Mercury (10 page)

A
S THE ANNIVERSARY OF
my father's death approached, each day was both itself and the day it had been a year ago. I woke with the same feeling of terror that he might have died in the night, carried the same burden of dread through my appointments and duties. If only I was stronger, or cleverer, or richer, or more eloquent, if only I was a better person, I could save him. The actual anniversary was an abyss. I could not imagine how I would get from the day before to the day after. Then my mother phoned and suggested we go to Gloucester to mark the occasion.

“I thought about Walden,” she said, “but Edward loved the beach, and we'll be closer to Scotland.”

“It's a Tuesday,” I said, as if this were an insuperable objection.

“I already told my assistant I won't be in. Can't Leah take over your appointments?” She had it all planned. The five of us would drive to Gloucester, remember my father on the beach, and have lunch in a local restaurant. I put down the phone, my dread deeper than ever. Later that day in the bathroom mirror, I noticed how the lines on my forehead had begun to mimic my father's.

My mother must have phoned Viv separately. That evening
at supper she announced she'd arranged for the children to have the day off from school. “What shall we do?” she said. “We could bring some of Edward's favorite poems to read? Or put a message in a bottle and throw it out to sea? Or tell stories about him?”

Trina said she would draw a picture of Edward to go in the bottle. Marcus said he'd write something and attach it to a kite. He had heard about some country—Japan? Korea?—where people used kites to send messages to the dead.

I spent several evenings going through family albums, searching for a photograph to put in the bottle. My father's illness, which in life I had often managed to ignore, was in pictures clearly visible. He was always holding on to something—a tree, a wall—or someone—my mother, me. There were even several photos of him at Windy Hill, holding on to a horse. I chose one of him walking in the Adirondacks and slipped it into a bottle along with one of Nabokov's tail feathers.

Tuesday was overcast, miraculously still and a little above freezing. My mother arrived at our house soon after ten. Viv had offered to drive, but as we approached her car, she suddenly exclaimed: she'd forgotten to get gas. Could we take mine? Later I realized she had already begun to keep the gun in the trunk of her car.

We were nearing Gloucester when Trina asked if Edward would be able to hear us.

“I don't think so,” said my mother, “but no one knows for sure. We're honoring his memory.”

“Like Greyfriars Bobby?” Marcus said.

My father had told the children the story of the little dog who, for years, went every day to sit by his master's grave. Viv and I had visited the churchyard when we were in Edinburgh.

Even on the beach there was almost no wind. The sea was a dark green and the sky was like a painting, the gray streaked with yellows and pinks and oranges. It was a perfect day except for Marcus and his kite. We'll take a walk, Viv promised, on the next windy day. We lined up, my mother and I, the children, and then Viv, looking across the ocean to Scotland.

“We're here,” my mother said, “to remember Edward John Stevenson, our beloved Edward, who died a year ago today.” She described how they'd met at university in Edinburgh. How they'd walked around the city, talking about politics. At one point he'd thought of trying to run for Parliament. Then he got a job working for British Rail and fell in love with trains. Life wasn't fair, he used to say, but everyone deserved a good train service. She read a poem he had known by heart: “The Night Train.”

Next Trina read a list of the things she liked about Edward: that he did double knots in his shoelaces, that he called jimmies hundreds and thousands, that he gave her a guinea pig for her fourth birthday, that he talked to Nabokov and tried to answer her knock-knock jokes. Marcus explained about his kite and how it had a private message for Edward. He liked that Edward could imitate all kinds of machines and always came to watch him swim.

Viv described her first meeting with Edward—he had shown her his asparagus beds—and how much he'd enjoyed visiting the stables. While the waves came and went, she read several haiku, some by Basho, some by my father.

“Dad,” said Trina. She tugged my sleeve, and I understood it was my turn to speak.

“Edward—”

I cleared my throat and tried again. “Dad, I don't know what
to say. I remember coming home from school. It was June and you'd been cutting the lawn and everything smelled of grass. Mum was away, and we had supper in the garden. You said we could stay up as long as the swallows were flying. You taught me to be kind and truthful and not to judge other people. You're the person I feel standing behind me—”

I stared at the waves and blinked and stared. Then I raised the book I had brought and read Shakespeare's sonnet: “From you I have been absent in the spring.” Line by line, I thought, I can't continue. Line by line, I did. Line by line, my father drew closer until, by the final couplet, I sensed him standing beside us on the wet sand.

