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.

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