She could hear him in the bedroom, opening a dresser drawer, and she could imagine the rest: his standing at the sink in his pajamas, brushing his teeth, a towel draped around his neck. The fire was still burning, but she didn’t have Marshall’s fear of going to bed before a fire had burned down. It was like being afraid of airplanes or enclosed places: if you weren’t afraid, you weren’t afraid. Still, she stood in front of the fire, which warmed her front as her back grew progressively colder. She picked up Evie’s afghan and slung it over her shoulders Marshall style, looking through the flames to the andirons: two lions, paws raised, their blackened manes rivulets of ash.
As she expected, he was in the bathroom. The door was open, and he stood at the sink by the glow of the night-light, leaning forward, hands gripping the edge of the sink, the toothbrush replaced or not yet used. He heard her enter the bedroom but didn’t turn toward her. Neither did he move away from the sink. He was thinking, again, about McCallum; how desolate he must have felt, with his life out of his controclass="underline" the hyperactive son; the unwanted baby; a wife who loathed him — she must have loathed him to stab him. It was terribly sad. McCallum was terribly sad.
As she undressed, she looked quickly over her shoulder, twice, to see if he had moved, and the second time she looked he had and was standing with the towel pressed against his face.
“I don’t blame you for hating me,” she said, walking to the open door.
He shook his head no. That, or he was rubbing his face back and forth beneath the towel.
He was crying out of sympathy for McCallum. He finally felt a real connection between McCallum and himself.
The Flamboyant Tree
16
“ ’S WONNERFUL, ’s mah-vel-lous, that you should care fooooooor meeeeeee,” McCallum sang.
McCallum was in charge of the tape selection. So far, they had been through both sides of Bobby Short, one side of Maria Muldaur, and ten or fifteen minutes of a Jean-Michel Jarre tape Marshall had ejected, because it was impossible to listen without speeding. They were on day two of their journey, instigated and largely bankrolled by McCallum, who sat in the passenger’s seat padded with down-filled pillows: one behind him, one wedged between seat belt and door, another under his knees. In anticipation of their ultimate destination, McCallum was wearing black kneesocks, khaki Bermuda shorts, running shoes, a baseball cap he’d turned backward, and thermal underwear under a denim workshirt. “Wonnerful,” McCallum sang, though that verse had ended several minutes before.
“You’re grouchy because you’re doing all the driving,” McCallum said. “How is the doctor going to know I’m taking a turn at the wheel? You’re also supposed to not cross the street on a red light. How much advice can anybody afford to pay attention to? Who’s going to see me doing a little driving? It’ll make me feel less like an invalid.”
“I’d see you,” Marshall said.
“Well, I wish you’d been my guardian angel when you-know-who was trying to kill me.”
“I wish I had, too.” He was thinking not only of the possibility of McCallum’s having escaped physical harm, but how much better he would feel if his house had remained the pleasant, undisturbed environment it once had been. Sonja was there now, as he and McCallum drove south during Benson College’s spring break. He had wanted her to come, and initially he had taken it as a bad sign that she hadn’t wanted to. Though she’d assured him it was over, he’d begun to feel that her affair with Tony was the new subtext for everything — every new recipe she prepared, every silly, old romantic movie she wanted to watch on TV. If McCallum hadn’t gotten so excited by the idea of getting some sun, he probably would not have left Sonja’s side he was so worried she would pick up again with Tony. He felt ambivalent about seeing Gordon and Beth, and he was worried that McCallum might be — because suddenly this was getting to be the story of McCallum’s life — an unwanted guest. None of which he had said to McCallum, because the last time Marshall had visited him in the hospital he had become as excited as a child at the prospect of getting out of town.
Already, he missed Sonja. He wanted to be angry at her, but he couldn’t sustain his anger. She had at least acted on her desires — and, much to his relief, she had selected a slightly ludicrous lover. Still, how boring the house must seem, after her antics with Tony. She had considered going somewhere warm herself to “think things over,” but then she had decided to stay where she was.
Between McCallum’s ejecting one tape and plugging in another, the radio cut in with the theme from Midnight Cowboy, a movie that had greatly impressed Marshall when he’d first seen it. The song also immediately caught McCallum’s attention, though it was frizzed with static, as well as fading in and out as if they were driving through a series of invisible tunnels. Marshall could have done without hearing it; the song conjured up the movie’s ending — Ratso wearing his palm tree shirt, dead on the bus bound for Florida.
Florida was where the two of them were headed, after the stopover they would make first in the small town of Buena Vista, where McCallum, for reasons Marshall still could not comprehend, felt that he must, for once and for all, explain himself to Cheryl Lanier so that his soul might begin to heal along with his bodily wounds. McCallum had also tried to find out where Livan herself was, to no avail; if McCallum had been intent on contacting her, the best he could probably do would be to send a letter to Livan Baker, Planet Earth. To the extent he’d been involved with Cheryl himself, Marshall could hardly refuse to stop on their way to visit Gordon in the Keys. Though she hadn’t responded to the note he sent her along with the clipping about Livan Baker — vanished, it seemed; or at least, in a follow-up article in the paper, the U.S. government claimed to be interested in finding out her whereabouts — Cheryl had phoned McCallum in response to whatever letter he’d sent her.
The tape deck swallowed the next tape McCallum pushed in: Eddie Fisher, singing “I’m Yours.” It was quite possibly the worst song Marshall had ever heard. Eddie Fisher’s soaring tenor was vehement; it would have paralyzed the intended recipient of his affections as certainly as Kryptonite would bring Superman to a screeching halt. He had read that during Eddie Fisher’s brief marriage to Elizabeth Taylor, she had had him picked up from the piano bench aboard her yacht and thrown overboard. Marshall looked imploringly at McCallum, but his eyes were shut, his head dropped back on the headrest, a shit-eating grin on his tipped-up face. All he could hope was that it was a homemade tape and that next they might be treated to something less ridiculous. It turned out to be Kate Smith. Rolling along on the Beltway, as a pallid half-moon beamed through drifting clouds, surrounded by vanity license plates and cars that were either expensive and new or limping-along junkers, Marshall practiced patience by listening silently to McCallum’s hit parade.
“I love it,” McCallum said, keeping his eyes closed so that there was no indication he was talking to Marshall, rather than himself. “Here we are doing our update on the buddy film: would-be murder victim and concerned friend making a big circle around Slick Willy’s Washington, on their way to making amends and soaking up some Florida sunshine. ‘Greetings from sunny Florida,’ ” McCallum said. “Remember those postcards where you check one box in each category? ‘I am: Fine; Sunburned; Fatter; Lonely; Horny.’ ”