The New Yorker Stories (83 page)

When the Benadryl kicked in, he went upstairs to lie down, and he was surprised when he woke up hours later. He went into the bathroom and undressed, turned on the shower, and stepped in, grasping the shower bar. What would his wife have said of this latest mishap? That he had somehow invited the wasp? Barbara had had many good qualities, but charity toward him when he was hurt was not among them. He thought that perhaps it had frightened her, to know that he was human. She had said many times, only half-jokingly, that she’d married a man she thought could take good care of her.

He dried off with his favorite towel, threw it over the shower door, and went downstairs, where he made another cup of tea. His wrist was tender but no longer painful. Napoleon was standing silently at the porch door. The dog was going to be killed crossing Route 91. Didn’t Breezy care? He opened the door, and the basset hound bounded in, something clamped in his teeth. It was a dead chipmunk. Napoleon dropped it, with its bitten bloody neck, at Cahill’s feet and looked up expectantly.

“Maybe the doctor could work it in around five o’clock,” Cahill said, staring down at the creature. “But the doctor is a very busy man, you know.”

The dog knew none of these words. Cahill relented. “Good boy,” he said to the dog, who wagged his tail furiously and nosed the chipmunk, then looked up for further approval. This would have set his wife screaming. Cahill patted the dog’s head, keeping it from the dead thing, then picked the chipmunk up by its tail and dropped it in the trash. This meant that he would have to take the trash out immediately, but no matter. He washed his hands. All those years of careful washing, using the brush, scrubbing under nonexistent fingernails—oh, his precious hands. Now a minuscule rim of fingernail protruded on a few of his fingers, and this brought him a certain sense of pride. He’d never tell anyone anything so ridiculous, but there it was: he liked having fingernails. “We are two very impressive gentlemen, aren’t we?” he said to the dog. The interrogative always made the dog’s tail wag frantically. “But maybe it’s time to be getting home—what do you say?” He looked at the list of phone numbers taped to his refrigerator, then welled up with sudden anger: he’d call Breezy, and she could walk over and get her dog this time. Enough of the escort service. He dialed her number. Above the phone was hung a copy of an etching he had always loved, and had kept above his desk in the private part of his office: “Abraham’s Sacrifice,” by Rembrandt, the angel’s hands so exquisitely, so lightly placed. “Breezy?” he said, when he heard her voice. “I’ve got Napoleon over here and I think it’s time for him to come home, if you’d be so kind.”

“I am sorry. Did he run away again?” Breezy asked. “Ever since I started taking classes up in Orono, there’s no keeping him in the yard. But the other thing is, he just loves you. It’s hard to keep him behind the fence.”

“I noticed that. He’s going to be hit by a car, Breezy, and you’re never going to forgive yourself. You’ve got to do something about that gate latch.”

He looked at the dog, sniffing the trash can. It was too tall for him to get his snout in.

“Absolutely,” she said. “I’m going to speak to Ed at the hardware store about how to fix the latch. Tomorrow.”

“They’re open till nine tonight,” he said.

“Morty, you do not hint subtly!” she exclaimed. “I’m overwhelmed tonight, if you must know, with Father having misplaced his glasses and his teeth, and he’s got a terrible cold, so he’s in a foul mood. The practical nurse didn’t show up today, either.”

“A lot of part-timers in that profession,” he said. “Doesn’t make for reliability.”

“Well, Morty, that may be true, but what alternative do I have? If dear Barbara were still alive, I could at least get a hug.”

Breezy had been his wife’s best friend. She had received endless sympathy from Barbara—especially concerning her father’s move into her house. Breezy was one of the reasons that Barbara had wanted to spend what turned out to be the last winter of her life in Maine.

After they hung up, Breezy did not appear for so long that he suspected she might not be coming at all. The dog lay curled next to him in the living room, as Cahill read a book called
How Buildings Learn,
his feet stretched out on the footstool. Finally, she arrived.

“Morty, I hope I didn’t cause you pain by mentioning Barbara,” she blurted, instead of saying hello. The dog rose and shook himself, ambling toward her. She bent and stroked his side. “You ran away again,” she said. “Did Napoleon run away again?”

“Exile to Elba next time,” Cahill said.

