by David Gates
Sylvia’s phone out there doesn’t ring like a regular phone; it sounds thinner and beepier. She says Harold likes to have everything modern. When she answers, she always says Martin residence.
“Syl, this is Len,” I said. “I’m sorry to bother you. Now, Bonnie’s all right, but I wanted to let you know she is in the hospital.”
“Oh my Christ.”
“No, now, she’s going to be fine. The doctor—what happened, apparently somebody broadsided her when she was pulling out into traffic and they had to—they operated on her this morning and the doctor says she came through it fine.”
“Oh my Christ. What are you saying?”
But all in all she took it okay; a couple more Oh my Christs and that was about the extent of it. She even thought to ask who was looking after Dave Junior and how Dave Senior was holding up. I said he was doing fine. The only time he’d really started carrying on—I didn’t get into this with Sylvia—was when he told me that where Bonnie was pulling out of was a motel entrance. As I told him, she was probably looking for a phone.
“You might as well sit tight for the time being,” I said. “There’s nothing much to do here at this point. Now, when they bring her home—”
“Are you crazy?” Sylvia said. “Are you out of your mind? You think there’s any way I wouldn’t be with my daughter?”
I could’ve said something about that. But I just said, “Well, I’ll be here. If I’m not in the waiting room, I’m either at Dave and Bonnie’s or I’m just down getting a cup of coffee.”
“I hope you’re eating,” she said.
After I got done, the colored fellow’s wife got up and made a call and came away shaking her head. They talked together for a minute, then went over to the elevators and pressed the DOWN button. Ding, and the doors slid apart to take them in. I don’t know where the rest of the afternoon went to. The TV was on, a game show and then a talk show and then what I guess was a soap opera. I’m not much of a one for TV. Books, movies—anything where you just sit. Dave and Bonnie gave me a VCR my last birthday—a nice thought—but after I watched a half a dozen movies the novelty wore off.
The window had a view of the parking lot and a loading dock, and eventually it started to get dark outside. I was looking out, watching a UPS man hand boxes out of the back of his truck, when the pink lights came on.
I talked Dave Senior out of spending the night on the waiting-room sofa, thank God, and followed him to his sister’s in North Madison to pick up Little Dave, then on to the house. When he unlocked the kitchen door, I got a smell of onion and garbage. They had dirty dishes piled up on the counter and toys all thrown around: trucks and hot rods and robots and space aliens. “You mind watching him while I try to get some of this shit squared away?” he said. “Housekeeping hasn’t exactly been at the top of the list.” But the truth is, their house doesn’t generally look much better. Of course Bonnie goes to work, which Sylvia never did until Bonnie started seventh grade. (And we know what happened next.)
Dave Junior’s three, and the way he gets more keyed up the tireder he gets reminds me of Bonnie at that age. I settled him down and let him pick out a storybook—not knowing what I was letting myself in for. I took him on my lap, opened up the book and, lo and behold, they had pictures but no words, the idea being you had to make up your own story. I thought, Heaven help you if you don’t tell him this thing the way his mama does.
“Look at the mouse,” I said. “He woke up the cat, see, and now look what happened, the cat’s chasing him.” It went along that while the cat’s chasing the mouse a dog starts chasing him, then they knock over a big cake and that gets a man chasing the three of them, and so forth and so on. I could see now that it was a house-that-Jack-built kind of idea, though it would’ve been nice if they’d let you know beforehand so you could do a better job. But the way I told it seemed to suit him, except that one time he got impatient and turned the page before I was done talking about the picture.
Dave Senior came in from the kitchen. “How you making out?”
“We’re doing fine,” I said. “I think Grampa made a hit.” I roughed up Little Dave’s hair. It’s so soft; softer, I’d say, than Bonnie’s used to be. “You’re going to see Gramma pretty soon,” I told him. “You’ll like that, I betcha. Gramma be plenty glad to see you, I can tell you that.”
“Do you remember Nonny?” Dave Senior said.
