And then, at some still unformed age, he has no idea why, he simply refused to go near it anymore. And that part of his childhood was over.
The contraption remained, a monument to inept mechanical love and other, more complicated secrets, until the day his father angrily took it apart. Piece by unhappy piece, the jungle gym was transported to the junkyard.
Which was when his father, showing an optimism singular in his history, began an interminable wait for the lawn to repair itself, to grow full and thick again, in this place as in others.
A wait that has outlasted them all.
On this very spot, half night-shaded dirt and half meager grass underfoot, Sam is standing when his phone rings in his pocket. Out of an otherwise quiet evening, the repeated, vibrating cacophony seems to originate deep in his own chest: his heart rattles in its scaffolding, and his knees tremble.
“Are you sitting down, son?”
“No, Mr. Cutter.”
“Well, I am, son. I’m sitting down, and I’m an old pro in the game of life. So my advice to you right now is to go find yourself a good, sturdy chair to sit down on, and to listen damn carefully to what it is I have to tell you.”
EMMA
THURSDAY MORNING, she says goodbye to her mother—who believes her to be going to meet an illustrious professor about a possible research position for the fall—gets into her car, and drives up Pine Creek Road. But instead of taking the shortcut for New Haven she continues to the outskirts of Wyndham Falls, where she parks in an unreserved spot behind the post office. From there she walks east a hundred yards along the edge of Route 44, stopping by the 35-mph speed-limit sign on which someone has scrawled the trenchant words WHY NOT ME? with an indelible marker.
A not unreasonable question, it seems to her as she waits beneath it for her ride—if, say, like the hooker standing outside heaven’s gate in the tired old joke, you’re only granted one question to get what you always thought you wanted. It dresses up nice, existentially, and is suitable for just about any occasion.
Several minutes later, a white rental car pulls over in front of her. Sam is behind the wheel, and she climbs in beside him.
“They moved Nic Bellic out of intensive care last night.”
She turns and studies him. Handsome from the side, as he is from the front. The flickering car-window light on him today like the inside of a grotto. So here it is: she’s been waiting for the explanation, why he called her near midnight, waking her up, to inquire in an offhand voice, which she immediately X-rayed, whether she might be able to change whatever plans she had and go to Hartford with him in the morning. And, seeing through that voice, she said she would. For which agreement, first thing this morning, she made the requisite arrangements; nothing being simple in this land. Preparations required, fractional white lies.
“Does that mean he’s going to be okay?”
“It will take him a while to recover. But ‘no lasting effects anticipated.’ According to my lawyer.”
“Sam, that’s amazing.”
He doesn’t look amazed, however, or even relieved, his jaw set and his gaze unswerving, as they motor grimly on toward Hartford and around them, all along this two-lane country highway, the pastoral landscape gradually sheds every last atom of its pastoral nature.
They drive by a wholesale furniture outlet with a GOING OUT OF BUSINESS sign; and a Dairy Queen; and an Italian sub shop. Two gas stations. The pet store where her father took her one day to buy fish. She remembers how the pimpled young man ran his tiny feminine net through the tank, coming up with her first guppies. He blew air into the clear plastic bag before knotting it. And all the way home she worried about the fish, trapped inside with that strange unwanted breath, which was not like or of them.
Sam slows down; there’s traffic bunching ahead.
“My lawyer told me not to go to the hospital again.”
“Why?”
“Because—his words—at this point it’s incumbent on me as someone who’s still a potential defendant in a potential criminal proceeding to maintain total separation from the potential plaintiff. That even so much as a semblance of a record or pattern of personal involvement with said potential plaintiff must be avoided at all costs, because it could leave some kind of motivational trace that a jury could later interpret with a negative bias.”
“That’s one of the most hateful things I’ve ever heard.”
He shakes his head to himself.
“Well,” she says, “we’re here anyway.”
