Carry That Weight

CARRY THAT WEIGHT

As Gloria watched the colossal, orange sun drop steadily into the ocean, she felt her old life disappearing with it. Her husband walked beside her. He squeezed her hand tightly, holding on as if she might disappear as well.

“It’s like a fiery Cyclops.” Mark gestured out to sea with his chin.

Gloria loved to travel, but a one way ticket to a place 4500 miles from home was a brand new experience. Out over the yawning Pacific she found herself wishing that the plane wouldn’t plummet before their new life in Hawaii could begin. Now, finally, here they were. She squeezed Mark’s hand but didn’t speak.     

Her Japanese roots were out there somewhere, across that massive body of water. As she looked, she imagined a furious wave coming at them. Goosebumps rose on her arms, and dread crept up her body. Gloria’s intuition told her something of magnitude was coming for them.

“Let’s go back,” she suggested. “Find a grocery. Sleep off the jet lag.”

“You go ahead,” he told her. “I want to see the last of the sun set.”

‘Okay,” Gloria sighed. “I’ll wait with you.” They were in this together.

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It had been such a long, difficult day. Though she loved her husband very much, she had to admit he stressed more easily than she did. When they landed and discovered Mark’s luggage had been left behind in CA, he had become so frustrated at the ticket counter that beads of sweat had broken out on his face.

“It’s not gone, sir. We’ll find it and bring it to you in the next few days,” soothed the agent. “Are you staying in Honolulu?”

In the cab to their new apartment, Mark had settled down. “That agent lady was nice,” he said. “It’s good here. So far, no phonies.”

They had rented, sight unseen, the second floor of a two-story place in a section of the city inhabited by personnel from Pearl Harbor. It was former military housing so had a uniform appearance, but grass and flowers grew haphazardly. Many houses needed a new coat of paint. It was like the government had built them then tossed them into the trash. 

Contributing to the seediness were the couple’s worldly possessions, boxed weeks before, shipped and delivered to their front lawn. Stepping from the cab, Gloria felt panicky. So much unpacking to do, a new life to settle.

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Gloria and Mark had married in 1979 and decided, a year later, to move from their Georgia home to Hawaii. She was a travel agent and could get a job anywhere. He loved taking care of children: sick children, refugee children, children who needed his help. He likened himself to Holden Caulfield, a character in The Catcher in the Rye. “All I want,” he would paraphrase, “is to catch kids in the rye.”

Before they met, he had spent a year in Lebanon with a Christian organization which worked to bring peace to war-torn countries. When he spoke about it, during their first date, his eyes shone and the corners of his mouth lifted. Gloria was impressed by his passion and empathy. He wanted children yesterday and would raise them to know God. She had been waiting for a good man, and here he was.

When Mark walked into Have Gun Will Travel, the agency Gloria worked for in Decatur, she had noticed him. Taller than she was, with brown hair and glasses, his features were soft, like a baby’s. He was carrying Around the World in 80 Days, and he showed her the cover. “I want to have an adventure like Phileas Fogg’s,” he told her so seriously he scowled.

“Adventure? I can help you with that!” were her first words to him.

Gloria thought it was lovely to plan a trip around a book. She was a reader, too. Perhaps she didn’t read as often as Mark, or become as deeply involved as she would discover Mark did, but she loved to disappear into the plot of a good novel.

They worked together in the following weeks to plan stops in Tokyo, Hong Kong, Bangkok, Beirut, and a few countries in Western Europe. He would spend six weeks away, and when it was time to purchase the tickets, Mark asked Gloria to join him.

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Gloria was exhausted when they got back from the beach, but she wanted some warm Ovaltine so began to unpack. A few things were broken, some beyond repair. Mark’s .38 Special, a prized possession, was missing. The relaxing vibes near the ocean wore off, and Mark lost his cool when he discovered the gun gone.

“People suck!” he yelled. “I hope the thief shoots himself with it.”

Knowing about Mark’s childhood helped Gloria cope with these outbursts, but they were quick and strong, and sometimes she just needed to walk away. “I’m sorry, Mark,” she said as she got up from the floor where she had been refolding his clothes. “I don’t have any patience right now.” She left the room to place a call to his mother back in Georgia. It was 6 a.m. there.   

“Oh Gloria!” said Diane, sleepy but excited. “Y’all safe and sound?” Diane and Gloria had bonded almost immediately. Gloria’s mother had died young, so she longed for a maternal figure. Diane had always wanted a daughter. She had given Gloria her wedding dress for the ceremony.

“Yes,” answered Gloria. “Everything is fine. We are both fine.”

“You shouldn’t have called, though,” Diane scolded. “Long distance is so expensive! You write now on. Send postcards.” 

Diane worried about money because Mark’s father was a tightwad and a disciplinarian. He must have had good qualities, but Gloria didn’t know of any. The man often abused his wife and berated his son for defending his mother. Gloria hated him.

