Mercury (5 page)

T
HE
W
EDNESDAY AFTER
H
ALLOWEEN,
I attended the funeral of a patient. Mr. Lombardo had died in his sleep the night before he was due to have his first cataract operation. I was sitting in a pew near the back of St. Catherine's, gazing at a stained glass window showing the saint on her wheel, when the buzz of conversation ceased. The only sound as the priest entered was a piteous sobbing. My patient, I learned, buried his fig trees every winter and made excellent wine. He had gone out in the middle of the night to help a young family whose boiler had sprung a leak. The day before he died, he had played bocce with friends.

Afterwards I waited in line to shake the hand of Mr. Lombardo's oldest son. When I introduced myself, his face darkened. “You're the one who made him get surgery,” he said, dropping my hand.

I nodded dumbly and hurried away, guilty as charged.

That evening on the sofa I told Viv about the exchange. “It was as if he blamed me for his father's heart attack.”

“That makes a kind of sense,” she said. “His dad was fine. Then you announce he has cataracts, and the next thing he's dead. Everyone knows there's a connection between stress and heart attacks. Maybe you didn't pull the trigger, but you loaded the gun.”

If there was a gun, I argued—at the time it was only a metaphor—then it was loaded by genes and habits. The autopsy had found three of his four arteries almost entirely blocked.

Viv shook her head. “Sometimes, Don, for all your lenses, you can't see what's right in front of your face. Think how you felt about Edward's death. And you had years to prepare yourself.”

Before I could argue further, she said her day too had been difficult. That morning the police had appeared at Windy Hill. During the night someone had broken into the nearby farm stand, destroyed a greenhouse, and set fire to two sheds. “They wanted to know if we'd seen anything,” she said. “Which we hadn't.”

“They're bound to have insurance,” I said.

“But imagine if someone broke into the stables.”

She looked so dismayed that, for the moment, I forgot the Lombardos and did my best to be reassuring. The stables were set back from the main road, I said; lightning didn't strike twice.

O
STRICH-LIKE,
I
HAD BEEN
hoping that Viv had forgotten Greenfield, but the next morning she reminded me of our plan to meet at the open house that afternoon. Despite myself, I was impressed by the airy classrooms, the language lab, the library and Thoreau room (for contemplation and religious practice), and especially by the polite, articulate students. Trina was thrilled by the art room and asked voluble questions; Marcus throughout was monosyllabic. Viv wisely didn't press him and afterwards suggested his favorite restaurant: China Garden. Not until the next morning, when I was walking him and Trina to school, did I ask what he thought of Greenfield.

“The kids are stuck up,” he said, “and the diving team sucks.”

“They're meant to have great labs,” I pressed. “Challenging teachers.”

“Who wants to be challenged? It's school, not a duel to the death.”

Sensible boy, I thought. Before I could praise his answer, his friend Luis joined us. The two began to argue about whether their new history teacher wore a toupee. Trina asked if I'd noticed that Nabokov was losing his feathers.

“I saw some on the bottom of his cage last night,” I said. “Has he been losing them for long?”

“Since before Mom's birthday. He pulls them out.”

“Why didn't you say anything?”

“I didn't think it mattered. You and Mom have been so busy.”

Walking beside her, I couldn't see her face, but I knew from her tone that she felt blamed. “No busier than usual,” I said. “And it probably doesn't matter. At certain times of year birds lose their old feathers to make room for new ones. It's called molting.”

“Isn't that in the spring?” She stooped to pick up an acorn. “Busier in your heads. There's a kind of buzzing around you, like the fridge.”

“I'm sorry,” I said. “Sometimes you just need to shake me. Will you do that?”

She reached for the sleeve of my jacket. “Like this?”

I can date our conversation to November 5, the four hundred and fifth anniversary of Guy Fawkes's botched attempt on Parliament and the first anniversary of the killing and wounding of more than two dozen people on a Texas army base. Merrie had brought me the news of Fort Hood between patients. We'd both remarked how lucky we were to live in Massachusetts where guns were harder to come by.

That evening, after Viv left for her Pilates class, I went to the computer and opened the folder labeled “Finances.” For several
years she and I had kept our money separate, writing checks back and forth, but after we bought our house we had opened a joint account. Only our credit cards remained separate and private. I was the one who paid our bills, mostly online, yet still I felt oddly stealthy as I clicked from account to account. I had insisted, on principle, that we couldn't afford $30,000 a year. Now I found abundant evidence that this was true. Among our nonnegotiable expenses were the mortgage, property taxes, insurance, groceries, utilities, the children's various lessons, summer camp, college funds, and retirement savings. And there were always surprises. Last year the roof had leaked. This spring my car needed a new catalytic converter. When Marcus broke his leg, we had paid for tutors and extra physiotherapy.

As I studied the figures, I could hear my father quoting Mr. Micawber: “‘Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.'” I shut down the computer and telephoned my mother. Since my father's death we had met less often; now she seemed pleased by my suggestion of lunch. After checking her diary, she said she could manage Monday. I hung up with the sense that my problems were already solved.

