Van Gogh's Room at Arles (3 page)

It was expensive. Schiff said as much.

“Is it?” Bill said. “Do you have a burglar-alarm system in your house there, Professor?”

“No.”

“Sure,” Bill said, “and if that’s what you have to pay to see to it your hi-fi ain’t stolen or they don’t clear out your spoons, isn’t your very life worth a few dollars more to you than just making sure they don’t get your tablecloth?”

“I said I
don’t
have a burglar-alarm system,” Schiff said.

“Whether you do or you don’t,” the salesman said. “It’s the same principle.”

On condition that all of it could be put in that day he ended up picking one of the S.O.S. Corporation’s most all- inclusive plans. He got a bit of a break on the package.

“You won’t be sorry,” Bill told him sincerely. “They dealt you a rotten hand. In my business I see it all the time, and I agree, it’s a little expensive, but you’ll see, it’s worth it. Even if you never have to use us, and I hope you don’t, it’s worth it. The sense of security alone. It’s worth it all right. Oh, while I still have you on the phone, is there something else you want to ask, can you think of anything you’d like to know?”

Schiff figured the man was talking about credit arrangements, but he didn’t care about credit arrangements. It was expensive, more expensive than Schiff would ever have thought, but not
that
expensive. If the bitch hadn’t cleaned out his accounts—something he’d have to check—he could afford it. But there
was
something else. Schiff brought it up reluctantly.

“Would I have to shout?” he asked. “On the TV, that lady who falls down shouts.”

“Well, you take a nasty spill like that you could just as well be screaming as actually shouting.”

“I think she’s shouting,” Schiff said. “She’s pretty far from the phone, all the way across the room. It sounds to me like she’s shouting.”

“Well,” Bill said gently, “shouting, screaming. That’s just an example of truth in advertising.” And Schiff knew what Bill was going to tell him next. He braced himself for it. And then the salesman said just exactly what Schiff thought he was going to say. “Maybe,” he said, “her phones aren’t sensitive enough, maybe they’re not wired for their fullest range. That’s one of the reasons I want to be on the site, why I don’t like to quote a customer a price over the telephone.”

He has me, thought the political geographer, they dealt me a rotten hand—he’s in the business, he knows—and he has me.

If it wasn’t one thing it was another. Or no, Schiff, remembering his theory of consequences, fallout, the proliferation of litter, corrected. First it was one thing,
then
it was another. Once you put the ball into play there was nothing for it but to chase it. He had to find out about his funds, whether there were enough left to take care of it if S.O.S. insisted on payment for their service up front. (Claire paid the bills, he hadn’t written a check in years. Except for a couple of loose dollars—it was awkward for him to get to his billfold, finger credit cards from a wallet or handle money—for a coffee and sweet roll when he went to school, he didn’t even carry cash anymore. Even in restaurants Claire paid the check, figured the tip, signed the credit-card slip. His disease had turned him into some sort of helpless, old-timey widow, some nice, pre-lib, immigrant lady.) He knew the names of the three banks with which they dealt, but wasn’t entirely certain which one they used for checking, which handled their trust fund, which was the one they kept their money-market account. (There was even a small teacher’s credit-union account they’d had to open when the interest rates were so high on certificates of deposit a few years back and they took a loan out on an automobile Claire didn’t think they should pay for outright.)

Information gave him the bank’s number, but the bank— they might have been suspicious of his vagueness when he couldn’t tell them what kind of account he was asking about—wouldn’t tell him a thing without an account number.

“Jesus,” he said, “I’m disabled, I’d have to go downstairs for that. My wife usually takes care of the money. Normally I wouldn’t even be bothering you with something like this, but she walked out on me today. Just left me flat.”

“I don’t like it,” the bank said, “when people take the name of the Lord in vain.”

He knew where to find the stuff, in the top drawer of a high, narrow cabinet in the front hall—for reasons neither could remember they called it “the tchtchk”—the closest thing they had in the house to an antique, and except for the fact that two of its elaborate brass handles were missing it might have been valuable. The only thing was, getting there would not be half the fun. Even with the Stair-Glide Claire had to help him. Always she had to swivel and lock the seat, folded upright like a seat in a movie theater, into position for him at the top of the stairs. On days he was weak she had to lift Schiff’s feet onto the little ledge—less long than his shoes—and pull down its movable arms held high in the air like a victim’s in a stickup. Even on days he was strong she had to fold and carry his aluminum walker down the stairs for him. The logistics seemed overwhelming. He’d really have to think about this one.

