He’d gone on as long as he could, covering the lapses, but it was exhausting, an exercise as painful as push-ups on broken arms, and he began to lose heart. Confronted with a photo of his grandchildren, he’d say, Now, there’s a fine boy. He reminds me of my schoolmate Irving Teller. Died in the war, Irving… And who could say otherwise? He knew Erica didn’t care, and as with most deceptions, the bulk of his efforts went into convincing himself of the lie, though after a while it hardly worked on him, either.
His mind: a slow sinking, an insignificant tear in the hull that takes on only a gallon or two a day, but eventually the gunwales are even with the surface of the water, and eventually the boat disappears, descending through the depths, leaving Albert to scissor his legs and carve the water with his emaciated arms. He’ll go down soon enough, he knows it. He’s finished, he welcomes death.
Erica! Albert yelled. Where had she gone? He yelled again. This went on for a while until he looked at the clock, and suddenly she reappeared, leaning against the doorframe, arms crossed.
What’s my dog’s name? she said.
What dog? Albert said.
My dog. The only dog I ever had.
You’ve never mentioned it.
Only every day. What’s his name?
Don’t play this game with me. I’m starving.
What’s his name, Albert?
I don’t care what your dead dog’s name is, Albert yelled. Go get me something to eat.
Erica nodded. Good, that’s right, he’s dead. What was his name?
Albert gripped his chair. You’re taunting me. You’re always asking meaningless questions. These doors you insist on making me unlock just to get a drink of water or a morsel of food—if my daughters knew the tortures you put me through, they’d have your hide. I refuse to comply. I refuse.
You don’t complain to them, though, do you?
My conversations with my family are none of your business.
Albert, you know it’s good for you. It’s good for your mind. It keeps you sharp.
I’m a dead man. Who cares how sharp I am?
I do, and the sharper the better.
I’m pleased to be able to do you a service, then. Pleased.
Don’t be such a little old lady, Albert. What was my dog’s name?
Sparky.
That’s right. Sparky.
Don’t threaten me with Sparky.
No one’s threatening you, Albert.
I was skinning rabbits when I was six. I could field-dress a deer when I was eight. My father had to hold me up to reach the hams. Don’t threaten me with stories about your little dead dog.
Erica moved closer to his chair. Mind your manners, Albert.
He waved the back of his hand at her. I need to eat, he said. I need you to go get Chinese.
Erica put her hands on the arms of his chair and leaned in until her face was so close to his that her eyes became blurs. Their noses touched.
How much have you had tonight?
You think I can remember? he whispered. He felt her breath on his lips.
You want me to leave.
Yes, he said.
I’ve already left, Albert. Do you understand?
I understand.
I left so that you can do what you need to do.
I understand, he whispered.
I hope you’ll have more courage when it comes to the rest of it.
I will.
This is what people do for people they love, she said.
I know, he said.
You’ve made a plan? You know what you’re going to do?
Yes, he said.
You know what to do, Erica said. Her eyes were closed.
I do, Albert said. He had closed his eyes but opened them now. He gently pushed Erica back by the shoulders, only enough to be able to see her face clearly.
Didn’t I already send you away? he said. Didn’t I remove you from danger? You’d have tried to stop me, he said. I got rid of you for your own good.
I know what you’re going to do.
You do? he said. Did she? he thought. Don’t tell, he said.
Albert, you shouldn’t go tonight. If you fall on a patch of ice you could break your leg. You could get lost. You could freeze to death. How are you going to find your way?
I’ll find my way.
Go tomorrow.
No. You’re trying to trick me. It must be tonight.
He turned his face away from hers, but she was so close, her body over his, that struggling was pointless. Her legs were astride his, her feet pinning his on either side. The silver cross around her neck tapped against the underside of his chin. Her hair poured over his face.
Tomorrow I’ll have lost my nerve, he said. I feel it draining from me already.
He felt the wet of her lips against the dry granite of his own.
You’ve thought this through? she said.
Yes.
Hardheaded old man, she said. She pulled back.
What’s my dog’s name? she said.
Sparky.
You know how you’re going to do it?
I know. It’s clear in my mind. Go, he said.
And she went, like a vapor, back to the ether world she’d come from.
It was time. The rug beneath his feet was rotting flesh, the walls the sides of a dank tomb. Go.
Choices: Would he experience numbness, palpitations, shortness of breath, coldness in the extremities, burning of the bowels, blurring of vision, failure of vision, agita, tremors, organ malfunction?
He would call Roosevelt. He located the phone book and painstakingly worked his way through it. Every time his eye attached itself to a new name, he plunged into a dark well. What was he doing, again? He climbed back out and resumed the search. Finally, he arrived at the number. He dialed. He hung up quickly. Work out a dialogue first. Anything worth doing is worth doing properly. Prepare and strategize. He pulled out the Parker from his breast pocket and a legal pad from the side table.
Help me, I’m in agony, he wrote.
I’m experiencing shortness of breath. There is some numbness in my limbs.
He looked at what he’d written. He read it aloud, and struck out the last sentence.
I can’t feel my hands! he wrote.
He ran through the dialogue a few times, found his address on the Journal ’s delivery label, jotted it down, practiced the dialogue once more.
That sound again, barely audible, from far away. He recognized it this time. He knew exactly what it was. The river.
25.
My photographs of Vik are medleys of smudge and blur, thumbs effecting solar eclipse, plan views of shoelaces. When I managed to align focus and f-stop, I was a mug-shot artist. Videos, same: catalogues of a wide range of ground cover species, off-camera directions that always end with, Okay, ready? and as the frame swings up to capture the subject… blackout—or worse, when I captured him standing uneasily at the edge of a swimming pool, stage-mothering him to Do something, do something! Move around or, like, dance!, and he would, saggy trunks dripping all over the place, tentatively bouncing on one leg then the other as if testing their structural integrity, his mouth a rictus of mortal embarrassment.
Vik was director of our tripod-assisted sex tapes, all of them either metronomed by low-light warnings (though the audio has been, in years since, an effective enough lubricant if mixed with vodka; melancholy, sure, but what’s the brain doing during masturbation, anyway, but pining after an absent set of hands, mouth, body, way of life?) or, when well lit, comedies starring a Parkinsonian ghost writhing abstractly about our mattress, disgorging here and there a foot or arm before redevouring the escapee; sexy snapshots, likewise, were lightning flashes of bleached landscape and shadow, a cloud of saltpeter storming on our affections, carving into the foreground horrors of cleft and gap.