The glorious weather that day seemed to confirm my optimism. In the autumnal sunlight even our shabby main street had a kind of splendor. When I stepped into the windowless bar, I stood blinking for several seconds, waiting for my eyes to adjust to the merry underworld of bottles and TV screens. My mother was already seated at a corner table, with a glass of wine.

I bent to kiss her cheek. “Sorry I can't join you,” I said. “My patients might rebel.”

“Is one clearer? Or two? Or don't you give a toss?”

She began to talk about her new account with a chain of bowling alleys. I bided my time, waiting to bring up Greenfield. But when our sandwiches arrived, she said, “I want to tell you something, and ask you something.”

The eye is the fastest-moving part of the body, beyond the control of the brain. Who knows how many saccades my pupils made as they tried to avoid my mother's next sentence?

“I'm seeing someone.”

Of course: the waiter, our fellow customers, the football players, me.

“I never thought it would happen,” she went on. “I was devoted to Edward. But Lawrence—Larry—is a lovely man.”

I was as shocked as if she'd thrown her drink in my face. Despite my glimpse of her in the restaurant and my subsequent comment to Steve on the tennis court, I had banished any thought of her replacing my father. “Are you trying to tell me,” I said, “that you're getting married?”

“No.” She laughed. “But I'd like to ask him to Thanksgiving.”

I studied a crack in the table and said she was welcome to bring him. My mother, still Scottish after thirty years in the States, did not comment on my frosty manner. “Another man to keep you and Marcus company,” she said. “He's looking forward to seeing you again.”

For a moment I thought he had spotted me in the street. Then she explained she had known Larry for years; his wife had Parkinson's. “The four of us used to play bridge. You met them one evening when you were dropping off groceries. Larry had to put Jean in the home last year. He keeps saying he wished they lived in Oregon, where he could honor her wishes.”

“And get into your bed.”

“He's already in my bed,” said my mother, not so Scottish
after all. “Fran says I'm going to set my grandchildren a terrible example and live in sin.”

That she had told my sister first only deepened my vexation. I took a too-large bite of my sandwich and was still chewing when she asked what I wanted to talk about. I swallowed, drank some water, and described Viv's sudden infatuation with private schools: how I didn't think we should separate Marcus from his friends, how I was anxious about the fees.

“Edward and I had the same argument,” my mother said. “He worried we were shortchanging you and Fran, sending you to public schools.”

“I didn't know that.”

She raised her shoulders to suggest there was much that I didn't know. “We weren't really arguing about schools,” she said thoughtfully. “Edward, after being very keen to stay here, suddenly got cold feet, but he didn't want to say so. And I had this great job, so I didn't say anything either. We struggled through the year, arguing about everything except the thing we were really arguing about. Then, suddenly, he was happy again. Maybe you and Viv are fighting about something else?”

If she had pressed me about the “something else,” what would I have said? My wife is in love with a horse? I can't live without my father? But she didn't. I got out my credit card.

I knew that not one person in fifty would share my disapproval of Larry, and not one person in a hundred, including me, would understand it. When Viv had remarked that if Peggy were a man, women would be lining up round the block, I had staunchly agreed. I prided myself on being a man who opposed the double standard, who valued character in women over youthful beauty. Yet now my disapproval was a dish I kept eating even as it grew cold and stale.

That afternoon Viv was scarcely through the door before she started exclaiming: how wonderful, Larry sounded great. “Peggy said you were grumpy,” she added.

“No.” I was at the stove, stirring spaghetti sauce. Some onions had stuck to the bottom, and the spoon kept snagging.

“Now is the winter of our discount tents,” said Nabokov, stepping smartly back and forth on his perch. It had been one of my father's favorite jokes.

Still holding her jacket, Viv approached the stove. “But you're not pleased,” she said. “You're not glad that your fabulous mother, who took care of your father for a decade, has someone else.”

Her dark green sweater was dotted with white marks, which I had assumed were toothpaste. Now that she was closer, I saw that moths were to blame; her shirt was showing through the holes. “You should darn your sweater,” I said.

“No one darns nowadays. Perhaps”—her head was cocked at the same angle as Nabokov's—“you're finally coming to terms with your father's death. Someone's stepping into his shoes, so he really must be gone.”

“I know he's dead,” I said shortly. “Larry's wife isn't.”

“And he takes excellent care of her, according to Peggy. But she's no longer his wife in anything but name.”

“My mother stuck with my father through thick and thin.” I kept stirring and stirring. A spot of sauce landed on Viv's sweater, between two moth holes, but she didn't seem to notice.

“She was amazing,” she said. “And I'm thrilled for her.”

She paused as if about to say something more. Would she finally acknowledge how abandoned I felt? How absent she'd grown? But she said nothing. In the face of my unfaltering stirring, she stole a slice of pepper and offered it to Nabokov.

