by Larry Watson
“I can tell you’re feeling better.” She strikes a match and holds the flame to his cigarette, then points to the telephone on the bed stand. “You have your own phone?”
“I’ve got Doc McCarthy to thank for that. I told him I needed a phone to keep up with customers while I’m in here. And since I gave him a great deal on a freezer a couple months ago, he went for it. Told the nurse to attend to it right away. When she plugged it in, she said, ‘A private room, a private phone . . . You have to be the most privileged patient in this hospital.’ And it’s a direct line. So if you want to call me, you don’t have to go through the switchboard. The number’s right there on the phone.”
Edie steps back toward the window.
“Why’d you cut off your hair, Edie? Your hair looked great long.”
“My God, Roy. My skirt. My hair. Maybe I should consult you before I make any decisions about my appearance.”
“Maybe you should.” Roy has figured out how to speak without exposing the space where his front teeth were. “I know what looks good on a woman,” he says. “Now, you, you don’t need much help. Short skirts? Hell yes. Short hair? Huh-uh. At least not fixed like that.”
“Fixed?” She laughs and runs her hand back and forth through her hair.
“What does Dean think about your hair?”
“He hasn’t said.”
“And you didn’t consult him. What about how you dress?”
“What about it?”
“What does Dean think?”
“What else,” she says, “has the doctor said?”
Roy smiles as if he understands her strategy. “Not much,” he says. “Wait and see how the bones heal. Or don’t.”
“I bet you’ll be fine.”
“Is that your expert medical opinion?”
“Isn’t it better to look on the bright side?”
Roy smiles again. “Is that what you do, Edie? Do you look on the bright side?”
“I try.”
He reaches toward the ashtray, stubs out his half-smoked cigarette, and attempts again to sit up a little straighter. “Here’s the thing. My life is divided in two now. Before and after. I can feel already how my memory will work. From now on, every time I try to remember something I’ll think, When was that? Was that before the accident or after? But you’re right there, on both sides. You’re like the hinge holding my life together.”
“What the hell are you talking about? Dean was your brother before and he’s your brother now. Your mother’s your mother. Your apartment’s your apartment. You’re not making sense.”
“But you were there. You were out there on the prairie. You found me. If not for you . . . Hell, you know the answer to that as well as I do.”
“A ‘hinge.’ You sure know how to flatter a woman.”
“Do you need to be flattered? I didn’t think you were that kind of woman. But if that’s what you need, I can sure as hell oblige you.”
“I just stopped by to see how you were doing. Physically.”
“Physically? You want to know how I’m doing physically? Well, let’s see.” He raises his head from the pillows and looks down the length of his body as if he’d forgotten a body was there. “How am I doing?”
He lets his head fall back on the pillows. “But since you’re here, and since you’re concerned about how I’m doing—how I’m doing physically—there is something you can do.” He crooks his finger for her to come closer.
Reluctantly Edie steps forward.
“Come around to the other side,” Roy says, and she does as he commands.
He lifts the sheet. “Reach under here, will you, Edie?”
She flinches.
“Come on,” says Roy. “You know what I need. I’m a prisoner here, Edie. There’s a box of tissues right over there on the shelf. Just put your hand under here and give me a little relief.” He laughs. “Shouldn’t take more than a minute.”
Yes, she understands what he needs. She understands very well. He’s flat on his back, swaddled in gauze and plaster, and helpless as an infant. He has to find some source of power, some way to impose his will. And if he can humiliate her in the process, so much the better.
“I’m asking you for a favor, Edie.”
And how does he know that Edie won’t tell Dean about this incident? Or perhaps he simply doesn’t care one way or the other.
For a moment it looks as though she will do as Roy asks. She steps close to the bed. But rather than reach under the sheet, she bends down and kisses her brother-in-law chastely on the forehead.
“You have to learn to do things for yourself, Roy,” she says as she backs out of the room.
