It was the woman doctor who finally came out and told us we could go in. She said Bonnie came through the surgery fine, as far as they could tell, and not to be shocked when we saw her. We followed the doctor into the intensive care and over to a bed with an IV bag hanging over it. Bonnie lay flat on her back, in a white gown with short sleeves; they’d taped the needle end of the tubing to the back of her hand, and they had the hand strapped to the side rail in case she tried to move. But she wasn’t moving: you had to look close to see her chest rise and fall. She had another tube up her nose, the whole top of her head was wrapped in bandages and her face was so swollen that she looked the way she had as a baby.
I picked up her other hand, stroked it and held it. The hand didn’t do anything back. I said, “Daddy’s here, honey. You’re going to be fine.” Nothing.
Dave Senior wouldn’t come near the bed. Being her husband, it must’ve been even harder on him. He turned to the doctor and said, “This looks great. When the hell are you going to know what’s going on?”
The doctor put up a hand, like she was making to guard herself. “Not before tomorrow,” she said. “At the earliest.” She was a small woman, pretty enough, with lines at the corners of her eyes and dark circles. To me, she seemed young for a doctor—she might’ve been forty—but for her I suppose it was a different story. I know when I was forty, I felt like an old man. Sylvia had run off to Phoenix with her boss and left it up to Bonnie either to go out there or to stay with me in Clinton. A teenage girl, with her school and all her friends? What do you imagine she’s going to choose? So I had Bonnie to look after and the house to try to keep up, all the while putting in ten, fifteen hours a week overtime so I could set something aside for her college. But that’s years and years ago now. I retired, sold the house and bought my little place up in Shelburne Falls. And Bonnie finally settled down and married Dave; they live over in Madison, not ten minutes from where we lived in Clinton. Sylvia and I will talk a couple times a year by phone, and I’ll even chat with Harold if he happens to pick up. Hell, by now they’ve been married longer than we were. She claims to have cut way back on her drinking, which I think was half her problem. And I really am an old man now, though Bonnie says seventy-two’s not old anymore. I don’t feel old these days. I’m healthy (knock wood), I keep active and I’m not strapped for money. That’s my good way of looking at it.
I left Dave in there with Bonnie and went back to the waiting room to use the pay phone. I’d managed to put off calling Sylvia for a whole day, just about. In the first place, Dave couldn’t even get hold of me until a couple hours after he got word of the accident. (I’d been over trying to get Scotty Williams’s ArcticCat running so he could put it in the paper; he hasn’t been well the last year or so.) Then the drive down delayed things another couple hours. I meant to make the call as soon as I got to the hospital, but I found out they still had some tests to do, and by the time they finished up it was after midnight. Only ten o’clock Sylvia’s time, but she would’ve been up the whole night worrying. I could’ve called this morning, but they started getting Bonnie ready at seven and I wasn’t about to wake Sylvia up out of a dead sleep at five a.m. Why Dave Senior left it for me to pass the word to his mother-in-law is another question.
So at least now I wouldn’t be calling with all bad news, but it scared me to think what a chance I’d been taking. Imagine having to call to say Bonnie was gone—no preparation, nothing. I waited for a colored man to get done with the phone and tried not to listen—something about a transfusion. Then he went back and sat with his wife. It being a workday, we were the only ones in the waiting room. They were a nice-appearing couple, both of them starting to get some white hairs. She would look at the floor, then up at the clock. He kept hold of her hand.
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 afterward 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.
After supper Dave Senior went back to the hospital, leaving me and Sylvia with the baby. She had a cocktail before supper, but just the one. Afterward, she gave Dave Junior his bath while I cleaned up, then asked me to watch him while she went into the den to finish unpacking. Now she had him on the couch—the hide-a-bed, folded up—trying to zip him into his sleep suit while he wiggled and giggled.
“What would you like Nonny to read, punkin?” she said, once she finally got him squared away. “Your daddy said you could have one story and then off to bed.”
He went and got the mouse book from the coffee table and put it right in her hands. “That.”
“He loves that one,” I told Sylvia. “Just so you know, they don’t have any words in it, so you have to sort of make it up as you go. It’s kind of along the lines of the—”
“Oh, I think Nonny can manage.” She had him up on her lap, playing with his hair. “What do you think, punkin? Does Nonny have it under control?”