• • •
They drive on. Her left hand on the armrest, inches from him. He drives as though on an extraordinarily long trip, with continents still ahead of him. He drives as if he has no company in the world, including himself. If she were to touch him now, she thinks, it would simply be to bestow faith, or what she knows of it, to show him something good about himself, something like the news he’s just gotten.
“It means a lot to me you came,” he says, after a long silence. “So what did you tell him? Your asshole lawyer.”
“I thanked him for calling. And then I told him he can go fuck himself.”
She laughs out loud—a sudden joyousness, like dancing.
He smiles at her then. Like a gold coin buried under the sand that you gave up looking for so long ago you can no longer remember where or when.
The smile she hasn’t seen since they were children.
SAM
HE KNOCKS SOFTLY on the open door and tips his body inside: a shared room, divided halfway across its length by a hanging curtain pulled almost to the far wall. Up front, a small man with a cap of sparse white hair lies on a forty-five-degree bed watching TV. The volume is off and the screen shows a news anchor mouthing above a stock ticker.
The old man turns his head in stages: olive-pit irises planted in drought-ridden soil, hoary stubble bristling over sunken cheeks, a grizzled tuft of chest hair bursting the hospital gown’s declining neckline. An odor of forgotten surrender permeates the room: potatoes going to rot in a dank basement.
A crooked finger directs him toward the curtain.
A murmur of thanks, and he crosses the foot of the bed, slips around the edge of the curtain. Then one more step, before he stops.
On a chair beside the bed a fiftyish woman with a sharp nose and blunted Slav cheekbones sits vigil over her sleeping son, on whose still gaunt face lifelike signs have sprung up like petals out of ash: full, pinkish lips, eyelids no longer the color of gray Plasticine. An IV remains, but the breathing and feeding tubes are gone.
And Sam stares confounded: the soul-sapping paradox by which a patient—no, victim—miraculously beginning to live again, may appear more like a ghost than when he was dying.
Meanwhile, the woman glares back. Which he cannot contend with, so physically complete is her authority over her dominion. Her plain brown dress—too heavy for the season—and thick-soled brown shoes remind him of the Portuguese woman in Winsted who used to sell his mother bluefish at cost. A dark-red head scarf lumpily contains her graying dark hair. On her lap she holds a canary-yellow blouse and a spool of yellow thread.
Licking his dry lips, he quietly announces himself:
“Mrs. Bellic, I’m Sam Arno.”
Simply from this he’s drained. In return she remains mute, as immovable as a frieze in a ruined church. “Mrs. Bellic, I’m very sorry.”
Suddenly, she is standing, blouse and thread dumped on the floor.…
“Ma.”
They both turn as if called: her son, awake in the hospital bed. The mother’s face transformed; you could imagine her smiling, almost.
“Ma, go down the hall and get me something to drink, okay? Coke—not diet, regular. You need money?” She shakes her head. “Go ahead now, Ma.”
A canvas sewing bag goes with her. She walks past him without a glance and around the curtain, trailing the smell of another country, cedar and dust.
Sam bends, picks up the spool of thread, the yellow blouse. He stands awkwardly
, not knowing what to do with these things. All he knows is that he can’t bear to leave them on the floor.
“Chair,” Bellic snaps.
Sam places the things where he’s told, folding the blouse as best he can, though one of the sleeves immediately falls loose. He faces the bed with his empty hands. “I’m sorry, Nic.”
“Don’t call me Nic. You don’t fucking know me.”
“You’re right.”
“Some mystery guy, the nurse tells me a couple days ago, sneaking around the ICU? Think I wouldn’t guess who?”
He doesn’t know what to say.
“So how did I look? Since you were there.”
“Like you were dead.”
It is just the truth he’s telling. But the truth seems to cave Bellic in: his head sinks into the pillows. He looks as if he wants his mother to come back.
“Get the fuck out,” he begs softly, and turns his face away until Sam leaves.
DWIGHT
IN THE UPSTAIRS HALL SHOWER, the soap mostly rinsed off, I hear my phone ringing. I step out, dripping, and answer.
