Abbott Awaits (6 page)

If he weren't an untenured humanist at the flagship campus of a state university system, what would Abbott most like to be? He's thought about this question and now he has an answer: He'd like to be a field scientist with a useless research project. While he does make himself click on the headline about the man who threw his three young children off a bridge to get back at his wife, he also, it should be noted, permits himself to click on the headline about the husband-and-wife team that has studied fireflies for the past eighteen years. During this time they have amassed copious data on the life cycle and mating habits of several species of lightning bugs. It's not much of a surprise to learn that the males with the brightest and longest flashes have the most reproductive success. In some species, the females return a blink two seconds after the male's blink; in other species, the interval is four seconds. The research is wonderful because it is so unnecessary. All it does is create knowledge. Abbott loves science without application or consequence. It's no mystery why they aren't divorced, these scientists. Or why they haven't stabbed or poisoned each other. For eighteen summers they have been conducting research in the
same place in Pennsylvania. They sit on a jutting rock and look down at the fireflies blinking in a large bowl-shaped field. No vivisection, no monkeys, no Pentagon grants. They just observe and record the data. The man says the first night of each summer they never do any science. They used to try, but they gave it up. He says all these years and it's still an amazing sight. His wife agrees. It's like the sky is turned upside down, she says.

This morning Abbott is sitting on his back deck having coffee and reading the
newspaper
with Ted, Margot, Oliver, Vince, and Chester, who are all imaginary people. Not friends, exactly, because Abbott does not have the time or energy to maintain the friendships. Acquaintances, let's say. Abbott says, “OK, everyone, listen to this,” and he begins to read aloud a very interesting imaginary article about two identity thieves, ages sixteen and seventeen, who hatched and executed a bold scheme whereby they obtained the credit card information of numerous wealthy Americans and then used the cards to make generous (but not exorbitant) donations to worthy charities (children, animals), consequently putting the prosperous cardholders in the awkward position of contesting the transactions and retracting desperately needed donations to heroic nonprofit organizations. Shame as a lever. And if these fraud victims did not contest the charges, then in essence no crimes had been committed, and the kids would go unprosecuted. Abbott considers this article a kind of moral-political-spiritual Rorschach test, and he stops reading after five paragraphs to
elicit comments from his acquaintances. Margot is laughing. She has her head tilted back and her mouth open with her buck teeth pointed upward as if to take a big bite out of the sky. She is gorgeous and buzzing. She pats Abbott on the forearm and says, “You just made my day.” Abbott has a gigantic crush on Margot. If he were not married to a real woman and if he didn't have dried applesauce on his neck and if Margot were not always off backpacking through terrifying countries, he thinks he might propose to her this instant. But then Ted with that ridiculous facial hair says that he just doesn't think that the end ever justifies the means. Abbott shares a meaningful look with Margot; he rolls his eyes, and she sticks out her big red tongue. Ted says that these two fellows—he actually says
fellows
—broke the law and must face the consequences. He provides a brain-numbing series of examples and hypothetical scenarios to illustrate means/ ends ethics. And while he is genuinely sympathetic to all Robin Hoods … that's when Vince interrupts to say that these naïve hackers have an undeveloped political consciousness. Margot says, “They're sophomores in high school, Vince.” Vince says, “So?” Margot says, “Can't you just admit that it's kind of cool?” Vince swats her question away with a wave of his hand. He says that injustice is systemic. You can't just strike rich individuals, he says. You have to strike institutions and systems. These kids' actions are meaningless in the context of the larger struggle. Ultimately, they have done nothing to alter the access to the means of production. This is Vince's answer to everything. He is right, of course, but Abbott still wishes he would shut up. The deck furniture is imaginary and it is
nice
. This lazy expanse of Sunday morning is definitely imaginary. Oliver exclaims, “String those kids up and televise it!” This represents his full intellectual response to the matter. Nobody knows why Oliver is even allowed to be here. Then it's quiet for a moment, and everyone turns toward Chester, the fatalist. Generally, Chester does not speak unless prodded. “So, Chess,” Margot says, “what do you think?” Chester looks up from Sports, the only section of the paper he says still has the capacity to surprise. “It doesn't matter what I think,” he says fatalistically. “Sure it does,” Margot says. “Just keep reading the article,” Chester says, returning his attention to Sports. Abbott finds his place at the sixth paragraph and resumes reading out loud. As it turns out, twenty-two of the twenty-four
wealthy fraud victims contested and withdrew the unlawful donations. Charity officials, quoted on condition of anonymity, found it difficult to hide their disgust. After a two-month investigation, the FBI apprehended the teenaged perpetrators at a skate park a few blocks from their high school. There was, apparently, something wrong with their plan at the level of conception. They are still being held and interrogated by the FBI, and will likely face charges of larceny and fraud. Said one law enforcement spokesman, “These little wiseguys are in a whole heap of trouble.”

