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

“What happened to you?” she asked. “You got into a fight. My God. We need to put some ice or something on that.” She tried to reach for him again, and again he moved away from her.

“Leave me alone. Listen,” he said, straightening up, “you want to know what happened? This is what happened. I was angry at you, and I started walking, and I ended up in Alta Plaza Park. I walked in there, you know, where it was dark? Off those steep stairs on Clay Street? And this is the thing. I wanted to kill somebody. That’s kind of a new emotion for me, wanting to kill somebody. I mean, I wasn’t looking for someone to kill, but that’s what I was thinking. I’m just trying to be honest here. So I went up the stairs and found myself at the top, with the view, with the famous view of the city. Everybody admires the view, and I looked off into the darkness and thought I heard a scream, somewhere off there in the distance, and so, you know, I went toward it, toward the scream, the way anybody would. So I made my way off into the shadows, and what I saw was this other thing.”

“This thing?”

“Yeah, that’s right. This other thing. These two guys were beating up this girl, tearing her clothes, and then they had her down, one of them was holding her down, and the other one was, you know, lowering his jeans. No one else was around. So I went in. I wasn’t even thinking. I went in and grabbed the guy who was holding her down, and I slugged him. The other one, he got up and punched me in the kidneys. The woman, I think she stood up. No, I know she stood up because she said something in Spanish, and she ran away. I was fighting these guys, and she took off. She didn’t stay. I know she ran because when I hit the guy who was behind me with my elbow, I saw her running away, and I saw that she was barefoot.”

“This was in Alta Plaza Park?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s in Pacific Heights. They don’t usually have crime over there.”

“Well, they did tonight. I was fighting with those guys, and I finally landed a good one, on the first guy, and I broke his jaw. I heard it break. That was when they took off. The second guy took off and the one with the broken jaw was groaning and went after him. No honor among thieves.” He smiled. “Goddamn, I feel great.”

She lifted his hand and touched the knuckles where scabs were forming. “So you were brave.”

“Yes, I was.”

“You saved her.”

“Anybody would have done it.”

“No,” she said. “I don’t think so.”

She led him upstairs and sat him down on the edge of the bathtub. With a washcloth, she dabbed off the blood from his hands and face. There was something about his story she didn’t believe, and then for a moment she didn’t believe a word of it, but she continued to wash him tenderly as if he were the hero he said he was. He groaned quietly when she touched some newly bruised part of him. He would look terrible for a while. How happy that would make him! She could easily get some steak, or hamburger, or whatever you were supposed to apply to black eyes to make the swelling go away, but no, he wouldn’t want that. He would want his badge. They all wanted that.

“Should we go to bed, Doctor?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“I love you,” she said. They would postpone the argument about feedings until tomorrow, or next week.

“I love you, too.”

She undressed him, just as if he were a child, before lowering him onto the sheets. He sighed loudly. She could hear Raphael’s breaths coming from the nursery. She was about to go into her son’s room to check on him and then thought better of it. Standing in the hallway, she heard a voice asking, “What will you do with another day?” Who had asked that? Eli was asleep. Anyway, it was a nonsensical question. The air had asked it, or she was hearing voices. She went into the bathroom to brush her teeth. She didn’t quite recognize her own face in the mirror, but the reflected swollen tender breasts were still hers, and the smile, when she thought of sweet Elijah bravely fighting someone, somewhere — that was hers, too.

As much as I love her, I blame Astrid. Astrid told my wife, Corinne, that she could achieve happiness if only she’d leave me. It sounded simple. “Leave that guy, walk out that door, you’ll achieve happiness, you’ll be free.” Achieve happiness. Now there’s a phrase. Into the Ford with the busted shocks and out onto the American road, then — that was the prescription.

I stood in the driveway. It was sleeting the day she left. I had agreed not to follow her. She was so eager to go, she forgot to use the windshield wipers until she was halfway down the block. She turned the corner, the tires splashed slush, the front end dipped from the bad shocks, and she was gone.

Holding on to my son, I walked into the garage, taking an inventory. Jeremy, in my arms. My rusting pickup truck. The broken rake, the bent saw, the corroded timing light still on the ledge beneath the back window with the curtains. Yes, the garage window had curtains. Don’t ask me why I put them there. More inventory: the house itself. My life. My health. My job. A case of beer. My mother, Dolores, upstairs in her room. Let them arrive here, whatever they are, is my first motto, and my second is Let them stay.

Astrid thought that happiness was within poor Corinne’s grasp, and she said so, day after day. Happiness for you, she would say, is a day without Wes. You are right to say that Wes crowds you and confuses you. Any morning you wake up without that guy’s stale beer breath on you will be pure profit. Astrid was relentless on the subject of me. She and Corinne worked at the same nurses’ station, 3-F. In the quiet of the hospital night, plans were hatched. A nurse can always get a job, anyplace. Those were Astrid’s words, I have no doubt.

Corinne had been bitching about me, to me, and the topics were, I don’t know, the usual. I drank too much on weekends, my dog, Scooter, slobbered on the bedroom floor, my hands were always dirty from the shop — and the killer accusation: I was inattentive to her needs, whatever they were. Mostly Corinne complained about herself, her rickety soiled unrecognizable life, her confusion, her panic over our baby, her fear of being an inadequate mother, her sadness, that stuff.

But I loved her, and she left me. Then I loved Astrid, and I married her. I’m married to her now, and I still love her. She has — and I’ve got to use this word — guile. Corinne, my first wife, had none. You’d think a nurse of all people could take care of her own baby and not be bewildered. But she was. Mousy brown hair, mystified by most conversations, unable to fix a dinner you could serve to guests, she was about the most lovable thing you ever saw. I lost my heart to her helplessness time and again. I’m not saying this is admirable.

The minute Corinne was gone, Astrid showed up. I don’t recall that, prior to that day, we had so much as exchanged a moody, sparking glance. She took me into her expert arms. It was consolation and sympathy at first, I guess. I didn’t question it. In about the time it takes to change the painted background in a photographer’s studio from a woodland scene to a brick wall, she had left her boyfriend and was presenting me with casseroles and opened bottles of cold beer. I took some advantage of her, but she didn’t mind my advances. She was saying, “Wes, it seems you are the one. I am surprised.” She discounted the flaws I owned up to. My first wife lost her credibility as a character witness, and I got a spell cast on me. And then I softened. Love for Astrid like a climbing vine grew out of my heart. I don’t know how else to say it.