First Chapter: Imagined
 
By Tom Maremaa Prologue Things could not have got much worse that year. My marriage had broken up and I’d lost custody of my son in a legal fight that had left me drained of ener- gy and pocketbook. A giant chasm had opened up in my life. I could neither move forward nor regain anything from the past. I was depressed. At the time, when my friend first told me the news—which seemed incredulous—I was suffering from a monumental writer’s block. Mornings, I would get up early and make a pot of coffee for myself and then stare at blank pages on the screen until I began to feel nauseous. Nothing came. When I took a few stabs at the page—a sputtering of words on the key- board—I grew even sicker. “Your writing will run as true and deep as your feeling when it’s running truest and deepest,”I remember the great Gertrude Stein once saying. But the words I wrote were not true; they rang hollow to my ears, and they certainly had no feeling because most of the time I was numb. My body ached from the numbness; I had trouble focusing because of the dyslexia which flipped almost every letter on its head and made mockery of my attempts at spelling. The dyslexia had grown more aggravated with time. I thought I should learn Hebrew or Arabic because it seemed easier for me to write from right to left than the other way around. And to further the humiliation, my stomach growled savagely at me those mornings, as I struck the wrong keys and hopelessly misspelled words; my whole body had become an angry beast of prey fed by endless cups of coffee and sleepless night. The wolf was at the door, I figured, reflecting my writer’s shadow in its ice blue eyes. After the divorce most of my friends had drifted away; and this was especially painful because friendship had meant a great deal to me coming from a small town in rural Ohio where you knew your neighbors and relied on your friends during times of crisis. It meant even more later in life because once it was lost— which seemed to happen a lot in the big city—your chances of ever recovering it were about as good as your chances of selling a screenplay to Hollywood: one in a million. That may be why the story held such a singular fascination for me, why it pushed me to the limits: it was as if a great friend from the past, lost but not forgotten, had suddenly returned to grace our lives once again. An impossible dream, these days, the kind of thing that just doesn’t happen very often anymore. It had not broken yet as major news when it fell unceremoniously into my lap, or as fate would have it, my laptop computer. It had not yet become one of those monster media events like the Rodney King beating or the Simpson chase in that Ford Bronco or the plot to destroy Nancy Kerrigan’s skating career—an event that would hold the country glued to the tube for days or months on end, commanding all our attention before, ultimately, dying on the airwaves and disappearing completely from public consciousness—as if it had never happened. One night in December, around eleven o’clock, I got a phone call from my old friend Tad German, who works as a reporter for CNN in New York. I hated to answer the phone; it made me, for some reason, more depressed than I already was, and my first impulse was simply to let it ring through and let the answering machine pick it up with my standard, “Blah blah blah. Leave a message at the beep. And I’ll get back to you pronto.” (Yeah, right. One time, during those dark days, I had fifty-three messages on my machine I was going to get back to “pronto.”) “You won’t believe what’s happened,” said German, his voice quivering. “You just won’t.” “What?” “I’m on to something big, really big.” Tad German was a man who, despite being fifty-two years old and the father of three grown sons, still gushed with boyish enthusiasm whenever he reported on a story that was pure breaking news. And he was certainly pumped for this one. “Every story is big,” I said, throwing a little cold water in his ear to dampen the heat of enthusiasm. “It’s life that’s small. Go back to sleep, Taddy boy. The wife needs you.” “You gotta listen to me. You gotta,” he kept insisting. “Jake, are you there?” “Yes. Why?” “Because you’re the only one who’ll believe this,”he insisted in his booming, TV-trained voice. “Thought you said I wouldn’t it.” “Shut up and listen, Jake,” he cried. “I’m damn sending you an e-mail right now with a photo image attached. Did you hear what I said? Check your laptop in a few minutes.” “Oh, God. That’s the last thing I want to do,” I said. “Jake, you’re only man in town I can trust with this.” “So Jake Ryder is the only man you can—” “Don’t dick with me,” he interrupted. “Tad, I’m royally depressed. It’s midnight in the garden of evil, no good, and you want me to download