David Gates - A Hand Reached Down to Guide Me

“Karen said you’d give me an argument. She got called in to the hospital.”

“That’s never good,” he said. “You’re welcome to come in for a drink .”

“Except you’re blocking the door. It’s cold out here.”

“Forgive me.” He stepped aside. “I just didn’t want there to be a misunderstanding.”

She set the sleeping bag down, wriggled out of her backpack and unzipped her down vest.

He fetched another glass.

“Here, I can get that.” She took it from his hand and poured herself a couple of fingers, then added a dribble of water from the jug. “My husband used to drink Macallan.”

“I didn’t realize you’d been married. Have my chair.”

“I’m okay.” She sat on the floor, her back against his bed. “Yeah, five years. Amazing, huh? My wedding dress was a size six.”

He poured himself another finger and sat back down in the Morris chair. He couldn’t decide whether he liked her throaty voice.

“So how’s the mouth?” she said. “Karen tells me they went in with earthmovers.”

“I don’t think there’s going to be a problem.”

“Meaning there is a problem?”

The pain was still there, but at such a distance that it didn’t seem to apply to him. “I mean that it’s fine,” he said.

“So are we going to fight about this?”

“About?”

“Me staying.”

“I don’t believe I have the energy,” he said. “If you do stay, could I ask that you simply keep quiet? Without offense. I just don’t feel up to carrying on a conversation.”

“Don’t worry about me, I have thick skin. Thick everything.” She put a hand to her belly and made the flesh shake.

He looked away. “Make yourself comfortable, if that’s possible. There are books here.”

“I brought mine.” She reached for her backpack. “Just tell me when it’s lights-out.”

After a while, he felt the room begin to cool, and as if she felt it too—well, she did, of course—she got up and fed the stove. He clicked on Deal to start another game. The drugs he’d taken at six thirty were wearing off, and he took another codeine for the pain, another Dilaudid—because he was addicted, he supposed, though this was hardly the desperate condition they wanted you to believe—and an Ambien to get to sleep. If he wasn’t careful, one of these mornings he would fail to wake up. (If he continued to be careful, then it would be some other morning.) He lost, clicked on Deal again, studied the array, then moved a red two onto a black three and dragged the king into the empty space.

—

He seemed to think someone had hold of his upper arm, guiding him toward what must be the bed. At one point someone had said, “Are you all right?” There had been a noise, some sort of disturbance. There was a connection among these things, or if not a connection, at least a sequence. But such considerations existed far outside him.

—

He opened his eyes and it was daylight, and wide Gloria had been replaced by narrow Karen, fitting a paper filter into the coffeemaker. His mouth was hurting; his back too, as if he’d thrown it out again. Could time possibly have gone backward, to that episode with the boy? But there was a rule against that. The cabin stank of whiskey. He closed his eyes and the negative afterimage of the window appeared, complete with the tree branches outside. He followed it, now here, now here, now here, until it faded, then opened his eyes and burned it in again.

He woke up the next time to the smell of coffee. He ran his tongue along his lower lip: it smarted, felt fat, and he tasted blood.

He woke up again and Karen was sitting on the bed.

“Say again?” she said.

“What time is it?”

“Ten thirty. So how much of this have you been taking?” She rattled the vial of Dilaudid in his face. “You scared the living shit out of Gloria.”

“Where is Gloria?”

“Where she always is. Berating some stock boy.” She got up and set the pills on the table. “Could you drink a little coffee?”

He turned on his side—what in God’s name had he done to his back?—to fold the pillow double against the headboard and watched her fill a cup and pour in milk.

“Thank you.” She had put sugar in, though somehow he hadn’t seen her do it. “So. Am I being called to account for my sins?”

“I’m not the Puritan,” she said. “You have a medical problem.”

“Granting it’s a problem. That’s your assumption.”

“I think Kaspar Hauser could validate my assumption. If we could reach him in the Black Forest.”

“Ah, at least someone appreciates my little jokes.”

“I’m surprised you haven’t been busted,” she said. “How stupid do you think people are?” She sat down on the bed again. “Apparently you passed out and fell into your keyboard. And I guess you smacked the floor pretty hard. Let me see you.” She rested a finger on his lower lip and pulled it down gently. He hissed in. “Not terrible,” she said. “I made some oatmeal. In the microwave.” Point of information, evidently. “You haven’t been eating.”

“I need to take something,” he said. “I hurt everywhere.”

She shook her head. “Not on my watch. I don’t doubt that you hurt. We’re going to get you to someone who treats these things.”

He worked his elbows to get himself sitting up. “Oh? By whose authority? I’ve had about enough of you , I can tell you that.”

“You’ll feel better,” she said.

“You’re damn right I will. I want you out of my house. The both of you. You and your fat lesbian whatever-she-is.”

She looked at him and got up off the bed. “Good,” she said. “A little honesty.” She took her leather jacket off the peg. “I have to say, you were a wonderful teacher. Beyond that—I don’t know, I guess I’m glad to know there wasn’t anything beyond that.” She wound the scarf around her neck and put the vials of pills into her jacket pocket. “You have an appointment for one forty-five. I’ll give you some privacy to get yourself cleaned up.”

—

Nathan flew in from Seattle to see him in the facility—to use the facile term—then back to attend to his Lexus dealership and to be present for his son’s sixth-grade graduation. Claudia, coming in from Rome, missed Nathan by a day—the two of them hadn’t seen each other for years—and stayed on, visiting for the half hour the rules allowed and sleeping out at the house, in her old room. She told him that the girls had moved their belongings away in a U-Haul. They’d been perfectly lovely to her, she said; the thin one had invited her to go out for coffee.

When he had gotten through the worst of it and they’d discharged him, Claudia took him to have his bridgework completed; on Thanksgiving night he was able to eat with her at Red Fish Blue Fish. She had the veal, and what she said was a good Pinot Grigio; he had the branzino, a fish once unknown, and was drinking mineral water for now. She was not going back to Italy, she told him. She and Giancarlo—but this probably wasn’t the time.

“Come, come,” he said. “I’m not such a delicate soul.”

“No,” she said. “No one’s ever accused you of that .”

“Ah. I take it you’ve been talking to your mother.”

She nodded. “I’m going down when you’re, you know—sometime over Christmas.”

“When I can be trusted by myself? Well, that should be a pleasant visit.”

“Why are you so hateful about her? Because she still loves you?”

“You’re not becoming one of those truth tellers, I hope. I only meant that New York should be a welcome change from this outpost. Martine certainly found it so.”