“Yes.” Little Dave has this way of saying his words exactly.
Dave Senior shook his head. “I would doubt he remembers. Let’s go, partner. Past your bedtime.”
I did this and that in the living room, piling up magazines, getting all the toys in one place. But the whole time I kept thinking, If only. You know, if only she hadn’t stopped off there. If only she would’ve just pulled out five seconds later, or five seconds earlier. A good way to drive yourself crazy. You imagine all the things that could make five seconds’ difference: fishing around for car keys, fiddling with your seat belt. Or, if she did stop off to call somebody, the phone ringing once or twice more. I could picture her turning the rearview mirror to fix her hair for a second, then taking another couple seconds to get the mirror back right. But what in the world was she doing out that way in the first place? Her supervisor told Dave Senior she went home sick—a turkey sandwich that didn’t agree with her. She wasn’t heading straight home, though, because where it happened was on the Post Road, almost over into Westbrook. She probably had an errand of some sort, then stopped off to make a phone call; motels generally have a pay phone outside the office.
I was trying to find where they kept their vacuum when Dave Senior came in and said he’d changed his mind and was going to take a shower and head back to the hospital. So I did my little song and dance again. The best way he could help Bonnie was to keep his own strength up, and so forth and so on. I told him, “She’s not going to know you’re out there, Dave. For all she knows right now, you could be on the planet Mars.” Although I personally believe people do know. You hear of too many cases where they wake up and they can tell you what everybody said. But what was more important? Her maybe having that little extra boost now, or him being able to hold himself together over the next who knows how long?
I asked if he wanted the TV. He said he didn’t care, but it didn’t take him any time at all to get involved in some hospital program—not what I would’ve picked to get my mind off things—where a bad girl seemed to be making a play for a married doctor. So that when the phone rang he jumped a foot. He listened for a second, then said, “Hang on, I’ll let you talk to Len,” and held out the phone to me. It was Sylvia, calling from the airport out there. She couldn’t find a nonstop to either New York or Boston, so she was about to get on a plane for Atlanta, where she’d put up overnight and fly to New York in the morning and then hire a rental car. I hated to think what all this was going to set old Harold back.
“Be careful driving,” I said. “Just take your time.”
“Hah,” she said. “You’d just as soon I didn’t come at all. You think I won’t be on good behavior.”
“That’s not so,” I said.
“Hah. You never were much of a liar.”
I could’ve said something about that, too.
When the commercials came on, Dave Senior looked over. “I get you a cold one, Pop? I could sure as hell use one.”
“Guess you could twist my arm,” I said. I was glad he felt like he could call me Pop. His own father died years ago; from what I can gather, he was hell on wheels when he drank. They say it’s one in ten; seems like about one in two sometimes.
We cracked our beers and I got him talking about Little Dave and what he could and couldn’t do—lately he was trying to learn to tie his shoes—until the hospital program came back on. I remember when Bonnie was about four, she used to tie her shoes with a special knot she made up herself, and you had a hell of a time undoing it. I’m ashamed now to think back, because I sometimes lost my patience. Not knowing that afterwar
d the time would seem so short. On the TV, the bad girl tossed her head to get her hair out of her face, then clinked her glass with the married doctor.
“Pop, can I ask you something?” Dave Senior said. “What do you honestly—I don’t know, shit, forget it. You’re not really the person to ask.”
“Hell, go ahead and ask. What is it?”
“Well, I guess you knew we’d been having trouble.”
“No, I had no idea.” Though Bonnie had said some things.
He took a long swallow that finished off his beer, and put the empty can on the table next to him. Then he turned back to the television, so I did, too. That girl tossed her head again and gave the doctor a look, and I wouldn’t have been in that doctor’s shoes for a million dollars.
“Doesn’t seem like you’re too curious,” he said.
“I don’t want to stick my nose in your business,” I said. “But if—”
“Nope. Nope, I think you’re smart,” he said. “I think we might as well leave it right there.”
