Russell Banks - Affliction

Margie agreed. Lillian was a demanding woman, and Wade was a stubborn man: no wonder they came to blows. Margie herself was not demanding, however; and that was then, this was now. That was Lillian Pittman; and she was Marjorie Fogg. They were not interchangeable parts. Wade would never hit her.

As for his drinking, Margie believed that it was immaterial, and besides, if he had a good woman to come home to, Wade would come home, instead of hanging out after work at Toby’s Inn till all hours with kids like Jack Hewitt and Hettie Rodgers. Instead, he would be home telling Margie jokes over supper and watching TV with her afterwards and making love to her in bed before falling peacefully to sleep. So it was possible that she and Wade could have a happy life together, certainly a life happier than this one they were leading alone.

They drove out together that Sunday afternoon to visit Glenn and Sally Whitehouse, our parents. It had stopped snowing, and the sky was bright blue, the snow blinding white and falling from the trees in fantails as the temperature rose. The woods crackled with the sound of distant gunfire.

The old Whitehouse place, as it is still called in Lawford, is less than four miles from town, out on Parker Mountain Road, and Wade rarely went there. He counted on seeing Ma and Pop now and then by accident in town, at town meeting or at Golden’s store or at the post office. That was enough, he felt, to keep him in touch with them, and besides, they never actually invited him out to visit, any more than they asked me. They knew better, after years of our finding excuses not to come, than to ask anymore. When the Whitehouse children leave home, even if only to move down the road, they do not return willingly. Our mother knew why, but our father would not. I often wonder if she hated him for having driven her children so far away. It has also occurred to me that perhaps he only did what she wanted him to do. Naturally, I have never spoken of this to Wade or Lena.

Wade pulled off the plowed road onto the unplowed driveway and parked his car by the side porch. The house looked abandoned, closed up, as if no one lived there anymore. There were no fresh car tracks or footprints in the snow leading to the road, and the windows were dark, half covered with flapping sheets of polyurethane.

Wade got out of the car and sniffed the air, but smelled no wood smoke. Margie got out and looked at the house for a second and said, “Are you sure they’re home? Did you call?”

“No. But the truck’s here,” he noted, and pointed at the snow-covered pickup parked at the side of the house. “Looks like they’ve stayed inside since the snow started.” His face crinkled with concern, and he hurried to the porch door.

They stamped their feet loudly on the porch floor, and Wade reached for the doorknob and pulled, but the door would not open. “The fuck?” he said.

“What’s the matter?”

“Door’s locked. That’s peculiar.” He tried again, but the door did not give. He stepped to the side, cupped his hands around his face and peered through a porch window into the dark kitchen, where everything looked normal — a few dirty dishes in the sink, coffeepot on the wood stove, Merritt’s Shell Station calendar on the wall showing November.

Margie came along beside him and looked into the room and said, “Do you think they’re okay?”

“Of course!” he snapped. “I would’ve heard.”

“How?”

“I don’t know, for Christ’s sake!” he said, and he turned back to the door and knocked loudly on it. In silence, Margie came and stood behind him. After a few seconds, they heard the door being unlocked at last, and when it swung open, they saw Pop standing in the gloom of the room, a puzzled look on his face, as if he did not recognize his son. He wore long underwear and a pair of stained woolen trousers held up by green suspenders, and he had a pair of ancient slippers on his bare feet. His thin white hair was disheveled, and his face was unshaven and gray. He looked elderly and fragile, and he said nothing to Wade, just turned and shuffled away from the open door toward the stove, which he bent over and opened, as if to check the fire.

“Pop?” Wade said from the doorway. “Pop, you okay?”

The old man did not respond. He clanked the door of the cold stove closed and walked slowly to the woodbox and started to pull out a batch of old newspaper and several pieces of kindling. Wade looked at Margie and sucked his lips against his teeth, nodded for her to enter ahead of him, and the two of them came inside and closed the door.

Silently, Pop built the fire, while Wade and Margie watched, their breath puffing out in small clouds in front of them. The kitchen was as cold as it was outdoors, but dark, and consequently it seemed colder. “Jesus, Pop, how the hell can you stand the cold, dressed like that?” The old man did not answer.

Wade looked into the living room and saw nothing amiss; the door to the bedroom beyond, however, was shut. “Where’s Ma?” Wade asked.

Pop struck a match on the top of the stove and lit the fire, then stood stiffly up and for the first time looked at his son and the woman with him. “Sleeping,” he said.

Wade unzipped his coat but did not take it off. Dragging a chair from next to the table, he sat down and crossed one leg casually over the other. “This’s Margie Fogg, Pop. You remember her, don’t you?”

Pop looked steadily at Margie for a second. “Yes. From Wickham’s,” he said. “Been a while.”

Margie crossed the kitchen and shook the old man’s hand, but his gaze had drifted away from her and seemed focused on some point halfway into the living room beyond.

“You want some coffee or tea?” he blurted, as if suddenly realizing that they were in the room with him. “Or a beer?”

As if joking, Wade laughed lightly and said, “What I’d like is to know how you and Ma are doing. I haven’t seen you in town in a while, and I was wondering.” His voice was high and tight, the way it always was when he talked to his father.

“Oh. Well, we’re all right, I guess. Your ma is fine. She’s sleeping. You want me to get her?” Pop asked.

Wade said yes, and the old man shuffled from the room. Quickly, Margie moved close to the stove and held her hands out to it, as the fire crackled and popped through the kindling. She unzipped her down jacket, then changed her mind and zipped it back up. Wade got a chunk of heavier wood from the woodbox and tossed it into the stove and stood next to her.

“Jesus,” he whispered.

Margie said nothing. She could see that Wade was frightened but knew that he did not want to say it.

“This house. Lots of memories associated with this house. Not much has changed, I’ll tell you that. Except that the place is getting more and more decrepit. They’re too old for this house,” he said.

Then Pop was back, alone. The bedroom door was still shut. “Where’s Ma?” Wade asked, his voice high and tight again, like a scared adolescent’s.

“She’s coming. I told her you was here.” The old man took the coffeepot from the stove and rinsed it out at the sink, handling it clumsily, as if he were unfamiliar with its shape and parts.

“Here, Mr. Whitehouse, let me do that,” Margie said, and she plucked the coffeepot from his gnarled hands and proceeded briskly to clean it out. Pop backed away, hesitated a minute, then brought her a can of coffee and set it next to her on the drainboard, where there was a half-empty bottle of Canadian Club.

Time passed, and still Ma did not appear. Margie got the coffee perking, cleaned the few dishes in the sink and put four cups out on the table, while Wade smoked a cigarette and moved restlessly around the room, from the window to the door to the living room and back to the table, where he sat down for a moment before jumping up again. He and Pop did not speak to one another, but Margie filled the silence by asking the old man a few questions, and he answered her slowly and vaguely.