tale still surprises me. I sustained hardly any injuries, despite the three days in the hospital. The car roof was full of my blood, from a cut on the forehead. I ended up on this roof in the upside-down car.

The truck driver and the police officer thought I was dead, but I was only drunk and in shock. I wasn’t charged. I feel really old saying this now because no one would escape charges these days. But those were different days. We drank and drove. The days of one for the road…the traveller, we called it.

A nun friend later teased me about that car accident: she said I hadn’t been knocked off a horse and blinded but I’d had my own Pauline moment of conversion.

Yeah, different times then. Not overly proud of them but they are a part of my past so I gotta acknowledge them.

I found a way out in church. Yeah, I’m not exaggerating. This time it wasn’t the nuns hammering me with my need for redemption. It was my own self-image on which I was crucifying myself. I like this guy Marcus Borg, who says faith isn’t so much the acceptance of dogma as it is entering into a transforming relationship with the God of faith. I’ve always had trouble with

My religious phase followed. Though its initial colours are long gone, it’s left its traces, too. In those long-ago days I went into a church and found it very peaceful. I sat there quite often and began hanging out with a different circle of friends, who seemed a heck of a lot happier than I’d been of late. I drank less in the following years. Won some self-respect.

I never went to an AA meeting but I’ve read what they teach. And I agree with them: you can’t change your life without a powerful belief in a higher power. I used the word grace a lot during those days of my transformation from a teenage drunk to a guy who wanted a better future.

I eventually lost some of that faith. But not all of it.

Another important thing about me. I’ve only realised it lately by reading a book called Status Anxiety. I’ve spent most of my working life trying to heal a poor self-image by changing jobs, trying to find the job which had enough prestige, enough status, to satisfy some kind of need I didn’t even know I had. Alain de Botton. I owe him for that book.

I’ve worked at more than one job: teacher, salesman. I see now that whenever I’ve left a career, it’s because the next job offered me more prestige. I was trying to heal my poor self-image. ’Course I never understood any of this at the time. I thought I was after more money. I didn’t realise what was underneath the need for more money.

It’s taken me—is taking me—a long time to understand me. What I tell myself when I make big decisions may be a very long way from what I am really feeling.

I married Rita. That was a big decision. We had Jason. Another biggie. Pretty uneventful life till that stuff with Uncle Frank.

* * *

Since when did fuck become my favourite word?

For Julia, I used to watch my language. She hated gratuitous profanity. I no longer give a shit.

I hate this wheelchair. Every day I sit in this contraption it gets harder and harder on my rear end. Have to be helped into it every morning and out of it every evening. Even need to be lifted onto the toilet every time my bladder or my bowel calls.

Golden years. Fucking golden years. Isn’t that what Julia used to call these senior years? Specially when the cancer came into her life. How was I so unlucky as to lose her, the best friend I ever had? Leaving me alone to deal with this second and mother of all strokes. Yeah, I know. As they keep telling me here. Others have had worse strokes. Some guys can’t even talk. I can talk. Mostly I feel like cursing.

Oh, I can talk, all right, as the nursing home personnel know all too well. Many of them with memories of shifts they’d like to forget. No, my speech is not impaired. Nor is my mind. I know what’s happening. I can still tell them all where to go.

Old age sneaks up on you like a foot that goes to sleep while you’re reading on the can. You go to get up and stumble. While you’ve been preoccupied with worrying about trivia, your shit’s over, your life’s finished—you can’t even walk any more.

Do I waste too much time feeling sorry for myself? One of the nurse’s aides—that one who criticised my emotional outbursts; that’s what she said. This is one interesting lady—one of the self-righteous who’s always preaching her fundamentalist approach to religion. You know, the kind who shows Darwin to have been correct when he said that ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge. This woman hates my moods, my negative emotions, of which, admittedly, I have plenty, anger chief among these.

What does she know about old age? Of the life of a goddamn cripple? What does she know about dependency? How could I myself have known what to expect of these golden years? Reading about it’s not the same thing’s living it. House gone. Furniture gone. Oh, I remember reading the stories about these nursing homes. The tales about abuse by families, robbery by strangers, but not about death by boredom from all these well-meaning assholes. Telling us how to count our pills, how to look after our money, and what kind of clothes to buy. I’m waiting for the counselor to show me how to rid my life of idiots like himself.

This isn’t the only smug religious fanatic in here who pisses me off. There’s another one, this one a resident. Always preaching at me. Embarrassed the hell out of me one day when I went to church. I was up for something different that day.

This idiot comes up to me in the aisle and hugs me. So glad you’re finally seeing the light, Phil.

She’s the most self-righteous son of a bitch I’ve seen in here. Got the answers all the time. I avoid her every time I see her coming.

Zapoti can’t stand her either. But he got even. I knew it was him. Had to be. Only he would thinka doing it. I know she’s ticked him off, too, with all her preaching. He hates it as much as I do, maybe more. Anyway, he got her good.

