The Age of Miracles (23 page)

Ulysses had himself tied to the mast not to miss their singing, Doctor Wheeler was thinking. Sound of the sirens, sound of the sea.

“Mail it to me when you write it,” he said. “What episode would you like?”

“Oh, ‘Penelope.'”

“Of course. You've finished the book then?”

“No, I've always known it. I had a recording of it by Siobhan McKenna when I was young. I may know it by heart.”

“Then do that. I'll look forward to reading it.” He waited.

“Come on,” Ketch said. “We better go.”

They went out the door and down the long hall and the marble stairs and out into the parking lot. “Let's walk to my house,” she said. “For old times' sake and go up to the cemetery. I can walk to school tomorrow. I like to.”

“Okay. If you like.” They began to walk down the sidewalk in the direction of the gravel road behind the buildings. It was a cloudy night. A waning moon rode the spaces between the clouds. It was cool but not too cold. Ten o'clock on a Wednesday night. The campus was deserted. They walked without talking up to the cemetery and stopped under a maple tree by a large granite tombstone with a kneeling angel and lay down upon the grave, upon his coat, and fucked each other without mercy.

When it was over he got up and buttoned his pants and stood leaning on the tombstone waiting while she stood up and shook off his coat and gave it back to him. He put it on. She took his arm and they walked down the hill to her apartment.

“Why does this remind me of the poets versus the fiction writers baseball game?” she asked.

“I don't know. Well, I've got to be going now. Joanne's waiting for me.” He left her then and she went inside and sat down at her typewriter and went back to work on a poem she had started that morning.

At any moment you may meet the child you were

There, by the Sweet Olive tree.

If you turn the corner by the faucet

He will come around the other way

Carrying your old sandbucket

And your shovel

You may notice the displeasure in his eyes,

A sidelong glance, then he'll be gone,

Leaving you holding your umbrella

With a puzzled look, while the spring day

Drops like a curtain between the clocks

And the dialogue you rely on stops.

Doctor Wheeler walked up the dark steps to his house. His cats were waiting beside the door. “Darlings,” he cooed. “Simonedes. Dave. Well, wait a second. Let me find the key.” He laid his papers on the wooden porch floor, found the key in the pocket of his jacket, turned it in the latch, and went into the darkened room. The cats followed him. He walked back out onto the porch to collect his papers. Above the house the maple trees stood guard. Doctor Wheeler knew them in every weather. Had seen them bent double by wind. Had known them in lightning, rain, snow, or when fall turned them saffron and gold, as they had been only a week ago. They were fading now. Winter was coming on.

He went back into the house and lit the fire and fed the cats and sat down in his armchair. Homer was on the table by the chair. He picked up the book and held it to his chest, patting it as though it were a child. Finally, when he had almost fallen asleep, he reached up above him and turned on a lamp and opened the book at random.

The old nurse went upstairs exalting,

with knees toiling, and patter of slapping feet,

to tell the mistress of her lord's return,

and cried out by the lady's pillow;

“Wake,

wake up, dear child! Penelope, come down,

see with your own eyes what all these years you longed for!

Odysseus is here! Oh, in the end he came!

And he has killed your suitors, killed them all

who made his house a bordel and ate his cattle

and raised their hands against his son!”

He closed the book and pressed it back into his chest. Then he reached into his jacket pocket and took out a crumpled package of cigarettes and turned off the lamp and lit the cigarette and sat in the dark looking into the fire and smoking.

