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

—

This is what she says in the truck on the way back to the house.

“It’s the economy. There’s suffering. You were always a grease monkey, Wes, and you could always get a job fixing cars. So you wouldn’t know. But they’re making it really personal in my case and saying that I can’t keep track of things. Perhaps I was losing track, but only in the afternoons when I was off by myself, and the experts wouldn’t deny that, although they tried to. In a way, the multinational banks did this to me, because I couldn’t live on my income and I was eventually fired from the hospital, and even though sorrow isn’t necessarily contagious, I know I caught it directly from one of my patients. He was a man who groaned all day. The groans got into my head and took up residence there. I’m hearing them now. Can you hear them? No? Lucky you. God bless you for picking me up, Wes. I know I should have given you more of a warning, but I couldn’t. My goodness, it’s cold.” She wraps a scarf around her neck. But it’s not cold. The cold is all in her head. It’s a warm and humid early October day, seventy degrees. Indian summer. To stay warm and to give herself a greenhouse effect, she’s wrapped herself up like a mummy.

“That’s all right, Corinne,” I tell her. “Where are you staying, by the way?”

She looks at me.

“What I meant was, how long are you staying? Here? With us?”

Gazing out, she says, “American cities are so dirty.” She points to an abandoned, boarded-up drugstore. “I do remember an apothecary, and hereabouts a-dwells,” she says meaninglessly, as if she’s quoting from somewhere. She breathes in deeply and coughs twice. “Let me tell you a story. There was this woman. And she was just fine for a while, and her husband was just fine, too, and no one was to blame for anything. Let’s say this happened in the past. They lived in comfort and kindness with each other. But then something happened. Let’s say a volcano erupted. And she never knew what happened, I mean who caused the volcano, but she knew something did happen, because gradually she was never fine. The dust made her cough, and the water seemed to be poisoned, and the air smelled terrible, of lava, and there were voices, and she realized she had made a big mistake bringing a child into the world. Into this world, my God, how terrible it is, and no one has any idea.”

“Oh, Corinne,” is all I can say. Trouble is waiting for me patiently at home. Because I have not told Astrid, my wife, or Dolores, my mother, or Jeremy, my son, or Lucy, my daughter, that Corinne is in town, there will be tribulation. Why couldn’t I tell anyone that I was going to the bus station to pick her up? I know why. Give me some credit. After all these years, I wanted to see her, and therefore I would see her. I had forgiven her. I forgive her now. But would they? It was a bad bet. Still, I am the head of the household.

She pulls down the sun visor and moves the little slide to the left and looks at herself in the visor’s mirror, primping her hair. “They’ve done things to me. They don’t let up.”

“I know.”

“Wes,” she says, turning to face me, “I can’t help it. I need taking care of for a time.”

The neutrality on her face has vanished. There is another expression there now. It is one of supplication such as you see from homeless veterans on street corners. Supplication. Does anybody ever use that word in normal life? I doubt it.

“There’s something I want you to do,” she says, but then she won’t say what it is. “Is this your neighborhood?” she asks.

“We’re getting there,” I say.

Houses pass by, old houses with large front porches, and I note a screech from my F-150’s engine, a loose fan belt.

“Wes, did you ever think of me?”

It’s a trick question. They are always asking you for outright expressions of affection and love. But I have to be careful. My answer may be quoted back to me. For a moment I am spooked.

“Yes, I did think of you. Often.”

“Even after you were married to Astrid?”

“Yes.” I drive down a full city block before I say, “I worried about you.”

This is not the answer she has been fishing for. But she seems to relax and to settle back. On the floor of the truck, on the passenger side, there is an empty beer can I forgot to throw out. With a regal air, she puts her right foot on it to keep it from rolling around.

“I thought that maybe you did. Sometimes I had dreams about you. In the dreams you were a young man, and you were still being kind to me. You carried me once out of a burning apartment house. You did it for free. In the dream.”

—

We pull into the driveway. I can see from the blue Honda Civic parked in the garage that Astrid is already home. My mother — today is Wednesday — will certainly be upstairs in her room knitting a shawl or surfing the Internet for stories about true crime or the coming apocalypse. Jeremy may still be out tomcatting around town with his crazed friends before dinner, but Lucy will be in residence in the living room, reading one of her horse books.

Really, I should take Corinne to a motel until I can figure out what to do with her. But instead I pick up her two brown paper bags. We go in through the side door, stop for a moment in the mudroom, and then go up the three stairs into the kitchen past several pairs of soiled empty shoes. I’m behind her, and I notice how gray her hair has become and how it, too, gives off a fast-food odor.

In the kitchen, Astrid has been sprinkling seasoning onto some salmon when she glances up and sees Corinne, who looks worse than she did a few minutes ago because of the kitchen’s overhead light. First Astrid looks at Corinne. Then she looks at me, and then she looks at Corinne again. Expressions pass across her face so quickly that you might think you hadn’t seen the previous one before the next one appears. First she’s confused: her eyebrows rise up. Who’s that? Then she’s in full recognition mode: her mouth opens, slightly, though she says nothing. Her tongue licks her upper lip. Then it’s time for pity and compassion, and her eyes start to water. Then she’s shocked, and her hand with lemon juice on it rises to her face. “Uh,” she says, but nothing else comes out. A little spot of seasoning stays on her cheek. Then she’s angry, and that’s when she looks at me, as if I were the cause of all this. But the anger doesn’t stay posted up there on her face for long. It’s displaced by an expression we don’t have a word for. You see this expression when someone is hit by circumstances that are much bigger than expected, and the person is trying to restore things to normal, which can’t be done. Actors can’t duplicate this look. It only happens in real life.

My wife makes a move toward my ex-wife, to embrace her. I stand there waiting to see whether there will be an implausible hug. But Astrid stops herself in midstep.

Right about then, Lucy sails into the kitchen, heading toward the refrigerator for a diet soft drink. She turns and sees Corinne. “Who’re you?” she asks rudely.

No one remembers to say anything in response. Down the street, in the distance, a car alarm goes off, a faint eee eee eee sound.

Lucy looks at me, then at her mother, then at Corinne. “What’s going on?”

“This,” I say at last, pointing at Corinne, “is Jeremy’s mother, Corinne. She’s here for a visit.”

“How do you do?” Corinne says. “You must be Lucy. You look so clean. And bright. So do you, Astrid,” she says, smiling at my wife. “But then you always did. It must be from the hospital. It must be from the disinfecta nts.”