Abbott Awaits (10 page)

Furthermore, Abbott's daughter will not drink her organic cow's milk. Just will
not
, no matter how many times her father takes a sip of it and then licks his lips and rubs his belly. Then this morning Abbott's wife has what she considers a breakthrough when she adds maple syrup to the milk and the child drinks it eagerly. “Maple milk!” his wife says, making lip-smacking noises at the child. Abbott is not impressed. He feels his belly-rubbing program has not been given enough time to succeed. “And all those additives and chemicals,” he says to his wife. “No,” she says, “it's pure maple syrup.” “Right,
pure
,” Abbott says, troubled by the stupidity of his sarcasm. He gets up from his chair and walks to the kitchen to scrutinize the syrup bottle, which does indeed disingenuously announce its 100 percent purity. What he will do, he decides, is read the ingredients out loud like the Declaration of Independence, but he finds upon inspection that the ingredients are not listed on the bottle, so his scheme collapses. “I thought they were required to put the ingredients on here,” he says. “What?” his wife says. “It's pure maple syrup.
Sap
, that's the ingredient. Look at her go.” There's no denying it, the child is crazy about maple
milk. Abbott is still perplexed by the absent list of ingredients. “Syrup is not sap,” he says with a derisiveness born of uncertainty. “It can't just be sap.” His voice nearly cracks, and his wife turns in her chair to face him. “Well, what do you think it is?” she says, laughing now. “Processed sugar,” he says. “And aspartame. Lead paint. Fluorocarbons. Agent Orange. Parablendeum. How does it get so delicious?” “More?” Abbott's daughter says, holding up her empty cup. “They do something to it,” his wife says, “but they don't add anything. I'm not saying it's health food, but I know it's natural. Pure Vermont maple syrup—what did you think that meant?” Abbott disappears into his office, where, after establishing a particularly strong dial-up Internet connection, he learns, at age thirty-seven, that real maple syrup is, after all, just maple sap—from a tree—boiled down. (Native Americans taught the early settlers how to make it. For a sugar maple tree, you'll need about thirty-two gallons of sap to make a gallon of syrup. It's a good idea to strain the finished syrup through cheesecloth to remove any debris or crystallized minerals.) Here he is, suspicious of trees. He hunches over the laptop in his darkened office, chastened and contrite. Outside, someone is mowing in the rain. Abbott knows you can't just believe. He knows you can't just not believe.

Every Sunday morning Abbott retrieves from the end of the driveway a newspaper in a blue plastic bag. Every Sunday morning he pulls the plastic bag off the newspaper and drops it into a low kitchen drawer containing nothing but blue plastic bags. This morning he opens the drawer with his foot and tosses the balled-up bag into the drawer, which is, Abbott now sees, filled completely with blue plastic bags. This morning's blue bag falls slowly onto the pile, then slides and tumbles out of the drawer and onto the kitchen floor. It stretches out nearly to full length. A draft of air nudges it across the tile. Abbott's dog jumps back and yelps, in all likelihood waking the child. Abbott looks down into the heaping drawer of weeks. This is how you know that you have Time in your house; you discover its shed skins. He places the thick newspaper on the counter, where it will remain until it is recycled. He gets down on his knees by the drawer. Who else is going to do it? He opens a blue plastic bag and begins to shove the other blue bags into it. The opening is small, so the work is painstaking. When he's finished, he ties the top of the bulging bag in a knot and tosses the whole year into the garage. Today he'll deal with shit, snot, piss, blood, vomit, rust, and rot, but they won't be bad in quite the same way that this is bad.

