14 Degrees Below Zero (8 page)

Mama hung up the phone and turned around. It happened so fast that Ramona didn’t have time to hide.

“Ramona, how long have you been standing there?” Mama asked.

“I don’t know.”

“You know what I told you about eavesdropping,” Mama said, kind of mad, kind of not.

“I know,” said the Perfect Princess. She smiled at the Old Queen, who never stayed mad for long.

The Old Queen smiled back. “What am I going to do with you?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” said the Perfect Princess, who never did anything wrong, and who always made things right.

“Well, at least come give me a hug, you little spy,” said the Old Queen, for whom hugs were food, and for whom the Perfect Princess was always available to lend strength.

8. OF ALL THE THINGS HE NEEDED AT THIS STAGE OF HIS LIFE.

I
t was not Lewis’s favorite time of day—mid-morning, a compromise between the promise of the early hours and the gradual setbacks and accommodations leading to the end of his work shift. He stood by a rack of ties doing increasingly desperate math: he’d made about seventy-five dollars so far that morning, enough to almost cover the cable bill. If he skipped lunch every day that week, he might make enough in wages and commissions not to have to dip too far into his remaining savings.

Of course, that took for granted that he would continue to ignore the increasingly strident demands from the bill collectors that he make headway on Anna’s medical expenses.

Carew had woken Lewis at six for his trip to the park to void his bowels, nipping and straining at the leash, the poor damned thing seeming to feed off of Lewis’s anxiety. Lewis had popped his antidepressant and—who cared what he looked like—donned his winter coat and hat against the chill. He had shivered in the park while Carew did his thing, one hand on the cell phone in his pocket, fighting off the urge to call and wake Jay.

Lewis took a deep breath that caught in his chest. His heart lurched. He pretended to examine the rack of ties while listening to the soft piano music filtering through Men’s Wear. The pills made his mouth dry, made his teeth taste bitter. He couldn’t really say what effect they were having on his mood. He was not depressed per se. He sensed his heart drifting somewhere above the rest of him, which made him feel calmer than a month before.

His doctor wanted him to visit a therapist. She was a new doctor, packaged with the insurance that came with his job at the department store. She was young, thin, and strangely attractive for all her sternness and obvious anxiety over her legitimacy and authority. Lewis had acknowledged that getting his head examined wasn’t the worst idea in the world, but he’d mused out loud to the young doctor—a brunette in black jeans with an uncertain smile—that at this late date in his existence it might be better to leave things alone. He told her about his shortness of breath and the chest pains, and she’d assured him that “almost definitely” his symptoms had psychological origins.

Almost
definitely.

The day of Anna’s diagnosis had coincided with the nadir of their marriage, from Lewis’s point of view. What Anna thought, Lewis couldn’t have said. She seemed content, but she had let herself get chubby, which had dulled Lewis’s desire for her as his own sexual powers continued their gradual slide. While he thought of sex continually, morning erections had become sporadic, and his ability to get it up wasn’t helped by the sight of Anna’s white cellulite-laden thighs and expanding waistline. Anna seemed content with whatever carnal attention Lewis could manage, however infrequent, and spent her days out on the sunporch painting—canvases of their garden, nothing else. Her painting was very good. Several of her oils were still propped against the walls of the sunporch. When Lewis looked at them, he saw flowers. He stared at them for long periods of time, as though the blurry images would give him some clue of what she thought, or felt.

For his part, Lewis had been seething with anger nearly all the time. He had mastered his job at American Express, and his daily life amounted to little more than tedious nuisance. When he came home, the place was always a mess—newspapers scattered everywhere, dishes in the sink, unwashed clothes stacked in the bathroom hamper. Anna would be on her daily walk around the lake when Lewis unlocked the door and let himself inside. There were times when Lewis hated her, for confining him and blithely consenting to make him what he had become—a man of routine, of moral timidity, of grasping uncertainty.

He even hated her for his affairs, such as they were.

She hadn’t felt well for some time. She had sharp pains in her abdomen. She finally started to lose weight, though not in an attractive way. Her eyes settled in caverns of darkness, and she slept twelve hours a night. After a while she started inexplicably vomiting after meals. Lewis suggested she get to the doctor.

The news came fast, all in one day. Anna went to the doctor in the morning, and by afternoon she was on the phone with Lewis.

“I think you’d better come home,” she told him.