“I’ve been to the hardware store. Ed was off tonight, but I left a note saying I came in and that it was an emergency. We are going to solve this problem, aren’t we?” she said in baby talk to the dog. Then she turned to Cahill. “Morty, I feel sometimes that when I say something you aren’t . . . I don’t know . . . that you don’t approve of what I’m saying. I don’t want a gold star for going to the hardware store, but I did go there as you suggested.”

“I’m afraid the dog is going to be hit by a car, Breezy,” he said, with the firm sympathy of a doctor giving a bad diagnosis. He heard his voice pitched a bit too low, and softened. “Just a long day,” he said, standing. Breezy—she’d got her nickname because she loved to talk—was clearly hoping to be asked to stay for a cup of tea. But it had been a bad day—the officious letter, the wasp—and he realized that he’d had nothing to eat since breakfast. He patted Breezy’s shoulder as if she were a patient he was steering gently out the door. At the front stoop, she turned to face him and said, “I know you miss her very much, Morty. I do, too, every day of my life,” and then she was gone, down the steps, curving with the path into the night, Napoleon—so named because the dog did not like to chew on bones, though he liked to tear the bones apart (the sole original thing he’d ever known Breezy’s father to come up with)—trotting along on his leash without a backward glance.

Cahill went into the kitchen and took a potpie from the freezer, placed it on a cookie sheet, and set the oven for four-fifty. Though the oven had not reached the correct temperature, he put his dinner in anyway. Then came another knock at the front door: most certainly Breezy, back for some reason.

Cahill went to the door and opened it. A young woman was standing there.

“Dr. Cahill?” she said. “Excuse me for knocking so late. I’m Audrey Comstock. I live in Portsmouth.”

“Yes?” he said.

“May I come in? I’m a friend of Matt’s.”

“Enter,” he said, gesturing toward the living room. She walked in and looked around. She did not sit, nor did he motion toward a chair. Patients were that way: some would remain standing forever if you did not formally offer them a seat. “What can I do for you?” he said.

“Get him to marry me,” she said.

“Excuse me?”

“He doesn’t think he can leave here. You,” she amended. “Leave you.”

“I know nothing about this,” he said.

“We’ve been seeing each other for more than a year. We met at a painting group in Portsmouth. At Christmas, he all but proposed.”

“Oh?” he said. At Christmas, Matt had prepared a goose and cooked parsnips from the root cellar. They had eaten the meal with some Stonewall Kitchen condiment—a sort of jelly with garlic. Was he to believe that all that time Matt had been in love but had never mentioned the person’s name? Of course, anything was possible. A patient having a physical would say that nothing was bothering him, and only when he’d taken off his shirt would Cahill see that he was broken out in shingles, or had cut himself badly and wasn’t properly healing.

“I’m not sure why you’re here,” he said. She was an unpleasant-looking woman—in her early twenties, he thought. Her beak of a nose, crammed too tightly between her small eyes, made it difficult to look at her with a neutral expression.

She said, “I wanted to tell you that you wouldn’t be losing a son; you’d be gaining a daughter.”

“My child is grown and gone,” he said. “I am looking for neither.”

She looked at him blankly for a moment. “He doesn’t feel like he can leave,” she said again.

“I assure you he can,” Cahill said.

“We have our art work in common,” she said, as if he’d asked for further explanation.

He looked at her.

“Matt and me,” she said finally.

“This matter is entirely between you and Matt,” he said. “You don’t have to persuade me of anything.”

“He respects you. You’re like a father figure to him. It’s just that he doesn’t think he can leave you.”

“You’ve said that many times,” Cahill said. “I’ve explained that he can leave.”

“He loves me,” she said. “He said he’d take care of me.”

“Well,” he said, “perhaps you can work things out. When people are meant to be together, such things have been known to happen.”

“You’re trying to get rid of me,” she said in a trembling voice. “You don’t think I’m good enough.”

“Please do me the favor of not attempting to read my mind,” he said. “I was about to eat a late dinner when you knocked, and now it’s time to do that, if you’ll excuse me.”

She stamped her foot. The woman was ridiculous; he would have to get a peephole and not let such people in.

“Can I see?” she said plaintively.

Cahill stared at her. “See what?” he said.

