Gerald Everett Jones's Blog: Gerald Everett Jones - Author, page 3
June 11, 2025
Clifford's Spiral: Chapter 11 (cont'd)
In Clifford's Spiral, the stroke survivor’s past is blurry, and his memories are in pieces. He asks himself:
Who was Clifford Olmstead Klovis?
Chapter 11 (continued)Stroke sufferer Clifford Klovis tries to piece together the colorful fragments of his memories. Some memories are sweeter than others.
His stay with the Bedards was mostly uneventful. The father, Jack, was mostly absent, much in demand because he was the only large-animal vet in the county. Clifford’s contact with him amounted to two suppers, after which the burly, soft-spoken fellow excused himself and went straight to bed. Notably lacking in their dinner-table conversation were any of the expected fatherly questions about Clifford’s college major, his career plans, his family background, or his intentions toward Natalie. Jack and his wife Madeleine did want to know about student life in Paris, on which subject the inexperienced Clifford knew almost as little as they did. Both parents were French-Canadian by birth, and neither had ever traveled back to France. Jack (who may have been born Jacques) spoke with a hint of Quebecois. Madeleine’s accent was plain, flat New England. Clifford would soon learn that her personal manner was just as straightforward.
Over the first night’s dinner of meatloaf, green beans with bacon bits, and mashed potatoes with gravy, Jack asked between mouthfuls, “They take dollars over there?”
“I don’t know,” Clifford said. “I’ll have travelers’ checks.”
“Watch the rate,” he said. “Don’t get gypped. There’s French going back in my family, you know. Smile to your face, stab you in the back. At least, that’s what they’d say about the old-timers. Lumberjacks in Quebec. Why did they come? Ha! Probably criminals.”
He went back to his meal and didn’t say another word before he excused himself with a reassuring wink to Clifford and got up.
Natalie had a younger sister, Suzanne, who from her pictures was blonde and prettier. She was away at a Catholic boarding school in Boston, and other than Natalie’s saying out of her parent’s hearing, “She’s a spoiled brat,” there was no further mention of the cute baby sister.
That night, they put him up in Suzanne’s room. He remembered the horsehair blanket on the bed was a half-inch thick and about as heavy as those lead aprons they use to shield you from X-rays at the dentist’s office.
Clifford hoped Natalie would slip into the room during the night, but it never happened. He didn’t dare make the move into her room himself. Here he had these expectations of bucolic togetherness, and there wasn’t even an opportunity for serious necking. If they went outside to kiss, he feared their lips might freeze together.
He planned to leave early Saturday morning to avoid the Sunday rush on the highways leading back to New York. On Friday night after dinner, Natalie proposed they take a walk.
“It must be pretty cold out there,” Clifford said.
“Damn right,” Natalie said. “It’s forty below!”
“So you’re joking about the walk, right?”
“Not at all. We’ll get bundled up. Complete with mittens and wool scarves wrapped around our noses. We’ll be out for maybe five minutes, but you’ll be able to tell all those French sophisticates what it’s like to step out on a frigid, crystal-blue night in the country, dead still. And you’ll never forget the sound your boots make in the snow.”
When they were both wrapped up like padded furniture, they ventured out on the stoop of the old clapboard farmhouse. As she’d said, the air was perfectly still. The frozen boards of the stairs creaked loudly as they stepped down to a snow-covered walkway.
They wore galoshes with double layers of heavy wool socks. Clifford wore a pair of Jack’s, which were easily two sizes too large. When Clifford took his first step, he understood her remark about the sound. It was like the eerie noise cellophane makes when you crumple it, something like a screech and a crackle. The snow was not wet and not damp, but a kind of exotic, granular material on the surface of some other planet.
“See!” she exclaimed, all muffled.
“Wow!” he replied, and they walked on — screech, screech, screech, screech…
Through those scarves, there was no way for them to have a conversation, much less a wet kiss. The heart-to-heart that Clifford had both anticipated and dreaded didn’t take place.
When they’d gone a short distance marveling at the sound of their footfall, Natalie took his arm to make him stop. She pointed a mitten skyward.
June 8, 2025
Clifford's Spiral: Chapter 11
In Clifford's Spiral, the stroke survivor’s past is blurry, and his memories are in pieces. He asks himself:
Who was Clifford Olmstead Klovis?
Chapter 11Stroke sufferer Clifford Klovis tries to piece together the colorful fragments of his memories. Is it possible in his situation to say life is good?
