No Harm Can Come to a Good Man

by James Smythe

  ‘Oh,’ he says. She thought that he would care; that it would get some sort of a reaction from him. Instead he opens the passenger door and rests both hands on the roof. ‘Do you mind if I don’t drive?’ he asks.

  ‘Of course not,’ she says. They climb in.

  ‘Where do you want to eat?’ she asks him, as they leave the parking lot. He’s staring forward, but not at the road. She knows that he’s watching Alyx in the mirror, just as she did.

  ‘Wherever you like,’ he says. There’s something wrong about him, Deanna thinks, beyond anything that Amit’s messages set her up for.

  ‘How hungry are you?’ she asks.

  ‘I don’t know.’ His voice is still and monotone.

  ‘What about T.G.I. Friday’s or something?’

  ‘Sure,’ he says. He watches everything, through the windscreen and the mirrors. Glimpses flashing by catch his attention: a poster with his face on, stuck to the window of a shop; a billboard advertising ClearVista; and, in the rearview mirror as they leave the airport compound, a man in a blue jacket. He stays quiet. He is, he thinks, imagining these things. He’s seeing faces in clouds.

  He doesn’t say anything all through dinner, so Deanna doesn’t really either. Instead they let Alyx jabber at them. They share a platter of mozzarella dippers and chicken wings and potato skins, all of them drinking Cokes apart from Laurence, who orders a single beer that he doesn’t sip from even once. In the back seat, on the drive home, the girls sing, both of them. Deanna holds her husband’s hand, resting it in his lap, and thinks – though it cannot be true – that he’s too cold, as if his whole body has been frozen by something and cannot thaw itself.

  At home, Laurence goes to the bedroom while Deanna puts Alyx to bed. When she’s done and returns to him, thinking that they might talk, he’s already in bed. His eyes are shut, but still she says his name as she climbs under the duvet next to him; he doesn’t even attempt to respond and she doesn’t know if he’s lying to her or not.

  During the night he wakes her. He rolls over and puts his hands on her shoulders and shakes her awake. She opens her eyes to see his face, his eyes red and bleary. She doesn’t know if it’s from tears or lack of sleep. She reaches for his face; not to comfort him, but to feel his cheeks, to see if they’re wet.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ she asks him.

  ‘Are you sure about the person that I am?’ he asks. The words sound wrong and slow, but there they are. It’s not something he’s ever asked before, or that she’s ever contemplated. Ever since they met, he has been who he is. He is unchangeable, a man of constancy.

  ‘Look at what you’ve done – at everything you have achieved,’ Deanna tells him. He lets go and turns away from her.

  ‘I’ve wondered,’ he says, speaking into the darkness on the far side of the room, and then he goes silent. She questions if he was even awake, or if this was some sort of lucid dream. She sits up slightly, listening as he goes back to sleep, or falls into a deeper sleep. His whole body seems to shake with his inhalations. He snores, which he never usually does, unless he’s stressed or ill. (She remembers to not even think the S word, Amit’s rules intruding into her subconscious.) Eventually she gets out of bed and goes downstairs. She sits in the darkness of the kitchen at her laptop and opens the photo application, and she clicks to sort it by faces. She looks at the pictures of them as a family: the five of them, then becoming four. How abrupt it seems, and how their faces are never as happy after the change. She remembers how difficult it was, taking that first family photograph without Sean in it. They were in Italy, and a woman at a restaurant offered. They said yes, without thinking, and then stood around, parents at the back, children at the front; and, behind them, in the distance, a lake, an expanse of water stretching off into the distance. She wishes that she couldn’t see that lake, but there it is.

  There was such a gap in that photograph, as if it had been taken and then sliced out, and all that can be seen through it is the water. Deanna thinks of water – of lakes and seas and rivers – as universal now. They are all to blame, a single entity of destruction.

  In the photograph, Laurence looks lost. He is trying the hardest, but Deanna can see it in his eyes: that he is failing.

