Chapter Forty-four

The radio is tuned into WNBC’s local affiliate. At nine o’clock, live music from the Totem Pole Ballroom begins. The announcer introduces the band, no one Rick has ever heard of, and the guest singer, also no one Rick has ever heard of. No Dinah Shore or Dorsey Brothers. But the music is nice and they play a lot of tunes he remembers from when he and Francesca thought a good night out on the town was when they went someplace and danced. For a little Iowa girl, Francesca knew how to do all the modern dances—jitterbug, Lindy hop, and even the East Coast swing. She was fun to sweep off the floor in his showboating exuberance, swinging her up feetfirst toward the ceiling. Keller may take her out on the floor, maybe even now as the band plays a Duke Ellington song, but Rick doubts he’ll have any of those moves. Too bad. Francesca deserves to have a great partner on the dance floor.

Pax stands up and shakes himself, shoves his nose beneath Rick’s resting hand so that Rick can give him a good ear scratch. It’s well past the point in the evening when Rick is put to bed, if only to lie there awake. Long hours in the chair, longer hours in the bed. The band finishes up “Cottontail” with a flourish, and the sound of applause fills the airwaves. The band leader introduces the next song, and a bouncy tune Rick doesn’t recognize comes out of the boxy radio. His fingers begin to tap out the rhythm on the dog’s skull, gentle six-eight taps, as if he’s playing drums. Pax wags his tail and laughs his doggy laugh. Rick dances his fingers up and down the dog’s long back and Pax motors his back leg as if he’s being tickled. The music changes to a swing rhythm and Rick rocks from side to side, patting the new beat on his paralyzed knees. He can hear it but not feel the slap. He slaps his face on the bad side. A different sound than hitting terry-cloth-covered dead knees. Sharp and snappy. He slaps his good cheek and says, “Ouch!” He does it again. Pax has stopped laughing and watches, his eyes on Rick, his nose working and his ears, determined to comprehend Rick’s behavior. He’s making the sound of violence but laughing at the same time. Puzzled, but convinced there is no danger, Pax sits facing Rick.

“Let’s dance, big boy.” Rick thrusts the knotted rope toward Pax. Obligingly, the dog grasps the end and tugs left, in the direction Rick is looking. Then Rick quickly looks right and the dog tugs him right. The wheelchair swings left, then right, but not in time with the music. Pax can move him only a foot or so in either direction. It’s more a slow waltz than dancing to the thumping beat of the high-energy trumpet solo being played now.

The plaintive first notes from a clarinet take the place of the energetic piece and a slow and sensuous music fills the room. Whatever it is, the key provokes a musical nostalgia in Rick. Every rising note reminds him that he is not listening to this music with his wife on their anniversary; he’s playing with his dog and his wife is maybe dancing to this very sweet and sensual music with another man. Dancing in the very place where he got down on one knee, just like in the movies, and asked her, their acquaintance barely a week old, to marry him. And she said yes. He has cheated Francesca of the life she deserved.

Every descending third in the clarinet solo reminds him of how much he loves her. And how often he treats her like a servant, an annoyance. “Pax, why do I do that?”

Pax has let go of the rope. He has no answers.

The radio is on the built-in shelves that house the encyclopedias and the dictionary. The glow from the tubes casts a candlelike warmth into that dark corner. The music has grown too much to bear, but no one has taught the dog how to turn the radio off. Whenever the band takes a break, in that few seconds before the band leader or the announcer or whoever he is introduces the next song, Rick can hear the crowd noises—applause, laughter, the clink of stemware against stemware. People having fun. Francesca and Keller, having fun. It’s what he wanted, to give her a good time. Is that her voice he hears, laughing like she used to in the days when the Totem Pole was their place? Touching him just so, so that he knew when it was time to leave; to go home and continue the dance. How soon would she suggest to Keller that they leave? How soon before her fingertips graze the back of his neck?

He has got to shut this radio off. It’s enough to have made them go; it’s suddenly too much to listen to it. He’s like a blind man imagining a elephant.