FATHER AND SON look nothing alike. Elmer Linderman is a short, compact bald man, perpetually smiling, and bowlegged from the years he spent on horseback. Dean is tall, slope-shouldered, and usually overdue for a haircut. On this warm evening Mr. Linderman is wearing a sweat-stained work shirt while his son is shirtless. Yet when they step back to assess the carport they’ve built, they fall into the same posture—hands in the back pockets of their jeans and heads cocked to look at their handiwork.
“What do you think?” Mr. Linderman says.
“It’ll work,” says Dean.
“I don’t know what the hell good it’ll do. The car won’t start any easier on a cold morning. I’ll still have to plug it in.”
Dean shrugs. “You won’t have to sweep snow off the car.”
“Not if the snow comes straight down. But how often does that happen?”
“Well, it’s better than nothing.”
Mr. Linderman grips one of the posts that the corrugated fiberglass sheets are attached to. “The hell of it is,” he says, “all those years on the ranch, we always left our vehicles out in the open.”
“You’re in town now.”
“You sound like your mother.”
Dean turns away from the carport and looks off in the direction of the unbounded prairie beyond the trailer park. “I remember one blizzard when the snow piled up so high you weren’t sure which drift the truck was under.”
“You might be remembering more than one.”
“I’m thinking of a time when Roy and I did the shoveling.”
Mr. Linderman walks away from the trailer, and his son seems to know that he is to follow.
“Is that thunder?” Dean asks.
“More likely trucks out on the highway. An eighteen-wheeler with an empty trailer makes a hell of racket.” He turns toward his son. “Your brother quit his job. He say anything to you about that?”
“Nope.”
“Us neither. Your mother come across that bit of news when she went in to talk to Delbert Thayne.”
“About?”
“You know your mother. Wanting to make sure Delbert understood about Roy’s condition and to go easy on him when he returned to work. And Delbert says, ‘He won’t be returning.’ Seems Delbert visited Roy in the hospital, and your brother up and announced he’s quitting.”
“Huh. So did Mom ask Roy about it?”
Mr. Linderman walks a little farther from the rows of trailers. From the roofs of a few trailers, the stalks, wires, and wings of television antennas protrude like the skeletons of great birds, and from a few windows come the gray-blue ghostly glow of television signals.
“You know your mother,” says Mr. Linderman. “She don’t like to push her boys in any direction they might not want to go. Roy will tell us when he’s good and ready, she says.”
The sweat Dean worked up earlier has dried, and he crosses his arms against a breeze that blows across the open land. He says, “Sam Wylie would hire Roy at the drop of a hat.”
“Just what I told your mother. A wheeler-dealer like your brother will never be out of a job for long. Still,” Mr. Linderman says hesitantly, “maybe you could ask Monte if he needs another hand at the store.”
“I think,” says Dean, “one Linderman is enough for Monte.”
“Sure, sure. I just thought I’d put i
t out there.”
“You mean Mom put you up to it.”
Mr. Linderman starts walking back toward the rows of trailers. “You know your mother.”
IT’S THE THIRD call from Roy in as many days, and this one begins like the others—with an apology.
But this time Edie doesn’t hang up. She’s home alone. Dean went over to his parents’ trailer after work and he’s still there, helping his father with another project that Mrs. Linderman dreamed up.
“. . . It’s just that . . . well, hell, you know you make me a little crazy. And then cooped up here . . .”
“Is this another ‘I’m sorry, but . . .’ ?”
“All right, all right. I apologize. I apologize for my behavior. Period. There, how’s that?”
The phone cord is long enough to allow Edie to sit down at the kitchen table.
“Okay.”
“I’m forgiven then?”
“Until the next time.”
Laughter comes across the line. “Ah, you know me too well. But that isn’t the only reason I called. Laying here like this I’ve had a lot of time to think. And you know I’m not big on that. I’d just as soon be up and doing.”
“Roy Linderman, man of action.”
