The End of the Book

by Porter Shreve

  Toward the bottom of the stack I found an accordion file marked Old Drafts. But the file was mostly empty; only the first section contained any manuscript. The twelve typewritten pages began:

  From the window of the westbound train George Willard saw what fifty thousand new arrivals a year had witnessed. In the distance, over the corn and oat fields, a gray pall hovered like a storm cloud. He had heard stories about Chicago since he was a boy, had risen at two o’clock this morning unable to sleep or slow his heartbeat, which even now pounded in his ears with the rhythm of the wheels rumbling over the tracks.

  The chapter goes on to describe the landscape from the train, the blighted neighborhoods, the grand boulevards tracing the lakeshore like the curve of a woman’s hip, the shock and wonder George feels upon his first encounter with the unruly metropolis. Had I seen the chapter in workshop I would have praised the writing and period detail, but said the story was slow to trigger. I would have rolled out the old familiars: What’s at stake? Where’s the conflict? Who are the antagonists? I wondered where the rest of the book had gone, what happens in chapter two, once George is off the train, in the maw of the city.

  As I was putting the box marked “BOG” back in place, I noticed just behind it a brochure I hadn’t seen at first. I had a passing worry that it had fallen out of one of the boxes, but I’d been so careful—I was sure it must have been sitting loose. I held it to the light. LIVING WITH CONGESTIVE HEART FAILURE, it read. THE GOOD HEARTS PROGRAM AT LAKESIDE UNIVERSITY HOSPITAL.

  I checked my watch. Well past one. I couldn’t linger any further. I put the brochure back and returned to the office, where I spent much of the afternoon searching the Internet. I knew my father had heart disease, but congestive heart failure put him in a whole new category. Since all I’d seen was the brochure, no ECG results or instructions for treatment, I had no way of knowing the severity of his condition. Stage A meant his future risk was high but functions were fine for now, B and C could be managed with meds and treatment, but if he’d reached Stage D, he needed a transplant, or in the case of a seventy-eight-year-old who’d put on hard miles and still took a drink before five: palliative care. I have one foot in the grave, my father had said. Perhaps he wasn’t kidding.

  But I knew I couldn’t mention his heart without admitting I’d been through his things. It was enough that I’d uprooted him, made him agree to see the cardiologist. If he wanted me to know his business, why would he hide the boxes and brochure in the storage cage? When I asked about the appointment back in February, he’d said his heart was same as ever: ticking like a bomb. He claimed he was taking his pills, walking more than he had in years, had cut back on butter and salt. My last cigarette was postcoital, he’d said. And believe me: that was a long time ago.

  So unless I confronted him, all I could do was keep an eye out for symptoms. He did have a slight wheeze in his chest, but the raspiness dated back to his Pall Mall days. He seemed tired on occasion and sometimes short of breath, but not alarmingly so. I looked for veins standing up in his neck, swelling of the ankles, but nothing seemed out of the ordinary. I even checked the medicine cabinet every couple weeks and counted his pills to make sure he was taking them. By that measure, at least, he was proving a man of his word.

  My attention to my father had not gone unnoticed at work. At a rare dinner out at an Indian place in the neighborhood, Dhara told me there’d been chattering in my bullpen that my lunch breaks had been growing longer and longer.

  “Where have you been?” she asked. “I never see you in the cafeteria anymore.”

  I’d been off the road for much of the winter. The universities I was assigned to were getting cold feet about digitization. Ordinarily I’d have been all over the Midwest, following up with librarians or at the warehouse checking in with the manager. But the scanning had slowed considerably due to legal battles over copyright. Though my team was far removed from the negotiations, our calendars had thinned, and unlike everyone else in the office we had to make an effort to look busy. “I’m sorry, Dhara,” I said. “I’ve been spending a lot of time at my dad’s.”

  “Still bringing him carry-out?”

  “He wouldn’t eat otherwise.”

