Townie_ A Memoir - Andre Dubus [168]
“Wait,” he said. “Tell me that again.”
And I knew he’d just reached for the pen he always carried and was writing those words down. A few years later they became the opening line for his novella “The Pretty Girl.”
But this time, as he lay crippled on the bench, ready to do his next set of presses, he seemed to be taking it in for his use only, words he would need, not to help build a character, but to build himself.
EIGHT WEEKS later his upper body was back to what it had been before the accident. We’d learned it was easier for him to bench-press only if his torso couldn’t slide to the left or right, so we’d hook his leather weight belt under the bench and around his waist, cinching it in tight, and he stayed that way till his bench presses were done. For his shoulders he did overhead dumbbell work from his wheelchair. For his back I installed a chinning bar in his kitchen doorway that he could reach but could be taken down afterward. For his upper arms Pop did seated dumbbell curls and overhead triceps extensions, and with each passing week he got stronger and stronger.
One afternoon Pop told me that the day before his accident he’d gone out and bought a compass because he’d wanted to walk wherever he went, to get his exercise that way and learn more about where he lived.
“Can you believe that, man?” He was between sets and he glanced over at me and wiped the sweat off his forehead with the back of his arm. “I had plans to walk.”
And now he wanted to do something for his heart and lungs, too. But what can a man without legs do? There was swimming, but his entire life he’d been afraid of water. There were those racing wheelchairs you could take out on a track somewhere, but Pop and the rest of us still held out hope that he’d walk again one day and the thought of buying another wheelchair was a dark one.
Then I remembered shadowboxing. I told him how it could wind even the fittest boxers, how you could probably do it in a sitting position, and I pulled up a chair beside him and showed him how to throw a few punches. I felt like I was lying to him, though, because these punches were not themselves without pivoting feet and legs and hips to power them. But Pop liked the movement, needed the movement, and he remembered boot camp in the Marine Corps, how much harder the running became when you had to count cadence too, when you had to sing “the D.I.’s fucking song.” So Pop began singing. After his weight workouts, he’d put on some Sinatra or Ella Fitzgerald or Peggy Lee, and he’d shadowbox in his chair and sing from his diaphragm, Fly me to the moon and let me play among the stars…, his left leg sticking out straight from his chair, his right gone, his eyes closed as he hit notes and punched the air.
I’d drive down the hill feeling more joy than sadness. I had never grown anything before, never planted a seed and watered it till something blossomed that had been waiting there all along. At least I thought I hadn’t. But I had. It was me I had built up. And I imagined that helping Pop get his strength back gave the kind of sustained creative satisfaction a gardener must feel, or a coach, or a father.
18
IT WAS THREE years later, and because of what I’d just done, a big man offered me his place in line, another squeezed my shoulder and said, “That’s the way to do it,” and the woman who took my boarding pass glanced at me quickly, her eyes passing over me as if she were trying to memorize something. My heart had finally slowed back down. My legs felt unsteady. I needed water.
It was a big plane, and I took my seat in the center row. Beside me sat a young woman in a Boston College T-shirt. She had long blonde hair, a thin gold bracelet clinging to her tanned wrist, and she was reading Cultural Literacy, which I’d just read. She glanced at me. I asked her if she liked the book, told her I thought it was pretty good, my voice still high and reedy from where the adrenaline had put it. She said she’d