So Long, Chester Wheeler(44)

Chapter Fourteen:




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Judgy

When I woke up and stepped out of the bedroom and into the main body of the RV, Chester was looking at himself in a hand mirror. It must have been in one of the drawers he could reach. I didn’t know which one, and I didn’t know why Chester had kept a mirror in the RV when there was one over the bathroom sink. I didn’t know much of anything that morning. I think I wasn’t fully awake.

“I want you to do me a couple of favors,” he said when he saw I was up.

“Depends on the favors.”

“I want you to set me up to shave like you did that first day at home. And then I want you to bring me a bowl of warm water and a washcloth and a towel, and a fresh change of clothes. And go away and give me some time to work all that out. I need to clean up as much as I can. I want to take what we used to call a navy bath in my day.”

“Like a sponge bath.”

“Yeah. Like that. I haven’t showered for a really long time.”

“That is so true,” I said.

“And my toothbrush, of course. So will you do all that for me?”

“Absolutely,” I said. “It would be my pleasure.”

He seemed a little surprised by my good attitude, but he made no comment.

I laid a towel over his lap and brought him shaving cream and a razor. Filled a bowl with water and placed it on the portable table by his side.

“Do I have to shave with cold water?” he asked me, sounding mostly like Old Chester. “Or did you remember to turn on the water heater this time?”

“I remembered. That’s not a mistake a person makes twice. Now I’ll go shower and dress, and when I get out, I’ll set up that navy bath and make myself scarce.”

“Thank you,” he said.

In my head I thought, That’s two. I was definitely keeping a scorecard for Chester 2.0.

As I was walking back to the shower he said, “Maybe you could go have coffee with Sue while I get ready.”

“Kind of early, though. I don’t want to wake her. But I’ll take a walk if I need to.”

“Thank you,” he said again.

I marked the scorecard a second time in just minutes, thinking, Wow. We are really on a roll.



As it turned out, all the curtains had been opened in the house, and I could see Sue puttering around in the kitchen. I made my way up her walkway carrying her bowl and spoon, both clean, and she saw me and waved, and came to the door.

“You look rested,” she said. “It’s about time.”

“I slept a lot.”

“Coffee?”

“Yes, please.”

I followed her into the kitchen and sat. There was a longhaired calico cat sitting on the table and he—or she—stared at me with a blank expression. I stared back.

“What do you take in it?” Sue asked.

“Black is fine.”

She set a mug in front of me and shooed the cat off the table. Then she fetched her own coffee from the counter by the sink and sat across from me. She looked a little edgy. I didn’t figure I blamed her.

“So are we taking bets on how this is going to go this morning?” she asked me.

“I’m betting on this session being less of a disaster.”

“Where is he now?”

“He’s in the RV getting ready. He wanted to shave and take a sponge bath, which is why I’m putting my money on less disastrous. It’s unusual for him to think about how he’s coming across to other people. Right now he’s aware that he doesn’t want to offend on a purely physical level. We’ll see if that carries over into that dreaded moment when he opens his mouth.”

She held up two crossed fingers and then sipped her coffee in silence for a minute or two.

It struck me that we were oddly comfortable with each other after only twenty-four hours of acquaintance. It felt like visiting a family member I hadn’t seen for a long time, which was—let’s face it—an odd way to feel about anybody from Chester Wheeler’s past.

“Listen, that thing I told you yesterday . . . ,” she began.

She didn’t have to say which thing, and I didn’t have to ask.

I pantomimed zipping my lip.

“Thank you,” she said. “It’s a personal thing to him, and I know he’d be upset that I mentioned it. I’m still not really sure why I did that.”

“He makes you want to lash out and hurt him,” I said. “You get so tired of being hurt by him and it’s hard not to hit back.”

“That’s a good observation.”

She sipped in silence for another minute, her mind seeming far away. After a time she shook herself back to the moment, as if trying to wake up.

“Well, anyway,” she said, “I should get going on those waffles.”

I watched her work for what might have been three minutes, or it might have been ten.

Then my cell phone rang.

At first I was surprised I had even remembered to bring it into the house with me. It was in my shirt pocket, but it had ended up there without any conscious thought on my part. I lifted it out and glanced at its screen.

The caller was one Chester Wheeler.