Most of our lives come down to far less, of course.
Long ago I’d given up trying to keep count how many times my own had gone south, gone sour, gone dead still. I’d think I knew where I was headed, every station, every stop, two dollars for the box lunch that came aboard at Natchez or Jackson tucked in my shirt pocket, only to find myself waylaid to some unsuspected sidetrack, engine long gone, mournful call fading.
That was the shape my son’s life took, too, whatever the explanation. Some errant braid in the genes, mother’s madness encoded, encysted and passed down the line; chaos dropping (we’d expected another caller) on a swing from above. As though all his life David had been scaling this huge mountain of sand. Some days, some years, he’d manage to kick in footholds and stay in place, maybe even hoist himself up a yard or two. But the sand always gave way.
The phone, I realized, had been ringing for some time. As I stood, the manteau of moonlight fell away from my lap. I crossed to the hall table and picked up the receiver. Quiet enough itself, my “Yes?” tipped headfirst into silence.
Someone there at the other end, though.
After a moment I hung up. Almost at once the phone began ringing again. I ignored it. The ringing stopped, then restarted. Beating its jangly chest till I capitulated.
“Lew? Were you sleeping?” Deborah.
“Not really. You just call?”
“Started to. Then someone needed something-right away, of course.”
“Don’t they always? Makes you feel important, though.
Needed. How many of us are given that?”
“You’re saying this is a gift?”
“Hey, you have to unwrap it, it’s a gift, right?”
“Hmmmm.”
“Wow. A polyester necktie with violins on it! An ant-farm picture frame! An electric hot dog grill!”
“Hmmmm again. How’d your day go?”
“Not bad. Stuck its head out of the water some earlier than I’d have liked. And now the tail keeps wagging.”
“T-a-i-l? Or t-a-l-e?”
“Either, I guess. Both.”
“Think any more about your book-if it is a book?”
“Haven’t had much chance to.” I told her about my visit to Don, what he was planning. Then about my expedition to the morgue with Santos.
“I’m sorry, Lew. Listen …”
Across the street, someone dressed all in gray, as though wearing tatters of the night itself, hove into view. He carried an old-fashioned red kerosene lantern, swinging it back and forth and shouting what well might have been (at this distance I saw only the motion of his lips) All aboard! Though he could as easily have been calling Bring out your dead, searching for an honest man, or just seeking warmth.
Surprising how we subtropical folk got used to the cold. Coming to take it so much for granted that we’d stopped remarking it. An adaptable lot. I stood now, blanketless, chill, watching the plume of my breath stream out, balance for a moment before me, fade.
“Rehearsal’s going … well … oddly, I guess might be the best description. But good. We’re onto something here, and reluctant to shut it down. I may not be home for a while.”
“You get a chance to eat?” She’d gone directly from work to rehearsal, I knew, and rarely ate lunch. “I could bring you something.”
“We ordered out. Soup, sandwiches, coffee, beer. Should be here any minute. We’ve all been hitting it pretty hard, and we were starving. Thought we’d take a break first, then tuck heads down and give a try to plowing on through, see where we get. Just a second, hang on.” Someone had spoken to her, and she turned away briefly to answer. “Lew …”
“Still there?” I said after a moment.
“Yeah. Yeah, still here. Guess I will be for some time too, from the look of it. Here, I mean. You be okay?”
“Sure I will.”
Enormous shadow accompanying him, the man came back along the sidewalk with his lantern.
“I was sitting outside the theater tonight waiting for everyone to show. Tired beyond belief, exhausted really, but at the same time excited, eager. There were these rings and loops around everything, like auras, street and sidewalks and the edges of buildings vibrating, trembling. I didn’t know if that was because of the light or just because I was so tired. Dark was coming on fast, and I remembered your telling me how, when you were a child back in Arkansas, you’d sit in your backyard trying to watch it get dark. After a while you’d look around and realize it had gone several degrees darker but that you hadn’t been able to see the change as it happened. We never do, do we?
“Sorry, Lew,” she said. “I’m just fantastically, incredibly, unbelievably tired. When I’m this tired, my mind’s all over. Nothing connects and everything seems to. Listen, don’t wait up, okay? I’ll see you in the morning.”
“Have a good rehearsal.”
I put the phone down with the sure sense that I was letting go of something far more than a conversation; with the sense, too, that there was little enough I could do to change this.
Or maybe it’s just my storywriter’s sense, all these years later, telling me that.
Chapter Fifteen
Boy’s been sick, Lester said. Took to his bed and won’t be budged, over a week now. Never done that before. I’d gone across for coffee and doughnuts from the Circle K. Lester held his plastic cup on one bony knee, vinelike fingers wrapped around. We’d both wisely foregone the doughnuts after tasting them. Pigeons strutted happily among their dismembered remains.
Maybe I could go see him.
Don’t know as how it would do any good. But if you could spare the time, the boy does seem to have taken to you, in his own way. Meaning only (I thought) that occasionally, in his own way, he acknowledged my existence.
We walked four, maybe five blocks. A square, Federal-looking house set almost flush with the sidewalk, columns thick as pecan trees on the shallow gallery out front, two stories, peach with darker trim, faux gable stuck atop like a stubby birthday candle. We went up wooden external stairs painted industrial gray through a wrought-iron gate, multiple locks and frosted-glass front door into the entryway. Folks are away, Lester said. Table inset with lime-green tile there, vase of yellow, hopeful flowers on it. Mail stacked alongside. Floor itself tile, darker green, light blue. Up more stairs then to the boy’s room. Mattress in a corner, chair by the window. Cardboard box on its side, packed neatly with food: boxes of crackers, squares of cheese, cans of Vienna sausage, potted meat, bags of carrots, celery. Boy doesn’t take much to beds, Lester explains, just plain will not sleep in one. Won’t sit at table either, or eat like reg’lar folk-shaking his head.
But I understood. This food was the boy’s own, forage, stockpile. He had no further need to go out into the world for it, no need to ask anything more of that world, anything at all, at least for a while. Here in his cave, on this pure, bare island, he’d become self-contained, self-sufficient, insular, hermetic, whole.
All man’s problems, Pascal said, derive from the simple fact that he is unable to remain quietly alone in his room.
The boy, just as Lester reported, lay on the mattress. On his right side, knees drawn up, so that he faced me when I sank to the floor just inside the door. My own knees stuck up like a cricket’s. I’d put my back to the wall and slid down it. God. I used to be able to do this, and it doesn’t seem so long ago, with ease. Now garden tools dig at my joints and I fight for breath. Cramps announce themselves: arriving on track four.