LATE TO LAUGH
by Carol Harada
He always shows up late to laughing yoga, often sitting in his Jetta mustering up the strength to go into the church basement. Sometimes he tells himself it’s because churches creep him out. He’s avoided them ever since they showed that child molester cautionary tale in cub scouts at St. John’s Lutheran, where he hid with Tory Mancini below the pew. Here it’s too smoky outside, tobacco clouds loitering by the door long after the AA groups have come and gone. The laughing leader Mrs. Prabha Jhoti, a matronly woman in colorful salwar kameez and long hair in a tight bun, once said that Harvey had resistance. As if she’d invented the concept.
Harvey sighs at last, watching the second hand gather up the leaden minute hand and sweep it into 7 o’clock. He pockets the keys, slams the car door, church door, and himself into the folding metal chair. His bony ass gets cold right away. From her place up front Mrs. Jhoti flirtatiously winks at Harvey and nods to everyone else. Like a conductor, she rises and waves her arms down and up, beginning the opening movement of their symphony of laughter.
“Heh heh heh,” comes effortful belly barks from the guy in overalls. Then the shrieking peal of that skinny lady who teaches authentic movement, whatever that is. Despite the tangle of hair and the oversize glasses, she reminds Harvey of a little seen marsh bird making up for lost time. Her laugh line is perfectly supported by the roar of genuine hilarity from the tiniest, roundest, oldest man in the world. His long beard shakes and his gold teeth flash. There are others who start off with the “fake it until you are making it,” as Mrs. Jhoti says. The physiological benefits are sure to follow, she reassures.
And then there’s Harvey. Sometimes he can’t hear himself laugh, like tonight. He experiments with soundless laughing, turning the volume all the way down to zero point two five. Just puffs of air emanating from his tummy. By now they are all up out of the unfriendly chairs and walking, swaying, even knee slapping and stomping. Mrs. Jhoti comes by just then and giggles in his ear, which releases an image of Harvey’s dead friend Jake, waltzing like a circus bear around the hospital room. AIDS ward 1988. Another thrilling episode of Dementia Land. Harvey had trailed after Jake with the IV stand on more than one occasion. He had pretended back then that he really had gone to lunch with Frank Sinatra and The Jakester. Harvey still carries from that false memory the feel of his father’s homburg sitting rakishly on his head and the tingling of his lips when he’d played the blues harmonica for old Blue Eyes. Harvey loved those little adventures with Jake’s addled brain. They were vacations unplanned for, with no jetlag, at least for Harvey.
The jaws start to ache, his face goes numb, and Harvey can tell that about fifteen minutes of non-stop laughing has passed. He wants a cigarette and he doesn’t even smoke. Mrs. Jhoti waves her fingers and the laughter dies down until it sputters into silence. People don’t look at each other for fear of starting up again, some wipe their eyes, and almost everyone shuffles back for a cup of chai made without black tea.
Harvey sips the spicy goodness, and Mrs. Jhoti nudges him with a fat dimpled elbow. He nods and lets his mouth betray the faintest trace of curved satisfaction. They talk about the rescue cats she’s crazy about, and once more he declines her kind offer to find him some “good pussy”. He doesn’t have the heart to correct her English, enjoying her innocent Pakistani phrasing. Neither will he tell her that he is trying to keep the feeling, that burning hole in his side where Jake once fit like a neighboring jigsaw puzzle piece. He wants to, but does not say how hard it is to outlive the livest wire. And yet, somehow she knows about the decades. It’s in her obsidian eyes that glimmer like the sparkling trim on her tunic and pantaloons. Everything is there in the glowing darkness.
