Northwest Corner (26 page)

H
E KNOCKS SOFTLY
on the open door and tips his body inside: a shared room, divided halfway across its length by a hanging curtain pulled almost to the far wall. Up front, a small man with a cap of sparse white hair lies on a forty-five-degree bed watching TV. The volume is off and the screen shows a news anchor mouthing above a stock ticker.

The old man turns his head in stages: olive-pit irises planted in drought-ridden soil, hoary stubble bristling over sunken cheeks, a grizzled tuft of chest hair bursting the hospital gown’s declining neckline. An odor of forgotten surrender permeates the room: potatoes going to rot in a dank basement.

A crooked finger directs him toward the curtain.

A murmur of thanks, and he crosses the foot of the bed, slips around the edge of the curtain. Then one more step, before he stops.

On a chair beside the bed a fiftyish woman with a sharp nose and blunted Slav cheekbones sits vigil over her sleeping son, on whose still gaunt face lifelike signs have sprung up like petals out of ash: full, pinkish lips, eyelids no longer the color of gray Plasticine. An IV remains, but the breathing and feeding tubes are gone.

And Sam stares confounded: the soul-sapping paradox by which a patient—no, victim—miraculously beginning to live again, may appear more like a ghost than when he was dying.

Meanwhile, the woman glares back. Which he cannot contend with, so physically complete is her authority over her dominion. Her
plain brown dress—too heavy for the season—and thick-soled brown shoes remind him of the Portuguese woman in Winsted who used to sell his mother bluefish at cost. A dark-red head scarf lumpily contains her graying dark hair. On her lap she holds a canary-yellow blouse and a spool of yellow thread.

Licking his dry lips, he quietly announces himself:

“Mrs. Bellic, I’m Sam Arno.”

Simply from this he’s drained. In return she remains mute, as immovable as a frieze in a ruined church. “Mrs. Bellic, I’m very sorry.”

Suddenly, she is standing, blouse and thread dumped on the floor.…

“Ma.”

They both turn as if called: her son, awake in the hospital bed. The mother’s face transformed; you could imagine her smiling, almost.

“Ma, go down the hall and get me something to drink, okay? Coke—not diet, regular. You need money?” She shakes her head. “Go ahead now, Ma.”

A canvas sewing bag goes with her. She walks past him without a glance and around the curtain, trailing the smell of another country, cedar and dust.

Sam bends, picks up the spool of thread, the yellow blouse. He stands awkwardly, not knowing what to do with these things. All he knows is that he can’t bear to leave them on the floor.

“Chair,” Bellic snaps.

Sam places the things where he’s told, folding the blouse as best he can, though one of the sleeves immediately falls loose. He faces the bed with his empty hands. “I’m sorry, Nic.”

“Don’t call me Nic. You don’t fucking know me.”

“You’re right.”

“Some mystery guy, the nurse tells me a couple days ago, sneaking around the ICU? Think I wouldn’t guess who?”

He doesn’t know what to say.

“So how did I look? Since you were there.”

“Like you were dead.”

It is just the truth he’s telling. But the truth seems to cave Bellic in: his head sinks into the pillows. He looks as if he wants his mother to come back.

“Get the fuck out,” he begs softly, and turns his face away until Sam leaves.

DWIGHT

I
N THE UPSTAIRS HALL SHOWER
, the soap mostly rinsed off, I hear my phone ringing. I step out, dripping, and answer.

“Where the hell you at?” the voice starts in.

“Tony … Hey.”

“Called your house yesterday to see if you wanted to play some golf. Jorge was up. Could’ve had us a game.”

“I’m in Connecticut.”

“Still? When you coming back?”

“Don’t know yet.”

“How’s your kid doing, anyway?”

I’m standing by the bathroom window. Initially the heat from my shower left the panes steamed white, but while I’ve been talking to Tony the thin, obscuring film has evaporated off the glass, providing a clear view down to the driveway, where a pale-blue Honda minivan has just pulled in. The driver’s door opens and a balding, gangly man in a seersucker sport coat and chinos gets out, pausing to tug his yellow socks taut over his asparagus calves.

“Christ. It’s fucking Norris.”

“Who?”

“My ex’s ex.”

“That’s you,” Tony points out.

“Not me, the other guy. He sells insurance.”

“Yeah? His rates any good?”

“Tony, look, I gotta go.”