    
Yet seem'd it winter still, and, you away,

    
As with your shadow I with these did play.

My mother had brought a bunch of white roses. She gave each of us some flowers to throw into the waves. I waded out as far as I could in my rubber boots and threw the bottle containing the photograph, the feather, and the message towards Scotland.

I
KNOW NOW THAT DURING
those snowy weeks, when Viv claimed to be so busy at the stables, she was also visiting a shooting range. She used her weekly trips to the riding school in New Hampshire to cover her tracks and to justify the sudden increase in take-out meals, which delighted the children. At the range she found herself in the company of people who regarded a gun as no different from a screwdriver. Live free or die. Scotland was united with England in 1603 and, despite the efforts of Bonnie Prince Charlie (and others), has remained part of that more populous, more prosperous country for four centuries. Perhaps that is why honesty and integrity have always mattered more to me than freedom. Of course there are degrees, but who, after all, is ever free? As a son, a brother, a doctor, a father, a husband, an employee, and an employer, my life has been governed by rules, and mostly for the better. I am glad that someone paves the roads, makes me send my children to school, regulates my business, checks the ingredients in my food, stops my neighbor from burning down my house, sends the fire brigade when they do.

But I am getting ahead of myself. A few days after our visit to Gloucester, Jack phoned to ask if Marcus had swimming practice that afternoon. “I've got cabin fever,” he said. “Can I
come and watch?” I was about to refuse—my day was already complicated—but something in his voice stopped me. Leah took over my last appointment. I whisked Nabokov home, collected the children, and was at Jack's apartment a few minutes early. While he got ready, Marcus and Trina played with his computer, talking nonsense into the microphone and giggling when it appeared on the screen.

“There's a picture of Mercury,” Trina said.

She was pointing to a photograph, one I hadn't seen before, on the wall over Jack's desk. A white horse stood in a field; a man was holding its bridle. “Actually,” Jack said, “that's his mother, Moonshine, with Michael.” Hilary had hung it there, not wanting to see it every day.

So this, I thought, stepping closer, was the architect of all my troubles: a slight man of medium height, wearing a white shirt and jeans. Save for the intensity with which he gazed at the horse, he looked entirely unremarkable.

We dropped Trina off for her violin lesson and drove to the pool. While Marcus headed to the changing rooms, I led the way to the bank of seats, where half a dozen parents were already checking their phones. When we were seated in the front row, Jack said, “Swimming pools are so intense. Shut your eyes.”

I did. Breathing in the warm, muggy chlorinated air, listening to the splashing and the echoing voices, I felt calmer than in days. “Tell me what they're doing,” Jack said. I opened my eyes and described Marcus, his teammates, and their coach, a woman with hair even shorter than Viv's and the endearing habit of clapping her hands and exclaiming, “Good work.” Then I asked if he and Hilary were still going swimming. He had told me they'd started going to the Y together.

“We're not doing anything,” he said. “Hil phoned saying she
wasn't feeling well and then left a message saying she had the flu. Since then I've heard nothing for three days and seven hours.”

“So call her.”

“I have.” He slammed his hand down on the bench. “I called asking how she was feeling. I called asking if there was anything I could do. I called asking if I should get tickets for a concert. In the old days I'd have gone over to her house. When my girlfriend Marie-Claire dumped me, I tore a sink out of the wall.”

I said that flu was very debilitating. “Viv was completely flattened at New Year. I could take you to her house.”

“So could a taxi. If she doesn't want to see me, there's no point. My charging around never did really work. Now I'd just be some blind guy, tripping over chairs.”

His words were so bitter, his expression so bleak, that I turned back to the pool and said they were practicing flip turns. Marcus's was a bit splashy. Jack said he used to do great turns.

“You still could,” I said, “if someone counted down the distance. Did the two of you have a row?”

