Rob shook his head. “I’m sorry, Ed. It doesn’t ring a bell for me at all.
Never heard of the place. I guess it was a waste of time, a dead end.”
“Oh well—win some, lose some. Let’s boot up your new toy and load the software. Does it take three-and-a-half inch diskettes?”
Rob dropped the paper into an overflowing wastepaper basket. “Of course—bring ‘em on. I’ve made a few changes in your graph program, by the
way …”
It took several hours to set up the new laptop and transfer all the numbers Rob had been accumulating. On the bus back and forth from Atlantic City, Rob had written a graphics program to display the numbers in bar graph form. It printed out in a continuous sheet a couple of feet long. When the dot matrix’s buzz stopped Edwin tore the paper off and spread it out over the litter on the table. “What do you think?”
“It’s too easy to fool yourself with numbers,” Rob said. “Massage your data right and you can get any result you want. But it sure looks good, doesn’t it?” He noticed his voice was unsteady.
Edwin scanned the printout, pencil in hand. “Not any result,” he said. “You can’t get any old answer. You’re definitely progressing here. If this is normal down here, and we draw a line here where you’ll intersect it…”
“It’ll take me years,” Rob said sadly. “At the rate I’ve been going.”
“Maybe it’s like working out at the gym,” Edwin said. “As you get stronger it gets easier. What you mustn’t do is give up.”
Rob leaned a shoulder against the wall and stared down at the graph. “It’s just … it’s the end of November already. The kids’ second birthday is December twenty-fourth. And then it’s Christmas. It’s going to be hard to
hang on to my courage.”
“They arrived on Christmas Eve, how cool! But you poor guy, December’s going to be a double whammy for you this year.” Edwin began to fold the long sheet up. “Was it a bummer, going to Atlantic City for Thanksgiving?”
“If there’s a rehearsal for hell, they have it there then. Commuting in from this area was the smartest decision I’ve made. Two or three day trips a week is plenty. If I had to live in Atlantic City, I’d lose my mind.”
“I’m going to Tucson to see Carina over Christmas. She’ll be there on vacation, with her folks—one of those huge extended Latino families. You come too.”
Rob shook his head. “A reunion with your girl, and you want to drag me along? Don’t be silly. Besides, do they have casino gambling in Arizona? I have to keep this up.”
“Let me work on the problem,” Edwin said thoughtfully.
Dismantling the Open Door Center’s front porch took almost no time. Once Rob pried off the peeling roof shingles the rotten wood framing practically fell apart of its own weight. He had to rent a small dumpster to take the debris. When he was done only the stone steps and support piers were left.
The house looked odder than ever, and the shelter residents had to use the
back door.
But then the fun could start. Rob had Hechinger’s deliver a truckload of pressure-treated lumber, and began the framing. The Center had on hand only the simplest and cheapest tools, so Rob bought himself a square, a four-foot level, a D-handle drill, a worm-drive circular saw, and—an irresistibly enchanting toy—an electric hammer.
After the unusually chilly fall, December was mild. Rob was able to get by in just his old clothes and the blue toggle coat, saving his more decent outfit for casinos. It was enormously satisfying to be outdoors measuring and cutting two-by-sixes, hammering them into a sturdy framework to support the decking. He dragooned Jonathan into helping to hold beams while he nailed. If the weather held up, he hoped to get the roof framed and shingled before the new year. Then when winter really closed in, he could sit under cover and work on the floor and rails.
He was leveling and squaring a floor joist one morning, squinting in the sunshine at the bubble in the level, when a female voice said, “Excuse me—Mr. Lewis?” It wasn’t Mrs. Ruppert, who still tapped Rob for the occasional sink stoppage or radiator adjustment, but an entirely different woman, fortyish and conservatively dressed. “I’m Pastor Amy Phillipson.”
Rob straightened up and stared in surprise. But at least no impolite
comment slipped out—women became clergy all the time these days. “Hi, I’ve heard about you.” He wiped his hand on his faded and tattered jeans and took hers as she held it out.
“And I’ve heard a lot about you! Show me what you’re doing here. This must be the new porch!”
