Another Heyday Chapter

Standing in the backyard of his condo with a drained bottle of bourbon in one hand, a stub of a cigarette in the other, and a light mist that was more cold than wet, Rich concluded that an ending is anything but the end; rather, he mused, it’s really only the beginning of something else entirely, even in death—especially in death.
Death, as it turned out, was not the ending Rich once thought. He took a final swig out of the bottle and lifted his head toward the drizzling sky.
Almost cold enough for snow…almost.
But neither the cold nor the liquor were enough to completely numb Rich’s fright for what lay ahead. He knew what he had to do, or thought he knew what to do, but that still didn’t make it any easier to buckle on his nerve and do the dirty deed, another of his momma’s sayings that didn’t make him blush quite as fiercely now as it did then, perhaps because he finally knew what she was talking about. It only took him seventy-three years to fully appreciate just how right she was.
They say ‘nothing’s as easy or as hard as remembering.’
He inhaled one last drag, savoring it, loving it, needing it, pulling the smoke deep, deeper still into his lungs, into his marrow, into his very existence, and he held it there until the burn threatened to ignite his passion and sorrow into a blaze. Only then did he exhale, flicking the used butt, the first he’d smoked since quitting ten years earlier, with the same self-glorification an inmate has after taking the last bite of his last meal before taking the long walk to the electric chair. Between thumb and forefinger, tilted at just the right angle for optimum lift, he tossed it with the same bombast he’d known as a punk kid, taking on the world with no concern for tomorrow—a man on the way to the chair.
It extinguished itself in the rain before ever touching the ground.
Ain’t that the truth.
Just then Max whined, pressing his nose into the screen door, safe inside and away from all the horrors in the night, and yet, so desperate to join his master and friend without any pause for his own concern. Max watched him with the only concerned set of eyes Rich felt he had left in the world. There were his daughters, of course, but they didn’t need him, not anymore, not like they used to. No, he admitted, at this point, Max was about all he had left.
The sound of Rich’s wet heels squished on the hardwood floor as he let the door close with a loud ‘thwack.’
“Alright boy, you and I gotta talk.”
Max nudged his leg as if to protest the conversation he knew was coming. That gesture alone practically shattered Rich’s fortitude. He wanted to say to hell with the boardwalk and to hell with the voices. But he couldn’t say to hell with Linda. He owed her that much. It could’ve been guilt, although there were no certainties in life, and Rich wasn’t one of those weepy willow, modern day, sensitive men that was willing to look into themselves and lament over every stubbed toe.
I lived and she died, simple as that, right? Except he reflected things are never simple—certainly not life and death.
He conceded that maybe somewhere inside was more self-condemnation than he wanted to acknowledge that Linda had died and he’d been spared, and a greater need to know for what purpose. He wondered, dare hoped, that he’d been spared for just this moment.
“God knows I haven’t always been the best. But you know what, buddy, you have been. You’ve been all I’ve had these past few years—” Max yelped, as if trying to stave off anymore of such talk but Rich pressed on. “It’s time for me to go and I don’t know if I’m coming back. I don’t know what’s going to happen to me or you…or any of this.” He gestured with a broad sweep of his arm around the small kitchen in such a way that it encompassed everything in that little room while pressing outward into the wind and the world. “I guess I really don’t know much, but I know I’ll miss you.” And that was it. He reached down, rubbed Max behind the ear, and then clipped the leash to his collar. Goodbyes weren’t mean to be drawn out.
Rich grabbed Max’s food bowl and basket then walked him over to Mrs. Dubinski’s. Her front door was already ajar like she had expected the company. More peculiar still, before Rich even knocked, she shouted from the kitchen, “Door’s open, come on in.”
There was a pleasant aroma of ginger and cinnamon pervading the dimly lit condo. She might’ve been a lousy cook, but if one were to judge by smell alone then she really would’ve given Sarah Lee a run for her recipes. The walls were covered in photographs gathered over the many decades, some coated in a thick layer of dust, and others meticulously wiped clean as if certain memories were better than others. One spotless photograph in particular caught Rich’s eye. It was of a young Mrs. Dubinski, long blond hair flung back, body supple and not yet gaunt although still angular and serious, swept up in the arms of a soldier.
He had a natural grin to his otherwise hard face, smoothing out a strong jaw line and piercing blue eyes into something friendly and welcoming. It was a childlike, mischievous expression that said this guy knew how to have fun regardless of age and rank. In fact, Rich thought it was the look on his face that offset the military buzz cut, uniform, and Mrs. Dubinski’s natural solemnity into a still shot capturing a moment of utter joy. She looked the happiest he’d ever seen her in that photograph. It was obvious then why she never remarried after being widowed at such a young age. She could’ve easily had an entirely different life, but in the end, as the painfully dust free photo promulgated, she really couldn’t.
And there in the kitchen, huddled into her ragged robe like a bag of bones, desiccated and wizened, sat Mrs. Dubinski peeling apples. Her senescent hands moved with the skill and precision of a war doctor that’d seen far too many battles.
She sniffed the air without looking up. “Been drinking, have ya? Well don’t just stand there, have a seat and do us both a little favor.”
Without missing a beat he grabbed an apple like it was the most natural thing in the world. Only after his third bare Golden Delicious did he remember that baking wasn’t what he’d had in mind. Just as he opened his mouth she cut right in.
