The Wide Night Sky

by Matt Dean

  Chapter 29

  Leland woke to the sound of screaming. It was a woman, he thought. A woman in a great deal of pain. But not Corinne. Not Anna Grace.

  Well, no. Of course it wasn’t Anna Grace. She’d have bitten a wooden dowel in half before straining her voice like that. More to the point—

  Where was he, anyway? He opened his eyes.

  Yes. Right. The emergency room. A beige bed in a beige room at the back of the unit. He remembered, now, being wheeled in, having his vitals taken, shivering under a pile of blankets. He remembered Ramanujan joking with him—“We’ve got to stop meeting like this”—and shaking his hand and asking when the new book would be out.

  The screaming went on and on, ragged and inexhaustible, until Leland wondered what kept the woman’s vocal chords from breaking. Her throat should have given out long ago. It frustrated him that he could neither help her nor make her shut up, and it shamed him that he wanted so very, very badly to make her shut up. Just…please…shut…up. Please...please...please.

  “She lost an eye.”

  Leland flinched. He’d thought he was alone, but here was a voice at his elbow. When he looked up, he expected to see Ramanujan, but no. Scott Cable had somehow, for some reason, materialized at his bedside.

  “You,” said Leland.

  Peering into the hallway, Scott spoke in a low voice. “Were you awake when she was asking why she couldn’t see?”

  Leland shook his head.

  “She didn’t know until someone told her.” In a stage whisper, he said, “‘Why can’t I see? What’s wrong with my eye?’”

  “God,” said Leland. “That’s…”

  “Unnerving. Terrifying. Unimaginable.”

  Leland tossed aside the blankets. He patted his limbs and torso, searching for IVs and electrodes. All clear, except for his hospital ID bracelet. He tugged at it, trying to tear it free, but it wouldn’t give. He got to his knees and leaned over the side rail, fumbling around underneath for a lever or switch.

  “What’re you doing?” Scott said.

  “Getting out of here.”

  Splotches of color bloomed in Scott’s cheeks, spreading upward from the margins of his beard. “Do you think you should…?” He put out his hands, patted the air. “You really shouldn’t.”

  “I feel fine,” Leland said. It wasn’t strictly true—he was headachy and queasy and he couldn’t shake the dread that he was dying of something horrible—but he still had both eyes, that was the thing. “Where is the goddamn—?”

  He couldn’t operate the rail, and he had no intention of somersaulting over it like a child on a jungle gym. He scooted to the foot of the bed and dropped his legs over and hopped down. Standing barefoot and bare-legged on the linoleum, he became aware, somewhat belatedly, that he was more naked than not. Boxers underneath a hospital gown, that was all.

  For a moment, he and Scott looked at one another. Leland shifted his weight from foot to foot. Scott opened his mouth as if to speak, then shut it again.

  Leland spotted a paper grocery bag sitting on one of the hard plastic chairs. He looked at Scott, the sack, Scott again. Scott’s eyes flicked away. Leland lunged across the small room, grabbing the paper bag as if Scott might try to get to it first.

  In fact, Scott appeared to have no interest in the bag. He went to the door and closed it and stood with his back against it. He said, “You know, I hate to say this. I think I might have to stop you from leaving.”

  In the bag, Leland found a pair of jeans, neatly folded, and a wadded-up white T-shirt. The jeans must have come from his bedroom. The shirt might have been the one he’d been wearing earlier in the day.

  Turning away, he stripped off the hospital gown and let it fall to the floor. He thought of Carolina Beach, of that boy in the bookstore arcade. Travis. God, that horrible, self-parodying name. Why not Jethro or Jim Bob or Li’l Abner?

  But never mind the name. When he imagined displaying himself as Travis had, that day in the video booth, the idea of it was shockingly potent. The vulnerability of nakedness, even of near-nakedness, made his heart thump against his ribs, and he was getting an erection.

  At the same time, in another part of his mind, he was thinking about Anna Grace—or if not of her explicitly, not by name, then at least of his betrayal. The weight of it fell on him all over again. A craving for expiation gnawed at him. Whose job was it to forgive you if you didn’t believe in sin?

