16

A little bubble caught in J’s throat, but he forced out the words, “I know it’s been a long time. Too long.”

“mmm,” his own mother was giving him the verbal equivalent of a noncommittal nod. At this point J saw very little choice but to take it.

“I’m sorry. Can we go from there?” J asked feeling rather desperate. His face was hot and he was on the brink of perspiration.

“Joseph,” she gasped. Somewhere in his name he heard the seeds of forgiveness, the bricks for a bridge that needed rebuilding and the deeply buried but still present love of a mother. Never in his life had his given name sounded so wonderful. The bubble in his throat twitched; his eyelids felt heavy.

It would take time to heal wounds that had been growing for years. It certainly wouldn’t be accomplished on three quarters from a payphone in what J’s mom called, “the middle of the night.”

The next day, J went to see Matty.

She hadn’t gone to work because she wasn’t feeling well. J hadn’t known that when he headed over to her place that morning. He had planned to leave a note, call her at work, but he could handle the universe’s decision to allow their conversation to take place in the morning. J had always felt that not enough of the “heart-to-hearts” took place in the morning. So many seem to happen in the evening or worse way past bedtime. There really is nothing like a good night’s rest before the talk.

Matty seemed to sense what was coming, since so few things roused J before 9 AM. They didn’t speak as she opened the door and lead him into the living room. She sat on the couch and he pulled a chair up close so he could sit facing her.

It started, as these talks are known to do, with a lot of far off stares. Both Matty and J alternated their gazes that not only took in the other, but took in all their past and any future they might have dreamed of. The time-sensitive stares are murder on the eyes. It eats right away at the cornea. That isn’t scientifically proven, but it makes sense, because something about the stares always end up activating the tear ducts and blinking becomes imminent, crying likely.

So far in their silence, Matty and J had been able to stave off the tears. It seemed odd to J, that the most their relationship would synchronize outside of the bedroom, was going to be during the break-up. He hadn’t made a move and yet he sensed that Matty was not only fully aware of his next move, but if he weakened, fully prepared to make the move for them. Nothing brings a relationship together like ending it.

With a deep breath, J began to speak. His words were a jumbled mess in the delivery and no clearer in Matty’s reception, but it didn’t matter because she knew what he was saying. It had been said a million times in a million ways by a million different lovers all over the world. In every language it’s the same, sometimes the tone is different. It can be tinged with sadness, regret, or anger, but the message is always the same, “So long. Heart hurts.” In some cases a tiny door gets left open, but those doors always look larger to one person than the other and they are always revolving; a Russian roulette of love doors, a game show of reunification, where it only works if the plinko ball lands just so.

“So long. Heart hurts,” J said to Matty in so many words.
“So long. Heart hurts,” she cried back to him in so many words.

J trudged away from Matty’s place. He felt like he’d given in. He felt like he’d lost a fight to a giant boxer wearing valentine heart shorts who kept landing repeated bunches to his gut, his head and below the belt. J just let the boxer wail on him with his left hook of loss and his jabs of disappointment. There was nothing he could do but take the beating.

As he made his way to McCormick’s, he couldn’t help but relive the good times he and Matty had shared. He couldn’t help but find the place in his mind where her smells, her soft hands, her constellation moles all resided. He walked slowly, obliviously along as he tried to hold each feeling in his hand, to knead it like dough and then to put it carefully away in a little trunk somewhere to the left of his cerebellum.

McCormick looked older every time J saw him. Without spring in his step, J wasn’t looking like much of youngster either, McCormick thought. McCormick hadn’t been expecting him, but as J made his way deliberately up the drive, McCormick noticed and put a pot of coffee on. He had a surprise for J and by the looks of him, J needed a surprise.

J walked right in, always at home with the homeless. McCormick greeted him cheerfully and led him to the kitchen.

“Jimmie?” J said hardly believing his eyes. He hadn’t seen Jimmie in almost as long as he hadn’t seen his parents.

“J!” Jimmie nearly shouted as he stood up from the table. He stuck out his hand to shake J’s, but J mashed the gesture into a bear hug. Jimmie didn’t smell great; it wasn’t that he didn’t enjoy hygiene as much as the next guy, but he’d been known to miss a bath, not that any of that mattered to J. He was so glad to see Jimmie.

“What’s with you?” Jimmie asked.
“I’m having a rough run lately,” J replied.
“No home, no food, a cough that you can’t shake, kind of rough?” Jimmie asked, betraying a bitterness that J had never seen in Jimmie. “Or just can’t find a use for that condom I gave you?” he asked as his friendlier nature returned.
“It doesn’t seem so rough anymore, Jimmie.” J said the hint of a smile. “Sorry ‘bout that.”
“No, J. That was out of line. A broken heart is nothing to…” he trailed off.
“I used your condom,” J said with a smile.
“Don’t say it like that,” McCormick said with a laugh.
“I’ll get him a new one,” J said with a laugh of his own.

It was so good to be sharing a cup of coffee with McCormick and Jimmie again. It had been too long. They sipped and shared stories like old times.

