New Stroke

an essay by Mike Nagel

Hello. Thanks for being here. 

Chances are high that Mike Nagel’s work is the reason you read Little Engines. He’s a big reason I make Little Engines. “New Stroke” has everything you want in a Nagel essay, but watch yourself. He’s getting funnier, and he’s swimming in deeper waters.

After the essay, Mike reads the piece aloud for paid subscribers.

🖤AV

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New Stroke

by Mike Nagel

In 1945, the famous philosopher/Englishman C. S. Lewis published a novel called The Great Divorce about a guy who takes a sight-seeing tour through heaven and hell.

In the book, heaven and hell are the same place, and in both places you get everything you want.

Here's what the people in hell want: They want to be left the hell alone. So they move their houses outside the city. And then they move them out past the suburbs. And then they move them way up into the mountains.

In hell, C. S. Lewis says, people just keep moving further and further away from each other, until they're nothing but faint flickers of light in the distance, lightyears from anyone.

[ ][ ][ ]

It's May here in Plano. Hot and soupy. I spend the evenings reading on a lawn chair next to my in-law's pool.

J and I moved in last December to help out after my father-in-law's stroke. Back then, the pool was as clean and blue as a bottle of Listerine.

Now there's a layer of scum on the bottom. And there's a layer of scum on the top. And in between, there are sixteen thousand gallons of scum.

"It'll be nice to have a strong, capable man around the house again," my mother-in-law said when we moved in.

It took me a minute to realize she meant me.

Twice a week, Ramzi comes over to walk my father-in-law around the living room. Ramzi the Dream Boat. That's his name.

Ramzi's a physical therapist, paid for by the good people at Medicare. It's part of their all-inclusive Stroke Victim Package. He shows up after lunch wearing scrubs and New Balance tennis shoes. He has the physique of a semi-professional water polo player. His arms float at his sides like they're filled with helium.

If my father-in-law doesn't make enough progress with Ramzi, Medicare will stop paying for him. If he makes too much progress with Ramzi, Medicare will stop paying for him.

The trick with Ramzi, we've learned, is to make just enough progress.

Exactly the right amount.

Ramzi comes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but sometimes he comes on Friday, and sometimes he doesn't come at all.

"That boy," my mother-in-law says when he doesn't show up. But I can tell she's in love with him. We all are. He's such a dreamboat!

Sometimes I fantasize about Ramzi taking me aside to say he sees a bright future for me in professional caregiving.

"You have the gift," he says.

"I know," I say. "I think I've always known."

In my fantasy, I leave my cushy corporate job to pursue a career making eighteen bucks an hour walking old people around their living rooms. I wear scrubs and New Balance tennis shoes. My arms float at my sides like they're filled with helium.

That's one fantasy I have.

Another fantasy I have is being hired as a winter groundskeeper for a seasonal hotel, exactly like Jack Nicholson's job in The Shining. My fantasy is basically the first half of The Shining. I spend all winter there alone, tightening and re-tightening the screws. Tightening screws is the only manual labor I'm qualified to do. And even then, I'm barely qualified. I still have to whisper "lefty loosy righty tighty" to myself, and I still get it wrong half the time. The problem is that I'm never sure whose left or right we're talking about: mine or the screw's?

[ ][ ][ ]

When you take care of people it's called caregiving. When you take care of places it's called caretaking.

"Which one am I?" I think. "A giver or a taker?"

In the mornings, I walk to Caddo Park, just down the street from my in-laws' house. I listen to the Dax Shepherd podcast while I walk around in circles. Recently Dax interviewed an astrobiologist. An astrobiologist is someone who looks for life on other planets.

Here's what this one had to say: "Nothing yet!"

Some people think it's a huge waste of time and money to look for life on other planets, especially when we don't even know what to do with the lives we have right here on Planet Earth.

For one thing, we still have all this poverty to deal with. We still have sickness and old age and untimely death. There's lead in the water, hormones in the milk, serious concerns about how much fuel it takes to fly a jumbo jet from New York to London. Not to mention political division, religious fanaticism, and an inability to agree on anything worth agreeing on. Not to mention boring old sadness.

Recently NASA announced plans to build the Habitable Worlds Observatory, which will cost eleven billion dollars and take twenty years to complete. It'll be able to detect a nightlight on the opposite side of the universe.

According to NASA's website: "Habitable Worlds Observatory would be the first telescope designed specifically to search for signs of life on planets orbiting other stars."

One reason it might be worth all that time and money to search for signs of life on planets orbiting other stars, the astrobiologist suggested, is that it would just be really nice to find some. It would be encouraging, you know? They made it work. Maybe we can, too.

"It's not like climate change is going to kill us all," the astrobiologist explained, although now I’m paraphrasing. "What's going to kill us all is the worldwide bloodbath that climate change is going to create the minute our air conditioners can't keep up."

The ultimate downfall of the human species, he said, will be our inability to get along.

To quote the famous philosopher The Cowardly Lion: “Ain’t it the truth.”

[ ][ ][ ]

On Monday, Dan comes to look at the pool. Dan the Pool Guy. That's his name. My mother-in-law found him online. She typed in Pool Guy.

"I need a good old boy," she said. "I need a man."

Dan the Pool Guy wears a camouflage baseball hat and looks like the type of guy who knows which way to turn a screw.

He drives a pickup truck and smells like chlorine. I watch him talk to my mother-in-law out back for twenty minutes while he points down into the pool.

"It was so nice to have a strong, capable man around the house," my mother-in-law said when she came back inside.

"Totally," I said.

