“It’s OK not to go,” Caroline assured Jonah. “Your personal choice is what matters here. This is your vacation.”
Nobody will be forced to go.
“I’ll say it one more time,” Gary said. “Your grandma is really looking forward to seeing you.”
To Caroline’s face there came a desolation, a deep tearful stare, reminiscent of the troubles in September. She rose without a word and left the entertainment room.
Jonah’s answer came in a voice not much louder than a whisper: “I think I’m going to stay here.”
If it had still been September, Gary might have seen in Jonah’s decision a parable of the crisis of moral duty in a culture of consumer choice. He might have become depressed. But he’d been down that road now and he knew there was nothing for him at the end of it.
He packed his bag and kissed Caroline. “I’ll be happy when you’re back,” she said.
In a strict moral sense Gary knew he hadn’t done anything wrong. He’d never promised Enid that Jonah was coming. It was simply to spare himself an argument that he’d lied about Jonah’s fever.
Similarly, to spare Enid’s feelings, he hadn’t mentioned that in the six business days since the IPO, his five thousand shares of Axon Corporation stock, for which he’d paid $60,000, had risen in value to $118,000. Here again, he’d done nothing wrong, but given the pitiful size of Alfred’s patent-licensing fee from Axon, concealment seemed the wisest policy.
The same also went for the little package Gary had zipped into the inside pocket of his jacket.
Jets were dropping from the bright sky, happy in their metal skins, while he jockeyed through the crush of senior traffic converging at the airport. The days before Christmas were the St. Jude airport’s finest hour—its raison d’être, almost. Every garage was full and every walkway thronged.
Denise was right on time, however. Even the airlines conspired to protect her from the embarrassment of a late arrival or an inconvenienced brother. She was standing, per family custom, at a little-used gate on the departure level. Her overcoat was a crazy garnet woolen thing with pink velvet trim, and something about her head seemed different to Gary—more makeup than usual, maybe. More lipstick. Each time he’d seen Denise in the last year (most recently at Thanksgiving), she’d looked more emphatically unlike the person he’d always imagined that she would grow up to be.
When he kissed her, he smelled cigarettes.
“You’ve become a smoker,” he said, making room in the trunk for her suitcase and shopping bag.
Denise smiled. “Unlock the door, I’m freezing.”
Gary flipped open his sunglasses. Driving south into glare, he was nearly sideswiped while merging. Road aggression was encroaching in St. Jude; traffic no longer moved so sluggishly that an eastern driver could pleasurably slalom through it.
“I bet Mom’s happy Jonah’s here,” Denise said.
“As a matter of fact, Jonah is not here.”
Her head turned sharply. “You didn’t bring him?”
“He got sick.”
“I can’t believe it. You didn’t bring him!”
She seemed not to have considered, even for a moment, that he might be telling the truth.
“There are five people in my house,” Gary said. “As far as I know, there’s only one in yours. Things are more complicated when you have multiple responsibilities.”
“I’m just sorry you had to get Mom’s hopes up.”
“It’s not my fault if she chooses to live in the future.”
“You’re right,” Denise said. “It’s not your fault. I just wish it hadn’t happened.”
“Speaking of Mom,” Gary said, “I want to tell you a very weird thing. But you have to promise not to tell her.”
“What weird thing?”
“Promise you won’t tell her.”
Denise so promised, and Gary unzipped the inner pocket of his jacket and showed her the package that Bea Meisner had given him the day before. The moment had been fully bizarre: Chuck Meisner’s Jaguar in the street, idling amid cetacean puffs of winter exhaust, Bea Meisner standing on the Welcome mat in her embroidered green loden coat while she dug from her purse a seedy and much-handled little packet, Gary setting down the wrapped bottle of champagne and taking delivery of the contraband. “This is for your mother,” Bea had said. “But you must tell her that Klaus says to be very careful with this. He didn’t want to give it to me at all. He says it can be very, very addictive, which is why I only got a little bit. She wanted six months, but Klaus would only give me one. So you tell her to be sure and talk to her doctor. Maybe, Gary, you should even hold on to it until she does that. Anyway, have a wonderful Christmas”—here the Jaguar’s horn beeped—“and give our best love to everyone.”