“Just telling you,” I said.
Sylvia opened the book, flipped through the first few pages, then nodded. “Now, once upon a time,” she said, “there was a little mouse. And one fine day, this mouse happened to meet up with a kitty cat who was as big as a monster.”
“You don’t need to hold back,” I said. “It’s the most natural thing in the world.”
“I’ll be all right in a sec,” she said. I looked at this lady, fairly well along in years—like I am, sure—pressing a wadded napkin against her eyes, and I thought, I was married to her. I sometimes get the idea that old Harold didn’t turn out to have as much money as he let on. Though of course she’d never say so. Sylvia turned out to be loyal as the day is long—though a little late in the game, from my point of view. She looked at the black stuff on the napkin. “I better go fix my face again. I wanted to look nice for her.”
“You look fine.” In my pocket, I ran my thumbnail over the ridges of a quarter to make sure it wasn’t a nickel. “I wouldn’t expect her to take too much note anyhow. You know, the first few days.”
She unwadded the napkin and tried to smooth it out flat with her fingertips. “Have they said anything at all about the long term?”
I shook my head. “I don’t believe so.”
She worked some more at smoothing out the napkin, then said, “I wonder if I hadn’t better start looking for a reasonable place to stay.”
“But aren’t you—I just assumed you were staying at Dave and Bonnie’s.”
“Aren’t you staying there?”
“So?”
“Well? Don’t you think that would be …”
“What?” I said. “Christ, they got a big enough house. I can take the den and you can have the hide-a-bed. Or vice versa. I think Dave was sort of counting on you helping out with the baby.” I stood up. “You want anything from the machine? I’m going to get some Raisinets.”
“Is that what you’ve been eating?” She shook her finger, which was an old joke between us: my mother had a habit of 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.
After supper Dave Senior went back to the hospital, leaving me and Sylvia with the baby. She had a cocktail before supper, but just the one. Afterward, she gave Dave Junior his bath while I cleaned up, then asked me to watch him while she went into the den to finish unpacking. Now she had him on the couch—the hide-a-bed, folded up—trying to zip him into his sleep suit while he wiggled and giggled.
“What would you like Nonny to read, punkin?” she said, once she finally got him squared away. “Your daddy said you could have one story and then off to bed.”
He went and got the mouse book from the coffee table and put it right in her hands. “That.”
“He loves that one,” I told Sylvia. “Just so you know, they don’t have any words in it, so you have to sort of make it up as you go. It’s kind of along the lines of the—”
“Oh, I think Nonny can manage.” She had him up on her lap, playing with his hair. “What do you think, punkin? Does Nonny have it under control?”
“Just telling you,” I said.
Sylvia opened the book, flipped through the first few pages, then nodded. “Now, once upon a time,” she said, “there was a little mouse. And one fine day, this mouse happened to meet up with a kitty cat who was as big as a monster.”
I shot her a look—the idea was to put him to sleep, not get him worked up. When she pointed at the picture, I got up from the recliner and came over and sat down beside them, and my God, you could smell her breath three feet away. Unpacking. She must have been into it hot and heavy. “So the mouse said, ‘Can’t we even talk about it?’ ” Little squeaky voice for the mouse. “But the kitty cat hated all mice in the world, and he began to run after the mouse. See? ‘Come back, I want to eat you alive.’ ” A big bass voice.
I looked at Dave Junior, but he was smiling away.
“So the mouse ran into her hole, and when the kitty cat went after her, he tripped over a grrreat big dog. And there’s the dog, see? And that dog was as big as a monster.”
“Syl?” I said. “I don’t know about too many monsters.”
She put a finger to her lips and hissed. “Quiet in the peanut gallery. Now, the dog, who was as big as a monster, hated all kitty cats in the world, and when the kitty cat tripped over him, he took off after her just as tight as he could go. ‘Come back, I want to eat you alive.’ ”
“You said her,” Dave Junior said.
“Uh-huh. And there’s the kitty cat.”
“But before you said—”
“Sssh. So they ran and they ran and they ran and they ran and they ran. Aaaand—they ran!”
