The Sweet Hereafter (17 page)

I sat at the kitchen table opposite him, while Dolores took what appeared to be her customary position behind his wheelchair, where she rubbed his shoulders affection lately and now and then stroked his hair back.

It was a brief interview, mainly because I did a lot more talking myself than I normally do. I was still distracted by the business with Zoe. Essentially, I repeated what I had told Dolores outside the church, but said it at least three times, with a slight variation each time, as if I was cross examining myself. I felt slightly out of control.

Abbott mostly gargled and sputtered, interrupting me occasionally with stuff like Blame … creates …

gabble gabble… and Cluck cluck cluck… lives… longer.

.

.

than… spelunk. Which Dolores, with modest downcast eyes and a small knowing smile, translated as Blame creates comprehension and A person’s name lives longer than her lifetime.

Yeah, sure, Dolores. Whatever you say. I merely nodded and continued talking, as if he’d said something I totally agreed with or had asked me to repeat myself. Yackety yak: out of sync, out of character.

Finally, I reached the end of my spiel one more time, and because this time he said nothing, no mysterious oracular pronouncements, just a drooling silence, I was able to stop, and for a few seconds all three of us were silent and apparently thoughtful.

There was a crackling fire in the kitchen wood stove, but that was the only sound. The house was warm and weathertight and smelled good, like baked bread. Most of the furniture was either homemade or yard sale stuff, twenty and thirty years old, repaired over and over with string, wire, and glue, but still sturdy, still serviceable. I waited.

I wanted a cigarette, but it didn’t look as if either of them smoked, especially him, so I just patted the pack in my shirt pocket for comfort.

Then Abbott spoke. He twisted his face around his mouth the best he could and pursed his lips on the left side as though he were sucking a straw and in a loud voice said something like A down … gloobity gear … and day old’ll … find you… innocent… if a brudder.

lands… gloobity first And so on and so forth. I was guessing, but it sounded like the old guy was ready for action. All I could read was his face, however, which was bright and open and smiling as he talked, not angry and vengeful, the way I like it. It was the longest speech he’d made so far, but to tell the truth, I hadn’t the foggiest idea of what words, or even what language, he’d used for making it.

Serbo Croatian, maybe.

Dolores knew, though. She smiled and said to me, You heard what Abbott said?

Yes, I heard. Can you make it exact for me, though?

I think I missed some of it. You know, a word or two.

Certainly. Glad to. What Abbott said was: The true jury of a person’s peers is the people of her town. Only they, the people who have known her all her life, and not twelve strangers, can decide her guilt or innocence. And if Dolores meaning me, of course-if she has committed a crime, then it’s a crime against them, not the state, so they are the ones who must decide her punishment too. What Abbott is saying, mister Stephens, is forget the lawsuit.

That’s what he’s saying.

He is?

Yep.

You’re sure of that?

Yep. I told you he was logical, she declared. He understands things better than most people. He under stands me too.

That right?

Oh, yes. Abbott’s a genius.

A genius, eh? A gibbering fool, is what I thought.

From what I could see and hear, Dolores was the ventriloquist and Abbott was the dummy. And you can’t argue with the ventriloquist about what the dummy really said.

I got up from my chair, lit a cigarette, said my good byes, and I was gone. Not without a certain relief. It surprised me; I don’t usually give up that easily. I guess I had my reasons the Driscolls were too weird to bring into a negligence suit, but they were also too weird to sue, which did not displease me.

The guy Abbott Driscoll, though, he gave me the creeps. Whatever his wife claimed he said or meant to say, I was sure he knew things that neither of us knew and was just playing cat and mouse with us, using his affliction to make us say and do things we might not otherwise say or do, so that we would end up showing him who we really were. Which might have been okay for her presumably, she wanted him to know who she really was, but I didn’t.

The guy would’ve made a hell of a lawyer if he could talk straight.

Well, you win some and you lose some, I said to myself. And this one was probably better off lost early than late. Down the hill and over to the west end of town I went, back to the Bide a Wile to pack.

Halfway down the hill, I passed by the little handmade house in the pines where I’d been told Nichole Burnell lived with her mommy and daddy and two younger brothers and baby sister, and I thought for a second of stopping off there, just to put a scanner on the parents.

