Van Gogh's Room at Arles

by Stanley Elkin

  You could be crippled or you could be single. Schiff, though he made a pretty good living at the university— Check, he reminded himself, the savings and money-market accounts, see if she cleaned you out before she split— didn’t know anyone who could afford to be both. Oh, maybe if you went into a home maybe, but unless you had only three or four years to live that was prohibitive, too. (Wasn’t everything up front? Didn’t you have to sign your life savings over to those guys? He should have known this stuff, but give him a break, until this morning he hadn’t even known his wife would be running out on him.) And, though he’d never actually been in one, he didn’t think he’d like the way it would smell in the corridors.

  So he was checking his options. Still working his new situation, he meant, still, he meant, thinking about the blows he would be taking in his comfort, he found his mind drifting back to that wish list. He found himself idly thinking about the skeepskin whoosies crips draped over the furniture and across their wheelchairs and sheets to help prevent lesions and bedsores. It was astonishing what one of those babies could go for in a wicked world. (It varied actually. They came in different grades, like wool rugs, fur coats, or diamonds. Lambskin was the most expensive, then ewes, then adult males, but it wasn’t that simple. There were categories within even these categories, and certain kinds of sheep—castrated fully-grown males were an example—could sometimes be more expensive than even the finest virgin lambskin. Once you really got into it, it was a waste, a waste and a shame, thought Schiff, to be crippled- up in such an interesting place as the world.) Oh well, he thought, if he really needed them he could afford all the sheepskins he wanted. Sheepskin deprival wasn’t his problem. His wish list wasn’t. He had been drifting, he had been thinking idly. With Claire gone his problem was the real and present danger he was in, his problem was singleness and emergency.

  He picked up his cordless phone and called Information. (Another thing he didn’t understand about his wife. Since his disease had been first diagnosed, even, that is, when he was relatively asymptomatic, he’d asked the telephone company, and with a supporting letter from his neurologist received, for its free Unlimited Information Privilege. For years now he hadn’t cracked a phone book. Claire had telephone numbers written down in a small, worn black spiral notebook she kept in a drawer in the kitchen. When she wanted the number of a plumber, say, or the man who serviced their air conditioners, she’d go all the way downstairs for it rather than call Information. Recently, it was the cause of some of their biggest fights. “Ask Information,” Schiff offered expansively, almost like a host pressing food or drink on a guest. “The number’s in my book,” she’d say. “Why not ask Information? It’s free.” “I’ve got the number downstairs. Information has better things to do.” “It’s their job, for Christ’s sake. What do you think the hell else they have to do?” “That’s all right, I don’t mind.” “I mind,” Schiff would say, and he’d be shouting now. “Why?” he’d yell after her. “This is some passive-aggressive thing, isn’t it? Sure,” he’d shout, “this is some lousy passive-aggressive thing on your part. Just your way of showing me who the cripple is in this outfit!” Sometimes, out of spite and with Claire as witness, checking what was playing at all the movie houses, when the feature was scheduled to begin, he’d rack up a dozen or so calls to Information at a time. Or patiently explain to her, “You know, Claire, the Information operators don’t actually look anything up. It isn’t as if they were ruining their eyes over the tiny print in the telephone directory. It’s all computers nowadays. They just punch in an approximate spelling and the number comes up on the screen.” “It’s wasteful,” Claire might say. “It’s free.” “It’s a drain on the electricity, it’s wasteful.” “You clip goddamn coupons for shampoos and breakfast cereals and shit we wouldn’t even eat unless you got fifteen or twenty cents off the price of the goddamn box! That’s wasteful! Do you know what they charge for a call to Information? Forty-five cents, that’s what! Forty-five cents! They’re ripping you off I’ll tell you the truth, Claire, I feel sorry for people who aren’t handicapped today, I really do. I probably save us a dollar eighty cents a day. You know what that comes to over the course of a year? Practically six hundred fifty dollars a year! Go buy yourself a designer dress, Claire, go get yourself a nice warm coat.” “Big man!” “Big fucking passive aggressive!”)

