The Old Man

The old man's wife passed away a few days ago.

He wouldn't like me writing it that way—a fan of George Carlin, the thought of 'soft words' tended to make him cringe; he would have preferred 'died' or 'shuffled off her mortal coil.' He said that second one plenty. Every few years now one of his friends shuffles off their mortal coil, and he always says it that way when he finds their name in the obituary. 'I guess Mavis shuffled off her mortal coil. A shame. She had the most wonderful rack as a young woman. Would've married her if I hadn't met Julia.'

The old man wasn't exactly politically correct. Come to think of it, he was a bit of a cantankerous old bastard with every imaginable bigotry—the 'self-hating Jew' routine was something he carried out very well. But with him you could always see the humor in his words. I once watched in awe as he told a joke that had the word 'nigger' in it at least three times to a table full of black men who could remember when they heard that every time they were sent to the back of the bus, and he had them laughing their asses off. He could always manage it. Maybe it was because anyone he was talking to understood immediately that he had no fear of their opinion.

In any case, I've been writing the old man's biography for nearly six months now, so I've come to know him as well as anyone could—except Julia, of course. This old man is a veteran—he commanded a tank and rode its turret from Omaha Beach to Buchenwald. He's smoked since he was fourteen, wrote children's books, was mayor of his hometown for ten years, and has had his nose broken in bar fights a bare minimum of seven times (most recently in 1988).

I know this man well, and I know he is an unbelievably tough, experienced, hardened human being, one who prefers only to show two emotions—sarcasm of the most disdainful order, and rage that probably put more fear of God into the hearts of German soldiers than the booming cannon he fired. It was only when his wife died that he showed grief and, more importantly, the love I knew he had for Julia but that he had let people see only very rarely.

It wasn't expressed at the ceremony. He stood silent throughout most of it and said, stone-faced, just how great a woman Julia had been and that he found happiness in knowing that her suffering was over and that he knew they would see each other again. This was, of course, a show of his love, but it didn't have the power of what I later saw. He wanted nothing to do with the reception—asides from having a few cigars with his old buddies from the factory he'd done thirty years at, he was mostly out of sight.

When the reception was over and I visited his home, I couldn't help but ask why he'd been off. Foolishly I figured he would tell me something about how he just couldn't bear to talk about it.

"Didn't want to talk to her fuckin' family. Most annoying, shrill people you've ever met—and so dramatic, too. Like a pack of fuckin' gypsies. No, if I wasn't talking to the boys or trying to get some piss out of this damn bladder of mine, I was going to put all my energy into staying away from those bats. I swear, Julia was the only one of them I could stand to be around for more than ten minutes."

We were sitting in his study—a strange outbuilding he'd erected himself when he got sick of smoking outside in the winter. It's always been a wonderful place; decorated with bumper stickers ("Work Harder-Millions on Welfare Depend on You!," "Crazy Old Fucker Onboard," "Bush & Cheney '04," etc.), posters, and a couple of very tall, very wide, absolutely packed bookshelves. At the center of it, on the far wall from the heavy steel door, was his desk—on which he drew comics, wrote angry letters to politicians and retail managers, and had created his bestselling kids' novels. I sat on the orange cloth chair across from his own black seat, and had a cigar with him as we talked.

"So why aren't you smoking in the house now? You can do that now."

"Nah." He shook his head. "The house is still hers as much as it is mine." He paused for a minute. "Plus, I wouldn't want to cover up her smell. Y'know how everybody's got their own smell if you stay around them for long enough? Well, everybody except guys like me. We all smell like old cigars and whiskey. But ladies. Ladies always have their own smell. Her smell isn't something I want to get rid of just yet."

"Huh."

"Yeah, yeah, fuck off. It makes sense if you've been married for almost sixty years."

"No I mean, it makes sense. Just didn't have much else to say."

"Feh. Funny thing is; I can't even describe her smell. Doesn't smell like anything but Julia. If I ever smelled it anywhere else I'd just assume it was Julia, or nowadays my brain playing tricks on me."

"I've been meaning to ask you something."

"Fuckin' ask it. I had a girlfriend who did that a lot when I was in high school. 'Can I ask you something?' 'Mind if I ask you a question?'" He said in falsetto. "Just ask it."

"Right. You and Julia really weren't very similar. I mean, she was sweet and she gave cookies to the neighborhood kids and got along with everybody. If you don't put someone in tears, force a kid off your property, or start a verbal argument with the lady at the drugstore in a day it's because you've got laryngitis. Plus, Julia didn't give a damn about politics and got uncomfortable whenever you bothered talking about something that got anyone worked up. Not to mention the fact that she was beautiful as a teenager and you..."

"Alright, alright. Jesus Christ, keep the verbal abuse to a minimum, will you?"

"Right."

"Look, loving somebody's not about having things in common. That's bull shit. I had lots of things in common with lots of people. Girlfriends, my mother, my brothers, people at work. I never loved any of 'em. All a bunch of fuckin' jackasses. Especially my family—using that 'blood is thicker than water' crap to get me to do things for them. Not that I would, unless they were damn polite about it. That metaphor doesn't go past the literal sense at all, boy.

"No, love ain't about having shit in common. It's about understanding each other. Julia and I, we could predict, understand, and sympathize with each other. We couldn't argue because we knew how the argument would go beforehand and it was always pointless. We didn't ever think about cheating on one another because we knew we'd never love anyone the same way—not that fucking around is overrated. If you don't understand your lover, go right ahead. Because if you don't understand them, it's meaningless, and...oi, I'm getting sidetracked. Point is, if you don't understand someone you can't love 'em. End of story."

I nodded, having not looked into his eyes while he ranted—that was a pretty typical thing he did, and it sounded the same, so I was entirely focused on re-lighting my cigar as it had gone out. But when I looked up, I saw tears in the two brown eyes that had seen so many incomprehensible things over the decades.

"I understood Julia." He said again. "That's all that mattered...that matters."