The Old Goat CHAPTER 19

Something For Over The Couch PART 19 “The Old Goat”

Suddenly I had the obvious answer to a question I never asked myself. My visit to Nena’s restaurant, and her involuntary tears falling into the soup she was stirring when she recognized who I was, made it abundantly clear that she had been in love with my Father. But was he in love with her, and did it contain the answer to his death?

I left the kitchen and went into the dining room of the restaurant, as Nena’s tears continued to drop into the soup she was stirring with her wooden ladle. I ask you, what kind of a conversation could I have had with that woman. She had recognized me as the son of a man she had been intimate with, a man now dead three years. When it comes to memory, time is distance, and both time and distance obscures and finally obliterates the past. Three years is just perhaps sufficient to heal the wounds of love, unless some chance encounter brings everything again to the fore, such was my visit to the restaurant for Nena, and also for myself. So a conversation might have commenced but it was not to be, at least not that afternoon. My mind began the task of reconstructing the conversations between Nena and my Father, three years ago as I sat waiting to depart. He was doing his rounds of collection for the insurance company, and often those visits took half an hour or more. He was simply being polite. His conversations with Nena were all in Italian, of which I knew not a word, and I was not old enough or interested enough to notice those sounds, pauses, and facial expressions that tell more of a conversation than the words alone would convey. And even so, the modulation of the voice, and its music would have certainly been edited, and passed through a filter because of my presence.

What does a child know, and what does a child understand of such a conversation? They understand not a word, and because they understand no words, they manage to eventually understand everything that matters. As I was heading for the door, the voice of the old goat, the harmonica playing drunk, accosted me with his new name for me saying “Don’t go Van GoGo, don’t I know you from someplace? Aren’t you that insurance salesman’s son who died in such tragic circumstances? And right upstairs,” he said, pointing to the ceiling with one hand, and crossing himself with the other. To my surprise I crossed myself as he had done, but it was an involuntary spastic gesture. I tried to walk past him, but he took hold of the sleeve of my coat and tugged on it twice to command my attention. Perhaps you might like to see the room in which he had his ‘heart attack’, he said, screwing up his face, as if he was having trouble focusing his eyes. I did not have to answer this question, and so he pulled me out into the entryway, still holding on to my sleeve. In the entry was a narrow staircase leading to the second floor, and I followed him up the stairs as he led the way, looking over his shoulder twice to make sure I was coming. At the top of the stairs there were two doors facing each other across a landing. My guide stopped for a moment and pointed to the left and said “This is my place, please come in.” The old goat’s apartment did not look like he was expecting visitors. It has more the look and the smell of those barred cells in a zoo where large animals live out their lives pacing from one wall to the other. The furniture was of the same Depression era as in the restaurant. I would like to describe my host’s refrigerator, and let that description stand for the entire room. It was one of those old, stoop shouldered models which was probably white years ago, but now was a tobacco brown color. The handle had accumulated a black halo of flecks of food and grease. It was the kind of stain on an object that is testament to thousands of greasy meals eaten in silence, without even a television for company. The refrigerator, like missing and rotted teeth, especially the ones in the front center, stand as mute testimony to a failed life beyond redemption. And though it is a life failed beyond salvation, still, about once a year, an attempt is made to wash the stain from the refrigerator, but I do not think the goat ever made any attempt to tidy up, never dusted anything, or even swept the floor. He was the type of man that no one could love, except perhaps some long suffering daughter. In the center of his room was a small table, one obviously used for all his meals, and he invited me to have a seat, but there was only one chair at the table. He offered the chair to me with a gesture, and seated himself on the edge of his sofa, a yard away, and, hunching forward in my direction, looked at me expectantly, as if he was my guest, rather than I his. “Beer,” he said, after a long pause, “perhaps you will have some beer?” To this I agreed, to be polite, even though I had never tasted any. At that he jumped up and opened his antique patinated refrigerator, and took out from the interior a quart bottle, half full and dark brown, without any label. Somehow, the brown bottle was shocking to me, perhaps because of my upbringing. I didn’t even know that beer was sold in such a bottle. Then for the first time in my life, I took a sip of that alcoholic beverage and thought, wondering to myself, ‘It tastes like urine, why would people drink urine?’ Ignoring my revulsion I drank it down, one little sip at a time. Meanwhile, as I struggled to drink the beer, my host said nothing to me, and after a while even picked up a magazine and began to absentmindedly look through its pages. I was reminded of Nena’s remark ‘Just ignore him, he is out of his mind,’ and the absurdity of sitting there drinking his beer was so odd that I became restless and thought of simply leaving. Finally he began to say something. “Don’t believe what the doctors are saying about blood clots.” he said, looking up from his magazine. Don’t believe it, don’t believe anything the doctors tell you, have you been vaccinated for polio?” “No, I have not.” I replied. “But it is the law, you have no choice, they will force you.” “No, they won’t because I have…because there is a religious exemption.” “So, you have the religious exemption then, because of your religion?” “Yes.” “So then, you are one of those people who believe in God, and I suppose you think you are sitting there in my chair, at my table, because God has some plan for you, and if when you leave you trip and fall down the stairs that is also part of His plans. Is that what you think then?” Suddenly this stranger had thrust himself by accident directly into the vortex of my mixed up life. The fact that I was not vaccinated for polio, even though I knew a friend in grade school who was a ruin because of it, never entered my head as part of any system of beliefs. In my house polio, like black persons, and the mafia were never mentioned as if they didn’t even exist. But now some stranger was asking me to confront all the contradictions of my life, but he was not a person I would ever be inclined to confide in. I was more likely to pour out my soul’s distress to some stranger on a bus, than talk about my life to an old drunk I had only just met. But having caught me with a hook, he was hoping to reel me in but was interrupted by the door opening and Nena herself walked into the room with a try. On the tray were two bowls of chili. She put one in front of me and the other she handed to the old man on the sofa. After that she went to the sink and began washing the dishes. It was obvious then, that she was the daughter, and she washed the dishes because he knew she would have to.

So then I said, “I am here to find out about my Father’s death, which you said you would tell me about, didn’t you?” I said this loud enough so that I was certain Nena would hear me over the water running in the sink. “Yes, I will tell you all about it. Your father had a heart attack right there in that chair you are sitting in, the very same chair. I think it was painless because all that happened is that his head banged down onto the table, and he fell over onto the floor chair and all.” “That’s not so Pop,” Nena said from the sink, turning off the water, but not turning around. “That was Uncle Ned who died in that chair two years ago, and not Dicky’s father. I told you he is out of his mind,” she said, turning around and addressing me directly. Then I watched her as she made a painful effort to curb her emotion, a knife in one hand, and a washcloth in the other.

—Richard Britell Parts 1 - 18, at Spazifineart.com (short stories)

EDWARD ACKER

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