“Where the hell you at?” the voice starts in.
“Tony … Hey.”
“Called your house yesterday to see if you wanted to play some golf. Jorge was up. Could’ve had us a game.”
“I’m in Connecticut.”
“Still? When you coming back?”
“Don’t know yet.”
“How’s your kid doing, anyway?”
I’m standing by the bathroom window. Initially the heat from my shower left the panes steamed white, but while I’ve been talking to Tony the thin, obscuring film has evaporated off the glass, providing a clear view down to the driveway, where a pale-blue Honda minivan has just pulled in. The driver’s door opens and a balding, gangly man in a seersucker sport coat and chinos gets out, pausing to tug his yellow socks taut over his asparagus calves.
“Christ. It’s fucking Norris.”
“Who?”
“My ex’s ex.”
“That’s you,” Tony points out.
“Not me, the other guy. He sells insurance.”
“Yeah? His rates any good?”
“Tony, look, I gotta go.”
“Monday back at the store, right?”
“If I can.”
“Monday!”
I click off. The water has dried on my body, leaving behind an invisible chill. Norris is in the house: I can sense his insinuating, low-wattage ambience like a cheap scented candle. I open the bathroom door and hear Ruth’s voice drifting up the stairs, telling him that Sam’s gone out for the day but she’ll be sure to let him know about the visit.
I tiptoe out to the top of the staircase to hear their conversation better.
“I bet you didn’t even give him my message.”
“I told him you wanted to see him,” Ruth replies calmly. “I gave him your new number.”
“Did he say he’d call me?”
“No.”
“I’ve got something important to tell him.”
“What is it?”
“I’d rather tell him myself, if you don’t mind.”
Creeping on the balls of my feet, I descend a few steps, bending low enough to be able to safely observe the situation through the scrim of the upper balusters.
Down in the front hall, I’m satisfied to see that Norris has managed to get only one leg inside the house. Ruth, looking pretty and firm in a plain navy shift dress, stands before him with her arms crossed over her chest—a Pop Warner blocking position that I remember well from the days of our bliss.
Norris gives a loud, emotional sniff. “Wanda and I are getting married.”
“So I’ve heard.” Ruth’s tone is matter-of-fact. “Congratulations, Norris. I’m happy for you.”
“Thank you.” He can’t hide the disappointment on his face. “I’d like Sam to be in the wedding.”
Ruth studies him.
“Having him there would feel right,” Norris adds.
My lower back’s aching from crouching so low. Aiming for a more comfortable vantage point, I take another step down. My foot lands on a loose board, the wood lets out a loud crack under my weight—and I watch Norris’s head quick-pivot in my direction and his mouth pop open like a human PEZ dispenser.
Ruth is gawking at me, too, and not in an admiring way. “Jesus, Dwight. Get some clothes on, will you?”
I rise to my full height and come down a few more steps.
“Norris,” I greet him.
Mortally dumbfounded, he looks at Ruth, whose response is to rub a hand over her face and contemplate the floor, disowning both of us. This goes on for a while, till Norris clears his throat and rallies.
“Dwight … Well, this is a surprise.”
“I’m here to see my son,” I say, a little defensively.
“You mean Sam?”
“That’s right, Norris. My son.”
“That’s interesting, Dwight. I mean I have to say, it’s been a while, hasn’t it?”
“You know it has. And you know why, too.”
“I do know, Dwight, I do,” Norris says amiably. “Or at least part of it. I guess what I’m a little confused about—forgive me for prying—is why a visit now. All of a sudden, I mean, after a whole decade without so much as a stopover.”
“He needs me.”
“Needs you. Hmm.” Norris’s mouth draws a line harder than I thought possible in him, and he takes another step into the house. “Okay, I guess we can have a gentleman’s agreement on that one. But just tell me this, Dwight, while we’re at it: Where’ve you been when Sam really needed a father? Where’ve you been all these years, Dwight? That’s kind of the million-dollar question, wouldn’t you say?”
