This Monkey's Gone to Heaven

Chapter 20, The End, This Monkey's Gone to Heaven

Chapter Twenty





I was in the hallway of the funeral parlor, sitting on a chair, staring ahead, feeling distant and a tad numb. In the background in a closed room I could hear some employees laughing about something. It seemed odd. I was confused. I had just gotten off the phone with Beth Ann. She was still in Italy with my two boys and her doctor friend. Her chief of staff Patty had given me the number where she could be reached. I told her about my mom and she actually started crying, which kind of took me by surprise. She said she wanted to leave on the next flight, take the boys so they could be here for the funeral, but I told her to stay and finish the trip if only because…. Well, I didn’t really know why. She started suggesting that things weren’t working out between she and her doctor friend and she said that she missed me.
“Maybe we could give it another try, Emmett. The kids just miss you to pieces.”

Now that my mom was gone I felt like I was drifting; the wall was gone; the point of reference. I couldn’t look her way anymore. It all seemed empty and gone, my back was turned, and the only alternative was to face the direction where my life would eventually end, which I guess meant facing forward, didn’t
it? So, maybe there was freedom in that. Honestly, deep down I sensed that my mom was somehow better off now. I could almost bring myself to admitting a feeling of relief. If I was honest, I vaguely felt at peace. Maybe that’s why I still felt that something significant was missing. My mom’s death was a tragedy to be sure, but I had to ask myself if this was it. Strangely, I could almost hear myself asking for more. At least let me go insane for a while, I seemed to want. First spare my children, then let the world end. Let there be an apocalypse, let me stumble through the ruins.

Nicole soon after the funeral decided she needed to go back to France for a while. She needed a break from all this American madness. I didn’t blame her. But I knew if she left she wasn’t coming back. Howser must have known it, too, because he said if she was serious about going to France he was going back to Jamaica, so he left the next day, driving all the way to Minneapolis to catch a charter, running away from the inevitable heartbreak.
I eased my ole beater out of the garage and went to the car wash and had it all spruced up. Then I went to the motel where Nicole was staying. I helped her with her bag and we drove to the airport in silence.
I got out of the car to get her bag. When I handed it to her, I fixed my eyes on her. “Nicole…”
She looked up at me and said, “I’ll never be able to forgive you, Emmett. I’m zorry about your mom.”
Then she turned and walked away.
Well, that’s fair, I thought. A love story can end this way.
I was about to turn and walk away, but I heard myself say, “Nicole, wait.”
She turned around and looked at me.
“I fucked up, Nicole. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
“You did ‘urt me, Emmett. But that’s OK. I’m a big girl, I can ‘andle it.”
She turned and started walking away.
“Can’t I at least get your number, where you’ll be staying?”
She turned around and said, “I don’t where I’m going yet.”
“Well, can you call me?”
“Where are you going to be at?”
“Yeah, that’s a good question. Well, write me. I’ll give you my PO box in Alaska.”
“Alright.”
I ran to the beater and found an old electric bill and gave it to her.
“The PO is on the bill,” I said.
“Alright. Bye then.”
“Bye.”
She started walking away and I said, “I love you, Nicole.”
Without turning around, she said, “Love you, too,” and kept walking away. But I could tell it was water off a duck’s back. She was done with me and there was nothing I could do about it. We wouldn’t write each other. This would be the last time I’d ever see her again and this time it was for real.

For the next few days I stayed in the garage, sleeping in the backseat of my car. I thought about my dad a lot. What he’d eventually tell me was shocking. I was beginning to wish he’d never offered his confession. It kept me up, thinking about it. That night after her funeral, that’s when he told me, joining me and Stanley for a couple beers. It started out innocent at first. He told us that he and that lodge-owner up in Canada, her name was Lola, they had fallen in love and they were thinking about getting married.
“Well, that’s great, Dad.”
Stanley said, “Well, when?”
“I don’t know maybe this winter some time.”
“Kinda soon, isn’t it?” Stanley asked.
“We’re both adults.”
“No, I mean right after mom’s funeral.”
I looked at Stanley. “Stanley, don’t be stupid,” I said.
“Out of respect for Mom.”
“They weren’t even together. Don’t be insane.”
Dad said, “I loved your mom, Stanley.” He took a sip of his beer, his lip started trembling, then he excused himself to go to the bathroom.
“Don’t be an ass, Stanley. They were miserable together and you know it.”
“He can wait.”
“Wait for what?”
“There’s a mourning period.”
“Isn’t enough that he stuck by her all these years?”
“He stuck by her? It’s the other way around. He was the one in the wheelchair, not Mom.”
I wasn’t going to argue. We drank our beer in silence and waited for Dad to come back from the bathroom. It was taking him so long it became awkward for me and Stanley.
“Damnit, Stanley.”
I got up and went to the bathroom. There was just an old man puking. I ran outside and immediately saw him in the corner of the parking lot under a street lamp, sitting in his wheelchair facing the other way. I went up to him.
“Dad?”
“Emmett.”
“You OK? Stanley’s talking out of his ass.”
“It’s not Stanley.”
“Everything’s gonna be OK, Dad.”
“I let your mom down.”
“No, you didn’t. Why would you say that?”
“The plane wreck.”
“What about it?”
“It wasn’t an accident.”
“What do you mean it wasn’t an accident? The plane was on fumes. You forgot to check the fuel.”
“No. I did it on purpose.”
I stood there.
“You did what on purpose?”
“I crashed into that tree on purpose.”
Kamikaze. My brain froze on that word.
“You tried to kill yourself?”
“No, it’s worse. I was trying to get attention from your mom. I didn’t think it’d be that bad, the crash, I mean. I thought I’d be in the hospital and she’d start seeing me in a new light. I was sick of being ignored.”
I played the usual game with myself by accepting it at first, telling myself that kind of decision-making ran in our blood. It was as natural as a fat cell. We couldn’t help it. Therefore, we weren’t to blame.
I told him that I probably would have done the same thing and don’t worry about it, let’s go get a couple more beers, but whatever you do, don’t tell Stanley. But the rest of the night was hard. I avoided looking into his eyes, gulped my beer, and started ordering shots of whiskey.

