David Gates - A Hand Reached Down to Guide Me

“I don’t believe Paige understands your humor, dear. Why don’t you let me do this.”

“I am fine .” Abigail went to the door. “You can carry on with the tutorial.” She turned to Paige. “You don’t know how refreshing it is. Marry an aging poet and they throw in a young person to sweeten the deal.”

Paige put down her glass and watched a gray squirrel creeping on the flagstones, in little freeze-frame movements. She heard the screen door close. “This is what it’s like?” she said.

“Give or take.”

“So why do you not leave?” She picked up the severed plug end of the cord and started slicing plastic away from one of the ragged copper wires.

“And who takes care of me when I get cancer?”

“Your doctor,” she said. “You’re not planning to give yourself cancer, I hope.”

“Give myself cancer? How sixties. What’s that line? ‘Canker is a disease of plants, cancer one of animals.’ ” He coughed again.

Paige got an inch of copper bared on a red-clad wire and started on the matching red wire in the other part of the cord.

Abigail opened the door. “The bread has mold ,” she said. “It’s horrible . I’ve got to go into town.”

“Why don’t we just all go to the Cup and Saucer?” he said. “You’ll be amused, kitten. They’ve got a blackboard with the pies du jour. Oh, sweetheart? I meant to tell you, after lunch? Paige would like me to drive down to the city with her to visit Ken. In the hospital.”

Paige stopped carving at the wire.

“And who is Ken? ” Abigail said.

“Old, old friend of mine and Catherine’s. I’ve told you about Ken. He and his wife used to watch Paige—their daughter went to Saint Ann’s, too. At any rate, Paige tells me he’s in Sloan Kettering. And I gather he’s not doing well.”

“Oh, of course,” Abigail said. “Any friend of yours and Catherine’s. I’m sorry the man’s ill. Were you asking my permission?”

“Sweetheart—”

“Were you? ” she said to Paige. “Christ, you both disgust me. Oh, and thank you for the gracious invitation. But I think I’ll just eat shit.”

—

“Daddy,” Paige said as she drove them toward town. “Next time brief me a little?”

“Next time? You’re a worse pessimist than I am. No, your silence was golden. I love you very dearly, kitten, but you are not the world’s best liar. Remember the time you took a puff off my cigarette and tried to—”

“I was four years old.”

“You said, ‘The wind did it.’ ”

“I know, Daddy. I remember.” This might, in fact, be Paige’s earliest memory. Sun on the stoop, Remsen Street, early spring, forsythia. He’d put his cigarette down on the edge of the brownstone step; it sat there, smoke streaming up from where the ash met the paper. She’d thought it was a clever lie: You sucked air through a cigarette, so why couldn’t the wind have gone through on its own? For a four-year-old, wasn’t this a lie of genius?

She said, “I’m glad you gave up smoking.”

“Well. I’m glad you’re glad.” He coughed.

She checked her mirror: there was a car behind them, so close she couldn’t see its grille.

“I’m just going to let this asshole go by.” She slowed down, pulled over, heard her tires crushing fallen leaves; the car roared past and she gave it the finger.

“Temper temper,” her father said. “We’re not in any hurry. How does it go? ‘We’ll sit here like birds i’ the cage. They’ll talk and we’ll talk with ’em—who’s up, who’s down, and fire us forth like foxes.’ ” Cough. “God, I’m missing whole chunks.”

She shifted to second and pulled back onto the road. “So where are we going?”

“Well, here’s a thought,” he said. “What would you say to Cape Cod? You remember that song? Cape Cod girls they have no bones —or, rather, they have no combs. They comb their hair with codfish bones . You know, it may well be that the Indians actually did that. Must have smelled to high heaven.”

“Well, isn’t the smell the whole point?” Paige said. “Girls and fish smell? Or am I being too feminist?”

“Ah well, see now, there we come to a whole discussion that fathers and daughters probably ought not to be having,” he said. “Even in these enlightened days.”

“Daddy, you need to be back writing.”

“What, keep rearranging the bric-a-brac? No, I’ve been to the mountaintop. I’m perfectly content at this point to leave the field to Mr. Mathers.”

Just before the Thruway entrance, she pulled into a gas station and put the car in neutral. “So?” she said.

“I’m quite serious about the Cape,” he said. “And I do know someone we could impose on.”

“Who’s that?”

He coughed. “Old friend of mine. Former student, actually.”

“Somebody else who used to babysit me?”

“Now, I thought that sounded very plausible. No, you never knew this person.”

“I never knew the other person, Daddy. Ted?”

“Ken,” he said. “As in, beyond our ken. A little more than Ken but less than kind. No, this is actually a real person. Let me get out and see if I can maybe raise her on the phone.”

“Use mine?” Paige said. She reached behind his seat for her backpack.

He held up a hand. “No, we don’t want brain cancer on top of everything else.”

“So who is this real person?”

“Louisa Philips?” he said. “You’ve heard me mention her.”

“An old friend ?” This was the one who’d broken up his second marriage. Okay, the one he’d used to break up his second marriage.

“Well, now she is. She’s in North Truro, I believe. With her husband. To whom I gather she’s very happily married.”

“I’m thrilled for her,” Paige said.

“You’re not going to have an attitude, kitten?”

“What attitude would you like me not to have?”

“Look, I promise you, kitten, it will be a mindless good time. Pleasant people? Lovely old house? The ocean? Abigail and I have stayed with them. On a couple of occasions. And it’s never been the least bit.” He opened his door and put one leg out. “You know, we don’t need to do this.”

“All my stuff’s back at the house,” Paige said. “I don’t even have a toothbrush.”

“Nor do I,” he said. “But the Lord has spoken to me of Walmarts in the wilderness.”

He walked to the pay phone and she watched him poking at the numbers as if counting heads. Why had she not understood until now that this had been a done deal?

“Well,” he said as he fastened his seat belt. “ She’s there at any rate. He, apparently, is in Tokyo. Telling the boys at the Nikkei what’s what. Or that’s my understanding. She says she’d be delighted to have some company.”

“Won’t I be a third wheel?” Paige said.

“Dear heart,” he said, “you make it possible . So.” He pointed out the window. “Follow the pillar of smoke.”

“Tell me one thing, okay?” she said. “When did you really call her?”

“What do you mean, kitten? Just now.” And anybody would have believed him.

—

The map showed that there was no decent route to Cape Cod. They didn’t even hit Hartford until the sun was glaring and flashing in her rearview mirror, and at Manchester they had to choose between 44 and 6; each seemed hopeless. So 44: this dreary two-lane with the occasional white colonial. The sun went down, the morning bump had long since worn off and now, in the half dark, hearing the white noise of the road, she started having moments where she’d jerk awake realizing that she was driving.