He was in bed. He was lying down. Lying down, sitting, he was any man’s equal. He didn’t know his own strength. Literally. He had no sense of weakness, his disease. He could be in remission. Unless he tried to turn on his side, or raise himself into a sitting position, he felt fit as a fiddle. At rest, even his fingers seemed normal. He could have counted out money or arranged playing cards. Really, the logistics seemed overwhelming. He was as reluctant to move as a man in a mine field. Inertia had become almost a part of his disease, almost a part of his character. His character, Schiff thought, had become almost a part of his disease. A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do, he thought, and heaved himself upright. So far, so good. Not bad, he thought, and pushed himself up off the bed and, preparing to move, leaned into his walker. Not bad, he thought again, pleased with the relative crispness of his steps, but soon his energy began to flag. By the time he’d taken the thirteen or so steps to the Stair-Glide (the twenty-six or so steps, actually, since his movement on the walker could be broken down—to keep his mind occupied, he really
did
break it down—this way: push, step, pull; push, step, pull, each forward step with his right leg accompanied by dragging the left one up alongside it,
almost
alongside it. He felt like someone with a gaping hole in his hull). Push, step, rest, pull, he was going now; then push, rest, step, rest,
pull. Rest!
He lived in slow motion, like someone bathed in strobe light or time-lapse photography. He could have been the subject of time- motion studies.

In repose, folded out of the way against the wall, the Stair-Glide looked like a torso on a target on a rifle range. Gasping, Schiff fumbled with the lever that swiveled it into position and, almost losing his balance as he took a hand off the walker, had practically to swipe at its shallow little theater seat to get it down. With difficulty he managed to lower the chair’s arms and wrap them about himself—there was a sort of elbow on each arm that loosely encircled his body and was supposed to keep him from falling too far forward—and lower the tiny footrest. (They design this shit for kids, Schiff thought. They think of us as a bunch of Tiny Tims.) He didn’t know what to do, whether to pull his feet up on the footrest and then try to collapse the walker, or to collapse the walker and then worry about getting his feet up. (They’re right, he thought. We
are
kids. We need nursemaids. Or wives. Boy, he thought angrily, her sense of timing. Her world-class, son-of-a-bitch sense of timing. Briefly, it occurred to him that he might be better off homeless, find himself a nutso, broken-down bag lady with whom he could bond and who would take care of him, or, if it was still too soon for him to make a commitment, get involved, or even too early for him to start dating again, some streetsmart, knowledgeable old wino with a feel for the soup kitchens, the ground-floor, handicap-friendly shelters. He had money. Surely she’d left
something
for him, though even if she hadn’t there was the house. He could sell it, split the proceeds with her, and have enough left over to pay the wino or bag lady for their trouble. What could it cost him—— ten bucks a day, fifteen? Hell, if he didn’t save almost that much on the calls he made to Information, he saved almost
almost
that much. I was already crippled, Schiff thought, now I’m crazy, too.) It was a dilemma, a whaddayacallit, Hobson’s choice. This ain’t going to happen, he told himself. If I bring my feet up and fold the walker, my feet will slide off the footrest and I’ll never get them back on it again. If I fold the walker and hold it I won’t have the use of my hands to lift up my feet. Then, out of the blue, it came to him. He raised his feet onto the footrest and moved the chair into its glide mode. He leaned over and picked up the still uncollapsed walker. He didn’t even
try
to fold it. With his arms on the armrests and the heel of his hand pressed against the button that made the Stair-Glide go, he raised the lightweight aluminum walker around his body and up about level with the top of his head and, to all intents and purposes, proceeded to
wear
it downstairs!

