The Corrections: A Novel (75 page)

Invoking this charm, which was all he had now, the paltry sum of his identity, he stepped through the doorway.

“My word, you’re scratchy and smelly,” Enid said, kissing him. “Now, where’s your suitcase?”

“It’s by the side of a gravel road in western Lithuania.”

“I’m just happy you’re home safely.”

Nowhere in the nation of Lithuania was there a room like the Lambert living room. Only in this hemisphere could carpeting so sumptuously woolen and furniture so big and so well made and so opulently upholstered be found in a room of such plain design and ordinary situation. The light in the wood-framed windows, though gray, had a prairie optimism; there wasn’t a sea within six hundred miles to trouble the atmosphere. And the posture of the older oak trees reaching toward this sky had a jut, a wildness and entitlement, predating permanent settlement; memories of an unfenced world were written in the cursive of their branches.

Chip apprehended it all in a heartbeat. The continent, his homeland. Scattered around the living room were nests of opened presents and little leavings of spent ribbon, wrapping-paper fragments, labels. At the foot of the fireside chair that Alfred always claimed for himself, Denise was kneeling by the largest nest of presents.

“Denise, look who’s here,” Enid said.

As if out of obligation, with downcast eyes, Denise rose and crossed the room. But when she’d put her arms around Chip and he’d squeezed her in return (her height, as always, surprised him), she wouldn’t let go. She
clung
to him—kissed his neck, fastened her eyes on him, and thanked him.

Gary came over and embraced Chip awkwardly, his face averted. “Didn’t think you were going to make it,” he said.

“Neither did I,” Chip said.

“Well!” Alfred said again, gazing at him in wonder.

“Gary has to leave at eleven,” Enid said, “but we can all have breakfast together. You get cleaned up, and Denise and
I will start breakfast. Oh, this is
just
what I wanted,” she said, hurrying to the kitchen. “This is the best Christmas present I’ve ever had!”

Gary turned to Chip with his I’m-a-jerk face. “There you go,” he said. “Best Christmas present she’s ever had.”

“I think she means having all five of us together,” Denise said.

“Well, she’d better enjoy it in a hurry,” Gary said, “because she owes me a discussion and I’m expecting payment.”

Chip, detached from his own body, trailed after it and wondered what it was going to do. He removed an aluminum stool from the downstairs bathroom shower. The blast of water was strong and hot. His impressions were fresh in a way that he would either remember all his life or instantly forget. A brain could absorb only so many impressions before it lost the ability to decode them, to put them in coherent shape and order. His nearly sleepless night on a patch of airport carpeting, for example, was still very much with him and begging to be processed. And now here was a hot shower on Christmas morning. Here were the familiar tan tiles of the stall. The tiles, like every other physical constituent of the house, were suffused with the fact of their ownership by Enid and Alfred, saturated with an aura of belonging to this family. The house felt more like a body—softer, more mortal and organic—than like a building.

Denise’s shampoo had the pleasing, subtle scents of late-model Western capitalism. In the seconds it took Chip to lather his hair, he forgot where he was. Forgot the continent, forgot the year, forgot the time of day, forgot the circumstances. His brain in the shower was piscine or amphibian, registering impressions, reacting to the moment. He wasn’t far from terror. At the same time, he felt OK. He was hungry for breakfast and thirsty, in particular, for coffee.

With a towel around his waist he stopped in the living
room, where Alfred leaped to his feet. The sight of Alfred’s suddenly aged face, its disintegration-in-progress, its rednesses and asymmetries, cut Chip like a bullwhip.

“Well!” Alfred said. “That was quick.”

“Can I borrow some clothes of yours?”

“I will leave that to your judgment.”

Upstairs in his father’s closet the ancient shaving kits, shoehorns, electric razors, shoe trees, and tie rack were all in their accustomed places. They’d been on duty here each hour of the fifteen hundred days since Chip had last been in this house. For a moment he was angry (how could he not be?) that his parents had never moved anywhere. Had simply stayed here waiting.

He took underwear, socks, wool slacks, a white shirt, and a gray cardigan to the room that he’d shared with Gary in the years between Denise’s arrival in the family and Gary’s departure for college. Gary had an overnight bag open on “his” twin bed and was packing it.

“I don’t know if you noticed,” he said, “but Dad’s in bad shape.”

“No, I noticed.”

