The Death Bed
by Danel Adams
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The Manchells had striven for years to preserve the façade of a normal middle class suburban family, but when the threads that had bound them together begin to unravel the members find themselves at odds with each other and themselves. As each of them finds their own mold and becomes increasingly set in it, Julia Manchell searches for an answer that can pull the increasingly polarized family back together. Looking to the family’s dying patriarch for support she must navigate the various pitfalls of hedonism, pragmatism, and nihilism that her loved ones fall into, while trying to preserve the childlike innocence of her younger brother throughout the ordeal. She soon finds that before she can accomplish her purpose she must first come to grips with the lingering guilt from her own hidden past.
The Death Bed is the story of a family that drifts apart and collides violently back together again, as they find that they are still bound to one another through their sufferings and shared disasters. It delves deep into the human psyche and examines the eternal search for meaning that unifies all of mankind.
Table of Contents
Part I
Part II
Part III
Part I
Chapter 1
“I honestly don’t know how he’s still holding on,” said the blonde woman as she exhaled a cloud of smoke out of the corner of her mouth. She was slender and attractive, and carried herself in such a way that others couldn’t help noticing it. “Medically speaking he should have been dead months ago; all the doctors are baffled. Not that they really care about him. Who would? They just want to understand so they can write it up in their journals. He’d be in a hospital if the family hadn’t objected. It had something to do with insurance, but you know how that goes.”
The blonde woman’s companion slid over to the far side of the booth as subtly as possible to avoid the smoke, which had been irritating her eyes throughout their lunch together, despite the blonde woman’s best attempts to be conscientious.
“Are you still trying to quit?” she asked trying to avoid the cloud of smoke. “I only ask because I’m worried about your health.”
“There are a lot of other things that can kill you. If I live long enough for these things to get to me then I’ll consider myself fortunate,” the blonde woman said and put out what little remained of her cigarette.
“Lung cancer’s still a horrible way to go, there’s lots of pain with cancer.”
“There are much worse ways to die; trust me. If you’d worked at a nursing home as long as I have you’d understand that. Like this guy I was mentioning. I’d take lung cancer over whatever he’s got in a heartbeat.” The blonde woman spoke with a casual detachedness, as if she were worlds removed from the topic.
Her companion seemed to be deep in thought, then said abruptly, “I’ve heard of cases where people have managed to stay alive well past what medical science would expect, and then all of a sudden, usually after something drastic happens, like the death of a loved one, they pass on. It’s like they go on living by sheer will to stay alive.”
“But that’s what makes him different,” retorted the blonde woman, not meaning to sound as contradictory as she did. “He has nothing to live for; he hardly ever has visitors and he just lays in bed all day reading. It’s like he’s been waiting for death to come for him, but it never does.” Looking at her watch, she put away the cigarette she was about to light, got up from the table, made a comment about time passing too fast, and straightened her name tag which read “Susie” even though she had always gone by Susan.
“Thanks so much for meeting me for lunch. It’s been too long since we’ve had time to just sit down and chit chat for a while,” said the blonde woman. She looked at the check, left seven dollars and twenty-six cents on the table, apologized for having to leave in such a hurry, and promised that they would “do this again sometime” as she rushed out the door.
* * *
Abraham Thomas Manchell had existed for seventy-eight years. He served his country in Korea where he was credited with saving the lives of two of his comrades, before he returned home to work in construction. At the age of twenty-six he waited as his wife gave birth to their first son. He had been a handsome man then, with his thick black hair slicked over to one side and his muscles well defined. He retired at the age of seventy-one, one year to the day after Margie, his childhood sweetheart and wife of over fifty years, had died of cancer. He took up woodcarving to pass the time, until arthritis prevented him from being able to properly maneuver his knife. “I’ve lived a right decent life,” he would tell people. “Right decent and I’ve got nothing but good memories, memories of living when the world was still simple and a man could work in the day and enjoy life when he got home to his family.” He continued to tell people this up until the day he moved into Grace Assisted Living Center.
After fourteen months in that assisted care facility all those years and memories now seemed to him as if they belonged to someone else. The simple process of recollection was painstaking, and he had all but given up on it after moving out of his old house, away from everything that used to be familiar. All he had left were some wooden animals that he had whittled years ago. They now lined the dresser next to his bed, which was actually quite comfortable; it had one of those fancy mattresses that they were always advertising on television. Not many places had beds like that, and he suspected that the beds had been the deciding factor for his son when he’d chosen Grace over Mercy. As he lay in that bed at Grace Assisted Living Center, his second hand copy of an old western novel, the only real companion that he had, sat on the dresser surrounded by wooden animals just out of reach. Susie had carelessly set it there when she came in to give him his medicine, despite having been told on several occasions to leave his books on the end table by the bed.
