Van Gogh's Room at Arles (8 page)

“Oh,” she said, “you poor man, I was going to call
you.”

“You were?”

“Well, when I heard what your not-so-better-half had
done
to you … And on the eve of your
party!
Outrageous! People ought to know that some of the most significant damage one can do to others is to force them to change their plans at the last minute. Too too rude, I think. To treat other persons’ lives as though they were subject to alterations like something off-the-rack. Barbaric!”

“Then why didn’t you?”

“Why didn’t I—?”

“Call me,” he asked her.

“I thought Dickerson would take care of it. Dickerson was
supposed
to take care of it. That’s what we arranged at any rate.”

“We? You and Dickerson? Arranged?

“We, the members of the Political Geographers Party Committee.”

“There is such a thing?”

“Well, now there is. The people in your seminar threw it together as soon as we heard.”

“Heard? Heard what?”

“Why, what Mrs. Professor S. did to Mr. Professor S., of course.”

“What’s none of your business is none of my business, I suppose, but I’d like to know—” Schiff said formally, and with as much dignity as the thought would allow, “this just happened—who put the word out? How did you know? Is it some jungle telegraph thing?” Then, risking the inside joke, “Or are you folks connected to Information, too?” Chilled to the bone when Miss or Mrs. Kohm gave her immense and raucous board member’s society laugh.

“We take care of our own, dear,” is what she said.

“The Political Geographers Party Committee,” Schiff said. “Is that like a fan club or something?”

“Would you like a fan club?”

“I’d like,” said Schiff, sorry as soon as he permitted the words to escape, “for my life to go into remission.”

“Well,” she said, “there’s nothing the seminar can do about that one, of course, but it can and will rally round its annual party.”

“The party,” Schiff said, “the party is off.”

“Of course the party’s not off. As far as the party’s concerned, well, damn the torpedoes, full-speed ahead.”

“It’s off,” Schiff said.

“Why? Give me one good reason.”

“I’ve nothing to serve.”

“Eats,” she said, “the subcommittee on eats is taking care of that.”

“There’s a subcommittee on eats?”

“There’s a subcommittee on booze, there’s a subcommittee on party decorations.”

“Who organized all this? Did you?”

“Oh, that isn’t important,” Ms. Kohm—it was how he neutrally addressed her in class, too—dismissed. “You won’t have to lift a finger.”

“I can’t lift a finger.”

“You won’t have to.”

“Look,” Schiff said, “it’s late. There are other people in the seminar I still have to get in touch with.”

“But I
told
you, there’s nothing for you to do. Dickerson will take care of it.”

“Dickerson,” Schiff said. “Dickerson didn’t even call me.”

“Possibly he was nervous about catching you at a bad time, or that he was interrupting your dinner, or that he hates bothering you at home. In any event,” Ms. Kohm said, “there’s no reason for you to call the scholars. Everything really has been taken care of. The PGPC is on top of it.”

“The Political Geographers Party Committee,” Schiff said, exactly like a moderator of a news show identifying a reference for the audience.

“Exactly,” Ms. Kohm said, exactly like a panelist.

“Listen,” Schiff said, “what you and the others in the seminar have done is very kind. Really,” he said, “
very
kind. And I appreciate it, I
do,
but to tell the truth, I don’t believe I could even handle a party just now. Be a guest at one, I mean, never mind its host. I don’t much enjoy playing hearts and flowers, Ms. Kohm, but it’s been a pretty rough day, I’ve a lot on my mind, and the last thing in the world I’m up to right now is a celebration.”

“Jack, let me give you some advice: the worst thing someone like you can do at a time like this is to feel sorry for himself.”

Jack? Jack?

“Negative energy, particularly for someone in your condition, has devastating effects.”

In
his
condition? In
his
condition?

“Let me tell you something, Ms. Kohm,” Schiff said, “unless they’re referring to alternative fuels or to how they’re feeling, I’m always a little suspicious of, and embarrassed for, people who use terms like energy.”

“Jack,” she said, “I know you’re upset, that you’re just sick with worry about Claire, and, incidentally, I shouldn’t think she’s in Portland.”

Claire? Claire?

Where did this woman get off? (Or would she stop at nothing?) Was she drunk? She might be drunk. She looked like a drinker, had, he meant, a drinker’s dramatic, slightly hysterical expression, and her makeup, fixed in place like cosmetic surgery, might have been a drinker’s makeup, something planted on her face for emergency, like a name sewn into her clothing.