  Stepping hurriedly into his jeans, he stuffed his hard cock down one pant leg and zipped up. He put on his shirt and tugged at the bottom hem, stretching it downward. Finally, he turned back.

  “You’ve got stitches,” Scott said, as though that would settle everything. “You don’t remember getting stitches?”

  Leland didn’t trust himself to speak while he still had a hard-on. He shook his head.

  “I think they’d prefer it if…” Scott made the familiar gesture, opening his hand, setting free a captive bird.

  Leland touched his forehead, where he’d been sewn up on his birthday.

  “In the back,” said Scott, twirling his finger in the air.

  At the back of his head, right of center, Leland found a gauze bandage surrounded by cloth tape and stubble. It was difficult, working only by feel, to take the measure of the spot, but he guessed it had to be six inches long and three inches wide. “Shit,” he said.

  “I don’t think it’s anything major.” Scott held up his thumb and forefinger, showing a gap of two or three inches. “Ten stitches, I think? There was—” He cleared his throat. “There was a lot of blood.”

  Leland half-remembered searching in his desk drawers for AA batteries, grumbling to himself because his speakers had gone dead. His legs had simply folded beneath him. Maybe one knee had given way before the other, turning him in such a way that he’d struck his head on the edge of a drawer. He touched a tender spot through the bandage, winced, dropped his hand.

  Useful in its way, that twinge of pain: He needed some help staying in the present moment. He still wanted to get out of here, but the longer he talked with Scott, the less likely he was to escape. He drummed his toes on the floor. Still barefoot, and there were no shoes in the bag. He needed to decide, and quickly. Would he attract too much attention without shoes, and if so, what should he do about it?

  Stepping away from the door, Scott kicked off his flip-flops. “Wear mine?”

  “So you’re not going to stop me from leaving?”

  With a shrug, Scott said, “I’m having a moment of self-awareness. I’m a lover, not a fighter. Do you want me to create a diversion? I could start hollering.”

  The door opened suddenly. It was Ramanujan, hair agleam, eyes flashing, one side of his mouth turned up. He was carrying a file folder. “Are you doctoring and dashing?”

  “Look,” Leland said. “Look. I don’t belong here. I fell. That’s all. I still have both eyes. Thank you for the stitches. I’m fine to go home.”

  The doctor peered at him over the wire frames of his glasses. He tapped the edge of the folder against the palm of his hand. Chastened, Leland sat on the edge of the bed. He glanced at Scott, but Scott was gazing at the ceiling and combing his fingers through his beard.

  “There was something in your blood work,” Ramanujan said. “I want to draw another sample and do some follow-up testing.”

  “‘There was something’? What kind of something?”

  “Two hormone levels that are out of balance. I want to do an antibody test to check for Hashimoto’s. I’m also sending you for a PET scan.”

  “I’ve had PET scans,” Leland said.

  “Months ago. Things change in the body over time. For example, in September, these hormone levels weren’t so out of whack. So now we check things again, to see what else has changed.” He waited a moment. “Okay?”

  “Okay,” Leland said.

  With a nod, Ramanujan left the room. While the door was open, Leland realized that the one-eyed woman had stopped scream
ing. Had she been sedated? Had they taken her to surgery? Had she died? What would it be like to live with one eye? Would simple things—walking, driving, watching movies—become more awkward?

  “What exactly is Hashimoto’s?” he said.

  “I don’t know.” Scott moved a chair to the bedside and sat down. “Were you aware there was a doctor here, not thirty seconds ago?”

  “Funny thing. It didn’t even occur to me to ask him.” Leland looked at Scott. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but why are you here? Where’s John Carter?”

  “He’s in the waiting room. He seemed kind of…” Scott gestured vaguely with his fingertips.

  “Freaked out?”

  “I told him I’d sit with you while he cooled off. I have an ulterior motive as well. I think I need to make amends. It’s about Anna Grace.” He took a breath. “I saw…”

  I saw… I saw… While Leland waited for the end of the sentence—and what were the odds that it would ever come?—he tried to fill in the blank for himself. I saw your wife on the sly, every afternoon for months. I saw your hard-on after you hugged me that time. I saw you go into that bookstore.