Gary recounted this to Denise while she opened the packet. Bea had folded up a page torn from a German magazine and taped it shut. On one side of the page was a bespectacled German cow promoting ultrapasteurized milk. Inside were thirty golden pills.
“My God.” Denise laughed. “Mexican A.”
“Never heard of it,” Gary said.
“Club drug. Very young-person.”
“And Bea Meisner is delivering it to Mom at our front door.”
“Does Mom know you took it?”
“Not yet. I don’t even know what this stuff does.”
Denise reached over with her smoky fingers and put a pill near his mouth. “Try one.”
Gary jerked his head away. His sister seemed to be on some drug herself, something stronger than nicotine. She was greatly happy or greatly unhappy or a dangerous combination of the two. She was wearing silver rings on three fingers and a thumb.
“Is this a drug you’ve tried?” he said.
“No, I stick with alcohol.”
She folded up the packet and Gary took control of it again. “I want to make sure you’re with me on this,” he said. “Do you agree that Mom should not be receiving illegal addictive substances from Bea Meisner?”
“No,” Denise said. “I don’t agree. She’s an adult and she can do what she wants. And I don’t think it’s fair to take her pills without telling her. If you don’t tell her, I will.”
“Excuse me, I believe you promised not to,” Gary said.
Denise considered this. Salt-splashed embankments were flying past.
“OK, maybe I promised,” she said. “But why are you trying to run her life?”
“I think you’ll see,” he said, “that the situation is out of hand. I think you’ll see that it’s about time somebody stepped in and ran her life.”
Denise didn’t argue with him. She put on shades and looked at the towers of Hospital City on the brutal south horizon. Gary had hoped to find her more cooperative. He already had one “alternative” sibling and he didn’t need another. It frustrated him that people could so happily drop out of the world of conventional expectations; it undercut the pleasure he took in his home and job and family; it felt like a unilateral rewriting, to his disadvantage, of the rules of life. He was especially galled that the latest defector to the “alternative” was not some flaky Other from a family of Others or a class of Others but his own stylish and talented sister, who as recently as September had excelled in conventional ways that his friends could read about in the New York Times. Now she’d quit her job and was wearing four rings and a flaming coat and reeking of tobacco …
Carrying the aluminum stool, he followed her into the house. He compared her reception by Enid to the reception he’d received the day before. He took note of the duration of the hug, the lack of instant criticism, the smiles all around.
Enid cried: “I thought maybe you’d run into Chip at the airport and all three of you would be coming home!”
“That scenario is implausible in eight different ways,” Gary said.
“He told you he’d be here today?” Denise said.
“This afternoon,” Enid said. “Tomorrow at the latest.”
“Today, tomorrow, next
April,” Gary said. “Whatever.”
“He said there was some trouble in Lithuania,” Enid said.
While Denise went to find Alfred, Gary fetched the morning Chronicle from the den. In a box of international news sandwiched between lengthy features (“New ‘Peticures’ Make Dogs ‘Red in Claw”’ and “Are Ophthalmologists Overpaid?—Docs Say No, Optometrists Say Yes”) he located a paragraph about Lithuania: civil unrest following disputed parliamentary elections and attempted assassination of President Vitkunas … three-fourths of the country without electricity … rival paramilitary groups clashing on the streets of Vilnius … and the airport—
“The airport is closed,” Gary read aloud with satisfaction. “Mother? Did you hear me?”
“He was already at the airport yesterday,” Enid said. “I’m sure he got out.”
“Then why hasn’t he called?”
“He was probably running to catch a flight.”
At a certain point Enid’s capacity for fantasy became physically painful to Gary. He opened his wallet and presented her with the receipt for the shower stool and safety bar.