Abraham reached for the call button to have someone come in and hand him the worn out paperback, but changed his mind. Instead, he turned on the television that was mounted in the back corner of each resident’s room. It was an enormous black television and the dim light that it produced flickered on the barren white walls of his room. Abraham fell asleep within the hour while a rerun of M*A*S*H played in the background.
* * *
Lewis Manchell had been an accident. His parents had decided that three children were more than enough, but hadn’t been careful with birth control. The result of that carelessness sat in his desk in Mrs. Puckett’s sixth grade classroom, not comprehending a word that his teacher was saying about long division. This lack of comprehension was not from lack of intelligence, he had always been considered one of the smartest kids in his class, but because he was devoting all of his attention to Summer Wallburn, who was recognized in most circles as the prettiest girl in the sixth grade.
Summer was sitting two desks away and was busy working out the problem from the dry erase board: five hundred and eighty-four divided by thirty-two. Lewis fixed his eyes first on the perfect movement of her hand, noting her meticulous penmanship, not bubbly like that of the other girls, nor scrawled like his own, but slanted and fluid, like a grownup’s. This lent her an air of maturity and made her all the more alluring. Lewis’s eyes soon migrated from those delicate white hands to her lips, which were pressed tightly together, and her wrinkled nose, which made her appear focused and studious, a characteristic that Lewis fe
lt was essential in a girlfriend. He admired her sleek brown hair that bobbed perfectly under her cheeks; it made him all the more self-conscious about his cowlick, and he discretely spit on his hand and pressed the saliva down onto the patch of hair that stuck straight up on the back of his head, a remedy that, of course, only made the situation worse. But he soon forgot about his own shortcomings as his attention was drawn to her dark brown eyes.
This is where his attention remained until she turned her head and he quickly looked away, slightly embarrassed to have been caught, but exhilarated by the rush that came from that brief moment in which her eyes had met his own. He couldn’t help wondering if she had noticed his cowlick and tilted his head so that it would be less visible from her angle, just in case she looked his way again.
His heart was still pounding when he realized that he had been called several times to go up to the board. He could feel a tide of inaudible giggles washing over his back as he almost tripped over the leg of his chair when he stood up from his desk. He walked up to the board where he worked the problem as quickly as he could, longing to escape the supposed attention of his peers.
“Is that right class?” Mrs. Puckett’s condescending voice indicated to the rest of the class that Lewis had made a mistake.
“No,” said several voices from the class in unison.
“Summer, can you tell us what Lewis did wrong?” Mrs. Puckett asked using that same condescending tone.
“He forgot to write out the remainder,” answered Summer.
“That’s correct. Remember you always have to write out the remainder. You can sit down now Lewis.” Mrs. Puckett’s words were such a relief that Lewis hardly noticed the chiding words that followed: “Try to pay better attention,” as he hurried to his desk, where he made a conscious effort to avoid looking in Summer’s direction.
* * *
Julia Manchell was the only member of the family who seemed to live in a continued state of bliss. And why shouldn’t she? She was a senior in high school, had her driver’s license, and a brand new shimmering red Ford Mustang. The outside world saw her as the perfect girl. To them she was charming, intelligent, and passionately in love with the boy she had determined to marry—as soon as he could find the nerve to tell her how he felt.
Because of her all too perfect life, most of those who were closest to her could hardly stand being around her. It wasn’t that she was stuck up, not in the least, but because of the overbearing air of happiness she exuded. Those who could tolerate her were able to do so because they looked at her lovesick mannerisms, the daydreaming and the way she seemed to float rather than walk, with a pessimistic pity, knowing that such bliss could never last. Only a few people belonged to this second group, most of whom had learned to be skeptical of happiness from personal experience. They tended to be older, and so it was easy for Julia to dismiss them as worn out pessimists who had been beaten down by time, people so shortsighted that they could only assume that her life would follow the same course as their own.
Her mother belonged to this second group, and saw a younger version of herself in her daughter’s beaming lovesick face as she and Jason floated out the door and down the walkway.
* * *
Mrs. Manchell stood in the courtyard, just outside the front door and watched as the young man opened the passenger door of his old, but well maintained Mazda, and waited for Julia to sit down before closing it behind her.
Mrs. Manchell escaped through the open door into the empty house so that her daughter wouldn’t see the tears that were beginning to fill her eyes. She was embarrassed and wasn’t even sure why she was crying. A myriad of emotions welled up in her: regret over lost time with her little girl, joy at seeing her daughter happy, anxiety for the hurt that would inevitably come when the boy fell out of love. All these emotions gave way to one that she had never been able to find a name for, the empty feeling that always found its way in when she thought about her own life. This nagging nameless emotion grew stronger than it had been in the past as she compared her daughter’s blissful state to her own.
