Fiction by Tom Brauner
Walking down the path into their lush back yard, gray pea-gravel crunching under his feet, Rex decides that today is the day to discuss his plan with Patricia. He has just returned from his appointment with his oncologist. Dr. Bell had stated that nothing remained in his treatment armamentarium; chemo, radiation, surgery had all failed. Rex, confronting this seemingly unassailable problem, feels an urgent need to take action in the same way he built his business—by assessing problems and finding an immediate remedy.
The idea has been percolating for a few months now, and while he is quite certain how Patricia will react when he sits down to discuss it with her, he feels convinced that this is the best option. Every trait he feels he has in such limited supply—kindness, empathy, warmth—Patricia has in abundance. She will hear the latest news from Dr. Bell, and her own needs will come a distant second to his. For once, he does not want this to happen.
He finds her at the end of the path, expectantly waiting for him on the patio swing at the bottom of the yard, her worry impossible to disguise. He hadn’t wanted her to come to the appointment with Dr. Bell because … he wasn’t sure he could hear the report and watch his wife’s face at the same time. Now he wishes Patricia had come so he didn’t have to have this part of the conversation. Rex sits down next to her and, before she can ask, volunteers the news.
“Dr. Bell says there are no more options, Patty. We’re on the last leg of the flight with no place to land.” When he’d retired from the business, Rex had decided he would finally learn to fly, realizing a boyhood dream. He never tires of flying metaphors, although Patricia had tired of them almost immediately.
Her voice quavers and catches. “How long does he think, Rex?”
“Two months … plus or minus.”
She begins to cry, and he moves closer to her, close enough to smell the scent of her hair and the Chanel perfume she so loves, putting his arm around her and pulling her tight to him. His sweet girl; what she saw in him he never understood, but he is so glad she saw it. Fifty-five years. The time had flown and now he was going to fly away from her, too. He brushes water out of his eyes with the back of his sleeve, then uses the same sleeve to gently brush some of the tears from Patty’s cheeks. When you start the flight together, you hope for clear skies the whole way. He didn’t say this out loud of course. She would have just rolled her eyes and cried harder.
The next afternoon, Rex asks Patricia to come sit outside with him. The Santa Barbara day is sunny and warm, and the poppies are in bloom in her bee-friendly habitat. He always went along for the ride with that sort of stuff. It was the kind of thing that Patricia thought through carefully before she took action. The beautiful way it always turned out stunned him when he took the time to notice.
They had met during the early years of his business, American Staple. After he’d returned from Vietnam, Rex had studied chemistry and business at Cal State Northridge. In a late-night laboratory mistake, he created an adhesive that lightly bonded metal to metal. After graduation, he worked on possible applications until he hit upon the idea of using it to adhere individual staples together. It ended up being the cornerstone of his business.
As the company began to grow, Rex was swamped with work. He placed a help-wanted ad for a secretary in The Santa Clarita Valley Signal. He had already gone through several desultory interviews (Where was their damn work ethic?) when Patricia came in to apply for the position. He liked her no-nonsense style and the fact she had managed the front office for her dad’s tool-and-die shop since she was in middle school. And Patricia was easy on the eyes, which was an acceptable thing to say in those days. Rex offered her the job on the spot. He asked her to marry him three months after he hired her—with the understanding they would continue to work together. She had said yes to both propositions.
American Staple would not have taken root and blossomed without their complementary talents. Rex was good at manufacturing and Patricia was a genius with people. They were as completely intertwined as two partners could be.
Three months, two years, then suddenly twenty years, and finally—in what was surely only another blink of an eye—fifty-five years together. They’d created a thriving business, raised three great boys (mostly Patricia’s doing, he frequently declared) and now, as Rex sees it, his cancer has thrown a spanner in the works. He desperately wants to assure Patty’s happiness after he is gone.
“So, I’ve been doing some thinking,” he begins.
“Of course you have,” she says. “That’s what you do.” Her eyes were puffy and red-rimmed from crying.
“How would you feel about screening some candidates for my replacement?”
Her mouth opens and contorts into various shapes, but no words come out. She gets up to leave and Rex pulls her back.
“Hold on a second, Patty. Hear me out. You know I’m a first-rate problem-solver.”
Patricia’s cheeks were now becoming as red as her eyes. “Don’t you think that maybe this is not your problem to solve, Rex, and that maybe this isn’t the time to have such a ridiculous conversation?”
“Look, Patty, there isn’t much time … I don’t have much time left. You’re the only thing I worry about now. I’m on the final glide path—sorry, that just came out—but you’re in great physical shape, you’re still beautiful, you have who knows how many good years left.”
“Rex, this is crazy. We’re both upset, but I don’t want to have this discussion now or tomorrow, or ever for that matter.”
“Patty, I love you. You’ve always been the best part of my life. My timing may be lousy, but I know you’re happiest with other people around. That is who you are.”
“I have friends for that, Rexford.”
He knew she was mad when she used his whole name, but he would not—could not—relent. “You need your own person, Sweetheart. We both know it.”
