The Book of Joe

a crawl in my father’s hospital room. Try as they might, the seconds are unable to overtake the measured beeping of the heart monitor. The day is a run-on Henry James sentence that makes no sense, punctuated by small talk, bathroom breaks, and trips to the temperamental coffee machine down the hall. It is unclear to me whether we’re waiting for our father to wake up or to die, but it’s almost beside the point, as the ma chinery seems specifically engi neered to allow neither but to simply sustain him in this mechanical purgatory. Cindy, who left to take the twins to school soon after I arrived, returns around noon to bring us some pizza. Having never been married, I’m not equipped to decipher the nature of the glances that pass between Cindy and Brad, quick, intense looks bursting with angry nuance.
    Brad leaves to walk her back to the elevators and returns looking troubled and even further deflated. Something is definitely going on there.
    At around five-thirty, some imperceptible variation in the beeps and hisses of our father’s life support systems apparently signals to Brad that it’s time to knock off for the evening. He conducts a quick conference with the nurse on duty, and then we leave.
    “Nice car,” Brad says, getting into the passenger seat of the Mercedes, the leather farting impudently against his jeans.
    “Thanks,” I mumble self-consciously.
    “Must have set you back some.”
    I groan inwardly. No good will come of this conversation.
    Mercedes dealerships should have a back room they take you to after you sign the papers in the showroom, with plush carpeting and sofas upholstered in the same rich leather used in the cars, where an instructor gives a small workshop, over gourmet coffee and muffins, on the social intangibles of owning a luxury car, the etiquette and so forth. For sixty-eight thousand dollars, it’s the least they can do. Then maybe I would feel equipped to handle the predicament it is my fate to continually confront as a novice Mercedes owner. If I agree with my brother’s assessment, I’m being patronizing. If I say “not really,” I’m showing off. Until you have money, you think it’s the answer to everything, and only once you have it do you realize that it’s just a whole new set of questions, the only difference being that now you have to keep them to yourself, because no one’s going to sympathize. I grunt something unintelligible and hope we can leave it at that.
    “You hungry?” Brad says.
    “I could eat.”
    There are only two places worth eating at in Bush Falls.
    One is the Duchess Diner, right on Stratfield Road, and the other is the Halftime Pub, a combination sports bar and pub frequented primarily by the many former athletes living in the Falls. The Halftime Pub has the added distinction of serving the best steaks in northern Connecticut.
    “You want to get a steak?” I ask, since we’re fairly close to Halftime.
    “Nah,” Brad says. “I’m more in the mood for something light. Let’s just hit the Duchess.”
    “Come on,” I say. “My treat.”
    “You can treat me at the Duchess,” he says, looking uncomfortable.
    I can’t remember a time when Brad preferred anything to a Halftime steak, but I let it go, reminding myself that when you haven’t been around for seventeen years, it’s probably prudent to operate under the assumption that things might have changed somewhat while you were gone.
    The Duchess is decorated in classic Diner. The benches in the booths are upholstered in maroon vinyl, the tables laminated in a shiny, speckled Formica finish. Beyond the booths is a long bar with nine spinning stools for single diners, and behind that is the kitchen. If the place has changed at all since I left, the differences are too subtle for me to detect.
    The waitress behind the counter is Sheila Girardi, who was a grade behind me in school and who played the lead in every school play and sang and danced in every talent show. “Hey, Goff,” she says with a familiar smile. “Goff ” has been Brad’s nickname ever since junior high. Whenever Brad executed a particularly spectacular move or hit a clutch basket, the nickname would reverberate against the walls of the gymnasium in a vocal frenzy. “Goff! Goff! Goff! Goff!” I’d sit in the stands, cheering Brad on, dreaming of the day when it would be me to whom the frenzied cheers referred. But I never made the team, and no one ever shouted Goff for me. And so I remain Joe