Frederick Busch - The Stories of Frederick Busch

“I’m a district judge with a house in the suburbs and a wife and two kids and two cars. Three cars. We have an old Volvo my son Hank fixed up. A ’67 Volvo. It runs pretty well, but it’s rusted out. Bound over — you say that when—”

“Yes, you’re a judge. Good man. I was talking about a restraint for the ribs, is all. Two ribs. You’re lucky.”

“Of course, I’m lucky. And I didn’t aim to hit some telephone pole.”

“You remember what happened?”

“No. But I wouldn’t have. People with a — people like me don’t do that.”

The doctor looked bitter and weary. “No,” he said. “I can call the rescue squad, if you like, and ask them to take you back and drop you off at your car. I’d have to call the garage and tell them that it isn’t telescoped. Totaled. All but small enough to use for a Matchbox toy if the grandchildren come over. Of course, you’ll probably benefit by using less gas in it from now on.”

Richard blushed. He couldn’t shut up, though. He said, “I meant suicide.”

“I know.”

“I meant people like me don’t do that.”

“You want anything for pain?”

“No.”

“Don’t be stubborn, Your Honor. A petulant patient is still a patient in pain. Can be. Call the nurse if you hurt. I’ll leave orders in case you do. I’ll see you before they sedate you. It might be soon, but I think they’ll wait until tomorrow, or late this afternoon. We’re crowded. Sick people, you know.”

“Unlike me.”

The doctor let his face say that he was ignoring Richard’s childishness. And Richard felt an overwhelming need to cry.

“So if you’re so crowded, how come you put me in a private room. Why don’t you keep a suicide watch on me? Who says it’s suicide?”

“First of all, we didn’t. Second of all: Two kids in a car, one pedestrian walking her dogs, the cop who was chasing you for DWI and reckless endangerment and all the other violations you probably pronounce on people at your place of work. I’m going. We aren’t having much of a doctor-patient relationship right now.”

And when he left, Richard lay back, breathless with rage. He panted with hatred for his wife and his doctor, the nurse, the orderly, the hospital, the cops behind him during the chase, and the fact that he had not slowed down when they came into his mirror, no siren on but a band of white and red light that made him blink before — he suddenly could see himself — he crouched over the wheel and then leaned back, pushing his arms straight, locked at the elbows, jamming the accelerator down until the bellow of the engine and wind and, then, the siren of the following police, were almost as loud as the howl that he howled and that he kept on howling until the impact shut him, and everything else, up.

He heard his breath shudder now, in the salmon-colored room, mostly shadows and walnut veneers. Then he heard a man say, “You wanna nurse?”

“Who?”

“It’s me. You can’t turn, huh? Listen, Your Honor, it’s such a pain in the ass as well as the armpit, the crutches, I’m gonna stay flat for a while. I’ll visit you later on, you can look at me and remember. I’m the guy said hello the other time.”

“You’re in here with me?”

“Yeah. Ain’t it an insult? You a judge and everything. Like the doctor said, it’s real crowded.”

“This is too crowded.”

“Well, listen, don’t go extending any special treatment to me, Your Honor. Just pretend I’m a piece of dog shit. You’ll feel better if you don’t strain for the little courtesies and all. Your wife’s a very attractive woman, if I may say so. Hell of a temper, though.”

Richard rang for the nurse.

His roommate said, “All that pain. Dear, dear. Listen, remember this when you wake up. My name’s Manwarren. Emanuel Manwarren. Manny Manwarren. It’s an honor to be with a Your Honor kind of deal.” Then, to the entering nurse: “His Honor is in discomfort.”

Richard lay with his eyes closed until the nurse returned with water and a large capsule. He looked at her. She was young and intelligent-looking, and very tired. He said, “How shall I take this medicine without drowning? I can’t sit up.”

She said, “He ordered it by spansule.” Her voice was flat. She was expecting a fight.

“He would,” Richard said. “What if I die taking medicine?” He heard himself: he sounded worried about dying.

“Don’t fret,” she said. “I’ll telephone for an order change, and I’ll bring you a shot.”

“You’re a charmer, Your Honor,” Manwarren said.

“Are we going to engage in class warfare, or whatever this is, for all the time we’re in here? Mr. Manwarren?”

“Call me Manny. Nah. I’m a prickly personality. I hate the cops, authority figures like that, judges — you know what I mean?”

“Manny, why don’t you think of me as a miscreant and not a judge.”

“Can I call you Dick?”

Richard closed his eyes and listened to his breathing and the rustle of Manwarren’s sheets. The pain was in Richard’s bones and in his breath. He said, “There was someone with me, wasn’t there?”

“Dick, in cases like this, there usually is.”

II

THEY LIVED IN a renovated carriage house at the edge of a small country road outside Utica. Simple country living at a condominium price, Hilary liked to say. They couldn’t quite afford the mortgage, college tuitions, cars, the McIntosh stereo rig — Snuyder felt like a pilot when he turned the power on — or the carpets from Iran or Iraq or India, he forgot which, that Hilary had lately come to buy as investments. He thought of them as insulation.

Looking at his lighted house at 1:25 in the morning, observing a close, clear disk of moon, a sky bluer than black, and veined with cloud — it was a dark marble mural more than sky — Richard said, “We get by.”

Hilary was in the living room, at the piano. She was playing little clear crystal sounds with occasional speeded-up patterns of dissonance. He watched the tall, pale woman at the piano, her body rigid, neck tense, all pleasure residing below her moving wrists.

“Hello,” Snuyder said softly, removing his jacket and then his tie, dumping them on the sofa. “I was working with the clerks on a case. It’s a terrible case. Then we went out for some drinks.”

The repetitions in the music came in miniature parts and were very simple. There was a name for that. He was unbuttoning his shirt and he had it off by the time she sensed him and stopped and turned on the piano bench to see him wiping the sweat on his chest with the wadded shirt.

“Ugh,” she said, covering her eyes with her big hands.

“How.”

“Richard, stop. It’s ugly.”

“It’s a sweaty night,” he said. He went for his welcoming kiss. She hugged his waist and kissed his belly.

“Yummy,” he said.

“Salty,” she said. “Phoo.” But she held him, and he stayed there. “Vhere vas you so late?”

“I told you — clerks? Case? Just now?”

Richard carried his guilt and his dirty shirt toward the shower and Hilary followed. She stood in the doorway as he slid the cloudy shower door closed and made a screen of water that sealed him away. He groaned and blubbered and shook his head and shoulders and, loosening at last, dopey with comfort, shed of the sweat and oils and inner fluids of somebody else, he heard only part of what Hilary had said.

He called, “What?”

He turned the water off, and her words came over the stall. “I said you sounded especially like a whale tonight.”

“Thank you. You did not. The Satie was beautiful,”

“Thank you . It was Villa-Lobos, a Chôros . I don’t think it’s possible to confuse the two unless you’ve got me at the piano, the Snuyder Variations, eh?”