  “S.O.S. Corporation,” a woman said when the number rang through. “How may we help you?”

  “I’ve seen your ads on TV and I’d like to speak to one of your sales representatives,” Schiff said.

  “Bill isn’t busy just now. I’ll put you through to Bill.”

  “I’m disabled,” Schiff told Bill. “My wife of thirty-six years skipped out on me today to be with an old boyfriend in the Pacific Northwest and left me high and dry and all alone in the house, pretty much a prisoner in it, in fact. Claire left me the car, and I have my handicap plates—my ‘vanity plates,’ I call them, with their stick-figure, big- wheeler wheelchairs like a kid’s toy—but I haven’t driven in over a year and don’t even know whether I still can.”

  The salesman started to explain his company’s services but Schiff interrupted him. “Yes,” he said, “I’ve seen your ads on TV,” and continued, teaching Bill his life and current situation. Then the good political geographer went on to explain what he called “choke points” in his home, fault lines along which he could be expected most likely to fall, how close these were to the various telephones in the house. When he was done, the fellow, if he’d been paying attention at all, could have passed, and might even have aced, any pop quiz on the material that Schiff cared to give him.

  “Yes sir,” Bill said, “that’s pretty clear. I think we’ll be able to serve you just fine.”

  “I think so,” Schiff said, “I’ve seen your ads on TV, I’ve heard them on the radio.”

  “Pretty effective spots,” Bill said.

  “Long-time listener, first-time caller,” said Schiff.

  “Hey,” said the salesman, “you can rest easy. We could get the equipment over to you and set you up today.”

  “Well, I do have some questions.”

  “Oh,” Bill said, disappointed, realizing things had gone too smoothly, sensing the catch, “sure. What’s that?”

  Schiff wanted to know if he could wear the thing in the shower, whether there was any chance he would be electrocuted. The shower was one of the major choke points; if he was going to be electrocuted the deal was off.

  “No chance at all,” Bill, who’d actually often been asked this same question, said brightly. “The emergency call button works on the same principle as the waterproof watch. Besides, everything in it, the case, the working parts, are all made of high-grade, bonded, heavy-duty plastic. The only metal part is the copper wire that carries the signal, and that’s locked in bonded, heavy-duty, high-grade plastic insulation.”

  Schiff said that that was good, that people his age had been known to recover from broken hips, but that he couldn’t think of anyone who’d ever come back from an electrocution. Bill chuckled and, feeling his oats, wanted to know if Professor Schiff had any other questions. Well, yes, as a matter of fact, he had. If he wasn’t near a regular phone would it work on a cordless? The salesman was ready for him. He slammed this one right out of the park. “Yes, absolutely. So long as it’s in the On mode. Then of course, since the battery tends to drain down in that position, it’s your responsibility to see to it that you keep your phone charged.”

  “I could do that, I’m not completely helpless, you know,” said Schiff, who, from the salesman’s quick answer to what Schiff thought a cleanly unique question, suddenly had a sad sense of himself as a thoroughly categorized man.

  “Of course not,” Bill said. “Anything else?”

  There was the question of price. Bill preferred to wait until he had a chance to meet Schiff in person before going into this stuff—there were various options—— if a doctor accompanied the paramedic on a call, whether Schi
ff would be using some of the other services the company offered, various options—but the professor was adamant. He reminded Bill of all he had yet to do if he was going to call off that party for his graduate students. He wouldn’t budge on this one. The salesman would either have to tell him what it cost right then and there or lose the sale. Bill gave him the basic monthly rates, installation fees, what it would cost Schiff if they had to put in additional phones. He broke down the costs to him of the various options and offered a price on specific package deals. It was like buying a good used car.

  It was expensive. Schiff said as much.

  “Is it?” Bill said. “Do you have a burglar-alarm system in your house there, Professor?”

  “No.”

