The Land of Steady Habits: A Novel

by Thompson, Ted

  There was a pause. “I sense that you feel somewhat guilty,” he said, putting his glasses back on.

  “Maybe, I don’t know. The kid would have been doing it anyway.”

  “But do you feel guilty?” Now Howard was taking notes.

  “Of course, of course I do.”

  “Why?”

  “You know why, Howard.”

  “I’m not so sure that I do.”

  “Then you really are as bad at this as they say you are.”

  Howard raised his face, hurt, and Anders’s cheeks flushed with rage, then even deeper with regret.

  “This makes you very defensive,” said Howard.

  Anders nodded. “I suppose so.”

  “You remember that this is confidential, right? This doesn’t leave the room.”

  Howard spoke in a voice Anders had never heard before—assured, calm, warm. He had complete control over the situation and seemed to imbue that playroom with the professionalism of an actual doctor’s office.

  “Let me just come clean,” Howard continued, clicking his pen and slipping it in his pocket, “and tell you what I see. I see someone who’s defensive and accusatory, who put himself on the line last week and doesn’t want to talk about it because, for some reason, he thinks he’s being cornered.” He looked down at his notes. “And by that I mean he hasn’t even mentioned his ex-wife, or her new boyfriend, who seems—”

  “I did drugs with the kid.”

  Howard glanced up.

  “You did?”

  “Outside. When I was trying to leave.”

  “Okay,” said Howard, looking back at his notes.

  “There’s your honesty,” said Anders. He’d expected that he’d feel relief when he came clean, that it would alleviate the weight of that night a little bit, but the longer Howard stared at the legal pad in his lap, the more Anders became frozen in dread.

  “That’s it?” he said. “ ‘Okay’?”

  “No, it’s fine, I’m just—” Howard looked up. “What kind?”

  “What kind? I don’t know; it was some boarding-school stuff.” Anders shook his head. “Some kind of blend. With PCP.”

  Howard’s face changed. “PCP?”

  “I thought it was just grass, I didn’t know—I mean, Jesus, Howard, I thought I was supposed to be able to tell you anything.”

  “You can, you can, it’s just—” He stared at the pad again. “The boy is hurt,” he said finally, as though that were all there was to it, and before Howard could continue, a phone rang on his belt. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Excuse me one second.” He took the phone and went through the entryway, leaving Anders alone in the white room with its coffee table full of Klee and Mondrian books. He opened one, paged through its little squares, its stark borders, its right angles. Despite all his questionable techniques as a therapist, Howard had never taken a call in the middle of a session, like a Hollywood producer bored with a pitch. This pitch was his life. This wasn’t some game—he shouldn’t have to impress Howard with anything. He was paying the guy too much for that. Anders shut the book, replaying the past few minutes of their conversation. He nibbled on his pinkie nail, got up, and looked for Howard in the entryway, but he was gone.

  He opened the office door and poked his head outside. Howard wasn’t there either. He listened for his deep, runny-nosed voice and heard only the hum of an airplane in the bright gray overhead. So Anders went inside, put on his coat and scarf, and, on his way to the door, grabbed as many coffee-table books as he could carry, which, it turned out, was quite a few, and they were quite heavy—a stack of decorative crap reaching all the way to his chin.

  4

  Anders would never pay for it—either the session or his stupid books—and that was it for Howard, his last chance, so he’d have to come begging if he wanted any of it back. He hit the highway. All of this had gotten out of hand. The kid was fine, and Anders’s involvement—if any—had been a mix-up. An accident. Wrong place at the wrong time, which happened in the world, Howard might like to learn; it was a thing.

  He exited at the hospital, a rectangle at the top of a hill that had been newly sided and expanded and outfitted inside with high-tech screens. They had spared nothing on the renovation. Its entrance had a vast buffed floor and tall, leafy plants that rose three stories to a windowed ceiling, and a fountain somewhere trickling ambient noise. He’d walked through this construction zone with Helene many times during those dreamy, confusing months, marveling at the gall it took to undertake a forward-looking project in the atrium of the dying, and seeing it now, shiny and complete, all waterfalls and foliage, he felt as though she were back in treatment and that he should have come with a bundle of daylilies or a box of Krispy Kremes or a bouquet of chocolate-dipped fruit. Every time he was in this building, he could not shake the feeling that something was required of him and that somehow he had already blown it.

