This Monkey's Gone to Heaven

Chapter 13, This Monkey's Gone to Heaven

Chapter Thirteen


“Cut! Cut! Cut! That’s all wrong, people! Start all over and this time I want emotion. E-mo-tion!”
Mom said, “Pipe down in there! You’re fiancé’s trying to get some sleep!”
I was practicing in the bathroom mirror. Ever since proposing to Dorothy, which was yesterday, I’d developed this nervous tick. The whole left side of my face twitched. I’d have to explain it away in a story so my cast and crew wouldn’t think I’d lost my nerves. As for the wedding, well, I planned on stringing that along for as long as I could and by that I mean never showing up for it.
Dorothy and Mom celebrated last night, drinking endless vodka cranberries. My mother had seen my change of heart seconds after the grand declaration. So to protect her friend, she set a date. The wedding was to take place on a Sunday, two weeks from now in the backyard. They were giggling and squealing like school girls, talking it up, two Chatty-Kathy’s going on and on about wedding dresses, who to invite, and well into their second bottle slurring out a grocery list for the big feast that went on for two hours I swear. I sat in my room with my head in my hands as Moonshine at my feet twitched violently from a long series of nightmares, no doubt bearing striking similarities to the events of his master’s life. At least tomorrow I’d be on set miles away from this madness. But, fuck a duck, that made me nervous, too. My face was jerking like God had snagged me from heaven and just like in the Bible I would turn grey/white over night. Staring into the mirror this morning, it was still so hard to believe. I looked like a damn fool, my face twitching, all white-haired, fat, pasty, and weird-looking, so before driving to Stanley’s to pick up my cast and crew, I planned on getting some Grecian formula to turn back the clock.
When I turned to open the bathroom door, it whipped open on its own and there was my mom.
“Here,” she stuck out her hand. “I made you a sandwich. Eat it,” she said. “It’s peanut butter and mayonnaise, your favorite.”
I took the sandwich and started eating it. I was famished. I hadn’t eaten anything since yesterday afternoon. Then she noticed. “My god, what happened to your hair?”
It dawned on her and she started laughing. “You are something else, aren’t you? Well, you’re the one that opened your big mouth. If you’d just think for a second, but no, you just blurt it out like some toddler.” And she turned away, laughing and shaking her head like Aunt Jemima in baggy clothing. She was losing so much weight I was getting concerned. Had there been a brief spell where I wasn’t so mad at her, I’d have told her to go see a doctor. “Oh, Emmett,” she laughed. “You will never learn.”
But the greatest shock of the day came last night when my dad approached my window as I sat at my desk basking in self-pity. I heard the whirr of his electric wheelchair making its way through the rhododendrons.
“Dad!” I muttered excitedly, leaping across the bed to open the window.
“Dad! Hey, Dad!”
“Where’s your mom?”
“Hold on, let me crawl out.” I crawled out of the window and followed him into the yard where a whippoorwill was calling.
He wheeled the chair around to face me. He was grinning from ear to ear as shone by the humming streetlight.
“Well, what is it? Aren’t you going to tell me?” I asked.
“I have the greatest news,” he said.
“Well, what? What is it?”
“You remember that dream of mine when I was a kid, how I wanted to go work at a fishing lodge up in Canada?”
“No, you never told me that…”
“Yeah, it’s always been a dream of mine. I never told you that?”
“No. I don’t think so.”
“Yeah, that was my dream. Canada. I wanted to end up in Canada on a lake somewhere…I never told you that, huh?”
“No.”
“I must have. You sure?”
“So tell me.”
“Huh.” He thought about it before continuing. “Yeah, well, so anyway, two days ago I’m looking at a magazine, you know, at the checkout lane, and I’m just paging through it not really thinking and suddenly, lo and behold, I notice this advertisement for a fishing lodge up in Ontario. It just catches my eye. Without even realizing what I’m doing I go to a payphone and give them a call. Well, guess what? You’re never gonna believe it. I end up getting me a job. God damnit, boy, I finally got me a job! My dream job! And it’s all because of you and the movie you’re making. You’ve inspired me. God almighty, I’m finally going to Canada.”
“Well, that’s great, Dad, but what kind of work are you going to be doing? I mean, it’s the end of September. Don’t they usually close down the lodges for the winter?”
“Not this lodge. It’s a year-round operation. Ice fishing! I can’t wait, I’m telling you, I can’t wait. I finally found the nerve. Do you believe it? Aren’t you proud of your old man?” Then he screwed up his face and pretended he was cranking an auger to make a hole in the ice.
“Can’t you just see me?” he said excitedly.
“Well, yeah, that’s great, Dad. But when are you leaving? What about your inventions, you’re not going to just give that up, are you?”
He made a face and dismissed the notion with a wave of his hand.
