Here’s what you have to do in our state: show your driver’s license; make a choice; leave a deposit; wait two weeks. The two weeks, presumably, are to check, on the basis of your driver’s license, that you have not previously been convicted of a felony. And, I imagine, also, to make sure that you won’t do anything on an impulse; that if you are, for instance, very angry, you will have time to cool off. Would you like a new or used one, the clerk asked, when I had chosen one of the less heavy revolvers. New, I said. Well, he said, used is cheaper, and the used ones come from police departments, when they change the specifications. All the same, I said, I would rather have one that’s never been used. More than two weeks went by, but when I called to inquire whether I might wait a few weeks more, the clerk said no, the permit to buy expires after five weeks, and you have to start the whole process again. I went back to the shop, paid, decided to buy no ammunition. The clerk put the gun, in its box, in a white paper bag, the flat, white paper bag stationery stores use. I have put the white paper bag, with the box and the gun in it, into a closet. And though there is no ammunition, it seems to me to lie there, ticking. I mean, I know I ought to throw it out. Or not worry about it, after all, everybody has them. And cars are dangerous, germs are dangerous, writing is dangerous, and reviewing is dangerous, and editing is dangerous, and some of those doctors were. So I’m not a coward or a hypochondriac so much, with respect anyway to risks of certain orders. I’ve taken on a bully or two, in my professional capacity, and on occasions of another sort risked my physical self. But this buying of a gun, this simple, in some ways quotidian purchase, is the most extreme, the worst, most extremest, I can’t find the word for it, thing I’ve ever done.
One of the times he was on his island, and before she ever left, she wrote a story. He said, Kate, will I like it. She said, I don’t think so. He said, I won’t read it then, if you don’t want me to, since it is not in your name.
Here’s how it is with the old couple. It is his second marriage. He is a doctor. He married her when his first wife failed, as so many of those refugee wives failed, to make the transition with him across the abyss of culture and of war. But now here’s how it is with the old couple, in their second marriage, for love. At bedtime, she likes to watch television, programs he especially despises. He cannot sleep with the TV on; but every night, in the course of the program, she goes to sleep. When he gets up, to turn off the set, she is furious. Either she insists that she was not asleep, and that she wants to watch, or she reproaches him for having switched the set off. You woke me up she says, with rage.
As a child, Jon was told by his parents to live by four maxims: do the best you can; never boast; never complain; and always think of those less well off than you are. Very sound precepts, all, moral. They only seemed designed to cut him off from any happiness whatever. He does the best he can, fair enough, the effort. If it succeeds, he should not make it known. If it fails, and fails by some injustice or in some manner painful to him, he should not complain about it. And lest he enjoy, even in private, his moment of success, or, in the other case, his private failure, he is to think at once of others. And not of fortunate others, but of others less fortunate than he. He is a truly good man, but the cost must have been high.
Is he gentle with the children, does he recognize the family, I asked the deputy sheriff from upstate, who said he worked mainly with German shepherds, on drug cases and bar fights, and that he had one for a pet. Lady, he said, when he gets into the car at night, I tell you, he becomes a different dog.
My world, after all, has been, in a way, the newspaper, and all these people; and home, whatever home is, consists of sheriffs, neighbors, lawyers, doctors, ambassadors, editors, senators. Also, of course, come to think of it, now swamis. Last summer, when I broke my foot, and could not drive, on account of the brake and the clutch, Ben drove me from time to time. And we talked. When my foot was better, he drove me, in his own car, as a kind of present, to his ashram. When we got there, I thought, I cannot really say that I understand this, it does not speak to me really, but Ben does seem to have, look at him, rapt, chanting, though he is trained as an engineer, does seem to have a faculty for this spiritual matter; and these people are not Moonies; there is nothing sinister here; it seems gentle rather. On the drive back, Ben said, Kate you, who are always seeing doctors, I know you are skeptical, I was skeptical too, for years, but you who are always seeing doctors, why don’t you take one class, just one at the ashram in New York? He gave me a ticket, which admits the bearer to one hatha yoga class. And one day, when there was, as there now always seems to be, this pending question of the surgery, I thought why not. So I called the ashram, and I reached a voice with so Bronx an intonation that I thought at first I had misdialed. But he gave me the schedule of the classes, and sounded so very kind, that at the end of our conversation I asked his name and whether I would see him there. He replied, Yes you will, and I am Vishnu. But then, but then, I never went.
In the matter of helplessness. “This is a final notice,” the blue-and-white slip from the telephone company said. If I did not pay the amount below within five days, they would disconnect my phone. After that, if I paid the amount in full, there would be a service charge, to reconnect. As it happens, for once, I had my bank statements in order, and canceled checks to show that I had paid my phone bills every month. When I had called the business office, and been put, as one always is, several times, for long intervals, on hold, I finally reached someone. Mr. Beaumont was his name. Yes, he said, phone company records indicated that five months ago, the company had erroneously twice credited a single check to my account. I said it seemed rather hard, on their part, to expect me to intuit an error in their bookkeeping system, and harder still to threaten at once to disconnect. Oh, he said, those notices go out automatically. I said that, for my own records, it would help if he sent me a letter, and some sort of document showing they had in fact credited me twice in error. He said, No, I’m afraid we don’t do that. I said, Look, you know, you really must; otherwise, I’m just paying this arbitrary and rather large amount, on the basis of this conversation, and a slip of paper that threatens, without any explanation whatever, to disconnect. Well, the long and the short of it is: they did disconnect my phone. And I thought, I can’t. The rudeness of their voices; this is a whole different department, it’s bullying and rudeness. And the time I had spent on it. There ought to be more important things to occupy my mind. But I can’t pay it, I’d sooner bomb them, I’d sooner lose contact with the world entirely, I’d sooner die. I thought this is part of what being black used to be like, this is part of what being poor is like, this is what being stateless is like, this is helplessness. Then I thought, It cannot be; surely I am not this helpless. And of course, within days it came to me, I am the press.
Well, I got a B minus, in a summer course in Ovid, when the requirement for the doctorate was at least a B. Wouldn’t you say, Mr. Hughes, the head of the department, said, not at all unkindly, that in view of the requirement, this is not quite enough. I mean, a B minus, surely, means at most, and not at least, a B. But surely, Professor Harris, I said, a B minus is a B of some sort. Well, yes, he said. And anything that is another thing can surely be said to be at least that other thing? So he said all right.
Everything changed. Gradually, almost imperceptibly, things changed. Months and months later, he said, Kate, it’s time, I think I’d better read it. By then, we had long been to Orcas Island, New Orleans, God knows where. He took the story with him. Some time later, the phone rang. It wasn’t you. It rang again; it was you, saying, I haven’t finished, but, Kate, the raccoon.