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It’s Understandable

Joseph Bodie

    So this guy is walking downtown and he sees his friend. Only his friend has this big, round, orange head.
    So he goes up to him and he says, “Hey, Bill?”
    And his friend goes, “Hey, man. What’s up?”
    And he’s like, “Yeah, uh, what is up? What’s with the big, round, orange head?”

    It is 1996. Sunday, in fact. And as far as Iscot Glivin1 can tell, as he walks from his bedroom, across the living room, and into the kitchen, this Sunday is as common and unremarkable as any other Sunday morning.
    Maggie2 is standing in the kitchen with her pink apron pulled tight around her white nightgown, cooking breakfast. Iscot sits down at the table to the smell of sausage and the pop and sizzle of frying bacon. The standard smells and sounds of early morning marriage. The Sunday edition of the local paper is waiting for him at the table, as usual, and his Ziggy coffee cup is filled with still-steaming black coffee, poured lovingly by Maggie only minutes before he was due to awake.
    Iscot sits down and opens the paper and takes a sip of coffee from his mug. He can hear the droning of a lawnmower and the intermittent barking of a dog and the occasional chirping of the neighborhood birds. The standard sounds of a suburban dawn. Indeed, this Sunday could easily be confused with any other Sunday morning.
    Until the phone rings.
    Iscot, still holding the paper, glances first at the phone and then at Maggie, still stationed at the stove, and she in turn looks at Iscot, the phone, Iscot again, and then shrugs and begins to wipe her hands on her apron. Iscot shakes his head and holds up one hand to tell Maggie not to bother, that he will attend to this interruption.
    Iscot sets down the paper, presses both hands on the table, and stands up. He walks over to the wall and picks up the receiver.
    “Hello.”
    “Hello, Mr. Glivin? This is Doctor Carver3. How are you?”
    “I’m fine,” Iscot says holding the phone against his ear and looking at Maggie, shrugging this time his shoulders.
    “Good, good. Listen, Iscot, I have some unfortunate news. Your father has passed,” the doctor says in an official, almost nonchalant tone that would normally be reserved for announcing some trivial piece of information such as the arrival of the mail. The kind of tone a waiter might use when asking for your drink order. The standard tone of the health care profession.
    “It’s understandable,” Iscot says, nodding his head a few times.
    And a low static hum continues the conversation for a minute or two.
    “Iscot, he fought hard. And long. With the kind of cancer he had, it’s amazing he held on as long as he did.”
    Iscot stands holding the phone, glancing at Maggie and the paper and his not-so-steaming cup of coffee, as if each were a place he would rather be. But however desiring his glances, they are brief, lingering on each object only momentarily, as if he is unsure or incapable of deciding where, if anywhere, he should be.
    “Iscot, are you there?”
    “I am.”
    “Well, listen, if you need anything, anything at all, you let me know. Just give me a call or stop by the hospital. Take care, Iscot. I’m...I’m sorry for your loss.”
    Iscot hangs up the phone and sits back down at the table. He begins to flip through the paper, turning the pages with a slow, resigned flick of his wrist. He stops when he reaches the comics section and notices a Ziggy cartoon. He looks at the paper and cocks his head and then looks at his coffee mug. Iscot picks up the coffee mug and stares at it and begins to smile. The comic strip and his coffee mug have the same caption.
    “Iscot, who was that on the phone?”

    “Well, you’re not going to believe this, but I swear it’s true,” the guy’s friend says. “I found this lamp on the beach the other day. I rubbed it and out pops this genie, right. And he grants me three wishes. So for the first wish, I wished for more money than I could ever spend in my life. And that’s how I got that car over there and this nice suit and, well, that’s what I’m doing downtown today. Shopping.”

    It is 2001. Tuesday, in fact. Iscot sits in his boss’ office in a metal fold-out chair. His boss sits behind a desk in front of him. Stacks of paper, a computer, and a telephone populate the surface of the desk and metal file cabinets line the walls. A placard on the desk displays the name Michael Guyer.4 There are no pictures anywhere and there is a window behind the desk, from which the parking lot can be seen.
    “Iscot, this is not easy for me. You’ve been here how long now? 20 years?”
    Michael Guyer looks at him expectantly.
    Iscot blinks.
    Three times.
    “Well,” Michael Guyer says and takes a deep breath, “Iscot, we have to let you go. It’s true that you’ve never missed a day, never called in sick, and you’re always the first to arrive and one of the last to leave. It’s the extensions you grant to these people, Iscot. You have the highest approval percentage of any welfare officer we have working here. It’s not only that it’s the highest. It’s that...it’s a hundred percent, Iscot. And that’s exactly the problem. We’ve been evaluating you for some time now, monitoring you, in hopes that this would change. But it hasn’t. It’s been unfortunately consistent. I’m sorry, Iscot. But we have to let you go.”
    “It’s understandable,” Iscot says, nodding his head a few times.
    “Well, I’m...I’m glad you see it that way, Iscot,” the boss says, his brow furrowed, one eye squinted, the tone of his voice the undulating pitch of incredulity. “You have until the end of the day to clear your desk. There will be a severance package as well. Again, I am sorry.”
    Iscot stands and shakes his boss’ hand and leaves the office. He walks past the rows and rows of cubicles and desks and papers and computers and doors which lead to more hallways and more rooms just like this one. The standard scenery of business. He walks past his own desk and into the elevator.
    Iscot stands inside and the door closes slowly and mechanically and with a sound as if the elevator itself just sighed.
    Iscot pushes the button for the ground floor lobby and notices a piece of paper someone has taped to the wall and he smiles. It is a Ziggy comic cut from a newspaper. It has the same caption as his coffee mug.