some goddam, stupid photo.” “Listen, I’m sorry she left you, old sport. These things do happen in life, you know?” “Tad, this is no time for clichés,” I said. “Your story better be good. Damn good.” “It is. Just boot up your machine and take a peek, okay?” At the time I was living in a small walkup apartment in the Village, just me and my cat and those visiting armies of cockroaches. Life had definitely reached a low ebb. I was ekeing out a meager living by pen, writing my music reviews (when I wasn’t completely blocked) on a second-hand laptop I had got cheap from a friend who worked in Sales at one of the magazines. Unfortunately, it had a built-in modem and connections to various online services, which meant I had an Internet address and could be regularly bombarded with reams of e-mail from editors and readers. It was worse than a FAX machine. I logged on to my beloved America Online and, sure enough, that friendly, computer voice, with all the charm of an encyclopedia salesman, cried, “You’ve got mail!” I downloaded the picture. “Well, you’re a music critic,” said Tad German, calling me back later, panting like a dog in heat. “Now who the hell do you think that is?” Sunday The hospital room is almost completely dark, except for a thin tube of fluores- cent light that glows above the head of the bed. The curtains are partially drawn; shadows against the wall. The nurses have kept it that way, a room in a state of perpetual twilight, at the request of the family. Night blends into day, blurring the rough edges of time. In a remote corner down a long white corridor, the room is isolated from the rest of the hospital. The name on the door, apparently, has been changed so many times that even the nurses do not know the true identity of the man lying in bed connected to the machinery of life support. The patient is scruffy in appearance,his hair shaggy as a dog and his face covered from cheekbone to chin with gnarly strands of beard, now gone salt-and-pepper gray. His eyes are shut tight and his breathing has almost stopped. In bed twenty-four hours a day, his body swollen and slightly blubbery, he remains motionless, a sleeping whale adrift in a sea of dreams. That morning, early December, his eyes are flickering rapidly from left to right, as he is lying comatose in bed. • • • Two men are hovering now around me bed. Mr. Bloat, whose shadow fills the room, is laughing heartily while his partner, Mr. Bones, is busy disconnecting the tubes attached to my body. The patient, me, I, this living, breathing thing, is feeling sick. “Oh, my God!” he cries. “I’m a real goner.” I, he get up from bed and wander out of the hospital, wearing only me candy-striped pajamas. Mr. Bloat and Mr. Bones give pursuit, yelling at the top of their lungs, “Come back! You can't do that!” In Central Park, after eluding me followers, I, he stops for a drink of water but the water coming from the fountain is frozen. I begin to shiver. A blanket of fresh snow suddenly covers the fields of strawberry near the corner of West 72nd and Central Park West. There is nobody to talk to, not a soul; and no birds are singing. I panick. “Better get back to where you belonged,” I mutter to meself. In the hospital room Roger, the sadist male nurse, bangs on my head with Maxwell’s silver hammer. I am bleeding.... • • • He suddenly bolts awake from the dream. His entire body bathed in a sea of icy sweat, he tries to sit up but cannot, and falls back on his pillow, banging his head against the bedframe. It is only the second time in ages that he has awakened from the throes of his deep, permanent sleep. His head is a little bit fuzzy. When he opens his eyes he has trouble focusing; things flipflop because of his dyslexia. Looking around the room, he sees nothing familiar. For a moment, panic strikes again: where is Roger, the sadist male nurse? Gone, at least for now, he figures. Roger works A.M.s, not P.M.s, so it must be afternoon. There is still time to hide before Roger returns to bang again on the back of his skull with Maxwell’s silver hammer. “Bloody bastard!” cries the scruffy-looking man, as a surge of anger shoots through his body, tightening his muscles, wiring his frazzled nerves. He wipes the cold sweat from his brow. What am I doing here? he is thinking. Who am I? He feels the contours of his face, stroking his bristly beard. In a tiny oval mirror that is lying on a table alongside his bed, he stares at himself with grave curiosity. He cannot, for the life of it all, recognize the face that stares back at him in the mirror. His mind draws a complete blank. Who is he? There are lines on his forehead, yes, and wrinkles around his neck. His jaws are puffy, even a bit jowly. But he has not aged badly at all. He appears, in fact, much, much younger than his