“I’ll write you a check later,” she said.
“How about now, before you forget.”
Muttering and soughing, Enid complied with his wishes.
Gary examined the check. “Why is this dated December twenty-six?”
“Because that’s the soonest you could possibly deposit it in Philadelphia.”
Their skirmishing continued through lunch. Gary slowly drank a beer and slowly drank a second, relishing the distress that he was causing Enid as she told him for a third time and a fourth time that he’d better get started on that shower project. When he finally stood up from the table, it occurred to him that his impulse to run Enid’s life was the logical response to her own insistence on running his.
The safety shower bar was a fifteen-inch length of beige enamel pipe with flanged elbows at each end. The stubby screws included in the package might have sufficed to attach the bar to plywood but were useless with ceramic tile. To secure the bar, he would have to run six-inch bolts through the wall into the little closet behind the shower.
Down in Alfred’s workshop, he was able to find masonry bits for the electric drill, but the cigar boxes that he remembered as cornucopias of useful hardware seemed mainly to contain corroded, orphaned screws and strike plates and toilet-tank fittings. Certainly no six-inch bolts.
Departing for the hardware store, wearing his I’m-a-jerk smile, he noticed Enid at the dining-room windows, peering out through a sheer curtain.
“Mother,” he said. “I think it’s important not to get your hopes up about Chip.”
“I just thought I heard a car door in the street.”
Fine, go ahead, Gary thought as he left the house, fixate on whoever isn’t here and oppress whoever is.
On the front walk he passed Denise, who was returning from the supermarket with groceries. “I hope you’re letting Mom pay for those,” he said.
His sister laughed in his face. “What difference does it make to you?”
“She’s always trying to get away with things. It burns me up·”
“So redouble your vigilance,” Denise said, proceeding toward the house.
Why, exactly, had he been feeling guilty? He’d never promised to bring Jonah on the trip, and although he was currently ahead by $58,000 on his Axon investment he’d worked hard for those shares and he’d taken all the risk, and Bea Meisner herself had urged him not to give Enid the addictive drug; so why had he felt guilty?
As he drove, he imagined the needle on his cranial-pressure gauge creeping clockwise. He was sorry he’d offered his services to Enid. Given the brevity of his visit, it was stupid to spend the afternoon on a job she should have paid a handyman to do.
At the hardware store, he stood in the checkout line behind the fattest and slowest people in the central tier of states. They’d come to buy marshmallow Santas, packages of tinsel, Venetian blinds, eight-dollar blow-dryers, and holiday-theme pot-holders. With their bratwurst fingers they dug for exact change in tiny purses. White cartoon puffs of steam shot out of Gary’s ears. All the fun things he could be doing instead of waiting half an hour to buy six six-inch bolts assumed ravishing form in his imagination. He could be visiting the Collector’s Room at the Museum of Transport gift shop, or sorting out the old bridge and track drawings from his father’s early career at the Midland Pacific, or searching the under-porch storeroom for his long-missing O-gauge model railroad equipment. With the lifting of his “depression,” he’d developed a new interest, hobbylike in its intensity, in framable and collectible railroad memorabilia, and he could happily have spent the whole day—the whole week!—pursuing it …
Back at the house, as he was heading up the walk, he saw the sheer curtains part, his mother peering out again. Inside, the air was steamy and dense with the smell of foods that Denise was baking, simmering, and browning. Gary gave Enid the receipt for the bolts, which she regarded as the token of hostility that it was.
“You can’t afford four dollars and ninety-six cents?”
“Mother,” he said. “I’m doing the work like I promised. But this is not my bathroom. This is not my safety bar.”
“I’ll get the money for you later.”
“You might forget.”
“Gary, I will get the money for you later.”
Denise, in an apron, followed this exchange from the kitchen doorway with laughing eyes.
