Лоуренс Блок - Random Walk - A Novel for a New Age

“And they’re coming here? Do they know us?”

“Not yet.”

“Okay.”

She looked at him. His image dimmed for a moment before her eyes, then sharpened. She said, “Thom, I got the name of the town. I missed it by a letter, but I got it. And I knew about the motel.”

“And the cafeteria in where was it, Omaha. You’re doing great, Mom.”

“You don’t think I’m crazy?”

“No, of course not.”

“Okay. I don’t think so either, but sometimes I’m not as sure as I am the rest of the time. What’s happening is there are two men coming to Bend. They’re on their way now, and they should get here soon. I don’t know exactly when. Maybe tomorrow, maybe not for another day or two.”

“How will we know when they’re here?”

“We’ll know.”

“Okay. You mean you’ll know, and you’ll tell me.”

“Right.”

“Meanwhile I’m going swimming. They won’t think I’m a jerk if they see me swimming in regular shorts?”

“They’ll think you’re a man who makes his own rules. Thommy? I should have thought to pack your bathing suit. We’ll get one for you tomorrow or the next day.”

The following day she sat out by the pool gazing down the highway. He spent part of the time swimming, part of it reading and watching television. At mealtimes she sent him over to Wendy’s and he brought back food for the two of them.

Her eyesight was almost gone. It seemed to her as though she saw demonstrably less every time she opened her eyes, and that what little sight she had left was something she was holding onto by a thread. On the one hand she had to hold onto it, and at the same time she had to let go, it would be such a relief to let go.

With her eyes closed she kept seeing them, walking up the road, one with his hands plunged into his pockets, one talking, gesturing broadly with his hands.

Oh, she saw so much .

She waited, but they didn’t come that day. The next morning she woke up knowing they’d be there soon, and she sent Thom across to Wendy’s and waited for him in a chair beside the pool. They ate breakfast there, and then he went in to watch a Clint Eastwood movie on HBO.

After lunch she had him sit out at the pool with her. “They’ll be coming very soon,” she said. “I want you to watch the road for me. They’ll be walking on this side of the highway, and they’ll be coming from the right.”

“Two men.”

“The taller one is wearing a knapsack.”

“What about the shorter one?”

“He isn’t carrying anything.”

“Well, he’s got the beard. I guess that’s enough.”

“Just watch for them, will you?”

“Is it okay if I read at the same time? I’ll look up every few minutes.”

They sat together, and then she must have dozed off, and something stirred within her just as he touched her arm and said, “Mom?”

She opened her eyes. For a moment she saw nothing, nothing at all, and she thought that the last of her eyesight had gone, but then it came back, just the narrowest beam of sight, and she looked as if down a very long tunnel and saw two men at its very end.

“Go to them,” she told him. “Tell them your mother wants to see them.”

“Just tell them that?”

“Go.”

She stood up. It was a tricky business walking; she had to look down to see her feet, then had to raise her eyes to see what was ahead of her. It was easier, really, to close her eyes and trust her feet to find their footing.

She walked down the blacktop driveway to where the three of them waited. And yes, the tall man had a pack on his back, and yes, the shorter man had a beard, but there was more red in the yellow than she had seen in her mind’s eye.

And there was such a rich aura around them, and such a good energy coming from them.

“We’ve been waiting for you,” she said. They looked at her, not sure what she meant, and she said, “I’m Sara Duskin. This is my son, his name is Thom.”

They introduced themselves. Guthrie Wagner and Jody Ledbetter.

“I’m so pleased to meet you,” she said, and held out a hand to each of them. They took her hands, and a current ran through the three of them, so strong that she almost gasped. And they could feel it, too, and she looked at each of them, looked at them in turn because her field of vision could not encompass both of them at once.

“Oh, yes, yes,” she said, holding tight with her hands and letting go deep inside herself, letting the last of her eyesight slip away forever.

And then she saw:

Saw Guthrie learning to ride a two-wheeler, biting his lip in concentration, his father steadying the frame of the bike with one hand and running along beside him, saying Yes, you’re doing it, you’ve got it now, don’t quit, yes—

Saw Jody in the womb, impatient to be born, a breech presentation trying to thrust himself ass-first into the world, and the obstetrician trying to reposition him, big hands working to shift him, and she picked up the thought of No no no, damn you, no, let me do it my way—

Saw Guthrie at Boy Scout camp, his khaki shorts down around his knees, and an older boy playing with his penis, and Guthrie wanting him to stop, but not knowing how to make him stop—

Saw Jody fighting with his older brother, and losing, and brooding over it, and coming back the next day and blind-siding his brother with an axe handle, and getting punished for it, getting the strap from their father and locked for hours in a musty attic room to think about it—

Saw Guthrie on his wedding day, standing up stiff and scared in a suit, wondering who this stranger was beside him, and then the divorce, and wondering where it had all come from, and where it had all gone—

Saw Jody in a tattoo parlor in Seattle, just out of high school, drunk, proud, excited, scared to be scared, watching the spider in its web taking form upon his arm—

Saw Guthrie at his father’s funeral, dry-eyed—

Saw Jody at his mother’s grave—

Oh, she saw their whole lives! She saw into them, she saw all the joy and all the pain and all the grief, all the rich human beauty. “Oh,” she said, her gray sightless eyes open now, her face radiant. “Oh,” she said, her heart wide open now, warmth flooding her chest, tears streaming from her eyes. “Oh, my friends,” she said, tightening her grip on their hands, transported by waves of her love for them, of their love for her, of all the love that was suddenly so abundant in the universe.

“Oh, my friends,” she said. “My friends! ”

When he got off the phone Mark Adlon went to the bar in the sun room and poured two fingers of Dewar’s Ancestor into a highball glass. He took it and a matching empty glass into the kitchen, where he filled both glasses with ice cubes from the automatic ice dispenser built into the refrigerator door. He topped up the scotch with spring water and filled the other glass with lemonade, then carried them both out onto the patio where his wife was reading the latest issue of People magazine.

“Oh, thank you, dear,” she said.

“It’s plain lemonade, but if you want a little vodka in it—”

“No, I’d rather have plain.”

“That’s what I thought.”

He took a seat alongside her, set down his drink on the glass-topped coffee table, and looked out across the expanse of lawn.

“The days are really getting long,” he said.

She nodded. “Just two weeks to Midsummer Eve.”

“I never understood that,” he said. “If it’s the first day of summer, why call it Midsummer Eve? Midsummer Eve ought to come in the middle of summer, shouldn’t it?”

“You would think so, wouldn’t you?”