Charles Baxter: There's Something I Want You to Do

No wonder Jupie had turned out the way she had.

The doctor rose to his feet and approached the plate of cookies, taking three for himself. Rarely in his life had he felt so hungry or so sleepy. He was starving in every possible way. He needed a nap, right now, and his hunger felt like an embrace of emptiness hugging him pitilessly, stifling him. His hunger, he suddenly thought, was empirical . In his mind arose an image of a man drinking a six-pack of air, one empty bottle after another. In rapid succession he ate the cookies and took three more, while Mrs. Lundgren lectured him on the holiness of all human existence and how existence was not a choice but a gift. Well, at least he knew where this was going. The lowest and highest hold the same rank in God’s eyes, she was saying, tapping her finger on her knee. Of all the democrats, God was the greatest democrat. Status meant nothing to Him. He cared nothing for trinkets or the glittering machines of success. Before Him, we are all the same. The doctor felt himself growing impatient at all this moralizing and its transparent intentions. Everything she said sounded like a practiced speech, prepared and canned, like tomatoes in the basement. What did he, the doctor, think would save him?

“Excuse me?”

“Well, we were wondering, what will you do to be saved?” She leaned back and smiled. “We were wondering about that.” She reached over for a Ritz cracker and popped it into her mouth. The doctor watched her chew. She ate like a peasant.

“Isn’t that a very private matter?”

“Yes, it is,” Mrs. Lundgren said, keeping her gaze on him, and suddenly he knew whom she resembled in both appearance and manner: Margaret Thatcher. “But you are the father of the young man who caused our daughter to become pregnant, aren’t you? We wondered what values you had instilled in him. It may be a private matter, but it’s ours now. Our matter.”

“It’s a father’s job to instill values,” Mr. Lundgren said, from his corner. “That’s what a man does, so.”

“I have tried to teach him to love the world,” Elijah said. “And to treat everyone with respect. And to fight for what is right.”

“Well, that’s not enough,” Mrs. Lundgren said, and the doctor intuited that she was a skilled tactician in argumentation and probably coached the high school debate squad. “If the world were enough, being worldly would be a virtue, wouldn’t it? But it isn’t. Does the world include our grandchild, yours and ours, the one who died?”

“You should take this up with your daughter,” the doctor said.

“But we have,” she told him. “And she seems to have been converted by your son. Converted to oblivion.”

“Don’t lecture me.” The doctor spoke, but it was Gerald who had spoken up. Elijah seemed to be turning into his wife’s fictional creation. Okay, fine.

“I’m not lecturing you. We’re just asking questions and offering an opinion. We want to know what sort of man you are. As if we were all family here. Which we sort of are. Whatever did you teach Raphael? If I may ask?”

“Well,” the doctor said, “first of all, we’re not a family. What I taught Raphael, that’s my business. And as for what I am, I’m a pediatrician.”

“Yes, we know that. That’s what you do . You care for children, which is quite admirable. But I asked you what you are .”

“By what right do you ask me such a question?”

A rather long air pocket of dead silence followed, accompanied by the music. The doctor had never heard such a silence, with music in it.

Finally Mrs. Lundgren said, “The right of one parent to another. We have blood on our hands. All of us. And our children have blood on their hands. They have snuffed out a life, those two. They have caused suffering.”

“Oh, for shit’s sake,” Gerald blurted out. “A woman has a right to choose. We all know that.” Neither Lundgren flinched, as he had hoped they would. “I have to leave now.”

“I don’t think so,” Mr. Lundgren said, and the doctor felt a chill.

“Do you think the happy choices of our children should depend on the suffering of fetuses? Is that the ticket? Is that the ticket to the universe? To its meaning? You should read your Dostoyevsky,” Mrs. Lundgren said, a mild frenzy in her voice. “Don’t you think a father should protect his infants and not kill them?”

“That’s enough,” the doctor said, standing up, although all he did was to reach for more cookies. Dostoyevsky in Delano! Of all things.

“You opened a jar,” Mrs. Lundgren said. “The jar was full of pain. It was your jar.”

He felt the room constricting and growing hot, warmed up from its already overheated condition. He felt Gerald overtaking him. It was Gerald who blurted out, “With all due respect, fuck you, ma’am, and you, sir, and good night.”

She laughed, and for a moment the doctor felt himself admiring her. “What a silly person you are,” she said. “Obscenity is not an argument. It is weak-minded. I had thought you would be more thoughtful. After all, you have a medical degree. You have not thought any of this through, not any of it, I can see that now. How shallow is the pool in which you swim. You are therefore self-deluded, cruel, and mean-spirited. I’m sorry to be so blunt, but we are in pain. Isn’t it ironic? Your name being Elijah? And you, a doctor?”

“Now you’re name-calling. I’m not a monster, and neither is my son. Perhaps you are the monster. It’s time for me to leave now. Time to go.”

“Is it time?” She glanced theatrically at her watch. “Perhaps I am a monster. But if I am, I’m a monster in the right army, and you’re in the wrong one.” She was still smiling eerily at him. The smile, fixed and meaningless, appeared to be surgically applied. Inside the walls of the house, the mice, perhaps on a salary, continued to play The Nutcracker. “The doctor is too busy to give us more than a few minutes of his precious time. So we must bid him farewell, Herb.” She turned toward her husband, who seemed to have been mummified in his La-Z-Boy chair.

Who was Herb? It was only at this moment that Elijah realized he had already forgotten the first names of the Lundgrens. They had introduced themselves, what seemed like years ago, but their first names had not stuck. He put on his hat and coat, which had been draped over the newel post, and without another word, walked out to his cold car, thinking that never in his entire life had he had a social encounter like this one, nor would he ever again.

—

The stars had a spectral clarity in the moonless sky; no wonder people thought of them as the lights emanating from the dead. Shaken, hungry, and sleepy, the doctor took several random right turns until he finally found himself where he wanted to be: on a dirt road between fallow fields with hardly a house in sight. He wanted to be lost, and he was. He turned on the car’s radio and turned it off again after hearing a few bars of atonal orchestral music. On the passenger seat rested a bag of Oreos, a box of Goldfish crackers, Cheetos, and Funyuns.

Rafe had trained in tae kwon do from the time he was a child. He had begged for lessons starting in second grade. The last time the doctor had seen Rafe sparring, the boy jumped so high that his father was startled; Rafe’s moves were perfectly coordinated, and his flexibility seemed impossible. When he did a front rising kick, his extended foot was higher than his face. And fast. He dominated his opponent with a complicated series of kicks, and then he leaped out of range before his opponent could land anything on him. He never retreated. Why was the doctor thinking of that particular match, now? The blank merciless expression on Mrs. Lundgren’s face had reminded the doctor of his son’s face in combat.