“Monday back at the store, right?”

“If I can.”

“Monday!”

I click off. The water has dried on my body, leaving behind an invisible chill. Norris is in the house: I can sense his insinuating, low-wattage ambience like a cheap scented candle. I open the bathroom door and hear Ruth’s voice drifting up the stairs, telling him that Sam’s gone out for the day but she’ll be sure to let him know about the visit.

I tiptoe out to the top of the staircase to hear their conversation better.

“I bet you didn’t even give him my message.”

“I told him you wanted to see him,” Ruth replies calmly. “I gave him your new number.”

“Did he say he’d call me?”

“No.”

“I’ve got something important to tell him.”

“What is it?”

“I’d rather tell him myself, if you don’t mind.”

Creeping on the balls of my feet, I descend a few steps, bending low enough to be able to safely observe the situation through the scrim of the upper balusters.

Down in the front hall, I’m satisfied to see that Norris has managed to get only one leg inside the house. Ruth, looking pretty and firm in a plain navy shift dress, stands before him with her arms crossed over her chest—a Pop Warner blocking position that I remember well from the days of our bliss.

Norris gives a loud, emotional sniff. “Wanda and I are getting married.”

“So I’ve heard.” Ruth’s tone is matter-of-fact. “Congratulations, Norris. I’m happy for you.”

“Thank you.” He can’t hide the disappointment on his face. “I’d like Sam to be in the wedding.”

Ruth studies him.

“Having him there would feel right,” Norris adds.

My lower back’s aching from crouching so low. Aiming for a more
comfortable vantage point, I take another step down. My foot lands on a loose board, the wood lets out a loud crack under my weight—and I watch Norris’s head quick-pivot in my direction and his mouth pop open like a human PEZ dispenser.

Ruth is gawking at me, too, and not in an admiring way. “Jesus, Dwight. Get some clothes on, will you?”

I rise to my full height and come down a few more steps.

“Norris,” I greet him.

Mortally dumbfounded, he looks at Ruth, whose response is to rub a hand over her face and contemplate the floor, disowning both of us. This goes on for a while, till Norris clears his throat and rallies.

“Dwight … Well, this is a surprise.”

“I’m here to see my son,” I say, a little defensively.

“You mean Sam?”

“That’s right, Norris. My son.”

“That’s interesting, Dwight. I mean I have to say, it’s been a while, hasn’t it?”

“You know it has. And you know why, too.”

“I do know, Dwight, I do,” Norris says amiably. “Or at least part of it. I guess what I’m a little confused about—forgive me for prying—is why a visit now. All of a sudden, I mean, after a whole decade without so much as a stopover.”

“He needs me.”

“Needs you. Hmm.” Norris’s mouth draws a line harder than I thought possible in him, and he takes another step into the house. “Okay, I guess we can have a gentleman’s agreement on that one. But just tell me this, Dwight, while we’re at it: Where’ve you been when Sam really needed a father? Where’ve you been all these years, Dwight? That’s kind of the million-dollar question, wouldn’t you say?”

I stand looking at him. The chill that briefly came over me upstairs, then abated while I was watching and lazily mocking him in my thoughts, now returns in force: I almost shiver.

But it’s nothing, just myself.

Norris, meanwhile, seems to loom more manly and resolute in the doorway of the house he was so unceremoniously kicked out of not so long ago; he appears, for maybe the first time in his personal history, like a man in sober possession of himself. All his life his goofy bonhomie and ineffectual waffling have been his hallmark and chrysalis, but that’s visibly gone now. It’s as if, somehow, the cumulative personal failings of our broken little circle—the countless ways, independently and together, that we’re doomed to continue to get it wrong—have finally killed off the innocent in him.

I listen to him drive away. Then I sit down on the stairs where I am. Hard thoughts have sprung upon me, and questions I can’t answer.

RUTH

S
HE FEELS ALMOST PROUD
of Norris for his little speech—and, of course, is relieved that he’s gone.

Turning, she finds Dwight sitting on the stairs. With his little towel skirt, his big shamed head and primitive naked chest, he might be the deposed king of some Pacific atoll. But the picture doesn’t incite or amuse her as it might once have. Actually, he has his face in his hands and looks rather sad.

Not her problem, she tells herself firmly, deciding to go to her room. She’ll pass the time as calmly as possible until Sam’s return from the hospital. Confirmation is what she needs, as soon as possible, and about twenty fingers and toes to cross while she’s waiting. She doesn’t have time to worry about Dwight. She walks toward the stairs.