By the time he’d made it the eight steps to the landing— his hand kept slipping off the button and stopping the chair—a second walker—one he could keep permanently set up at the bottom of the stairs—had gone on his wish list. When the Stair-Glide slowly started its turn into the second flight—he’d timed it once, it took exactly one minute to do the trip—the telephone began to ring. He knew it would stop ringing before he could get to it. I’m in farce, he thought. I take to farce the way ducks take to water. But, even in farce, Schiff was a hopeful man—a man, that is, obsessed with solutions, even though he tried always to live by the cripple’s code with all its concomitant notions about the exponentiality of litter and his grand ideas about every solved problem creating a new one. Now, for example, he had still more items for his wish list. He could leave cordless phones all over the house, in every out-of-the-way place he was likely to be when a phone started to ring, by the shelf where the toilet paper was kept, along the tops of tables, between the cushions of the sofa, in the gap between his pants pocket and the side of a chair, beside potted plants on windowsills—— in each inconvenient closet, pantry, alcove, and cuddy, adjunct to all the complicated, nesty network of random space.

The minute was up. He was at the bottom of the stairs. He disrobed himself of the walker and set it down, aware at once (by the relief he felt, that suffused him like a kind of pleasure) of how rough it could be, how heavy it became if one wasn’t up to the burdens of aluminum. The burdens of aluminum. And, still seated in the Stair-Glide, already accustomed to his relief, no longer surprised by the return of his off-again, on-again energies, restored—so long as he remained seated—to health, which after the ordeal of the stairs he intended to savor a while longer, not even tempted by the telephone which he suddenly realized had never stopped ringing. It’s Claire, he thought. Only Claire knew he was alone in the house, how long it took him to get to a phone. Then he thought, No, that’s not true, plenty of people know, Claire’s driver, even the dispatcher at the taxicab company, the agents at the airlines, the woman at the bank, friends to whom he’d spilled the beans, Harry in Portland, Bill at S.O.S. Even, when it came right down, Information. God, he hoped it wasn’t Information. Then he realized he was wrong about that one too. He hoped it
was
Information. They could be checking up on him to see if he was still crippled. He wanted Information on his side and decided not to pick up. The phone stopped ringing. Though, actually, Schiff thought once it had stopped, it
could
have been anyone. Thieves checking to see if the house was empty so they could come out and strip it, take what they wanted. If it was thieves, Schiff thought, it was probably a good thing he hadn’t yet had time to do anything about his wish list—— that second walker, the dozen or so extra cordless telephones he’d thought he might buy. And suddenly scratched the cordless telephones and had another, less expensive, even better item for the wish list—— an answering machine. They didn’t have an answering machine—Schiff felt clumsy speaking to them and didn’t like to impose on others what he hated to do himself— but he had to admit, in his new circumstances, under his novel, new dispensation, an answering machine could be just the ticket. It might just fill the bill. The problem with an answering machine as Schiff saw it was the message one left on it to tell callers you couldn’t come to the phone. If the device caught important calls you didn’t want to miss, it was also an open invitation to the very vandals and thieves he was concerned to scare off. “I can’t come to the phone just now, but if you’ll just…” was too ambiguous. It wouldn’t keep the tiger from your gates. A good thief would see right through the jesuiticals of a message like that and interpret it any way he wanted. Schiff wouldn’t take it off the wish list but he’d first have to compose an airtight message for the machine before he ever actually purchased one. An idle mind is
too
the devil’s workshop, Schiff thought, and rose from the chair, plowed—he often thought of his walker as a plow, of his floors and carpets as fields in which he cut stiff furrows— his way to the tchtchk and, quite to his astonishment, found almost at once statements from the banks with their account numbers on them. These he put into his mouth, but he couldn’t go up just yet, couldn’t yet face the struggle with the walker on the Stair-Glide; he had to rest, build strength, and decided to go into the living room for a while and sit down.

Where he collected his strength and doodled messages in his head for the answering machine.

Hi, he thought, this is Jack Schiff. Sorry to have missed your call, but I’ve stepped out for five minutes to run out to the store for some milk for my coffee. Just leave your et cetera, et cetera, and I’ll get right back to you.

That wasn’t bad, Schiff thought, but what would people who knew him make of it, of his “stepped out” and “run out” locutions? Of the swiftness and fluency of movement—so unlike him—he implied in that “get right back to you” trope? Unless they read it as the code that it was, they would think they’d reached some other Jack Schiff. Also, what if the thieves waited five minutes and called back? Or ten? Or fifteen? Or a whole hour and then heard the same damn message? After they robbed him they’d probably trash the place, maybe even torch it.