“I gotta go,” said Louise. “I gotta work.”
“What are you gonna tell them when they see your face looking like that?”
Louise paused. “I was night skiing. And I ran into a tree.”
“Well, they’re not gonna let you work like that,” said T.J. “And you shouldn’t be driving with your eye swollen shut. So you might as well call in with that excuse instead of delivering it live.”
Louise had never called out of work in her life. It was a point of pride to her. It was one of the things T.J. sensed about her, she thought; one of the reasons T.J. liked her.
“Go on,” said T.J. “I give you permission.”
They were interrupted by a sudden coughing from down the hallway: loud enough to make Louise jump.
“Oh,” said T.J. “That’s Dad. I should have told you he was here.”
“He lives with you?” said Louise. Last summer, she had learned that the former director was still living, if deposed; but she had never once spotted him on the grounds.
“He does,” says T.J.
Louise considered. “If I stay here, and you go out,” she said, “will he need anything from me?”
“No,” said T.J. “We’ve got a pretty good system. I come back in once or twice a day to tend to him. He’s fine on his own, otherwise. Doesn’t need much.”
Louise said nothing.
“You look scared,” said T.J., grinning. “He’s shy, but he doesn’t bite.”
• • •
Louise stayed at T.J.’s for a week. Because T.J. tended to her father only in his room—bringing him soft food on a tea tray, and then returning twenty minutes later with an empty bowl—Louise intersected with Vic Hewitt only twice: the first time, she came out of the bathroom after a shower to find T.J. emerging with her father from his room. Walking behind the old man, she supported him carefully: arms beneath armpits, hands clasped tightly at his front.
Louise gasped, before she could stop herself, and then said, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
There was something so intimate about the moment that Louise felt guilty for even seeing it. She put her head down.
“You’re all right,” said T.J., “but get out of the way so I can bring him in there.”
And Louise backed into the other bedroom, allowing them to pass.
She had barely seen his face.
The first time had been accidental; the second time was intentional. After T.J. went out one morning, Louise watched at the window until she was a hundred yards away, a dark figure in the snow. And then she went still: from down the hallway, she thought she could hear low voices coming from Vic Hewitt’s room.
She walked down the hallway, holding her breath, making each footfall lighter than the last. Mr. Hewitt’s door was closed, but not latched; she could see the tiniest crack in it, and she put her face to it, and then nudged the door open, little by little, until she could see inside.
Vic Hewitt lay on top of all the blankets, clad in corduroy pants and a sweater, his long feet bare. He was thin to the point of pain—very different from the tall, broad figure T.J. had pointed to in the black-and-white photograph from early in the last decade. He looked up at the ceiling, blinking.
The voices she had heard, Louise realized, were emanating from a large radio just to the right of his head. An announcer gave a call sign she recognized immediately: WNBZ, out of Saranac Lake. It was the only radio station that reached the town of Shattuck.
She nudged the door open an inch further, straining to hear the news, when suddenly Mr. Hewitt spoke.
“Hello,” he said to her, though he didn’t turn his head.
Louise had not thought he’d heard her.
“Hello,” she said.
“Who are you?”
“Louise,” she said.
Silence.
“Do you need anything?” Louise asked. But he said nothing more, and at last Louise retreated.
• • •
While T.J. was out each day, Louise read the books on her shelves, many of which were how-to manuals and guides, but a number of which were classics of American and British literature, the kinds of books Louise had been assigned during her only year in college. She read Walden out of sheer boredom and found herself annoyed by Thoreau: his self-regard, his tone of superiority, the way he doled out advice so obvious as to be insulting. Here was a rich person playing, thought Louise. There were poor people far more resourceful and self-sufficient than he was; they just had the grace and self-awareness not to brag about it.
“Have you read this?” she asked T.J., upon her return, and when T.J. nodded, she shared these feelings aloud.
T.J. was opening cabinets in the kitchen, reaching for pots and pans.
“Oh,” said T.J. “He wasn’t as bad as all that, was he?” But she was smiling, and Louise was convinced that she agreed.
In the evenings, they played cards—Rummy 500, mainly—almost always in silence, until Louise got comfortable and restless enough to begin asking questions about T.J.’s life. Some of these T.J. answered readily; others she dodged. Things T.J. would not talk about included: the Van Laars, the Van Laars’ children, the guests who came to visit the Van Laars. Things T.J. was happy to talk about included: the operation of Camp Emerson, her passion for hunting and fishing, building repair and maintenance, planting schedules, and—most of all—her father. About Vic Hewitt, T.J. was happy to speak at length. She regaled Louise with stories of his smarts, his skillfulness, his quiet humor.
Of all the stories she told, the ones about her father brushed closest to revelations about the Van Laars themselves, because they often involved Vic correcting or preventing some act of mismanagement of the estate itself. But she never used their names, Louise noticed; in fact, T.J. seemed to prefer to pretend that they did not exist.