“Excuse me.”

She attempts to step around him. He makes no effort to move, however, his wide body blocking her path. Inadvertently, her right leg bumps his right shoulder. Which she should ignore, obviously, just continue on as if nothing’s happened.…

But for some reason—number one on the List of Inexplicables—she stops and meets his gaze.

Meanwhile, his bare shoulder, still damp from the shower, as though guided by its own circuitry, has coerced the hem of her dress from her knee up to the middle of her thigh. She can’t fathom whether the sudden heat she feels at the point of contact is coming from his skin or hers; only that, after so many years, it shocks her down to her feet, robbing her of the power to keep climbing. The
one thing she can think to do is remain where she is, leaning into their combined heat with everything she has, trying, in fact, to deepen the seal between them and create more heat, this red flame sparked out of nothing, out of two inanimate nodes, cool and harmless on their own but incendiary when pressed together.

“What do you think you’re doing?” she breathes, as though insulted.

His eyes, for the first time in all the years she’s known him, appear boyishly stunned.

Not me
, they say.
You
.

She knows this is so, but has no wish to stop herself. Her hand reaches out and grips the back of his neck. Then she leans down and kisses him hard on the mouth.

DWIGHT

S
HE UNSTRADDLES ME
. I can smell the sex we’ve just had, and under it the softer, less complicated lavender water she’s wearing, now transferred to me. Her rumpled dress is hiked up to her waist and she’s tugging at the hem to try to cover herself. Already not looking at me, her eyes darting around the room.

“Try the stairs,” I suggest, meaning her underwear, which I can tell she’s hunting for. I make an effort to keep my voice unassuming, just the helpful facts. But this does not seem to be what comes out. She frowns, her gaze suddenly stunned with regret, and slips out of the bedroom.

When she returns a few minutes later, her dress smoothed back down to her knees, she’s apparently made the decision to meet my eye in the manner of kindergarten teachers and white-collar prisoners. The hitch in the plan is that I’m still lying naked in her bed, half covered by the sheet.

“I have no idea how that just happened,” she begins in a voice of assertive calm. “And neither do you.”

“I think you mean why,” I reply with a lightness I don’t feel. “The how part would seem pretty cut-and-dried.”

“Is that supposed to be funny? That wasn’t us, Dwight. It was two other people. And if you try to tell me it was us I’ll have to deny it to your face.”

“It was me,” I say simply.

Ruth stares at me. “It was a mistake, obviously. One of those kamikaze things people do during wars just to prove they’re alive.”

“We’re alive, all right. I can verify that. But there’s also no law that
says we’ve got to talk about any of it. We could just go on with the day and see how it feels later. That’s my recommendation.”

“Your life philosophy in a nutshell.”

“If you think it’ll make you feel better to paint a target on my chest, go ahead. Fire away.”

She falls silent. Shaking her head to herself like an explorer who, after years of hacking through malaria-infested jungle and scaling craggy peaks, has suddenly discovered that the New World is really just the Old World in new clothes (or no clothes at all).

Then she comes closer. I watch her approach. She lies down next to me on the bed, dressed in her clothes, on top of the sheet, and after a while she takes my hand where it rests between us and holds it in both of hers.

“I won’t say I’ve missed you, because technically it’s not true. But I guess this feels okay. For today.”

She lays her head on my chest, and I feel the weight of her drifting down into me, becoming my weight; until, finally, I begin to float.

She is gone when I wake. The bed empty even with me in it, the room. I call her name, but there’s no answer. Naked, I go down to the den and put on some clothes. Then, needing to occupy myself, I take the stairs to the basement.

Down there, a lifetime earlier, I built a home workshop fitted out with a bench-top table saw with a ten-inch carbide-tipped blade, a professional power sander, and a double-tined wall rack full of Craftsman tools to make your mouth water. I put together the setup on weekend days over the course of months. It was expensive and time-consuming, my hobby and my goal. And then it was finished, and I used it at most a dozen times, all except once for meaningless things, tiny handyman jobs, none of the big artisanal projects I thought I’d attempt—no hand-turned tables or toboggans or birch-bark canoes made the old Indian way, nothing that would ever last
in the world or in memory. And then my habitation in this house came to a premature, though deserved, end.