Van Gogh's Room at Arles (5 page)

He probably wouldn’t have felt this way (or felt anything more than a little surprised) if just at that moment, the very moment when the bank’s teller, or clerk, or paid professional informer, was singing out Schiff’s bottom lines, bright, clear, and brassy as a belter on Broadway stopping the show, someone somewhere in the house hadn’t picked up an extension.

The cooperative teller asked if Schiff had gotten that and, before he could answer, broke down the sums for him again.

“Oh,” said Miss Simmons, “is that you, Professor? I didn’t know you were still making your calls.”

“I got a wrong number,” he said, and disengaged.

The three of them were downstairs.

“Yep,” Bill was saying, rubbing his hands, “you got it right the first time. Turns out we didn’t really have to check. We could almost go with the plan we specified on the telephone. Jenny found one or two places the signal may have to be reinforced, but you could do a voice level, she’ll meter you and, who knows, you might just be able to get away without us having to change a thing in the original specs. Even if we do have to make an adjustment it wouldn’t run you more than an additional two or three hundred dollars.”

“I have to go upstairs?”

“No, no,” Bill said, “she marked off the distances. You can do the reading right down here, can’t you, Jenny?”

“Sure,” said his former student. She took something that looked rather like a light meter from one of the deep pockets in her coveralls and held it up. “Go ahead,” she said, “pretend you’ve fallen. Just speak into the air.”

“What should I say?”

“Anything. I’m just getting a level.”

“Calling all cars,” Schiff said in a normal voice. “S.O.S. S.O.S. Save our Schiff.”

“What do you think, Jen?” Bill said.

His former student looked at her old professor whose worth she knew—as a teacher, as a husband—she looked at his weakened limbs, may even, when she was upstairs, have seen his urinal—as a man.

“It’s all right,” she said.

“Is
it?” said Bill, surprised. “How about that?” he said. “You got it right the first time, but then that’s your business, isn’t it, Professor? Floor plans, knowing the territory.”

In spite of himself, Schiff basked in what, in spite of himself, Schiff knew wasn’t really a compliment. But he did, he
did
know the territory.

“Yep,” Bill said, “Jenny tells me you used to be some kind of geography professor.”

“I still am,” Schiff said, “I still teach.”

“Do you?” Bill said. “Well, good for
you.”

He knew the territory, all right. He should have thrown the S.O.S. s.o.b. out of the house. He told himself it was only because Claire had left him and he needed the service that he didn’t. But it was because of what Claire had said, too. His fear of tradesmen, of almost anyone who didn’t teach at a university. At least a little it was. So he
knew
the territory.

“Well,” said Bill, “all we have to do now is a little paperwork, fill out a few forms.”

He was asked questions about his medical history, stuff out of left field. Not just about his neurology but about childhood diseases, allergies, even whether he’d ever had poison ivy. He listed his medications. It was for show, not for blow, but again, and still in spite of himself, he took a certain pleasure in this medical inventory. It was the first time in years anyone had taken such an interest in him, even a faked one. Bill was more thorough than any of his physicians, and Miss Simmons seemed to hang on his answers as much as the salesman.

“That should about do it,” Bill said.

“Oh,” said Schiff, a little let down.

“Well, except for a few housekeeping details the corporation has to have for its files. Nothing GMAC or any financial institution wouldn’t need to know if you were applying for a loan on a car.”

Schiff couldn’t have said why he was so steamed. He’d expected it. Wasn’t this the reason he’d been trying to get through to his banks? Wasn’t it why he’d attempted to be so circumspect?

“Will you be paying by check?”

“Yes,” Schiff said, thrown off, expecting some such, but not exactly this, question. “The corporation takes checks, doesn’t it?”

“These systems are fairly big-ticket items. It takes cashier’s checks.”

“Well, that poses a problem, doesn’t it?” Schiff said. “Me being crippled and all? My wife having lit out for the territory and leaving me up shit creek without a paddle with a car in the driveway to get to the bank but not quite enough strength in my legs to press down on the accelerator let alone the brake pedal?”

“Don’t get so excited,” Bill said. “We’re flexible. We’ll work with you. Hey,” he said, “we’re nothing if not flexible. If you can demonstrate you have enough money in your account to cover the check, we’ll work with you.”

