Mercury (6 page)

I
MISSED MY FATHER ALL
the time, but the major holidays, those days when I had reliably been in his company, were particularly hard. For the last few years we had celebrated Thanksgiving at Claudia and her great-aunt Helen's house. Now, as I helped Viv make stuffing and cranberry sauce, I kept picturing him standing in their living room, reciting the Scots grace, using his walker as a prop in charades. How could we celebrate without him? How could my mother have already replaced him? But as soon as Larry came into the room, I could see that he was, as she had said, a lovely man. He went round greeting everyone. He endeared himself to Viv and Claudia by asking about the stables, to Helen by praising the house, to Marcus by talking about diving, and to Trina by describing the time he'd ridden an elephant.

“I doubt you'll remember,” he said to me. “We met years ago.” His lower teeth were endearingly crowded.

“Of course,” I said, although I still had no recollection of our meeting. What had my mother told him about me? A wonderful doctor. Gave up surgery to care for his father. Devoted to his children. Or a less flattering description?

But Larry was asking after Nabokov. He too had an African grey. “I remember your father telling me that Henry VIII
owned one. We joked about what it might say. ‘Wife number three. Watch your head.'”

My mother, once the introductions were past, behaved as usual, helping Claudia with the turkey, but something about her was different. In private she must often have bemoaned my father's illness, but in public she always behaved as if she were glad to be married to this man who towards the end, could not button his own shirt nor finish a sentence. Watching her now, I remembered a long-ago afternoon, bicycling on Cape Cod. I had gotten ahead of the others, and when I turned around to wait, I saw her pedaling towards me, her face bright with happiness.

Needless to say, Larry was good at charades and his baked squash was delicious. As I sat looking down the candlelit table, everyone talking and laughing, it was as if my father had never existed. Just then my mother tapped her glass.

“Ladies and gentlemen.” Her gaze settled on me. “May I propose a toast? To absent friends.”

It was the toast my father had made year after year. We raised our glasses.

But the most significant event of the holiday was still to come. Viv and I drove home, put the children to bed, and went to bed ourselves. An hour later we were woken by the phone. I answered on the second ring, half expecting to hear my mother's voice. A man asked for Viv Turner.

I hovered, uselessly, while she said, “Yes,” “Yes,” and “I'll be there as soon as I can.”

The alarm had gone off at Windy Hill. The police needed her to check that no damage had been done and reset it.

“Probably just a raccoon,” she said, as she pulled on her clothes.

“This is Massachusetts,” I reassured her. “People don't steal horses.”

But we were both thinking about the break-in at the farm stand. She turned out the light, and I heard the familiar sequence: her feet on the stairs, the back door, the car door, the engine.

When Marcus was four, he had gone through a phase of dreading sleep, sure that if he closed his eyes, some dragon or demon would pounce. As I lay there, alone in the dark, clicking back and forth on the abacus of my nocturnal accounts, I had new sympathy for his fears. My father was dead; my patients were dying (only one); my mother was changing (she had found happiness); my wife was obsessed with private school and a horse (she was an enthusiast); we were close to bankruptcy (not really). At last I pulled on my bathrobe and went downstairs. I still have the British belief that almost any situation can be improved by a cup of tea.

The water had just come to the boil when I heard a car turn into our driveway. But as I heated the pot, measured, and poured, I heard nothing more. Thinking I had been mistaken, I opened the back door. There was Viv's car in the usual place, and there was Viv, still sitting behind the wheel. Something terrible must have happened.

At the sight of me hurrying down the steps, she jumped out of the car. “Don,” she said, “you'll freeze.”

In the kitchen she opted for Scotch instead of tea, which suddenly seemed like a very good idea. We sat down at the table. Two policemen, she told me, had been waiting at Windy Hill. They had walked around the barn and the smaller building, looking for signs of entry. Inside the barn, the younger policeman had checked the windows again while she and the older one went round the horses.

Our kitchen overlooks the garden, and we seldom close the curtains. As she described how, outside Mercury's stall, they had found a man's glove lying on the floor, I watched the pale gleam of her face reflected in the dark window. “People drop gloves all the time,” I said.

She shook her head. “I fed him just before I locked up. I couldn't have missed it. Someone broke in and visited his stall.” She set down her glass and reached for my hand. “I need you to promise something. Don't tell anyone about this. I don't want Hilary to move him.”

“Maybe she should,” I said. “He requires all this special care, and now some burglar is interested in him.”

“No!”

The single syllable was so piercing that I was again sure something terrible had happened. Had she cut her hand on her glass? Developed appendicitis? But before I could speak, she was pointing to the ceiling. We listened for the children. When no sound came from above, she went on, her voice steely. “There's no need for her to move Mercury. We'll make the stables safe. Promise me, Don.”

I promised, and she kissed me, but in bed she turned away.