  “So Imego’s his taco truck? Seriously, we ought to be careful, Adam. You can’t afford to lose this job.”

  And that’s when I told her about the heart-failure brochure. I don’t know why I’d kept it to myself. I guess I felt I’d exhausted Dhara’s patience, and didn’t want to hear her say I was making a song and dance about nothing. “He could be terminally ill,” I said.

  “How long have you known?”

  “A month or so.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me before?” she asked. “We used to go over the whole day at dinner. Now I never see you.”

  “You’re the one who works late,” I said.

  To my relief, Dhara had no rejoinder. She nipped the top off her samosa, and the steam rose like a mini volcano. “So you haven’t badgered him with questions?”

  I didn’t admit I’d sneaked into his storage cage. “I stumbled across the information.”

  “But you don’t know how sick he is?”

  “He looks the same—scarecrow in a cardigan—but I think he doesn’t want me to know. The brochure was hidden. I wasn’t supposed to see it.”

  “You’ve got to find out,” Dhara said. “If you don’t want to talk to him, I will.”

  I was surprised she cared. She’d only seen him a couple of times, coming and going, since he’d moved in. Mutual discomfort had marked the few times they’d spoken, and privately she’d always been critical of my father—for good reason. Perhaps she was remembering her mother’s last years and realizing, for my sake, there was only so much time.

  “I’ll do it,” I promised, though I didn’t know how. The prospect set my foot to tapping.

  “So—I need to tell you something,” Dhara began, and she paused long enough for competing thoughts to cross my mind: I want a divorce or I’m pregnant. “I’ve applied for that job at corporate,” she said. “I’ve reached the ceiling here, and the Chicago office is not where it’s at. Even Pittsburgh is growing more than we are. I have to take a shot sometime, don’t I?”

  In my heart of hearts I’d known this was coming. Still, I allowed a silence to linger in the air, a momentary sadness to pass over my face. Then I asked, “What about me?”

  “If I get the position, we’ll talk about it, of course. I’m sure you’d be able to find something, with the Library Project or public relations. We can cross that bridge later, and hope it’s the Golden Gate.”

  “You know how I feel about this,” I said. “I really don’t want to leave.”

  “Let’s just see how the thing plays out. Maybe you’ll come around when you see what they’re offering.”

  “I doubt it,” I said.

  “Your work is stalled, too, Adam. There’s not a lot keeping you here.”

  “What about Vritra? I thought you were all worried about his health. We can’t just abandon him.”

  “I’ll make you a deal.” She actually put out her hand to shake on it. “If we move to California, he can live with us for however long it takes him to get situated.”

  “He’d never go for it.”

  “What choice does he have?” she asked. I shook her hand limply, and my mind drifted for the rest of dinner.

  But on the first of April I got a surprise. Dhara was working late. I was home alone having microwave lasagna, reading the New York Times online at the swag-leg table, when the doorbell rang. It was my father.

  “Do you want to come in?” I asked. He never visited our apartment, had stepped inside the place only a couple of times.

  “That’s okay.” He looked down at his loafers; his white tube socks drooped over the sides. “I wanted to bring you this.” He leaned his ball-handle cane against the wall, reached into his corduroy sport coat, and pulled out a thick handful of cash. “You can count it, if you’d like.” He press
ed it toward me.

  Most of the bills were hundreds and fifties. “Jesus!” I said. Instinctively, I grabbed his lapel and pulled him inside.

  He stumbled into our hallway. “Easy there.”

  I grabbed his cane and closed the door behind him. “My neighbors are going to think a drug deal’s going down.”

  “I’d be the oldest pusher on the block.” My father leaned against the wall, catching his breath. “Is that how you treat everyone who gives you six thousand dollars?”

  I held the money as if he’d put a gun in my hand. “Is this a joke?”

  “It is April Fool’s Day.” He grabbed his cane from my hand and made for the couch.