“Ask Miss Simmons if I have enough money in my account to cover it,” Schiff said.

“No offense, old man,” the salesman said. “Hey,” he said, “take it easy. No offense. Often, a spouse quits on a partner who’s been dealt a bad hand she Hoovers out their joint accounts before she goes.”

“This happens?” Schiff, oddly moved, said suddenly, in spite of himself, interested, narrowly studying the man, a sort of political geographer in his own right, a kind of bellwether, some sibyl of the vicissitudes.

“Well, a lot of resentment builds up,” Bill explained. “I mean, put yourself in her place. At least
some
of the trouble between you had to have been physical, right?”

Schiff stared at him.

“Sure,” Bill said, “and it’s my guess that until you were struck down you two probably had it pretty good in bed together. Go ahead, write the check. It’s the amount we agreed on. You’re good for it.”

“Am I?”

“Well, sure you are,” Bill said. “She ever have to lift you up off the floor?”

“Yes,” Schiff said stiffly.

“She ever have to carry you?”

“Once in a while,” he said.

Bill clucked his tongue. “You enjoy that? You come to enjoy that?”

“Well,” Schiff said evasively.

“Well, sure you did,” Bill said.

“I didn’t want her to hurt herself.”

“Of course not,” Bill said.

“She’s pretty strong, but let’s face it, she’s no spring chicken.”

“Let’s face it,” Bill said.

“I don’t have my checkbook.”

“Want me to go get it? Want Jen to?”

“I think it may be in one of the drawers in the tchtchk.”

“Say what?”

“The cabinet in the hall. We call it the tchtchk.”

“That’s a new one on me. You ever hear that, Jen? The choo-choo? Heck, I can’t even pronounce it. How do you say that again?”

“Tchtchk. It doesn’t mean anything.”

“Just a pet name, eh? From your salad days.”

“I guess.”

“Well, sure,” Bill said. “It’s just something you ought to bear in mind.” Schiff didn’t follow. “Well, that you
had
salad days,” Bill said.

“Oh, right,” Schiff said, who didn’t need the lecture but wanted to placate the man just long enough to write the check and be rid of him.

“That’s why the good Lord usually lets us hold on to our memories,” Bill said. “So we can remember the times before our wives had to carry us around piggyback.”

“She never carried me around piggyback,” Schiff said.

“No? How’d she manage you?”

“She held me around my waist.”

“Off the ground?”

“Thanks,” Schiff told Jenny, “thank you.” She’s brought his checkbook. She could have brought him the one from the money-market account, even the tiny credit-union one. It was the account with money from the trust. “May I use your pen?” he asked coolly. It was hard to get a good grip on the pen with his weakened hand, difficult for him to write the check, almost impossible to form the numerals, some of which he had to trace two or three times and which were an illegible muddle when he finished. He didn’t even bother to sign it but pulled the ruined check from the book and started another. Miss Simmons looked elsewhere. Bill watched Schiff closely, bearing down on him with a knowing stare. “My small motor movements are shot,” Schiff explained. “I didn’t forget how to make out a check.”

“Of course not,” Bill said. “It’s like riding a bicycle.”

“I forgot how to ride a bicycle,” Schiff said.

“We have to keep our chin up,” Bill said. “Hey,” he said,

“I’ve got to get back to the office. Jenny still has to do the installations so I’ll leave her here with you.”

“Sure,” Schiff said.

“Watch yourself now.”

“I will.”

“Don’t fall.”

“I won’t.”

“I don’t know if Jenny could handle you,” Bill said. Schiff didn’t answer. “The service, though, the service is another story. Sometimes the service sends out women.”

Schiff had enough. “What is this?” he demanded. “What are you getting at? Just what are you hinting? Do you talk this way to all your customers?”

“Why are you so excited? Do you think it’s good for you to get so excited? I know your blood-pressure medications. I know what you have to put into your bloodstream to keep a lid on the stress. Do you think I’m against you? I’m not against you. Quite the contrary. I represent the service. Does the service stand to gain if its clients become upset with it? I know how highly you think of our advertising campaign but believe me, brother, what it finally boils down to is word-of-mouth. And, if you want to know, I wasn’t ‘hinting’ or ‘getting’ at anything. All I was referencing was man’s dependence on woman for her ability to nurture.”