What Clifford didn’t expect today was a visit from his son. He and Jeremy had their stark differences, just as Clifford had contended with his father. There was no getting along between the generations of male Klovises. Clifford was basking in the sun not long after Myra’s exit when he heard an electric whine, followed by a voice behind him:
“Catching some rays, I think was the slang in your day,” Jeremy quipped.
Jeremy was in his own wheelchair, an electric one, and Clifford thought it grossly unfair that the boy had arrived unannounced. Jeremy was hardly a boy — twenty-eight by his father’s dim reckoning.
Myra should have prepared me.
“They say you can’t speak,” Jeremy said. “And it’s a damn shame because I’m sure you’ve got a lecture for me all pent up in there somewhere.” And he laughed.
As Myra suspected and Jeremy dared hope, he believed his father understood what was going on around him. Based on clinical tests, Christensen — and perhaps the rest of his colleagues — seemed to think Clifford was a dim bulb. But Myra sincerely wanted Clifford to comprehend her advice.
Jeremy wanted — he needed — his father to listen and understand. Over the years, their conversations had been rare, and even then mostly trivial. An introvert himself, the son didn’t have any confidants. At work, his colleagues tended to be even more withdrawn than he was. He hadn’t given up on finding a girlfriend who could overlook his disabilities, and he’d considered hooking up with someone who was similarly impaired, but his love life had been at a standstill for years. His mother would have been eager to give him advice and counsel on any topic he might bring to her, but, to Jeremy, mothering was smothering, and he’d had too much of Eleanor’s worrying and fretting, especially after his accident. Besides, these days she was off on another continent doing a professional job of worrying and fretting about other disadvantaged children.
Jeremy went on, “I was cleaning out your place. It’s not like you’ll be going back there. Oh, and don’t worry about your privacy. My helper was a guy from the street corner who spoke only Spanish, of which I can speak next to none. Ten bucks an hour, and we won’t tell the government. I pointed and he lifted. Your secrets, if you had any, are safe.
“I can’t believe the amount of junk people accumulate over their lifetimes. It’s ridiculous. You go into some antique store, and that stuff is priced like it’s museum artifacts. But you try to unload any of your shit yourself, and nobody wants it. Nobody wants your glitzy stuff! It’s a life lesson, my man.
“You had that executive desk. Was it granddad’s? Solid walnut, nineteen twenties, hand-carved. Big as a fucking subcompact car. Anyhow, I go looking on eBay, and I see other stuff, quite similar actually, and the replicas are going for, like, three grand. So, I think — hello! — maybe we can actually score on this one. I list it, and no takers. A few watchers but — no — fucking — takers. Then I relist it on auction — at a starting price of ninety-nine bucks! Just one bid, any bid, and it’s sold for a laughable price! I’m thinking, At least somebody’s going to pay the freight to take it out of our lives. But no takers! Not one! And here it is something you’ll see on some movie set tomorrow because there aren’t many of them — and who wants to make more? So somebody scored, and maybe they peddled it to the prop guys at the studio, but such was not our luck.
“And the rest of your old stuff? Mountains of it! Files and books and files and — LPs? Are you kidding me? — junk. I called the junk guys, and they charged me half a grand — half a truckload — to haul it all away. Best day of my life, frankly. No more old musty shit to worry about. You, I doubt you’re worried, but just so you know, I did you a favor. A big favor.”
June 4, 2025
Clifford's Spiral: Chapter 10
In Clifford's Spiral, the stroke survivor’s past is blurry, and his memories are in pieces. He asks himself:
Who was Clifford Olmstead Klovis?
Chapter 10Stroke sufferer Clifford Klovis tries to piece together the colorful fragments of his memories. Is it possible in his situation to say life is good?
It was a warm, sunny morning after a weeklong spring thaw. The ground was freshly muddy and not yet green. The funky straw of last season’s Kentucky bluegrass would be mulch for the new sprouts. The air was ripe with rot that would feed the next generation of plants and animals. It was the smell of defrosted dog shit sinking into piles of damp, moldy leaves. It was the smell of death morphing into new life.
Clifford took a deep breath and smiled. Myra had wheeled him out on the veranda and turned his wheelchair to face the glaring sun. Mind you, he didn’t need a wheelchair. He was still ambulatory. He could still cross a room on his own, although unsteadily. But, to prevent injuries from falling, mandatory policy in the place was to wheel patients around when the destination was anywhere outside of their rooms.