“The good old British row. Not that I'm aware of. The last time I saw her, we went to the movies and ate Mexican food. I don't think I got salsa on my face. But a dozen things could have happened to make her realize having a blind lover is crazy. That's the trouble with silence. It can mean so many things. An atom bomb might be about to fall. A dog might be taking a crap.”

Beside him I shifted uneasily. “Sorry,” he said. “Rampant self-pity is a drag. People have ditched me before, but I always had anger to fall back on.”

“So why not get angry now?” From the pool came the sound of clapping, followed by “Good work.”

Jack spread his hands. “It was only ever a way to hide from the
pain. Now I can't do that shit anymore. I just have to sit with the pain, and let me tell you, it's torture to feel so fucking helpless.”

I remembered Bonnie in my office, swearing. As if I'd spoken aloud, Jack said, “How's the school dinner lady?” He might have given up on anger, but he had not lost his edge. I said her surgeon had reported that, as I'd suspected, she had had several operations as a child. There was significant scarring, which might compromise the success of her recent operation.

“‘Compromise,'” Jack mimicked. “Is that another word for blindness? Do you plan to tell her?”

I pictured Bonnie, like one of Linnaeus's swallows, blindfolded, wintering beneath the ice. “Should I?” I said.

He asked if there was anything she could do that would make a difference. I said no. Her only hope, like his, lay in research.

“Then I'd say leave her in ignorance. Does she know you have the hots for her?”

“I'm her doctor,” I said stiffly. “We're both married.”

“And I'm a jerk.” He began to describe his latest research. He'd discovered this remarkable and obvious thing: people who are blind from birth have no images in their dreams. “They just have sounds and smells,” he said. “And touch. Whereas people like me keep dreaming in images for a long time. And another interesting fact: the blind dream about transportation four times more often than the sighted.”

Before I could ask if this was true of him, his phone buzzed. His voice rose hopefully as he excused himself, and sank into ordinary politeness: only a student.

On our way home, after we had dropped him off, Trina said, “Jack's sad.”

“Yes, he is,” I said. Marcus was in the backseat, engrossed in his phone.

“Why?” She eyed me gravely.

“It's hard being blind, and sometimes it's harder than others.”

She was silent for a few seconds. Then she announced, “He's like Nabokov. He's lonely.”

During the busyness of homework and supper, I kept thinking about her simple insight: Jack was lonely. Doubly so, in his blindness and his estrangement from Hilary. When the children were in bed, I asked Viv if she'd spoken to Hilary. She said they hadn't talked in nearly a week.

“Maybe you should go by her house,” I said. “She told Jack she wasn't feeling well.”

Viv said she would go tomorrow, and I went to bed, thinking I had done my best to help my friend.

D
AY BY DAY
I
had been teaching myself to usher Bonnie out of my brain whenever she appeared there. Now Jack's questions had undone my lessons. Once again, on the pretext of doctorly interest, I dialed her number. Once again she answered promptly.

“Dr. Stevenson!” She had been about to ring my office. The bandages had been removed and the shadow was gone, but her surgeon said it would be six months before they knew how much vision she would recover. Was there anything to be done about her glasses? she asked. I said we had an opening at three that day. If she took a taxi to the office, I could give her a lift home on my way to pick up Marcus and Trina.

Which was worse, I wonder now: my posing as a Good Samaritan, or my using my children to do so? My offer did not harm them, it did not harm Bonnie, but something I couldn't name was harmed. At the time I gave these subtleties no thought. I went to tell Merrie about the appointment and, wanting to
distract her from the unusual fact of my dealing directly with a patient, asked about her friend, the teacher.

“Oh, it's been a nightmare,” she said. The girl had contradicted herself several times but still clung to her story. “I don't know if Ginny will ever recover.”

I echoed her outrage. All that morning I was especially diligent, and there as my reward, when I came into the waiting room at ten minutes past three, was Bonnie. She was standing beside Nabokov's cage, talking to Merrie.

“What's Nab telling you now?” I said.

Merrie smiled. “He's urging us to lie still and think of England, which, if you don't have a dirty mind, is pretty good advice.”

“I'm not sure I've ever thought of England,” said Bonnie.