“You know it must’ve been, oh, I don’t know, twenty years ago that I was sitting in a kitchen very much like this one peeling apples with my niece. Her name’s Gloria and she lives out on the Cape with a doctor, Steve, Doctor Steve he goes by, even to Gloria. I never liked him much, but she seems happy enough, and he gave her two solid sons, more like their mother thank the Almighty. So it was,” she paused then as if remembering something, “be a doll and hand me my smokes on the counter behind you, hun.”
“These things will kill you,” he said, handing her the unfiltered Camels.
“I can only hope.”
“Mind if I join you?”
“Go right ahead,” offering him the box of matches, “I think tonight’s the sort of night where we’re all allowed our own little vices. So anyways, I was sitting with Gloria and she had it in her mind that she would rather die than be separated from her then boyfriend, Robert. He didn’t have all the money, hell, as I recall he was damn near broke, but he did have a cute face and a cuter butt.” Rich never heard her speak so forthright before and he found it inspiring. She stopped again to tap the ash of her cigarette into a ceramic cup shaped like a gnome. It was actually frightening in the way fairytales excite the imagination when you’re a child but scare the piss out of you when you’re an adult. “She loved this guy,” she began again, falling right back into the tale. “I’m talking true love. Not all that cliché stuff they force feed down your throat in the movies. You know about true love?”
It was his turn to tap a little ash into the hollowed out remains of childhood fantasy. He was dismayed that the second cigarette of the evening didn’t taste quite as good as the first, but then again, he knew that few things were ever as good the second time around.
Stoically, he said “I might’ve seen my share” while exhaling a plume of smoke. It hung in the air above both their heads, a dark cloud on a darker night.
“No might’ve about it. Either you felt it or you haven’t because true love is something you don’t forget. True love can make people do the dumbest things. And Gloria’s mother, my sister Kerry, got up on her high horse about as far as she could go, as she was always known to do, God rest her soul, and forbid Gloria from seeing the scum bum any longer. You can imagine where this not-quite-Romeo and a-little-too-pretty-for-Juliet were headed if I didn’t sit Gloria down, just like you are right now, and say ‘is this true knock me down, knock me up, in your arms, forever true love? Or is this a girl who’s thinking a little too much with her knickers?’ She promised me everything under the sun that this was the only man she’d ever love. I knew better by then, these things have a way of fizzling themselves out given enough time. So then I told that girl to damn what anyone else says and follow her heart. Oh, her mother was mad. I thought she was going to strike me down with a rolling pin. But then sure enough, like all good things eventually end, Gloria left him after two months and came crawling home to Kerry with a little less chastity and a little more wisdom.
She learned that sometimes true love isn’t as true as it turns out to be. Sometimes it’s only as good as the idea. And then sometimes,” she glanced ever so subtly in the direction of the photos on the wall, “it’s just what it should be. Maybe true love can only be true when it’s not allowed to run its course, whether it’s two months or twenty years. Maybe that’s the truest sort of love, the kind that we hold in memory and in heart.”
Rich barked a harsh laugh, not so much at the story as how she could see so much and so little. He ground out the cigarette and stood up all in one movement. “I can’t figure out whether you’re an old woman, an old witch, or just an old cynic. Or maybe they’re all the same.
But if you take a good long look at me,” he leaned in close across the table so she could see into his eyes, the only part of him that still held the years. They were dark and spoke of pain, not greater than Mrs. Dubinski’s, but just as strong and it ran just as deep. “You’ll see we all got a little Gloria in us. However, I’ve seen true love, only my photo can’t be wiped clean every now and again for a pleasant memory then put away just as easily. No, Mrs. Dubinski, my photo’s waiting for me outside, and eventually it’s going to get me…”
It was a longtime coming before she said “I know you’re an old soul,” and gently brushed a hand along his chin. “Lot’s to let out.” She hesitated only a moment longer as if choosing the words very carefully. “I saw you once, a long time ago, about thirty years ago if I’m not mistaken. I’m good with faces.” Rich gasped and shock was the least of his emotions. “The day they shut down the boardwalk after all those people got killed. I was one of the first nurses on the scene and I saw you—only I got old and you didn’t, at least,” she ran a single finger along the base of Rich’s eyelid, “not anywhere that most people can see.
Follow your heart, Rich, and damn what anyone else says.” He knew it hurt Mrs. Dubinski more than she’d ever let on to say those words again, the same words that had caused her a lifetime of loneliness and failed as horribly as they had for Gloria. They were the words of an optimist coming out of the mouth of a pessimist, weathered and beaten by a lifetime of experience.
He gathered himself together with as much normalcy as the situation would allow. “You’ll take care of Max for me?”
“Of course.”
“I’ve got a lot to let out.” He then turned to Max. “Now you take good care of Mrs. Dubinski, understand?”
Max barked once in that way only a fool would think was mock understanding. He knew all too well, perchance even better than Rich thought, what was happening. With the most tenderness Rich had been shown in about as long as he could remember, Max licked his dangling fingertips then laid on the floor by Mrs. Dubinski’s feet.
“You take care of yourself,” she said curtly. “And that’s not a request.”
“Yes, Mrs. Dubinski,” he said, shutting the door on his way out. Descending the front porch, Rich couldn’t help but caress the past as each step creaked under his weight. She could’ve been a loving but tough aunt who’d just made him promise to stay away from the school yard bullies with the way she spoke to him. He knew then that although he was technically about as old as she was, had seen just as many summers, even more winters, she had the power to make him feel like a child again and wasn’t afraid to use it. And it was in that innocence that he latched onto a childlike notion that everything turns out as it should in the end. Only as a child could he believe in a happily ever after.

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fiction and short