Dave Junior giggled.
“And then guess what?”
He did a big show-off shrug.
“They ran!”
Another giggle.
“Until pretty soon what should they come upon but a man and his wife. See? Now, the wife had just gone to all the trouble of making the most beautiful cake in the world for her husband, and there it is right there. Can you guess what’s going to happen?”
“The kitty’s gonna run under the chair and they’re gonna go pow and all go flying.”
“That’s right. Completely ruined. So watch, she’s bringing the cake in, and he’s not paying any attention. Just sitting there with his face in a newspaper. You’re not going to be like that, are you?”
“I don’t know,” said Dave Junior.
“What kind of an answer is that?” she said, in a way that made me look at her. “That’s no answer. Let me tell you something. You turn out to be like that, I’ll come back from the grave and cut off your penis.”
He squirmed around and stared up at her.
She began to laugh. “Oh, my Christ. Oh, Sylvia. Now you’ve done it. You have done it.”
I got up and picked him up off her lap. “C’m’ere, young fella. Time to hit the hay. We got a big day tomorrow.”
“No,” he said. “I don’t want to, you didn’t finish.”
“Here we go.” I got up as he tried to wrestle out of my arms. “I’ll tell you the rest of your story in bed.”
“No, Nonny has to tell it.” He started kicking.
“You run along with Grandpa, sugar,” Sylvia said, just sitting there on the couch smiling, not even looking up at us. “He’s going to give you your milk because Nonny got tired. She’s going to have her milk and go to bed, too.”
I carried him out to the kitchen, squirming and screaming his head off, and managed to get the icebox open and pour him a cup of milk one-handed; I put it on the table and sat him down in front of it. He gave me a dirty look, drank it in one big gulp and instantly got quiet. I led him by the hand into his room, put on his night-light and tucked him into bed. He lay quiet while I finished up the story as best I could, but when I left, shutting the door behind me, he started up again.
I went back into the living room; Sylvia was gone and the door to the den was shut. I sat down on the couch—still warm where she’d been sitting—and listened to him carry on. He was just all keyed up, and probably wouldn’t keep at it for long. Basically he’s a good boy; Bonnie did a fine job with him—or I better say does.
Jesus, I thought, imagine having all this to do over.
That night I dreamed the accident was just a false report, and that Bonnie and I were grocery shopping in the Big Y in Greenfield (where I go once a week). I was pushing the basket and she was riding in it, standing up, even though she was a grown woman, and pulling down boxes and cans and throwing them on the floor. Actually, she was sort of Bonnie and Sylvia both. I woke up and it was just starting to get gray outside the picture window. It took a second to understand that none of this was true.
I thought about getting up and pulling the drapes closed, but once I’m up I’m generally up. For me, a couple hours is a good stretch, and I don’t seem to need more than four or five hours a night. Which can make for a long day unless you’ve got some project going.
When I first retired up to Shelburne Falls, I figured I’d do some hunting and fishing, not having fished for maybe twenty years. I got a license and borrowed a pole and some tackle from Scotty, but it was all I could do to poke the hook through a nightcrawler. If they’re so backward they can’t feel pain, why is it they start wringing and twisting when the hook goes in? I knew right then that if I was that sorry for a worm, I wouldn’t be much of a hand at shooting deer anymore. You change, you know?
The one smart thing I did, I moved my shop up. My basement’s only half the size of the one in Clinton, but without the rec-room furniture and Ping-Pong table I’ve got more space. I still turn out some piecework for Wahlstrom—last month I cut two hundred and fifty cams—which gives me a little mad money. We could do everything back and forth by UPS, but it makes a good excuse to drive down and get together with some of the old gang. A few of them still work there, and I guess Fred Wahlstrom’ll outlast everybody. Eighty-one years old and he still comes in at seven-thirty every morning. We have an early supper and I drive back up the same night; somebody always offers to put me up and put up with me, but it’s a straight shot up 91 and I like to sleep in my own bed. Sometimes you sit there at the table and they’ll be talking about how so-and-so did such-and-such the other day, or what a fuddle-dee-dud old man Wahlstrom is, and suddenly you feel like you’ve died and you’re looking on from the other side. Like you can still hear and see them, but if they were to reach out a hand it’d go right through you.