  Charlie had been moved to the third floor, reached by way of a glass elevator that looked out on the place as though it were an Embassy Suites. Glancing through the atrium windows, Anders could see a parking lot scored with strips of sod and a tiny silent ambulance whirling its lights. It was three o’clock on a December Saturday, prime shopping time, and down by the water, a line of cars crawled along I-95 like engorged insects.

  Charlie’s door was open. The room was dark except for the glow of a ceiling-mounted TV. There must have been thirty cards in there, some of them attached to balloons, and an entire bedside table loaded with games.

  “Charlie?”

  He had his knees up on the bed and was drawing furiously in a sketchbook in his lap. “Hang on.” He let out a groan of frustration and began erasing. Finally, he looked up. “Oh,” he said. “Yeah, my parents aren’t here.”

  “That’s good. Is my wife around?”

  Charlie stared at him. “I don’t see her.”

  In the odd androgyny of a hospital gown, he looked small. His face was drawn, and in the light from the TV, it was hard to distinguish the shadows under his eyes from half-moons. His forehead was shiny, and his hair, which had grown in angelic ringlets when he was a boy, was now an oblong frizzled bush.

  “How are you feeling?”

  “Awesome,” he said.

  “You look okay,” Anders said. “The way people were talking, I thought—” He didn’t know what he’d thought. That Charlie would be hooked up to machines? He had thought there would be at least one machine.

  Charlie went back to the thing in his lap. “Do you have a balloon for me or something?”

  “Here,” said Anders. Before he’d come in, he had grabbed one of Howard’s books, a heavy volume on Paul Klee. In the car it had seemed the newest of the bunch, colorful and strange and hefty, but in the blue light of the TV, you could see, its jacket was scratched and dinged. “I thought you might like this.”

  “What is it?”

  “It’s some art.”

  Charlie took the book and flipped through a few pages of paintings, their tight little shapes creating what looked like patchwork villages—houses, streets, the moon—that were, despite their precise boxes, coming apart at the edges and falling into a jumble.

  “This is pretty sweet,” he said. Then he flipped to the back, where, Anders hadn’t noticed, a manila sleeve was glued, a library slip still in it. Charlie looked up at him. “Did you lift this?”

  “I—” There was nothing to say. “Not from a library.”

  “You brought me a stolen library book?”

  “I didn’t actually know that.”

  But Charlie was laughing.

  Of course Howard had taken his fine modernist tomes, his props of good taste, from the library.

  “I love it, dude. You show up at the hospital to give me a stolen library book.”

  “Here, I didn’t know. Give it back to me.”

  “No way, man, this is my favorite present by far. By far; I love it.”

  “It’s not—” Anders shook his head. “I’ll br
ing you something real. What can I get you?”

  “Nothing, nothing at all.”

  “Well, listen”—he scribbled his number on the back of one of the old business cards that were pressed in his wallet—“if you need anything, you know.”

  Charlie looked at the card, its heavy stock and the raised seal of the Springer logo.

  “So what happened to you?” Charlie asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  Charlie flicked at the corners of the card. “Vice president, securities division.”

  “I retired.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s complicated.”

  “Try me.”

  “It sucked.”

  Charlie broke into a huge grin.

  “Yeah,” he said. “I get that.”

  “And a bunch of other reasons.”

  “I have to go to rehab.”

  “Yeah,” said Anders. “That’s usually how this goes.”

  “I’m not even addicted to anything. My parents are just Nazi assholes.”

  “They’re worried.”

  “They’re embarrassed. There’s a difference.”

  “Well, you did a stupid thing.”

  Charlie looked up, his eyes suddenly hard. “Seriously? I’m getting a lecture from you?”

  “I’m just saying—”

  “No, no, I’m interested, considering you were high as balls.”