O
NCE ON A PLANE
I read a quiz in a woman's magazine: “How well do you know your partner?” Brief scenarios were described, and the respondent asked to pick among possible answers. After a lovely dinner the waitress forgets to put the second round of cocktails on the bill. Does your partner (1) Pay and sneak away? (2) Point out the error? (3) Point out the error and ask for free desserts? Until a year ago I could confidently have answered such questions about Viv. She was impetuous, ambitious, staunch in her left-wing beliefs, and devoted to animals. Here is my evidence, four examples so specific that, despite everything, they still stand firm.

              
1.
  
The June after we met, Viv and I were walking to a restaurant near the seaport in Boston when we spotted the ferry to Provincetown. Before I could protest, she was pulling me up the gangway. Everything will work out, she insisted. And it did. We found a hotel, bought underwear and toiletries, and had a sunlit day and starry night.

              
2.
  
When Marcus was only three months old, she had gone back to work and taken on an extra project to secure promotion. The following year, to maintain her
visibility, she attended conferences in Scottsdale, Cincinnati, San Diego, and Montreal.

              
3.
  
In 2008 she spent every Sunday in New Hampshire campaigning for Obama, and several nights a week telephoning reluctant voters.

              
4.
  
Once, when we were having a drink on the porch of the apartment she shared with Claudia, a mouse had appeared and started running in slow, tipsy circles.

                       
“It's sick,” Viv exclaimed. “Can't you help it?”

                       
“With what?” I held up my empty hands. “Besides, I don't know about mice.”

                       
While I sat down again, she bent over the tiny creature, murmuring, “There, there. You'll be all right.” She called Claudia for advice and insisted on watching over the mouse's last hour with an old towel and a saucer of water.

So in answer to the question: An animal is in pain. Would your partner (1) Drop everything to help? (2) Say I'm not a vet and drive on? (3) Urge someone else to help? I would have chosen 1, unhesitatingly. But since Mercury's advent, my sense of knowing Viv was under siege. A battlement fell here—Hilary. A turret there—Greenfield. A major stretch of wall fell when, not long after lunch with my mother, Viv asked me to go to the stables to help Claudia with Nimble; they were sending him to the vet's to be euthanized. She had a doctor's appointment, and the Brazilian men who worked at Windy Hill had a family birthday. “You don't need to do anything,” she assured me. “Just offer moral support.” I rearranged my appointments and drove out to the stables. A trailer hitched to a faded black truck was standing near the indoor arena. As I got out of my
car, Claudia appeared in the doorway of the barn, leading a gray pony.

She thanked me for coming. Nimble nudged me, searching my pockets. Poor beast, I thought, showing him my empty hands. It was almost cold enough for snow.

“Come on, Nimble,” said Claudia, leading him towards the trailer. It was surely no different from many others he had entered during his long life, but twenty feet away he came to a halt. Neither tugging nor coaxing would budge him. When Claudia changed direction, heading for the water trough, he limped along obligingly, but as soon as she turned back to the trailer, he stopped. I could see the whites of his eyes.

“What's the problem?” said Claudia, offering a carrot. Nimble ate the carrot but did not move. I felt the first drops of rain.

A man wearing a shiny blue jacket got out of the truck. “Step up,” he said, and slapped Nimble's rump. The pony gave a feeble kick. While Claudia went to fetch some oats, the man tugged at the halter and swore. Nimble—I was by now entirely on his side—put his ears back and stood firm. At the sight of Claudia and the bucket of oats, he nickered, but he knew better than to take a single step. Still swearing, the driver returned to the cab.

I stepped over to stroke Nimble's neck. “Can't he stay?” I said to Claudia. “He's not doing any harm. I'll pay for his hay. Doesn't he deserve a good retirement?”

“Donald,” she said, “his kidneys are failing. Really, this is the kindest way.”

“How can this be kind? He's terrified. Let's phone Viv. I'm sure she'd want him to stay.”

Claudia put her hand on my arm. “The shot will calm him,” she said.

Even as she spoke, the driver reappeared. With no preparation, he rammed a needle into Nimble's shoulder. Nimble reared halfheartedly. Claudia hung on to the halter until he was again standing quietly. While she and the driver argued about vets, his head sank lower. I stood watching out of a sense of duty. At last Claudia declared him ready. Nimble lurched up the ramp, paused on the threshold, and stumbled into the trailer.

All of this was harrowing, but worse, much worse, was Viv's reaction when I described the gruesome scene. “He didn't know what was happening,” she said.

“He absolutely did. He knew that horse trailer was his death sentence. I felt like an accomplice to murder.”

I would have bet ten thousand dollars, a month of my life, that my kind, animal-loving wife would agree with me, but like Claudia, she was adamant. Nimble was old, he was ill, he was fit only for dog food and glue. At some point the woman who watched over a dying mouse had disappeared. I had missed her departure.

And I had missed something else, something even more crucial. I have never believed I was exceptional, but Viv secretly, passionately, believed that she was destined for greatness. When her attempts to compete on Dow Jones failed, when she found herself thirty-seven years old with two beautiful children, a devoted (if grieving) husband, a pleasant home, dear friends, and a job she loved, she felt as if her life was over. Everything tasted of ashes until Mercury arrived.