I must’ve fallen back asleep, because I woke up again and the room was brighter. What woke me up this time was a hissing and the smell of bacon. I’m at Bonnie’s house, I thought, and she’s fixing breakfast. Again, it took a second for it all to come back. I sat up and saw Sylvia out in the kitchen, poking a fork around in a skillet. Dressed to the nines, too, in plaid slacks, white blouse, her hair just so. She saw me, smiled and waved. As if that business last night had never happened. Well, I wasn’t about to bring it up. Old Harold was more than welcome to deal with all that.
I pulled my robe on over my pajamas, stepped into my slippers and went to use the toilet and brush my teeth. I hadn’t thought to bring toothpaste, and when I opened the medicine cabinet looking for theirs I noticed a prescription vial with Bonnie’s name on it. VALIUM, 5 MG. How long had she been on that stuff? Well, it could’ve been something a lot worse. It was, when she was younger. I guess some people have a couple beers to relax and some people take one of them. I got the cap off (childproof, thank goodness), shook one out, looked at it—it was just a little bit of a thing—then slipped it into the pocket of my pajama top.
Back in the living room, I folded away the hide-a-bed and replaced the cushions. Now you could smell coffee, too. Sylvia was pouring grease out of the skillet into the dispose-all, and she’d laid the bacon out to drain on paper towels; she’d turned on the coffeemaker, and coffee was piddling down into the glass pot. I’m getting a little hard of hearing, but I could’ve sworn she was humming. Sylvia never could carry a tune in a bucket.
She didn’t seem to know I was watching—maybe she’s hard of hearing, too—and I felt like I knew every move before she made it: put the skillet in the dishwasher, scoot over to the icebox, get out the eggs. When she opened an overhead cabinet and started reaching for the juice glasses, I could see the muscles of her calves under the pantlegs. This was a woman seventy years old. Supposedly she plays golf and tennis; that’s all since my time.
I picked out slacks and a sport shirt, and went back into the bathroom to get dressed. I took the pill out of my pajamas and set it on the edge of the sink while I got my shirt on, then put it in the breast pocket. When I came out again, Sylvia had the table in the breakfast nook set for four. “Look at all this,” I said.
“Good morning,” she said. “You certainly look spiffy. I’ve got coffee ready. Any signs of life down the hall?”
“Not a peep out of either of ’em,” I said. “You look nice yourself.”
“Makeup covers a multitude of sins,” she said.
“Sleep all right?”
“Like a rock. I was so bushed I can barely remember getting into bed. How about you?”
“I thought I heard you get up a couple of times.”
“While you were sleeping like a rock?” I said.
“Oh, well,” she said. “You know.” She picked up a cup and saucer with one hand, pointed to it with the other and raised her eyebrows. Her hands were steady enough that the cup and saucer didn’t rattle.
“Sure,” I said. “Please.”
She filled the cup and handed it to me, saucer and all. Damned if I could keep my hands that steady, and I’d had one Bud Light—one!—to get me to sleep. I remember many a morning when Sylvia’d be fixing breakfast after a rough night, just as fresh as a daisy. Which scared me more than anything.
She was pouring a cup for herself when little Dave came in, dragging his stuffed dinosaur. “Well, look who’s here! Good morning, punkin.”
“Where’s Mommy?”
“You remember, punkin. Mommy had to go in the hospital?”
“Want her to come back.” He dropped the dinosaur and grabbed Sylvia around the leg with both arms.
She stroked his hair. “She’ll be back. I bet you like bacon, don’t you?”
“Yuck,” he said, making a scrunched-up face I bet a nickel he’d been told was cute. Then he cocked his head, like he was listening to something. “No, wait, I like it.”
“Well, here.” Sylvia handed him a piece. “That should hold you for a little while.” He stuck it in his mouth: gone in two bites. “My goodness. You’re hungry, aren’t you, punkin? What do you usually like for breakfast?”
“Yogurt.”
“Okay, let’s have a look.” She opened the icebox and bent over. “Oh my goodness, yes. We’ve got peach, wild berry … peach and wild berry.”