years, although it matters little since he has no idea what he had looked like once before a long time ago. He twists and rolls his neck. Fists clenched, he pounds on his bedframe. Then he begins to grow tired again. His eyelids are drooping, he feels weary, slowly ready to fall back to sleep. This is me bloody fate, he tells himself, with a sigh of resignation. Outside, somewhere down the corridor, he hears voices, and soon the latch on the door unlocks. Two nurses, a mother and daughter pair, come strolling in. Thankfully, one of them is not Roger! They turn up the lights and stand by his bed and start their routine checks, examining his body, poking and prodding him. He tries not to wince at the pain, or give any hints that he is awake. “Well, Johnny, how are we doin’ today? Feelin’ any better?” says the older mother nurse, cracking a smile. “I guess not,” replies the daughter nurse. “Well, maybe tomorrow.” “Tomorrow’s another day, Johnny Boy,” says the mother nurse. “Small comfort for your lot, though.” Johnny Boy is lying silently in bed, his body aching, his muscles stiff as a board. “Lois, remind me to get some food refills,” says the mother nurse. “His supply is gettin’ low.” “You know, I been on this shift for three whole weeks and not once, even, he’s opened his eyes,” says the daughter nurse. “Can you believe that?” “That’s the way it’s been with our man Johnny Boy,” says the mother. “Long as the family keeps paying the bills, our job is to keep him alive.” “Momma, he’s practically—a veg-jet-able.” “No, he ain’t. Nobody calls my Johnny Boy a veg-jet-able,” her voice grows indignant. “You hear me, girl?” “Sorry. Didn’t mean no disrespect. Who he is, by the way? You know?” There is an awkward silence between the two nurses, fussing over Johnny Boy. “You really wanna know?” “’Course I do.” “You keep a secret? I mean, girl, really keep a secret? Not tell Roger,” says the mother nurse. “My lips are truly sealed.” “Well, all right then. Sure as the sky is blue and the old sun sets in the west, sure as we ain’t in Kansas no mo’, this man with the kind heart, with the gentle soul is,” the mother nurse gulps, “John Lennon.” The daughter nurse drops her pen and clipboard with a loud thwack on the floor. “John Lennon, the Beatle? Oh, no. No way,” she cries, batting her eyes and shaking her head in disbelief. “Not possible, Momma. Not! What you talkin’ about? John Lennon, he died. Why, he died so long ago I weren’t even born.” “Listen, Lois, you’s new. I been here since the day they brought him in day he was shot. Nobody thought he’d live, everybody sayin’ he was a goner, and no family ever come see him. Only meto take care of him.” “Well, he sure looklike John Lennon.” “He is. Believe me.” “I believe you, Momma. But what about his family? What’s her name? That Yoko woman?” “Well, I’ll tell ya. They’s kept it a secret the whole time. Only the business manager, this Barney Somebody ever comes to see him. Figures,”says the mother nurse. “What?” “Why they don’t want to tell nobody. Too embarrassed at the poor man’s condition,” says the mother nurse. “Word ever gets out, lot of folks—you know, he had fans—they gonna reject him as less than human.” “Sad is what it is.” “Sure it’s sad. But I’s done my best taking care of him. Besides, I been singing him Beatles songs for twenty years in case he done forgot any after the old, bloody assassination attempt.” “That’s sweet, Momma.” “He ever wakes up again, I tell ya, he won’t miss a beat.” “Well, Momma, I can see’s you done alot keepin’ him alive all’s these years,” says the daughter nurse. There is the sound of boots marching down the corridor, heavy combat boots like the ones that Roger wears. “Hush. That’s Roger. Don’t want him to hear what we’s been talkin’ about, understand? Roger’s got a mean streak in him like one of them storm troopers you see on TV in them World War II movies,” says the mother nurse. “He’s bad. Now promise, girl, you won’t tell nobody what I told you?” “My lips are truly sealed.” After the nurses have finished with him and left the room, Johnny Boy Lennon tries falling back to sleep. He starts to doze, nodding off quietly, but his sense of hearing has all of a sudden become acute. Despite the thick walls of his room and the four floors of the hospital, he begins hearing, for the first time, the sounds of traffic below. New York is bristling with noises from the street. Cars are honking; people shouting and singing Christmas carols. Ho, ho, ho. The frolic of the holiday season is in the air and the sounds are floating up to room like wisps of smoke. He feels a tingling sensation run through his body. This is the time of the year to celebrate, he is thinking. Why can’t I be doing the same? Down the hall there is a little Christmas party going on now, nurses and