David Gates - The Wonders of the Invisible World

“The mall,” he says. “Yes. Very civilized. If you’re expecting a philippic against malls, I’m going to have to disappoint you.” She smells liquor breath.

“Where else did you go?”

“Oh?” he says. “Might I ask in what spirit you’re asking?”

“Just a spirit of curiosity.”

“Good. Good answer,” he says. “Because not all sixty-seven-year-olds have Alzheimer’s disease.”

“What is this with you and Alzheimer’s? Aren’t people more likely to die in a car crash?”

“This is — this may be true. But you can have Alzheimer’s and still die in a car crash. Or prostate cancer and die in a car crash. Or Alzheimer’s and die of prostate cancer. How in God’s name did we get onto this ?”

“Can I see what you bought?” Holly nods at the Barnes & Noble bag.

“Very deft. Thank you. Yes, let’s talk books. Books. All right: baroque as it may seem, I got a sudden hankering to reread Hazlitt. I found your Portable Coleridge upstairs and that made—”

“Not mine.”

“Yours now, n’est-ce pas ? At any rate, the reason I say civilized, I’m sitting up in your lovely guest room reading Coleridge on Shakespeare. This naturally makes me want to read Hazlitt instead, so I hop in your car, over to the mall, find the Barnes & Noble and voilà,” He reaches in the bag and produces Hazlitt: Selected Writings. “Ten minutes from an idle wish to its fulfillment. Fifteen, tops. You can’t tell me that’s not a modern miracle.”

“Can I see?” He hands her the book. William Hazlitt (1778–1830) seems to have been a great social and literary critic who said, “No one has come between me and my freewill.” Like whoosie and her Calvins. It’s not the world’s zingiest quote.

“I haven’t told your husband this,” Van says, “but I’ve been thinking about maybe going back to teaching. Little adjunct position someplace. Help ’em screw some young guy out of a full-time job. Oh, brother. I better sit down.” He pulls out a chair and sits, his palms flat on the table. “Better.”

“Are you all right?”

“I’ll put a narrow construction on that,” he says. “Yes, I’m fine. You want to know what I’ve been thinking about all day? Of course you do. This is something that happened back when I was probably thirty-five, thirty-six — Jesus, think of it. It was the time when the students were discovering pot and all that. I’d contend with them all day long and then drive back home to Woodbridge. Spray the shrubs, whatever I did — well, you know.” He waves an arm around, presumably to indicate the house and grounds. “Okay, okay, get to the point, Van. So this particular day, I’d suspended a student, to what purpose God only knows, and he came into my office — big, husky, blond boy, with one of those beards where it won’t grow in on the sides? Just a little on the chin.” Van rubs his jaw. “He was already on probation, and this was the next step. So I told him, ‘You’ve got to start making better choices.’ And he looks at me — surly little bastard — and he says, ‘Like what?’ And I said, ‘Fucking?’ Well. He goes bright red, the way blonds do? Because the whole time I’m thinking, Seth’s Little League team’s playing out of town this afternoon, so when I go home I’ll get to be all alone with my wife. Boy, he was out of there like a shot. He either thought I was a pervert or just completely out of my mind. Isn’t that a strange story?”

“Van, I have to tell you, it sort of bothers me that you drove my car after you’d been drinking.”

He waves this away. “Oh, pooh. And pooh again. As in: Pooh pooh. A couple of vodka tonics in the afternoon does not a drinking make. Nor iron bars a cage.” He stands up and walks to the refrigerator. “I guess you’d’ve had to see Lily to appreciate that story. But hell, you did see Lily. Once in the wheelchair, once in the box. And now you have the pictures.” He shakes his head. “You know, the one thing that got to me. The day I took the handicap plates off the car. Not a day I’d care to live over. May I offer you one of your own beers?”

“No, thanks. May I have the keys, by the way?”

“Hmm. Then may I invite you back to T.G.I. Friday’s? Which is the answer to your question. Where I was? I went in there thinking I’d just sit and have a drink and read Hazlitt. But, as it turns out, they have a big, you know, overhead TV, and they were showing a hockey game, and it was so — what’s the word? Restful. They just skate around and around and around. It was like a fish tank. Am I painting an attractive enough picture? They also have a real fish tank, by the way.”

“Keys?” Holly says.

“Of course.” He digs in his pocket.

“I think it might be a better idea to go upstairs and lie down for a while.”

“Now, there’s an offer.” He shakes his head. “Jesus, I am drunk.” He dangles the keys, drops them in her palm. “Oh, yes. The old boy’s definitely overdue for a nap.”

Holly turns on the radio and opens the refrigerator, maybe there’s enough stuff for salad in the vegetable drawer. “I’m Daniel Zwerdling,” she says, right along with Daniel Zwerdling after his “Hello.” She knows all their voices. Was she to blame for that going-upstairs remark? She’d meant it to be free of any little edge of anything. And we all know what that’s worth. On “All Things Considered” they’re talking about Cuba’s currently lively arts scene; she catches the phrase this island nation. She’s got salad stuff galore, and they can do without fancy-schmancy bread. God knows if Seth’s father will even be able to eat.

So. The lamb chops are marinating. Seth won’t be home for at least an hour. And she’s got no work to do — hasn’t even turned her computer on for a week. Well, she could pay those bills. She goes up to their bedroom, quietly, so Van won’t hear, and closes the door behind her. In Seth’s top drawer she finds half a dozen envelopes with a rubber band around them, next to his stubby brass pipe and his old Edgeworth tobacco box. She opens the lid: it’s full of sticky, piney-skunky-smelling buds, like tiny green shrimps, and she plucks out one and hides it in her kangaroo pocket. Thievery pure and simple. Then she closes the drawer, leaving the bills, having decided that — no, having understood that she’s going to call Mitchell. She walks to the bed as if somebody were inside her body, controlling it the way a little man up in his little booth runs a giant construction crane.

“Well,” Mitchell says. “What do you know. I was just thinking about you.”

“Me, too,” she says. “Then again, I’m always thinking about myself.”

“You’re a card,” he says. “But.”

She begins wrapping coils of phone cord around her index finger, whose nail she keeps short for her husband. “I’m not sure I can be dealt with,” she says.

“Yeah, I always liked that about you. Though you don’t sound too happy about it.”

“I don’t know, I didn’t call to complain.”

He clears his throat. “Which raises the question.”

“I guess I wanted to hear a friendly voice.”

“Oh? I was under the impression that you had all the friends you could use.”

“Come on, please don’t — you know.” Suddenly feeling cold, she puts her free hand in her kangaroo pocket. She needs to get socks on, too.

“Holly, I’m not understanding this. Look, do you want me to meet you someplace?”

“No.” She fingers the sticky little bud.

“Okay.”

The sound of him waiting for her to go on.