The one-year-old child in the home video that Abbott shot but did not want to watch tonight is doing some adorable things that Abbott and his wife had forgotten, even though they believed when they saw those things, only a year ago, they would never forget them. For instance, she is putting a ceramic serving bowl on her head. Abbott and Abbott's wife watch without smiling. Abbott is stunned, and he does not know what his wife is. The family room, past and present, looks post-tornadic. That child, so alive right now on the television, is missing, gone forever. That ceramic serving bowl, a wedding present, has also disappeared. Abbott does not want to pick a fight. He does not want to spoil the evening with gloom. But how else to say it—mortality permeates home video. Those tragic anti-drunk-driving television commercials from Abbott's youth—the ones featuring home-video footage of joyous children subsequently killed by drunk drivers—those ads did not create the association. They presumed it, utilized it. Nevertheless, Abbott keeps his mouth shut. “You're right,” Abbott's wife says after only a few minutes of adorable footage. “You're right. Let's not.” A child is a Trojan horse,
a thing of guile
. The rout is commenced.

Yesterday morning, compelled as if by some binding treaty or biological imperative or perhaps
The Farmer's Almanac
, many of the men in Abbott's neighborhood rose early to clean their gutters. Abbott, more vulnerable to this kind of suburban pressure than he'd care to admit, today borrows a ladder and climbs it roofward during the hottest part of the day. The rain gutter is an apt synecdoche of domestic existence: From the ground it appears practical, functional, well conceived. But when you stand on a borrowed ladder and peer into it, you realize what a gutter is. A gutter is a flimsy trough of sludge, secured by rusty hardware. Rainwater is not so much channeled and diverted as collected and absorbed. All along the front of his house Abbott is alternately repulsed and terrified. He is afraid of falling off the ladder and sustaining compound fracture or death. The warning is right there on the top step, accompanied by a picture of a tumbling man who also appears to be on fire. Abbott knows that one instant everything is OK and then the next instant everything is not. He knows that it's always the husbands of pregnant women who get buried
by sinkholes or lashed by falling power lines. But he continues scooping the muck into a black garbage bag, and by the time he reaches the gutter along the back of his house, his dread and aversion have abated, and his eye and mind begin to wander. He sees that the roof over his family room runs flat until it hits the roof over his garage, where it rises at a soft angle for three feet or so before peaking and dropping steeply down the other side. Abbott, now accustomed to the ladder and his repetitive gutter-cleaning movements thereon, knows that there are two kinds of people in the world: those who would climb onto the flat roof one lovely summer night with a blanket and a bug-repelling candle and a bottle of cheap wine in order to recline against the gentle slope of the garage roof and gaze up at the vastness with a wine-bent conception of the sublime so limited as to be
soothing
, and those who would not. Of the latter type, Abbott knows that there are two subtypes: those who would not, beyond adolescence, even think to climb onto the roof with a frayed backpack one lovely summer evening, and those who would envision it deeply and repetitively, but never, ever do it. Abbott belongs to this wretched latter subtype, the worst possible. All that vestigial poetic yearning, useless and malignant. Abbott's wife, inside the house, comes to the kitchen window below the section of the gutter that Abbott is cleaning. Her face in the window is level with his thighs, and so naturally he imagines her sucking his penis and swallowing his semen. “Are they bad?” she asks. “The gutters?” “Yeah.” “They're not that bad,” he says, lying for no reason at all. She says, “The baby is really kicking today.”

Abbott knows what's going on out there. Blankets on lawns, scared birds circling the dark, the smell of burnt meat, sulfur. Somewhere a minivan in neutral is gliding silently toward the pond. Abbott is unpatriotic, unwashed. He pours another drink, kills a mosquito, sedates his dog with laced cheddar. He can hear, in the distance, the Sousa and bottle rockets. He reads
Billy Budd, Sailor
for the first time in seventeen years. He had forgotten how sad it is, or more likely he had never quite known.

