The Right Thing to Do
Erin Fitzgerald
Wilford Brimley sleeps in a tent in our living room. The tent has
yellow, red, and blue panels. Its about three feet high, and takes
up most of the space between the couch and the love seat. At night
his
legs stick out of the door. Theyre pale and hairless, as one would
expect. He leaves his socks on when he sleeps. Theyre white with
knitted gray toes and heels, and they stay upright around his shins
until morning. I have to step over his feet when I walk to and from
the kitchen.
My cat will get up on her hind legs and meow if I roar at her. I
pat her on the head and tell her she is a good kitty. Thats her
reward.
It took me a little less than a year to train her. “I thought you were
hopeless until I saw that,” Wilford says to me sometimes. “Now,
Im not sure.”
Wilford tries to teach us how to play poker. When he sees what I
have and thinks I should have gone all in, he leans back in his chair
until
it creaks, and he exhales hard through his nose. I put the cards
away and get out Apples to Apples. Im positive hes the one who
puts down
the Shannen Doherty card for “trustworthy.”
My daughter likes to sleep in the tent in our living room. She was
annoyed when Wilford moved in. He tries to make it up to her by
reading Harry Potter aloud while shes playing Skate 3 with
the volume turned down on our Xbox. When Wilford reads, Harry sounds
like
Dumbledore who sounds like Hermione who sounds like the description
of the Forbidden Forest who sounds like a seventy-six-year-old widower
trying to peer around his glasses because I couldnt get him
an eye appointment before next month. “Id tell him to
stop,” my daughter
says, “but
Im
only on book three.”
Robert Duvall is Wilfords
best friend ever. I know from reading Wikipedia that Robert got him acting
jobs when Wilford had been doing
stunt work. “Bobs a great man,” Wilford tells me while
were
waiting for the guy at the deli counter to slice our ham. “You could
do a lot worse than to spend ten minutes every day imagining youre
Bob Duvall.”
Wilfords at a book club meeting when Robert Duvall calls later that
night. “Hey, Mr. Duvall,” I say. “Can I ask you something?”
“Sure, hon,” he says.
“How long did it take for Wilford to get acting jobs on his own?”
I can feel the discomfort drip through the static of my wireless handset.
“Not even the bit parts? Or the infomercials?”
“Dont tell him, sweetheart.” Robert Duvall says, finally. “Its
hard to explain, but I need that bastard as much as he needs me.”
When they talk on the phone, Robert Duvall and Wilford go at it
for hours. On our end, its mostly chuckling. When the cordless
phones
battery dies out, Wilford switches to the wall phone in the kitchen,
the one with the fifteen-foot cord. He takes the handset over into
his tent. When he has to pee, he says, “Bob, I gotta use
the john. Ill be
right back.” He goes into the bathroom and leaves the handset
in the tent. Hes never right back.
Whenever putting Wilfords luggage in the driveway seems like a great
idea, I look for pictures of him on the Internet instead. I look
for pictures from The China Syndrome, in which he played Jack Lemmons
best friend. Wilford was a little older than I am now. Some of his
hair was still sandy blond. I look at those pictures like optical
illusions. After a few minutes, I think I can see why Howard Hughes
hired him as a bodyguard. I know why chickens fight and horses race
to earn his fondness, and I would throw in three of a kind to his
full
house without much anger at all. And I close the Google Image window
before I change my mind.
We test our blood together sometimes. Wilford gives me lancets
because I never remember to fill my prescription. I set my lancet
device
to 1 because my fingers only have one or two visible scars. Wilford
sets
his to 5 because he has been putting little needles into his fingers
for thirty-two years. We load up our devices and cock the mechanisms
back and insert the testing strips into our glucometers. He shoots
first. I dont push my button until I hear the springy click, and
then his exhale.
Return to Archive
|