Gary put a small box on Chip’s dresser. It was a box of ammunition—twenty-gauge shotgun shells.

“He had these out with the gun in the workshop,” Gary said. “I went down there this morning and I thought, better safe than sorry.”

Chip looked at the box and spoke instinctively. “Isn’t that kind of Dad’s own decision?”

“That’s what I was thinking yesterday,” Gary said. “But if he wants to do it, he’s got other options. It’s supposed to be down near zero tonight. He can go outside with a bottle of whiskey. I don’t want Mom to find him with his head blown off.”

Chip didn’t know what to say. He silently dressed in the old man’s clothes. The shirt and pants were marvelously
clean and fit him better than he would have guessed. He was surprised, when he put the cardigan on, that his hands did not begin to shake, surprised to see such a young face in the mirror.

“So what have you been doing with yourself?” Gary said.

“I’ve been helping a Lithuanian friend of mine defraud Western investors.”

“Jesus, Chip. You don’t want to be doing that.”

Everything else in the world might be strange, but Gary’s condescension galled Chip exactly as it always had.

“From a strictly moral viewpoint,” Chip said, “I have more sympathy for Lithuania than I do for American investors.”

“You want to be a Bolshevik?” Gary said, zipping up his bag. “Fine, be a Bolshevik. Just don’t call
me
when you get arrested.”

“It would never occur to me to call you,” Chip said.

“Are you fellas about ready for breakfast?” Enid sang from halfway up the stairs.

A holiday linen tablecloth was on the dining table. In the center was an arrangement of pinecones, white holly and green holly, red candles, and silver bells. Denise was bringing food out—Texan grapefruit, scrambled eggs, bacon, and a stollen and breads that she’d baked.

Snow cover boosted the strong prairie light.

Per custom, Gary sat alone on one side of the table. On the other side, Denise sat by Enid and Chip by Alfred.

“Merry, merry, merry Christmas!” Enid said, looking each of her children in the eye in turn.

Alfred, head down, was already eating.

Gary also began to eat, rapidly, with a glance at his watch.

Chip didn’t remember the coffee being so drinkable in these parts.

Denise asked him how he’d gotten home. He told her the story, omitting only the armed robbery.

Enid, with a scowl of judgment, was following every move of Gary’s. “Slow
down
,” she said. “You don’t have to leave until eleven.”

“Actually,” Gary said, “I said quarter to eleven. It’s past ten-thirty, and we have some things to discuss.”

“We’re finally all together,” Enid said. “Let’s just relax and enjoy it.”

Gary set his fork down. “
I’ve
been here since Monday, Mother, waiting for us all to be together. Denise has been here since Tuesday morning. It’s not my fault if Chip was too busy defrauding American investors to get here on time.”

“I just explained why I was late,” Chip said. “If you were listening.”

“Well, maybe you should have left a little earlier.”

“What does he mean, defrauding?” Enid said. “I thought you were doing computer work.”

“I’ll explain it to you later, Mom.”

“No,” Gary said. “Explain it to her now.”

“Gary,” Denise said.

“No, sorry,” Gary said, throwing down his napkin like a gauntlet. “I’ve had it with this family! I’m done waiting! I want some answers
now
.”

“I was doing computer work,” Chip said. “But Gary’s right, strictly speaking, the intent was to defraud American investors.”

“I don’t approve of that at all,” Enid said.

“I know you don’t,” Chip said. “Although it’s a little more complicated than you might—”

“
What is so complicated about obeying the law?
”

“Gary, for God’s sake,” Denise said with a sigh. “It’s Christmas?”

“And you’re a thief,” Gary said, wheeling on her.

“
What?
”

“You know what I’m talking about. You sneaked into somebody’s room and you took a thing that didn’t belong—”

“Excuse me,” Denise said hotly, “I
restored
a thing that was stolen from its rightful—”

“Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit!”

“Oh, I’m not sitting here for this,” Enid wailed. “Not on Christmas morning!”

“No, Mother, sorry, you’re not going anywhere,” Gary said. “We’re going to sit here and have our little talk
right
now
.”

Alfred gave Chip a complicit smile and gestured at the others. “You see what I have to put up with?”

Chip arranged his face in a facsimile of comprehension and agreement.

“Chip, how long are you here for?” Gary said.

“Three days.”

“And, Denise, you’re leaving on—”

“Sunday, Gary. I’m leaving on Sunday.”