I stand looking at him. The chill that briefly came over me upstairs, then abated while I was watching and lazily mocking him in my thoughts, now returns in force: I almost shiver.
But it’s nothing, just myself.
Norris, meanwhile, seems to loom more manly and resolute in the doorway of the house he was so unceremoniously kicked out of not so long ago; he appears, for maybe the first time in his personal history, like a man in sober possession of himself. All his life his goofy bonhomie and ineffectual waffling have been his hallmark and chrysalis, but that’s visibly gone now. It’s as if, somehow, the cumulative personal failings of our broken little circle—the countless ways, independently and together, that we’re doomed to continue to get it wrong—have finally killed off the innocent in him.
I listen to him drive away. Then I sit down on the stairs where I am. Hard thoughts have sprung upon me, and questions I can’t answer.
RUTH
SHE FEELS ALMOST PROUD of Norris for his little speech—and, of course, is relieved that he’s gone.
Turning, she finds Dwight sitting on the stairs. With his little towel skirt, his big shamed head and primitive naked chest, he might be the deposed king of some Pacific atoll. But the picture doesn’t incite or amuse her as it might once have. Actually, he has his face in his hands and looks rather sad.
Not her problem, she tells herself firmly, deciding to go to her room. She’ll pass the time as calmly as possible until Sam’s return from the hospital. Confirmation is what she needs, as soon as possible, and about twenty fingers and toes to cross while she’s waiting. She doesn’t have time to worry about Dwight. She walks toward the stairs.
“Excuse me.”
She attempts to step around him. He makes no effort to move, however, his wide body blocking her path. Inadvertently, her right leg bumps his right shoulder. Which she should ignore, obviously, just continue on as if nothing’s happened.…
But for some reason—number one on the List of Inexplicables—she stops and meets his gaze.
Meanwhile, his bare shoulder, still damp from the shower, as though guided by its own circuitry, has coerced the hem of her dress from her knee up to the middle of her thigh. She can’t fathom whether the sudden heat she feels at the point of contact is
coming from his skin or hers; only that, after so many years, it shocks her down to her feet, robbing her of the power to keep climbing. The one thing she can think to do is remain where she is, leaning into their combined heat with everything she has, trying, in fact, to deepen the seal between them and create more heat, this red flame sparked out of nothing, out of two inanimate nodes, cool and harmless on their own but incendiary when pressed together.
“What do you think you’re doing?” she breathes, as though insulted.
His eyes, for the first time in all the years she’s known him, appear boyishly stunned.
Not me, they say. You.
She knows this is so, but has no wish to stop herself. Her hand reaches out and grips the back of his neck. Then she leans down and kisses him hard on the mouth.
DWIGHT
SHE UNSTRADDLES ME. I can smell the sex we’ve just had, and under it the softer, less complicated lavender water she’s wearing, now transferred to me. Her rumpled dress is hiked up to her waist and she’s tugging at the hem to try to cover herself. Already not looking at me, her eyes darting around the room.
“Try the stairs,” I suggest, meaning her underwear, which I can tell she’s hunting for. I make an effort to keep my voice unassuming, just the helpful facts. But this does not seem to be what comes out. She frowns, her gaze suddenly stunned with regret, and slips out of the bedroom.
When she returns a few minutes later, her dress smoothed back down to her knees, she’s apparently made the decision to meet my eye in the manner of kindergarten teachers and white-collar prisoners. The hitch in the plan is that I’m still lying naked in her bed, half covered by the sheet.
“I have no idea how that just happened,” she begins in a voice of assertive calm. “And neither do you.”
“I think you mean why,” I reply with a lightness I don’t feel. “The how part would seem pretty cut-and-dried.”
“Is that supposed to be funny? That wasn’t us, Dwight. It was two other people. And if you try to tell me it was us I’ll have to deny it to your face.”
Northwest Corner Page 20