Poor welkin-eyed Billy, devoid of
sinister dexterity
. The days can be long without it, Abbott knows. He's lying in bed beside his wife, who is almost certainly awake. These two heads on pillows, maybe three feet apart. Budd's tragic impressment by the Royal Navy has Abbott remembering the day, nearly thirty years ago, when he learned about military conscription. His father had made some casual remark about his exemption from the draft, young Abbott had asked for a clarification of terms, and his parents, still married then, had explained. What a concept. What a blow to moral intuition. (This was roughly six months before the intuition-razing twelve-hour television miniseries
Roots
.) Abbott can recall the backyard patio, the dandelions, the squat tin shed flexing in the heat. He received his parents' warm but dubious assurance that he would never be conscripted and then went upstairs and closed his door. Thirty years ago in a backyard. Abbott, lying now in bed, has an idea. He might put his forehead right against hers if she'll turn around. The firecrackers still cracking out there, the sedated dog snoring at the foot of the bed. “Hey,” he whispers, turning on his side to face his wife's shape.

“I come to this guy's house in the middle of the afternoon, and he's home. I figure he's probably a professor. I'm a little early, and he seems kind of startled to see me. He comes to the door holding his daughter.” “How old is she?” “I don't know, I can't tell anymore. Two? The guy's arm is completely covered with butterfly stickers, and he's wearing all this costume jewelry. Like that kind Sarah used to love. Three or four bracelets and probably
ten
necklaces this guy's wearing. His daughter is just in a diaper, and she has magic-marker streaks all over her chest and legs. They're listening to Tom Petty's
Damn the Torpedoes
. You know, I've been there, those long days, no big deal, but this guy looks a little sheepish, even after I tell him I have a daughter and try to make funny faces at the girl and all that.” “You scared her, didn't you?” “She just looked at me. Then the guy shows me into the kitchen, and I see his dog, this big Lab, jammed into a tiny space between the dishwasher and the cabinet, and the dog is trembling and drooling like crazy. Just like Otis used to do when it thundered, except today it was beautiful. And I think maybe he'll try to explain the dog, but he doesn't say anything. So I say, ‘Your refrigerator isn't working?'
And he tells me that it's just not keeping the food very cold. I open it up, and I look in, and it's filled with juice and fake meat, so now I know the guy is a professor.” “You look at people's food?” “Hey, I don't judge. And the first thing I always check when there's a problem with a fridge—just in case—is the little temperature dial. You know? Like you turn it one way to make it—” “I know what the dial is.” “And sure enough, I move this huge thing of apple juice and about three gallons of milk to look at the dial, and it's turned all the way to the warmest setting. So that's the problem with the fridge. That's why he called me out there.” “Oh, God.” “I know.” “I think even I would know to check that dial.” “And I know this guy is going to be humiliated about this, so I'm trying to explain the problem while still facing into the refrigerator, and I'm moving very slowly and trying to make it seem like it's requiring some expertise to, you know, turn the dial to a higher number. And I tell him that's the first thing he should always check when there's a problem.” “Were you an ass about it?” “No, not at all. I was serious and professional. This could happen to anyone, and that's what I told him. I told him I see it every day, which believe me I don't. And when I finally close the door and turn around, the guy is kind of smiling, but he won't make eye contact.” “That's horrible.” “I am taking no pleasure in any of this. And he's still holding his daughter, and she's patting his head and saying, ‘Good boy, Dad,' over and over. Then we just stand there in the kitchen, and it's awkward. The only noise is the dog, who is trembling so hard in that little nook or whatever that you can
hear
it. And then I have to tell him it's forty dollars for the visit. It's supposed to be sixty—and Ray will give me shit about it—but I just can't do it to this guy.” “You're sweet. You are.” “And he says sure, sure, and he writes me a check while holding his daughter, and she's sticking a dinosaur into his ear and saying, ‘Dino in Dad's ear.' And then he hands me the check, and things are still kind of awkward, so I point at Sarah outside in the van in the driveway and tell him I've got my girl with me today. And I tell him she's sixteen and we're on our way to go upgrade her cell phone. And we both look out the window at her—she's got her feet up on the dash, and she's painting her toenails.” “No, she wasn't.” “Yes, she was too. And she had that bored-looking kind of scowl on her face.” “I know the one.” “And honey, I have no idea why I'm talking so much
to this guy. I just want to leave. This is more than I usually say in a week on the job. But then for some reason I tell him what I promised myself I would never say to anyone because I got so sick of hearing it when Sarah was little, but I said it.” “I don't believe it.” “Yes, I did. I said, ‘Man, enjoy it now because it just goes by
so fast
.'” “Wow.” “And now I'm mortified, too, and the situation has gotten unbearable. The dog I swear seems like his heart might explode.” “What did he say?” “He didn't say anything. He kind of laughed, and then I laughed too. Then he shook my hand and took the girl back into the playroom before I even put away the paperwork and got my tools. When I left, he was down on the floor, throwing her way up in the air and catching her.”