Jimmie had been in and out of jail a few times for some minor offenses. J told his dollar and sixty nine cent theft story to riotous laughter. For a moment as they sipped coffee, McCormick didn’t look so old, J didn’t look so tired, and Jimmie’s hacking cough didn’t come so frequently.

“So that’s it,” J said as he finished telling them about Sid, Sherri and Ben and the last few activities they’d participated in. He hadn’t sugarcoated things, he’d told them about the success and the failures. He’d told them about the absolute bust that was “The Color of Money” had been. He told them about the legal trouble Crazy Ralph was in. He told them about his self-motivated and regretful decision to push the elevator sit-in. He told them that he was trying to make a difference, but it just didn’t seem to be worth it the way it used to. J was trying not to dwell on the failures. “I was talking to Sid and I told him we weren’t distracted enough, but I don’t even know what I mean.”

McCormick played with his ponytail thoughtfully. Jimmie rubbed his knuckles against his five o’clock shadow. No one said a word for a while as they thought about everything J had been through. It’s not that his activism had been earth-shattering or so different from their own attempts to set the world on a better course. The real difference was that J was in front of them asking for advice, without so much as asking. McCormick and Jimmie had played a lot of roles to a lot of people, but advice seekers weren’t exactly following them around like groupies. Each man wanted to make sure he said something that might help J. McCormick knew that most people looking for advice were looking for ways to validate feelings they already had. He was searching J’s countenance for those feelings. He kept coming up empty. Finally when the silence had crossed the border of thoughtful and was coming up on the checkpoint of awkward, McCormick spoke up, “J,” he said flicking his tongue against his cheek and then holding it there. “I think you’re running on fumes.”
J looked back thoughtfully hoping that the old man had more than that to offer. “Your brain’s in the right place, but your heart has up and left,” he said with a punctuating click. “I think you better fix that.”

McCormick looked at Jimmie, expecting an automatic disagreement, but Jimmie didn’t seem prepared to give one.

“Look,” Jimmie said with a shrug, “I am not a philosopher. All I can tell you is somewhere about halfway through that tale I got Willie Nelson stuck in my head.”

J turned to Jimmie skeptically and raised an eyebrow.

“You know,” Jimmie said as he started to strum an imaginary guitar. “You’ve got to know when to hold ‘em, you’ve got to know when to fold ‘em.” He sang. Badly.

J was considering the message while McCormick was considering the source.

“That’s Kenny Rogers,” McCormick shouted.

“What’s the difference?” Jimmie laughed. “For a taste of whiskey, I’ll give you some advice too old man.”

“I can’t think of anything I’d want your advice on,” McCormick laughed. “I’ll keep my whiskey, thank you very much.”

“You’ve got whiskey?” Jimmie said with awakened interest.

“Gentlemen,” J said holding his hands up.

“Where?” hollered Jimmie.

All three laughed and then quieted back down.

“I’ve got to go talk to Sid,” J said. “Thanks. Always a pleasure.” He said with a wave to his friends.

“Good luck kid,” Jimmie said. “you owe me a condom.”

“You don’t need it,” McCormick said with a chuckle.

“It’s the principle,” Jimmie retorted with a smile.

J could hear the two of them still arguing as he walked down the drive. What a couple of characters, he thought. It’s funny which people can end up meaning so much to a life. It all just seems like so much chance.

His brisk walk to Sid’s didn’t really clear out any of the issues that were percolating in his mind. Something had to give. He just couldn’t keep going the way he had been. He thought McCormick was right. Maybe he’d outgrown this method of voicing disapproval. Maybe his only hope now was to work from the inside. He hated to think that his idealism might be dying out, but maybe it wasn’t, maybe he was knowing when to fold ‘em. And maybe he was knowing what ‘em were. Still, it felt so much like failure.

“It feels so much like failure,” J told Sid.
“It is what it is,” Sid said. J was pretty sure he’d said it to be reassuring, but he didn’t get much assurance out of it, let alone any reassurance. J’s scrunched eyebrows communicated that to Sid.
“I just mean that times and people change. Things, attitudes… they change,” Sid tried to explain.

Just then there was a knock at the door. A knock followed by the entrance of Ben and Sherri. They were holding hands and smiling. It seemed to be an aggressive display of affection, especially after what Sid had seen after the MegaCorps fiasco. Sid wondered if they were trying to compensate. J wondered if they were liquored up.

“What’s got you two so giddy?” J asked.
“We’re moving in together.” Sherri said with an enormous smile. It was the biggest smile either of them had seen, bigger even than the smiles she had from the Reading Rocks campaign. “It was Ben’s idea.”

Their gaze shifted from Sherri to Ben. He shrugged and gave a little smile of his own. It wasn’t the reluctant, “what the hell have I done?” sort of smile that Sid and J had expected. It was a “you can’t fight love,” sort of smile. Sid and J both shrugged themselves and flipped their hands out as if to answer the smile. “No. I suppose you can’t,” their open palms seemed to reply. They were caught a little off guard, but something about it seemed right, a little out of character perhaps, but still, it sat well with them. Sometimes that’s all anybody should ask.

So could 17