Russell Banks - Continental Drift

Stopping beside the bed, Bob stares down at his wife, looks down the length of her body to where the baby was and on to her feet. Her left: hand dangles from the bed, as if pointing to the floor, and her thin wrist, circled with a plastic cord and name tag, is like a child’s, and to Bob, at this moment, tells everything. Her slender white wrist carries to him the long, sadly relentless tale of her strength, her patience and her trust. It tells him what he’s been shutting out for months, perhaps for years. Purely and simply, it tells him about the woman’s goodness.

His jumbled thoughts and feelings suddenly clarify and separate, and he realizes in a rush that this is what he loves in her. And this is what he’s been denying himself, keeping it from himself so that he could go on thinking he didn’t love her, so that he could go on trying to love a different woman, a woman he thinks is probably not good, or at least she’s a woman whose goodness he’s incapable of seeing, as he sees Elaine’s goodness now, simply by looking down at her wrist.

Shame washes over him, and he feels suddenly cold. He knows, for this brief moment, what he’s done, and the knowledge makes him feel naked. To keep his options open, a man has kept himself from loving his own wife. This is a terrible sin. It’s the kind of sin, worse than a crime, that Satan loves more than a crime, because it breeds on itself and generates more sin. Because of the nature of his sin, it’s been impossible for Bob to see goodness in Marguerite or Doris or anyone else he might like to love. Yet until now, to keep his options open, he’s been willing, he’s even been eager, to trade off the years it took him to lose sight of Elaine, all the years of living with her day in and out, eating, working, sleeping with her, night after night, season after season, until she finally became invisible and he no longer knew what she looked like, until her voice became as familiar and lost to his ears as his own is, until, when he wished to see her, truly see who this woman was, he could only look into the exact center of her eyes and see the exact center of his own eyes looking back and know that he still had not seen her — until finally, now, years and years later, after what he’s done to her tonight, and perhaps only because of what he’s done to her tonight, Bob is able, when Satan isn’t looking, to glance at the woman’s thin wrist and at last see the woman’s goodness, which is the very thing, the only thing, a man can truly, endlessly, passionately love.

Her eyes flutter open, and she smiles. “Hi, honey.”

Bob can’t speak. He pats her shoulder, then leans over and gently kisses her on the lips.

She brushes his cheeks with her fingertips and whispers, “The baby’s a boy, Bob. It’s a boy.”

He nods. He knows, he knows.

“Have you seen him? He’s real pretty.”

He shakes his head no, turns away from her face and lays his head on her breast.

Tenderly, she runs her fingers through his hair.

“I … I’m sorry,” he says in a muffled voice. “I … I’m sorry I wasn’t able to … to help.”

She smiles and says that she knows he’s sorry, but he shouldn’t feel guilty, the baby came early and quick. “It was real easy,” she says. “Not like the girls. I almost had him in the car on the way over. Poor Ellen, she thought she’d have to deliver him herself.” She laughs, and he laughs a little too.

He stands and clears his face with his fists, like a child, and they smile at one another. “A boy, huh?”

“Yep,” she says proudly.

“Bob junior?”

“Bob junior.”

“Wow. A son.”

“Going to grow up and be just like his daddy,” she says sweetly.

A shade passes over Bob’s face. “No.”

“Oh, come on, honey. Be happy.”

“I am, I am. I just … no, I’m happy, really. A son!”

She tells him he can see his son in the morning, the nurse will bring him in early so she can feed him, and if Bob wears a face mask, he can see him and maybe hold him too. Then she asks about the girls.

Ellen Skeeter’s going back to Oleander Park to be with them now, he tells her, and she said she’d stay all night and get Ruthie off to school in the morning, if he wants, which he does, because he plans to sleep out in the waiting room tonight. “Thank God for Ellen and Ronnie,” he says.

She smiles and tells him to go on home and get some sleep and come back early tomorrow. “You’re going to be busy the next few days,” she tells him. “I’m on vacation, me and little Bob, but you and the girls, you got to take care of business as usual, you know.”

He understands. She’s right. She’s always right. He does have a lot to do in the next few days. He kisses her lightly, pats her wrist gently and backs from the room.

3

Late the next afternoon, George Dill spots his daughter’s car as it lurches out of traffic into the parking lot of the liquor store and pulls up by the Dempster-Dumpster in back, and he shuffles forward to the front door, waves good night to Bob and starts out.

“Hey, George!” Bob calls from the register. “Isn’t Marguerite coming in?”

“No, sah, Mistah Bob, she tol’ me this mornin’ she gon’ be in a hurry tonight, so I better be ready.” The old man nods emphatically, as if agreeing with himself, and his Miami Dolphins cap slides forward on his bald head.

“Really?” Bob says. He didn’t see her this morning. He was at the hospital, viewing his son and namesake, and got to the store later than usual; by then Marguerite had already dropped her father off and gone on to the clinic. He wasn’t able to tell her, as he’d planned, that he would not be able to see her anymore.

Bob steps around the counter and peers back through the side window at her car. He can’t quite see who’s inside, though it is clear to him that there is someone other than Marguerite inside the car. A man, evidently. In the front passenger’s seat. A black man.

“George, tell Marguerite I need to speak with her about something, will you? Tell her it’s important. It’ll only take a minute.” He returns to the cash register and starts totaling the day’s sales.

Seconds later, Marguerite appears at the door, opens it and sticks her head in. She’s wearing her nurse’s uniform, looking tired and a little perturbed. “I can’t talk now, honey. I gotta rush. I’ll talk to you later, okay?”

“No. It has to be now.”

She doesn’t understand.

“Come inside and close the door.”

“Only a minute?”

“Yeah. Only a minute.”

She steps inside and lets the door close behind her, then walks carefully across the floor to the register. “Is somethin’ wrong?”

“No, nothing’s wrong. But … but Elaine, she had her baby last night. Our baby. She had a boy.”

Marguerite’s face breaks into a quick smile, a flash that catches itself and turns serious again. “That’s real nice, Bob. A boy. Is she okay and all, Elaine?”

“Yeah, she’s fine, fine. But … well, listen, she had the baby when I … when I was with you last night. I got home, and … well, you know.”

“Oh.”

Bob looks down at the cash register keys and drums his fingertips nervously across them, as if trying to type out a message.

“You couldn’a known she was gonna have the baby, honey. Those things happen on their own. The baby don’t know or care what his daddy’s doing at the time.” She tries a faint smile.

“Yeah, well, I know that. But even so, I naturally did a whole lot of thinking last night … and this morning. I thought a lot about the way things have been going for me.”

“Uh-huh.” She crosses her arms over her breasts and takes one step backwards.