"That guy really knows which way to turn a screw, if you know what I mean," she said.

"I do," I said. "I do know what you mean."

This pool has some quirks. For one thing it's a piece of crap. It's made of fiberglass and Silly Puddy. It's held together by an intricate system of twisty ties and coat hangers that my father-in-law devised years ago before a massive, mind-fucking stroke turned him into an Idaho baked potato.

They built this pool in the 1980s, back when everybody was confident that people in the future would solve all their problems. They'd know what to do about all the aerosol spray in the atmosphere. They'd know what to do with all the used-up nuclear rods in the landfills.

Before we moved in with my in-laws, I'd been committed to a lifestyle in which I gave myself everything I wanted.

Here's what I wanted: I wanted to be left the hell alone.

I thought that sounded heavenly!

I used to think about buying a small plot of land and building two tiny houses on it. One for me, and one for J. We’d build them facing each other, with the porches touching. Sometimes we’d text each other.

"U up?" we'd say.

Recently some friends of ours built a house. "A mansion," they called it. Mansion is a French word. It means "house."

They designed the whole thing on an iPad. They put the kitchen exactly where they wanted it, and the garage exactly where they wanted it, and the laundry room exactly where they wanted it. They got an app that tells you exactly where the sun is going to be, and they put the sunlight exactly where they wanted it, too. It took two million dollars and three years to complete. When it was finally done, they invited us over for dinner.

"Well?" I said. "Is it exactly what you wanted?"

It is, they said. It's exactly what they wanted. But it wasn't quite right.

“We’re starting renovations next month,” they said.

They’d downloaded a renovations app.

[ ][ ][ ]

After Dan fixes the pool, I start swimming in the evenings after work.

"I don't swim in water that's less than eighty-five degrees," J says.

"That's okay," I say. "You can watch me."

I do the freestyle stroke and the backstroke. I do the breaststroke and the sidestroke. I do this new stroke I invented that you probably haven't heard about yet. I call it The Diplomat.

"Are you watching?" I say when I do The Diplomat.

"I'm watching," J says, turning the page of her book.

While I swim, I listen to the next-door neighbor clear his throat and hock loogies across his backyard. He hocks two or three a minute. A medical condition, J says. An ear, nose, and throat thing.

I've never met the guy, but I've heard stories.

For example, I've heard the one about him throwing a desktop computer through the front window. I've heard the one about him being carried off, drunk and blabbering, by two Plano police officers. I've heard the one about him threatening to sue J's parents over the fence. Now between their houses there are two fences, six inches apart.

When I get out of the pool, I lay out on the warm concrete until the sun goes down and I start to see stars.

The Habitable Worlds Observatory costs eleven billion dollars, but it's free to take a look up there every once in a while and see what we see.

Nothing yet.

[ ][ ][ ]

After nearly a year of walking with Ramzi, my father-in-law has gained the mobility, dexterity, and physical independence of a Rock'Em Sock'Em Robot.

Ramzi stands behind him while my father-in-law shuffles his way across the living room. Then he shuffles his way back. He swings his arms and works his hips. He keeps his head on his shoulders. That's the main thing.

"Way to keep your head on your shoulders!" Ramzi says.

"Yeah," I chime in from the kitchen table, my mouth full of Hot Pocket. "Good stuff."

Sometimes I worry that J is going to notice what a dreamboat Ramzi is, and then the two of them will run off together. They'll live in two tiny houses with the porches facing each other.

"Hey," I'll say. "That was my idea."

In the meantime, all I can do is keep trying to perfect The Diplomat and hope that's enough to keep her interested.

"Are you watching?" I say.

"I'm watching," she says.

[ ][ ][ ]

When I was a kid, around the same time I read The Great Divorce, I read another story about heaven and hell. This one had more of an Eastern feel.

In the story, heaven and hell are the same place, and in both places you sit around a big pile of food with chopsticks that are ten feet long.

In hell, everybody's starving to death because they can't feed themselves. In heaven, everybody's fat and happy because they all feed each other.

On Mother's Day, J's brothers come over with their families, and we make a charcuterie board.

Everybody I know has gone cuckoo for charcuterie. Even me. I've gone cuckoo for charcuterie, too.

We set out cheese squares and pepperoni circles. We set out olives and pickles and cucumbers and carrots. We set out a variety of cracker options, all gluten- and dairy-free. A variety of bread options, all gluten- and dairy-free. A variety of pita chip options, all gluten- and dairy-free.

We set out a dipping sauce.

It's called Tzatziki.

When my mother-in-law comes out of the backroom and sees the charcuterie board that's been prepared in her honor, which we put together frantically while she was changing her clothes, she says the same thing she always says when she sees something wonderful and unexpected, what I've come to think of as her signature catchphrase.

She says: "Oh my heavens!"

And then my father-in-law says the same thing he always says whenever he sees something wonderful and unexpected, what I've come to think of as his signature catchphrase.

He says: "Would you look at that."

[ ][ ][ ]

And later that night, when I put my father-in-law to bed, he reminds me to leave his bedside lamp on. I always leave it on, and he always reminds me.

He's kept it on every night since he came home from the hospital eleven months ago, sending forty soft-glow watts flickering out into the neighborhood.

With the right telescope and enough patience, I’ve heard that flicker will be visible from the furthest corners of the universe.

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Mike Nagel is an essayist, workaday copywriter, author of DUPLEX and CULDESAC, ex-columnist for Little Engines, and the Father of Unintentionalism.

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LITTLE EXTRAS

Listen to Mike read “New Stroke” aloud.