It was what he’d wanted, only more so, and if he’d had to be half killed to get it, so be it. Finally walking again, he went off to work, where he was a hero and where he hardly had to work at all. Instead he had only to make an appearance, start to lift a pallet or adjust a hose, check a meter, take a spell at the Filtec, all to the welcoming smiles and a momentary turn in the talk of the other workers, a routine that it struck him must be very like what it was to go senile or nutty in a big, tolerant family. If not for the last frayed shred of his belief that work was what kept him going, he wouldn’t have gone at all. It was what gave him purpose and his days structure, or so he’d thought from the start of his first real job, or so he seemed to remember thinking. But now he discovered he could do well enough, would not go to pieces or wander directionless without it, as long as he had money, as long as he was, as they said, set. And suddenly he was.
He had a kid too now, ready-made, already old enough to play ball, and an ace pitcher to boot. He and Jesse were shagging balls in the yard. Because he wasn’t yet completely steady in the eyes of the medical profession and women, who were perpetually monitoring his outdoor activity for risky maneuvers like diving for flies, Sue was backing him up, and now she shouted from behind him, “OK, Jesse, have you done your homework?”
Jesse answered, “Hunh?” as if he hadn’t heard. Little roughed the kid up on their way to the house, mussed his hair, kneaded his shoulders, traded body checks. At the door they both became dignified, as befitted the men of the house.
He was going to have a kid of his own too, a girl, they thought, though Alice explained that all babies began as girls. Lately a pregnancy expert, she could talk about zygotes and ultrasounds and transition, which was a technical expression, he was happy to hear. She and Melissa were in the den, sitting on the sofa watching TV, Melissa with a magazine open on her lap. She patted the space between her and Alice. They were watching one of their shows, and Alice was filling him in on the progress Melissa was making with Jesse’s father (to which he listened only halfheartedly, believing that a father whose attentions could be bought off was no father at all), when a picture of a bottle of Gutenbier came on the screen. Alice squeaked. Everyone fell silent. The bottle wasn’t like the ones he handled every day at work. It was squatter and darker, and the label looked like something printed by hand. The little book-and-bottle logo was still there, though, at the corner of the name, like a registered-trademark symbol. Above the bottle were the words: In the spirit of the ages. A page of antique script scrolled past as a rolling bass voice said, “George Washington took his recipe with him when he went to war. James Madison and Thomas Jefferson conferred on the merits of brewing methods.” It went on, “The Commonwealth of Massachusetts passed an act to encourage its manufacture and consumption.” Another page appeared, with the camera closing in on a passage that a different, distant, sonorous voice read: “And whereas the wholesome qualities of malt liquors greatly recommend them to general use, as an important means of preserving the health of the citizens of this Commonwealth …,” fading near the end.
“Who are we to disagree?” the original voice asked.
“Gutenbier,” the deep voice intoned as the old bottle reappeared, then transformed into a new one—and it was the new one, redesigned to look something like the old. “It’s good for the country. It’s good for you. And … it’s good.” Under the bottle a printed parting line appeared—“It’s pasteurized”—which got a laugh from Sue.
Little could tell without looking that no one was looking at Melissa. Gutenbier was like her brother or her father, an absence nobody spoke of, out of deference to her although she’d never asked them not to. He would rather have been wrong than hurt her feelings, so he went along, but he didn’t quite believe the reasoning behind it all, because, sad as she seemed sometimes, Melissa didn’t strike him as the type to overlook the obvious, no matter how willing everyone else was to do so in her behalf.
She settled back on the couch, a rustle of warmth at his shoulder, and flicked her hand at the television as if she’d just made a point. Everybody waited, but Melissa didn’t say anything. Lying back, she turned her head his way. He felt it as a breath and cautiously turned too, but couldn’t tell if she was looking at him, over him, at Alice, at them both, at no one in particular, or at everyone. He turned the other way, to Alice, who took a second out from the show to smile at him too, a smile that barely touched him before she returned to the television, which she looked at just as she’d looked at him and had looked at him months ago and years ago, always with the illusion of looking up, anticipating something, lips parted a little in that way that had once seemed so suggestive but now, no different, merely because of the baby, seemed more like the look of Mary waiting on her angel. There was no way of telling, no way of knowing, other than a certain feeling, what it meant, what either of them, any of them, ever meant, but between the two of them, bit by bit, he was coming to believe this wasn’t too much mystery for a man to bear.