  Anders lowered his voice. “Look,” he said. “We both know you tricked me into that.”

  Charlie’s grin came back. “You were hilarious.”

  “That was dangerous.”

  “And amazing.” He shook his head. “And weird. And so fucked up.”

  “Listen, I need you to keep that between us.”

  “I mean, you were like, ‘I’m joyful, guys, I feel joyful.’ ”

  “Charlie. I’m asking as a favor.”

  “You’re a trip, man.” He went back to the notebook in his lap. “Don’t worry about it. That’s not my style.”

  Anders stood for a moment, watching the boy work. “I shouldn’t have done that,” he said finally. “I know you tricked me but—it was wrong. So, I don’t know, sorry.”

  Charlie squinted at him. “Nobody’s blaming you, dude.”

  “Yeah, well.” The boy is hurt, he kept hearing in Howard’s sad bassoon of a voice. The boy is hurt. “I hope you get better.”

  From the elevated platform of his bed, Charlie seemed to acknowledge, with a flick of his head, that so much of what people say when others are sick is for themselves. They get religious and apologetic; they’re overcome with the people they believe they should be. He didn’t know what he was looking for from the kid—forgiveness? absolution? a confirmation of his total innocence?—but in any case, the boy didn’t look up.

  “What are you working on?”

  “Just a thing.”

  “Can I see?”

  He handed him a sketchbook with a fake leather cover that had peeled down to the cardboard. Inside there were pages of drawings; it was a comic book, some frames no bigger than stamps, others filling a full spread, torn out, and glued over. In the grand tradition of so many comics, the opening image was a view from outer space, the Earth a glowing mass with a tiny pod hurtling away from it.

  “Are you making a superhero thing?”

  Charlie sighed and rubbed his forehead. “It’s a graphic novel.”

  The following page was a rendering of the inside of the capsule, a huge control panel and a tiny window and, strapped to a table in the back, unable to touch any of it, a little dog covered in sensors.

  “It’s about Laika.”

  “That’s sweet.”

  “You know what, man?” said Charlie, reaching for the sketchbook. “Forget it.”

  “Hang on,” said Anders. “This is good.”

  “You know what the scientist in charge of that project said about it forty years later? He was one of those Soviet guys with a goatee and a lab coat, and he said, ‘Nothing that we learned on that mission could justify the loss of that beautiful animal.’ ”

  “Really?”

  “Google it. Laika was a stray and the scientists became really close to her. They, like, raised her.”

  Anders looked back at the page, the dog strapped down to that table. “That’s heartbreaking.”

  “I know,” he said. “That’s why there are a billion books about her. They lied and said she crashed in the ocean but she really burned alive in the atmosphere. But in my book, Laika’s still floating out there and Oleg—that’s the scientist—is old now and living in post-Soviet Russia, all poor and shit, and one day he turns on the old equipment and hears Laika’s heartbeat.” Charlie raised his eyebrows. “She’s still out there, waiting for him.”

  Despite being the sort of people who had little interest in the arts, the sort of people who couldn’t enter a museum without whispering, I mean, I could do that, Sophie and Mitchell had somehow produced two of the most creative kids Anders knew, kids who had built their independence by retreating into the parts of themselves their parents least understood.

  “So what happens?”

  Charlie shrugged. “That’s as far as I’ve gotten.”

  “Oh, come on.”

  “I’m gestating.”

  “Wouldn’t he try to rescue her?”

  Charlie smiled. “Maybe. Or, I don’t know. Maybe it’s not that kind of book.”

  The door opened then and Sophie came into the room with a tall Starbucks cup and a pair of sunglasses on her head. “Charles Ashby, what did we talk about? You’re supposed to be sleeping.”

  It took her a moment to notice Anders standing on the other side of the door.

  “Oh,” she said and looked at her watch. “I thought visiting hours were over.”

  “He brought me a book,” said Charlie.

  Sophie looked at Anders. “Well, that was sweet,” she said, taking her seat beside Charlie’s bed. “You didn’t have to do that.”