Death Comes to a Hero

T
HE WASHINGTON REGIONAL Medical Center for Exercise had become the pickup bar for all the old people of Fayetteville, Arkansas. Every health-conscious fifty-and sixty-year-old citizen in town had started going down there, at noon to hear the old forties and fifties music, with its crescendo of “Begin the Beguine.” Later in the day, to get serious on the StairMaster and treadmill and Exercycles, while radio station ninety-two-point-four poured out Oldies onto the airwaves. By which the twenty-six-year-old disc jockey meant songs from the ‘seventies and ‘eighties, music that reminded Brenda Lacey of the years her sons had been into dope. Still, it was nice to exercise to the Pointer Sisters and the Marvelettes and Diana Ross and the Supremes. Brenda was in great shape for her age. Her legs were long and thin and her skin was tight and she only weighed two pounds more than when she had been Homecoming Queen of Fayetteville High. She had lived a lot of history and none of it had gotten her down. She was living in an age of miracles and proof of it was all around her. An elderly man with one leg was working the ski machine with great dexterity. It always cheered Brenda up to be at the center when he was there. He came in wearing a suit and tie and never took them off the whole time he went from machine to machine with his good leg and his other miraculous man-made leg. Brenda never tired of watching him make his miraculous adjustments. He was plump and had a fine handsome face that was intent on every step of his way. She had seldom seen him smile but he always had a pleasant look on his face.

Another thing that cheered her up was the group of elderly housewives who met each day at noon to do aerobics to the ‘fifties music. They told stories as they danced, of wars their husbands had gone to and what the music meant to them. When “Begin the Beguine” came on, a soft dreamy spirit would fill the room and the women's faces would become sensual and tender. Brenda was not quite as old as the women who danced at noon. “Begin the Beguine” reminded her of her young aunts and their friends, who would sit around the living room floor on Saturday afternoons, playing phonograph records and rolling up their hair and writing V-mail letters to their sweethearts overseas.
When they begin the beguine, it brings back a night of tropical splendor. It brings back the sound of music so tender. It brings back a memory, ever green
.

The young men and women who ran the Washington Regional Medical Center for Exercise all belonged to a Christian church. They kept everything immaculately clean. They changed the filters on the air-conditioning units. They were polite and kind to the old people who came there to recuperate from their triple bypass operations and varicose veins and gastrointestinal upsets. The old people were remorseful over their old ways. They were sorry they had eaten too much and drunk too much and been too lazy and waited so long to get on the StairMasters and treadmills and Exercycles and weight machines. They were going to make up for lost time. With the help of the young people they were going to learn how to live forever. How to eat, how to do aerobic exercise, how to be healthy, happy old people, how to be thin and get the heartbreaking fat off their buttocks and hips and waists.

It occurred to Brenda that she had never seen anyplace as hopeful as the Washington Regional Medical Center for Exercise. People came in smiling and left smiling. It was a good idea. An idea whose time had come. Brenda smiled at the obstetrician who had come in the door. He was a local hero. The only doctor in northwest Arkansas who was brave enough to do abortions. Once a year for twenty-six years he had examined Brenda to make sure she wasn't getting cancer. She had never had cancer and she thought it was the goodwill and kind nature of Doctor Hadley that made those pap smears come back negative. If she had gone to a mean or stupid doctor there was no telling what might have happened. She smiled and waved to let him know how much she cared. “You've lost so much weight,” she said. “You better be careful. You'll be going anorexic on us.”

“Not a chance,” he answered. “Not as long as they make Häagen-Dazs.”

The dean of the Business School at the University of Arkansas came in the door, signed in, and went to work on the free weights. A sportswriter for the
Northwest Arkansas Times
came in the door and took his stack of newspapers over to the Exercycle that had the plastic holder for papers and climbed aboard and began to pedal. The mistress of the richest man in town came in. She looked great from her hours on the treadmill and her plastic surgery. She wore panty hose and makeup when she exercised. She had her hair done and came right over and messed it up.

Brenda climbed down off her machine and went to the heart-rate monitor and stuck in her index fingers. One-forty, which immediately went down to one-ten. She was going to live forever, that much was clear. “Are you finished?” the obstetrician asked.

“Yes, I have to go pick up a child. I'm in the Big Sister program.”

“That's nice. That's lovely of you.”

“I like to have children around. They cheer me up.” She smiled and threw back her head. It was true. Her children were grown and gone and her husband had run off to the Virgin Islands when he had his midlife crisis. All she had was one part-time boyfriend who was out of town half the time selling prefabricated buildings and she sure wasn't going to marry him and nurse him into the sunset. She had all the old men she wanted right down here at the Washington Regional Medical Center for Exercise.