Last Christmas, one of the kids’ schools, a Catholic school, came to visit us here. Sang Christmas carols for us. Brought us some gifts. Decorated a Christmas tree in the dining room. Some of the old ladies helped. Ran a bingo. The kids played bingo with us. There were prizes. This lady I can’t stand, she won a little radio. Her name’s Edna. I know it was Zapoti who later sent the school principal a letter. He made a copy of the letter and posted it on the bulletin board outside the dining room here on the second floor. Funny, funny letter. Read something like this:

Dear St. Peter’s School:

God blesses you for the beautiful radio I won at your recent senior citizens luncheon. I am eighty-four years old and live at the Beach Bay Nursing Home for the Aged. All of my family have passed away. I am all alone now and it’s nice to know that someone is thinking of me. God bless you for your kindness to an old, forgotten lady.

My roommate is ninety-five and always had her own radio, but before I received one, she would never let me listen to hers, even when she was napping. The other day her radio fell off the nightstand and broke into a lot of pieces. It was awful and she was in tears. She asked if she could listen to mine, and I said fuck you.

Life is good. Sincerely, Edna

Yeah, I liked that. Good for Zapoti.

He’s one crazy bastard. You gotta watch him pretty close. I knew it was him put that sign on my door. Nemo me impune lacessit. Underneath: Don’t fuck with me!

No more vegetable garden. Wonder what happened to my tomato stakes. Fern doesn’t garden. Who got my stakes? I saved them over the years.

Don’t feel like reading much any more. Too damn much work. And writing? There was another of those idiots with the smile pasted on her face around the other day telling us we should write down our life stories, for the kids. To hell with her. Let her write her own story. Most of it I want to forget.

Oh yes, Christmas used to be fun. And maybe Valentine’s Day. But now, without Julia? And holidays? We used to love to go on our holidays. But now? What holidays? We aren’t going anywhere. Except into more dependence.

Can you come and put me on the toilet now? My favourite request. And how the orderlies snap to it, rushing down the hall, always on another mission to another resident’s room.

Phil, I’ll be there in a minute.

And if that minute becomes five or even ten minutes, Goddamn it! You said a minute. And I have to go badly.

Phil, I came as fast as I could. Mr. Grossi is really sick down the hall. I had to get him looked after.

You always have some excuse for keeping me waiting.

Are you not having a good day, Phil?

Go to hell.

And then no more small talk as the orderly wheels me into my own bathroom, not completely mine, of course, but shared with the guy in the adjoining room. Then Mr. Helpful assists me—they love that phrase around here—with the lowering of my track pants, assisting me to stand ever so gingerly, and then he places me on the toilet seat.

How has it come to this? I get so upset every time I have to be helped. A man so used to being independent helped onto the toilet every time. And then the ultimate degradation. Allowing this same guy to wipe my arse before I can be helped once again back into this wheelchair.

For revenge, I like bowel movements that make the orderly want to pass out. Sometimes I almost get my wish. These guys remind me of some of the guys I used to work with, especially those guys in advertising who were always trying to get things into the paper after the page had gone to the press. I memorised words to help me see them in perspective: intelligence is limited, but stupidity knows no bounds.

But they pissed me off so much sometimes that I couldn’t bite my tongue, couldn’t count to ten, couldn’t live by my knowledge that the greatest remedy for anger is delay. I often lost it with them and the air would be blue in the composing room.

Anger has been a big part of my life, yeah, that’s true enough. And I’m damn good and angry having to wait for the end of it all. And so it has gone on for too long now.

I wait so much these days. For someone to get me out of bed each morning. For someone to put me to bed each evening. At six p.m., right after supper, because I can’t take this fucking wheelchair for five more minutes.

I asked you fifteen minutes ago to put me to bed!

We’re coming, Phil, as fast as we can. You’ll be in bed shortly. Be patient.

You be patient, asshole. I want to go to sleep!

Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. For the end. It can’t come soon enough.

If there’s a hell, I’m not scared. I’m used to the devils; they all have jobs as orderlies. Just joking, God, honest. I’m just a little bit terrified of where I might be going. Maybe I’ll come back to be what I hate. Is that what hell is? Me coming back as an orderly? Or maybe we come back as whatever we never had compassion for? The rich man comes back as a poor man? The hunter comes back as a deer? But who said the hunter never cared about his quarry? Who the hell does know what’s coming? All I know is that part of me hates this life so much that it can’t be any worse than here and now.

For sure there’s not much left that I care about. ’Cept maybe Fern and Rita, and Jason, of course. But I don’t really see them much. Nothing interests me these days. What’s there to look forward to? Life’s pretty much over. Yet peace hasn’t showed up yet. Only anger. Bitterness. Cynicism. The staff here is mostly assholes. The food’s worse.

