Invincible 3: The Lesson

This is part three in a seven-part serial that will run every Tuesday and Thursday for the remainder of March. This piece was included in full in our recent collection of spiritual writing, Spiritus Oppidum, Vol. 1. Past and future online installments can be found here.

Despite my demanding schedule, I made a concerted effort to visit my family as often as possible. By this time my grandfather was declining sharply, and although I wouldn’t have traded one moment of the time I spent getting put into checkmate by that man, I was never comfortable watching him slowly shrivel away into a shell of the man he once was, one who needed assistance just to eat or shit, one who never failed to smile his Sears and Roebuck smile and be positive even when at his worst. The stubborn old bastard, even at the very end, honestly believed the pain that he lived with day in and day out to be a secret from those around him. Watching him go like that made me feel a medley of sadness, anger, and helplessness. Seeing this was what finally decided my area of specialty.

At home for the holidays, a mere two weeks before grandfather passed, Dad and I were at the town dump (it wasn’t a “recycling center” back then. In those days people weren’t afraid to call a spade a spade), emptying our barrels into the burn pit. Noticing I was out of sorts, he asked me what the matter was.

“Something having to do with your grandpa, Moe?”

To this I could only give a sullen nod.

He wiped his palms on the knees of his overalls, nudged his ball cap a notch further back on his head, and said “Comes a time for everyone. You and me, too, someday. Dad’s lived a good long life.” He paused then, considering. Grabbing me by the shoulders, he turned me to face him, looking me squarely in the eyes. “Can’t let it get you down, kiddo.” We had just had lunch before going to the dump, and I could smell the mayonnaise and onions on his breath.

“Ain’t fair, Dad, that’s all. He’s suffering, and there isn’t a damn thing I can do about it! Jesus, he’s falling apart right before our eyes!” I felt the corners of my own eyes begin to sting but resisted it. After all, I was in college. College boys don’t start bawling in front of their fathers…right?

“Ain’t a damn thing any one of us can do, Moe. Not even those Christless goddamn doctors.” Hate, as fleeting as it was unabashed, rippled over his face as that last word came out. “All you can do – all we can do – is keep doing exactly what we’re doing.” Another pause, as he looked away. Then, nodding to himself, he fetched the last of the barrels out of the bed, turned, and upended it in the pit. I loaded the empty ones into the bed of the truck and made as if to climb back into the warmth of the cab, thinking Dad was following suit. Instead, I heard this: “Come over here a minute, Moe.”

“Huh?” was all that came out as I turned towards the sound of his voice, one hand on the passenger door handle. I expected to see him standing there, perhaps leaning on the now-closed tailgate. Instead, what I saw was my father making a rather clumsy ascent up and out of the pit. He stumbled at the rim of it and I thought he was going back down, but he pinwheeled his arms, saving it at the last moment. That’s when I saw he had something in his hand.

“I said come back here.” The thing in his hands bore a strong resemblance to a bundle of rags. “Mind me now, son.”

I sauntered back, my breath puffing out in clouds. As I got closer, I saw what the bundle of rags really was: a filthy, ragged old doll, one of the ones with a head, arms, and legs made of plastic and a plush torso tying them all together. From time to time, Dad would do or say things that seemed strange at first, but there was always a point to what he did or said, a lesson. Entirely unable to guess what that point might be, I tried humor to mask my confusion. “Nice dolly you got there, Daddy,” I said, half-smiling. Not only was I puzzled, but getting cold, too. The temperature had been dropping since we’d been there, and the leaden sky was spitting snow once again.

Rather than acknowledge my comment, he tossed the doll to me. I fumbled it but recovered, holding it at chest-height and arm’s length, as if it were a dirty diaper or a rotten fish. “This thing’s gross,” I protested.

“Never mind that, Moe. Just look at it for a minute.”

“Huh? What for?”

“Just do it. Take a good long look at that thing.”

I did. What was no doubt once a child’s prized possession, something someone went everywhere with, was now a ruin. Indentations and paint that had once suggested a face were now gouged, scratched, or worn clear through in most places. Teeth marks from a small dog peppered the arms and legs. The remains of a pestiferous flower-print dress hung in strips from an elastic ring about its neck, a neck which now hung askew at a grotesque angle.

“What am I looking for, Dad?” During my inspection, I saw nothing but a discarded toy with a creepy and out-of-place smile, at once both innocent and mischievous, on the remains of its face.

“You get a good look at it?” He asked, giving me a cool, measuring look, daring me to say yes if I didn’t mean it. But I did.

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. Now give it here.”

I handed the doll back, glad to be free of its mangy weight. Then he did something I'll never forget. He turned and drop-kicked that fucking thing clear across to the other side of the trash pit. An audible grunt escaped him, mixing with the twin gunshots from his knees in a symphony of discomfort. He turned to me then, fluffy snowflakes piling up on the brim of his ball cap, some even caught in those bushy eyebrows of his, and this sight – coming on the heels of what he had just done – was too much. I started to giggle. In doing so, I thought I had figured out what he was trying to do: cheer me up. Fathers tend to do that when they see their offspring unhappy, right?

"There, goddammit," he said, hitching his pants. "Now follow me."

We walked over to it and then stood, side by side, staring down at that godforsaken thing with its arms and legs now jumbled and tangled, looking like a sadist’s game of Twister. I didn’t dare speak. I was still clueless as to where this was going, but Dad enlightened me. Pointing a gnarled finger at the object of our attention, he said “Take another good look at that thing, Moe. Tell me what you see.”

