Patricia Gaffney (5 page)

I
t was Wolfie, the boy from the next block, who pointed out to Andrew that his shoes didn’t match. “Yo,” Wolfie greeted him on a frosty Thursday morning as Andrew was unlocking his car, preparing to drive to school. “Whassup with your shoes, man. Where your ol’ lady at? She let you go out like that?”

The incident unnerved him, especially since it was the kind of thing much more likely to happen to his old lady than to him. He went back in the house and changed his shoes—one dark-brown brogan in place of one black one; not that alarming; could happen to anyone—and went on to work.

Then he forgot about a history department meeting. Tim Meese stuck his head in the door to his office. “Where were you?” Andrew all but slapped his forehead. “I forgot!” Tim was as amazed as he was. Faculty meetings were skull-crushingly boring and frustrating wastes of time, but Andrew never missed them, at least not by accident.

A little later, Mrs. Melman, his next-door neighbor, called to say that the key wasn’t in the mailbox, so she couldn’t get in the house to let Hobbes out, a favor she’d been doing for him since Dash left on the days when he had a late class. The key, the key…it took him too long to remember: It must be in the pocket of his sweatpants, where he must’ve slipped it instead of in the mailbox after his morning jog. More absentmindedness, but still, nothing to worry about. Just because his father was going senile didn’t mean he was.

Then, proving things could happen in fours in one day as easily as threes, his car sputtered out of gas at a red light on Sixteenth Street. Evening rush hour; honking horns; the humiliating push from good Samaritans; a ten-block walk, round-trip, for gas in a freezing wind.
What the hell?
The last time he ran out of gas he was sixteen years old.

Unbelievably, Wolfie was loitering in front of the house when he got home. He was bouncing the same basketball he’d been bouncing this morning, but he couldn’t have been there all day; he had on different clothes, a hooded sweatshirt instead of a Windbreaker and stocking cap.

“Aren’t you freezing?” Andrew asked.

“No.” His full name was Wolfgang Coleman. He was eight years old and small for his age, almost frail; when he grinned, his permanent teeth looked too big for his face. “So, man, where your ol’ lady at?”

He’d dodged the question this morning. Wolfie was Dash’s little pal more than he was Andrew’s; small children made him uncomfortable. “She went on a trip,” he said, turning his back on a shock of cold wind whipping up the sidewalk.

“A
trip.
”

“Yes, a trip.”

“She be back?”

“Oh, yes.”

Wolfie’s large eyes gleamed with skepticism. “My ol’ man went on a trip.” He waited, palming the huge-looking basketball in his wiry palm until Andrew said, “Really?” “Yeah. Only he
never
come back.”

He didn’t care for the implication. They stared at each other. “Do you want to come in?” Andrew asked finally, more out of exasperation than hospitality.

“Don’t got time. You need your walk shoveled?”

“Now?” He glanced at the stretch of clear, windswept walkway to his front porch. “No, thank you.”

“Tomorrow?”

“If it snows, if it sticks—very well, tomorrow.”

Wolfie raised his free hand. It took Andrew that telltale, old-white-guy second to realize it was for a high five, and by the time he did, Wolfie had spun around and started for the corner. His basketball made tinny, echoey thuds on the sidewalk in the icy quiet.

I’m falling apart.
Andrew studied his face in the black window of the microwave while his Hungry-Man Steakhouse frozen dinner circled inside. He looked gaunt, beaky, a raptor in glasses. Were the whites of his eyes jaundiced? He squinted, going closer, closer—then jerked back. Now they claimed electromagnetic emanations from microwaves were harmless, but not long ago they were saying just the opposite.

The problem was, he wasn’t thinking about what he was doing while he was doing it. He wasn’t
awake.
Right now, eating his dinner on a stool at the kitchen counter, he couldn’t remember what he’d had for breakfast this morning, or lunch for that matter, or precisely how he’d passed the time between classes this afternoon. Yesterday was mostly a blur, too, except for the fifteen minutes he’d spent talking on the phone to Chloe. How to account for these lapses? Dash was the daydreamer, not him. It had something to do with time, which was passing in a peculiar, unfamiliar way, going by in a rush and yet taking forever; no wonder he couldn’t keep track of it.