  She scrolls back to the earliest picture that they have of Sean, when he was only hours old, his skin a shade lighter and more wrinkled than she can remember it being, and from this point she cycles through his timeline, watching how his face changed over time, as he grew. The features coming through; his eyes, almost changing color as he got older; his hair becoming thicker. Onesies to T-shirts to school uniforms. And then the last photo, taken only a fortnight before he died. She looks at that boy, and she knows that he’s the boy from the book that she’s been writing, but she thinks that that’s okay. She opens the book document then, and she goes to the start. The page after the title doesn’t have anything on it, no dedication, yet, but the space left for one. She types, For Sean. She thinks that she should type something else, but she doesn’t know what. Just dedicating it to him doesn’t seem like it’s enough; anything more seems crass, somehow. She tries phrases and words but none of them work. Only, For Sean.

  She picks up her phone from the breakfast bar and finds Amit’s telephone number. It’s just gone five; she tells herself that she’ll leave it another hour before calling him and asking him about Laurence. She wonders what he knows, what he’s not telling her. She turns the phone over and over in her hands. She puts the TV on and it’s the same old channels: all the political pundits, all the speculation. She watches them, and she feels as if she’s heard everything that they’re saying before: as if it’s just the same old tune, over and over. She zones out, watching it, snapping back when she hears Laurence’s name. It’s nothing, just a run down of the past few weeks. It’s nothing.

  It’s five forty-five. She presses the button to call Amit.

  He answers after long enough that she’s almost sure he won’t. ‘Dee. Everything all right?’ he asks, as if he’s been awake for hours, but a crack in his voice gives him away.

  ‘No,’ Deanna says. ‘What happened out there? Why have you really sent him home?’ She breathes: she thinks that she has to, before she can say the words. ‘What’s wrong with him?’

  ‘Haven’t you seen the blogs? He’s stressed, is all.’

  ‘I’ve seen them. There’s something else. You wouldn’t send him home because he had a migraine. You were there,’ Deanna says. ‘You’re meant to be taking care of him. Don’t screw with me, Amit.’ He is silent for a second. There’s a murmur in the background, another voice. He isn’t alone. Deanna doesn’t care.

  ‘All right. I’ll call you back in five minutes,’ he says.

  ‘Make sure you do,’ she tells him. He hangs up, and she keeps the phone in her hands.

  Amit’s second night in a row sleeping with Clara, and this time he was far less drunk. This time it wasn’t something he can excuse to himself quite as easily. He likes her, he thinks. Not so much that he would get into anything serious, but he likes her, and he doesn’t want to lead her on. He dresses, no charade. This won’t happen again, he tells himself. He puts the light on, apologizing to Clara, who pulls the sheet over her face to shield herself. It’s too early.

  ‘I have to go,’ he says.

  ‘Oh,’ she replies. She sits up in bed. She hasn’t taken her make-up off from last night, and it’s smeared, as if she’s in some classic rock band from decades back. ‘So.’

  ‘And I have to go back home later today, so …’

  ‘No, I get it,’ she says. ‘You come out here again, you’ve got my number?’

  ‘Of course,’ he says, and then he pauses. There’s more to say to her. There are precautions, in this day and age. ‘Listen: don’t tweet about me, or whatever. My boss. You know?’

  ‘It’s fine. You weren’t impressive enough for me to tell the world anything.’ She isn’t quite smiling when she makes the joke, and it’s disarming. He rolls with it. He nev
er knows the protocol for this situation: whether you should hug – or, even, kiss – when saying goodbye. He errs on the side of caution and raises one hand in a static wave from the doorway as he leaves.

  In the hallway he ties his shoelaces and then he calls Deanna back as he’s walking to the elevator. She answers straightaway, before he even hears it ring.

  ‘Okay,’ he says. ‘So, you need to not freak out.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘You remember ClearVista? That report that we did, to get the prediction about what would happen in the election?’ How could she forget, she thinks: it’s what Laurence sat in front of for weeks after Sean died. When he thought that nobody else was looking, he was there, fingers hovering as if he was just waiting to carry on; but he never ticked a box on the file, not until Amit told him he had to. He just liked having the questions up there in front of him. ‘We had the results through, and there was something wrong with them.’

  ‘He was affected by Sean, Amit.’ Even as she says it, not knowing the actual problem, she feels like that’s the default excuse; not just for Laurence, but for them all.

  ‘It’s not that. Some of the results are completely wrong. Like, they make no sense. And there’s a video.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘They make a video, some CG thing. We told you, I’m sure. I don’t know. It’s fucked up, either way. I’m trying to call them, but Larry … He didn’t take it well, not one bit.’