Awkwardly Rob pointed out the new framing bolted to the old stone piers. Was she checking up on him? It had been so much easier when he could just scope out people’s minds. “Once I get some joists up, I can set up a temporary walkway with plywood. Then folks won’t have to go around back.”
She was like a brown sparrow, her eyes bright and bird-like as she assessed him. “Mrs. Ruppert says you’ve been a godsend. I’m sure you’ve had a very interesting life, Mr. Lewis. How did you ever come to be homeless?”
“There were things,” Rob said evasively. “People have been nice to me, though. You know Edwin Barbarossa.”
“Isn’t he a sweetie? He mentioned to me that you’ll be at loose ends over the holiday. So I came by to invite you to Christmas dinner.”
“Umm …” Acute embarrassment made him tongue-tied.
“Nobody much will be there—my family of course, Jeff and the children.”
Rob felt his stomach tense. “How old are your kids?”
“Eleven and eight. Oh, and my husband’s daughter and her family will be there too. Their baby was born in September.”
Big kids and infants he could handle. If there had been toddlers Rob knew he’d decline. As it was, he ought to accept. “I appreciate it,” he said slowly.
“The house is nearby, over on the other side of Colesville Road—here’s the address and phone number. If it’s raining, call and someone will give you a lift. Around three, all right?”
When she was gone Rob shook his head in amazement and picked up his hammer. He was a reformed criminal, currently supporting himself on blackjack winnings. What was a nice lady minister doing inviting him to dinner? Edwin should have warned her.
Above him the front door opened a cautious crack. Rob had barricaded it with some boards to prevent accidents. Mrs. Ruppert looked out over the block, her small plump face puckered in dismay. “Oh Rob,” she wailed. “All the lights have gone out upstairs in the women’s dorm!”
“I’ll look at it. It must be the circuit breaker.” Rob put his hammer down again.
Christmas week was fully as bad as Rob had foreseen. He had learned to sleep anywhere, in a pile of leaves in the rain, or by a crowded freeway.
But now he couldn’t sleep in his stuffy little basement room. He lay awake night after night, staring up into the dark. It was so stupid! He had total power, if he cared to exert it, over other people’s heads and hearts. But his own were unmanageable. One morning he went into a Toys “R” Us and began toy shopping, torturing himself with speculations about what Angela and Davey might like. It wasn’t too late—Federal Express could handle the delivery. But the thought of the note or card defeated him. He abandoned a heaping shopping cart in the middle of the aisle, and went to the homeless shelter to hammer plywood.
I could phone her and not talk, he thought as he worked. Just hear her say, “Hello.” I could ride the Metro and the bus, and just look at the house as it goes by. The weather’s so warm, the kids might be out in the yard.
Even changing diapers would be a pure delight. The palms of his hands recalled emphatically the heft of solid toddler bodies. Then, with an equal and frightful vividness, he remembered the last time he had touched them: the TV blaring out the Lehrer Report, the smell of apple juice, the treble voices speaking with preternatural clarity. No, he couldn’t go back yet! It wasn’t safe—and the hammer came down, wham! on his thumb. Rob dropped the hammer and gripped the
throbbing finger with his other hand gratefully.
Here at least was a perfectly allowable reason for the tears rising to his
eyes.
Early on Christmas Eve morning, he took the subway downtown and visited museums. The National Gallery and the Sackler would counterbalance the tackiness of Atlantic City, he thought. He looked at Renaissance paintings and toured a visiting exhibit of Mesopotamian sculptures, eerie colossal statues of big-eyed curly-haired kings. It was hard to picture these stiff smug figures as the Gilgamesh of the epic.
But the exhibits were full of families and kids in town for the holiday.
Their simple happiness oppressed him. At midday he gave up on culture and set out to walk. If I could just wear myself out I’d sleep, he told himself. Walk until I drop.
He went north up Connecticut Avenue towards Dupont Circle. The leafless trees were hung with glittery white lights, and red bows adorned the lamp posts. All the store windows were decorated for the holiday. Was Julianne going to have a birthday party for the kids? Had she set up a Christmas tree? He stopped to look at a menu hanging in a bar window. I could get drunk, he thought. Six or eight whiskies and out like a light. Or if I’m thinking lowlife chemical solutions, some dirtbag would sell me cocaine or heroin even on Christmas Eve.
