Richard Powers - Gold Bug Variations

"He says, 'My father died.'"

My hands flexed automatically to grab my neck, the escape of flushed birds. We had had no clue, until then, of the condition of Jimmy's mind. Only his sagged face and vocal cords; he was trapped somewhere inside the hull. These first words Jimmy had gotten out since his vascular accident could not have been more grotesque. I didn't know which would be worse: a real death, a second horror laid on his, or a detached, neural wandering. Dr. Ressler leaned back down to ask a question that never occurred to me. "When did your dad die, James?" He straightened and interpreted, "Nineteen-sixty."

Annie came back, sat in one of the chairs by the bed. When shifting, I caught Jimmy in certain angles — eyes alert, face at attention — where his expression seemed almost cogent. Was he decoupled, incoherent, ruined, or just rubbed raw, shot back into involuntary memory? "Mr. Steadman," Ressler smiled, holding him affectionately by both hands, sitting down on the hospital bed that, while single, was large enough for both these men. "Jimmy. Can we get you anything?" Uncle Jimmy trumpeted again, more sedately, a breaking whitecap of pitch. But the professor was growing fluent enough to be able to understand the sentence without leaning up against him.

"He'd like us to tell him a story. He says that if we give him one he'll be good." Perhaps inept irony was still intact. Or maybe he'd become a child. I searched Ressler for his opinion. I looked into the face of a biologist who thought Jimmy's request totally understandable: anyone in the world might one day reasonably request such a thing. A story. And why not? "Either of you two any good at narrative?"

But the line between simplicity and violence in Jimmy had been whittled narrower than a capacitor gap. When Dr. Ressler tried to tell Jimmy what had been happening at the office in his absence, the invalid flared out. His mouth hung open as inappropriately as a vault left swinging on its hinges. He practically howled a word that, in its vowel at least, was clearly "no."

Ressler appealed for help, but I could give none. I had no idea what Jimmy wanted. If it was really a tale with beginning, middle, and end, I was no good to him. My skill lay in retrieving, not telling. I could lead them to the encyclopedia, give them the Greek explanation for thunder or Native American rain. I knew that legenda was Medieval Latin, for things to be read at gatherings. But I could not invent one. Annie grabbed a newspaper from the stand where a visitor to Jimmy's sickmate had left it. Thinking it was sound he needed, she pulled a headline off page two: "Sunni Splinter Group Shells Suspected Shi'ite Arsenal." But Jimmy's head snapped up. He gave her what must have been a sidelong glare and growled. That was no story; he was not going to be robbed of explanation by mere reportage.

It seemed he would only be kept in check by a real barrier of narrative fable. He wanted an exegesis as precise, elegant, and exact as those old origins of thunder, evil, rainbows, suffering. But those museum pieces were rusted over beyond reviving. There was a man in the room who might make a stab at why the defective blood vessel had burst, leaving a mind flooded. But that wasn't the song Jimmy asked for. He needed a more potent bedside tale. Jimmy was pinned under wreckage, a cerebrovascular accident that had failed to throw him clear of the crash. He lay propped up in bed, sense of direction destroyed, one of those compassless whales trapped up an illusory inlet. For some reason, even after damage that could never be reversed, he still wanted the sum of his experience read back to him as an adventure.

Dr. Ressler looked at Annie and me, wondering why he'd bothered to bring us along. Jimmy was growing increasingly restive, rocking on the bed, attempting to build up the momentum needed to throw his feet to the floor. Ressler caught him up gently. "Jimmy. Listen. The hospital is making threatening noises about the bill. They've asked your mother for proof of ability to meet a prolonged stay." He hushed Jimmy's long, mewled objection. "Of course that's impossible. No one has told you because no one wanted to upset you."

Jimmy lay still while Ressler related the insurance company's refusal to retroactively reinstate him. He listened passively to the legal counsel's opinion: the letter of the law lay on the side of the insurers, a business that made no provision for individual charity. Ressler did not mention Todd's plan to save Jimmy by confessing the deed. But the professor did lay out something I heard for the first time. "Don't worry about this bill for now. Your job is to come back from this as quickly as you can. I believe we can get you reinstated. But don't mention this to anyone just yet."

The admonition made me snort in pain. But neither man paid me any notice. They were concentrating on each other. Ressler began spelling out a plan so developed that it seemed months in the making. Who knows how much Jimmy was taking in. Ressler leaned over his friend's crumpled side, speaking in low tones, as if admonishing, behave, then, and we'll give you what you ask for. Lie still and we'll give you that story.

The Cipher Wheel Days go by when he can think of nothing but what he might have done for Lovering had he been paying attention. He does not see Jeanette; neither can abide what they now know about the other. In that dead period, when Lovering's chaotic half of the office still sprawls up to the dividing line, Ressler learns, from out of the diminished Blue Sky, that Daniel is suing Renée Woytowich for divorce. Impossible: Ressler was at Woyty's the other day and father and mother were on the floor playing with the kid, beyond all dignity hopelessly in love with one another and their family. All incinerated in a matter of hours. He ought to leave it, run the other direction. But he must know.

He tracks Dan down to his office, late in the evening. Ressler knocks gingerly, hears nothing beyond the door but canned laughter. He goes in, circumspect and uninvited. Woyty sits in front of the hulking, luggable TV set that hasn't been on since Ivy's arrival. Woyty's long fast from watching, causing great concern at Stainer Central, is broken with a vengeance.

"Absolutely unavailable for chatting, Stuart. Got to assign a number to Life of Riley here."

Stuart sits down and watches Jackie Gleason play the big, bumbling, malapropian airplane factory worker whose tag line, "What a revoltin' development this is," has become a national catch-phrase. After a minute of ritual self-effacement, Dan says, "So much for the liberal humanist theory that what the world needs is more laughter. America doesn't need any more entertainment; it's entertained to the gills. I'm panning this sucker. Straight zeros. Send Life of Riley back to figurative speech where it belongs." He speaks as if there's something heroic in wandering out of the mode shelter in the middle of the bean curve. He fiddles with a Sputnik-sized wad of aluminum foil strung between the rabbit ears. "Reception's piss-poor here. Ghost so bad it makes Queen for a Day look like the Austro-Hungarian dual monarchy out for a weekend."

Ressler looks at him, neither admonishing nor accommodating. All at once, Woyty is volunteering all over the place. "You came to get the lowdown on my divorce, didn't you? Scavenger. Want to know why I'm filing? Want to know the grounds?" Ressler doesn't even nod. "Go ahead, guess." But Woytowich doesn't wait. "You got it. Infidelity."

"Good Christ!" Ressler slams the desk, shoots to his feet. "Don't be an idiot! One look at her and any divorce judge would laugh the case out of court."

"Saying she's not pretty enough? You wouldn't have her? Well, Stuart, I'm relieved to hear it's not you."

"I'm saying you're a fool. She worships you. She's just had a child." Ressler can't say how he knows Renée is blameless. He knows what women in affairs look like. Dan's wife is not one. "How could she possibly be running around? She doesn't have time. She hasn't been out of your sight for months."