  ‘I’ll bet,’ she says. ‘So what are you doing about it?’

  ‘I’m waiting for them to call back.’ He pauses. ‘Look, Dee, I’ll get this fixed. I’ll get the results, the right results, and we can get him back on the horse.’

  ‘Are you sure there was something wrong with them?’ she asks. She sounds nervous; as if she should have the faith in him in the first place.

  ‘I’m sure.’ He thinks about the video: about the nothing in Laurence’s eyes; about the fear in Deanna’s. ‘Look, don’t tell him I told you. Let him tell you. I’m sure he will eventually. Might not be until this is over, but he will.’ Another pause. ‘You know how it’s been for him. You know how it’s been, and you’re pretty much the only one who can know. He’s worked too hard and he didn’t take the time he should have, maybe. After Sean.’

  ‘I know,’ she says, ‘I told him to take more.’

  ‘Wasn’t more to take, that’s the problem. I should go,’ Amit tells her. ‘I’ve got a meeting this morning with one of the guys Laurence was here to meet. Some of them wouldn’t cancel this late. I’m smoothing things over. He can take a week off. Two, if he needs it. Take him to speak to somebody. You guys have a therapist.’ It’s not a question.

  ‘Okay,’ she repeats, and then, ‘Do you think he’s all right?’

  ‘No question. He’s stressed. He’s been through a lot.’

  ‘We all have,’ Deanna says.

  He hangs up the call and goes to the restaurant to eat something. He stops in front of the mirrored walls as he walks and pushes down his hair, wets his hand with spit to manage a cow-lick, and he tucks his shirt in and smells his armpits, to check. When he sits down at a table, a waiter gives him a menu and he orders a coffee. He opens the results of the survey again. He wants to be prepared when ClearVista finally calls him back. He watches his handset and he wills it to ring again.

  ‘Come with me,’ Deanna asks. She wants to get him out of the house, to take him anywhere that he can’t simply fixate on what’s happened. If he won’t share, she reasons, she can push him; not to tell her, not to get worse, but to claw himself back to normal.

  ‘I’m tired,’ he tells her.

  ‘I need your help,’ she replies. ‘It’s only Henderson’s. That’s the only place we have to go.’ She knows that Trent and Martha will raise Laurence’s spirits as well, or they’ll try to. He doesn’t reply. ‘Get dressed,’ she says.

  When he finally appears downstairs a few minutes later he’s resigned to this. He stands by the front door and stares out at the street.

  ‘Might do me good,’ he says.

  ‘It really might.’

  ‘Can we walk?’

  ‘If you help me carry the bags back,’ she replies. He nods and opens the door and he walks down the drive. He smells the air, Deanna notices; holding it in for too long before he breathes out. She pulls her shoes onto her feet and slams the door behind her. ‘Let’s go then,’ she says. She takes his hand and leads him down the pavement. He’s always a step behind her, slightly out of sync. It’s as if his feet are lazy, not quite willing to make that effort that they should be.

  They reach the junction with the path down to their lake house. They haven’t spoken about what to do with it, not seriously. It’s there as a totem now. They’ll sell it eventually, when it suits them, but Deanna knows she can’t go back there now. Whatever happens to Laurence, if he makes it to the highest office or not, she will never spend another night in that house. She doesn’t believe she could sleep there, simply for knowing what happened just outside the windows, off the dock, in the water.

  She catches Laurence staring at it as they pass. He stops, briefly, and he looks down the path. Through the trees, in the distance, they can see the shimmer of the water.

  ‘Come on,’ she says, and she pulls him forward. They pass people who greet them, townsfolk who smile and wish them well. Nobody stops to talk properly – Deanna knows that Laurence’s body language doesn’t suggest a man who wants small talk – but everybody knows them. At Henderson’s, Trent is already standing outside. He’s stretching, and he laughs as they come closer.

  ‘Well, there’s a face like thunder,’ he says. ‘News says you’re not feeling your finest.’ He holds out his hand to Laurence, who takes it. Deanna watches Trent shake hands with her husband; the energy isn’t mutual.

  ‘That’s true,’ Laurence says.

  ‘You need to be back in bed,’ Trent says.

  ‘Yes.’ Laurence nods.