All day long Abbott and his wife have been arguing. By evening there is a fragile truce. The daughter has been put to bed, though her singing and babbling are audible on the staticky monitor. “I forgot to even ask you about the butterflies,” Abbott's wife says, conciliatory in word if not tone. They are together in the family room, a designation they actually use. They are sitting as far apart as possible on the devastated couch, purchased at a furniture warehouse years ago, when Abbott was in graduate school, and now draped like a corpse by a mail-order cover. Besides Abbott's cocktail, the couch is the only adult item in the family room, which this and every evening looks as though robbers have ransacked it in an urgent search for a small and valuable item. Books, toys, coins, buttons, beads, and costume jewelry lie strewn across the stained carpeting. It's almost impossible not to fight with your life partner in this room. Abbott's wife has asked, sort of, about Abbott's trip to the butterfly conservatory, an outing he took this morning with their daughter but did not discuss afterward with his wife because she was too busy reminding him of things about which he did not need to be reminded. Today was Abbott's first trip to the butterfly conservatory. His wife has been twice before with their
daughter, and she has reported that the conservatory is “neat” and “kind of peaceful,” that it's “an interesting place in the middle of nowhere.” One response to his wife's inquiry is that the butterfly conservatory is a hideous travesty, a transparent example of everything that is wrong with everything. The twelve-dollar admission, accepted joylessly by a woman talking on the telephone to someone she clearly does not want in her life anymore; the cruel trap of the overstocked gift shop, selling stuffed butterflies, real butterflies, butterfly magnets and puzzles, butterfly nightlights and kites, along with entire aisles of bright toys thematically irrelevant but wildly attractive to children; the children; the lucrative imprisonment of thousands of butterflies, not to mention finches, turtles, lizards, fish, and a parrot, ostensibly in the name of appreciation and education; the
heat
, as one might find in a small bathroom after a long hot shower; the horrific music—hyperactive, flute-driven renditions of “Edelweiss” and “On Broadway,” engineered to overpower visitors and create in them a stupor that might be mistaken for relaxation; the weird smell; the cafeteria with its dumb food names; the fellow adult patrons, all behaving as though they have never before encountered a flying insect; the pervasive sense of animal dirtiness; the chipper, ecologically ignorant staff members, who are in all seriousness referred to as
flight attendants
, and who spend their days trying to get children to pet a sleepy lizard—Abbott ponders this truce-obliterating response. It would no doubt feel good to take a big swing. But the truth is, he had a pretty good time at the conservatory. There were so many butterflies. Some landed on people's hands or shoulders. The large proboscises were easy to see. Butterflies are astonishing when you look at them, and when else would you ever look at them? The flight attendants had helpfully led Abbott and his daughter to a mounted board of cocoons, where they saw butterflies emerging, drying their wings, then flying off into the world, or at least into the hot dome. Abbott had never seen his daughter so engaged, so stimulated. He knows that the conservatory is, in addition to a hideous travesty, something like a spiritual center, operated by a dedicated team of citizen-workers. Who else cares about butterflies? Who else would attempt to mend their broken wings with a special wing glue? The pop of the ice in Abbott's glass reminds him—and probably his wife—that he has
not, as a courtesy, desisted or at least curtailed his drinking during her pregnancy. This is a courtesy extended by quite a few Pioneer Valley men to their pregnant soul mates. Abbott has still not said a word in response to his wife's question, which, come to think of it, was not so much a question as a statement about forgetting to ask a question. His eyes are on a section of subtoy carpet in the shape of a rhombus. Either a rhombus or a parallelogram. He knows that any criticism of the butterfly conservatory would be a deliberate attempt to rankle his wife and renew the fight. This is what a married person can do, slander a sanctuary to provoke his beloved. But Abbott does not disparage the conservatory or its workers. His decision not to strikes him as exceedingly mature, though he knows that congratulating oneself on one's maturity is probably immature. Also, it comes as a tremendous disappointment to Abbott that his wife cannot know his restraint. If she could know, she would be touched. But he can't very well tell her how mature and restrained he's acting, for the maturity and restraint would evaporate upon utterance. Abbott and his wife can hear their daughter, through the monitor, singing an Australian folk song about a swagman who drowns himself in the billabong. She's waiting for an answer, his wife is. She's been waiting this whole time. Abbott clenches his jaw, stares at the dirty rhombus. When it comes down to it, he cannot bring himself to say that the butterfly conservatory was amazing, or even that it was neat, even though it would be at least partially true and would help salvage the evening. This is another small failure of spirit, and he knows it. The knowing of it might make things better, but probably makes things much, much worse. “It was fine,” he says of his outing with their daughter. And then he repeats it: “It was fine.” This is either an act of aggression or diplomacy, he's not sure which at this point. His wife is a separate person, large on the inside, capable of a very broad range of responses. She folds her thin fingers across her belly and gets ready to say something.

