Chang-Rae Lee - A Gesture Life

The second-story apartment windows are dark as well, but curtains are up and the Hickeys’ car, a red Volvo station wagon with rusty wheelwells, is parked at the curb. In the past two weeks I’ve been home, I haven’t heard a word about the store or the Hickeys, or news about their son, and I’ve been too afraid to call the children’s ICU to find out what, if anything, might have occurred. I don’t wish to hear the nurse’s voice stiffen and lower. I don’t wish to hear her ask if I am family. During the quiet, inactive hours I’ve been stuck inside the house, I’ve been thinking again, too, of what it would mean for Patrick Hickey to survive, of the awful accident or gradual demise of another young boy or girl with the exactly right heart, and I begin to imagine — or even hope — that the necessary and terrible thing will happen, just come to pass, for it seems that if there should be a price to pay for darkly willing an innocent person’s fate, I may as well pay it, and not the beleaguered Hickeys, who must endure constant torment by such conflicting thoughts.

I didn’t even hear about the store being available from Liv Crawford, who probably thinks I would find it too disturbing in my recovering state to learn that Sunny Medical Supply has finally gone out of business. Well, I do. It’s not that I believed the shop would be there forever, or become a village institution, but I did hold out hope of the store’s being passed along in the coming years, if going by a different name, from the Hickeys to whomever and whomever else, a humble legacy that a decent man had once begun and built up and nurtured. In fact, it becomes even more troubling a notion to consider how quickly the memory of the store will fade away, once it reopens as something else, say a bookshop or a beauty salon, and how swiftly, too, the appellation of “Doc Hata” will dwindle and pass from the talk of the town, if it’s not completely gone already. I realize, probably too late, that I wish to leave something of myself, a small service to Bedley Run, and not simply a respectable headstone, but after seeing the generic, forlorn closedness of the store, I feel precipitously insubstantial behind the wheel, like an apparition who has visited too long.

But I am bolstered by Liv Crawford, whom I haven’t actually seen in some time but whose daily contact with me is most regular, in the form of a different catered box dinner delivered each afternoon by her new assistant, Julie, a cheery, bouncy young woman whose talk and dress are uncannily like Liv’s. Yesterday it was moussaka from the Aegean Shack, with flatbread and a Greek side salad, and though I’ve asked Julie to please tell Liv this catering must cease, when the doorbell rings at six o’clock I find myself swiftly ambling to the door, my senses keen for what Liv has decided on that day, whatever delectation and surprise she’s thought to order for me. In fact, I think I have never enjoyed such a range of dishes, or known they could be had in the immediate area, though even more satisfying than the cuisine has been the simple idea of Liv taking a few moments from her busy afternoon to think of me. For a long time, particularly after Sunny left, I was certain that I would never get to enjoy the pleasantness and warmth of this kind of filiation and modest indulgence, and had resigned myself to a bachelor dotage of one-pot meals and (if careful) one-log fires and the placid chill of a zone-heated house. And I wonder if the spartan clime and space I’ve carefully arranged for myself has nearly shut me off, made me believe I ought never need to know what a sweet acceptance it can be, what good true ache can come by the door-to-door delivery of a hearty casserole in foil and a half-bottle of fruity red wine.

In this regard, I suppose, I feel as if I have been warmly taken up, in some manner adopted by Liv and then also by Renny Banerjee, who called on me two evenings ago to see if I was “getting enough rest.” He was his customary bright and lively. Of course his stated intentions could not mask the real reason he stopped in, which was to spy out whether I was possibly growing gloomy and depressed, as can often happen after a physical trauma or accident, and particularly to someone of my age. Renny did not call beforehand but rather showed up just after seven, I thought perhaps to see if I was really eating my Liv Crawford meal-on-wheels, or was in fact spooning most of it down the disposal, as might an old injured man with no more savor. I happily invited him in, and we sat at the kitchen table. Before eating I had changed into pajamas and a robe, and Renny seemed to consider my dress, patting me on the shoulder, as though he were wondering if I had never changed out of them, or had just risen from an unhealthfully long daytime nap. He had just come from work at the hospital, and I urged him to take off his suit jacket and tie and have the rest of the wine, only a third-glassful of which I was able to drink. I rose to get him a goblet but he jumped up first and went to the cupboard, lingering for an instant over the sink, where dirty dishes and utensils from dinner (and lunch, and the dinner before) lay half-submerged in a bath of filmy water.

“Your color seems real good, Doc,” he said, patting about his own chin and cheek. “You look like you’re coming along great. Just great.”

“I feel pretty good. Though I’m not swimming or taking my walks yet.”

“But you will soon, right? I guess we’ve got maybe a few weeks of good weather left, and then it’ll all turn to crap. You’ll have to join a club or something. I think Liv belongs to a posh one in Highbridge, and I’m sure she’ll get you initiated, or whatever they do.”

“You don’t do that yourself, Renny?”

“Are you kidding me, Doc? Renny Banerjee? You know me, if there’s anything I do after work it’s straining my elbow at O’Donnell’s on Church Street.”

“Or paying visits to the area shut-ins,” I added, feeling a bit humorous, and maybe even sharp.

“Now please, that’s unfair,” he cried, smiling widely at me, loosening the knot of his tie. He took a big, washing gulp of the Beaujolais. “I come of my own accord. Really. Not even Liv put me up to anything, at least not in regard to you. Toward the end of the day I just thought, ‘I want to say hello to Doc Hata.’ So here I am.”

“I’m happy you came, Renny. Please don’t let me suggest otherwise.”

“Certainly not,” he said brightly. “Well, what’s it been, almost two weeks now? You sound fine, and you haven’t coughed since I’ve been here.”

“I do, but just a little in the mornings.”

“That’s expected. But no fever, or infections, no other complications, right?”

“I’m fine. You should be my doctor, Renny.”

“I probably should! I don’t think you’re fragile. My medical philosophy is that after troubles, one resumes the normal routine, as long as it’s not totally damaging. I tore up a knee some years ago, when I used to play squash, and for months afterward I religiously did my physical therapy, and then I even changed my diet, and soon after that I stopped smoking and drinking. I was so completely wrapped up in fixing myself, fixing my weak knee, that I began to discover all sorts of other infirmities, and potential ones. I was so health-conscious that I felt sure I was becoming utterly decrepit. This of course coincided with something of a life crisis, and also my first go-round with Liv, and I can tell you she was a monster then, not like now. Not a good combination, you’ll know. So it’s no surprise I became quite deeply depressed.”

“You?” I said, having some difficulty imagining the ebullient Renny Banerjee sitting in a darkened room, dolefully rubbing his face.

“Absolutely. I never told anybody. I don’t go to doctors, you know. But I got bad enough that I asked Johnny Barnes to put me on something.”