David Gates - A Hand Reached Down to Guide Me

I moved into Wayne’s house last October; now it was almost summer again and still no word of his coming back. From what I could gather, the widow was playing him against a richer, feebler retiree, but even if he crapped out with her, she couldn’t be the only hot senior in the Sunbelt. I put the welcome mat, which still read THE DAVENPORTS, out in the garage, where he had his machine shop and kept his restored Plymouth Duster under a tarp. Every few weeks I got the key from its peg in the kitchen, took the tarp off and ran the Duster up to Killingworth and back; they fall to shit fast, he told me, if you let them sit. I slept alone on the driver’s side of the king-sized bed that took up most of Wayne’s bedroom, Gene Tierney having long since bestowed the sweets of her unhappiness on another married man. And I kept the photographs of Aunt Phyllis and the Mohegan Sun Goddess side by side on the nightstand, just as he’d left them. I’d promised myself not to put them in the drawer until I’d attained his perfect sanity.

—

Sarah would be dropping Seth off for Memorial Day weekend, so Friday afternoon I mowed the lawn before the rain could start, washed dishes that had been piled in the sink and stood in line at Stop & Shop among carts overloaded with hot dogs and soda. I’d suggested to Seth that we take a road trip to, oh, wherever. Since he had his learner’s permit, we could split the driving. But he said he’d rather just hang out, and maybe Kendra could come over? Not what I’d had in mind, but what had I had in mind? I’d asked Sarah about this new girlfriend, and she’d said, Well, I ’d probably like her, which I understood was not an endorsement. But in order to put my best foot forward, I worked out a mnemonic involving Ken Russell and Sandra Dee. The name wasn’t her fault.

I put the groceries away and jammed the plastic bags up the skirt of a knitted old lady hanging next to the refrigerator: one of Phyllis’s homemaking touches that I’d kept for the kitschy fun of it, along with the rooster clock and the pegboard with the legend ALL “KEYED UP.” As I minced garlic and listened to Marketplace , the sky boomed right in front of me, over the turnpike—had it been the Promised End, it would’ve come from the direction of New York City—and rain started rattling in the gutters. Usually Sarah dropped Seth at the corner of Bayberry Drive: walking the last block or so, he said, made the “passage” easier. But surely in such a downpour she’d bring him to the house.

I heard a car pull up to the kitchen door and Seth burst in with Sarah behind him, black hair pasted to her head, man’s white shirt pasted to her body.

“Come on in,” I said. “Let me get you a towel.”

“Don’t bother. I just thought you might have that check.”

“Hell,” I said. “I put it in the mail this morning. You should have it Tuesday.” And so she should, if I went out and mailed it tonight. “You have time for a drink?”

“I’ve got to get back,” she said. “I’m having people over. I thought you’d stopped.”

“Pretty much.”

“He really has,” Seth said.

“Oh,” she said. “Well. Everything you know is wrong and now that’s wrong.”

The wet shirt showed brassiere that showed nipple. Had she put on a little weight? “I thought we weren’t using civilians for cover,” I said. “So who all is coming over?”

“No one you know.”

“One assumes that ,” I said.

“Well,” she said, “enjoy your weekend.” You see what I was saying about the moral high ground.

As she backed out of the driveway, Seth said, “You guys need to stop.” He sat on the step stool and began taking off his wet running shoes. “How come you’re listening to this shit?” Marketplace was playing “We’re in the Money,” betokening a gladsome day in the stock market. He peeled off a sock and threw it at the radio. “Like we’re supposed to be all happy for the rich people?”

“I just keep it on for company,” I said. “Does that sound pathetic?”

He got up and picked the wet sock off the counter. “Sorry. I need to work on impulse control.”

“No, turn it off, would you? I hate it too.” The jocular shills for capitalism left off in mid-banter. No sound but the rain. “You getting hungry?” I said. “I’m making pasta à la usuelle .”

“I guess.”

“Oh, hey, and I got us some movies.” I pointed a thumb at the stack of DVDs; I’d put Fail-Safe in the middle, but sticking out, as if forcing a card.

“Is there anything that’s not black and white?”

“Now there’s a hanging curve,” I said. “But yeah, come to think of it. You’ve never seen The Boys from Brazil , right?” This was my second choice: Olivier, Gregory Peck and James Mason all at their over-the-hill worst.

“So what is it, subtitles?”

“I wouldn’t do that to you again,” I said. “It’s about Nazis. Actually, if you’d rather, the Mets are on in a minute.” I’d driven him down to Shea for a few games when we first came east and he was still in his baseball phase.

“I know I’m being a pain in the ass, okay? Can I just go lay down for a little bit?”

“Are you all right?” I said.

“Yeah. I just need to have the passage, you know?”

If I only had a picture of what he looked like at that moment: his shaved head, because he said any hairstyle was a style; his crooked nose, broken by a pitch when he was in ninth grade, and which he refused to have fixed because that was part of his life. So much for the theory—favored by wife and shrink alike—that what was wrong with me was an inability to love.

During a rain delay after the first inning, they killed time by giving the scores, and I thought one might amuse Seth: Mariners nothing, Marlins nothing. His class had been reading The Old Man and the Sea . I eased down the hall and stood outside the spare room, across from Wayne’s bedroom. I’d allowed Seth to tape a poster of the Dalai Lama to the hollow-core door—that bare arm could have used some toning, not that I was beach-ready myself—and I heard him in there talking on his cell. Okay, time to crack a cold one. Seth’s door opened during the top of the eighth, the bathroom door closed, the toilet flushed and his door closed again. After the postgame show I still wasn’t sleepy, which was why the Good Lord made Tylenol PM. I read synopses of failed movies in Halliwell’s Film Guide , under the two ladies’ unjudging eyes, until beer and antihistamine took me down.

When I came to the next morning, it was hot and stuffy in the bedroom; I opened the sash and raised the shade just enough to let fresh air in. Seth’s door was still closed and the Dalai Lama was still giving me that look: I’m all about compassion, but you smell . I made coffee, brought my laptop out to the slab Wayne had poured for a patio and toweled off a lawn chair. Beyond the concrete, a lumpy patch of grass that used to be Phyllis’s garden; beyond that, a chain-link fence woven with strips of green plastic, then a stand of trees, then the turnpike. What Wayne said about how you stop hearing it after a while? Not true.

My mother had sent an email at 3:00 a.m. California time: Are you going up there on Monday?

Sorry , I typed. Slow on the uptake this morning. Clarify?

She answered within a minute. Had she been up all night? Hello? she wrote. Mem Day? I can’t stand to think of nobody visiting him .

I’d never been back to the grave; as far as I knew, neither had she. For serious? I typed. Do we really think he’s been hanging out in his casket all these years? I changed his casket to Middletown, Conn .