It was glorious. The staff had only a vague notion of his quality of life. It probably came down to something like survival with the absence of pain. They used drugs in various forms — injections, drips, and pills — to deal with both. Well, he had survived, and he had no pain to speak of (that is, if he could or would speak of anything). He’d attained the next layer on a human’s hierarchy of needs — namely, a comfort zone. He had shelter and warmth, a bed that was clean and dry (most of the time), recurring hot meals, and — thanks to Myra’s diligence today — the sun on his face. There are exquisitely spoiled family dogs who don’t get as much. Those dutiful animals no doubt fret about their jobs — or their perceived lack of a job: “Am I supposed to guard the baby or the back door? Do I alert the household of all strangers in uniform? What about those shiftless people on the sidewalk who smell bad? Is this some kind of trial period or a long-term gig? If you leave, will you return? Will I eat tonight? Tomorrow?”
As she set the brake on his wheelchair, Myra sat down stiffly in the lawn chair opposite him and leaned in very close. She spoke in a low tone, even though no one else was near enough to hear: “Clifford, I’m going to tell you something, and I want you to give me an eye blink to let me know you know I’m telling you something.”
June 1, 2025
Clifford's Spiral: Chapter 9
In Clifford's Spiral, the stroke survivor’s past is blurry, and his memories are in pieces. He asks himself:
Who was Clifford Olmstead Klovis?
Chapter 9Stroke sufferer Clifford Klovis tries to piece together the colorful fragments of his memories. Lost in the clouds?
It was after Ruth and before Tessa. Clifford was dating Chloe, who worked as an administrative assistant for one of the big consulting engineering firms. Chloe’s work pal was Pam, who was in a committed relationship with Larry, a Vietnam vet who was ten years her senior. Larry was news traffic manager at a local TV station, a tedious job with a graveyard shift. He had a way of making his work sound like high adventure to his barroom buddies.
Larry claimed to have had flying experience in Nam, but he was no fighter pilot. More likely he’d flown a desk, as the jet jockeys say, coordinating Air Force logistics. His job in news traffic demanded much the same skills as he dispatched and tracked helicopter crews to cover highway accidents, car chases, and big thunderstorms. Larry was proud to hold a single-engine private-aircraft license, which was how Clifford came to meet him. Their brief acquaintance added another memorable experience to Clifford’s mental album — and his fear of flying.
May 28, 2025
Clifford's Spiral: Chapter 8
In Clifford's Spiral, the stroke survivor’s past is blurry, and his memories are in pieces. He asks himself:
Who was Clifford Olmstead Klovis?
Chapter 8Stroke sufferer Clifford Klovis tries to piece together the colorful fragments of his memories. Why is he seeing spirals everywhere?
Clifford often had difficulty sleeping. He could fall asleep readily enough, as he did without effort when he’d had little more to say to Hypatia and René. He’d wake, too soon, from active REM sleep after just a few hours. He wished his dreams were more imaginative. There were frequent bathroom themes, locker rooms, and stinky stalls, and he guessed these were merely the mind’s tricks to keep him sleeping when his bladder was full and he’d otherwise want to get up to go relieve himself. He wasn’t surprised. In his waking life, too, bathroom urges had become more frequent and their satisfaction more logistically complicated.
Now, in the early morning, he’d been asleep for hours. The Epiphany of the Yo-Yo had taken place in the late afternoon, just as visitors, including the Gatsky kid and his mother, had overstayed their welcome. Hypatia and Descartes had arrived just after dinner, and then Clifford had dozed off. So here he was, wide awake, and it would be four or five hours before the sky would begin to brighten and the sun would rise again.
This gray area between sleeping and waking was a magical space. He’d see faces of people he’d never met. At least, he thought he didn’t know them. He’d have inklings of ghostly figures standing by his bed. They weren’t threatening, but their presence was hardly warm. They were just there. Perhaps they were Insiders — or sent by Insiders.
And memories would bubble up. Tonight it was a flood of recollections about Sissy Sidley, one of his teenage sweethearts.
May 25, 2025
Clifford's Spiral: Chapter 7
In Clifford's Spiral, the stroke survivor’s past is blurry, and his memories are in pieces. He asks himself:
Who was Clifford Olmstead Klovis?
