Evening Star
Near the end of his life Cliff understood what had always been missing.
Imagine! The pang of the lack, not of something once possessed then lost, but rather never had, with no ability to seek it, to imbibe what once he would have found cloying, now, now revealed as essential. Awash in hallucinatory passion, he longed to be submerged in another.
“Snap out of it!” His father’s voice, his north star, forever with him, swatting away reverie, demanding excellence. Cliff disentangled himself from his damp bedsheets and sat up, unsure if he could stay up, shivering.
Where is the hearty boy, he wondered, triggering the loop that accompanied his days, the story of his life. The boy who knew what he wanted and set out to bring it all into play. Study, sports, the right college, apprentice to the right star, a star in his own right.
The search for the right wife guided by his mother’s admonition: “It’s just as easy to fall in love with a rich girl as a poor one.” And one day there she was. A shiny girl in tennis whites, solid, accomplished. Over time upon their walls a cavalcade of photos: Shiny tots on the laps of a multitude of Santas. Teens in prom attire. Weddings. Grandchildren cuddling bears and bunnies. An embassy garden party in Paris. Proof that it all happened.
Though in his heart, untold, a wall with no photos, vignettes swept under the rug, the void that lurked under the whirl of accomplishment. A beloved baby boy lost. A shiny little girl who morphed into an angry stranger (the getting around that with bribery, warnings, cajolery, until, shiny again, she sailed off boldly).
The right wife who moved on, out of their circle into her own. Then gone, really gone, seized by the insatiable Crab, cancer. Cliff mourned as if they hadn’t been apart for decades; the mother of his children, with whom he’d shared Thanksgivings, birthdays, gone. While he marched into and through old age, one bony foot in front of the other. Soldiering on. Greeting the day with a mantra of gratitude, de rigeur.
Speaking aloud only of the shiny, hear hear, here here!
He rambles. It’s what he does. A ramble eternal, internal, for it would be disdained by friends and family. His dejection rejected. Snap out of it! Be happy. Cast aside this sudden dream of wild passion, rarely, if ever, his modus operandi. Certainly never during these last few years, as he’d transited from colonial, to condo with a view, to assisted living.
Unbidden passion triggered, no doubt, by his pretty nurse, Gretchen. Diligent, getting the job done. Like the charming, competent girls he’d hired in his day. A pleasure to have around. Great legs, shiny smile. An occasional brief affair. Passion was in the moment. In a bed in a room in a hotel far from the global ad agency he called his second home. It went no further. No furtive calls pledging lifelong allegiance. Hardly any lies. It was what it was.
So how to account for this drowning feeling now? Why is this crotchety, barnacled hull of a man sinking into a pluvial morass at this late date? He observed Gretchen, busy with vials and droppers. She must sense what he’s feeling. Was she laughing, her back turned to him, accustomed to needy old men, well-versed in playing dumb so as not to encourage entreaties, demands?
In any event, he had to pee. He could still manage that, the shuffling from bed to tiny ensuite bathroom. He needed to shower, but settled for a moist cold cloth pressed upon his face, forcing himself to look in the mirror at what he had become. This formerly gorgeous jock, as observed by his mother and grandmother (and his wife when she was in her shiny prime), now a speckled wreck of the Hesperus.
And what was the Hesperus anyway, and why did it come up in so many conversations with himself? He tottered back to bed and considered asking Gretchen to google Hesperus for him. He couldn’t face googling anymore. He’d had enough googling to last a lifetime. Now he just wanted to lie in his bed awash in longing, to imagine what had never been.
Suppose, he wondered, suppose when looking for the perfect wife, he’d come across a girl who whumped him and flumped him, who had no trust fund, no resumé, no compulsively updated rolodex? Would he have succumbed, marched her to the nearest justice of the peace and lived happily ever after? What kind of children would they have had? And what photos would have lined their walls? Certainly none taken at embassy parties. He would have been too busy whumping and flumping to worry about the perks of stardom at a corporation to which he’d have faint desire to kowtow. All desire would have settled on that simple girl. There was a song: You don’t have to be a star to be in my show. She would have been his non-star star.
Star schmar. It never happened. He’d never come upon that fork in the road, had never been torn, had never been prey to that eternal tug-of-war, passion vs sense. Miss Shiny appeared and in the blink of an eye, her ring finger boasted a three-carat solitaire, her apartment filled with shower gifts, on hold until their Bermuda honeymoon was history, and his closet overflowed with pleated skirts and little black dresses.
Whumped and flumped, he was, you could say, but not in the way he ultimately came to understand. What “they” were all about. The ones celebrating their sixty-fifth anniversary, lovers since high school, the “we” gang, the secretive pauses and smiles that made him feel intrusive. Seen, they were seen, one by the other. Devoted. Her back bent from exhaustion, as she tended to his needs at the direst end. He, turning down invitations far beyond the expected period of mourning. There was no one for them but that particular other.
Suddenly his doorway filled with the bulk of Joe, his favorite orderly. “Hey, Cliff. You got your cell phone? Your grandson called to say he can’t reach you. Wants to know if he can come over for a game of chess this afternoon.”
Cliff searched under the blanket and pulled out his phone. “It isn’t charged. Tell him yes.”
“You can tell him. He’s waiting for your call.” Joe plugged the phone into a charger on the night stand, then turned to Gretchen. “How’s my girl?”
An enchanting blush rose from her collar to her forehead as she looked up at him. Speechless, Cliff saw. That would have been his non-star, certainly, speechless at the sight of him. Besotted. He turned away and phoned his grandson, his lovely, loving grandson who never gave up on him, who found the stories of an ornery old fool charming.
“Tim. Timmy.” He stumbled. What he wanted to say, to announce with abandon, was, I love you beyond words. What he said was, “Hey, mate. Me here.”
“Hi Pops. You up for a game of chess? I could drop by around 2 o’clock.”
Cliff smiled at the sound of Tim’s voice, once a halting mezzo, long an embracing baritone. “That’d be swell. Hey, I want you to google something for me. Wreck of the Hesperus. Why do we say that?”
“You remember. It’s a poem by Longfellow, about a ship that went down. ‘Such was the wreck of the Hesperus, in the midnight and the snow…’ Remember? You read it in college, or high school.”
Cliff strained to recall, wanting to please Tim. “It’s on the tip of my tongue . . .” He fell back, spent. “And Hesperus?”
“Search. It’s there, deep in your busy old brain. With the Greeks. Hesperus. The evening star.”
“Like me.” Askew among the pillows, Cliff gazed at the ceiling. “An evening star. Night, actually. Never again to see the morn.”
“Ah, c’mon Pops. Don’t be sad. Have you showered yet? Ask Joe to help you shower. Have lunch. Then prepare to meet your favorite grandson on that most ancient battleground, the chess board.”
Cliff brightened. Yes. Shower. Lunch. One foot in front of the other. That’s the way, had always been the way. “Bring it on,” he cackled, and from the far reaches of his busy old brain spilled the words he’d struggled to retrieve: “For I can weather the roughest gale that ever wind did blow.”
“Bravo! That’s my Pops,” said Tim. “See you soon.”