She sighed. “It’s a special call,” she told Diane.

Her mother-in-law was silent for a moment. “How’s Mark’s moods?” she asked.

”He’s fine.” Gloria lied, “You know, I think it will be wonderful for him to be away.” She didn’t add “from his father,” but it was implied. Mark had stayed in the house through his college years to support his mother and now felt enormous guilt at leaving her to fight the battle alone. “You need to get away, too, Diane,” said Gloria.  

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What Mark’s mother called “moods” were bouts with tragic sadness. Sometimes he would pull the shades and lie on his back on the floor, staring up at a television he failed to turn on. At other times he would obsess on one thing, usually a work of art, thinking and talking about it incessantly.

He had an artists’ soul: sensitive, caring, contemplative. Gloria wondered why, with all his pain, he had not created his own art. When she asked Diane, Mark’s mother had replied, “His father made him do sports, dear. And bless his heart, he was no good at sports. And he couldn’t do something artsy,” she continued, “because the ridicule. His father, you know. I was just so distracted with my own problems,” Diane continued, “I should have encouraged him to dream and get out.”

But as a child, Mark had dreamed. He had told Gloria that at night, when the house was quiet, he imagined his toy soldiers as his defenders. Powerful and armed, they built Mark a fortress, put him and his mother inside, and guarded them fiercely.

When she and Mark married, Gloria believed she was taking on the role of guardian. It had been her idea to move far, far away. So far away his father could not visit or try to be a grandfather. Gloria had been pregnant when they married and though her miscarriage had affected both of them, it had been worse for Mark. He was desperate to start a family, eager to be better than his dad. He had been devastated, questioning God for taking his child away.

“I’m starting to think Holden Caulfield was right,” said Mark. “He was an atheist.”

Gloria never thought she would see the day. God was a be-all and end-all for Mark, and when he was isolated from God, he seemed truly adrift. Gloria didn’t think much of God, but she kept her mouth shut. 

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 It was after her second miscarriage, eight months into their new life in Hawaii, that Gloria became extremely worried about Mark. He was always out of sorts. He had been fired from his job at the hospital for fighting and laid around the apartment listening to records and pointing his new .38 at imaginary people. He was like a caricature of himself. He played the Beatles’ Revolver album constantly and at top volume.

He pointed the gun at the television. “Pow!” he yelled over the music. “That was Elizabeth Taylor. Pow! Johnny Carson. Pow! Pow! John Lennon and Paul McCartney.” Mark blew on the top of the barrel as if there was smoke.

“Why don’t you put the gun away, Mark?” Gloria asked. She was standing in the door of the kitchen, holding a dish rag. “I’m going to turn down the music.”

“I can’t think,” he told Gloria. “I don’t want to think. ‘When you’re feeling very depressed, you can’t even think.’ Holden said that.” 

Gloria crossed the room to the stereo. “What do you say?” she asked him.

“I say pow! Pow! Pow!”

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He was not one to smile a lot, but now Mark frowned and squinted as if blinded by the sun. When Gloria wasn’t at work she spent hours at the beach, avoiding her husband. She set the alarm on her watch to check on him every couple of hours, dreading the interactions.

Mark’s latest descent into a rock album didn’t help him deal this time. Imagine, which he had listened to since it’s release in 1971, now incensed him. “You are such a phony!” he’d scream at the spinning record. “It’s easy to preach peace and love when you have more money than God!”

Gloria was afraid he was going to shoot the record player. “You need to calm down!” she found herself screaming back. “What is going on with you?”

“I’ll tell you. Listen to this. This guy totally gets it.” Mark paged through his tattered copy of Catcher in the Rye, which he always had with him. “’If you sat around there long enough and heard all the phonies applauding and all, you got to hate everybody in the world, I swear you did.’”

“You hate everyone, Mark?” Gloria asked.

“I hate every rich hypocrite and every famous asshole. And so does Holden,” he said. “We are the same person. Listen to this: ’Among other things, you’ll find that you’re not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior.’"

“Mark,” Gloria said cautiously, “have you talked to God about how you feel?”

But Mark didn’t hear her. He moved the needle to play the first track of Imagine again. “No one should say he’s more popular than God,” Mark’s words came out in a rush.

Gloria knew now she had made a mistake. Diane had worked up the courage to leave her husband, and Gloria had invited her to come live with them in Honolulu. She thought it was a wonderful idea until Mark, dealing with the miscarriage as well, had started to unravel. She had brought him all this way, now his past was about to join them.

“No, honey, I know. Mark?” Gloria was scared her next question might set him off. “Should we tell your mother not to come?”

Mark glared. “She needs saving from him!” Mark pointed up, and Gloria didn’t know what to think.  

In the morning, Mark was gone.

In the evening, he shot John Lennon.