But it was the runup to oblivion that scared him. Three drinks, maybe, and
the trap door to the sub-basement would pop open. He’d just spent months working towards control— what was the point if he tossed all that progress away? Reflected in the dark glass he noticed his own face, a little haggard from lack of sleep but much more human than this summer. I am getting there, he told himself. No more selfdestructive craziness. And a haircut wouldn’t hurt either, if I’m going out to dinner tomorrow.
He walked on and found a barber shop in the lobby of an upscale hotel. “Off with the ponytail,” he told the girl. He felt he endured the touch of her fingers wielding the scissors and the clippers very calmly. When she held up the mirror he inspected the close-cropped fair hair and beard with mild surprise. I don’t look like a derelict any more, he realized.
He still had the evening to get through. Up near the circle was a big bookstore. He went in and chose an armload of action-adventure paperbacks with titles like MIA Hunter or The Destroyer. On his way to the register he saw a new paperback edition of the Gilgamesh epic, and added it to the stack. There was a Metro station at Dupont Circle. He would ride back to the room and read, all night if necessary.
Still he couldn’t sleep. After reading the night through, Rob’s head was thick with cliff-hangers and blazing M-16 rifles when he arrived at the Phillipsons on Christmas Day. Their house was a suburban archetype, a split-level set in the center of a green lawn. Rob leaned on the picket fence and swallowed his envy. His life had looked like this once.
“Come on in!” Amy Phillipson waved from the front door. “Isn’t it warm? It could be spring! This is my husband Jeff, my son Theo, and my daughter Janey. My father-in-law Buck is watching TV with Mark, and my stepdaughter Anne is upstairs nursing the baby.”
The new names swirled around in Rob’s head without hooking up to their proper faces. He stood dumb, acutely uncomfortable. Then the older kid, a brash carrot-topped girl in a blue soccer team shirt, said, “I love it when Mom brings home a hunk.”
“Janey!” Both Phillipsons pounced on her. Rob laughed so hard at this picture of himself that he felt better right away.
“Girls,” young Theo said in disgust. He had red hair like his father too.
“I got a new baseball mitt for Christmas. You wanna go out back and catch a few?”
“Sure, I’m in,” Rob said.
The air was so mild the birds sang just as if it were April, and snowdrops showed bravely in the flowerbeds. Only the bare branches of the trees betrayed the season. Theo had ambitions to be a pitcher, so Rob undertook the batting. “You watch yourself,” Jeff warned when he came out with some eggnog. “Theo’s idea of a strike zone is loose at best.”
“We could use a catcher and a fielder,” Rob invited.
“I’m basting the turkey,” Jeff said. “But I’ll turf out the couch potatoes.
It’s too nice a day to watch TV.”
In the end almost the entire family joined the game. Amy Phillipson was astoundingly fleet chasing ground balls, and the old father-in-law could hit anything Theo pitched. The atmosphere was so comfortable and normal that Rob felt himself fitting right in, as if he were a cousin or a distant nephew in town for the holiday. I’ve rejoined the human race, he thought.
It’s a miracle.
At dinner, Rob could have been eating turkey with these people all his life. Jeff had stuffed the bird with fresh oysters and breadcrumbs, a recipe of his own invention which he refined every year. “This year I put in brandy and mushrooms,” Jeff said, chewing thoughtfully. “I don’t know. Maybe if it was Madeira instead …”
Rob was fascinated. It was something he was sure he could do. After all, from carpentry to cooking was not so far a step—they were the same sort of creativity. He remembered his scant repertoire of two recipes at home. “When this is all over,” he confided, “I want to learn to cook.”
“When what is all over?” Janey asked.
“Umm, stuff.” “Janey,” her mother said warningly, and the girl pouted.
“It’s okay,” Rob said. “I have kids of my own …” Suddenly it was alien again, the dining room, the laden table, the faces young and old around it.