“What’s wrong?” Lewis asked. He had a four o’clock meeting, he remembered, one that seemed very important.

“I’m . . .
sick,
” she said.

“How sick?” Lewis asked. He remembered looking out his corner-office window, peering down at the Foshay Tower and the Metrodome.

“Sick,” Anna said. “Sick for real.”

“Oh, Christ,” Lewis had said.

On the way home that day, Lewis steeled himself for the months to come. Driving down LaSalle through the Phillips neighborhood (brick apartment buildings giving way to run-down multitenant houses in the direction he wasn’t going) he realized he had known all along that this was going to happen. Anna had tethered him to a life he had never wanted, and now she was leaving him. The torpor, the lassitude, had been harbingers of her death. He thought he had hated her for what had become of him, but now he realized that he had hated her for her death.

He stopped hating her. By the time he pulled into the driveway he had been desperate to make amends. She met him at the door. They sat down and she described what the tests had revealed: a big, necrotic tumor right in the middle of her. They cried, they said all sorts of things. Lewis apologized for the way he had treated her, all the while trying to make peace with all the hateful thoughts. Anna told him she wanted to fight the cancer, but she knew she would lose. The doctor hadn’t wanted to say so, but she had seen it in his face.

When they pulled out of their tearful embrace, Lewis looked at her. In telescoping time, he saw all the ages of Anna at once—sexy young aesthete, devoted mother, detached middle-aged enigma. He was not in love with her, the years had taken care of that. But he understood the sheer weight of all they had put up with from each other, and the degree of devotion it had required. Lewis had cursed his cowardice for going into the twilight, and her for allowing it to happen. Now he saw that twilight as the form and texture of his own particular journey through life—as though, for all they had endured, they had been born for each other.

It was terribly ironic. Of
course
he was going to try to make amends before she died. Only a complete bastard wouldn’t. Wasn’t this singular epiphany of Anna’s worth to him merely what anyone would have felt? Was that how it worked—going through life resentful and petty, then loving it all just before it was snatched away? Was he merely going through a clichéd Stage One of Spousal Grieving, now that it was clear she was lost to him?

Lewis shivered in his antidepressant chill. As though there was a pill for dealing with this shit. He straightened a rack of sport coats. He felt his heart beating faster than it should. He had a momentary image of Carew dead, run down by a car, and remembered that he used to fantasize about Anna’s death, long before she took ill.

Someone said his name, and Lewis looked up. In this context, it took him a good five seconds to realize that he was looking into the charming green eyes of Stephen Grant.

“Stephen,” Lewis said. “Can I sell you a shirt?”

Stephen smiled indulgently and leaned against a counter. He was wearing a jacket and tie, both of pretty decent quality, and carrying a thick leather briefcase stuffed with papers. His hair was brushed rakishly off his forehead, and he looked almost exactly his age. Lewis felt a flush of jealousy.

“Maybe another time,” Stephen said. “I was hoping we could have a chat.”

“Have a
chat,
” Lewis repeated. He gestured around him. “Maybe you’re not aware of the setup here. Let me fill you in. This is a business. I am at my job.”

Stephen sighed as though he had known this was going to be difficult and now found himself in a scenario he had foreseen precisely.

Lewis felt his jaw clench involuntarily. He might have even liked this guy, if it hadn’t been for the knee-jerk condescension that emanated from him like smoke off a slow-burning fire.

“I thought it would be a good idea to talk on neutral ground,” Stephen said. “Look, I’m sorry for surprising you. I had a meeting that got canceled. Can you take a break or something?”

Lewis remembered that he had intended, several days ago, to instigate just such an encounter with Stephen. Whatever the hell was on Stephen’s mind, this was a perfect chance for Lewis to impart his concern for Jay and Ramona.

“Actually,” he said, “your timing is perfect. Let me get permission from Massa, and we’ll go get a cup of coffee.”

Lewis led Stephen down to the Starbucks adjacent to the big two-story Barnes & Noble down on street level, tucked beneath the skyways. This was an act of subtle aggression, since Lewis had sat through several dinners during which Stephen regaled his captive audience with his thoughts on corporations, globalism, and consumer consumption. Lewis’s tenure with American Express, naturally, loomed beneath the surface of Stephen’s crusade to edify the ignorant.

With an involuntary gasp, Lewis registered the chill in the air and folded his arms around himself as they crossed the street. Stephen pulled a face when Lewis headed for the revolving door.