“By God, he’s an opinionated little cuss,” I said. “Ain’t’cha?”
“Can I hear a please?” said Sylvia.
He stared as if she was talking Chinese.
Sylvia looked at me, I shrugged and she handed him his yogurt. He took it over to the table and started right in making a mess. The telephone rang, and I thought, Oh my God.
Sylvia picked it up. “Carter residence.” She listened for a few seconds, then said, “Well, I was going to, lover. But things got a little hectic.”
I let out my breath.
She turned her back, which I took as a hint. Carrying my coffee into the living room, I heard her say, “Yes, I made a point of it. What? Yes, of course.”
I put the TV on and sat down on the couch. The Big Bird and all were on, and of course that fetched Dave Junior; he was on my lap in two shakes, purple yogurt all over his face.
“This your favorite program?” I said.
“I don’t know,” he said, not taking his eyes off the screen for a second.
Dave Senior came in, his hair wild, in his undershirt, zipping up his trousers. “What happened? What’s going on?”
“Go on back to bed,” I said. “It’s just Harold.”
“Jesus. What the fuck time is it?” With the boy right there.
“Early,” I said. “Go back to bed.” It was only seven-thirty, quarter to eight. I counted back: out in Phoenix it wasn’t even six in the morning.
“And what the hell’s this?” He was giving little Dave a dirty look. “What’d I tell you about eating on the good furniture, Mister? You get in there right now.” He pointed to the kitchen.
“But I want to see—”
“Now.”
Dave Junior got down and stomped off with his yogurt.
“And get a better attitude,” he called after him. He shook his head. “Too early in the morning for this shit.”
“I didn’t mean to get him in trouble,” I said. “I didn’t know he wasn’t allowed.”
“He knows better. He’s trying to see what he can get away with because he knows something’s up.”
Sylvia hung up the phone and stepped in from the kitchen. “Good morning. How would you gents like your eggs?”
“I usually have scrambled,” I said.
“You used to like a three-minute egg.”
“God, that’s right. I don’t know, I guess I just got out of the habit. Egg timers and all.”
“Men,” she said. “What about you, Dave?”
“Bowl of Total, I guess.” He rubbed his eyes and passed his hands back through his hair to smooth it down. You could see where he’d zipped his pants but not buttoned them. He was starting to put it on. “Christ, it can’t be but about five in the morning out there. What the hell’s Harold doing up at this hour?”
“I was supposed to call him last night,” Sylvia said, “and I forgot all about it. He’s such an old fussbudget. He said he was calling to make sure I’d gotten credit for the frequent-flier miles. But I think he just wanted to know I was safe.”
“He’s up at five in the morning thinking about frequent-flier miles?” Dave said. “He scared the piss out of me.”
“You ought to just go back to bed,” I said.
“I’m up now.” He looked into the breakfast nook. “Hey! Will you watch what you’re doing, Mister? You’re getting it all over the table.”
“It’ll clean up,” said Sylvia. “You ready for some coffee? I’ll get you a bowl for your cereal.”
“Don’t bother, I can get it.” He went into the kitchen and I thought, No time like the present. I took the little pill out of my shirt pocket, glanced in to make sure neither of them was looking, popped it in my mouth and washed it down with coffee.
Dave Senior came back in with a bowl of cereal and flopped down on the couch. I guess the rule didn’t apply to him. “Five o’clock in the morning.” He put a spoonful in his mouth and started watching the Big Bird dance with a bunch of children. “I didn’t want this day. And here it fucking is.”
I said there was no sense in taking two cars this morning—I wasn’t sure what that pill would do to me—so Dave drove us in the Caravan. We dropped the boy back in North Madison for the day, then went on to the hospital.
When the nurse on duty saw us walk into the intensive care, she brightened up. “Hi,” she said. “They’re moving her right now.”
“Oh, shit,” Dave said. “Now what the hell happened?”
“Oh, they didn’t tell you?” She was still smiling, they must train them to breeze over any bad words from people under stress. “She was awake and talking this morning, and Dr. Chambers thought she’d improved enough to go into a semi-private. And they might try to get her up for a few minutes this afternoon.”