  Toward the end of Anders’s marriage, when things had gotten really bad, Sophie Ashby had written him a letter. It came on her stationery, a nice heavy stock, and in it she told him, with a bluntness that was incongruous with the light loops of her handwriting, that he was losing his wife. She said that she was sorry he was so unhappy, she really was, and that she hoped he’d find a way through it—they all did—but if he couldn’t figure out how to buck up (her phrase) and do what was right for his family, it was clear to her he had no idea how to be a man.

  Despite the fact that it felt like a ransom note written on a thank-you card, Anders slipped it inside a book he was reading about emerging markets, and soon it had become his bookmark, worn and yellowed, her caustic words peeking out from whatever volume was resting on his bedside table. He carried it with him nearly everywhere he went. It fit nicely in the outside pocket of his laptop case or the inside pocket of his houndstooth blazer, a stiff rectangle in the jacket lining whose corners he absently flicked while he was concentrating deeply on something, like said book on emerging markets, and the distracting blabber of the rest of the world raged on around him.

  “He likes my graphic novel.”

  “Everyone likes your graphic novel,” said Sophie.

  “You don’t even know what it is.”

  “It’s about a dog.”

  Charlie shook his head. “It’s not about a dog.”

  “Well, how am I supposed to know what it is if you don’t let me see it?”

  “It’s about a stray dog who is launched into space for reasons she could never understand. It’s about being exploited by the people who are supposed to protect you.”

  “That sounds sad.”

  “It is sad. It’s very sad. It’s goddamn heartbreaking.”

  “The Meadows isn’t outer space, honey.”

  “It’s worse. It’s Arizona.”

  “I’m finished having this conversation.”

  Charlie looked back at Anders. “You see what I’m de
aling with here?”

  “I’m sorry,” Sophie said to Anders. “Clearly he needs to rest.”

  “He came here ’cause he’s looking for his wife.”

  Sophie’s face came back to Anders. “Oh,” she said, and for the first time it seemed to make sense to her what he was doing there. “She’s at home.”

  “She’s decorating,” said Charlie. “The house. With her enormous boyfriend.”

  “Charlie.”

  “What? He is.” He looked at Anders. “He’s big.”

  Anders nodded. “Thanks.”

  “He lives there now. A lot of conversations about that. About whether things are moving too fast.”

  “Charlie, you’ve made your point,” said Sophie. She seemed exhausted.

  “But I guess he’s loaded, so…” He didn’t bother to finish the thought.

  “He’s not loaded,” said Anders, and a strange pause settled over them. “He’s not. I’ve known the guy a long time.” Sophie’s eyes were fixed on the far wall. For once, both Charlie and Sophie were quiet. “Well, I should go.”

  “Anders,” she said as he was leaving. “She’ll call you back when she’s ready.”

  Outside, the sun was gone and the streetlamps were on. The cars on I-95 had come to a standstill. He made it into the recesses of the parking lot before he realized he was still holding Charlie’s sketchbook. Under the lights in his car, the drawings were impressive, beautiful little silver things that depicted a world of stark light, one in which people did as they were told and there wasn’t room for feelings outside the party line. Khrushchev made an appearance, a portly fellow looking not unlike Mr. Monopoly, and so did the ghost of Stalin, whose body was glowing with a radioactive halo. Charlie had stopped in the middle of a flashback to Laika’s puppyhood, an alley in a backwater village named Ozerki. At the center of the page was a note about a recent change.

  Parents not dead, it said. Just dickwads.

  5

  It had always troubled him that the moment you reached a point in your career where you had the means to improve a house was also the same moment you no longer had a family to live in it. Their town these days was peppered with empty additions, lit up atria waiting for everyone to come back and enjoy them. Theirs was a full-blown expansion, with recessed halogen lighting and a walk-in pantry and a roof that was lofted a full story to let the skylights “breathe.” Everyone agreed that it was beautiful, and it was, though the charm that it had for Helene seemed to wear off soon after it was finished, leaving him with an unfortunate loan and a house on the precipice of a collapsing market and no project they could talk about during the long silences of their empty-nest meals.