But I was in a hurry to get back to the city now, and it was getting late in the day, so I let it go. I was sure I’d be back in a few days and could check them out then. The kid was going to be in the hospital for a long time anyhow. Apparently she was out of immediate danger, but they weren’t allowing her any visitors yet, so I wasn’t worried about the competition.

I pulled into the motel lot, and when I passed through the front office on my way to my room, Wendell stopped me.

Phone message, Mitch, he said, and he handed me a pink slip of paper.

Came in a few minutes ago.

I remember it took me a few seconds to realize that I wasn t reading my secretary’s name and number. It was Zoe, which Wendell had spelled Zooey, and there was a New York number, with the instruction to call back right away. Okay. Will do. I was on automatic pilot now. I knew she’d gone out and managed somehow to get high, swapping services for goods, no doubt, and, thus fortified, was ready to resume the enterprise she had begun earlier.

I went back to my room, sat down on the bed, and dialed. The phone rang only once, and she answered, apparently waiting beside it.

H’lo?

Zoe? That you?

Oh, Dad, hi. Hey, listen, I’m sorry about this morning, I was really bumming, and this damn phone is all fucked up blah blah blah, in a soft, accommodating voice that was all surface, a lid of sweetness and light over a caldron of rage and need.

I waited out the preliminaries, responding feebly but with caution, and in a few minutes we got around to the main event, as I knew we would, brought on by my asking a simple question, just as before. Are you calling me for money, Zoe? I asked.

She inhaled deeply, held her breath for a few seconds, then sighed.

Real Sarah Bernhardt. I’m calling, she said, because I have some news for you. Daddy, I’ve got some big news for you.

News, I said, suddenly fatigued beyond belief.

You don’t want to hear it? I heard the lid on the pot start to wobble and jump.

Yes, sure. Give me your news, Zoe.

You always think you know what I’m going to say, don’t you? You always think you’re two steps ahead of me.

The lawyer.

No, Zoe, I don’t always think that.

‘Well, this time I’m two steps ahead of you!

Tell me your news, Zoe.

Okay. Okay, then. You won’t want to hear this, but I’m gonna say it anyhow. Dig it. I went to sell blood yesterday. That’s how it is.

I’m in fucking New York City, where my father is a hot shit lawyer, and I’m selling my blood for thirty five bucks.

This is not news, Zoe.

No, but this is. They wouldn’t take my blood. Long pause. I tested HIV positive.

I said nothing; the blood, hers, surged past my throat into my face. I could hear the heavy slam of my heart. I was swimming in blood.

You know what that means, Daddy? Do you? Does it register?

Yes.

AIDS, Daddy.

Yes.

‘Welcome to hard times, Daddy.

Yes, that’s one way of saying it.

Isn’t that a kick, Daddy?

Oh, Lord, I said. ‘What do you want me to do, Zoe?

‘What do I want you to do? She practically shrieked it. Then she laughed, a long high pitched cackle, like an old madwoman, a witch on the heath.

I’ll do whatever you want, Zoe.

Good. That’s really good of you. I was hoping you’d say that. I really was. She laughed again, girlishly this time, a child who had tricked her grumpy old dad. Money, she said. I want money.

‘What for?

She laughed again. You can’t ask me that. Not any more. You asked me what I wanted. Not what I wanted it for. I want money.

Suddenly, I was the man I had been twenty years earlier with the knife hidden in my hand, my child in my lap.

All right, I said. Fine. I’ll give you money. For whatever purpose.

I was the calm easy daddy singing our favorite song. I’ve got sixpence, jolly jolly sixpence, I’ve got six pence, to last me all my life.

I’ll come back down to the city this afternoon, I assured her, and I’ll give you as much money as you need.

Want!

Yes, want.

We were both silent then.

I can hear you breathing, Daddy, she said.

Yes. I can hear you breathing too. I’ve got sixpence to spend, and sixpence to lend, and sixpence to take home to my wife, poor wife.

I’ll come to your apartment, she said. Tonight.

What time will you be there?

Oh, seven or eight, maybe sooner. It’s about six hours’ drive from here. I’ll leave here today, as soon as possible. How much… how much money do you want, Zoe?

Oh, let’s see. Give me a thousand bucks. For now.

For now.

