David Gates - The Wonders of the Invisible World

I asked if he wanted the TV. He said he didn’t care, but it didn’t take him any time at all to get involved in some hospital program — not what I would’ve picked to get my mind off things — where a bad girl seemed to be making a play for a married doctor. So that when the phone rang he jumped a foot. He listened for a second, then said, “Hang on, I’ll let you talk to Len,” and held out the phone to me. It was Sylvia, calling from the airport out there. She couldn’t find a nonstop to either New York or Boston, so she was about to get on a plane for Atlanta, where she’d put up overnight and fly to New York in the morning and then hire a rental car. I hated to think what all this was going to set old Harold back.

“Be careful driving,” I said. “Just take your time.”

“Hah,” she said. “You’d just as soon I didn’t come at all. You think I won’t be on good behavior.”

“That’s not so,” I said.

“Hah. You never were much of a liar.”

I could’ve said something about that, too.

When the commercials came on, Dave Senior looked over. “I get you a cold one, Pop? I could sure as hell use one.”

“Guess you could twist my arm,” I said. I was glad he felt like he could call me Pop. His own father died years ago; from what I can gather, he was hell on wheels when he drank. They say it’s one in ten; seems like about one in two sometimes.

We cracked our beers and I got him talking about Little Dave and what he could and couldn’t do — lately he was trying to learn to tie his shoes — until the hospital program came back on. I remember when Bonnie was about four, she used to tie her shoes with a special knot she made up herself, and you had a hell of a time undoing it. I’m ashamed now to think back, because I sometimes lost my patience. Not knowing that afterward the time would seem so short. On the TV, the bad girl tossed her head to get her hair out of her face, then clinked her glass with the married doctor.

“Pop, can I ask you something?” Dave Senior said. “What do you honestly — I don’t know, shit, forget it. You’re not really the person to ask.”

“Hell, go ahead and ask. What is it?”

“Well, I guess you knew we’d been having trouble.”

“No, I had no idea.” Though Bonnie had said some things.

He took a long swallow that finished off his beer, and put the empty can on the table next to him. Then he turned back to the television, so I did, too. That girl tossed her head again and gave the doctor a look, and I wouldn’t have been in that doctor’s shoes for a million dollars.

“Doesn’t seem like you’re too curious,” he said.

“I don’t want to stick my nose in your business,” I said. “But if—”

“Nope. Nope, I think you’re smart,” he said. “I think we might as well leave it right there.”

He turned in after the news, the best thing he could’ve done for himself. I found sheets and blankets in the linen closet and pulled out the hide-a-bed, but I wasn’t tired — I mean I wasn’t sleepy — so I put the TV back on with the sound low, hoping that might do the trick. Letterman had some actress on, and the two of them kidded back and forth. I’m guessing she was an actress; he didn’t say. The point was she was young and pretty, had a lovely figure, full of fun. Something to keep old men watching TV.

I got disgusted and went out to the kitchen for another beer, in hopes that might put me under. But I noticed there was no milk for the morning, and not much of anything else in the icebox. Pudding snacks, yogurts, hot sauce, jar of dill spears, open can of black olives. I lifted the lid of a covered saucepan — leftover Spaghetti-O’s — then hunted up my jacket, wallet and car keys.

Everything’s changed in this part of the world, but you were bound to hit a 7-Eleven or something down on the Post Road. Turned out I didn’t even need to go that far: the Mobil station on the corner had a Mini-Mart, pretty well stocked. I picked up a half gallon of milk, plus a pint of half-and-half as an extra treat for the coffee. A dozen eggs, a package of bacon. Quart of grapefruit juice. Loaf of bread, pound of butter. And a six-pack of Bud Light so Dave wouldn’t run short. I put it all on my debit card, and stuck the receipt in my shirt pocket so I wouldn’t forget to write it in my checkbook. That’s the damn problem with those cards.

Then I figured since I was out, I might as well swing by and have a look at where it happened. A motel on the Post Road, in Clinton, but over toward Westbrook: shouldn’t be too hard to pin down. I switched the radio on and picked up an oldies station — what they call oldies. Back when Bonnie was growing up, these songs used to scare me: so cheap and raw, and all tied up with drugs and whatnot. Now I kind of like to hear them, though I’d be ashamed if anybody caught me listening. They played a Little Richard number— Gonna tell Aunt Mary about Uncle John —then “Angel Baby,” then that “96 Tears.” About half a mile before the Westbrook line, I saw a place up ahead on the left — the Nautilus Motor Court — that I remembered from years ago. If it had a bad reputation back then, I never heard about it. Sure enough, you could see skid marks on the pavement and the burned-out stub of a flare; safety glass still sparkled on the shoulder under the streetlight. I slowed down, pulled over to let a car full of teenagers pass and looked across at the motel. They’d painted the cinderblock wall white and planted geraniums along the top; seemed like they kept the place up nicely. I couldn’t see a pay phone by the office, but they might’ve had it inside, or back along where the rooms were. Anyhow, it didn’t mean anything one way or the other. She could easily have pulled in thinking there might be a phone, not found one and tried to pull out again. Or maybe this wasn’t the spot after all. I crossed into Westbrook, then made a U-turn in a car wash and started back.

In the center of Clinton, I thought, Why the hell not, and took a right under the railroad underpass. It was lower and narrower than I remembered; I hadn’t been up this way in how many years? I drove up 81 and crossed over the turnpike, glancing down at white headlights bound for New York and red taillights bound for Providence and Boston, then took a right on Glenwood Road.

The house looked pretty much the same — same shutters with crescent moons cut out — but they’d put up a split-rail fence along the driveway, and the little shrubs I’d planted on either side of the front door had grown to four or five feet wide, and somebody’d squared them off with a hedge trimmer. We bought the place the year after Sylvia went to work for Martin Real Estate and Insurance, the year before she ran off. It was too much house for us, really — three bedrooms and a finished basement — but Sylvia had talked in terms of another baby. I was hoping for a son; meanwhile, she must have had Harold Martin on her mind. I don’t doubt it was true love — look how long they’ve been together now — though at the time I know certain people assumed otherwise, seeing that he had his own business, was president of the Lions Club and so forth, when I was just a machinist there at the Wahlstrom Company.

After Sylvia left, Bonnie used to work on me about getting myself a ladyfriend. Or I’d go over to somebody’s house for supper and the wife would want to introduce me to this one or that one. But with Bonnie and the house and my job, I had enough to do as it was. And then later, when Bonnie went off on her own, I got used to coming and going as I pleased. I rewired the basement and set up my shop — lathe, drill press, milling machine — and if I felt like spending the whole weekend down there working on some project or other, there was nobody to complain. When Bonnie would tell me it wasn’t normal not to have what she called an outlet, I’d always say I had plenty of outlets — put ’em in myself.