My son? Shit, Fern has his own life to live. Fern has his job. Just like my old job—it tends to keep one preoccupied. No, I don’t see much of Fern. But then, maybe that’s how things had to turn out.

We never had much of the father-son thing going for us.

And so I don’t see much of his wife, Rita, either. Nor of their kid, Jason. Family? Some consolation for the golden years. Once in a while I wonder if Fern even thinks much about me. Stop that, I tell myself. Shit, he comes every week. What do you want, you old fart?

My anger turns to self-pity sometimes. I have enough negative feelings to keep me going. No, I don’t want any of this shit. Mind, I do feel that I got screwed big time when Julia left me so early. And she was my second wife. I lost the first one, too. How many’s that happen to? My life with both of them went by too fast.

I didn’t even realise it was going by so fast till it was too late to live any differently. Could I have lived differently had I known what was coming? Could I have enjoyed my time with Julia any better that I did? Probably not.

But I like to think I could have. There’s no second chances.

I just can’t get my mind around how much I had, how much I lost, and how quickly it happened. Life goes by quicker than Christmas morning. Feels like yesterday that I felt guilty about my own father. Did I spend enough time with him? Or did I ignore him? Is my own son Fern ignoring me these days? Where the hell did my life go so quickly? I never ever believed it would slip by so fast. That I would be here right now, an old man, waiting to die. Only yesterday I still had so many worries. And here I am now, not caring much about anything except who’s going to put me on the toilet.

Why can’t I die, then, if my life’s over? What good is this shit? Frank’s one lucky sonofabitch even if he went that way. Crazy bastard.

Fern does come to see me once a week. Sometimes twice. This nursing home depresses the hell out of him. Sometimes I want to yell at him, You think it depresses you? But I don’t want to fight with him.

Phil, you want to play 31 with us?

No.

Why are these guys always bothering me with their card games? Stick them up your arse. I don’t want to play cards. Why the hell are they always asking me? Who gives a shit about making thirty cents? Assholes!

Bingo. Now, that’s something else. I play bingo now and then. I still enjoy the game. It reminds me of being with Julia, of better times. She loved bingo. Went often. Was thrilled to win ten dollars. The game passes the time for me. Makes me forget my anger for just an hour or so. Connects me to Julia.

Most of my days are now spent sitting in this wheelchair remembering. Especially the reasons why I’m so damned angry. Wanting it over. Now! What’s the holdup here? Get on with it. Doesn’t really matter what’s coming. Just as long as there’s an end to this shit.

My own dad was luckier. A heart attack. Bang. Gone. January, 1982. My mother, one year later, February, 1983. Joe and Gina, both gone in such a short time. But no, I have to go on and on. No, not like Dad.

Seems so recent when I was called that night. Late, I remember. The fast drive to Dad’s. My mother crazy with worry. Dad in lotsa pain. Calling the ambulance. Following it to the hospital. Dad moaning from the truck on his chest. Tears he showed and for once didn’t care about. And then two hours later, he was gone. Simple as that. Buried three days later.

You were lucky, Dad. I didn’t know how lucky then. But I damn well know it now. Very, very lucky.

Get up, with help. Get dressed, with help. Use the toilet, with help. Back into the wheelchair, with help. Left alone to shave. To wash. Wheel to breakfast, best meal of the day in here. How can they fuck up cereal? Though they do manage to screw up this coloured water they call coffee. Lunch, sometimes tasty. Maybe a chat or two with someone from the past. Or some other slobbering old fool who wants to talk about Depends.

TV. Lots of TV. Sometimes even a western, with 400,000 commercials. The commercials get more time than the story so why bother watching the damn thing? And that fucking idiot walking around yelling for his Emma all day. Emma! Emma! Emma! Poor bastard. Lost his wife and his mind at the same time. But if only he would stop that insane yelling. Needs therapy: a whack with a two-by-four.

Eventually supper. Or so they call this shit they serve every night. The worst night’s when they have spaghetti. Hard to believe there could be anything worse than canned spaghetti but here it is. Do they work at getting it this bad?

And finally, help into bed and off my ass for another day. Hoping I will not wake. But I know I will. These fucking golden years.

* * *

How easy was that to learn? Phone programming is fucking A, man! Now every time a call comes in from school, it won’t ring at home. All calls from this number are simply rejected. Yeeesss!

So skipping is no longer an offence with consequences. Shit, if only I had a doobie to celebrate my accomplishment. Who says you don’t learn nothing of value in school? You just have to hang out with the right guys. Programming 101 taught by the guys at smoke break, in the smoking area yesterday morning, when I was supposed to be in history class. What a drag, man. History. One time I saw in a book, something written in the margins, a quotation apparently from that Irish writer, what was his name, oh yeah, Shaw. We learn from history that we learn nothing from history. I like that.

That scene in my favourite movie, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, with the teacher moaning Bueller over and over again, endless monotony, says it all for