“Of course,” she said.
4
Jim was now back in Park Slope, in Brooklyn, and on one warm day in May as all the leaves moved high above him in the sunshine, he was walking back to his house from the grocery store when his phone vibrated in his back pocket, and he thought: Fuck it, I’ll talk to whoever you are later. He hated going to the grocery store, hated eating, hated all of it.
After he let himself in, locking the grated door behind him and putting the few groceries away, he took out his phone and saw that it had been Larry’s wife, Ariel, who had called him. He listened to her phone message.
Larry had been hit by a car as he was crossing Park Avenue. He was in a coma at the hospital.
—
And this began a new odyssey in the life of Jim Burgess.
—
Jim went immediately to the hospital, was ushered into the intensive care unit, and there was his son, bloated-looking, with his eyes closed and a tube in his mouth and so many wires attached to him, so many blinking lights and sounds, a cast going up and over both his shoulders almost to his neck, he had badly smashed one shoulder and broken the other, and Jim sank down in the chair beside him and began to cry quietly and steadily as he looked at his son, who appeared to Jim to be the most innocent person who had ever lived in this world.
Ariel stepped into the room, and Jim was surprised by how kind she was to him. Looking exhausted, she said, quietly, “Talk to him, they say he may be able to hear.” And she backed out of the room, with her finger raised in the air.
So Jim began to speak quietly to Larry. He put his face right up to Larry’s ear, snot running down over his mouth as he spoke. “Larry, listen to me. This is your father and I love you with all my heart, Larry. Can you hear me? Larry, this is your father, and I love you and I have been an awful father to you.” Jim repeated this again and again, as he continued to quietly weep.
The nurses were kind; they moved around him with agility.
—
It was as though Jim had been sliced wide open from top to bottom, and from this flowed his tears and his love and his guilt. Flowed. He wept steadily for two days, as Margot and Emily came and sat with him and with Larry. Ariel made Jim drink water; a couple of times she brought him a sandwich and begged him to eat it, and he did. But he did not stop crying. He slept fitfully in the chair, and only once did he go to the hospital lounge and lie on the long hard couch there and sleep for a few hours.
On the third day, as Jim was speaking quietly to Larry, repeating over and over that he had been the worst father a son could have, Larry spoke. “Dad?” he whispered. His eyes were still closed.
“Larry. Larry, you’re there?” And Larry said no more.
In his entire life, Jim had never before experienced what he felt now sitting by his son. He bargained with God, although he had never believed in God. But he said, “God, make him be all right, and you can do anything you want with me. Anything. But make him be all right.”
On the fourth day, as Ariel sat on one side of Larry and Jim sat on the other side, still weeping but with no sound, Larry opened his eyes and said, “Dad, is that you?”
“It’s me,” said Jim.
“What are you doing here, Dad?” Larry asked this with slight puzzlement in his voice.
“You were hit by a car and I’ve been sitting here with you.”
And Ariel leaned over Larry and said, “Larry, do you know who I am?”
And Larry said, “Yeah, you’re my wonderful wife.”
“What’s my name?” Ariel asked, and Larry said, “Ariel.”
And Ariel began to weep as well.
Jim called Bob.
*
And so once again Bob was at the airport in Portland about to fly to New York, but this time Lucy was with him; she was going to visit her daughters while Bob was with Jim. William had driven them to the airport in the morning, showing up at Bob’s with his sunglasses on and his white hair sticking up from his head. “Get in the front, Bob!” William said in Bob’s driveway. “You’re not small. Lucy will sit in the back.” And Lucy did sit in the back, and William asked about Larry, and then talked about the University of Maine and the project he was working on, saving the potatoes from climate change. Bob felt a tenderness for this man. “You kids have fun now,” William said as he drove away after dropping them off, waving from the window.
“Poor Jim,” said Lucy now, meditatively. “But at least it looks like Larry will be okay.”
“Oh, I know,” Bob said. They were seated next to each other not far from the gate; they both had little rollie suitcases in front of them.
Bob was in a quiet state of bliss. He was going to New York with Lucy. And she had asked him if he would come to her little apartment once they got there—Jim was not expecting him until tomorrow, so Bob had a free night—and Bob had said yes. He pictured it as he had seen it in her photos: the white fluffy quilt, the white couch, the blue round tablecloth. He had no idea at all what would happen between them, if anything, but that morning he had stuck a pack of matches into his pocket in case—oh Jesus—he had to take a dump when he was there. But the possibilities filled his mind. Would he finally be able to hold her? Impossible—but maybe not.
Just as Bob started to say to Lucy that he was really looking forward to seeing her apartment later that day, the passageway to the plane opened and people were getting off, coming into the terminal, and a woman walked past them, carrying a large leather bag of bright orange, and just as Lucy said “Nice bag,” Bob understood with a tiny jolt that the woman was Diana Beach. He had not recognized her immediately because she wore a scarf over her head and there was a slightly disheveled look about her. But something about the way she moved made him realize that it was Diana.
—
He sat for a moment and then said to Lucy, “That’s Matt’s sister.” He rose and walked toward the woman, he was behind her, she was walking quickly. And then Diana turned around and saw him, she stopped walking and so did Bob, and Bob—for some reason—could not look away from her and could not smile either. They were caught in a look. And then—this was extraordinary—Bob watched as her face changed. It would be hard for him to describe this later, but her face quickly yet subtly became a different face. Her eyes seemed to recede and they had what appeared to be almost a film over them, they were gone in a way, and her skull appeared to become more apparent. Her mouth went down, but mainly it was her eyes; she had become a different person.
He said, “Diana! What are you doing here in town?”
Her voice was deep, almost croaky. “I’ve come to tend to business,” she said. She turned and walked away, very quickly. She was wearing sneakers with a pair of jeans and a white blouse.
—
Through a loudspeaker the gate agent was saying that passengers to New York could board in just a few minutes. Bob reached for the handle of his small bag and said, “Lucy, I can’t go, I’m so sorry. I have a really bad feeling.”
And she said, “I get it, go to Matt right now, Bob. Just go.” And yet for a moment Bob hesitated. “Go!” Lucy said. “And be careful.”
“Ah, Lucy—”
