The Doctor and Mr. Dylan (16 page)

“Did you play?”

“Sure, sure. I curled up until I was 85, and then I hung it up. Didn’t want to slip on the ice and break a hip.”

“My name’s Nico Antone.”

“Francis Baratto,” he said, shaking my hand. “Your kid has a nice slide.”

“Thanks.” I turned my attention to observing the game. Many of the curlers were overweight men in baggy sweaters, but Johnny’s teammates were three lean teenagers who looked like proper athletes. Johnny began the game by delivering the first stone. I leaned forward in my seat. Johnny appeared confident and laser focused on his target on the other end of the rink.

Francis continued educating me. “Your kid’s got a Teflon slider on the sole of his left foot. Watch. He’ll push off with his right foot, put all his weight on that Teflon on his left foot, and slide down the ice toward the target.”

Below us, Johnny stood up for a small backswing, and then launched into a streamlined sliding position that was a cross between a yoga stretch and a praying mantis lurking for food. His left foot lay flat against the ice, his left knee was pressed to his chest, and his right leg stretched out behind him like a rudder at the aft of a ship. Johnny gripped the red handle of the rock in front of him and slid down the ice at a startling speed. After a 40-foot slide he released the stone, and it traveled the length of the sheet in a gentle left-to-right curl until it stopped on the front edge of the bulls-eye.

“Great shot, Tone,” his teammates said in unison. Johnny raised one finger in acknowledgement. Like an emotionless assassin after a hit, he moved into position to await his next assignment. He didn’t glance up to the viewing area. He seemed unconcerned with my approval.

Tone?
My old college nickname, reborn in my son. Great shot, Tone. In less than two months, Johnny had grown into the local social network of this odd sport. Chalk another one up for Minnesota. My son had found his niche here.

“That’s a perfect shot,” Francis said. “See the way his shot curved to the right as it traveled down the ice? That’s why they call the sport curling.”

A second member of the red team delivered a shot. Johnny and a third teammate bent over the path of the stone and polished the ice with brooms that looked like oversized toothbrushes. Johnny leaned into his work and worked with the fury of a boxer pummeling an opponent on the ropes. The shot knocked two blue stones out of play. Johnny raised his broom high and called out, “Nice shot, Gary.” His look was triumphant and serious.

“Your son’s one hell of a sweeper,” Francis said. “How many years has he curled?”

“Two months.”

“Two months? Wow. He takes to this game. He really takes to it.”

“Thanks.” I was impressed, too. Johnny fit in. He was part of the scene, indistinguishable from Gary and the others. It was hard to believe this was the same kid that used to spend his winter evenings playing Call of Duty on the living room Xbox.

I’d seen enough. It was time to catch my plane. I knocked on the window that separated the viewing area from the arena ice, and gave Johnny a big thumbs up. He returned a hearty smile. I pointed to my watch and gestured toward the exit. He waved goodbye.

“Thanks for explaining things to me,” I said to Francis. “I’ve got to leave for the airport.”

“The airport? Where you flying to at this time of night?”

“To Minneapolis, and then from Minneapolis to San Francisco.”

“San Francisco? What the hell you want to go there for?” Francis shook his head. He pulled a small glass jar out of his pocket, and unscrewed the lid. He hawked a big goober of chewing tobacco juice into the jar, and screwed the lid back on top of it. He shook his head again and said, “Nothing but kooks in San Francisco.”

I couldn’t see any point in arguing with him. His mind was pretty well made up. If Francis Barrato ever heard my story he’d no doubt realize I was one of those kooks. I bid him goodbye, and left for the parking lot.

As I drove toward the airport, my thoughts turned to the people I was leaving behind in Hibbing. The weather sucked—it was five degrees below zero. The wind was whipping snow across Highway 37 in my path. But in Johnny, Lena, and Dylan, I had three people I missed already.