“Hey, it’s no joke. Dean was always the one who could sit for hours and do nothing but think about which way the world spins. But why the hell am I telling you what he’s like? You married the guy.”
“You’ve known him longer than I have.”
“That’s true. But I sure as hell haven’t figured him out.”
“Let me know when you think you have.”
“Anyway. Just laying here with nothing to do but wonder which nurse is going to hold the bedpan has been getting to me. Then I realize I don’t have to think. I can remember. And I’ve been remembering like a son of a bitch. So can I tell you what I was remembering tonight? You were a big part of it.”
“I’m not sure.”
But Roy proceeds. “This was, I don’t know, maybe the summer we graduated. Anyway. Hot, sunny day, and we’re all down at the Elk River. Sandbar was packed with kids. You were sitting on a log, and right next to you was Carla Hall—and you were both wearing swimming suits. I walked up behind you two and you didn’t know I was there, so I’m staring at your backs. And remember, I was going with Carla then. And Carla—well, hell, Carla was a knockout. Everybody thought so, right? But what I see when I look at the two of you is how different you look. And this is your backs, just your backs. But your back, Edie, yours was like, like—I don’t know what to say. It was smooth, not a goddamn blotch or a mole or a blemish. And you’re tan, both of you, but you looked like caramel. Suddenly I realize there’s skin and there’s skin. You know what I’m trying to tell you?”
“I don’t know, Roy. You liked my back?”
He groans. “Jesus. You don’t get it. I saw you, Edie. I appreciated you. I saw how you were different. How many other guys could have done that? Every guy at the river that day would have thought, Two good-looking girls. A back’s a back. Isn’t that what Dean would have thought? Isn’t it?”
“Some girls,” Edie says, “used to mix iodine and baby oil and spread that on before lying out in the sun.”
“Come on. Has Dean ever said anything about your back? Has he?”
Edie rises from the table and walks to the sink. A dishrag is draped across the faucet, and she takes the cloth and wipes it desultorily across the counter. She says, “He’s said a lot of things . . .”
“Okay, okay. Let me give you another one. And I know this is a time you remember too. You weren’t in school, so I skipped chemistry and went to your house. To check on you.”
She drops the washcloth in the sink and walks back to her chair. “I had strep throat,” she says. She closes her eyes, holds the telephone a few inches from her ear, and presses her forehead onto the heel of her free hand.
“Yeah, yeah. Strep throat. You answered the door in your pajamas. God damn, I still remember exactly what you looked like in those pajamas. Baby blue, right? Am I right? Baby blue pajamas?”
“Blue,” she says and sighs. “Yes, blue flannel.” It wouldn’t make a difference if he were blind, she thinks. He doesn’t even need her there to look at her in that way.
“And they buttoned up the front,” he says.
Roy and Dean Linderman aren’t identical twins, but they share identical obsessions. “High school, Roy. Do you hear yourself? You’re talking about something that happened years ago. I wore a bathing suit, and I had a good tan. We made out once. In high school, Roy.”
“It was more than that, Edie. You know it was. You in those blue pajamas. That was more than making out. Tell me it wasn’t . . .”
Edie says nothing but crosses the room and terminates the call. But she doesn’t set the receiver back in its cradle. She keeps it pressed to her ear.
FROM HIS HOSPITAL bed Roy looks up at his brother and says, “I want you to sell the Impala. Take out an ad in the Gazette and the Shopper both.” He points to a folded sheet of paper on the bed stand. “I wrote down what the ad should say.”
“The hell,” Dean says. “What for?”
Roy nods in the direction of his leg in its cast. “I’ll probably need something with an automatic transmission.”
“Are you sure? Why don’t you wait?”
The swelling in Roy’s face has gone down, but the bruising, though it has faded, remains. A yellow-lavender smear covers one side of his head from his hairline to his jaw.
“I could use the money,” says Roy.
Dean raises his eyebrows.
“Don’t give me that look. That’s Mom’s look.”