Resolving not to let any of the tears that were blurring her vision to stain her cheek, she dabbed her eyes, went into the kitchen, and poured a glass of Merlot. The wine almost matched the burgundy paint that covered the walls of the kitchen. It was the only room in the house that wasn’t white because she had insisted on having a little color in one at least one room. She walked through the living room where paintings and family pictures covered the sterile walls with a cluttered elegance that, over time, had become more cluttered than elegant. She sat by herself in the parlor and drank deeply. She let herself sink into the beige sofa. They had bought it when David was born knowing that it would be impossible to hide the stains that would inevitably come from children on a white sofa. As she melted into the comfort of the sofa, her body found itself enveloped in the beige leather; her mind found itself enveloped in thoughts about how he used to come home early and they would drink together until they were just a little tipsy and then spend the evening . . .
But David was away oversees and he never came home early, and now it was time to pick Lewis up from Tommy Johnson’s house. She set the half empty glass of wine on the coffee table and hurried out the door.
* * *
“I’m going to change the world. I intend to learn everything I can over the next four years and use that understanding to better mankind. I want to attend college because I believe it will better equip me to be an agent of change in this world, to learn where our society has gone wrong and how I can best spend my life to make it right.”
This is what Thomas Manchell had written on his application to be admitted into college. Nevertheless, he was admitted, and even given an academic scholarship. But, like most college freshmen, those words that he had written his last semester of high school had been all but forgotten, especially now that he was at the Harvest Hoedown. As a pledge he was required to attend all fraternity events, even when they were scheduled on a Tuesday night in the middle of a busy week of classes, but nobody had to twist his arm since his date was the cutest girl who had ever given him the time of day. She was pledging Chi Omega, had big brown eyes, was interested in him, and this was all Thomas cared about as she taught him to two-step under the barn roof that his fraternity had rented for the night.
He was noticeably nervous when she had him put his hand on her shoulder. His movements were rigid, and he apologized after every missed step. But as the night wore on, her reassuring laughter and the spiked punch loosened him up, and they both laughed as he tripped over her feet on the dirt dance floor.
“So what are you studying?” she asked when the song had ended and they were sitting in folding chairs at one of the wooden tables that surrounded the dance floor.
“I haven’t decided yet,” Thomas admitted.
“What do you like? What do you want to do?” she continued as if she were more interested in maintaining the conversation than in his response.
“I’m not sure yet. But I’m going to make a real difference. I’m not one of those guys who’s here to get a degree so I can get a better job and make more money. I’m going to learn how to change the world and help people.
“Help people,” she said almost suppressing a chuckle. “That sounds really, I don’t know, sweet. But why do you want to spend your whole life doing that? Are you one of those guys with a martyr complex, or are you just trying to convince me that you’re a sweet innocent freshman?”
As she waited for his response, her body language was still flirtatious, but it wasn’t as flirtatious as it had been a moment ago. Meanwhile, Thomas sat dumbfounded. In all his talk about making a difference nobody had ever asked him why. Somewhere inside he found an answer, but he couldn’t bring himself to tell it to those inquisitive brown eyes across from him. The words, “I don’t know,” escaped from his mouth as he stalled for time.
“That seems like a lot of self-sacrifice and hard work for no reason. Do you really thi
nk that you’ll follow through without even knowing why?” Her sarcastic tone still had a hint of playfulness, but it threw Thomas even further off guard.
“I guess I just want to leave my mark on the world. I want people to remember that I was here and that I did something important.”
“Good, for a second I was afraid that you were one of those stuck up moralists who’s always saying that everyone should do ‘the right thing’ and never have any fun.”
Thomas didn’t see anything wrong with what those beautiful brown eyes across from him had just condemned, but he also knew that he should reassure his date. “No. I’m nothing like that.”
“I’m relieved,” she said and then, without any hesitation, took Thomas’s hand and said, “Let’s dance.”
As she drug him back out to the dance floor Thomas was still thinking about why he had felt for so long that he should try to help others at his own expense. He wondered if it wasn’t simply because he knew that it was the right thing to do—or at least to want to do. But he couldn’t escape his own words: I just want to leave my mark on the world. The more he thought about them the more he thought about what kind of a legacy he would leave, how he would be remembered, perhaps like a Mother Teresa, or a Martin Luther King Jr. or even a John F. Kennedy.
As the dance went on his thoughts became more and more ambitious, and a little more distant from his old dream. As he let his mind wander, he danced better than he had all night, no longer focusing on each step, but letting them come naturally, getting swept up with the music. He looked into those big brown eyes and noticed that they were dancing a little closer to his own, and for the moment that was all that mattered to him.
* * *
Peter Manchell, who was described by his wife as a recovered alcoholic, though he had never gone to an AA meeting or acknowledged that he had ever had a problem, was the father of four, and the husband to what most people would agree to be a beautiful loving wife. He was a respected and upstanding man, and so he tried not to curse as he sat alone in his car, surrounded by thousands of other commuters, all equally alone in their respective automobiles, separated by their dent resistant side paneling and shatter proof windshields.