The fellow feeling switched off with an almost audible click. What am I doing here? he thought. Only common decency kept him from jumping up and running out of the house.
In the uproar of dessert, which was a Christmas cake decorated with sprigs of holly, he hoped his sudden silence would pass unnoticed. When they all pitched in to clear the table, though, Amy Phillipson drew him aside into the window bay. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Janey touched on something hurtful, didn’t she?”
“Not her fault,” Rob muttered.
“Can we do anything to help?”
He shook his head, forcing himself to break out of the ice, to make a reply. “I—I got into a deep dark hole, and I have to work my way out. And it takes so long …”
She gazed thoughtfully out the window at the leafless trees ringing the lawn, and quoted, ” ‘It is easy, the descent to Avernus. Morning and night
the gates stand open. But to retrace the footsteps, to light again return, there indeed lies toil.’ “
“Virgil,” he said, surprising himself. “The Aeneid. I read it this summer.”
“You are a very unusual person,” she said, surprised in her turn.
“Is it ever really possible?” Rob asked her impulsively. “To return to the light?”
“Oh, never doubt it!” Her voice and eyes were full of certainty. “You can’t do it alone, of course. But there are those who can build bridges, and unlock doors, and even plunder Avernus.”
Out of his depth now, Rob said, “Edwin’s good that way.” She looked up at him, surprised but smiling. “I hadn’t thought of him in that context, but you’re right. He’s an excellent representative. We always sing carols after Christmas dinner—you will too, won’t you?”
Rob wanted to say no, but knew it would be a mistake. No half measures, he told himself. If I’m in the human race, I’m in all the way. “I can’t carry a tune in a paper bag,” he said. “But if you can live with that, then let’s go for it.” So the evening passed off fairly well afer all. And whether it was the carols, or merely eating a large dinner with oyster stuffing, that night Rob slept.
CHAPTER 6
On his return in the middle of January from another Atlantic City day trip Rob found three separate phone messages from Edwin waiting for him at the shelter. He called back right away. “Is something wrong?” he demanded.
“Of course not. I wanted to tell you I got a new toy.”
“You and your toys! What is it, another CD accessory?”
&n
bsp; “No, this one is really cool, Rob—an EEG machine. To record your brain waves, you know? I borrowed it from a friend at the Mental Institute, just for you.”
“Ed, no needles, please!”
“There aren’t any needles,” Edwin said indignantly. “Just electrodes to paste to your scalp. This is as simple and as low-tech as you can go in brain studies, short of running mazes or doing pencil-and-paper tests. Oh come on, Rob, in the interests of research, aren’t you wildly curious to see if your brain wave patterns differ from everybody else’s?”
“I’ve never considered it,” Rob said. “Haven’t you had enough of the experiments?” “Never! It won’t hurt, Rob, cross my heart and hope to die. And if you want we can set it up right here in my office. You can recline in my desk chair.”
Rob laughed. “I’m just having you on. Of course I’ll come give it a try.”
The following afternoon Rob rode the Metro to NIH and walked to Edwin’s lab. Winter had set in at last. A powdered-sugar sprinkling of snow overlaid the grounds and made them a setting for a fairy tale. The heat thrown off by all the refrigerators and freezers in the hallways felt good.
“I’m going to have to bite the bullet and buy myself a heavier coat,” Rob said as he came into the lab.
“I don’t understand your attitude,” Edwin complained. “You have the money—why not spend it?”
“I want to travel light, I guess. Until I get home. Is this the toy?” The machine sat on its own cart, taking up almost all the space in the small room.
“Yep. Come and take her for a spin.”
Edwin’s eagerness made Rob laugh. He obligingly sat in the chair while Edwin fussed with wires and connections, crawling under the desk to attach the cables to his computer. “Does microbiology involve work with EEGs?”
“Nope. But Maureen—she lent me the machine—coached me good.”
“Oh great. You inspire confidence, Ed.”
“It’s not a complicated technology, I tell you, Rob. Now, quiet in the peanut gallery. I’m going to stick these electrodes on.”
“You’re going to put paste in my hair.”
How Like A God Page 17