I pulled into the driveway of my Palo Alto home at 1 a.m. Pacific Standard Time. I was surprised to see a silver Porsche 911 Carrera parked in front of our house. I didn’t recognize the car. It wasn’t new, so it couldn’t be Alexandra’s. The woman hadn’t driven a used car in her life. I had a sickening feeling in my gut, and I ground my teeth hard. I should have pressed the accelerator down, driven to a nearby hotel, and confronted the unsavory circumstances after the sun came up.

But I didn’t. Instead, I turned off the engine and sat alone in the moonlight. My heart was pounding, and there was no release for the adrenaline. I’d flown 1,600 miles to get to this point, and I was going to enter my home.

I unlocked the front door and turned on the entryway light. The furnishings were new. Three new long white couches formed an equilateral seating triangle in front of the fireplace. A six-foot-tall wooden sculpture of a leaping horse stood in front of the picture window that overlooked the Bay. The changes were absurd, and I loathed them. Alexandra knew how to sell houses. She had no idea how to decorate them.

I slipped off my dress shoes and tiptoed down the Oriental carpeting that lined the hallway toward the bedrooms. The door to Alexandra’s room was open. The sound of heavy snoring—male snoring—resonated from inside. I balled my right fist and sucked in my breath. This was going to be ugly. This was my house. This was my wife. There would be consequences for the snorer, and for Alexandra.

I returned to the living room and picked up the fireplace poker, all the while fearing what I was capable of at a moment like this. I knew I should walk out the front door now, before I lost my temper, but my weeks in the North Country had affected me. I couldn’t let this go. I was Odysseus returned from Troy. I seized the iron poker, strode into Alexandra’s room, snapped the lights on, and screamed, “I’m home!”

The man woke up first. He shielded his eyes from the glare, and puffed up his naked chest like a rooster. The blackest of beards framed his gaping mouth. He roared, “What the hell?”

Alexandra rolled over him to face me, her face lined with creases from sleeping hard. She blinked herself into consciousness and drawled, “Jesus Christ, Nico, what are you doing here?”

“How about I’m here because it’s my house? What are you doing, you piece of shit whore?”

“Hey man, stay cool,” the bearded rooster said.

“Don’t call me a whore, you limp-dicked weasel,” Alexandra shrieked. She pulled the plug on a brass lamp from her bedside table and hurled it across the bedroom at me. Her ridiculous silicon breasts flapped in the breeze as she swung her arm. The false melons bounced across the rooster’s shoulder.

The lamp smashed into a full-length mirror behind me. I raised the fireplace iron over the wreckage of the glass and the wreckage of my marriage. My eyes flickered back and forth between the rooster and the hen. My heart raced and sweat poured from under my arms. I drew back the poker like a baseball player stepping up to the plate. I’d hit home runs as a youth—my rejoicing teammates mobbing me at the dugout steps. If I reprised that baseball swing at my wife and her lover right here right now, I’d wind up alone and shackled in a jail cell—an image more awful than the naked duo before me.

I dropped the poker, and left the house.

My meeting with the dean of the medical school the next morning passed by in a fog. I remember little of the encounter except the dean’s insensitive words. He folded his hands on his desk and said, “Dr. Antone, it’s simple arithmetic. You have ten months to go. If you exceed your 12-month sabbatical, your faculty position here will be forfeited. You’re welcome to reapply in the future if you choose to, but there are no guarantees as to the success of your application.”

“I need to stay in Minnesota until one year from June.”

“It’s your life, and it’s your career. Make your own decision. I can only tell you what the rules are. You’ll need to return by next January to retain your job.” He shook my hand and looked right through me. I was an insignificant speck in his universe.

Dejected, I left the medical school and drove to the Stanford Shopping Center, where I eradicated my negative energy and a significant amount of money doing something the old Nico Antone never wasted a minute on: I went shopping. I blitzed in and out of Neiman Marcus in thirty minutes. I carried a slim gift-wrapped box, and the bounce had returned to my step. It was a warm winter day under a flawless blue California sky.

I could not wait to return to the snows of Minnesota.

