Onward Toward What We're Going Toward by Ryan Bartelmay Page B

with a goatee. He told her he didn’t think Green would walk again, at least not for a while, not until he went through some therapy. He had acute hemiplegia on his left side with a mild case of dysarthria. Mary glanced over her shoulder—Green was asleep in the room behind her. She was having a hard time concentrating on what the doctor was saying. A loud voice in her head had been telling her all afternoon that she needed to pack her bags and get as far away from this as she possibly could. She was doing her best to ignore the voice, but it was getting difficult. The doctor continued to talk: hemiplegia, dysarthria . She felt like she was at Walmart, reading the ingredients on a tube of toothpaste.
    â€œHow about talking?” she heard herself say.
    â€œHe’ll work with a speech therapist, but for the time being he can communicate through writing. He had a very severe stroke, Mrs. Geneseo.”
    â€œWhat about moving him? We’re actually not from here. We’re from Vegas.”
    â€œLet’s see how things go. One day at a time, Mrs. Geneseo.”
    â€œYou don’t have to call me that.”
    Dr. Gannaway gave her a quizzical look.
    â€œMary is fine.”
    â€œVery well, then. Mary.”
    â€œOne last question. Should I be looking for a home for him, an assisted living place or something?”
    â€œHe’ll be here for a couple days, then let’s see how things go. One day at a time.”
    That afternoon, a speech therapist gave Green a flip pad and a golf pencil and urged him to write.
    He wrote, Brazen Bull. Seth. $100 , and showed it to Mary.
    â€œBut we don’t have a hundred dollars,” she whispered.
    Green looked at Mary with downtrodden, heavy eyes, and she knew what he wanted her to do.

Four
    Buddy Waldbeeser

    July 1, 1953
    Â 
    â€œHe should have named the kid Bascom. That’s what you did. That would have been the right thing to do. That would have honored you. Bascom V. In the line of Bascoms. I’m, of course, four: William Bascom IV Waldbeeser. BB. Buddy Bascom. You honored your father. Lomax Waldbeeser. I don’t even know his middle name. Wait a second, I do. Archibald. Lomax Archibald Waldbeeser. He’s going to grow up to hate his parents.” Buddy went to the window and pulled the drapes shut. “Just like I hate you.”
    He turned around to face the chair he’d positioned in front of the window, giving the pillows stacked on it a view of the parking lot filled with traveling salesmen’s cars and the neon sign proclaiming the HILLTOP HOTEL. Pine Bluff, Arkansas. Highway 81. Buddy carefully set his derby hat on top of the pillows and stepped back.
    â€œI used to daydream about you calling me BB. I just wanted you to call me son. I mean, you never called me anything. You were there but not there, smoking your cigarettes or out in the barn cursing under your breath. Remember when you said to me, ‘I know what I want to do, but when it comes to doing it, I can’t?’ Seems like a lie now. You did what you wanted to do. Remember that time in the living room when you squared off into a boxing stance? You and your father. A goddamn boxing stance. He was an old man and you go at him like you’re Rocky Marciano. You were always . . . I don’t know. You were always disappointed. In everything. It didn’t matter what it was. Tom McNeeley wanted
to talk about you. After you died. He tried to explain that I shouldn’t think of you as less of a father for what you did. You were my father is basically what he said, like I should forgive you just because that’s who you were. What was it about your life that you hated so much? It doesn’t seem to be enough to say that I don’t understand. I mean I’m mad at you. That’s what I want to tell you. I just want the chance to tell you that. But I have to tell it to a stack of pillows. Look at us. Look at how you left us. Look at you.