He turned in after the news, the best thing he could’ve done for himself. I found sheets and blankets in the linen closet and pulled out the hide-a-bed, but I wasn’t tired—I mean I wasn’t sleepy—so I put the TV back on with the sound low, hoping that might do the trick. Letterman had some actress on, and the two of them kidded back and forth. I’m guessing she was an actress; he didn’t say. The point was she was young and pretty, had a lovely figure, full of fun. Something to keep old men watching TV.
I got disgusted and went out to the kitchen for another beer, in hopes that might put me under. But I noticed there was no milk for the morning, and not much of anything else in the icebox. Pudding snacks, yogurts, hot sauce, jar of dill spears, open can of black olives. I lifted the lid of a covered saucepan—leftover Spaghetti-O’s—then hunted up my jacket, wallet and car keys.
Everything’s changed in this part of the world, but you were bound to hit a 7-Eleven or something down on the Post Road. Turned out I didn’t even need to go that far: the Mobil station on the corner had a Mini-Mart, pretty well stocked. I picked up a half gallon of milk, plus a pint of half-and-half as an extra treat for the coffee. A dozen eggs, a package of bacon. Quart of grapefruit juice. Loaf of bread, pound of butter. And a six-pack of Bud Light so Dave wouldn’t run short. I put it all on my debit card, and stuck the receipt in my shirt pocket so I wouldn’t forget to write it in my checkbook. That’s the damn problem with those cards.
Then I figured since I was out, I might as well swing by and have a look at where it happened. A motel on the Post Road, in Clinton, but over toward Westbrook: shouldn’t be too hard to pin down. I switched the radio on and picked up an oldies station—what they call oldies. Back when Bonnie was growing up, these songs used to scare me: so cheap and raw, and all tied up with drugs and whatnot. Now I kind of like to hear them, though I’d be ashamed if anybody caught me listening. They played a Little Richard number—Gonna tell Aunt Mary about Uncle John—then “Angel Baby,” then that “96 Tears.” About half a mile before the Westbrook line, I saw a place up ahead on the left—the Nautilus Motor Court—that I remembered from years ago. If it had a bad reputation back then, I never heard about it. Sure enough, you could see skid marks on the pavement and the burned-out stub of a flare; safety glass still sparkled on the shoulder under the streetlight. I slowed down, pulled over to let a car full of teenagers pass and looked across at the motel. They’d painted the cinderblock wall white and planted geraniums along the top; seemed like they kept the place up nicely. I couldn’t see a pay phone by the office, but they might’ve had it inside, or back along where the rooms were. Anyhow, it didn’t mean anything one way or the other. She could easily have pulled in thinking there might be a phone, not found one and tried to pull out again. Or maybe this wasn’t the spot after all. I crossed into Westbrook, then made a U-turn in a car wash and started back.
In the center of Clinton, I thought, Why the hell not, and took a right under the railroad underpass. It was lower and narrower than I remembered; I hadn’t been up this way in how many years? I drove up 81 and crossed over the turnpike, glancing down at white headlights bound for New York and red taillights bound for Providence and Boston, then took a right on Glenwood Road.
The house looked pretty much the same—same shutters with crescent moons cut out—but they’d put up a split-rail fence along the driveway, and the little shrubs I’d planted on either side of the front door had grown to four or five feet wide, and somebody’d squared them off with a hedge trimmer. We bought the place the year after Sylvia went to work for Martin Real Estate and Insurance, the year before she ran off. It was too much house for us, really—three bedrooms and a finished basement—but Sylvia had talked in terms of another baby. I was hoping for a son; meanwhile, she must have had Harold Martin on her mind. I don’t doubt it was true love—look how long they’ve been together now—though at the time I know certain people assumed otherwise, seeing that he had his own business, was president of the Lions Club and so forth, when I was just a machinist there at the Wahlstrom Company.