Still, he didn’t know which bothered him more, the dignity he’d leaked through his mean outburst about her use of language, or the dignity he lost through her (and he could only assume everyone’s) general knowledge of his business, how it was between him and Claire, how it was between him and his condition.

“I know,” she was saying, and Schiff, who’d tuned out for a couple of moments, once for his indignation and once again for the regret he felt for permitting himself to give in to it, knew he’d missed something, perhaps even something important (maybe she’d gone on to say what the thinking was in political geography regarding Claire’s whereabouts), “things are pretty much up in the air just now, but, you’ll see, they’ll come down, they’ll settle. It isn’t the end of the world. Oh, I grant you, when these things happen, one always thinks it’s the end of
one’s
world, and, occasionally, even frequently, one’s often right about that. After all, there’s no arguing with a judgment call, but I wouldn’t count myself out just yet. The consensus now is that three things may still happen, Your wife could come back. Two, time heals all wounds. And, three, you could make an adjustment, discover not only that you don’t really need her but that, if you make the adjustment, become more independent, you might even be better off without her.”

The consensus? The consensus?

“You’re right that she could come back,” he told her, “but it’s a long shot. Even about three—though it’s iffy, improbable, the odds are against it—that I might adjust. But that, two, time heals all wounds, is out of the question.”

“Time doesn’t heal all wounds?”

“Only if there’s time,” he said.

“I’m sorry,” she said, “I don’t underst——”

“Well,” Schiff said, stinging her, hoping to anyhow, hoping she’d take it back and pass it on to the consensus, “aren’t you forgetting my condition?”

“Oh,” she said.

“Yes,” he said, “you bet.” Then, while he had her on the ropes, following through. “But my real objection to a party this year is that I couldn’t possibly clean up afterward. My ‘condition’ militates against it.” Forgetting about the PGPC and realizing his mistake at once. And—perhaps something to do with his hand eye coordination, his cripple’s slowed reaction times, just the merest piece of a beat off but a miss as good as a mile and except in horseshoes close didn’t count for diddly—Ms. Kohm, losing no time, all over him.

“Did you forget what I told you? That you won’t have to lift a finger? That we wouldn’t permit it even if you could? Listen,” she said, “this isn’t even a committee thing. I mean no one’s been assigned to wash, no one’s been assigned to dry. No one’s been named to empty the ashtrays or run the vacuum over the rug in the living room. This is an area where everyone pitches in. Should someone see anything out of place, he or she straightens it up. This party will be a strictly straighten-up-as-you-go party. Will that be all right? Is that good enough for you?”

“Well,” Schiff said.

“Will it?” she asked. “Is it?” she teased.

“Well,” said Schiff. “Do I have your word? That no one leaves the house until it’s neat and clean as when they came in?”

“Neater and cleaner,” Ms. Kohm said.

“All right,” Schiff said. “Look, I’m sorry I’m such a tightass, but really,” he said, “unless everything’s just the way you found it … I’m going to let you in on something. I try to live by the cripple’s code.”

“Yes?”

“One must never do anything twice.”

“Oh, what a good rule! That’s a good rule even for persons who aren’t physically challenged.”

“Actually it is,” Schiff said.

“No, I mean it,” Ms. Kohm said.

“Okay, all right. We’ll try having the party.”

“Do you know what time it is?”

“No. Is it late?”

“Twelve thirty-seven.”

“Thirteen,” Schiff said.

“What?”

“Nothing,” Schiff said.

“Well,” said Ms. Kohm, “it’s been a long day. Tomorrow’s the party. Tonight, actually. Better turn in.”

“I will,” said Schiff.

“Me, too,” said Ms. Kohm. “Well,” she said, “see you tomorrow night.”

“Tonight, actually,” he said, and both laughed and hung up, and Schiff, too tired to try to make it into the bathroom, took up the pisser and peed within a cc of his life.

