ents, provides comic relief and a regular income but somehow is not sufficiently supportive of his wife emotionally. He’s too wrapped up in his work, it seems. Near the end of the story, as he crosses the street near his office, he is struck down by a Prius driven by an angry former client named Nancy, seeking revenge. This melodramatic touch at the story’s climax leaves the boy’s mother and the boy alone together, with the girlfriend, named Venus, now out of the picture, or forgotten, following the lawyer’s painful death from internal bleeding. Together, in the story’s last paragraph, the boy and his mother engage in troubled speculation about their future.
Elijah had rather liked the story. He didn’t mind being killed off in it. He had complimented Susan on the narrative momentum, and he felt flattered that she would think of putting him into a piece of writing. In the story, the lawyer’s name was Gerald, and Elijah had started to think of himself that way from time to time, not as himself but as Gerald, a disputatious character who turned up in his consciousness and his voice whenever he, Elijah, was driving, or arguing with insurance companies over billing practices.
—
One night two weeks later, with snack-food salt and cooking grease once more on his lips and fingers, the Jones Diet Plan having failed him again, the doctor arrived home to find Susan and Rafe sitting in the living room, waiting for him. They were both on the sofa, and because they weren’t reading or watching TV or listening to music, he knew something was up.
“So?” he asked, as soon as he’d hung up his overcoat.
“Hey, Dad,” Rafe said. His tousled curly brown hair framed his face, under the standing lamp, and his broad shoulders cast a shadow across the upholstery. He was barefoot. He didn’t like to wear shoes or socks indoors and said that Asians had it right. With studied politeness, he said, “How was your day?”
How to describe a day that included a parade of sick kids and their parents, diagnoses, written prescriptions, and a trip to the hospital? “Oh, fine,” he said. “Yours?”
“There’s a thing,” Susan said. “There’s a thing that’s come up, Eli.”
“Yes? What thing would this be?” He waited. “Where’s Theresa?” This was Rafe’s sister.
“Upstairs.” At that, both Rafe and his mother started speaking at once. They didn’t seem to notice that they were talking simultaneously, or if they did notice, neither could stop to let the other one explain. They continued to talk over each other, although both of them were making the same point.
This simultaneous duo-outburst bothered the doctor even as he was listening to it. He knew his wife had a streak of self-absorption, a very little one, though still within normal range. Sometimes when other people were talking, she would excitedly interrupt as if no one else were in the room, as if no one else had ever existed. But to see Rafe talking over his mother — not even trying to outspeak her competitively, which would suggest that he knew she was there in the room with him, but calmly conversing with his father, as if the two of them were alone together — made Elijah feel a little sliver of despair.
The gist of their talk was that Donna’s parents wanted to meet with Elijah — just with him, and no one else. They had made this request to their daughter, and she had passed it on to Rafe, who had passed it on to his mother. Now, here it was. Why hadn’t they called him? At the office? He would have returned their call! Well, they just hadn’t. Nor had they explained their rationale, or what the conversation would be about.
They wanted him to visit them late Sunday afternoon. This Sunday. In three days. Around five p.m. Given the Minnesota late autumn, the skies would be darkening by then. They lived in Delano, a semirural town west of Minneapolis. They were looking forward to talking to him, Susan said. They also planned, she told him, to give him some Christmas cookies, though it was still November.
When the doctor agreed, Rafe said he would text Donna, who would then tell her parents that his father would be coming. The most simple encounters could be made complicated with just a bit of effort. Rafe gave his father the address of Donna’s parents, out in Delano.
—
That Sunday, the doctor pulled into their driveway with the aid of his car’s GPS system. The family name, Lundgren, was attached with red metal letters to the driveway’s mailbox. From the outside, the house itself projected an eerie normality, a rigidly resolute cheerfulness. A two-story colonial, it seemed to be projecting tremendous quantities of light from each window, as if every lamp and overhead fixture had been turned on to counter some terrible visitation, which was himself. The light was not just incandescent but somehow inflammatory, as if the walls and knickknacks were giving off a fiery plume that extended out onto the lawn, with its flecks of snow. The doctor shook his head to free himself from drowsiness and then groaned as he turned off the car’s engine, opened the door, and heaved himself out, shaking off potato chip particles from his overcoat.
When he pressed the doorbell, he heard from inside the house a chime that sounded like the first few notes of “Onward, Christian Soldiers.” When the door opened, he saw Donna’s parents, both approximately his own age, somberly smiling in greeting as they ushered him in. Donna’s mother held a plate of cookies, which she transferred to one hand as she waved him inside and shouted her greetings. Elijah was used to talking to parents about their children in his medical practice. He knew all the parental styles. Although he felt he was ready for any variety of family drama, he had forgotten how country people like the Lundgrens hooted in loud welcome for social occasions even when they weren’t glad to see you. Noisy hospitality of this kind could be cold and heartless. The whole point was to avoid any trace of intimacy. In the Midwest, you just had to get used to it.
Mrs. Lundgren, neither pretty nor beautiful but solid, wore her brown hair in a moderately ostentatious beehive. Her eyes looked out from behind glasses attached to a tiny chain around her neck. Her shapeless skirt, a dull gray, gave the impression of formality heightened by the cameo brooch she wore on her blouse. She reminded the doctor of a loan officer he had once known at a bank, a no-nonsense woman whose face, after much experience of the world and probably much practice, radiated aggressive neutrality, seasoned with a bit of distaste for humanity.
Mr. Lundgren wore jeans and a sweater. His eyes were the impossibly deep blue that had so frightened the Native Americans when they gazed for the first time at the conquistadors. He shook hands with the doctor with a machinelike pneumatic grip, which out here signified masculine force and solidarity. “Hello,” the host said, showing his teeth briefly, in what might have been a smile.
Donna’s mother grinned at the doctor and directed him toward a living room chair planted in front of an audio speaker. Nearby was a side table with Ritz crackers topped with whipped cheese-colored goo. Each cracker had been placed carefully on a tiny paper napkin on which were printed minuscule blue flowers. A giant flat-screen TV, as large and solemn as an altar, held pride of place in front of the window, blocking the view. The TV’s screen was dark, but music from The Nutcracker suite poured out from the speakers, making it hard to hear anything else over the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy. The doctor thought he heard Mrs. Lundgren shout out her own name, Eleanor, over the music, and she gestured at her husband and instructed the doctor to call him Herb. “We’re Eleanor and Herb!” she said brightly, with an icy hostile smile. “Nice to meet you! Thanks for coming!” Without a rising inflection, she asked, “Can we get you a glass of water!” The doctor shook his head. He wanted whiskey and crusty bread, but you wouldn’t get that in this household even if you begged for it on your knees.