Death is the muse of Stupid Thoughts. Here's one: “Maybe we'll see some good names for the baby,” Abbott had told his wife as they parked the car by the old New England cemetery. Here's another: Perhaps the high infant mortality rate in early America made parents more temperate in their love of children. The grass is already beginning to fade and wilt. Grasshoppers shoot from the lawn like fireworks. There, at the end of the row, is the infant son of Cotton and Euphrenia—
8d
must mean eight days. Out on the street, the cars move swiftly past. Meanwhile, Abbott's daughter has found a heart-shaped headstone, and she's racing back and forth from it to Abbott's wife. The headstone is chipped and mossy, like a heart should be. “Touch the heart!” she yells. “Touch the heart!” Her hair is wet and curly in the heat. She has two Band-Aids on her knee. Abbott's wife bends to read stones. She's pregnant in a graveyard, for God's sake. Abbott considers a satirical remark, but he keeps his mouth shut for reasons unknown to him but not unknown to James Russell Lowell, also dead. “Truth is quite beyond the reach of satire,” wrote Lowell, while alive. “There is so brave a simplicity in her, that she can no more be made
ridiculous than oak or pine.” The graves stretch for acres beneath the sun. Somewhere nearby, someone must be burning brush. Abbott bounces on the balls of his feet, twists his trunk until his vertebrae crack. He regards the narrow stretch of freshly mown grass before him. Stupidity, morbidity, irony … that leaves only gymnastics. “Honey!” he shouts at his daughter. “Honey, check out Dad.”

This morning there is quite a bit of water on the basement floor, so Abbott checks the Internet. He flushes the toilet and then scrambles downstairs to see more water spilling from what he thinks are called pipe joints. What he has, according to the Internet, is a clog. He consults the Yellow Pages, trying to determine, based exclusively on fonts, graphics, and slogans, which plumbing companies provide prompt service and excellent work at a reasonable price. They all do, apparently, though most of them use strange quotation marks. One advertisement for a local, family-operated business features a smiling, large-headed cartoon plumber clutching an enormous wrench and sprinting clogward, trailed by the lines that universally denote alacrity. This looks good to Abbott, and so he calls. He is handling this problem. He is taking care of his house and family. His wife and daughter went to Story Time at the public library, and they are due to return in forty-five minutes. Abbott's wife's dismay about the clog and its consequences in a one-toilet home will be attenuated, Abbott suspects, by her discovery of his swift and frugal decision making. The nice woman who answers the family-operated plumbing business's phone asks
if it's the main line that's clogged. Abbott breathes into the receiver. For an instant he considers terminating the call. The woman says, “Is it the big pipe, do you think? The four-inch one?” Abbott walks downstairs with the phone and a tape measure. The woman waits patiently. He surveys the plumbing, the impressive copper network. He has not been adequately respectful of and grateful for this system, he knows. He traces the route of the water, considers the location of the leaky joints. Yes, he tells the nice woman, he thinks it's the main pipe. “Well,” she says, “we don't have that big a snake.” Abbott does not understand what she's talking about. “I see,” he says. “We can only clean out a two-inch pipe,” she says, “but I can give you the name of a pipe rooter who can take care of you. He's the best there is.” Abbott is impressed by her generosity and her loyalty, and he is proud to have located, through his own initiative, the best pipe rooter out there. He takes down the name and number. “Thank you so much,” he says. “Have a nice day,” she says. Under normal circumstances, Abbott would take a short break between phone calls, but currently he is feeling hale and capable, and so he immediately calls the vaunted Pipe Rooter. After four rings, he reaches an automated system and he is asked to leave a voice message. He ends the call, paces the wet basement floor, and constructs in his mind a succinct, forceful, and informative message about the pipe and the clog. Then he takes a deep breath, and he calls the Pipe Rooter again. This time the Pipe Rooter answers after one ring, flustering Abbott beyond hope of recovery. “Yeah,” the Pipe Rooter says, by way of salutation. “Hello?” Abbott says, considering whether