“She’s going to talk to Delbert, you know.”
Roy turns his head from side to side. “Shit. I don’t suppose you can call her off. Or tell her I’ve got something else lined up.”
“Sooner or later she’ll want to see your pay stubs.”
“I just need to buy a little time. Once I get on my feet, I can work something out.”
Dean picks up the glass of water on the bed stand, raises it to his lips, and drinks. Then before he puts it back down, he looks at the glass curiously, as if he has just realized what he’s done. They grew up drinking from the same glass, eating off the same plate. So close for so many years it seemed as though one of them could taste what the other one bit into. Wearing each other’s coats and shoes. Sharing the warmth of their blankets and bodies on cold winter nights. And then, around the age of thirteen or fourteen, they were suddenly different—and no difference seemed as profound as the fact that Roy was now sure of almost everything and Dean was not.
“That price you’re asking,” says Dean. “That already seems low. And then ‘or best offer’? You really want that?”
Roy nods. “And put a For Sale sign in the window. Wash the car and park it on the street.”
“Edie and I have a little saved,” says Dean. “We could help you out—”
Roy waves away the offer. “How the hell did you two manage to save any money?”
Dean shrugs. “We keep it pretty simple.”
“And is that your idea? Or Edie’s?”
“Just let me know if you need anything.”
“Sell the fucking Impala,” says Roy. “That’ll hold me for a while. In the meantime, spend a little of your savings on your wife. Buy her something nice.”
“She makes more than me.” Dean refolds the paper with its instructions and puts it in his shirt pocket.
“That’s not what I’m talking about.”
“Thanks for the advice,” Dean says and turns toward the door. “Even if I didn’t ask for it.”
“Hey, hey. Wait up. I’ve got something else I want to ask you.”
Dean stops.
“Did you ever think I was going to die? From the accident?”
Dean stands up a little straighter, as if his brother’s question comes as a challenge. He says, “When Edie called from the hospital, she said right away yo
u were okay. ‘Roy’s been in an accident but he’ll be okay,’ she said. So, no. I didn’t think you’d die.”
“Yeah, but what if . . . What if I died?”
“What if you moved to Denver? What if, what if . . . How the hell do I know?”
Roy laughs. “I die or move to Denver? It’s all the same to you?”
“You know what I mean.”
“I’m not sure I do, brother. I’m not sure I do.”
“Well. You work on it.”
This time Dean makes it almost to the door, and it’s not anything his brother says that stops him and draws him back to the bedside, but once he’s there he bows his head as if he expects Roy to place his hand and a benediction upon him.
“She couldn’t say it fast enough,” says Dean. “That you were okay. It took a fraction of a second before she got those words out, and it wasn’t fast enough.”
ROY, IN HIS pajamas and robe and supporting himself on his crutches, surveys the trailer’s living room. The sofa and an overstuffed chair have been covered with sheets.
“What the hell, Ma,” Roy says. “Did you think I’d bleed on your furniture?”
“Your mother thought the chair and sofa would be too itchy for you,” Mr. Linderman says.
“They both got that kind of tweedy fabric,” Mrs. Linderman says.
“They’re a set,” says Mr. Linderman. “Remember?”
Mrs. Linderman puts a hand on her son’s shoulder. “You were saying in the hospital how the itching was driving you crazy.”
“Inside my cast, Ma. Inside.”
“I’ll show you how we got the bedroom rigged up,” she says.
Roy’s crutches, his mother’s girth, his father’s rolling side-to-side gait—they have to proceed single-file down the hallway, at the end of which Mrs. Linderman opens a door and gestures for all of them to enter.
“Here you be,” she says. “Welcome home.”
Roy looks around the small room. The single bed with no frame or headboard, its head pushed up against the wall. The worn white chenille bedspread. The straight-backed chair at the bedside. The chest of drawers painted a shade of blue more common to exteriors. If there’s anything here that pleases or surprises Roy, his face doesn’t register it.