She walked over closer to the obstetrician. She spoke loudly enough for the one-legged man to hear. “I have a cherry tree in my backyard that is full of cherries. I'm going to invite the neighborhood children over to pick the cherries. Who knows, I may make a pie, if I can remember how.” The obstetrician beamed. The one-legged man lifted his head and smiled. Brenda took their approval and wrapped it around her like a cloak. She heaved a deep happy sigh and turned and walked out into the summer sunlight. It was true about the cherry tree and now that she had thought of it she would invite all the children over to pick the cherries. They would fall from the children's hands into bowls and pans and saucers. She would stop by the store and buy piecrusts and cream. They would have a party, here on the planet earth, in the summertime, in the only world there is.

II

The one-legged man was a retired professor of English at the University of Arkansas and his specialty was Joyce and Eliot and Pound. He was spending his retirement explicating the
Cantos
, work which he thought would last him the rest of his life.

Brenda found this out one rainy Sunday afternoon when she was at the center and he was the only other person there. The center was only open from two to five on Sunday afternoons so the young people who ran it wouldn't have to miss any Christian church events.

“I hate the way they only stay open three hours on Sunday,” Brenda began. The one-legged man was on the biceps press. She was on the inner thigh machine. “It's so inconvenient.” He didn't answer. She giggled and tried again. “Still, it's an imperfect world. And we're lucky to have this place. All the other health clubs I ever went to were so dirty. I thought I was catching things all the time. Well, I won't even come here during flu season.”

“Ariadne's dancing floor,” he said. “The way the machines all spread out from the middle.”

“A dancing floor. That's right. I always try to get in here at noon to watch the old ladies do aerobics. Listen, they're really getting in good shape. I was watching them the other day, they're really getting limber. When I used to first watch them I was laughing at them. Now they're getting good. It makes me ashamed of myself. I'm starting to love them.”

“You could follow one of them through a day and know the history of our culture. May I introduce myself. I'm Morais Wheeler. I've been watching you. You work very hard, don't you?”

“I've done this all my life. I can't sit still. I have a lot of energy. My name is Brenda, a boring name.” She got up and went to the other side of him and got on the StairMaster. “Morais, that's a pretty name. Yeah, that's nice.”

“It's French. My mother was French. I keep thinking I've seen you somewhere. Do you work in town?”

“I used to. I was in the courthouse for a while, in the driver's license bureau. But I don't remember you. I would have noticed you.”

“Is that where you are now?”

“No, I work for the Organ Recovery Team. I'm the secretary. It's real good hours.”

“Joyce would love it.”

“Your wife is Joyce?”

“No. Joyce is a writer I admire. I haven't ever had a wife.”

“How'd you lose your leg?”

“A long time ago, in another country.”

“In a war?”

“You might call it that.” He smiled a deep wide beautiful smile that lit up his face and her face and all the space around them. It was a smile full of mystery and excitement. As old as he was, his smile seemed to promise things.

“Oh, God, I'm sorry. I guess you don't want to talk about it.”

“I don't actually. Not really.” He smiled at her again. He wrapped a smile around her embarrassment and then he got down off the machine and went over to the ski machine and began to make the delicate adjustments that put him in balance so he could exercise his good leg. His tie moved up and down on his white shirt. His coat was unbuttoned.

Brenda moved her legs and feet up and down on the StairMaster. It was divine, amazing. He was someone special. She had known that all along. He had probably been in some secret service in the army. In some code business or some secret thing behind the lines. He couldn't talk about it, of course. Real heroes never wanted to talk about their deeds. Yes, this was just what Brenda wanted. To get to know some people who did something besides watch basketball games. Brenda's boyfriend watched basketball games all the time. Every time he came over it was just to sit in her den and watch basketball games. “Why don't you go play basketball?” she had told him finally. “Why do you just sit around and watch it all the time?”