“Uh, Lewis?” Stephen said. “You know, there’s a coffee shop half a block from here.”

Lewis knew the one Stephen meant—the one with the fashion-plate girls behind the counter and the murals on the wall—the one that was
independently owned.
Christ, the things people found to worry about. Even Jay, who couldn’t be bothered to dress like an adult even though she had a daughter about to start kindergarten.

“The thing is,” Stephen added, somewhat piously, “I don’t usually patronize Starbucks.”

Jesus.
Lewis liked Starbucks. It was clean. The coffee was good, and it always tasted the same, no matter the time of day. They had
standards
you could count on. They were even blandly cheerful to Lewis when he stopped in most days. What was wrong with that?

“Well, make an exception—just this one time,” Lewis said as he pushed open the door. “Patronize
me,
all right?”

Stephen sighed, hitched up his briefcase, and followed Lewis through the door. They moved through the bookstore, past the racks of magazines and into the coffee shop. There was no line, and Lewis ordered his usual cup of coffee from the usual cute young girl, who dispatched Lewis quite quickly then perked up considerably at the prospect of interacting with Stephen. The girl smiled and seemed to regard Stephen’s ordering a latte as an act of admirable discernment. What the hell, Lewis thought. So it was Stephen’s turn to be relatively young.

They sat together at a small table by the window, looking out at the pedestrian traffic on Nicollet: young men and women in business clothes mixed with that semisubterranean population for whom downtown was apparently the most interesting place to while away their idleness—those shabby, slightly crazed folk of indeterminate age, many clutching to worn and faded bags from Target or Walgreens, as though these totems of consumerism lent them a tawdry respectability that belied their appearance. Lewis stirred his coffee and turned his attention to Stephen.

“I don’t have a lot of time,” he said.

“This won’t take long,” Stephen replied. “I wanted to talk to you about Jay.”

“Funny, so did I,” said Lewis.

“Really?” Stephen said, sipping his latte through its plastic lid.

“Ramona is very young,” Lewis told him. “And she is in a confusing situation, effectively having no father. Do you think it’s appropriate for you to be spending the night at Jay’s apartment?”

Stephen’s features froze. He lowered his coffee.

“I assure you, Lewis—”

“You don’t have to assure me of anything,” Lewis said. “What goes on between you and Jay is your business. But I have a responsibility to my granddaughter.”

The words came out unencumbered by forethought. Lewis felt his resentment growing, a black sentiment that he at once embraced and abhorred. He doubted that Stephen could comprehend the vigor of Lewis’s loathing for him in that moment.

“Well, I think that Jay—”

“Jay is overwhelmed,” Lewis broke in. “Her mother’s death has been quite a blow. And, frankly, so has motherhood. She’s put her life on hold. Although, I have to say, she didn’t have to.”

“Is that right?” Stephen asked. He sat back a little bit, his eyes locked onto Lewis’s, scanning, analyzing. Not for the first time Lewis felt a bit intimidated by Stephen’s self-possession—and then discarded the feeling. Lewis had fifteen years on Stephen, and he hadn’t spent all that time sleeping. He had
seen
things on the wide-open plain of time.

“What, are you disagreeing with me?” Lewis asked.

Stephen fiddled with his watch. “Look, Lewis, I didn’t come to have an argument,” he said. “We have the same interests at heart. You know I love your daughter.”

“OK,” Lewis allowed.

“It’s that you have this particular narrative,” Stephen added.

“OK. Tell me,” Lewis said.

“You have this way of creating Jay’s life for her,” Stephen said. “You’re constantly telling her what to think about herself, and everything else for that matter. You say she has been overwhelmed by motherhood, and she behaves as though that’s true. But from what I’ve been able to piece together—and, granted, I wasn’t
there
—you treated her pregnancy like an unrecoverable disaster.”

“It was a setback,” Lewis said.

“You made her feel like a failure,” Stephen said.

Lewis bit his lip and fought off a wide variety of impulses, some of them violent. Of all the things he needed at this stage of his life, among the least desirable was the presence of this hair-splitter questioning the way he behaved with his family. Because, ultimately, wasn’t Stephen just
dabbling
? Didn’t he have the option of
leaving
without any real repercussions? Jay and Ramona were Lewis’s life. They were all he had, and now he understood that Stephen threatened the sanctity of the way he chose to care for them.