That’s all I’ve got, Daddy. All I’ve got is now. Re member? AIDS, Daddy.

All right, I said. I almost smiled agreeably into the phone. I’ll meet you at my place, and we’ll talk, won’t we?

Yes. We’ll talk. So long as you have the money.

Otherwise, I’m out of there, Pops.

Do you have the test? The blood test?

You don’t believe me! she shrieked. I get it you don’t believe me, do you?

Yes. Yes, I do believe you. I thought, maybe, I thought I could get you to take another test. With a regular doctor, in case the first one was wrong.

You don’t believe me. She laughed. I like it even better that way.

It’s better you don’t believe me but have to act like you do.

I do believe you, Zoe. You say you have AIDS, goddammit! know what that means. Let me, for Christ’s sake, be your father!

She began to cry then, which didn’t surprise me. And so did I. Or at least I sounded, to her and to me as well, as if I was crying. I was not, however; I was fingering the knife blade, the sting its sharpness with my thumb.

I love you, Daddy. Oh, God, I’m scared, she sobbed.

I love you too. I’ll be there soon, and I’ll take care of you, Zoe.

No matter what happens, I’ll take care of you.

I felt incredibly powerful at that moment, as if I had been waiting for the moment for years.

We finally hung up, and I quickly packed my bag and put my room in order. Zoe was right, of course. I did not believe her. I did not disbelieve her, either. In that way, this call was like a thousand others. There was one important difference, however. Until this moment, I had for years been tied to the ground, helpless and enraged by my own inability to choose between belief and disbelief. That first task, to eliminate one or the other to free one limb so as to untie the other had until now been denied me; because I loved her. Oh yes, I loved my daughter. And because I loved her, I could not know the truth and then act accordingly. Now, for the first time in all those years, I was in a position to know the truth and then to act.

Out of desperation, Zoe had freed me from love. Whether she had AIDS or was lying to me, I would soon know. Either way, I was free.

She’d played her final card with me; she could no longer keep me from being who I am. Mitchell Stephens, Esquire.

157 he mind is kind, doctor Robeson told me, touching my forehead with his soft pink cool fingertips, which I couldn’t move away from, so I just glared up at him.

I’m lucky, they all say, because I can’t remember the accident. Lucky that it’s like a door between rooms, and there was one room on the far side, and that room I remember fine, and another on the near side, and I remember it too.

I’m still in it. But I don’t have any memory of passing through, I don’t remember the accident, and that’s counted lucky by everyone.

Don’t even try to remember, Daddy said, and got up from his chair by the window and looked out at the hospital parking lot. I think it was snowing out. He was probably worried about the drive home.

Mom, seated in a chair next to the bed, kept patting the back of my hand and not looking at me and said, You just think about getting well, Nichole, that’s all.

By then I knew I was as well as I would ever be again, and doctor Robeson had told me that just to stay like this I would have to work very hard. So shut up, Mom, go to hell.

To live like a slug, I was going to have to work like someone trying to become an Olympic ski jumper. To feed myself, to go to the bathroom, to bathe, to get in and out of bed, to put my clothes on and take them off, to change channels on the TV or do schoolwork for me to do these things as well as a three year old, I’d have to work out for years, maybe the rest of my life, in a room with pads on the floor and walls to keep my bones from breaking when I fell off the parallel bars or one of the shiny new exercise machines.

Anyhow, this was the room I woke up in after the accident, a hospital room, a weepy Mom and embarrassed distracted Daddy room, a doctor and nurse room, a room with a physical therapist who yells at you for your own good and another guy who’s supposed to massage you, but I wouldn’t let him, so they finally got a woman to do it. One room led into the next, but they were all the same. Even when I finally went home to my own room.

Daddy drove, with me in front next to him, and Mom and my new wheelchair, folded up beside her, in the back.

It was spring already, late April, with only patches of snow left in the woods and on the mountains, a few old dry dirt covered mounds along the sides of the road and at the edges of parking lots. No leaves on the trees yet, but you could see a light green haze and in some places a reddish glow over the branches where the buds were coming. At the edge of town, the fairgrounds was mostly under water and mud, but here and there in the field in front of the grandstand the snow melt had begun to recede, and yellow wet chunks of old dead grass had appeared.