Robert Butler - Perfume River

She does not remember this consciously now, as an event. Her body remembers, in the muscles, on the skin, simply as something it owes. Darla knows what the broken hip in Thomasville likely will mean for Robert, who has gone deep into his life without a close death of his own, and so she has not showered before making this call. She says, “Shall I come?”

“Thank you,” he says. “But no. Not yet. He’s probably … I don’t know. It’s going to be all about Mom. It’ll be about her. You don’t need to come. Please just do what you need to do today.”

She says, “Perhaps I need to be there. Not for her. For you.”

“Weren’t you doing something? A field trip?”

“Did I say?”

“Last week. Something.”

She thinks. Then, “Ah. Monticello.”

“You want to meditate there, yes?”

“Yes.”

“Go. Be a Southern belle.”

“Not quite.”

“Whatever you need.”

She doesn’t answer for a moment. From the prompting of her body, she tries to think if she should ignore what he’s saying. If she should go to him anyway. But her body also feels a sharp-scrabbling chill. He keeps the thermostat too low overnight. Always. She should turn it up before she runs, but she never seems to remember. She doesn’t want to go to Thomasville. “All right,” she says.

“I’ll see you later,” he says.

“Are you sure about this?”

“I’m sure.”

They fall silent. But they do not immediately hang up. They aren’t good at ending phone calls. They both hate phones, in fact. They can’t read each other’s body or face, which is crucial to them, to inflect their silences.

“Really?” she says.

Just enough silence has ticked by between them that it takes a moment for Robert to place the really into its proper context.

While he tries to, she interprets the few beats of his silence to mean he’s not really sure.

“I’ll come,” she says.

“No,” he says, figuring it out. “I’m really sure. Thank you.”

And he hangs up.

I do that too , she says to herself about the abruptness of his ringing off. She won’t worry anymore about him for now.

She touches the off button on the phone and places it in its cradle.

Robert finds his mother sitting on an upholstered couch beneath the skylight halfway down the entrance corridor. Peggy Quinlan rises at his approach and comes to him and they hug in the way they’ve hugged for decades, leaning to each other at the waist, cheek to cheek, patting each other behind the shoulders, as if always consoling each other. The patting is firmer this morning.

“Thank goodness you’re here,” she says. “They’re preparing him for surgery. The doctor is coming down to talk to us.”

They let go of each other. She takes his hand and leads him to the couch. “I need to sit,” she says.

They do.

Robert turns mostly sideways to face her.

“Are you okay?” Robert says.

“A little shaky. I didn’t eat.”

“Ma,” he says. “You have to eat.”

“After the doctor.”

“How’s Pops doing?”

She smiles faintly at Robert.

He sees it. “What?”

“‘Pops,’” she says. “It’s just good to hear you call him that again.”

He was unaware. He’s not sure it’s good. “How’s he doing?”

“He’s pissed,” she says. Then she quickly adds, “I put it that way because it’s how he says it.”

Robert wags his head at her. “You can say ‘pissed’ for yourself.” And he regrets niggling. Why make a point of this now? But he knows the answer. The artifice of her. This is not the time for her to be working on her image.

As she often does, Peggy quickly co-opts Robert’s irritation with her by claiming it for her own, criticizing herself. “Of course,” she says. “What a silly time to hear the whisper of the priest. Piss piss piss. There. I’m pissed too.”

Though part of him recognizes her self-deprecation, antically adorned, as just another strategy of image-making, Robert gives her credit for it. “Good girl,” he says.

“But he’s more than pissed,” she says. “He’s scared, darling.”

“He’s a tough guy.”

“You don’t see him like I do. He’s not so tough.”

This is hardly the first time she’s claimed this. Robert has always doubted that it’s so. He has understood her assertions about the inner life of William Quinlan simply as her taking the opportunity to project herself onto the blank screen of her husband.

“He’s faced death before,” Robert says.

“It’s not about the dying,” she says. “It’s about leaving other things unresolved.”

“Jimmy.”

“That,” she says. “And more.”

Robert nods at this. But he does not even try to think what those other things would be. They could be legion.

Peggy waits.

Robert stays silent.

She says, “I called Jimmy.”

“What?”

“I called him.”

“How?”

“Your grandson.”

She waits again, and Robert can only do likewise in response. He refuses to drag the story out of her. She is prone to this sort of drama.

She says, “I asked Jake if there was a website. He found one. It’s like the white pages for Canada.”

“Didn’t you already try to find his phone number?”

“Years ago. But this time, there he was. Not in Toronto anymore. A town called MacTier. It was his voice. I recognized his voice on the answering machine.”

“So you didn’t talk to him directly?”

“No.”

“When did you call him?”

“This morning, though I’ve had the number for a little while. I knew how losing Jimmy continued to hurt your father. Even if he wasn’t talking about it.”

“I’m not so sure.”

“I don’t expect him to call me back. At the end I was too much on your father’s side. How could I not be? But it wasn’t so bad between the two of you, was it?”

“Bad enough.”

“Still.” Peggy picks up her purse from beside her and opens it and draws out an index card. She offers it to Robert.

He lets it hang there between them.

“Please,” she says. “His number. He may listen to you.”

“I’m not sure it’s a good thing, even if Dad wants it.”

“For me then.” The throb in her voice sounds genuine.

Still Robert doesn’t take the card.

A figure appears in Robert’s periphery.

“Mrs. Quinlan.” A baritone, but not as warm as you’d expect from the pitch. A scalpel-edged voice. Robert turns to it. A man in blue scrubs, young-seeming somehow but with his managed scruff turning gray and with wrinkling at brow and eyes.

Robert and Peggy rise.

She uses the moment to thrust the index card into Robert’s hand.

He pockets it.

“Dr. Tyler,” Peggy says, “this is my son, Robert.”

He shakes the man’s hand. It feels faintly oily.

“Please sit,” the doctor says.

They do, and Tyler perches on the front edge of a chair set at a right angle to Peggy’s end of the couch.

Robert sees now that Tyler holds a plastic ziplock bag of almonds in the palm of his left hand. The man dips in and takes a few and chews them as he speaks. He lifts the bag a little, to draw attention to it. “Forgive me,” he says. “These are part of my prep. Good protein and good magnesium. To be at my best for Mr. Quinlan.”

Peggy gives him a nod of permission, not that he was asking. “Go right ahead.”

“I have to tell you honestly,” he says, drawing the sentence out slightly so he can look both Robert and his mother in the eyes as he speaks it. He pauses briefly, chewing his almonds, swallowing his almonds, though presumably the intent of the pause is to let these two family members have a moment to prepare themselves for the implied bad news.