T
HE PHRASE
“D
ON'T TELL
anyone” nearly always has a silent exception. In this case, I assumed it was Claudia. She and Viv were best friends; she owned the stables. Whether Viv had already decided not to tell her about the break-in, or whether circumstances conspired to make that choice, she herself scarcely knew. The police paid a follow-up visit the next morning and were gone by the time Claudia arrived. They recommended a new alarm, security lights, and grills at the windows, all of which Viv justified by reminding Claudia about the break-in at
the farm stand. By the end of the following week the measures were in place. The bill was paid, again I learned only later, with Viv's credit card—which is to say, by our joint account.

What I knew at the time was that our household was not running smoothly. Viv no longer walked the children to school but left first thing to ride Mercury; most afternoons she stayed late at the stables. At home she spent hours online, looking up things about horses: tack, nutrition, training, competitions. Trina missed a violin lesson, and we had to pay for it. Marcus missed a crucial swimming practice and wouldn't speak to us for two days. I was irked by these errors, but I held my tongue. In the weeks following my father's death Viv had carried the household uncomplainingly. My silence was rewarded when one night in early December she arrived home to find Marcus and his friend Luis making tacos.

“How are the horses?” Luis asked. “Marcus said maybe someday you'll let me ride.” He smiled at her over the cheese grater.

“I didn't know you liked horses,” said Viv.

“Yes, you did, Mom,” said Marcus. “Luis went to a ranch last summer. His whole family learned to ride.”

That night, when she joined me on the sofa, Viv said what a nice boy Luis was. I said he was, all credit to his mother, who worked two jobs and still helped with homework every night.

“So how can they afford to go to a ranch?” she asked.

In the last few months she had often accused me of not paying attention. Now I refrained from retaliating as I explained that Luis's uncle managed a ranch in Wyoming. He had hired the mother to cook for his summer guests. I was turning back to my book when Viv spoke again.

“I've been thinking,” she said, “you're right about Greenfield. There are all these good things—smaller classes, terrific
teachers—but Marcus's friends are important. We can volunteer at the middle school. Get him extra tutoring.”

“It is what he wants,” I said, trying not to sound too eager. Luis, I thought, with his tacos and his interest in horses, had changed her mind.

P
AINFULLY, ON PAGE AFTER
page, I record my myopia. My wife was choosing a horse over our family, and what was I doing to lure her back? But I had my own distractions, some I was aware of, some not. On the anniversary of Pearl Harbor, Diane came to my office. The vision in her left eye was a little blurred. I checked the prescription and said that the eye had improved in the last couple of months. It sometimes happened when you first started wearing glasses.

“Will it keep improving?” she said.

“Maybe—eyes are unpredictable—but any further changes will probably be very small. You like science, don't you?”

She nodded. “What's the problem with Jack's eyes? He wasn't always blind, was he?”

“Jack?” I said.

“Mom's friend, your friend.”

The week before, Jack had remarked that since he started carrying a cane, people often told him their secrets, but he found it hard to reciprocate. “All I can picture,” he said, “is me pouring out my heart, my listener yawning.” At the time I'd assumed he was rehearsing a new section of his book: how people treat the blind differently. Now I understood he'd been telling me that
he too had his secrets. I hid my hurt from Diane behind a stuffy speech about patient confidentiality.

“Ask Jack,” I said. “I'm sure he'd be happy to explain his condition.”

“He tried, but it was hard to follow. He can't draw a diagram.”

Something about her seriousness made me reach for my model eye. “This is the iris,” I said. “And the pupil.” I was pointing out the optic nerve when Merrie knocked at the door: my last appointment of the day was here. I thanked her and finished my explanation. “So we think we see with our eyes,” I said, “but really we see with our brains.”

Fifteen minutes later I emerged from the last appointment to find Merrie sitting on the edge of her desk. “If you want to give a biology lesson,” she said, “use the waiting room, or my office.”

“I didn't realize Mr. Kearney was waiting.”

“Mr. Kearney's not the point. You shouldn't see children alone in your office, with the door closed, beyond the necessary appointment.”

How fast does sight travel? Diane had asked. As fast as Merrie's meaning reached me. “Did Diane say something?”

“Only that it's cool that the eye has a lens like her contact lens.”

“But something happened? Come on, Merrie, what are you really saying?”

Still frowning, she said that a teacher at her daughters' school was in trouble. “Ginny's taught there for ten years. Now she's been accused of ‘inappropriate behavior.' She was helping a girl with extra homework, and the two of them were alone in the classroom. There's no way she can prove her innocence.”

“It sounds like that famous case in Edinburgh,” I said. “You seem very sure the girl is lying.”

“Lots of famous cases.” The girl had briefly been friends with her oldest daughter. Several times Merrie had caught her in a blatant lie. “She's a little cat, but she made me realize you do have to be careful. Men are even more vulnerable than women.”

When I moved back to Boston, colleagues had warned me about the dangers of lawsuits. Be careful about apologizing, the head of surgery admonished. But I had not considered other kinds of danger. All day long I saw women alone, with no nurse or assistant. Now I promised to heed Merrie's advice. We locked up, and I watched her stride away into the darkness. Then I phoned Drew to ask if he could babysit for an extra hour and Jack to ask if he'd like a drink. Both said yes.