  “Honestly, what on earth is this for?” I asked.

  “You know what it’s for.” He sat down with a groan. The hem of his trousers rode up his chalky legs. “I’m sorry I got behind on the rent. But this should cover January through April. Plus moving expenses. How much were those? A thousand?”

  “Two thousand, but that’s not the point. Where did you get this money?”

  “Where did you get this couch?” my father said. “It’s about as comfortable as an injection table.”

  “It’s modern. And you’re avoiding my question.”

  The elastic in his tube socks had broken, leaving his shins exposed. If his ankles were swollen, it was impossible to tell beneath the bunched material. “I’m not a pauper, you know.”

  “You’ve said yourself: Wall Street ate your IRA. What are you living on?” I asked.

  “Why should I face this cross-examination?” He began to get up from the couch. “Do you want the money or not?”

  “I’m sorry, Dad. But you have to understand it’s a little strange for me to be holding this” —I waved the wad of cash like a fan—“when your house is in foreclosure.”

  “That was another matter,” he said. “What’s done is done.”

  “You’re not going to tell me where this money came from?”

  “It was mine, and now it’s yours.” He pushed past me and headed for the door. “You can expect my next payment on May 1, with the moving balance included and a smile for your trouble.”

  Not five minutes after he left, Dhara came home. “Guess who I saw in the lobby,” she said.

  “My father.”

  “Yes, the very one.”

  “What was he doing in our tower?”

  “You’re not going to believe it,” I said.

  “Did he tell you about his heart?” She looked genuinely concerned. “How bad is it?”

  “I was going to bring that up, but instead he gave me this.” I handed the cash to Dhara, told her the amount and what it was for. She asked the same question I had—“Where did the money come from?” —but I told her he gave no answer, in fact breezed out with the promise of future rent checks. “Maybe Hollywood called,” I said, “and they’re making Sherwood Anderson, Volume One into a blockbuster.”

  Dhara opened the refrigerator and poured herself a glass of water. “The whole thing is strange. I don’t like it.”

  “We should be glad for the extra cash,” I said.

  “Sure, but where did it come from? What if he’s getting himself into more trouble?”

  As she was putting the Brita pitcher away, my cell phone rang. Dhara and I both had iPhones, and we had a habit of leaving them on the hallway table when we walked in from work, so when one of the phones rang we often headed over simultaneously to see who the call was for. This time it was mine, and I recognized Lucy’s 617 cell number.

  “Who is it?” Dhara asked, just a few steps behind me.

  “Unknown.” I slipped the phone into my pocket, where it continued to ring.

  “Could be important,” Dhara said.

  “No one’s looking for me,” I tried to assure her. “It’s probably a telemarketer.”

  “They don’t tend to call cell phones.”

  “Who knows?” I shrugged. “I’m sure it’s nothing.”

  A moment later, my voice-mail notification chimed. “Telemarketers don’t leave messages,” Dhara said.

  “We were talking about my father and the six thousand dollars he just delivered.” I tried to wheel her off the subject, but she was eyeing me with suspicion.

  “You look like the cat that ate the canary,” she said.

  “I don’t know what that is,” I stalled.

  “Your face is red. You look guilty.”

  “This has to stop, Dhara.” I walked past her to the living room and stood at the window watching for my father’s apartment light to turn on. “I don’t know what’s gotten into you.”

  “Well, I think you do.” She went to the bedroom and closed the door. Lucy was calling to invite me to lunch. “There’s a new independent bookstore/café I thought we could check out. It’s just down the block from my apartment. I hear they do salads and sandwiches.”

  I called back the next morning after Dhara had left for work. “Sounds good,” I said, and we planned for the middle of the following week. “That is, if they haven’t gone out of business by then.”

  “They’re only a couple months old, Adam. What happened to the optimist I used to know?”

  “9/11, Iraq, Afghanistan, the financial implosion, the end of ‘the great American ride.’ You’d have to be crazy to open a bookstore at a time like this.”