“Hell no, they didn’t tell us.” Dave Senior shook his head. “That’s about par for this place. If she isn’t here, where the Christ is she?”
The nurse stopped smiling.
I took a big breath and let it out. “Thank God. Thank God. You know, they probably called the house when we were on our way here. Jesus, isn’t that wonderful.” It was like the weight of everything lifted up off of me—my arms actually felt light, like there was air under them. And then, just like that, it hit me that this little time, with all of us together, was rushing to an end.
The nurse ran her fingernail up and down a clipboard gracefully, searching. It seemed to take longer than normal. “She’s being moved to five-seventeen B. That’s in the other wing, fifth floor. You can take the elevator by the waiting room.” Dave Senior turned around and tromped out without so much as a thank-you. Sylvia stared at him. I told the nurse thanks for everything, that she’d been a wonderful person to us, then Sylvia and I followed Dave out. He’d been under all that stress for so long, you see, that having it suddenly let up—I don’t know, you can understand how it must have discombobulated him.
The waiting room, where I’d spent so much time the last couple of days, looked strange to me, like some place you haven’t seen in years—it could’ve been that pill starting to take hold. I hadn’t noticed before that it was all shades of green in here: green walls, green carpeting, green couch and chairs. To calm people down. I thought, With all this green around, plus a Valium pill, you ought to be ready for anything they throw at you. Dave Senior was over at the elevators; he touched his finger to the UP arrow, and it lit up green. The colored couple was there on the green couch—I was pretty sure it was the same couple—and I was going to nod at them except I wasn’t a hundred percent sure. And what for? We were in different boats now: them still here and me just passing through one last time, really a million miles from it.
When Sylvia and I got over to the elevators, Dave Senior pounded the lit-up arrow with the side of his fist. “Let’s go. Son of a bitch.”
Sylvia laid a hand on his arm. “It’s all right. She’s going to be okay—thank God.”
“Fine. You thank God. God’ll shit his pants when he hears from you.” He shook loose of her hand and pounded the arrow again.
She took a step back. “What’s the trouble? I should think you—”
“What’s the trouble? That’s beautiful. That’s a classic. That should be the family motto. What’s the trouble. You whored around on him”—jerking a thumb in my direction—“your daughter whores around on me, and you—”
“No, now you’re out of line now,” I said. The colored fellow was looking over at us, trying to make believe he wasn’t. “I can understand if—”
“What brought this on?” Sylvia said.
Dave Senior looked at me. “What, you didn’t tell her? That would figure. That’s about par.”
“What didn’t you tell me?” Sylvia said.
“The great peacemaker,” said Dave Senior, shaking his head. “The great cover-up artist. Okay, what happened to your daughter, Syl, she got creamed when she came barrel-assing out of the motel where she was shacked up with somebody else’s husband. This shit’s been going on for—”
“Don’t listen to this,” I told Sylvia. “He’s all hipped on this thing because he’s upset. As near as I can make out, she just went in there to use the telephone.”
“Where do you get that crap?” said Dave Senior. “She had her car phone, for Christ’s sake.”
Ding, and the elevator doors came open and we had to step aside for a gurney with an old, old lady flat on her back, asleep or in a coma maybe. All there was to her, poor soul, was just ragged white hair and poor thin, wrinkled skin over her skull; her closed eyes stuck up in their sockets like knuckles. I had a foolish thought—probably due to that pill, because I could feel it coming over me pretty strong now. I thought that she’d lived a good long life and for that reason she’d been chosen to take Bonnie’s place. I stole a look at Sylvia on the million-to-one chance she might be thinking the same fool thing. But Sylvia was looking at her watch, and I could tell just as if she was saying it out loud what she was really thinking: if Bonnie was truly out of the woods now, what’s the soonest you could get a plane to Phoenix? They wheeled the old lady off toward the intensive care, and we stepped into the elevator. My ears were humming and my legs felt like they had no bones. I fingered the coins in my pocket: okay, if this one’s a quarter, then this one has to be a nickel. So I couldn’t be too far out there yet. Dave Senior pounded the 5 button with his fist, the metal doors slid shut on everything that had happened until now, and up we went.