Five Days (21 page)

‘Yes, I will still feel guilty about this until the day he's allowed out of that hell hole. Even then I'll still remain guilty about the horror he's been through.'

‘Does parental guilt ever cease?'

‘Do you really want me to answer that question?'

‘Hardly. Because after all that happened with my son Ben . . .'

That's when I told him about my son's amazing promise as a painter, the subsequent breakdown after that spoiled little rich girl dropped him, and how he'd already been in one major exhibition and . . .

‘So Ben's going to be the next Cy Twombly.'

Again I found myself looking at Richard with considerable surprise.

‘You know your modern painters,' I said.

‘I saw that big 2009 retrospective of his at the Art Institute of Chicago. Actually invented a reason to go to Chicago on business in order to catch the exhibition. Funny thing is – my dad, conservative ex-Marine that he was – still had a thing about art. Only his taste ran towards Winslow Homer and John Singer Sargent, which is still pretty good taste. Dad always had a secret hankering to be a painter. Had a little studio in his garage. Tried his hand at seascapes. He wasn't bad. Gave a few away to some family members. Even had a gallery in Boston take a few of the Maine coastal studies he did. But they never sold. Dad being Dad he decided that this was a sign they were no damn good. Even though my mother – who was some class of a saint – and his brother Roy told him otherwise. One night, after another of his big bouts of drinking – the guy could really put away cheap Scotch – he staggered out to the garage and burned all his paintings. Just like that. Dumped around two dozen canvases outside on the lawn, doused them with kerosene, lit a match.
Whoosh
. My mother found him sitting by the fire, looking sloshed, tears running down his face, so sad and furious with the world . . . but especially with himself. Because he knew he was burning all sense of hope and possibility, and a life beyond the one he had created for himself. There I was – a child of fourteen – watching this all from my bedroom window, telling myself I'd never live a life I disliked . . .'

‘And your father never painted again?'

Richard shook his head.

‘And yet he then ripped several strips off you when you dared to publish a short story.'

‘Well, the guy was such a total hard case.'

‘Or just jealous. My dad had a father like that. He saw that his son was a brilliant mathematician – and had teachers and college guidance counselors encouraging him to apply to everywhere from Harvard to MIT, just like your Billy. Only my dad's father was not a good father like you. Instead he was quietly enraged by his son's brilliance and worked assiduously at subverting his progress. Insisted he turn down a full scholarship at MIT because he needed him to work in the family hardware store every weekend. Dad went along with this – agreeing to U Maine and returning every weekend to Waterville to put in a full Saturday at my grandfather's shop. Can you imagine forcing a gifted young man to do that . . .'

‘Actually I can.'

‘Oh God, listen to me talking before thinking. I am so, so sorry.'

‘Don't be. The truth doesn't hurt anymore. It's just
there
. Right in my face. And the thing is, even though my father also played undermining games with me – and I was no way as brilliant as your father . . .'

‘Don't say that.'

‘Why not? It's the truth.'

‘But that short story . . .'

‘
A
short story, written thirty years ago . . .'

‘And one published a few months ago.'

‘You remembered that?'

‘Well, you did tell me about it yesterday.'

‘It's just a small thing . . .'

‘I actually Googled it this morning. And read it. And guess what? It's very good.'

‘Seriously?'

‘A man looks back on a childhood friend who was allegedly swept off the rocks at Prout's Neck . . . but who the friend knows was being investigated for fraud at the accountancy firm where he's a partner. Very Anthony Trollope.'

‘Now you're being far too extravagant.'

‘But you must have read
The Way We Live Now
– because the whole theme of personal and social corruption is—'

‘I am hardly an Anthony Trollope. And a small Portland accountancy firm isn't exactly a great City brokerage house in London.'

‘Does that matter?'

‘Trollope was looking at the way money is the ongoing human obsession. And the fact that he used the grand canvas of London at the height of Victorian power—'

‘And you use a small New England city in the middle of a recession to highlight the same concerns about the way we all are in thrall to money, and how, like it or not, it always defines us.'

Richard looked at me with something approaching bemusement – and clearly found himself incapable of articulating anything.

‘You seem speechless,' I said.

‘Well, it's not every day I get compared to one of the great masters of the nineteenth-century novel. And though I'm flattered . . .'

‘I know, I know – you don't deserve it. It's just a two-thousand-word scribble in a minor magazine. And your father was right about your writing all along. Happy now?'

He reached for his drink and finished it.

‘No one has ever been so encouraging about my writing before.'

‘Did your wife read the story?'

‘She said it was “readable, but depressing”.'

‘Well, the story really grabs you from the outset. But the apparent suicide at the end is incredibly disturbing. Still, I loved the moral ambiguity behind all that. It's like that line from Eliot's “The Hollow Men” – “Between the motion and the act . . .”'

‘“. . . falls the shadow”.'

As he finished my sentence, finished the quote that I was quoting, I found myself looking up at Richard and thinking:
This man is full of surprises.
Perhaps the most surprising thing is the fact that I find him so . . . ‘compelling' is the right word. And when he took those rather shapeless steel-rimmed spectacles off for a moment to rub his eyes I suddenly saw that, if you took away the dull golfing clothes and the actuarial inspector eyewear, there was a not unattractive man seated opposite me, and one whose initial grayness had now shaded into something warmer. I could also see, as he finished that T.S. Eliot quote, that he was regarding me in a different way now; that he too had discerned that the landscape between us was changing. Part of me was trying to tell myself:
This is a pleasant, interesting lunch, no more.
The other part of me – the person who always wondered why she imposed so many frontiers on her life – knew otherwise.

‘Have you always worn glasses?' I asked.

‘They're pretty damn awful, aren't they?' he asked.

‘I didn't say that.'