to hang up. “Yeah?” says the Pipe Rooter. “I was going to leave a message about my clog,” Abbott says. “Clogged main?” the Pipe Rooter says. “My main line is clogged,” Abbott says, “and the plumber I talked to isn't able to handle the width of the pipe.” Abbott does not want to mention the snake if he can help it, because it's lewd and because he is not sure he heard the woman correctly. “Yeah, you'll need a big snake for that,” the Pipe Rooter says. “That's what I understand,” Abbott says. The Pipe Rooter asks Abbott for his address, and Abbott supplies the proper answer. The Pipe Rooter says, “I actually have a little time right now if that works.” Abbott is thrilled by the promptness, but the thrill soon fades to distress. If he arranges and then supervises the repair before his wife is even aware of the problem,
then she will never understand and appreciate his role in the crisis. She'll return to the house to learn that the main line was clogged and then fixed. It will be like it all never happened. The toilet worked when she left, and it will work when she returns, a scenario that dismays Abbott. He might as well tell her the roof blew off and he put on a new one. She'll be left with a bill but with no real sense of the privation or exigency, or of his competent response. “Take your time,” Abbott says. “I'm on my way,” the Pipe Rooter says. “You come highly recommended,” Abbott says. “Just open the bulkhead, if you don't mind, and I can get started right away,” the Pipe Rooter says. Ten minutes later, the Pipe Rooter's van is in Abbott's driveway, and the Pipe Rooter is dragging his equipment around to the back. He is probably sixty years old, gray-haired and ruddy. Through the kitchen window Abbott watches him descend into the bulkhead. Then Abbott walks downstairs to the basement. The Pipe Rooter is crouched behind the washing machine, and Abbott lingers silently across the room. The Pipe Rooter stands and puts a large red hand on top of the washer. “My kids never liked those things,” the Pipe Rooter says, pointing to a dismantled swing chair against the wall. “When I swung them myself, they loved it, but then as soon as I put them in the chair, they'd wail.” Abbott nods. “But my grandkids love that stuff,” the Pipe Rooter says. Abbott asks how many grandchildren the Pipe Rooter has. “Four,” he says. “And two are living with us now because their mom just got a divorce and she's trying to get back on her feet. She got married young. So now she's got to find herself. I told her, ‘Shit, you think your parents' house is the place to look?'” “Right,” Abbott says. “The little ones are fun to have around, but they're wild. It's been a long time since we've had kids in the house. I'd forgotten what it's like. It's terrible. My wife remembered, but I didn't.” The Pipe Rooter laughs. “It's pretty bad,” Abbott says. “It's a blessing, though,” the Pipe Rooter says. He crouches again behind the washer. If his daughter misbehaves at Story Time, Abbott thinks, perhaps his wife will return early. “I remember this house,” the Pipe Rooter says. “I've been out here a couple times over the years. The snake goes out about ninety feet and there's a place where the big blade won't go through. I think the pipes out there under the road aren't quite matching up.” He stands up and makes his hands into mismatched pipes for Abbott. “Maybe
a busted coupling, maybe some roots coming through. So I'll bring the snake out that far and use the smaller blade. Should take about twenty minutes is all.” Abbott says, “It just goes in there like that?” “Just like that,” the Pipe Rooter says. The sun shines through the bulkhead and makes a golden rectangle on the cement. “Let me know when you're done, and I'll write you a check,” Abbott says. “I was here in this house maybe ten or twelve years ago,” the Pipe Rooter says. He breathes heavily as he turns his wrench. “I'll never forget it. See how you've got this open drain in the floor here?” Abbott walks across the basement and peers behind the washing machine. “I was down here working just like I am now. I kept hearing this little chirping noise, and I couldn't figure out where it was coming from. Then when I was packing up my tools, this little bird flew out of the drain. Right there.” The Pipe Rooter points with his wrench. “Flew right past me, out the bulkhead, into the sky. Scared me to death. Just a little brown bird, like a swallow. I told the guy who lived here, and I could tell he didn't believe me. Hell, if I were you I wouldn't believe me either, but I saw it and it's true.”