  ‘We’ll get you some comfort food,’ Deanna says. ‘Martha inside?’

  ‘Sure is.’ Trent opens the door for them. Laurence follows Deanna inside. It’s cold, the fridges pumping out wafts of gassy iced air. The shop is full of customers, people from all over the area. So much of the stock comes from local farmers, and it’s not cheap, but it sells. Deanna takes a basket and starts filling it, saying hello to the few people that she recognizes. All of the things that Laurence likes go into the basket, whether he notices or not. She thinks about cooking for him, making him the meals that have always cheered him in the past. She doesn’t know if it will work, but this is what they do for each other. It’s what they’ve always done.

  Deanna goes to Martha and greets her with a hug, and they talk in a slight hush about Laurence’s health; how he’ll be fine, he just needs some rest. They work him so hard already.

  ‘Imagine what it’ll be like when he’s President,’ Martha says. She smiles, and Deanna touches the wooden surface of the counter.

  ‘Don’t curse it,’ she says. She turns to look for Laurence, to urge him to say hello to Martha. He’s standing a way back, near the wines, staring up at the television screen in the corner of the shop. ‘Laurence?’ she calls, but he doesn’t react. ‘What’s wrong?’ She steps back towards him, leaving her shopping with Martha, who starts to put it through the register. Laurence doesn’t move. Deanna says his name, and touches him, and he stands stock-still, staring at the screen. He doesn’t flinch. ‘What’s wrong with you?’ she asks, and she glances at the screen. There’s a photograph of him up on it, taken by a member of the press on the day that Sean died. He’s in the suit he was wearing, the lemon-yellow tie that Deanna loved on him. He looks ill, gaunt and drawn. The newsreader seems to be talking about Laurence being off the trail for a short while – nothing serious, just a lead-in to another discussion about the state of the candidates, the likely successor to the throne – but this is the photograph that they have used: nothing Presidential, not one of the official promotio
nal shots. It’s cold, to see him like that. And now, in the shop, Laurence seems to be mimicking who he was that day. His expression is the same. He is just as lost, in his eyes. She says his name again, and she holds him, and he collapses. He turns into jelly in her arms, slumping down to his knees, and he sobs.

  Martha rushes over, through the other shoppers who are staring at them, and she acts like a shield.

  ‘Get him up and to the back,’ she says. They both try to lift him, but he’s a dead weight, even as thin as he’s been getting. Deanna hears the shoppers talking, saying his name, asking what’s wrong with him. She thinks about begging them to leave, to give him space and air. Then there’s a flash, a photograph being taken. She looks around to see who took it, but there’s no sign.

  ‘Please,’ she says to them, as if they’ll know what it is she’s asking. Trent appears at the rear of the crowd.

  ‘Everybody out,’ he says. ‘Nothing to see here. Five minutes, you can all come back in. Baskets on the floor, we won’t touch them.’ The crowd listens to him, and they disperse. When they’re gone, he switches off the TV set and then he squats next to Deanna and Laurence. He hooks his arms under Laurence’s and pulls him to his feet. Martha fetches water and Laurence sips it. Deanna watches his eyes and they come back, something in them changing.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Laurence says, his voice barely even a whisper.

  ‘It’s fine,’ Trent says. ‘But I’d say you’re worse off than you’re letting on.’ He looks at Deanna. ‘You want to get yourself better, I’d warrant.’

  ‘Yes,’ Deanna says, answering for him. Laurence doesn’t say anything else; he sips at the water, and he blinks furiously, as if there is something in his eyes.

  Deanna calls their therapist’s office. The receptionist answers and asks her to wait, and she does. Their hold music is a slowed-down piano dirge of Moon River and Deanna sings along under her breath, hearing her voice echo slightly in the receiver. She always wonders with this stuff if it’s a trick: if that song is carefully considered to calm down clients, so that they are more amenable. That’s one of the parts of therapy as a business, she thinks. It’s all smoke and mirrors. When the receptionist comes back onto the line she gives Deanna an emergency appointment, which is twice the cost of a regularly scheduled one. They haven’t seen Dr Diaz in months, a failing of Laurence’s schedule. He complained about the time it took, and how hard it was to actually schedule in time with Diaz and he stopped attending the meetings as soon as they actually needed them.