“So what’s going to happen on Monday, Mom? How are you going to make this house work on Monday?”

“I’ll think about that when Monday comes.”

Alfred, still smiling, asked Chip what Gary was talking about.

“I don’t know, Dad.”

“You really think you’re going to go to Philadelphia?” Gary said. “You think Corecktall’s going to fix all this?”

“No, Gary, I don’t,” Enid said.

Gary didn’t seem to hear her answer. “Dad, here, do me a favor,” he said. “Put your right hand on your left shoulder.”

“Gary, stop it,” Denise said.

Alfred leaned close to Chip and spoke confidentially. “What’s he asking?”

“He wants you to put your right hand on your left shoulder.”

“That’s a lot of nonsense.”

“Dad?” Gary said. “Come on, right hand, left shoulder.”

“
Stop it
,” Denise said.

“Let’s go, Dad. Right hand, left shoulder. Can you do that? You want to show us how you follow simple instructions? Come on!
Right hand. Left shoulder
.’”

Alfred shook his head. “One bedroom and a kitchen is all we need.”

“Al, I don’t
want
one bedroom and a kitchen,” Enid said.

The old man pushed his chair away from the table and turned once more to Chip. He said, “You can see it’s not without its difficulties.”

As he stood up, his leg buckled and he pitched to the floor, dragging his plate and place mat and coffee cup and saucer along with him. The crash might have been the last bar of a symphony. He lay on his side amid the ruins like a wounded gladiator, a fallen horse.

Chip knelt down and helped him into a sitting position while Denise hurried to the kitchen.

“It’s quarter to eleven,” Gary said as if nothing unusual had happened. “Before I leave, here’s a summary. Dad is demented and incontinent. Mom can’t have him in this house without a lot of help, which she says she doesn’t want even if she could afford it. Corecktall is obviously not an option, and so what I want to know is what you’re going to do.
Now
, Mother. I want to know
now
.”

Alfred rested his shaking hands on Chip’s shoulders and gazed in wonder at the room’s furnishings. Despite his agitation, he was smiling.

“My question,” he said. “Is who owns this house? Who takes care of all of this?”

“You own it, Dad.”

Alfred shook his head as if this didn’t square with the facts as he understood them.

Gary was demanding an answer.

“I guess we’ll have to try the drug holiday,” Enid said.

“Fine, try that,” Gary said. “Put him in the hospital, see if
they ever let him out. And while you’re at it, you might take a drug holiday yourself.”

“Gary, she got rid of it,” Denise said from the floor, where she’d knelt with a sponge. “She put it in the Disposall. So just lay off.”

“Well, I hope you learned your lesson there, Mother.”

Chip, in the old man’s clothes, wasn’t able to follow this conversation. His father’s hands were heavy on his shoulders. For the second time in an hour, somebody was
clinging
to him, as if he were a person of substance, as if there were something to him. In fact, there was so little to him that he couldn’t even say whether his sister and his father were mistaken about him. He felt as if his consciousness had been shorn of all identifying marks and transplanted, metem-psychotically, into the body of a steady son, a trustworthy brother …

Gary had dropped into a crouch beside Alfred. “Dad,” he said, “I’m sorry it had to end this way. I love you and I’ll see you again soon.”

“Well. Yurrr vollb. Yeaugh,” Alfred replied. He lowered his head and looked around with rank paranoia.

“And
you
, my feckless sibling.” Gary spread his fingers, clawlike, on top of Chip’s head in what he apparently meant as a gesture of affection. “I’m counting on you to help out here.”

“I’ll do my best,” Chip said with less irony than he’d aimed for.

Gary stood up. “I’m sorry I ruined your breakfast, Mom. But I, for one, feel better for having got this off my chest.”

“Why you couldn’t have waited till after the holiday,” Enid muttered.

Gary kissed her cheek. “Call Hedgpeth tomorrow morning. Then call me and tell me what the plan is. I’m going to monitor this closely.”

It seemed unbelievable to Chip that Gary could simply walk out of the house with Alfred on the floor and Enid’s Christmas breakfast in ruins, but Gary was in his most rational mode, his words had a formal hollowness, his eyes were evasive as he put on his coat and gathered up his bag and Enid’s bag of gifts for Philadelphia, because he was afraid. Chip could see it clearly now, behind the cold front of Gary’s wordless departure: his brother was afraid.