After Sylvia left, Bonnie used to work on me about getting myself a ladyfriend. Or I’d go over to somebody’s house for supper and the wife would want to introduce me to this one or that one. But with Bonnie and the house and my job, I had enough to do as it was. And then later, when Bonnie went off on her own, I got used to coming and going as I pleased. I rewired the basement and set up my shop—lathe, drill press, milling machine—and if I felt like spending the whole weekend down there working on some project or other, there was nobody to complain. When Bonnie would tell me it wasn’t normal not to have what she called an outlet, I’d always say I had plenty of outlets—put ’em in myself.
I sat with the motor running for a minute, just looking, then used the driveway to turn around. I don’t think anybody was home; the windows were all dark, and they’d left the outside light on over the kitchen door the way we used to do.
Sylvia showed up the next afternoon, looking like a million dollars for a gal her age. Last time I saw her was when Dave Junior was born—this same hospital, as a matter of fact. She gave us each a two-hand squeeze and a peck on the cheek, asked if anything had changed since she’d phoned from LaGuardia, told us about her trip. But when they called Dave Senior into the ICU, she started up. Did these doctors know what they were doing? Shouldn’t we get Bonnie to someplace in New York? I finally told her, “Look. You and I don’t have a thing to say about it. This is all up to Dave now.”
“They could put her on a helicopter and have her down there inside of an hour.” A fellow in a green hospital outfit was walking right past when she said it.
“You want to keep your voice down,” I said. “Listen, I forgot to ask: how’s Harold getting along?”
“Harold,” she said, “is won-derful. By the way, he said he’d be glad to help out any way he can.”
“Tell him that’s much appreciated, will you?” But I thought, To the tune of a couple hundred thousand dollars? Because where Bonnie worked they had no health plan at all, and when I’d asked Dave, he’d said his plan only covered her up to a certain amount. “Cocksuckers inch that deductible up every year and bring the cap down,” he’d said. “Sons of bitches.” I told him not to worry over the out-of-pocket because I had more in my checking than I knew what to do with. True, up to a point.
“Had the boy been drinking?” Sylvia said.
“What boy’s that?”
“The boy that hit her.”
“It wasn’t any boy,” I said. “This was a man thirty years old. Sure, of course he was drunk.” He’d been killed instantly, and there’d been some talk of charging the bartender who’d served him. Typical.
“And what about Bonnie?” Sylvia said.
“How do you mean?”
“Hel-lo?” she said, in that new way that means you’re thickheaded. I’d thought it was a thing only young people said. “Bonnie? Your daughter? Was she drinking?”
“Of course not,” I said. “She was on her way home from work, for Pete’s sake.”
“But she pulled right out in—”
“Here’s Dave,” I said. “Maybe he’s got some news.”
He came over and sat down in the chair next to mine. “They got the nurse in with her now. Be about fifteen minutes, they said.”
Sylvia leaned across me. “Is she awake?”
“Not yet.”
“Shouldn’t she be awake by this time? What are they doing in there?”
“Probably just, you know—I don’t really know, to tell you the truth.” He ran his hands through his hair, scratched the back of his head.
“Well, what did they say when they called you in?”
“Not a hell of a lot,” he said.
“Tell you what,” I said. “Why don’t we all go down and get some coffee? Wouldn’t kill us to stretch our legs.”
“I think I’ll just sit,” Dave said. “Why don’t you two go ahead. Bring me one back?”
“Cream and sugar, right?” said Sylvia.
“Good memory,” he said. “I better have it black, though. I need to cut down. Couple Sweet-and-Lows?”
“Well, they must have skim milk here, for pity’s sake,” Sylvia said. “It can’t be that primitive.”
shaking her finger, and I’d told Sylvia how I used to hate it. “What am I going to do with you?”
We finally got Sylvia settled in, though we had a little go-round about who slept where. I was bound and determined that she should have the hide-a-bed. I’d slept on it the night before and my back was fine; I hated the thought of her trying to get comfortable on that sofa in the den. I was just going to put a couple quilts down on the floor in there. But she said she’d rather have her privacy.