Chapter 7Stroke sufferer Clifford Klovis tries to piece together the colorful fragments of his memories. Why is he seeing spirals everywhere?
The Gatsky grandkid was playing in the middle of the freeway. This wasn’t necessarily dangerous. Although their drivers might be near-blind or almost deaf or both, the electric wheelchairs moved slowly. The boy would be agile enough to dodge them. The pace of the few ambulatory dodderers wobbling their way on walkers was glacial and likewise posed no threat except to themselves should the little brat miscalculate in his trajectory. If he progressed as far as the nurse’s station, which the residents referred to as downtown, the situation would become more perilous. There the freeway merged and widened into a busy, lushly carpeted interchange, patterned improbably with palm fronds and royal crests. Past that nexus, the carpet extended over the enclosed pedestrian overpass to the Mauna Loa Room, where the nightly buffet had a Hawaiian theme on Fridays, presumably in anticipation of the weekend, which staff saw as no vacation at all since hordes of loved ones and their brats would be descending on the apprehensive residents. That’s when the traffic would be loud and confusing, even to the residents who navigated the route to their food with regularity.
Mauna Loa was where the residents dined who were not either housed in Clifford’s assisted-living wing or residing in the hotel-like environment of the “ambulatory apartments.”
The electric wheelchairs were equipped with warning horns, which in such situations created a chorus of honks not unlike a gaggle of taxis at rush hour in Manhattan.
May 24, 2025
Three Writers Who Changed My Life
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All about Close Observers, the Angel’s-Eye-View, and Religion + Sex = Comedy
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May 21, 2025
Clifford's Spiral: Chapter 6
In Clifford's Spiral, the stroke survivor’s past is blurry, and his memories are in pieces. He asks himself:
Who was Clifford Olmstead Klovis?
Chapter 6Stroke sufferer Clifford Klovis tries to piece together the colorful fragments of his memories. Meanwhile, who owned the lovely hands that were touching him?
Clifford’s eyelids floated closed, not because he was drifting off to sleep but because he’d given into bliss. Nurse Myra was running the heel of her right thumb with deep pressure repeatedly along his inner left thigh from knee to groin, tracing the route of his femoral artery. She’d just finished working on his calf with both thumbs, after having used acupressure reflexology on the soles of his feet. He marveled at her confident skill and the strength in her hands. When she’d been working on his feet, he’d wished he’d studied some reflexology himself. If he had, the precise points where he’d felt brief, excruciating pain would have given him clues about what was going on with his internal organs. He didn’t think he was sick — any more than the consequences of having had a stroke. His appetite was normal if not sometimes voracious, his digestion proceeded relentlessly, and he hadn’t noted any congestion in his respiratory tract. Given this lack of symptomatology, how had Myra been able to find those nasty pain points? Was his liver going bad? Tumors growing in his colon? Kidneys about to fail? Undoubtedly, any of those conditions would present other, more ominous, symptoms.
Wouldn’t they? But, come to think of it, why should I worry? A second stroke would probably finish me off, and there are undoubtedly more painful ways to go.
It’s like what his internist told him about prostate cancer — yes, it’s serious and potentially fatal — but it usually progresses so slowly that something else will get you first. None of his doctors had ever told him he actually had prostate cancer, so he wondered why this guy would have told him such a thing. These days they weren’t allowed to hint, much less withhold information. If you had something, they were supposed to tell you — describing your condition in no uncertain terms even if they were sure you’d rather not know. Gone were the days of letting the patient think he’d live forever until the day he felt so sick he knew he wouldn’t.
As Myra’s thumb reached the top of his inner thigh, it veered away quickly before touching his scrotum. It was a deft movement, executed at just the right place to avoid exciting him sexually.
May 18, 2025
Clifford's Spiral: Chapter 5
In Clifford's Spiral, the stroke survivor’s past is blurry, and his memories are in pieces. He asks himself:
Who was Clifford Olmstead Klovis?
Chapter 5Stroke sufferer Clifford Klovis tries to piece together the colorful fragments of his memories. His thoughts swirl.
The spiral was Clifford’s preoccupation:
It was a problem I fretted over, that I felt was somehow mine to solve. Like other problems I puzzled over, I knew there were finer minds in the world at work on these subjects. But I didn’t know any of those people. And if I did, doubtlessly they’d write me off as an amateur — a talented amateur, but I’d be ignored nevertheless.
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Gerald Everett Jones - Author
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