David Gates - The Wonders of the Invisible World

“Okay,” he said. “End of discussion. I am buying, this gun, from Thurston. Clear?”

“Paul,” Faye said. “In view of everything, do you really think it’s a good idea to have a gun in this house?”

“Fine,” he said. “I’ll keep it in the truck, how’s that? I’ll go the whole route, the gun rack and everything. And that way you can have the pleasure of complaining to your sister that I’ve gone native.”

She gave him the finger, then said, “It smells in here.”

Out in the garden, she found Karen and Allen, her arm around his waist, talking with Thurston Martin, who was squatting by one of the zucchini plants. The three heads turned, and Thurston got to his feet, dangling his beer can between fingertips and opposable thumb. “Just saying you ought to pick some of these big ones,” he said.

“Thanks for your concern, Thurston,” Faye said. “You can go back in now. The little woman has been put in her place.”

Thurston looked at her, then started for the house.

“Faye?” said Karen. “Allen and I think we should head back tonight. Allen’s got a bunch of work to do before Monday.”

“Oh,” Faye said. “Should I be gracious? That’s clearly what’s called for here.”

Allen looked at the ground. Karen said, “He really does have work. And it doesn’t seem as if our being here is helping things any. I mean, we obviously didn’t pick a very good time.”

“Aren’t you diplomatic,” Faye said.

“Not really,” Karen said, “But I just want you to know, if you ever feel like coming down, either by yourself or—”

“Yeah. Well. Thanks. Look, you’re both handling this very smoothly, and old Faye intends to hold up her end. I’ll tell Paul what’s going on so you don’t have to go through all that again, he can drive you over to Burlington, we’ll find a shopping bag so you can carry that pie, and we’ll just have this whole thing together in no time.”

“Faye, I’m really sorry.”

“Oh, come on,” she said. “Come on, come on, you’re taking this way too seriously. This will all blow over. You guys can come back in December and we’ll have an old-fashioned Christmas, what do you say? Paul can kill us a goose with his shotgun, and we’ll all sit around and drink smoking bishop.”

Faye sat on the doorstep looking across the road. She had listened and listened, following the sound of the truck into silence; by now it had been silent for God knows how long. Here and there the scream of a jay, and that was all. She tried to wish that if the truck were going to crash it would wait to crash on the way back, so only Paul would die. It wasn’t actually a heavy thing, wishing people dead; she had learned this during her analysis. Everybody did it. Obvious example: children wishing their parents dead. Of course they feel guilty if that wish should appear to come true — the child is angry with the parents, the parents coincidentally die in a car crash — and then they need to enter analysis to straighten out the misunderstanding. But what about when parents wish their children dead? “These are not children,” her shrink had said, when she told him about her abortion. He’d said it angrily, unless she’d misperceived. The quality of the life, that was his concern. “We are physicians,” he had said, full of indignation at human suffering. In his work with teenage mothers, he’d seen what damage could be done. Yet damage was the foundation stone of his practice. So it all went around and around and around.

Down the driveway, beyond the mailbox, across the road, the land dipped down to the brook, then rose again to a grassy hillside, belonging to somebody — Paul must’ve said the name a hundred times — whose black-and-white cows stood in a complicated arrangement against the green. The phrase effictio portrait came into her head. Above the pasture, the wooded hilltop, a deeper green in which she already saw flecks of red; it was crazy to pretend she didn’t. Strange and terrible powers were available to us, no matter what her shrink had said, but in most cases you could wish and wish and wish — wish people dead, wish the leaves green again, wish your husband, your real husband, back in your arms and babies beyond number issuing from between your legs — while everything just stayed silent and inert, exactly as it was.

She stood up and went back inside. Her wildflowers lay on the kitchen counter; better get them in water. She lowered her palm above the remaining pie until she felt heat, then edged it back up, feeling for the boundary where the heat left off. Then she walked over to the table and touched the shotgun, still lying on top of its fake-leather case. She touched the stock, then the barrel; why should metal feel colder than wood? She couldn’t imagine an explanation that wasn’t mystical. At least touching this thing took away some of the awe. After all, it was just an object: its presence probably wouldn’t change things much, unless you allowed it to become an emblem of something. She sat down at the table and started lifting the beer cans, found one that was nearly full, examined the edge of the hole for cigarette traces, sniffed, took a sip. It was so quiet in here that her whole body jerked when the phone rang. She jumped up to get it, then sat back down and let it ring and ring and ring, thinking: As long as I don’t pick it up, it isn’t anybody.

Half awake, pawing at the night table for The Book of Great Conversations, I knock the bottle onto the floor. The sound hangs there: a ringing part, a shattering part, a splashing part. I smell the gin. Fine. It can stay there until I feel like getting up and dealing with it. Nobody here to be scandalized, nobody to be protected. A mouse, I suppose, might scamper across and cut its dainty foot, but that’s the mouse’s lookout, no? I remember when we first moved in here, we felt sorry for them, darting along the countertop to cower, bright-eyed, beside the toaster. So tiny, so dear: couldn’t we all just live? It took a month for you to agree that something had to be done. But no D-Con. So, like what? I said. A resettlement program? “Well, couldn’t we?” you said. “Couldn’t we try?” And finally I went out and bought the Hav-a-Heart trap. Humane, enlightened. That was only last fall. Less than a year ago. As I remember it, we were all right then.

Kid noise through the open window. Sunday morning, quarter to eleven, already hot. I lift the sheet and shake it out to make it feel cool as it floats back down to rest on my legs. The coolness doesn’t last. I prop both pillows (yours and mine) together against the headboard, sit up, put on my prescription sunglasses and turn to the Great Conversation in which Shaw loses his temper when Chesterton calls him a Puritan. Shaw says Chesterton has no real self, no firm place to stand, and Chesterton calls Shaw a Puritan for thinking that was necessary. Trying to understand these ideas is waking me up. I put the book back on the night table — carefully, though now there’s no need — get out of bed, step around the glass (I can’t wholly avoid the gin puddle), go to the window and tug the shade to make it go up. Down in the street firemen have put a sprinkler cap on the hydrant — otherwise the Dominican kids just open it up and let it gush — and pencil-thick streams of water come arching out. A little boy stands at the edge of the widening pool, undecided.

But hang on: didn’t I park the car in that first space to the right of the hydrant? What’s there now is a rusted-out station wagon, cloudy plastic duct-taped over where the passenger window used to be. So now I know: they tow after a week of tickets. Well, fine, more power to ’em. Unless of course somebody stole the thing. In which case, also fine. But isn’t it weird. You were always the one who said it was insane to keep a car in New York. I was always the one who said I wanted the feeling I could get out.