She was still wearing her ugly tortoiseshell glasses, but her hair was pulled back in a way that framed her face; her slender gold earrings moved as she spoke. Once she was sitting in the chair with the lights off, she announced that there was something she wanted to ask me. The machine was between us, hiding her expression; only her hands, fluttering above the armrests, were visible. Just for an instant I imagined her saying, Dr. Stevenson, you're all I've ever wanted.

“This is stupid,” she said. “Greg says it's stupid, but I keep worrying about Alice and Suzie. What if they've inherited my problem? Alice is crazy about basketball. I worry all the jumping up and down will ruin her eyes.”

My ventricles resumed their normal activity. I said that wasn't stupid. I didn't know the answer, but I would consult a colleague. In the meantime she should have her daughters' eyes checked, just to be safe. “Put your chin here,” I said.

By the time we emerged, Merrie had Nabokov ready to
travel. I went to warm up the car and came back to get him and Bonnie. As I pulled out of the parking lot, I felt a rush of exhilaration. At this busy time of day the journey to her house might take as long as twenty minutes. In the confines of the car I could smell some fragrance: her shampoo, or hand cream. From the backseat, Nabokov began to recite a railway timetable.

I told Bonnie that my father had worked for the MBTA, and she said she'd wanted to drive a train when she was little. “I always wave to women drivers on the subway. Did you get to drive one as a kid?”

“No. My best friend and I wanted to be pilots. Then I had a brilliant biology teacher.” We were behind a bus; I made no effort to pass.

“Lucky you,” said Bonnie. “I was planning to go to college, but my dad died and there was no money.”

“Your girls are growing up,” I said. “You can still go.”

“I hope so—I want to be a good example for them—but sometimes things happen.”

Before I could ask what things, she told me to turn left and pointed out the supermarket where Greg worked. His cooking had improved while she'd been out of action. Soon she was directing me to stop in front of a small green house. A neatly shoveled path led to the front door.

“Doctor—,” she began.

“Please call me Donald.”

“Donald, this has been an ordeal, but you've made things easier. When I'm up to speed, I'll bake you and Merrie my famous chocolate cake.”

I was saying there was no need when she leaned over and kissed my cheek.

I
HAD SEEN
B
ONNIE
only three times, spoken to her on the phone only twice, and yet for several hours she had displaced any thought of my old friend, alone in his private darkness. But Viv was already acting on her promise. After another failed phone call, she drove to Hilary's house and found the sidewalk piled with snow. She knocked, she rang the doorbell, she shouted and got no answer. She decided to walk around the house, banging on the windows and calling Hilary's name. “The snow was so deep,” she told me later. “It was like swimming.” She was at the back of the house when she heard a faint answering cry.

Hilary had been in bed for almost a week, with only Diane, who was at school all day, to take care of her. Viv set to work. She made soup and tea; she changed the sheets; she did laundry, loaded the dishwasher, emptied the trash and the cat's litter box, went through the fridge, ordered groceries. From Hilary's house she drove directly to the stables, and from the stables to her book club. Not until she was getting ready for bed did she tell me what had transpired. The next morning at the office a patient was waiting. It was almost 11:00 a.m., thirty-six hours after our conversation at the pool, when I at last phoned Jack with what I hoped was good news.

He didn't answer, and it was only later that I heard how, with the help of his regular driver, Carlos, he had already embarked on his odyssey. He stopped at a florist's, a liquor store, a jeweler's, and finally at Hilary's, where Carlos led him to the back door and wished him luck. If Jack didn't reappear in ten minutes, he would assume the best and drive away.

“After you took me to the pool,” Jack told me, “I thought and thought and what it came down to was, I could give up on Hilary, or I could go for broke. Both were terrifying. Then in
the middle of the night I woke up and I heard a voice saying, ‘Ask her to marry you, you numbskull.' I couldn't walk away from the best person I'd met in years without even trying.”

He knocked. Hilary, wearing her clean nightgown, opened the door. He drew a discreet veil over what happened next. Did he ask her immediately? Did they go to bed first? Did she say you're all I've ever wanted? Whatever the route, by the time Diane came home from school, they were standing on the same ground.