Charles Baxter - Saul and Patsy

Quietly he crossed their back lawn, then stood in the middle, between them. Emory turned the pages of his paper, then put it down and closed his eyes. Anne went on reading. Saul stood quietly. Only the baby saw him. Saul reached down and picked out of the lawn a sprig of grass. Anne McPhee coughed. The baby was rattling one of its crib toys.

He waited another moment and then walked back to his car. Anne and Emory had not seen him. He felt like a prowler, a spy from God. He also felt now what he had once felt only metaphorically: that he was invisible.

When he was almost home, he remembered, or thought he remembered, that Anne McPhee had been sunning herself and had not been wearing a blouse or a bra. Or was he now imagining this? He couldn’t be sure.

Patsy nudged him in the middle of the night. “I know what it is,” she said.

“What?”

“What’s bothering you.”

He waited. “What? What is it?”

“You’re like men. You’re a man and you’re like them. You want to be everything. You want to have endless endless potential. But then you grow up. In spite of yourself. And you’re one thing. Your body is, anyway. It’s trapped in this life. You have to say goodbye to the dreams of everything.” She waited. “You don’t want to do that one little bit, do you?”

“Dreams of everything.”

“Yes.” She rolled over so that she could look at him in the dark. “Don’t pretend that you don’t understand. You want to be a whole roomful of people, Saul. That’s kid stuff.” She let her head drop so that her hair brushed against him.

“What about you?”

“What about me? I’m not a problem the way you’re a problem. I don’t want to be anything else,” she said sleepily, beginning to rub his back. “I do want a better job at the bank, I’ll tell you that. But I sure as hell don’t have to be a great person. I just want to do a little of this and a little of that as long as I can make some serious money.” She waited. “You know. To get by. For that trip to Finland.”

“What’s wrong with ambitions?” he asked. “You could be great at something.”

Her hand moved into his hair, tickling him. “Being great is too tiring, Saul, and it’s boring. Look at the great ambition people. They’re wrecking the earth, aren’t they. They’re leaving it in bits and scraps. Look at the Lord of Misrule, our current president.” She concentrated on him in the dark. “Saul,” she said.

“Your diaphragm’s not on.”

“I know.”

“But.”

“So?”

“Well, what if?”

“What if? You’d be a father, that’s what if.” She had turned him so that she was right up against him, her breasts pressing him, challenging him.

“No,” he said. He drew back. “Not yet. Let me figure this out on my own. There’d be no future.”

“For the baby?”

“No. For me.” He waited, trying to figure out how to say this. “I’d have to be one person forever. Does that make sense?”

“From you, it does.” She pulled herself slightly away from him. They rearranged themselves.

The following Saturday he drove into Five Oaks for a haircut. When his hair was so long that it made the back of his neck itch, he went to Harold, the barber, and had it trimmed back. Saul liked Harold and his pensive mannerisms, even though Harold was a pale Lutheran, and a terrible barber. Harold made up for it with his occasional affability, and he happened to be in the same bowling league with Saul and sometimes played basketball at the same times that Saul did. Many of the men in Five Oaks looked slightly peculiar and asymmetrical, thanks to Harold. The last time Saul had come in, Harold had been deep in a conversation with a woman who was accusing him of things; Saul couldn’t tell exactly what Harold was being accused of, but it sounded like a lover’s quarrel, and Saul liked that. Anyone else’s troubles diminished his own.

By coincidence, the same woman was back again in the barbershop with her son, whose hair Harold was cutting when Saul passed by the ancient barber pole before he rang the bell over the door as he entered. To pass the time and achieve a moment’s invisibility, he picked up a newspaper from the next chair over and read the morning’s headlines.

SHOTS FIRED AT HOLBEIN REACTOR Iraqi Terrorists Suspected

Somebody was always shooting at something. Shielded by his paper, Saul heard the woman whispering instructions to Harold, and Harold’s faint, exasperated “Louise, I can do this.” Saul pretended to read the article. The shots, it turned out, had been harmless. Even though there had been no damage, some sort of investigation was going on. Saul thought Iraqis could do better than this.

There was more whispering, which Saul tried not to hear. After the woman had paid for her son’s haircut and left, Saul sat himself down in Harold’s chair.

“Hey, Saul,” Harold said, covering him with the white cloth. “You always come in when she does. How do you do that?”

“Beats me. Her name Louise?”

“That’s right. The usual trim, Saul?”

“The usual. Torture by Mr. Harold of Paris. Harold, this time try to keep it the same length on both sides, okay?”

“I try, Saul. It’s just that your hair’s so curly.”

“Right, right.” Saul saw his reflection in the mirror and closed his eyes as a reflex. He felt like asking Harold, the Lutheran, a moral question. “Harold,” he said, “do you ever wonder where your thoughts come from? I mean, do we own our thoughts, or do they come from somewhere else, or what? For example, you can’t always control your thoughts or your impulses, can you? So, whose thoughts are those, anyway, the ones you can’t control? And another thing. Are you happy? Be honest.”

The scissors stopped clipping. “Gosh, Saul, are you okay? What drugs have you been taking lately?”

“No drugs. Just tell me: Are your thoughts always yours? That’s what I need to know.”

The barber looked into the mirror opposite them. Saul saw Harold’s plain features. “All right,” Harold said. “I’ll answer your question.” Then, with what Saul took to be great sadness, the barber said, “I don’t have many thoughts. And when I do, they’re all mine.”

“Okay,” Saul said. “I’m sorry. I was just asking.” He tried to slump down in his chair, but the barber said, “Sit up straight, Saul.” Saul did.

Days later, Saul is asleep. He knows this. He knows he is asleep next to Patsy. He knows it is night, that cradle of dreams, but Earth’s mad lovelorn companion, the moon, is shining stainless-steel beams across the bed, and Saul is dreaming of being in a car that cannot stop rolling over, an endless flip of metal, and this time Patsy is not belted in, and something horrible must be happening to her, judging from the blur of her head. She is being hurt terribly thanks to the way he has driven the car, the mad way, the un-American way, and now she is walking across a bridge made of moonlight, and she falls. The door, Saul’s door, is being kept open for Elijah, but Elijah does not come in. How will we recognize him? Saul’s mind is not in Saul’s head; it is above him, above his yarmulke, above his prayer shawl, his tallis. When was Saul ever Orthodox? Only in dreams. Patsy is hurt, she lies in a ditch, and he has done this damage to her. Deer and doubt mix with the milky roar of mild lust on the Scrabble board. And here behind the barber chair is Giovanni d’Amato, sage of Cincinnati, saying, “You shouldn’t flunk people out of school if you’re going to get drunk and roll cars.” The sage is using his scissors to cut away Saul’s clothes. Saul the child is speaking to Saul the grown-up: “You’ll never figure it out,” and when Saul the adult asks, “What?” the child says, “Adulthood. Any of it.” And then he says, “Saul, you’re pregnant.”