“Discussion ended, case closed,” and with that Patricia rises and walks into the house.
But Rex doesn’t close cases quite that easily.
Three days later at the breakfast table, Patricia finds the From the Desk of Rexford Powers memo card beside her coffee cup. In Rex’s perfect printing he had written in pencil (as if it might be subject to revision):
My Top Three Candidates for the Job
Jack Bluther
Arthur Tamblin
Remy Charles
She pours herself a cup of coffee and sighs. She knows that Rex is feeling untethered and out of control and is seeking a way to take care of her. But how (for the thousandth time) can she get him to understand that people need to feel things and deal with their feelings before solving a problem? Patricia thinks back to all the things they had accomplished together, but she knows that this problem has no solution. She can certainly be angry with Rex—she’d often felt the heat of that emotion during the first ten years of their marriage. But eventually, she saw beneath the surface and understood that he was a good man who always, in his way, thought that he was putting her first. This is another instance of that fundamental goodness, and she adores him for that. But Jesus, can’t he just let me be sad?
She glances at the names on the card and is about to crumple it up when she thinks better of it. As always, it provides insight into the man she married and for that alone it has value. So here were her well-meaning husband’s picks for her future companion: Jack Bluther, Arthur Tamblin, and Remy Charles. She knows all three men, of course. Now as she attempts to think like Rex, Patricia mulls over how he has selected them.
Jack and Carol Bluther had been their closest friends as a couple. Rex had met Jack in the service and so they shared a long friendship. Carol quickly came to be Patricia’s best friend. The couples had traveled together, had alternated family Thanksgiving holidays for decades, had been together when one of the Bluther’s then-teenage sons had almost died in a car accident. Patricia and Rex had also supported the couple when Carol was diagnosed with breast cancer, had gone into remission for ten years, and then suddenly and unexpectedly died within a few months of a recurrence. That was three years ago. Now, despite his loss, Jack maintains a lightness and optimism that Patricia admires. Not hard to see how Rex has settled on Jack.
Arthur Tamblin was Rex’s flying instructor. He had retired as a military pilot and then decided he didn’t want to work for an airline. Arthur wanted to share his love of flying with others, that awesome joy of seeing the world uniquely from a thousand feet above the earth. He had joined them for dinner on several occasions, and they invariably shared an evening filled with nice wine and laughter. Arthur was a raconteur but felt no need to dominate the conversation; he could listen, and he was smart and undeniably handsome. Patricia wasn’t sure if he, too, specialized in flying metaphors, but if so, he must only deploy them in an airplane cockpit.
Of the three men, Patricia thinks Remy Charles is the outlier. He is the diametric opposite of Rex. Remy Charles, with his lilting French accent and electric blue eyes. When Carol Bluther was first diagnosed with breast cancer, she’d seen Remy for therapy to manage the roller-coaster experience of the cancer treatments and the welter of emotions she faced. Remy Charles was there again at the end of her life, sitting with Jack and his family and with Patricia and Rex when they visited Carol in her home during hospice. Remy was born outside of Paris and came to the States for college. Patricia doubts that it is the accent or French pedigree that places him on Rex’s list. She wonders how Remy even made it onto Rex’s list.
She folds the card once and puts it in her jacket pocket before walking out into the back garden. Despite herself, Patricia smiles. Rex is certainly a piece of work, but he is her piece of work, and she feels grateful—most of the time.
Here is how Rex came up with the list. He thinks of it like a football draft: each person can fill a specific position—or in this case a function—he feels Patty might need once he is gone.
Jack Bluther. Jack is his lifelong friend, and Rex knows how highly Patty regards him. Frankly, both of them need a mate, and the takeoff and landing should be pretty smooth.
Arthur Tamblin. Handsome, funny, adventurous. Most importantly, he once pointed out how lucky Rex was to find a girl like Patty. Rex will have to give Arthur a head’s up about the flying metaphors and that Patty hates to be called a girl.
Remy Charles. Remy is really Rex’s first choice, which is why he lists him last, to give Patty a little something extra to chew on. When he was thinking about the kind of person Patty needed, he realized that the man should be well-evolved and, perhaps more than anything, a man quite different from Rex. He wants Patty to have the experience of being with someone completely unlike him, not because of any jealousy on his part, but because she deserves someone who can take care of her emotionally for a change rather than he other way around. This is going to be a hard sell, though. Patty is pretty set in her ways.
The week after he places the memo beside her coffee cup, Patricia comes out to the garden to find Rex sitting on the bench looking at their wedding album.
“I haven’t looked at these since we got married.” He turns a page. “You were awful pretty.” He closes the book and gazes up at her.
She sits beside him as her cheeks flush with color, an ineffable spark between them still.
Rex watches a hummingbird flit around the red and yellow feeder.
“I was thinking about a party, sort of a Last Waltz kind of thing.”
Patricia studies him.
“I can say my goodbyes. Just the most important people.”
The recognition dawns. “Ah yes, I see. The band could include Jack, Arthur, and maybe Remy? Sort of an audition? You could stroll around, whisper your plan to the boys?”
