Wednesday, May 25, 2005

There once was a perfect man

      Around my hometown, they still talk about it. Even after all this time, it comes up. "How sad," they say, or "I guess it only goes to show that you really don't know what's going with another person." The men at Edward's Barber Shop shake their heads as they discover the correct way to dress out a deer, according to Outdoor Life, and the women at Helen's Beautique sigh as they read the latest home remedy for winkles in Ladies Home Journal. Then they move on to another subject, but they return to it again and again because it's hard to forget that there once was a perfect man.
      I met him in the first grade. Although I remember little of that time, I'm sure he already showed the promise of the perfection he would later become. His picture in our first-grade annual shows a bright-eyed all-American boy, looking all the while like a poster child for a pro-life group.
      In the second grade, his charisma developed to just the right degree. He wasn't so charming that the boys could call him a sissy, and yet he was charming enough to allow the girls to tolerate him. We even suspected that a couple of them even liked him. He denied it, of course, but we saw the way Wilma Simmons smiled at him. We forgave him, though, because he was as rough and tough and ready as little boys could be.
      In the third grade, he was the captain of any team we had, always the last boy standing in any spelling bee (the girls always won) and the teacher's favorite. Not the teacher's pet 'cause then we would have hated him; he simply the one she couldn't help smiling at even when he talked too much, the one she automatically picked to clean the erasers, and the one she held up as an example to the rest of us. And Wilma smiled at him all the time. (Rumor had it that he'd kissed her, but us boys refused to believe it. He was too normal to kiss one of them.)
      He had a tough time of it in the fourth grade. His right arm and leg were shattered in a car wreck. By the time he recovered, the school year was over. He spent the summer, regaining his strength and catching up on his classwork. When he returned for the fifth, it was almost as if he had never left.
      He graduated from the sixth and the seventh and was, from that time on, our class leader with no dispute. Some of the guys resented him, but they were just jealous. The rest of us were glad we had someone to follow for we too had discovered how nice it was to have a girl smile at you. And how rare and hard it was to attain those smiles.
      On through junior high he went, excelling at this and that. Don't get the idea, though, that he was a genius. Being a genius would have made him different, not one of us. His grades were A's and B's, just right for his image. Not too smart, not too dumb, just right.
      In fact, everything about him was just right: his personality, his looks, his clothes, his car, everything. He continued in like fashion through high school and graduated with honors and plenty of sports letters.
      Most everyone in town expected him to go to college, but he didn't. They were surprised at first and then pleased. In my town, going to college is the exception rather than the rule, and somehow it seemed fitting that the all-American boy would choose to settle at home.
      He married Wilma, found an excellent job (yes, you can get those without a college degree), and life looked good. Or, at least, it did for anyone looking on.
      But something was wrong for him. One Monday, Wilma came home and found a note on the entryway mirror that read: "I'm sorry. I love you. I wish things could be different. I'm sorry." She ran into their bedroom and found him dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
      When I heard of his death, I remembered the last time I saw him alive, a few months before his death.
      Home for Christmas break, I was in a department store, looking frantically for presents, when I heard his voice behind me.
      "Hi there, guy," he said.
      I turned and smiled. Although I hadn't seen him since graduation, he looked the same while I was already losing my hair and gaining weight. His grip was strong, his smile still high-voltage.
      We exchanged greetings, talked about the difficulty in finding gifts and caught up the news of our classmates. After about 30 minutes, the conversation faded away. There had been too many years between us. We ran out of things to say.
      "Well, I have to go," he said. "I have to pick up Wilma."
      "It was good seeing you," I said.
      He looked at me and half-smiled. "Tell me, how is college?"
      "I really enjoy it," I said. "It's everything that high school wasn't."
      "I've thought about going ..." His voice trailed off.
      "You should," I said. "You'd probably enjoy it."
      "Maybe later," he said. "My job. Wilma and I are trying to have a baby. Maybe later."
      I nodded. He stood there for a moment more.
      "You know, I'm never going leave that town," he said slowly. "I'm never going to get away."
      I looked at him, puzzled, and unsure of what to say.
      He smiled, shook his head and waved goodbye.
      I gave a mental shrug and went back to trying to find Christmas gifts that I should have already purchased.
      That was his last Christmas, his last time to celebrate in the town in which he had spent his entire life. And now I wonder why. No one will ever know, but I have my ideas, which may be no closer that anyone else's. But I wonder if he didn't get trapped in his own image, trying to be all-American, trying to be the perfect employee, trying to be the perfect husband, trying to be "just right" for everyone. Looking back, I can see how hard he tried to please his family, his teachers and his friends, almost as if he was trying to redeem himself or make himself worthy in some way to have their affection. I wonder if, when he realized he couldn't be perfect and couldn't be all things to all people, he couldn't forgive himself, couldn't forgive himself for simply being human. He thought he was trapped and took the only way out he could see.
      Of course, I'll never know if I'm right. No one will ever know.
      He was buried on a Saturday. The day dawned bright and beautiful. Wilma later told me that the sunshine and blue skies helped her survive.
      "I kept looking around and seeing how much life still had to offer," she said. "Even though he was gone and I'd have to go on without him, it still seemed worth it."
      I guess it must have been -- if there are such things -- the perfect day for a funeral.

Copyright 2005. All rights reserved.

10 comments:

Trixie said...

Wow, Tech, that is powerful. Very "Richard Cory"-like. I wonder how often we have people like this moving through our lives.

Richard Cory
Whenever Richard Cory went down town,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean favored, and imperially slim.
And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
"Good-morning," and he glittered when he walked.

And he was rich - yes, richer than a king -
And admirably schooled in every grace;
In fine we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.

So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.

- Edwin Arlington Robinson

Michelle said...

How sad. A lot of lessons there.

There are so many reasons that make it "worth it". So many reasons to give another day a chance.

Unknown said...

Prayers sent to the survivors for they need it more than the dead, who feel no pain.

Beautiful post, by the by.

Gloria Williams said...

This is powerfully written and so very sad. It brought to my mind the movement of a musical composition the way the story was told.

Trixie, I hadn't heard of that poem. It makes an excellent point: None know the troubles another is facing. We should be kind to each other because of this.

Anonymous said...

Great story. :)

And the info I promised:

Sheila's new blog is: http://pbackwriter.blogspot.com/

The website for her new Darkyn series is: www.darkyn.com She's using the pen name "Lynne Viehl" for that series.

Anonymous said...

Wow! It gave me a chill. The writing is excellent. Just who are you? :)

Anonymous said...

You write funny stuff so well that sometimes I forget how talented a writer you are. This is an amazing story. I could hear your voice as I read it. Fantastic, dude.

Anonymous said...

Very well written with a non-judgemental understanding. So often we tend to judge others when we don't know anything about thier story. But it was sad. I wish he had hung in there.
Randall

Joel said...

We tend to assume that certain people don't need a kind word, they don't need encouragement, they don't need reassurance, because they are so, well, together. They seem to have it all, at least in the ways that we don't, and we can't imagine that we would have anything to offer them that they would really need or want. I wonder if those kinds of people, the kind that don't wear their troubles on their sleeve, that project that perfect image, are most in need of a kind word and encouragement? Your post made me think about this, and to resolve to take the time to talk to the next perfect person I meet and to see them as a real person and not as the image they project.

night-rider said...

So much truth and you are such a good writer. Some people can stand all sorts of pain with fortitude and good humour, for others, something that looks entirely insignificant from the outside can send them into a deep depression. In the end it's the amount of india rubber in our veins that most influences our happiness I think. Unfortunately for your hero, when he started to fall he just didn't bounce.