The door of Jack's apartment was ajar, and when I stepped inside, the air had a spicy fragrance. He was at the stove, stirring a saucepan of mulled wine; his building was having a party that evening.

“Diane came to my office,” I said.

He added a pinch of cinnamon to the wine. “She's a smart cookie. Let's give this a shot.”

He filled two mugs and led the way to the living room. “So what's up? The air is vibrating. Are you mad that I'm going out with Hilary?”

“She just doesn't seem your type.”

“The type to have a blind toy boy? Did you notice my new decor?” He waved his arm.

I had grown accustomed to the bare functionality of Jack's apartment. Now I took in the pictures on the walls, the three new lamps. A wicker basket of papers sat on one table, a large bowl on another. As if following my gaze, he said, “She hasn't
just prettied up the place for my sighted friends. She's made my life easier.”

“Brilliant.”

“Brilliant,” he mimicked. “What's the matter, Donald? You're worried about my morals? You think I don't deserve Hilary?”

“If anything, she doesn't deserve you. I just feel stupid that I never thought you might want a girlfriend.”

Jack smiled. “You, and everyone else,” he said. “Lo, the blind are not celibate. It's nice to break a long dry spell, and nice to be with someone who treats me like a normal person. What do you think of the wine? Hilary says you don't like her.”

I was startled to learn that they had discussed me, and startled that the feelings I thought so carefully concealed were apparent. I said I hardly knew her. “We didn't get off on the best foot, but you like her, and so does Viv. Clearly I need to get on a different foot. The wine is good.”

“Maybe a splash more brandy. Why did you get off on the wrong foot?”

No point in saying that Hilary had struck me as shallow and flirtatious. Instead I said she seemed to disapprove of her daughter liking biology.

“Oh, that's just Hil, wanting Diane to have more friends. And now”—he set down his mug—“you may ask the obvious question.”

“Why is she going out with a blind man?”

He clapped mockingly. “I'll tell you my guilty secret. She didn't know I was blind until after we'd slept together.”

“How could that be?” Even as I asked, I guessed the answer: his vivid eyes had misled her.

“When she introduced herself at Viv's party, I assumed she
knew. ‘My blind friend Jack'—isn't that what everyone calls me? I gave her my card, and she phoned a couple of days later. I invited her over for a drink. With disgraceful speed, one thing led to another. Only afterward, when she asked if I needed help hanging pictures, did it dawn on me that she hadn't a clue.”

“So what happened when you told her?”

“She said ‘Wow, my first blind guy.' Then we went through chapter and verse. When did I lose my sight? Can I see anything? Is sex more or less intense? I answered as best I could and said she was welcome to get the hell out. I hadn't meant to deceive her. She said she didn't feel deceived, but she was hungry. We went out for Thai food. She told me stories about her job, and growing up in Ontario. I told her about my students and growing up in Gloucester. She walked me home, said she'd be in touch—maybe I could buy some condoms?—and drove away.”

I imagined Hilary's light voice saying “condoms.”

Gleefully Jack described the pharmacist's surprise. She too, apparently, had never realized that the blind have sex lives. But then he was home with his little purchases, waiting. After sixty-seven hours Hilary phoned to say she liked him but she didn't know what she was up for. She hadn't been with anyone since Diane's father, and she didn't want to be a person who wasn't kind to cripples. He said he liked her too. Whatever happened, he wouldn't play the cripple card. On that unsteady basis they were stumbling forward.

“Brilliant,” I said again.

“Come on, Donald. At first there was nothing to tell: I saw someone last night, and I may or may not see her again. It's not as if Hilary is a friend of yours.”

“But”—I studied the wicker basket—“you are.” Three words I would never have said to a sighted person.

Jack seemed to understand what they cost me. “I am,” he said, “and I'm sorry I kept you in the dark. Believe me, I know what that's like.”

Suddenly my resistance, my anger, whatever it was, disappeared. “Christ,” I said, “I'm being a dickhead.”

“Hurrah, he swore in American.” He clapped his hands again.

As I got ready to leave, I asked whether Viv knew about him and Hilary.

“Wouldn't she have said something?”

“The way things are nowadays, who knows?”

I saw him register what I was telling him, but for once he did not press me. Instead he told me about Mercury, the Roman god, with his winged hat and winged shoes. Like the Greek god Hermes, he carried messages and guided souls down into the underworld, but he had many other duties.

“He's a busy fellow,” Jack said. “He's the god of eloquence, of commerce, and of travel, but he's also the god of thieves and trickery. People used to paint his image on their doors, thinking that he would protect them from lesser thieves. And he carries a staff, a caduceus, with two serpents that people often confuse with your doctor's staff.”

“Asclepius's rod,” I said. “We only have one snake.” The idea of sharing anything with Mercury made me prickle.

I thanked him for the wine and left him to his party. Outside, the first snow of the winter had begun to fall. Tiny crystals glinted in my headlights as I drove home. In the kitchen Drew was teaching Trina, Marcus, and Nabokov to sing “Good King Wenceslas.”