The temperature was sixty degrees colder when I walked up Lena’s front steps that evening. I could see the flickering of her television screen through a gap in the front curtains. I peeked through the tiny window at the top of the front door. Lena was asleep, curled up under a blanket on her couch. Last night, I’d awakened a woman in her house. Unlike last night, this woman wouldn’t throw a lamp at me.

Why did Alexandra’s infidelity bother me so much? I was no saint myself. I spent as much time in Lena’s bed as I could, whenever Echo slept the night at her dad’s house. I’d return home right after the lovemaking so Johnny wouldn’t know what I was up to. Sometimes I slept until near dawn and snuck back into Dom’s house before Johnny woke. I was like a schoolboy myself, stealing around in the middle of the night, hiding condoms in a shoebox in the trunk of my BMW.

Alexandra was a bad dream, a distant tormentor I couldn’t shake from my memory. Had I expected that she would sit around night after night in that empty mansion, crying over my picture? Of course Alexandra was going to party when I moved away, but the grim reality of being a cuckold eviscerated me.

I needed to hold Lena again. I wanted to resume this new life that felt so natural.

I had a key to her house, and I let myself in. I tiptoed with stealth across the room and knelt at her side. She was breathing in quiet puffs. I touched her lips with a single finger, and Lena’s eyes fluttered open. She smiled at me, kissed my finger and said, “Hi, handsome.”

“I came here straight from the airport. I didn’t want to wait until tomorrow to see you.”

“Mmm. I’m glad you did.”

“I brought you something.” I handed Lena the package from Neiman Marcus. She opened the Hermes box and lifted out an Italian silk scarf, woven in interlocking paisley swirls of gold and green.

She ran the fabric across her face and said, “It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever touched.” She wrapped the scarf around her neck and pulled it into a loose knot above her breasts. “You could never find anything like this in Northern Minnesota. Never.” She ran her fingers through my hair and said, “And there’s nothing like you in Northern Minnesota, either. How was your trip?”

“My trip sucked. I had a rocky time with Alexandra, and the dean won’t guarantee me my faculty job if I stay away for more than a year.” Then I told her about the bedroom scene, my voice a dry croak as I relived the sordid details.

“That’s an awful story. You could have gone O.J. on them.”

“I’m too smart for that. It’s over. That’s the bottom line.”

Her eyebrows rose a millimeter. She leaned into me and busied her fingers stroking the knot in her new scarf. “Everything happens for a reason. It’s a good thing you found out about Alexandra.” Lena rolled over on top of me and said, “Welcome home.”

“It is home,” I said, and I meant it.

CHAPTER 13

WATCHING THE RIVER FLOW

Rays of morning sun streaked through Lena’s open bedroom window, across the billowing white duvet cover. My scrub clothes and her T-shirt and shorts lay in a lump next to the bed. Birds cheeped outside her window. It was summer in Minnesota, the days were long, and life was simple. I kissed the inside of Lena’s forearm and watched her dimples rise into a smile. We lay skin to skin in the afterglow of sex, and my mind was at ease. It was an opportune moment for a man to express his love for a woman, but I held my tongue. I felt an intense attraction to Lena, unlike any love I’d ever felt for a woman, but I wanted nothing more from Lena than I had right now—a clandestine relationship, concealed from our children and her husband. Sex and companionship. It made sense to conceal the poker hand of my emotions. Silence kept the power in my court.

Lena chose to tamper with the moment. “I love you,” she said.

I was trapped. What to say? “I’m so happy with you,” I said.

“I just told you I loved you. Do you love me?”

I was on the spot. How could I not parrot those same words? I looked into the sea foam of her irises, and felt a fluttering in my chest, but not from love. It was uneasiness. Instead of speaking, I kissed her, and I reached between her legs for the wonder she never denied me.

But this time she did deny me. She tightened her thighs together and said, “Do you love me, Nico?”

I winced. “I have a hard time expressing my emotions. I’m crazy about you.”

“I love you,” she persisted.

My heart rate climbed. I sat up in bed and said nothing. Our morning had shifted from idyllic to awkward. Her face curled into a distasteful scowl. She pulled the sheets up to her chin. I wanted to crawl out the window.