  “I knew she had a problem.” Scott spoke more hastily than usual, more hoarsely. “There’s a kind of tremor in the voice. If you’ve been a drinker yourself, you recognize it.”

  “A tremor,” Leland said.

  “I can’t explain it any better than that. It was subtle with Anna Grace, but I noticed it almost the day we met.”

  “In October?”

  “Not you and I, Anna Grace and I. When she and I met, I noticed it. I should have said something. Something more direct. Instead, I gave her that opera, as a hint.”

  “What?”

  “Under the Volcano. Someone gave me the book when I was drinking, and I couldn’t get all the way through it. I was drinking so much I kept passing out. It wasn’t the book itself that convinced me, but the fact that I couldn’t read it. I couldn’t focus, I couldn’t parse the sentences. I couldn’t read. That was my reality check. I hoped the opera might help Anna Grace the same way.” Scott shook his head. His cheeks reddened. “It all made perfect sense to me, until I put it in words just now.”

  Some while ago, after sampling a number of operas—stabbing knives of music, soprano and tenor voices jangling together like glass shards in a tin box—Anna Grace had gotten stuck on one of them. Sometimes Leland had come upon her in the kitchen, humming or singing one of the arias. He’d remarked on it. The loveliness of the melodies, the lyricism of the words. A bearded devil. A thing of dreams. Why had he never thought to ask her what she was singing, why she was humming a tune about a bearded devil?

  “She had a beautiful voice,” Scott said. “I wish I could’ve heard her sing. You know, in person.”

  “She flubbed something at her last recital. Ah, what’s it called? Kinderlieder? Kindertottenlieder?”

  “Kindertotenlieder. It’s Mahler.”

  “She wasn’t in good voice. She—” Leland clutched at the bedclothes. He felt close to gagging. “You think you should’ve said something. Jesus.”

  “Have you ever been to San Francisco?”

  “No, never.”

  “The summer after my husband died was the hottest and sunniest anyone could ever remember. Grief is hard enough on a day like today, when the rain just makes you want to curl up and sleep. It’s worse on the sunniest, warmest day of July. Everyone’s out in sundresses and tank tops. People are humming and whistling without even realizing it. I even caught a MUNI driver smiling to himself.” He looked sidelong at Leland. “You’ll just have to trust me on this. That is absolutely unprecedented.”

  “Husband?” Leland said. “You had a husband?”

  “For a second,” Scott said. “Back in ‘oh-four. San Francisco started issuing marriage licenses in February, and we got ours on the second-to-last day. March tenth, two thousand four. That was my actual wedding anniversary. You have to understand. I never thought I’d have an actual wedding anniversary.

  “It got voided anyway, later on, but we never stopped using the H-word. He was already sick on our first anniversary, and he didn’t make it to the second. Pancreatic cancer. It got to stage four before we even knew about it.”

  “I’m sorry,” Leland said. A failure of words, he thought—bailing the Titanic with a teacup, bringing a toothpick to a knife fight, battling a forest fire with an eyedropper—but he had to say something.

  “After he died, I felt like someone had wrapped me in bubble wrap, you know? I couldn’t hear. I’d be listening to a student or sitting in a recital— I’d be listening, but I couldn’t hear. Music I loved and knew by heart sounded like…”

  “Noise?”

  “I decided the Victorians had it right. The whole mourning thing. We should cover the mirrors. We should dress in black. We should withdraw from society and hide ourselves away in darkened rooms.”

  “I destroyed my bathroom. Does that count?”

  Scott seemed not to have heard. He stared at a point in the air somewhere to his right. “The alternative is standing dumbfounded in Cliff’s Variety with a package of light bulbs in one hand and ten-dollar bill in the other, staring at some equally dumbfounded cashier who just asked you something and you don’t even know what she asked you and you find yourself saying, ‘My husband died.’” His eyes met Leland’s. “I wanted to say it like a mantra. ‘My husband died. I am a widower. My husband is dead. I am a widower. I will never be anything else again but a widower.’”

  The word should feel like a blow. Leland was a widower, too, after all. Instead, it felt like nothing. Maybe he’d always thought of himself as a parent first and a husband second. Maybe he was operating his bereavement incorrectly.

