Tom Rachman - The Rise & Fall of Great Powers

“You told me before that you met Humph while visiting ‘someone’ at the hospital. Why didn’t you just say it was Xavi?”

“Because I don’t talk about this normally. He asked me not to.”

Xavi wanted nobody to learn of his decline, even his family in Uganda. It was better, he decided, that they believe he had abandoned them for glories in America than learn of this. He wanted nothing posted online about his illness, no health updates emailed to business-school classmates or Goldman colleagues, no photos of his dwindling self, in order that he exist only in preceding memories. He made Duncan promise never to hold a memorial service, as if dying before success were a public disgrace. Xavi never did see the end of the Iraq War; he died at the peak of the pandemonium there, though he’d stopped caring, having receded from the world in stages: aware of just the hospice, then just his room, then his bed, then his body, then nothing.

THE REVELATION HAUNTED Tooly all night, and the following morning, too. For some reason, it made her want Mac nearby. So, for this one occasion, she combined her two obligations, him and Humphrey, taking the boy all the way to south Brooklyn and skipping his dreaded sports course at the Y (wrestling that day).

As they approached Humphrey’s room, the hallway shuddered at music coming from the adjacent door. After introducing Mac to Humphrey, she excused herself to visit the neighbor. An acrid drug stench came from in there. The woman responded through her closed door. “What you want?”

“Just wondering,” Tooly called back, “if you could turn it down a bit! My father next door doesn’t hear well!”

“What?”

“It’s impossible for him to hear!”

The music cut out. “Too loud for you?” the woman asked. Then she cranked it even louder.

This was awful timing, since Humphrey seemed to be relishing his new acquaintance, already showing Mac various books — it was the clearest Humphrey had been since her first day here. Indeed, it was he who shouted into her ear about getting ice cream.

“Let me go fetch some,” Tooly said.

“I can.” He hadn’t left the building in weeks.

“We’ll all go together.”

So Humphrey and Mac plodded along Sheepshead Bay Road, she monitoring the old man’s equilibrium, ready to lunge and catch him. He barely noticed her, engaged in a marvelous gab with the boy. It occurred to Tooly that each of these two was oblivious to the other’s reputation, therefore took him seriously. Plus, Humphrey was wonderful with kids. And Mac, unaccustomed to such attention, sought to merit it, speaking in full sentences rather than swallowing his meaning halfway.

At the Baskin-Robbins, Humphrey bellied up to the display glass, peering blindly at the buckets of ice cream. “Can you see all right?” she whispered, but he waved her away, to discuss with Mac the relative merits of mint chocolate chip and pink bubblegum. The boy chose a single scoop, watching wide-eyed as Humphrey took the banana split.

“What about you?” Mac asked Tooly, which made her smile — he spoke as if he were treating.

“Very happy to watch.”

So she was: Mac speed-licking to avoid drips falling on his hand; Humphrey with his long spoon, operating with much concentration, much spillage, and much exercise of puckery lips. Two little boys, she thought.

“Very cold on my teeth,” Mac observed.

“Hmm,” confirmed Humphrey, who had few teeth left. “I try not to bite down.” He took pains to compose each bite, a process so fiddly that each took a tantalizing minute, his mouth opening thirty seconds early, theirs watering from suspense.

Humphrey insisted on paying — absolutely insisted! But he struggled with the indistinct green bills (she had slipped cash into his pocket before they left). He squinted at the pimpled cashier, at the bills, then handed them all over, saying, “Take it.” The cashier proved honest — it always surprised Tooly that most people were.

The afternoon was a success and, upon their return, even the music next door had stopped. But, despite herself, Tooly felt slightly hurt: around a stranger, Humphrey had pulled himself together and was lucid at times, even making little jokes.

Back in Darien, she deposited Mac before the Xbox and sneaked downstairs for a moment alone. But Bridget was there, standing by the closed washing machine. She inquired how their jaunt to Brooklyn had gone. Then — without transition — said how unhappy she was in her marriage.

“Duncan is an old friend,” Tooly interrupted. “I’m not who you should discuss this with.”

But Bridget couldn’t be stopped. She and Duncan had no romantic life whatsoever, she said, and he was in denial about it. They’d become like bunkmates. Though, even bunkmates interacted. Her eyes filled with tears to hear aloud her piteous state. “And,” she joked, with a plucky sniff, “he sleeps right in the middle of the mattress, so I’m all scrunched up at the edge!”

“What happens when you talk to him about it? Not about the mattress. Things in general, I mean.”

“On the few occasions I tried, he changes topic. To his pissed-off politics. Or he goes into conference with his BlackBerry. Does this thing where he, like, angles himself in bed when he’s reading his Kindle, so I literally cannot see his eyes, and he goes, ‘Mmmmmm?’ It’s the present/absent.”

“The present/absent?”

“Where someone’s present but they’re absent. Talking to you but looking at the screen.”

“He’s probably exhausted. He works insane amounts, Bridget.”

“I know. I know. And I do totally love him still. But I feel like — what’s the word? — like I’m withering. Already after having the kids, I turned into this ogre. It took me, like, four years to regain a familiar shape. And now I … Thing is, I have this feeling if I go full-time at the office — and they’ve asked me to — something bad will happen.”

“Meaning?”

“Maybe I’ll meet someone there,” she said, looking up testingly. “I want to be in love with someone again. I so miss that feeling. Thinking of someone when they’re not there — you know? Like you have with Garry.”

Tooly almost corrected that fantasy, but it was best to end such confidences, which seemed to affect Bridget dangerously. “Nothing’s happened at your office yet,” Tooly said.

“Heavens, no. How could I even find time for an affair? I haven’t even seen my hairdresser in two months.”

“That’s your answer — have an affair with the hairdresser.”

“There’s the dream. Free highlights.”

Each went her separate way, though Bridget dashed back downstairs a few minutes later to reiterate, “Obviously, I’m never going to do anything.”

Poor Duncan. Because, Tooly suspected, Bridget was going to stray. She hadn’t sought an opinion; she’d sought to desensitize herself to what already captivated her. If Bridget were to wander, Mac would be crushed. His mother was the only family member who was devoted to him.

Bridget must have found time for her hairdresser after all, because she came home with a shorter cut, rather like Tooly’s. When Duncan returned that evening, he asked Mac, “What do you think of Mom without hair?”

“Uhm …” The boy showed both palms, weighing like a scale. He gave a nervous snicker. Whenever Mac found himself in awkward situations, he gave this snicker, which was utterly unconvincing, thereby earning Tooly’s sympathy. The ability to laugh when a joke was not funny had unexpected value; it produced a different life. She’d never had the skill, either. Still, Mac was an extremely considerate young man, and she made a mental note to mention this to Duncan. She was always looking for ways to praise the boy to his father. But it wasn’t her job to mend that relationship. Would Mac even remember this when grown? What would he do when his father needed caring for? He’d dote on Duncan. There was no balance in relationships, much as people sought it.