When Gary made his second trip to the basement, Alfred was snoring in the big blue chair. Gary proceeded into the workshop, and here he was stopped in his tracks by a new discovery. A shotgun in a canvas case was leaning against the lab bench. He didn’t remember having seen it here earlier. Could he have somehow failed to notice it? Ordinarily the gun was kept in the under-porch storeroom. He was sorry indeed to see that it had moved.
Do I let him shoot himself?
The question was so clear in his mind that he almost spoke it out loud. And he considered. It was one thing to intervene on behalf of Enid’s safety and confiscate her drugs; there was life and hope and pleasure worth saving in Enid. The old man, however, was kaput.
At the same time, Gary had no wish to hear a gunshot and come down and wade into the gore. He didn’t want his mother to go through this, either.
And yet, horrible though the mess would be, it would be followed by a huge quantum uptick in the quality of his mother’s life.
Gary opened the box of shells on the bench and saw that none were missing. He wished that someone else, not he, had noticed that Alfred had moved the gun. But his decision, when it came, was so clear in his mind that he did speak it out loud. Into the dusty, uric, non-reverberative silence of the laboratory he said: “If that’s what you want, be my guest. I ain’t gonna stop you.”
Before he could drill holes in the shower, he had to clear the shelves of the little bathroom closet. This in itself was a substantial job. Enid had saved, in a shoe box, every cotton ball she’d ever taken from a bottle of aspirin or prescription medication. There were five hundred or a thousand cotton balls. There were petrified half-squeezed tubes of ointment. There were plastic pitchers and utensils (in colors even worse, if possible, than beige) from Enid’s admissions to the hospital for foot surgery, knee surgery, and phlebitis. There were dear little bottles of Mercurochrome and Anbesol that had dried up sometime in the 1960s. There was a paper bag that Gary quickly, for the sake of his composure, threw to the back of a high shelf because it appeared to contain ancient menstrual belts and pads.
The daylight was fading by the time he had the closet empty and was ready to drill six holes. It was then that he discovered that the old masonry bits were as dull as rivets. He leaned into the drill with all his weight, the tip of the bit turned bluish-black and lost its temper, and the old drill began to smoke. Sweat came pouring down his face and chest.
Alfred chose this moment to step into the bathroom. “Well, look at this,” he
said.
“You got some pretty dull masonry bits here,” Gary said, breathing heavily. “I should have bought some new ones while I was at the store.”
“Let me see,” Alfred said.
It hadn’t been Gary’s intention to attract the old man and the agitated twin fingered animals that were his advance guard. He shied from the incapacity and greedy openness of these hands, but Alfred’s eyes were fixed on the drill now, his face bright with the possibility of solving a problem. Gary relinquished the drill. He wondered how his father could even see what he was holding, the drill shook so violently. The old man’s fingers crawled around its tarnished surface, groping like eyeless worms.
“You got it on Reverse,” he said.
With the ridged yellow nail of his thumb, Alfred pushed the polarity switch to Forward and handed the drill back to Gary, and for the first time since his arrival, their eyes met. The chill that ran through Gary was only partly from his cooling sweat. The old man, he thought, still had a few lights on upstairs. Alfred, indeed, looked downright happy: happy to have fixed a thing and even happier, Gary suspected, to have proved that he was smarter, in this tiny instance, than his son.
“We can see why I’m not an engineer,” Gary said.
“What’s the project?”
“I’m putting in this bar to hold on to. Are you going to use the shower if we put a stool and a bar in here?”
“I don’t know what they have planned for me,” Alfred said as he was leaving.
That was your Christmas present, Gary told him silently. Flipping that switch was your present from me.
An hour later he had the bathroom back together and was in a fully nasty mood again. Enid had second-guessed his siting of the bar, and Alfred, when Gary invited him to try the new stool, had announced that he preferred a bath.
“I’ve done my part and now I’m done,” Gary said in the kitchen, pouring liquor. “Tomorrow I have a few things that I want to do.”
“It’s a wonderful improvement in the bathroom,” Enid said.
Gary poured heavily. Poured and poured.