During the long evening that Wheezer slept through, Andrew and Bryson updated me on Forsterville and on themselves. Forster’s Fine Furniture had gone out of business back when Mom and I were still enduring the indignities of Wicked and Harm on Smoke Vine Street in Jewel.
“Forster’s downfall can be summed up in three words,” Andrew said. “ ‘China is cheaper.’ We held on longer than most, but it was swift and merciless when it hit. It killed Grandpop. His factory was his family, his preferred family, actually. His employees were his children, his preferred children. He handed out the severance checks himself, crying the entire time, and then came home and collapsed. We buried him five months later. There were occasional renters, who ended up doing more damage than good, until finally someone left a coffee machine on and burned down an entire wing. By then, Granny was gone, having got Shelby through his disaster—this was before the cancer, but since it’s not strictly a medical subject, he’ll probably want to tell you himself—and Bryson and I had taken the marriage vows twice, first a civil service in North Carolina, and then the following year, when it became the law of the land, we had a ceremony here at the house. Shortly after that, we were walking around the empty factory, inspecting the abandoned machinery, debating whether we should sell to someone who wanted to gut it and turn it into condos, when Bryson had his idea. We could make it into a museum. Today’s public doesn’t want too much reality, Bryson said, they’re happier with simulations and reenactments. They like their reality broken into manageable pieces and then stylishly arranged for them as an entertainment. So that’s what we’re doing. Bryson even got us a state grant, and the building was already on the historical register, which helped. We’re both accountants, that’s how we met, but Bryson has all the creative savvy. It’s going to be a Furniture Factory Museum, with rental spaces for custom-furniture makers if they’re willing to ply their craft while people watch. And woodworking courses, with credits from the community college. And we’ve sent out a call that we’re buying fine old pieces made at Forster’s, and we’ve already got some in hand: the idea being that we’ll hold contests for woodworkers to duplicate these pieces, the way painters sit in front of old masterpieces and copy them. And we’re having an old film digitalized—it’s the factory workers doing their various jobs and talking about it. Grandpop had it shot back in the early nineties, and the museum-goers will watch that first in a comfortable screening room.”
“My mom was at Forster’s in the nineties. I wonder if she’s in it.”
“We’ll send you a copy, let’s make a note. Wouldn’t that be something?”
The second day, the first full day I was to be there, Wheezer stayed in bed without his baseball cap. They had made the downstairs sunroom into his bedroom and Tobias had the guest room next door. A hardly visible stand of fine hair was making a comeback on Wheezer’s scalp.
“Come here, Marcus, I want you to feel it.”
I sat down on the edge of his bed and ran my palm respectfully across the new growth. Naturally I thought of the last time I had touched his hair, gathering it into a silky clump so I could hit his face better.
“Bryson says it feels like petting a baby rabbit. How does it feel to you?”
“I’ve never petted a rabbit. Maybe putting your hand down on new grass?”
“Let me guess. Drew and Bryson have got as far as touching on ‘Shelby’s disaster,’ then one of them said, ‘No, no, that’s outside of our medical guidelines, he’ll want to tell you about that himself.’ ”
“How did you know?”
“I lie here and read people’s minds. Drew is so at one with himself he goes whole stretches forgetting he exists as an individual. He plans the meals, pays the bills, and thinks up more things for them to do at the Furniture Factory Museum. Bryson goes around plotting happy little surprises for Drew. Tobias wonders if he’ll be able to register in time for courses in the fall, then feels guilty for having the thought, and rushes in to bring me a fresh glass of shaved ice or a smoothie and ask if I want a backrub.”
“Are you sure you’re not just imagining what they might be thinking because you know them so well?”
“Oh, either way, Marcus. My point is, the mind doesn’t use one-thousandth of its powers. It can be all over the place simultaneously and go down roads you didn’t even know existed. I’ve learned that through being sick and all the drugs that go with it and from my coke and heroin era and even when I tried and failed to kill myself.”
“Oh, Wheezer.”
“Yes, that was my ‘disaster.’ However, I hate to say it, Marcus, but when you’re high you get glimpses of other ways your wonderful mind can operate. That’s one reason people keep doing drugs. Do you remember how we’d tell each other ‘trues’?”
“I certainly do.”
“You used to do research in order to dig up stories to shock me. Van Gogh handing his sliced-off ear to a prostitute. That’s what I was leading up to, telling you a true about the awful year I spent with my mother. I’d flunked out of college here, so in a rare moment of motherliness she invited me to live with her in Boca Raton and try the local community college. Well, to keep it nice and short, I dropped out after a couple of months and went to work for a contractor. Basic grunt jobs, like climbing on a roof and removing old tiles, doing coffee runs, picking up supplies, but I loved the outdoor work and I loved the paycheck. The contractor had a sixteen-year-old daughter named Cricket, who brought him lunch every day on her bicycle; she was too young to drive. She was a user and a dealer, still in high school, very small and smart and irresistible, she was an awesome little creature, and we fell in love and she introduced me to her wares. Then one night when we were together she didn’t wake up from an overdose and when I woke up I was devastated. It was clear she was dead, and I tried to join her. But I cut the wrong way. If you ever get serious about cutting your wrists, do it lengthwise, not crosswise. But you’d know things like that, being a doctor. Anyway, Mother said she’d raised one queer and one junkie and she was packing it in. Actually, she hadn’t raised me, but I was too despondent to contradict her. Granny came and got me and brought me back to life in this house and then died. Drew had paired up with Bryson by then and they’d started work on their Factory Museum. I went to work for the contractor they hired to do the renovations. As I said, outdoor work suits me and I would still be at it if I hadn’t come down with this children’s cancer.”
“The cutoff age for it is usually around thirty, though I met one man in his sixties who had it.”
“Did he survive?”
“To be honest, I don’t know. It was at the end of my oncology rotation.”
“How much longer do you have to go to school before you can hang out your shingle?”