“All right,” Schiff told him wearily.

“Sure,” Bill said, “that’s all there is to it. She helps him out with his motor movements. Large and small both.”

“Okay.”

“Ain’t a mother’s son of us don’t want to float around in the pool in his mama’s arms. Ain’t a joey alive don’t enjoy going for a ride in the mommy roo’s pouch. Security is the name of the game.”

Okeydokey already, Schiff thought.

“So I wasn’t suggesting anything kinky.
Honi soit qui mal y pense,”
the salesman said, took up the check in Schiff’s smashed handwriting, and left him in the house with Miss Simmons.

Who to this point, she told him, had only been seeing what had to be done, that now she could start to plant.

“To plant?”

“Your garden,” she said. “Lay out your seeds and bulbs for you. It doesn’t mean anything. It’s a serviceman’s term in the industry.”

The professor nodded, surprised by the term “industry,” though once he thought about it, maybe not so surprised. Increasingly, he’d been noticing those ads on TV. It was some crisis of the infirm and elderly thing, high tech’s interim arrangement with the nursing-home interests, with Medicare, the aging demographics, the death-with-dignity folks. He explained this to Miss Simmons as she laid out her tools, set out the equipment she brought into Schiff’s home from the van.

“Oh, now,” Miss Simmons said.

“By which, thought Schiff, she meant to assuage him, ease him, allay his fears, cut him, he meant, from the herd of the infirm, aging and elderly, anyone struggling for a few last breaths of dignity. Because it was true what the salesman had said. Women
were
nurturers, even women like this one. Beneath her repair or maintenance man’s gray union suit, this person who worked in the basement down with the pipes, boilers, and boards of circuit breakers, was probably just another bleeding-heart nurturer and enabler.

And my God, Schiff thought, I wasn’t even fishing. Though maybe, he thought, all he ever did now was fish, his condition, his very appearance these days a fishing expedition, searching out reassurance like a guy on a treasure hunt. (Appalled by his letters of credit, his devastating carte blanche entree like some terminal kid’s on a trip to Disney World. Appalled, too, by what he must have done to Claire, who’d abandoned him, forcing her against
her
nature by the cumulative, oppressive weight of his need.) Shit, he thought, I am what I am, and asked a question that had been at least somewhere on his mind since she’d told him he’d been her professor.

“I’ve been trying to think,” Schiff said, “was I still on a cane when you were my student?”

“A cane?” she said. “I don’t think so. I don’t remember any cane. No,” she said, “you walked like everyone else.”

“That had to be at least a dozen years ago.”

“I graduated it’ll be fifteen years this June.”

“You knew me when,” Schiff said.

“Oh, now,” Miss Simmons said.

“I knew
you
when,” he said.

Miss Simmons looked down at her wrenches and scissors and rolls of duct tape, at all the instruments he did not have names for. She appeared to blush, though women were clever, he thought. Blushing and downcast eyes could be a sort of nurturing, too. Outright flirting could. How could men trust a sex that lived so much by its inborns and instincts, that stood so firm by the agenda of its drives and temperament (anything for the cause), its goals and nature? Christ, he thought, they might just as well have been critters, low and furious on the biological scale as spawning salmon. (Giving another passing, glancing, bruising thought to what he must have done—his disease must have done—to his own wife’s damaged intrinsics and basics.) And, quite suddenly suspecting she may have thought he was coming on, momentarily panicked.

“Oh, no,” he said, finding his place again in the lecture she probably hadn’t even recognized was one, “I’m all for it. I believe it’s exactly the thing, quite the right way to go. I mean after the initial outlay it’s rather economical. And Bill is right, a sense of security
is
the name of the game.”

“Well,” she said, gathering up some pieces of equipment and rising, “this is going to take at least a couple of hours. I’m afraid I have to tie up your phones; you won’t be able to use them till I’m done. If there are any calls you have to make you ought to try to make them now. Otherwise…”

“What if someone was trying to reach me?”

“Well, they’d get a busy signal.”

“At least two hours, you said. No one talks on a phone two hours. They’d think something was wrong, that I’d had an accident. Well,” he said, “they could call the operator, I suppose, ask her to check to see if the line really
was
engaged.”