  “Would you rather get a steak near the Stock Exchange?”

  “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be a downer,” I said. “Things are a little funny on the home front. I won’t bore you with the details. I promise to be in a cheerier mood next Wednesday.”

  When we got off the phone I decided I’d feel a lot better if my life weren’t so full of questions: What stage was my father’s heart failure? Would Dhara get the job in Silicon Valley? Did she really want me to join her out there? Where would I be in six months? Chicago? San Francisco? With or without a job? What about Lucy? Why was I even asking, “What about Lucy?” Would I find the rest of The Book of the Grotesque? Would I ever write my own novel? Where did my father come up with that money? Was it his to give? And where did he go every morning, on these walks?

  I asked the weekday doorman in my father’s tower if he’d seen which direction my father took when he set out in the morning. But the doorman said he only ever saw him picking up the mail. “You might talk to the guys in the garage,” he suggested, with a vaguely sardonic look.

  In photographs of the famous buildings of Chicago, Harbor City is recognizable as much for its honeycomb towers as for the parked cars, back ends facing out, dotting the first nineteen floors. In Steve McQueen’s last movie, he gets into a car chase up Harbor City’s parking ramp and runs the bad guy’s Pontiac off the seventeenth floor into the Chicago River. When I told the parking attendant that I was Roland Clary’s son, he rolled his eyes. “Oh, yeah. The guy who can’t stand that we’re valet-only. Drives him crazy that he has to wait while we get his car.”

  I apologized and promised the attendant I’d try to teach my father some manners. “How often do you see him?” I asked.

  “Most mornings. Nine thirty or thereabouts. I told him he ought to get the brakes checked on that Mercury. They sound like a mouse in a trap. Could be the pads. Could be the rotors.”

  I thanked him, and the next morning brought the Prius around and waited down the block for the white Mercury Mystique to exit the Harbor City garage. And there it was, right on time, heading down State Street. I never watched detective dramas, but I felt like an amateur sleuth on a stake-out. This made the experience unreal, and therefore easier to carry through. Had I stopped to think about what I was doing, I would have turned around and gone into the office.

  We passed the old Marshall Field’s building, now a Macy’s, and continued down State. Since it was rush hour, traffic was tight. Just one car separated us, so I slouched in my seat and put on a pair of dark sunglasses. I probably didn’t need to bother, because my father was one of the most distracted drivers I knew. He kept books in
the passenger seat—never a good sign—and was forever fiddling with the temperature or the radio dial.

  At Adams Street he turned right. We crossed under the El, then went over the river and the Kennedy Expressway and into the West Loop. The traffic thinned, and the sight lines opened to half-vacant new condo buildings and squat walkups crowned with water towers. At Halsted he took a left, and we passed gyro shops and grocers along the edge of Greektown, then students biking to or from class at the University of Illinois–Chicago. The Brutalist redoubt of the UIC blurred by, concrete fortress after concrete fortress, interrupted only by the homey brick encampment of Hull House near the center of campus.

  Ignoring a NO TURN ON RED at Taylor, my father swung right, and not wanting to lose him I followed suit, nearly cutting off a cyclist. “Learn to drive, Prius!” a voice faded behind me. Worse insults have been hurled.

  I should have guessed where my father was going well before I could smell the charred peppers and sausages of Al’s #1 Italian Beef or notice the cucinas and ristorantes lining the street. The storage locker I had arranged for him stood on the west side of Little Italy. From half a block away, I could see my father pull up to the access gate, roll down the window, and punch in his code. The gate opened, and I sat waiting long enough for a light rain to pass, and listened abstractedly to NPR. The G20 summit in London had ended the day before with a trillion-dollar pledge to struggling economies and a promise to overhaul financial regulation. Closer by, a federal grand jury had charged our laughingstock of a former governor with racketeering, extortion, and fraud.