“Okay, okay. I see you don’t like it.”
“Wearing yourself out because you can’t let go of your crazy idea? Nope, I don’t like it.”
She looks out at the garden. “You can’t control this, Rex. You’re scared just like I’m scared, but not for the same reasons. You’re scared because you want to know how it turns out. I’m scared because I know how hard it’s going to get.”
They both watch for a long time as the hummingbird dips its slender beak into the feeder’s nectar.
“I never could have guessed how good it would all turn out, –Patty—except for this last part.”
“Just another way that you and I are different, Rex. I liked not knowing how it would turn out.”
The hummingbird finally flies away.
Patricia gently takes his hand. “There will always be some mystery, Rex.”
They look at each other, as if young lovers once again, and kiss.
Eventually though, Rex can’t help himself and says, “Still, a man should have a plan.”
As it happens, the universe is unmoved that Rex is fast approaching the end of his runway and wants to have a plan for Patricia. Ten days after their conversation in the garden, he can hardly rise from the bed. He spikes a fever that won’t remit, and the pain nearly crushes him. They call in hospice care, but Patty won’t leave his side, sitting or lying beside him around the clock.
“I’d like to go into the garden,” he rasps one day near the end.
Patty and the hospice nurse, William, load him into the wheelchair, and Patty pushes him through the bedroom sliders that lead outside. Rex feels the chill in the air as summer passes the baton to autumn. Patty parks him beside the bench near the hummingbird feeder. She watches him with a mixture of love and dread as he struggles to catch his breath, just the act of being wheeled here having exacted a toll.
Finally, he says, “Patty, I wanted to say my goodbyes to a lot of people, but there’s no time now. It’s moving too fast.”
Rex pants and his eyes are teary. Patricia sits down on the bench beside his wheelchair, gently laying her head on his shoulder.
“I don’t care if you end up with one of those guys on my list. You don’t need my help to find someone. I was just desperate to know he’d be a good one.”
She takes a long moment, composes herself, and finally says to him gently, “It’s enough that I’ve been with a good one my whole life, Rex.”
They hold each other tenderly, he in his wheelchair and she on the bench, and cry for a long time.
Finally, he says, “I’m so sorry to leave you, Sweetheart, but I’m very happy you were my co-pilot on this flight.”
Patty just cries harder.
Three weeks later, surrounded by Patricia and their boys, Rex takes one final breath, and his essence wings skyward, charting a course for parts unknown.
More than five hundred people attend the funeral at Our Lady of Sorrows. The eulogies sparkle, eliciting both laughter and tears. They capture a man who thought he wasn’t very good with people but who had, in fact, left an indelible mark on almost everyone. Employees of American Staple get up to speak, thanking Rex—and Patricia—for giving them the chance at jobs that were not in the Santa Barbara fields. Jack Bluther calls Rex a “great man” and talks about how he learned to be a good man by watching his friend day after day. His sons speak, and the hospice nurse, William, gets up and talks about the final hours with “Rex and his amazing family.” Patricia hears the emotion in their voices and the love in their words and feels lucky that Rexford Powers had been hers.
And, perhaps not surprisingly, the three men listed on Rex’s prophetic notecard each played a major role in the weeks leading up to, and in the months following, Rex’s death.
Remy Charles is still working a few days each week as a hospice therapist when the request comes in to visit Rex and Patricia at their home. He remembers them both well, and despite all his experience, is startled when he contrasts his memory of the vital Rex with the cadaverous man he finds lying in the hospital bed in the living room. Nonetheless, Rex reaches for his hand and, smiling beatifically, says, “I’m so glad they sent you.” Remy comes every day, leaving only when Rex gives him the sign. Patricia finds the Frenchman’s warmth and care reassuring and asks Remy to be in the room with her and her family in the waning hours of Rex’s life. He is there when Rex takes his last breath.
Fittingly, Rex had made a request to have Arthur Tamblin take Patricia up in a Cessna 182, his favorite airplane, to spread his ashes several thousand feet above the Santa Ynez Mountains. Patricia talks about Rex’s late-in-life love affair with flying, and Arthur declares that it was his love for her that Rex had always mentioned. “He wore that on his sleeve, Patricia.” She is pleased to hear this from Arthur. She is also pleased that throughout the flight he uses not a single flying metaphor.
Jack Bluther is steadfast and calm, not only speaking at the funeral, but also clairvoyantly dropping in whenever Patricia most needs someone to talk to. They reminisce about their mates and how lonely they feel without them. They share a deep understanding of what they each had and an abiding grief at what each has lost.
They are worthy men all, but quite unexpectedly Patty finds herself drawn to someone not on Rex’s list. She is surprised and then pleased by this recognition. In the years ahead, she will sometimes gaze skyward and smile.
Sometimes love favors an alternate flight plan.
Tom Brauner has a Doctorate in Clinical Social Work and for many years worked with neuro-divergent children and their families, as well as with individuals and couples in private practice. He has always loved books and literature. After retiring in 2023, he has finally found the time to write.