I did. Still looked like the same piece of castoff it had before. The snowflakes were getting bigger and coming down faster, starting to accumulate on both the ground and that poor doll despite our proximity to the embers in the pit. Clueless, I shook my head.

“I got nothing, Dad. All I see is a filthy beat-to-shit old kid’s toy you just punted twenty or thirty feet for no apparent reason, with its head mostly ripped off its shoulders.”

“Best you got?” said his mouth; you’re in the process of disappointing me said his face.

“Best I got.”

At that, he let a sigh hiss past his teeth in a white plume, reminding me of those talk balloons you’d see in a Peanuts comic strip. “Kids,” he muttered, shaking his head. The word sounded like an old dog turd in his mouth. He fell to a crouch, his knees popping in unison again, and since he had put one of his calloused, canned ham-sized mitts on my shoulder as he did so, I went to my own crouch beside him.

The gnarled finger popped out again, this time pointing at that lolling plastic head. “See that face?” Up until then, I had been, well…humoring him, I suppose. But now his tone told me he was losing patience.

“Yes, I see it. I’m not blind, Dad, I just don’t know what the hell you’re driving at.”

“Describe that goddamn thing’s face to me, Mister Big College Education.”

That hurt. It was the first potshot he had ever taken at my going to college, the first even remotely off-color comment.

“It’s a plastic doll head. There’s indentations that are molded into the plastic, and then painted to look like eyes, a nose and nostrils. A mouth. The paint that used to be its lips is almost completely gone. Just like the paint for the eyes and everything else. Some of the hair is still there. The thread that used to join the neck to the body is almost completely ripped away, except for six or seven stiches by the looks of it. The plastic used to be pink. Now it’s all scuffed and stained and faded. It’s snowing, but the snow is melting and running off. Makes it look almost like it’s crying.” I felt ridiculous, awkward. I sounded like a detective speaking into a recorder as he describes the scene of a crime, or a doctor speaking to the cameras as he or she reports the condition of a corpse during an autopsy. But for all that, it really did look like it was crying. And there was that creepy smile that had bothered me from the start, so I made mention of that as well.

When I was finished, I looked at my father in the hopeful way a pupil, believing he had just successfully solved a difficult equation, would look at their professor. Snowflakes danced and whirled their way to the ground between us, and it occurred to me then how little things had changed since I was a child. Here I was, in my early twenties and on my way to a college degree and (hopefully) a career as a chemist, yet when the chips were down, it was the same old scenario: father giving instruction and me taking it as best I could, eager to please him. In that moment my love for him swelled so much I thought I would burst.

He looked at me and -- what a relief! -- began to smile again. “You just hit the nail right on the head, Moe. Maybe you ain’t as blind as I was beginning to think you were.” His hat brim had become drifted with snow. “You said it yourself a minute ago. I just pulled this thing out of a smoldering pile of garbage. Then, I kicked the sunuvabitch clear 'cross it. And there it was, lyin’ inna heap, starin’ at the sky with its friggin head torn damn near right off’n its shoulders, snow pilin’ up in its face...and even after all that, what was it you said it was doing?”

“Smiling.”

“And what about the snow?”

“The snow?” At first it was a question. Then, with more conviction, “Yeah. The snow. It’s building up a little, but for the most part it’s…” I trailed off. Understanding and realization had come together, hitting me like a physical blow. It was like looking at one of those trick pictures the nuns give you in parochial school, where at first you see only random nothingness. Until someone points out a horse, or an old woman, or Jesus Christ Our Lord. After that, well…

After that you can’t not see.

“It’s what, kid?” I could hear the smile in his voice.

“It’s not sinking in. It’s sloughing off,” I said slowly, more to myself in affirmation that to him. “Melting. Melting and rolling right off.” Briefly, I found myself unable to take my eyes off that miserable old thing and its washed-out Sardonicus smile.

The hand on my shoulder squeezed. “Give the man a cigar,” chuckled my father. “In fact, give him the Kewpie doll and the brand-new Electrolux.” Using my shoulder, he stood up. I did the same.

“Take a lesson, son,” he said, again with his hands on my shoulders and his eyes looking straight into mine. “Don’t ever forget it. Life ain’t all cake and butterflies. Some of it’s pretty goddamn lousy. Watchin’ someone you love go down the tubes, especially the way your grandfather is, is prob’ly right at the top of the list of shitty life experiences. Worse still, you know he ain’t gonna be the last one you lose.” The bill of his cap shaded his eyes slightly; despite that, I could see the misty, faraway sheen they had – not to mention the tears as they began to build up in the corners – as he said these things. Seeing Dad’s eyes water made mine do the same. Monkey see, monkey do, right?

“I know,” I said.

“Having a hell of a time with it myself, tell you the truth. But it’s just the way of things. Not a damn thing to be done about it. Except what I just showed you. World’s a hell of a place and sometimes things really do get worse before they get better. But just do like this doll,” – again with the finger – “and don’t let it bring you down. Don’t let it beat you, leastways not permanently. Come hell or high water, kiddo, just keep smiling. Keep smiling and let it – and by “it” I mean everything, all the shit the world can muster– roll right on off.” Just as he finished, a solitary tear traced its way down his stubbly cheek.

It was the first time I ever saw my father cry. I’ll never forget that, either. No more than I’ll ever forget the cloying smell of the trash smoldering in the pit, how big and cartoon-fluffy the snowflakes coming down around us were, how the edge of the bill of the Red Sox hat he was wearing was threadbare.

That eight-word lesson I learned from him that day was many years ago, but it - and that ratty old doll he used to teach it to me - have stayed with me ever since.