doctors laughing and joking with each other. To be awake is somehow not normal for Johnny Boy; he begins to feel uneasy, apprehensive. He is used to the tranquil world of sleep and dream, singing and playing Beatle songs through the day and night. Soon he grows drowsy, eyes drooping, but then, all of a sudden, he hears the thunder of voices in the corridor. The voices, accompanied by loud stomping feet, are coming to his room. The door opens. And in walk two big bruising men. One man, Barney Fink, is particularly heavyset, a rolypoly giant with a balding pate and bloated gut. The other man, Sam Piccolo, is twerpy, thin as a matchstick, with a slicked down black ponytail that flaps when he nods his head. There is a noticeable bulge in Sam’s left breast pocket. He is packing a piece. Barney, the fat man, is carrying his own weapon: a classy Hermes leather briefcase with a gold handle and the carved initials BF. “Hey, boss, why we have come back here again?” says the underling. “Hospitals gimme the willies.” “Pathetic, isn’t he? Lying there in bed there, just a blob. The man’s a blight on society, I’m telling you. Family’s spent all this money to keep the sucker alive and what’ve they got? A brain-dead jerk,” says Barney Fink, standing over the bed, the lord of misrule. “But if he ever wakes up, he’ll collect the three mill inheritance. You catch my drift, Sam?” “So what do we want from him, boss?” “Listen, we got some business to take care of is all,” says the fat, bloated Barney Fink. The man takes Johnny Boy’s right hand, sticks a pen between two fingers and guides it smoothly along the bottom edge of a legal document. The pen, in large strokes, signs his name. “What are you doing?” “Forging some documents—backdating them. What the hell do you think I’m doing? Anybody ever tell you you talk too much, Sam?” “Not so loud, boss. They’ll hear us.” “Nobody’ll hear us, idiot. This room’s soundproof,” says the boss. “Then what?” “Then we unplug him,” says Barney Fink, grinning broadly. “That’s a good one. Ha, ha. Johnny Boy unplugged, just like all those other musicians.” “Yeah, in his day, Johnny Boy sure could play a mean guitar. He had some licks, but look at the sucker. Awright, do ’im.” “You want me to do ’im, eh, boss?” “Don’t repeat what I say. Just do as I say.” “You don’t like me, do you, boss?” “Shuddup! I told you what to do,” Barney Fink is shouting in the face of his underling. After sticking the signed legal papers into his briefcase, Fink backs away from the bed while his partner Sam slowly removes the tubes connected to Johnny Boy’s body. Then Sam grabs a hospital pillow and stuffs it over Johnny Boy’s face, pressing down hard. “This way it’ll look like he suffocated himself to death,” says Barney Fink with fiendish delight. “Yeah.” “Yeah, we’ll be done with him once and for all. No claims to the family fortune, no more hospital bills. Done, finito,” says Fink gleefully. “Put the son of a bitch out of his misery, right?” The soft pillow covers Johnny Boy’s mouth and nose. He swallows his breath, holding it tightly, lips pursed, ready to dive underwater into his nether world of sleep and dream. “There, that should do it,” says the Sam Piccolo, breathing a deep sigh of relief. “Let’s get outta here.” “Sure thing, boss.” The men leave the hospital room, walking fast, taking long strides down the corridor leading to the elevator around the corner. Johnny Boy has heard every word spoken by the two would-be killers. After the men have left he begins to feel another surge of anger. It is mounting inside like a runaway train. He is furious, all right, mad as Barney’s bull; anger now turning to rage. When I think of it I could spit blood. He throws the pil- low off his face and sits upright in bed. His stomach is churning. He hurls the plastic tubes attached to his body to the floor, with arms flailing madly about. His body aching, his back muscles in pain, he swings his feet around to the side of the bed. “Bloody bastards tried to kill me!” he cries aloud. © copyright 2006 Tom Maremaa
A novel about the second coming of John Lennon (177 pp)
Notes: Imagined is a novel about the return of a man who either is or is not John Lennon, the famous Beatle whom the world thought was assassinated on a cold, dark night in December some twenty years ago. The man who wakes from a coma in his hospital bed, speaks in Liverpool dialect, and sings Beatles songs is truly an original creation. He takes on a world that wants to believe. And in less than a week takes us on a magical journey from the madness of New York City at Christmas to the hippie heart of San Francisco, and even a sudden leap from the Golden Gate Bridge. In the end, Imagined brings us the real promise of a Beatles reunion, and delivers a message of hope, love and reconciliation.