  “What you’re feeling now,” Scott was saying. He put up his hands: Don’t get me wrong! “I’m not saying I know exactly what that is. But whatever you’re feeling now, you’ll think it’s going to go on forever. You’ll think it’ll never, ever get better—not even a tiny bit. And then someday, something will happen. Someone will smile, and you’ll realize you smiled back. You’ll walk by a car with an open window, maybe, and Beethoven’s Seventh will be playing on the radio, and you’ll be humming along without even knowing it. Whatever it is, something will happen, and you’ll see that happiness is possible again after all.”

  It was the truth, Leland knew that. After months of numbness and living by rote, his mother had slowly returned to the world, blinking like a bear emerging from hibernation, and then, as if sunshine and salt air could cure everything, she escaped to Boca Raton. Meanwhile, Leland had things to do, classes to attend, a daughter to feed and bathe. He stumbled along, halfway in his life, halfway out of it, feeling almost nothing, until Anna Grace came back.

  He had an image of her charging through the front door, parking a Rollaboard suitcase in a corner of the entryway, bustling about the house, setting everything right—straightening picture frames, tidying shelves, cutting Corinne’s sandwiches into crustless triangles, coaxing Leland back to love and life. It was a false memory, to be sure. Her return had been more tentative—and yes, somewhat painful, especially for Corinne. But it was nevertheless true that she’d come to his rescue. She’d saved him.

  Scott’s cheeks were wet with tears. After all this time—six years? six and a half?—the loss could still drive him to weeping. Leland remembered crying on Thanksgiving night, for the loss of his marriage, not for the loss of his wife. Had he cried since then? He didn’t know.

  He thought of getting up and putting his arm around Scott. Holding him. As if that was just what he needed: another hug. Leland stayed where he was, and just as well. Scott quickly calmed himself and dried his face on his sleeves.

  “So.” Scott got up. “I said what I needed to. Thanks for hearing me out.”

  Leland stood. He offered a handshake. Scott took his hand and shook it and then pulled him into a bear hug. Leland gasped—equal parts surprise and relief. For a second, he halfway resist
ed, but then he tightened his arms around Scott’s waist, locking his hands together as if he meant to hold on forever.

  His heart battered against his ribs as if it were leaping around in his chest trying to get out. His cock stiffened again. He was sure that Scott could feel his erection, and he was sure, too, though a bit less so, that Scott was also hard. Leland’s first instinct was to hide—to step back, to put his hands in his pockets, to make a diversionary joke. But he disobeyed that instinct. He held the embrace a little longer. When at last he let go, his eyes met Scott’s. Those pale green eyes. Spanish moss. Lichen. Sea glass.

  Scott’s lips parted as if he were about to speak, but before he could say anything, Leland stepped forward again and kissed him. He’d never kissed a man before, not even Travis. It was at once familiar and strange—like any other kiss, except that Scott’s mustache tickled his nose. And what should he do with his tongue? If he were kissing a woman, he’d take the lead, as if in a dance.

  Not that kissing his wife had ever been simple. Not that he’d ever been able to abandon himself in a passionate moment. Making love to Anna Grace had been delicate, tentative work. Every kiss, every caress, every embrace had been a treacherous sail between Scylla and Charybdis. Too rough, and he’d offend her. Too gentle, and he’d lose her interest. And then, too, while fixing so much attention on her responses, he’d had to worry about his own. For two decades, his erections had been either legitimate and halfhearted or forbidden and robust. He was harder now from a clothed kiss than he’d ever been in bed with his naked wife.

  Abruptly and with a sharp intake of air, Scott broke away. He touched his lips. His cheeks whitened and then turned scarlet. Leland’s own cheeks burned. He clapped his hands over his mouth.

  The door opened. The men staggered back from each other. A woman in scrubs came into the room, pulling a cart behind her. “Mr. Littlefield?” she said. “I’m here for your blood.”

  “Oh,” Leland said. He was looking at Scott, not the nurse.

  Scott moved toward the open door. “I’ll go…” He raised his hand as if to touch his lips again. “I’ll go.”