“Pax, pull me.” Rick tosses the end of the knotted rope out to the dog as if he’s throwing himself a lifeline. “Pull.” The dog is so astute to his gestures that Rick has only to look at the radio to get the dog to aim for it. The dog has to back up. If he were wearing a harness, he could pull Rick by moving forward, a more natural and effective method. But, as it is, the big dog literally has to back himself into a corner in order to get Rick where he wants to go. Which means that he can only get him within a foot of his objective, because the dog’s own body is in the way. “Good boy.” Pax slips out from the alley made between Rick’s chair and the shelves. Rick can get himself close enough now; his good left hand is enough to propel the chair forward that much more. Except that the radio isn’t on the lower shelf. It’s placed on the third; no one took the time to move the books, instead just setting up the radio in the most convenient place. Keller drilled a hole in the shelves so that the cord, attached to an extension cord, runs down the back of the unit and disappears behind the closed doors of the built-in cupboard that makes up the base. Rick’s fingers don’t quite reach to the knob. No one has ever thought that Rick might want to shut the goddamned thing off. It’s become such a habit, this leaving him out of things, making sure he wants for nothing and, by doing so, turning him into a hopeless invalid.

Rick stretches as far as he can reach. The music continues to taunt him, louder, livelier, sexier. She looked so beautiful tonight. Keller’s hands on her as he struggled with the corsage. Shy or desirous? Rick pushes his chair back a foot. Examines the geometry of his helplessness. In therapy, they want him to get to the point where he can push himself up, be of more help to those helping him. Rick grips the armrest and pushes himself toward the radio; he lifts himself half a foot, maybe more, and then is struck with the truth. If he lifts himself with his only hand, he has nothing to shut the radio off with. He starts to laugh, a dry, hacking, chest-deep sound that brings Pax to his side. Even the dog knows that there is no humor in the sound he’s making.

If he can grasp the cord, maybe he can jerk the plug out. The band leader introduces the guest singer, and suddenly the room is filled with the throaty crooning of a woman lamenting her lost boyfriend. She’s lost him to another. It’s pure blues, and tears spring to Rick’s eyes. “Pax, let’s try something else.” Together, they position him so that he can grab the latch on the cupboard door. It sticks a little, but he gets it open. Inside the cupboard, replacing the games and puzzles of previous tenants, are the medical supplies that he uses—tubing and sponges, basins and bandages.

Rick has to reach across his dead legs in order to feel around inside the cupboard for the cord. He thinks of them as ballast, that they’ll hold him steady in the chair as he reaches. Because he can’t move them, or feel them, he’s perfectly assured that they will stay put. Because they don’t move, he can’t quite reach far enough into the deep cupboard to touch the cord plugged into the hidden wall outlet. He needs to get a little lower, a little closer. He pushes his chair backward and leans forward, but he’s blocked by the length of his unfeeling thighs. The electric cord is a tantalizing inch from his reaching fingers. Rick tries moving his legs apart, lifting one, then the other and placing them against the sides of the chair, but the wheelchair is too narrow and the best he can do is a mere five or six inches of freeboard. Even with that, bent nearly in two, the solid roof of the cupboard obstructs his getting any closer. Rick bangs his head on the edge. It’s hopeless; he’s stuck here listening to the music that his wife and his caretaker are no doubt dancing to. Keller’s hands on her waist, she’s reaching up to place her left on his broad shoulder, her right hand—he pictures it bare, not gloved—in Keller’s, palm to palm, fingers linking at some point in the dance.

The lament is wrung out to the last note and the song is over. She wasn’t betrayed; she’s betrayed her lover. She’s done him wrong.

Rick tries one more time, lunging past his dead legs and reaching deep into the cupboard. The next thing he knows, he’s facedown on the floor; the wheelchair has catapulted backward, where it knocks into the tray table, upending it with the force of its empty trajectory. Everything on the table flies off; his water glass smashes on the bare floor, his magazines scatter, and his empty coffee cup rolls out into the hallway.

Pax is there, standing over him as if he’s a fallen soldier on the field. The dog is upset, and keeps pawing at him. “I’m okay, Pax. I’m okay.” The dog doesn’t seem convinced. He barks, paces, comes back, and settles only when Rick touches him. “Francesca is going to kill me.” Pax must agree, because he lies down beside Rick and heaves a great sigh. His normally upright ears are flattened side to side like immature puppy ears. “Maybe you can get me rolled over. Let’s try. It’s going to be embarrassing enough for them to find me like this, but at least I can be looking up.” Rick runs Pax through his lexicon of commands to get the dog to fetch the knotted rope, then use his weight as leverage so that Rick can flip over. On his back, Rick looks right into the cupboard and, finally, reaches the plug.