David Gates - A Hand Reached Down to Guide Me

“So you still miss the city.”

“Yeah, no shit.” Abigail started to cry. “Oh God. Too early in the fucking day for this.” She got up and went inside, a hand before her like a blind person. Paige heard a door shut somewhere. Probably that bathroom off the kitchen. Two people and three bathrooms: What could he have been thinking? Right, well, if you knew that .

—

Back in the study, Paige checked the Wordsworth poem—it was “ ‘O mercy!’ to myself I cried”—and felt a headache sneaking in. She got up to look for aspirin and met her father coming down the stairs: black shorts and a regrettable white alligator shirt, his calves still muscled. He hugged her, then took a step back, his hands cupping her shoulders. “Terrific.”

“Looking good yourself,” she said. Well, he did have a tan.

“Actually,” he said—and she knew what was coming—“there’s this extremely horrifying portrait of me up in the attic.” She tried to give him a smile; her mouth did something but her eyebrows wouldn’t go up.

She followed him out onto the porch. She didn’t want to do the exact same scene over again, though she couldn’t not sit down in her same chair.

“You sleep all right, kitten?” He coughed.

“Fine,” she said. “It’s so quiet up here.”

“It is that,” he said. And as if to demonstrate.

Paige listened awhile. Then she said, “Did Abigail go back to bed?”

“Yep.” He coughed again. A barking cough. “I don’t think she got much sleep.”

“She was telling me you didn’t get much sleep.”

“Aha,” he said. “And how did she know? You see the pathology. Well, ‘pathology’ is too strong a word.” Coughed again.

“How long have you had that? ”

“What, the cough? Dah—not worth discussing. Now, how are you?”

“Oh. You know.”

“Mm,” he said. “I’m not quite getting a reading here.”

“No, I’m fine,” she said. “It’s just nice to be away, you know. From all of it.”

“All of it, eh?” he said. “No, you certainly won’t find that here. So what shall we do to amuse you?”

“Put me to work? You want me to finish your hedge for you?”

“Ah. Thereby hangs a tale. I was merrily trimming away with the hedge trimmer—before cocktails, I’ll have you know—and I somehow managed to cut through the cord. You’d think one would see an orange cord. I assume this is why they make them orange. I’m just not a country boy, kitten.” Cough.

“Well, I could splice the cord,” Paige said. “You have electrical tape?”

“Alas,” he said. “But there’s a True Value in town.” He looked skyward. “God knows I’ve tried to find it. Well? Don’t we laugh?”

In the room where she’d slept, she got her car keys out of her jacket and considered: she’d meant to do the supposedly necessary this morning and had forgotten. But having to face her father afterward—no. When she came back to the porch, he stood up, stretched and coughed, and she followed him down between the boxwoods, then to her car.

“Now in the city,” he said, “we’d be sitting somewhere reading the Times and drinking Bloody Marys.”

“Do you ever think about moving back?”

“Well, of course Abigail would do it in a heartbeat.” Cough. “For all I know, I’m just hanging on here because she hates it.”

She opened the passenger door for him, then got behind the wheel. Another cough. “Did I tell you I bought this Eminem record? CD, I should say.”

“Why on earth?” She was having trouble getting into reverse.

“I’m quite taken with it. He just vents . And he’s not without self-irony, you know.”

“Lucky him,” she said. Damn this thing. There.

“Abigail, of course, loathes it with all her middlebrow soul.”

She stopped at the end of the drive and looked both ways.

“Watch for people coming around that curve,” he said. “I always feel safer at night. At least you can see the lights. Does it sound to you as if everything I’m saying is a metaphor?”

She popped the clutch and got them safely out there. “Don’t go by me. I’m sort of having echoes myself.”

“Echoes! Excellent. Well, this is a grim subject for a beautiful day.” He coughed. “May I open your sunroof?” He pointed upward with his thumb and started fiddling with the catch.

“So why did you marry somebody you think has a middlebrow soul?”

“You’ve heard of oral sex, yes?” he said. “Big deal in my day.” The sunroof slid open, and she thought she felt the warm air in the car whoosh up and back.

“Ah,” he said. “Delightful.” He stuck a hand up through the roof and wiggled his fingers.

“So where do I go?” she said.

“Just go straight at the light,” he said. “There I go again . Stop! Stop!”

She hit the brake. “What?”

“No, no, I meant me. So listen, what would you say to getting me out of here?” She looked at him. “Quite serious. Well, you know. Quasi.”

She pulled up in front of the hardware store and cut the engine. “How badly are you not getting along?”

“Get me out of here and I’ll tell you everything.” He coughed. He was tapping his knee with his index finger, fast, like a telegrapher. He’d trimmed his white beard so nicely, shaving his neck below the beard line and the upper part of his cheeks. She pitied the way his glasses cut into his temple, bit into the bridge of his nose. He was still a beautiful man. Objectively.

“You should see a doctor about that cough,” she said.

“I have. Shall I come in with you so you can keep an eye on me?”

“No, I’m not that into drama,” Paige said. “Otherwise I’d still be in the city.”

“Oh?” he said.

“Oh,” she said.

She looked for electrical tape with the electrical stuff—silly girl—and found it instead over with the tape. Had this been her hardware store, she would have put a portion of her inventory of electrical tape in each place. Cross-referencing.

Back in the car, she closed her eyes for a second just to slow things down, though she wasn’t crazy about the light show going on in there. She heard her father cough, then say, “Are you going to take me seriously? What I asked you?”

“Daddy,” she said. “I mean—come on. Am I supposed to abduct you or something?” She started the engine. “Where would we go?”

“That’s the spirit. You just carry on as the dutiful daughter and listen for your cue.”

“Why are you being so cloak-and-dagger-y?”

“You’ll enjoy it,” he said. “The intrigue. I know a little something about my girl.”

—

When they came up the driveway, there was Abigail sitting on the porch again. This day didn’t seem to be, like, progressing. In the garage, Paige took down the hedge clipper and the severed cord, found a sheetrock knife among the tools and brought everything back to the porch.

“And I’ve learned that his real name is Marshall Mathers,” her father was saying. He had a glass in his hand; a glass for her sat on the arm of her chair. “Apparently no relation to the Beaver.”

Paige picked up her glass and tasted: vodka tonic.

“He’s become quite the authority,” Abigail said. She reached into her glass, fished out the lime slice and bit out the inside part without even wincing.

“Hardly that,” her father said. “Shall I get you a little more, dear?” Cough. “You look like you’re still able to sit up straight.”

“Appearances are deceiving. But I don’t have to tell you that.” She stood up. “Does anybody care for some lunch? We have, let me see. We have lunch meat.”