My last days at the site of our house, living in the garage, I got to tell you, they were quite wonderful. It’s funny, even though I knew the place was going to be condemned since Dad had sold the lot to Mr. Smith and Mr. Smith had planned on planting an enormous flower garden, which meant the garage would have to go, I started organizing the boxes of junk and left-over rusty tools like spring cleaning. I swept the place and dusted the shelves, trying to make her look nice before she went to the gallows. I found some old black and white pictures kept in a shoebox stored way up in the rafters deep in the corner—-kept to be forgotten. They were my mom’s when she was younger. She was dressed as a clown. I had forgotten all about that period. I felt embarrassed for some reason, wondering how the person I knew had worked as a clown for children’s parties. It was absolutely the last thing I could imagine she’d have done. Life was strange. I was hoping I’d find some pictures of her when she was a cute little girl, but the whole box belonged to her clown stage. I put the box down and with a bad taste in my mouth I crawled into the backseat of my car and fell asleep as a storm descended upon my tiny world.

The following weather was beautiful, so during the day I’d open the garage door and sit in the driveway on a lawn chair like I was sitting on the porch to a real house. It was so comfortable just sitting there listening to the mourning doves that I considered spending the rest of my life there. I even took to greeting the neighbors in the morning on garbage day.

One day I was surprised to see a taxi cab drive up. Was it that pestering insurance agent again? I thought. Did his car break down? But when the cab door opened out came Brittany carrying a bird cage. The taxi drove away and she walked up to me smiling, indicating Take One, who was chirping away like a real song bird.
“You hear that?” she said.
“Sounds happy.”
“He started this morning. I had to come show you.”
She looked at me and smiled. Then she looked around.
“This is really nice.”
I tried to see it through her eyes. I mean, the day was certainly nice, but the eyesore, the burnt remains of the house, it was all too obvious.
“You really think so?”
“Yeah, it’s like a new beginning.”
“My mom burned it down.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“She was crazy, but it wasn’t her fault.”
“Yeah, that’s what your dad thought, too. I’m sorry, though.”
“Ah, it’s better this way.”
I looked at her standing there with that innocent smile on her face and for some reason she really moved me. I took it as a sign.
“It feels good to be honest,” I said.
“Yeah, I wouldn’t know.”

She stayed with me that night in the backseat of my car. She fell asleep wrapped in my arms, leaving a puddle of her drool that soaked a spot on my tee shirt. I had this goofy grin on my face. I had a feeling that I was falling for her again, if you can believe that, after all we’d gone through. Tomorrow morning the plan was to drive away. She didn’t care where. I knew it was Alaska, if only to be with my boys, and go back to eking out some kind of living as a bush pilot.
But before falling asleep Brittany said the oddest thing. She was so tired she half-mumbled it. I didn’t understand her, so I asked her to say it again.
She lifted her head and shot me a look of annoyance. She said, “I said, when you come back to finish your movie.”
“And what?”
“In a year I bet you come back to finish your movie.”
“Yeah, but you said something else. What was it?”
“That people will remember your movie as the world’s greatest porn???”
“That’s what you said?”
“I don’t know. Is that what you’re asking?”
“Jesus, Brittany.”
“It’s a compliment, now let me sleep.”

In the morning she was all sunshine and giggles. We loaded the dog and the bird and backed out of the driveway. She kept giggling while I longed for a moment of solace so I could say my last goodbye. She was giddy, beside herself with excitement. I guess she made me realize there was nothing to say goodbye to, whatever had once been had already burned down. I started smiling and laughing, too. Just for a moment. It felt like an act. I sensed friction. Sure enough, as I jerked the car into drive and we coasted away and started driving down the street, Brittany decides to stick her head out the window and tell my nice neighbors where they could all go, shouting at the top of her lungs.
Once we turn the corner and disappear from view (as though we never existed in the first place, like silly souls who just gave up) I know that I’ll ditch her at the first gas station I can find and wipe my hands of it once and for all.





The End