And no wonder he’d missed the department meeting this morning—it just occurred to him: He’d forgotten to make his list last night. What would Dash say about that? She thought his list making was obsessive-compulsive behavior, a “fetish,” she once called it. Nothing of the kind, merely a tool for time management. He liked making his at night in bed, last thing before going to sleep. Last night he’d forgotten, and look what happened.

What Dash failed to appreciate was what a leap of faith list making was, touching, really, and how many positive things it suggested about a man’s certainty in the future. Things, frankly, Andrew wasn’t altogether sure he believed in, given his family health history. And yet—the lists didn’t lie. If he could jot down “$$ to Chloe” or “drugsto.,” think how sanguine his expectations must be of indefinite check writing and Pepto-Bismol dosing. He would tell Dash that the next time she called him a pessimist. “How could I be,” he’d say. “I make lists.”

He put his empty plate in the trash and washed his fork. Start to finish, dinner had taken nine minutes, including cooking it. For the first few days after she left, he’d sat in his usual place at the dining-room table, enjoying his hot dog or bowl of soup with a cloth napkin, sometimes a small glass of wine. But over time that got to be too much trouble, or else more noticeably pathetic, and now he ate in the kitchen, frequently standing up.

Not that she was a slob, not precisely, but one unexpected side effect of Dash’s absence was a new cleanliness, he might even say radiance, around the house. He liked to stand in the kitchen door and survey the shiny, uncluttered surfaces of counter and stove, the crumbless kitchen table and footprintless floor, Hobbes’s clean, sweet-smelling blanket jumble beside the refrigerator. Everything remained just as he left it, the dish towel folded lengthwise in thirds over the swing-out holder by the sink, dishes not languishing in the drainer but put away, the sink empty and bright. Each evening he would perfect the space a little more, clean a new cabinet, rearrange the spice rack, but he’d finally run out of improvements. Tonight everything was just right.

He made a cup of tea, disposed of the bag, added a teaspoon of sugar, wiped the stove with a clean sponge, and carried his mug out to the living room.

Here the differences were subtler but even more satisfying. At last, all of Dash’s photographs on the walls were at precise angles to one another, and they stayed that way because as soon as one went out of alignment he righted it. He could sit in his easy chair and look around at perfect symmetry: no small pleasure. He knew where the newspaper was, and he knew it was all there, his wife hadn’t taken the Style section upstairs or into the bathroom and abandoned it. The oak doors to the “entertainment center” stayed closed unless he was actually watching television, a rare occurrence, and the CDs were no longer scattered all over the credenza but neatly stacked in the holder and back in alphabetical order by music genre. He even knew where the remote was.

Hobbes, who’d followed him in from the kitchen, wobbled blindly in the middle of the room, waiting for him to settle. When he did, the dog collapsed at his feet with a tragic sigh and fell back to sleep.

Andrew rested his mug of tea on the scarred arm of the leather chair that had once belonged to his grandfather, Edward Bateman Sr. Andrew had inherited it via his father, Edward Jr., who, instead of keeping it for himself, had given it to twenty-year-old Andrew as a bribe. As if putting his backside in the wide, creaky, redolent chair would make the profession of law seep into him osmotically, would make the desire to be anything but an attorney in the Bateman family firm miraculously, physiologically disappear. It hadn’t worked out that way, and yet, over the years, Andrew had never associated the chair with winning, never taken any gloating pleasure in the fact that he hadn’t had to pay for it in the way his father had wanted. Just the opposite, actually. As comfortable as it was, the chair always seemed to exude faint reproach.
Failure
, the cushions sighed in a disappointed, paternal whisper. His uneasy chair.