“Just once, can I find out if somebody’s trying to get rid of me or if you’re really eating dinner?”

He almost expressed his surprise, but checked his reaction. He leveled his eyes on her, wondering whether she wasn’t shamed by her own childishness. Of course, such people rarely were. “By all means,” he said. “The kitchen door is right there.”

Surely she would not really go in, but no—of course she would. Like an obese patient advised to diet who would proceed immediately to the nearest vending machine for a candy bar. There she went, to view his potpie. She would be seeing that, and the landslide of mostly unread newspapers that needed to be thrown out, a few days’ worth of dirty dishes in the sink. He had not yet carried out the trash, so perhaps even the dead chipmunk had begun to smell.

“That’s all you’re eating?” she said, returning to the room. In a gentler tone of voice, she said, “I could cook for you. Make extra when I cook for Matt and me.”

“I assume Matt doesn’t know you’re here?” he said.

She shrugged. “I can’t find him,” she said. “I thought maybe he was here.”

He gestured toward the front door. “When you find him, you can discuss with him these generous impulses,” he said. “I wish you good night.”

She started to say something. He could almost sense the second when she decided against it and turned to leave. He followed her out the door and stood on the stoop. No lights were on in the barn. The stars shone brightly, and there was a faint, wind-chime-tinged breeze. Breezy’s house was the only one he could see that was lit. Matt’s car was not in the driveway. Audrey waved sadly, overacting, the poor child cast out into the night. He did not return the wave.

Damn the woman! There was nothing he liked less than getting caught up in other people’s soap operas. He wrote a quick note on the pad by the phone and walked over to stick it to Matt’s front door. “Met your friend Audrey,” the note said. “Stop by when you get back.”

The next morning, when he answered his front door he saw not Matt but Deirdre Rambell, who worked as a secretary at town hall and had heard about what she called, with hushed sincerity, the situation. “Deirdre, it’s a few rocks that I’ve already put back,” he said. “The town is making a mountain out of a molehill.”

“Oh, it’s the Historical Society, you know. The volunteers go around checking, and they really care. For my own part, I’ve always felt the dead have souls that cannot be at peace when they sense any lack of respect.”

“Souls sense respect?” he said. He realized with slight embarrassment that although he was wearing chinos, he still had on his pajama top.

“Indeed they do,” she said.

“Then let me inform you, Deirdre, that at this point I have replaced all but a couple of the six or seven stones necessary to give the souls their deserved respect. Let me also ask you this: Do you happen to really know or care anything about the people buried on this property? About their lives, I mean—as people, rather than as souls?”

Nothing in his tone registered with her. “Aren’t they Moultons?” she said. “Fine people, among the first settlers.”

“Onward!” she exclaimed when she finally drove away.

Yes, he thought, that sort of woman always feels that she’s making progress.

You Got No Choice appeared next, apologizing for what he called the “slipup” at town hall. “That lamebrained letter was embarrassing,” he said, rolling his eyes. “I just found out, Doc, and came right over to apologize.”

“You, and the rest of the town, will be relieved to know that, as infirm as I am, the wall has been repaired, and now all is well with the world.”

“Excellent, Doc!” He tugged the brim of his cap.

“You wouldn’t have seen Matt’s van anywhere around town, would you?” Cahill said. “I haven’t seen him in a while.”

“Are you kidding?” You Got No Choice said.

“Kidding?”

“You don’t know?”

“Know what?” Cahill said.

“Up in Warren,” he said warily, as if Cahill might be having him on. “It’s been all over the papers.”

You Got No Choice saw the answer in Cahill’s expression. “Doc—they got him on some molesting-a-minor thing, or something. I didn’t want to bring up a sore subject. I know he was like a son to you. You get rounded up by the cops, you got no choice—you go where the Man says you go, right? Don’t mean you’re guilty.”

Cahill put his hand out to brace himself on the door frame. His mind was racing, but it moved neither backward nor forward. It raced like a car on a lift, with someone inside gunning the engine.

“Sorry to drop a bomb on you. Articles have been in the paper every day, as far’s I know.”

“It’s impossible,” Cahill said, having recovered enough to speak, though he could hardly hear his own voice.

“Say what?”

“Why wouldn’t he have called me? Why wouldn’t police have come to the barn, why—”