  “Sure,” Bill said, “and if that’s what you have to pay to see to it your hi-fi ain’t stolen or they don’t clear out your spoons, isn’t your very life worth a few dollars more to you than just making sure they don’t get your tablecloth?”

  “I said I don’t have a burglar-alarm system,” Schiff said.

  “Whether you do or you don’t,” the salesman said. “It’s the same principle.”

  On condition that all of it could be put in that day he ended up picking one of the S.O.S. Corporation’s most all- inclusive plans. He got a bit of a break on the package.

  “You won’t be sorry,” Bill told him sincerely. “They dealt you a rotten hand. In my business I see it all the time, and I agree, it’s a little expensive, but you’ll see, it’s worth it. Even if you never have to use us, and I hope you don’t, it’s worth it. The sense of security alone. It’s worth it all right. Oh, while I still have you on the phone, is there something else you want to ask, can you think of anything you’d like to know?”

  Schiff figured the man was talking about credit arrangements, but he didn’t care about credit arrangements. It was expensive, more expensive than Schiff would ever have thought, but not that expensive. If the bitch hadn’t cleaned out his accounts—something he’d have to check—he could afford it. But there was something else. Schiff brought it up reluctantly.

  “Would I have to shout?” he asked. “On the TV, that lady who falls down shouts.”

  “Well, you take a nasty spill like that you could just as well be screaming as actually shouting.”

  “I think she’s shouting,” Schiff said. “She’s pretty far from the phone, all the way across the room. It sounds to me like she’s shouting.”

  “Well,” Bill said gently, “shouting, screaming. That’s just an example of truth in advertising.” And Schiff knew what Bill was going to tell him next. He braced himself for it. And then the salesman said just exactly what Schiff thought he was going to say. “Maybe,” he said, “her phones aren’t sensitive enough, maybe they’re not wired for their fullest range. That’s one of the reasons I want to be on the site, why I don’t like to quote a customer a price over the telephone.”

  He has me, thought the political geographer, they dealt me a rotten hand—he’s in the business, he knows—and he has me.

  If it wasn’t one thing it was another. Or no, Schiff, remembering his theory of consequences, fallout, the proliferation of litter, corrected. First it was one thing, then it was another. Once you put the ball into play there was nothing for it but to chase it. He had to find out about his funds, whether there were enough left to take care of it if S.O.S. insisted on payment for their service up front. (Claire paid the bills, he hadn’t written a check in years. Except for a couple of loose dollars—it was awkward for him to get to his billfold, finger credit cards from a wallet or handle money—for a coffee and sweet roll when he went to school, he didn’t even carry cash anymore. Even in restaurants Claire paid the check, figured the tip, signed the credit-card slip. His disease had turned him into some sort of helpless, old-timey widow, some nice, pre-lib, immigrant lady.) He knew the names of the three banks with which they dealt, but wasn’t entirely certain which one they used for checking, which handled their trust fund, which was the one they kept their money-market account. (There was even a small teacher’s credit-union account they’d had to open when the interest rates were so high on certificates of deposit a few years back and they took a loan out on an automobile Claire didn’t think they should pay for outright.)

  Information gave him the bank’s number, but the bank— they might have been suspicious of his vagueness when he couldn’t tell them what kind of account he was asking about—wouldn’t tell him a thing without an account number.

  “Jesus,” he said, “I’m disabled, I’d have to go downstairs for that. My wife usually takes care of the money. Normally I wouldn’t even be bothering you with something like this, but she walked out on me today. Just left me flat.”

  “I don’t like it,” the bank said, “when people take the name of the Lord in vain.”

  He knew where to find the stuff, in the top drawer of a high, narrow cabinet in the front hall—for reasons neither could remember they called it “the tchtchk”—the closest thing they had in the house to an antique, and except for the fact that two of its elaborate brass handles were missing it might have been valuable. The only thing was, getting there would not be half the fun. Even with the Stair-Glide Claire had to help him. Always she had to swivel and lock the seat, folded upright like a seat in a movie theater, into position for him at the top of the stairs. On days he was weak she had to lift Schiff’s feet onto the little ledge—less long than his shoes—and pull down its movable arms held high in the air like a victim’s in a stickup. Even on days he was strong she had to fold and carry his aluminum walker down the stairs for him. The logistics seemed overwhelming. He’d really have to think about this one.