“I got to be honest. I don’t think I ever had one good idea. It was just a phase I was going through. It was more of an excuse…you know, after the accident…to get away from your mother, so I could be in my office all day pretending. That’s all that was.”
“Well, what about Brittany? Is she going with you?”
“Oh, women, you know…”
“What? You guys aren’t getting along?”
“No, we are. It’s just…you know, she’s starting to get on my nerves.”
“Well, how long you gonna be gone?”
“I don’t know. We’ll see how things go.”
“Well, isn’t she going to be upset that you’re leaving?”
“Who? Brittany? She doesn’t know yet. I need you to tell her this story, but give it a couple of days. I don’t want her trying to track me down. Tell her that I got caught trying to steal another video camera and that I was sent away to some work camp. She’ll understand.”
“What, you stole that camera?”
“No, of course not. It’s just the story I told Brittany. She likes guys living on the edge. I was just trying to impress her. You know how that goes.”
“Well, Dad, when are you leaving?”
“Tonight.”
“What you do you mean, you mean right now?” my voice cracked. “Jesus, Dad! You can’t go! You can’t! I need you! I thought you were going to help with the movie. Who’s going to shoot rabbits for dinner? Jesus, you promised. You said you were going to help. I need you there. You can’t leave, you just can’t. I’m not going to do this movie all alone. You promised.”
“They’re waiting for me.”
“Well, can’t you just do it another time? Why don’t you do it after the movie? It’ll only be a couple of months.”
“No, come on. I want to do this. Don’t guilt me. You were the inspiration here. Come on, try to understand.”
“Then take me with you. I’ll go pack my bags. It’ll be great, me and you working together. Alright? What do you say? Come on, Pops.”
He looked down into his lap and he started crying. He raised his hand and gave a signal. Out of nowhere two burly men appeared out of the shadows and lifted him out of his wheelchair and started to carry him down the lawn.
In tears, as he was being carried, Dad said, “Brittany can use my wheelchair. Until I get back.”
I followed them down to their van, which looked brand new, a red Ford, a 1999 model. I was suspicious. Maybe the story Dad wanted me to tell Brittany was in fact the truth.
After the two burly men placed him in the back seat, gingerly, like they’d had years of experience, I asked for their ID’s. I wanted to know what the hell was going on. They handed me a business card, Minichisima Lodge, which I gotta tell you looked pretty legit; I’d even go so far as to say it was designed with taste. They told me that my dad had called their mother, confirming his story, and after learning that he too was a paraplegic she invited him up to help around the place.
“Mom’s been in a wheelchair most her life, polio,” said one of the brother’s. “She knows how hard it is to find work. We just picked up this van in Florida and Mom gave us the directions to here, so it was on the way, and we sure could use another driver. We’ve got three more days of hard driving left.”
“He’s a paraplegic,” I said.
They both smiled knowingly at the other. “We know how to rig it. Been doing it for Mom for years.”
“Dad, why don’t you take your electric wheelchair?”
But he was still crying and he couldn’t talk.
One brother said, “Won’t work up at the lodge. No electricity. We stopped at Goodwill and got him a manual one.”
I glanced into the back and saw a folded wheelchair next to Dad’s duffel. They seemed like real nice guys. They looked anxious to get back on the road, so I leaned in and gave my dad a hug. He was crying and hugged me tightly. Finally, he muttered, “My van’s parked down the street. The keys are in it. I love you, boy.”
“I love you, too, Dad. Write me.”
“I will.”
“But don’t you want to say goodbye to Mom?”
“Not really. You can tell her where I went though.”
“Alright. I will.”
They slid the van door shut and got in, one saying, “Don’t worry about your dad. We’ll take good care of him. Mom sure could use the company.”
As they started to drive away Dad turned to wave goodbye. I waved back, shouting, “Call me!” taking half-hearted steps in the direction of the fleeing van.
As the van disappeared into the darkness, I thought, damn, that was fast. Why didn’t he tell me two days ago? Why did he leave it to the last minute? But I realized I probably would’ve spent the whole time trying to talk him out of it. On his part it was smart. Plus, I had to hand it to him--for a guy that had never once left the state of Minnesota it was probably the bravest decision he’d ever made.
Walking up the slope of the lawn, I collapsed suddenly without warning. I found myself clutching at the grass, mouth wide-open, tensing, feeling the pain rip through my body while the whippoorwill cried in the bushes. My dad left me. Why was it so painful? I was no spring chicken, I was thirty four years old. But somehow I felt abandoned—-for the second time in my life I have to admit (like a delayed reaction from the time Mom left me and I woke up from my nap to find that I’d been left all alone in the house as a four-year-old wondering why she left me forever without saying goodbye first). I felt completely alone in the world. The next time I’d lay eyes on him would be at my mother’s funeral.