Brief History of Male Nudes in America

The Uses of Memory

etta Cartwright believes these are the things that will bring her husband Franklin back from the dead: thick Velveeta sandwiches, fresh air, plenty of talk and music. She throws the windows open, though it is October in Boise and the smoke-rilled breeze whips the lacy curtains, makes them dance in the near-cold. Netta works the radio dial the way other retired women learn to spin the Bingo basket up at St. Mark's on Thursdays—90 percent wrist, 10 percent luck. She turns up the radio's volume when something good comes in:Johnny Paycheck or "TheWabash Cannonball ." She taps her foot and tries to find the music's rhythm and then tries to pass it on to Franklin. "You hear that, honey?" she yells, her foot cracking thunder, louder than the radio now. Carlene, Netta and Franklin's eldest daughter, watches her mother and shakes her head, amazement and disgust and weariness all rolling up into one big ball. "How can you be sixty-three and not know 106 The Users of Memory N.I The Uses of Memory anything?" she asks Netta. Carlene is sorting through a bowl of butter mints, picking out the pinks and slowly eating them. Netta is too busy to answer or to even listen. She must concentrate on the slippery rhythm, pick it up, then get it all the way down to her foot. Just an arm's length away from the women, Franklin lies on a bed near the living room window, and in the strictest sense he isn't dead, of course, but he's close enough: low vitals, a complete loss of hair, a mouth that won't form a single word. The left side of his body is soft and slack, useless as a flat tire. Netta has been known to walk right over and smack that arm or give a half-soft karate chop to the withered leg, hoping for even the slightest reaction. She'd appreciate a blink or even a nod from Franklin—thank you—but he just lies there, silent, not even a half-light shining from his old, whiskered face. Carlene finishes a mint and says to Netta, "There's got to be a special place in hell for you." She moves next to her father, or someone that used to be her father, and lightly strokes his arm: his knuckles, his knobby wrist, then the big, bare root of his elbow. "Don't get him too comfortable, now," Netta says. "He's just about ready for his bath." Carlene offers to take a turn cleaning him up, but Netta, as always, says no. Tobe honest, she doesn't trust Carlene with people. Dogs— yes. People—no. Netta considers her granddaughter Mandy a prime example of how Carlene can take a good person and screw her up, turn her inside out. During all the time that Mandy was growing up, she chewed her fingernails until they had to be iodined and taped; she ate her own long, brown hair; she would sit in front of the TV with her knees up in front of her and suck on them like a child trying to consume herself. Later, on Mandy's small body, the scaly patches of eczema bloomed. Carlene won't admit to being a poor mother, but Netta thinks she has gotten the message, because after Mandy, Carlene doesn't have any more children; she turns to raising Australian Blue Heelers. 107 A Brief History of Male Nudes in America They're a breed that cozies up to Carlene. They lick her face when she bends down to them. They bark and yelp for her when she crosses the yard. Her brown station wagon is scattered with dog kibble, and it doesn't even bother her; shejust brushes the driver's seat clean and drives away. When Netta comes back to the room carrying a big spaghetti pot filled with warm—bordering on hot—water, Carlene quickly steps aside like a pedestrian moving out of heavy traffic. Netta has generously added some of her Peaches and Cream bubble bath to the water, and a small eruption of sweet bubbles glides down the side of the pan and plops onto Franklin's sheet, but Franklin doesn't complain. He hasn't complained about anything in over four months, hasn't fed himself, hasn't been able to stand and take...