He looked up from a student essay he was grading on the Second Continental Congress, recognizing the piece he’d unthinkingly put on the stereo. Mozart, the D-minor piano concerto. He dropped his head back, enjoying the sinister opening. Dash could listen peacefully to the whole first movement, not even wagging her head in time, and during the romanza she stayed relatively subdued. But the moment she heard the first five-note trill of the rondo, she would leap to her feet and start conducting. Move aside, Igor Markevitch. She turned the piece into a ballet with her wide, theatrical arm sweeps, putting her whole body into it, her fingers mimicking the piano notes, and her face—what tragic drama in the tightly shut eyes, the painfully furrowed brow, what
sympathy.
It was a bit like watching a silent film star conducting an orchestra, every emotion exaggerated, telegraphed.

He used to enjoy the concerto in a modest way, a bit of a guilty pleasure, because compared to, say, the C minor, it was more facile (as Dash would say, “It’s catchier”). But now he couldn’t listen to it without seeing her conducting it. In a way, she’d ruined it for him, turned it into dance instead of music, an opéra bouffe. But in another way, he liked the D-minor concerto much better than he used to. It happened all the time: Dash took over one of his simple, straightforward pleasures and made it at once more enjoyable and less what it was in the beginning. Less his.

T
he next day, he put on shoes that matched, made certain Mrs. Melman’s key was in the mailbox, drove to work without mishap, and arrived at a curriculum meeting with time to spare. It was all in the list.

The last item on today’s list was “Write Chloe.” He had a few minutes before class—he’d send her a quick e-mail.

As usual, his computer mailbox contained a post from Dash, one of her mass mailings to every person in her address book. This one was about breast cancer awareness, but it could’ve been saving gorillas, voting for the feminist candidate, sending money to this or that charity or cause; or worse, some feel-good joke complete with music and graphics that took eons to download. None of her friends complained, though. It was so Dash, they said, exuberant, generous, activist. Exasperating.

Dear Chloe: Trust check arrived and you are not spending it all in one place, ha-ha. You’re right, a credit card would probably be handier for you, simpler for me. Still see no need to rush into it, however. Would only note, you turn 19 in two months. Tangible proof of our faith in your fiduciary trustworthiness may then be forthcoming.

He suspected Chloe found his notes ponderous and hard to wade through, eminently skimmable, probably because of sentences like that. He meant them humorously, but to be sure she took them that way he would have to add more “ha-has” or even smiley faces. Unthinkable.

Glad to hear you’re enjoying your independent study break and putting it to good use. You should do even better this term than last, if only because everything’s not brand new anymore. And that’s not pressure! Your mother and I simply could not be prouder of you. You’re handling college the way you’ve handled every other challenge, with confidence, enthusiasm, and good sense. If we’ve set high standards, it’s only because we know you always rise to them.

Nothing much new here. They’re calling for snow again. Wish you were here, we could go sledding in the park.

Rushing—more later. Love always, Dad.

His finger hesitated a second before he hit Send. Leaving out the most important thing, that he and Dash weren’t living together, made him uneasy, as if he were telling Chloe a lie. But Dash thought it would be better to keep it between themselves for now, and deep down, he wasn’t sorry. As long as no one knew, it stayed in the realm of the temporary. The not-worth-mentioning.

Dash thought she had a monopoly on missing Chloe. As if that were her exclusive domain, as if maternalism trumped paternalism by definition. He didn’t bother to dispute it; he sensed it gave her a perverse comfort to believe it. But she was mistaken. When he thought of his daughter, he felt a sharp pang of sadness perfectly mixed with delight, the strangest combination; like biting into a delicious piece of fruit with a sour spot, a sudden bitter taste. He missed the sound of Chloe’s voice, he missed her bizarre music playing in her room. The way she slouched in front of her computer, intense as a hawk. Mostly, he missed his last chance to be her father, at least in the old way, the father of a girl. His time was up.

He wished he had a blood pressure monitor here in the office. There was one at home, but why not have two? He put his fourth finger on the inside of his left wrist and counted the beats of his heart to the second hand of his watch. Twenty seconds, twenty-three times three—sixty-nine. Good, but he was sitting calmly in his office in Douglas Hall with nothing scheduled, no meetings or student conferences, nothing remotely stressful in the offing except his Early Republic class, and he looked forward to that.