    “And for my second wish, I wished for a beautiful woman to share all of my newfound fortune. And that’s how I met Charlene over there and we were married a few weeks ago and I’m pretty happy with everything.”

    It is 2013. Thursday, in fact. It is most assuredly unlike any other Thursday Iscot has ever experienced. He has never been in the hospital before, not once in all his life. But for the past few days, he has been bedridden, confined to a small, windowless room. The resort of the infirm. Maggie has not left his side.
    The door opens and Doctor Carver walks into the room and Maggie quickly looks up, her eyes are worn red and weary from the worry of the past few days, but now seem to coruscate; perhaps it is the tears, perhaps it is the hope kindled from the first sign of someone other than a nurse.
    “Hello, Iscot. Maggie,” Doctor Carver says, holding a grey, metal clipboard in his hands, at which he repeatedly glances. “How are you both?”
    “We’re fine,” Maggie says, clutching Iscot’s hand with hers so tight her knuckles are white and his hand a shade of red. “We’re worried. I’m worried. What’s...what’s...”
    Doctor Carver takes a deep breath and takes off his glasses and slowly taps the clipboard against his leg. “It’s cancer.”
    Maggie lets loose Iscot’s hand and covers her face with both of her hands and begins to sob slow, wrenching, intermittent sobs that shake and wrack her entire body, her hair shrouding her face in red curls.
    “It’s the same cancer your father had, Iscot. Genetics may be a factor. We don’t know.”
    “It’s understandable,” Iscot says, nodding his head a few times.
    “We’ll do everything we can. We’ll start chemo tomorrow. I’m not going to lie to you, Iscot. Early detection is crucial and we don’t have that luxury on our side this time. But your father was a fighter and I know you are too. I’ll stop by later on today to see if you need anything.”
    Doctor Carver turns and opens the door and Maggie jumps from the chair and runs to him, one hand still covering her face. He puts his arm around her shoulder and they walk out of the room, Doctor Carver issuing quiet condolences.
    Iscot reaches over and grabs his coffee mug that Maggie brought from home and looks at the caption and starts to smile.

    “And for my third wish, and this is where I think I went horribly, horribly wrong...”

    It is 2015. Saturday, in fact. Iscot is still in the same room at the hospital. The cancer that consumed and claimed his father has metastasized and the chemo stopped some time ago. He is a frail and small man now, as if a mighty redwood had grown in reverse, shrunk to a thin sapling.
    Maggie is by his bed. The machines around him beep and breathe and the nurses walk the hall and enter occasionally to check the tubes which deliver precious nourishment and morphine to his voracious veins. The scenery of the end.
    “Iscot...” Maggie says.
    Iscot lost his voice some time ago, silenced by cancer and morphine and pain. He has no words left. But he looks at Maggie and ends her sentence before it begins, silences her with a smile sympathetic and warm and understanding. The standard Ziggy coffee cup smile.
    The machines around him cease beeping and breathing, silenced by inevitability, and the footsteps of a nurse stop abruptly as the sound of a coffee cup connecting with hard floor echoes through the room.

    “...I wished for a big, round, orange, head.”

 

 

    1th 1950 at 10:37 am at a hospital in New York to loving parents Martha and Gary Glivin. Iscot’s birthing is remarkable because it set the new world record for shortest time in labor, previously held at 14 minutes and 33 seconds. It was a close call, though, and if births were viewed and contested in the same manner as the Kentucky Derby, Iscot’s would have been a neck and neck finish. An official team was ready and willing to review the tapes and make an official ruling, thereby settling any future debates before they began. Martha and Gary Glivin declined. They were happy enough to have brought a bustling, healthy baby boy into the world. Martha more so perhaps, glad to have the whole ordeal over and done with, and so quick at that.
    2nd 1951 at 9:07 am to loving parents Denise and Darren MacGuffin. A pretty routine event as far as the birth of a child is concerned. At first squeal from baby Maggie, Father Darren MacGuffin promptly shoved a pink, it’s-a-girl cigar into his newborn baby daughter’s mouth and lit it, much to the horror and disapproval of all parties present. Denise and Darren were divorced shortly after. Darren always regretted his decision.
    3rd 1943 at 3:45 pm to loving parents Jill and James Winston Carver, Junior. James Winston Carver, Junior was a doctor; James Winston Carver, Senior was a doctor, and his father before him and his father before him, and so on ad infinitum. Jill Carver was a hairstylist and owned her own salon, which she inherited from her mother, who inherited it from her mother, and so on ad infinitum. James Winston Carver III chose to follow his father’s profession.
    2th1948 at 7:38 am to indifferent mother Anna Guyer. Relegated to the states care promptly after birth. Michael was raised in numerous foster homes by numerous foster parents. And rather atypically, he turned out just fine. Well-adjusted and purposed, he chose to enter the public service profession in an attempt to better the lives of those less fortunate, those whom he easily identified with. After many years, however, the inevitable and viral apathy so often cultivated from abundant bureaucracy set in. He goes through the motions, pantomiming himself, dreaming an idyllic retirement. In his spare time, he plays golf.



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