‘I'm saying that. I let Muriel choose them for me around eight years ago. I knew from the outset they were a mistake. She told me they looked businesslike, serious. Which are synonyms for dull.'

‘Why did you buy them then?'

‘Good question.'

‘Maybe a little too direct,' I said, noting his discomfort. ‘Didn't mean to be so blunt. Sorry.'

‘Don't be. I've often asked myself the same thing. I suppose I was raised in a family where the women always chose the clothes for the men, and where I wasn't interested in style or things like that.'

‘But the truth is, you do have a sense of style . . .'

He tugged at his zip-up jacket.

‘This is hardly “style”. I don't even play golf.'

‘But you certainly understand visual style, citing Cy Twombly and John Singer Sargent. And when it comes to the world of books, of language . . .'

‘I often tell myself I dress like an insurance man.'

‘Then stop. Change.'

‘
Change
. One of the most loaded words in the language.'

‘And one of the easiest, if one can only accept the tenets of change. “
I don't like the eyeglasses I'm wearing, so I'll change them.”'

‘But that might cause some eyebrows to be raised.'

‘And are those disapproving eyebrows that important to you?'

‘They have been.
Change
. A tricky business.'

‘Especially when it comes to eyeglasses.'

‘I promised myself a leather jacket last year.'

‘What happened?'

‘Tried one on in one of those outlets down in Freeport. Muriel said I looked like a middle-aged man having an identity crisis.'

‘Is she often so warm and praising?'

‘You really
are
direct.'

‘Not normally.'

‘Then why now?'

‘I just feel like being direct.'

‘Do you buy your husband his clothes?'

‘Do I dress him? The answer is, no. I've tried to encourage him to think about clothes, but he's just not interested.'

‘So he dresses like . . .'

‘A man who doesn't care how he dresses. You will be amused to hear, however, that I did buy him a leather jacket last year for his birthday. One of those reproduction aviator jackets. He approved.'

‘Well, you clearly have taste. And you clearly know how to dress. As soon as you walked in, I thought, you really belong in Paris. Not that I know much about Paris, except for what I've read and seen.'

‘Maybe you should find a way to get there.'

‘Have you ever been?'

‘Quebec City is the closest I've ever come to France.'

‘Yeah, I did one trip to New Brunswick to see a client who had some business in Maine. That was thirteen years ago, before you had to have a passport to travel to Canada. Strange, isn't it, not having a passport?'

‘Get one then.'

‘Do you have one?'

‘Oh, yes. And it sits in a desk drawer at home, ignored, unused, unloved.'

‘Use it then.'

‘I'd like to. But . . .'

‘I know –
life
.'

The waiter showed up, asking us if we'd like coffee. I glanced at my watch. It was a bit after two-thirty.

‘Am I keeping you?' I asked.

‘Not at all. And you?'

‘No plans whatsoever.'

‘Coffee then?'

‘Fine.'

The waiter disappeared.

‘I wish ninety minutes would always evaporate so quickly,' I said.

‘So do I. But in your work, boredom can't be a big problem. Every day a new set of patients. A new set of potential personal dramas, hopes, fears, all that big stuff.'

‘You make the radiography unit of a small Maine hospital sound like a Russian novel.'

‘Isn't it? Like you said about my “small” story, the universal problems are always universal, no matter how minor the setting. And you must run into distressing stories all the time.'

‘What I see are dark masses and irregular-shaped growths and ominous shadows. It's the radiographer who decides what they all mean.'

‘But you must know immediately if . . .'

‘If it's the beginning of the end? Yes, I'm afraid that's one of the clinical fringe benefits of my trade – the ability, after almost two decades of looking at the bad stuff, to visually ascertain far too quickly whether it's Stage One, Two, Three or Four. As such I'm usually privy to this news before the radiologist. Thankfully there are very strict rules about technologists never informing a patient whether the prognosis is bad or not – though, if pressed and the news is good, I've developed a code which most patients understand and which gives them a sense that there is no cause for concern. And our radiologist, Dr Harrild, will only talk to a patient if he has discerned that the all-clear can be sounded.'

‘So if a radiologist doesn't come to talk with you after a scan or an X-ray . . .'

‘It all depends on the hospital. In a big hospital, like the place down the street, Mass General, I'm certain that there's an enforced protocol about never speaking to the patient. But we're not a world-renowned hospital. As you know we're completely local. So we bend the rules a bit when it comes to Dr Harrild meeting with the patient if the news isn't sinister.'

‘Which means if he doesn't meet with you . . .'

‘That's right. It's probably pretty damn dire.'

‘I'll remember that.'

‘Hopefully you'll never get a diagnosis like that,' I said.

‘The truth is, we're all going to eventually get a diagnosis like that. Because my work is, in part, all about risk assessment. So I too am looking – in a wholly different way – at the frailty of others. Trying to ascertain whether they are the type whose heart will explode before they're fifty-five due to lifestyle and the usual self-destructive habits. Or perhaps a family predisposition to cancer. Or the fact that, to my trained eye, they just look so beaten down and defeated by life that they are simply not a good bet.'

‘So you too have a trained eye.'

‘Well, if someone walks into my office carrying three hundred pounds in weight and looking like they have had trouble getting up the stairs to meet me . . . no, I am not going to agree to a one-million-dollar life policy.'

‘Then again, they might live well into their eighties, despite all that weight. Generic roulette, right? And there's one empirical fact that none of us can dodge – the price of admission for being given life is having it eventually taken away from you. Anyone who says they don't think about it all the time—'

‘I think about it all the time.'

‘So do I. That, for me, is an ongoing preoccupation since stumbling into middle age – the realization that time is such an increasingly precious commodity. And if we don't use it properly . . .'

‘Does anyone really use it properly?' he asked.