  He was in bed. He was lying down. Lying down, sitting, he was any man’s equal. He didn’t know his own strength. Literally. He had no sense of weakness, his disease. He could be in remission. Unless he tried to turn on his side, or raise himself into a sitting position, he felt fit as a fiddle. At rest, even his fingers seemed normal. He could have counted out money or arranged playing cards. Really, the logistics seemed overwhelming. He was as reluctant to move as a man in a mine field. Inertia had become almost a part of his disease, almost a part of his character. His character, Schiff thought, had become almost a part of his disease. A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do, he thought, and heaved himself upright. So far, so good. Not bad, he thought, and pushed himself up off the bed and, preparing to move, leaned into his walker. Not bad, he thought again, pleased with the relative crispness of his steps, but soon his energy began to flag. By the time he’d taken the thirteen or so steps to the Stair-Glide (the twenty-six or so steps, actually, since his movement on the walker could be broken down—to keep his mind occupied, he really did break it down—this way: push, step, pull; push, step, pull, each forward step with his right leg accompanied by dragging the left one up alongside it, almost alongside it. He felt like someone with a gaping hole in his hull). Push, step, rest, pull, he was going now; then push, rest, step, rest, pull. Rest! He lived in slow motion, like someone bathed in strobe light or time-lapse photography. He could have been the subject of time- motion studies.

  In repose, folded out of the way against the wall, the Stair-Glide looked like a torso on a target on a rifle range. Gasping, Schiff fumbled with the lever that swiveled it into position and, almost losing his balance as he took a hand off the walker, had practically to swipe at its shallow little theater seat to get it down. With difficulty he managed to lower the chair’s arms and wrap them about himself—there was a sort of elbow on each arm that loosely encircled his body and was supposed to keep him from falling too far forward—and lower the tiny footrest. (They design this shit for kids, Schiff thought. They think of us as a bunch of Tiny Tims.) He didn’t know what to do, whether to pull his feet up on the footrest and then try to collapse the walker, or to collapse the walker and then worry about getting his feet up. (They’re right, he thought. We are kids. We need nursemaids. Or wives. Boy, he thought angrily, her sense o
f timing. Her world-class, son-of-a-bitch sense of timing. Briefly, it occurred to him that he might be better off homeless, find himself a nutso, broken-down bag lady with whom he could bond and who would take care of him, or, if it was still too soon for him to make a commitment, get involved, or even too early for him to start dating again, some streetsmart, knowledgeable old wino with a feel for the soup kitchens, the ground-floor, handicap-friendly shelters. He had money. Surely she’d left something for him, though even if she hadn’t there was the house. He could sell it, split the proceeds with her, and have enough left over to pay the wino or bag lady for their trouble. What could it cost him—— ten bucks a day, fifteen? Hell, if he didn’t save almost that much on the calls he made to Information, he saved almost almost that much. I was already crippled, Schiff thought, now I’m crazy, too.) It was a dilemma, a whaddayacallit, Hobson’s choice. This ain’t going to happen, he told himself. If I bring my feet up and fold the walker, my feet will slide off the footrest and I’ll never get them back on it again. If I fold the walker and hold it I won’t have the use of my hands to lift up my feet. Then, out of the blue, it came to him. He raised his feet onto the footrest and moved the chair into its glide mode. He leaned over and picked up the still uncollapsed walker. He didn’t even try to fold it. With his arms on the armrests and the heel of his hand pressed against the button that made the Stair-Glide go, he raised the lightweight aluminum walker around his body and up about level with the top of his head and, to all intents and purposes, proceeded to wear it downstairs!