He slept like a baby. He didn’t dream. He didn’t once wake up. And, in the morning, it was like being roused from a trance, awakened, like someone from the audience, on stage, in the middle of a hypnotist’s act, come to life after a surgery in a room one can’t remember. Even, in those first several blank-slate seconds, experiencing what was not joy, not hope, not peace or patience, curiosity or wonder or even pleasure, so much as a sort of passivity, even obedience, something almost theological, some deep trust, almost— and here’s Schiff’s brain kicking in, and here’s Schiff—he supposes, like faith, like a perfect numb composure, Schiff detached and poised as an angel, like one of those rare dreams—and here’s Schiff with the slow, ever-so-gradual beginnings of self-consciousness—where he dreams himself moving, walking, running, pleased with the smooth point- to-point of his compliant synapses. And
here’s
Schiff. Tumbled from grace like a man overboard. Alert, alive, aware of the facts, passed sudden and roughly from one condition to the next like a clumsily transferred baton. Here’s Schiff. All at once the phone is ringing, his bladder is bursting, virtually screaming, “Do something, do something, will you, before I wet your pants all over you, your blankets, sheets, and pillowcases, your carpets and furniture and upholstery, before I take matters into my own hands and leave what used to be your dick jumping around every which way, loose and as out of control as a live wire spraying indiscriminate voltage like a hose in the street,” and his bones and body are stiff, filling up with pain in every cavity like air stretching a balloon, and—here’s Schiff, here’s Schiff now— he pulls himself up in bed to sit on its side and he reaches for his pisser but the son of a bitch is filled to the top—the job he did on it before retiring last night—and somehow he has to get into the toilet without—there’s no time to put them on—his shoes with their footdrop braces standing up in them like long shoehorns, and which permit him to put his feet out in front of him without kicking a foot into the carpet, smashing his practically hammertoes, tripping and stumbling the length of his body headfirst into the floor. So, here’s Schiff landed back in Farce, his homeland practically, and he pictures himself falling arse over tip down the stairs shoved tight against the aircraft and diving, face down, nose to the tarmac, which he kisses as if he’s finally come home after a long exile.

He’s up on his walker now, skedaddling to the John before he bursts, Schiff’s version anyway, his
modified
skedaddle, distracting himself, thinking, Push, Step, Pull (on “Push” pushing his walker out in front of him; on “Step” stepping out with his right foot; on “Pull” pulling his left foot up almost even with it), though even as he thinks Push, Step, Pull, he’s wondering if it wouldn’t be better to change his mantra to Push, Step, Drag, because times change and a chap owes it to himself to keep up with his disease. (And because the effort is so great. He should, he thinks again, have been an event in the Olympics.) What, it occurs, are these tears in these eyes? Because suddenly he can’t remember the last time he walked without having to resort to these diversionary tactics and gambits, when he didn’t have to think of his walker as a plow, or his floors as fields, when he didn’t have to break down his progress—progress,
hah!—
into tiny, divisible bits like so much sovereign acreage or, just to keep himself from going nuts—walking was so difficult now, required
such
concentration; this was how he concentrated on it—providing a running—running,
hah!—
commentary on it, like some kid muttering the play-by-play in his head as he throws a rubber ball against a stoop. The pressure on his bladder is driven by its own terrible, gathering momentum. Schiff, still pushing the walker, concentrating, but switching over to alternative modes even as he begins to feel a little, a little, not much, leakage——
I think
I can, I think I can!
Or “Schiff not out of the woods, yet, ladies and gentlemen, though even if he pees now, at least it won’t be on the Berber. Because once that stuff gets on wool, it’s
yech,
and watch out, it’s time for the Home! Over to you in the crapper, Jim.” “Thanks, Dave Wilson, but you’ve just about told the whole story. Schiff, as you say, had begun to feel a little moisture, but, fortunately, this was just about the time he was swinging his walker around, dropping his drawers, and already lowering himself onto the toilet seat. Maybe I can get him to give us a comment. Jack, Jack, it’s Jim Johnson, You do much damage?” “No, Jim, I don’t think so. There’s a phrase in Ward Howe’s ‘Battle Hymn of the Republic’ that best sums it up, I think. Something about the ‘evening dews and damps.’ I don’t think anything actually got on the tile though there may be some small humidity in my pants, however. In any event, I’m chucking them into the laundry basket on my way out.”

Which made him think about laundry. Which, Jesus, gave him a jolt. Because, really, with Claire gone, how was he ever going to handle that one? He didn’t know if they even still did laundry service, couldn’t recall the last time he’d seen a laundry truck. Claire, Schiff thought, you’re the rat and I’m the sinking ship! And where, he wondered, had his mild hope for the day gone? Those few seconds or so of respite he felt when he’d first waked up? That perfect, numb composure?