Mohawk (7 page)

“Those boys friends of yours,” Dallas asked.

“Sort of.”

Dallas nodded thoughtfully, and they walked a ways in silence. “Anybody ever teach you to defend yourself?”

Randall frowned. “You mean fight?”

“You should know how.”

Randall shrugged, seeing no advantage to it. If you knew how, you’d only be tempted. “Gramp says fighting is for people who can’t think.”

“Sounds like your grandfather. I can’t recall him ever fighting over anything.”

To Randall, the very idea of his grandfather raising his fists in anger was preposterous. Not that he thought Mather Grouse a coward. Rather, his grandfather simply would have nothing to do with people he considered unreasonable.

“Somebody said he was in the hospital,” Dallas remarked.

“He’s home now,” Randall said, though he offered no free information. While his grandfather had never spoken ill of Dallas, the boy knew they didn’t get along. Perhaps Mather Grouse considered Dallas unreasonable. Dallas once had borrowed a substantial sum and never paid it back, and Randall knew that his grandfather wouldn’t want his private business, even his health, discussed with anyone so untrustworthy. This was the problem, of course. There were very few subjects his father ever introduced that Randall ever felt comfortable discussing.

“Your mother doing okay,” Dallas asked.

Randall said she was fine.

“She ever see anybody?”

“See?” Randall played dumb.

“Go out—date?”

“I don’t know—” he started, then felt his father’s eyes. “I don’t think so.”

This seemed to cheer Dallas considerably, and the fact that the question had been asked cheered the boy, for it meant that their visit was nearly over. Randall’s talks with his father always followed the same basic pattern. You just had to be patient, let things run their natural course and eventually Dallas would go away.

When they reached the firehouse intersection, they had traveled about five blocks together and Randall guessed they’d part company, Dallas heading back to the garage, Randall up Seventh toward home. If the traffic light had cooperated, their goodbyes would’ve been smooth enough, but as luck had it the
WALK
light flickered out just as they arrived at the crosswalk, forcing them to share a few more awkward moments in each other’s company, each aware that their normal conversation had run its limited course and that anything further would represent a wilderness adventure. Had either been alone, he simply would’ve crossed against the light, for there was no traffic coming, but that wasn’t possible now. Both felt duty-bound by the other’s presence to wait for the signal.

Just as the
WALK
sign flashed again, Dallas thought of something to say. “You got any money?”

Randall hesitated, misunderstanding for a moment. Dallas must’ve guessed, because he looked hurt. “If you ever need any, you can just drop by the garage. I’m not always flush, but.…”

When his father didn’t appear to know how to finish, Randall said he would remember, though it was difficult to imagine asking his father for money. He never doubted Dallas would give it to him, but there were just some people you didn’t ask, even if they happened to be your father.

“Maybe I’ll stop by the house sometime,” Dallas concluded, a familiar promise that nothing would come of. Randall wished more than anything that his father wouldn’t make it, and there were times when he thought that things might be all right between them if Dallas could somehow refrain from saying he’d stop by the house.

In the nearly two years since Randall and his mother had moved back to Mohawk, Dallas had “stopped by” only twice. He’d intended to many other times, probably even shaved and showered, but then would stop downstreet for a paper or something and would run into a guy who’d just heard something about a poker game, and he’d stop in for a hand or two since he was early anyway, and next thing he knew the sky was gray in the east and his recently clean-shaven face was rough, his eyes bloodshot, his hands unsteady. And what he would feel more than disappointment in himself was a sense of relief—that he’d very nearly done something foolish.

As Randall and Dallas parted, the
WALK
sign flicked off again, and when Randall looked back, he saw his father in the middle of Main Street, cars whizzing by him on both sides. He remembered, then, something he’d overheard his grandfather observe to his mother—that for Dallas life was a series of near misses. To Randall, his father now looked kind, of sad, standing out there in the traffic, waiting for an opening so he
could scoot the rest of the way. And it occurred to him that it might have been a kindness to his father if he had lied, told him his mother was serious about somebody, instead of getting his hopes up. When he was little, there had been a time when Randall had prayed his father and mother would get back together. Now he looked at things differently. To pick out all the things that were wrong with his father wasn’t hard. His shirts never even said the right name and, though he hated to admit it, Randall was ashamed of him. Dallas needlessly complicated their lives, and his son couldn’t help thinking how much simpler everything would be if his father weren’t around.

Behind him tires screeched, seemingly in answer to the boy’s innermost thought, but when he whirled around his father was disappearing into the
Mohawk News
, where he would get a number down before returning to work.

Mather Grouse was home from the hospital only a week before being readmitted on the advice of Dr. Walters, the family physician. Had it been up to Mather Grouse himself, he would’ve cheerfully ignored his old friend in this matter, just as he had in all the others over the past thirty years. But it was not up to Mather Grouse. His wife had insisted. Mrs. Grouse had great faith in physicians in general—Dr. Walters in particular—and she often argued their omniscience with blasphemers like her daughter Anne, who refused to accord them the reverence they deserved. Mrs. Grouse believed that physicians spoke concentrated wisdom, like Jesus in the parables, and one’s duty was to be alive to possible levels of meaning. So, when Dr. Walters intimated that a series of tests might be beneficial, Mrs. Grouse saw to it.

She was convinced, for one thing, that Dr. Walters was concealing the real reason for the tests. He claimed that Mather’s blood pressure had been high during his recent stay in the hospital, explaining that people with pulmonary disorders were especially susceptible to heart attacks. The effort they expended in breathing was greater than the human heart was designed to accommodate. Mrs. Grouse nodded politely when all this was
explained to her, though, of course, she knew better. What Dr. Walters was really concerned about, she knew, was the damage to her husband’s lungs resulting from her daughter’s negligent use of the inhaler. It said, right there on the label, that frequent use damaged the inner lung. Dr. Walters was too kind to make an issue of Anne’s carelessness. Mrs. Grouse had suggested a mild dressing down, but the doctor had just smiled like an old imbecile and said he didn’t think the damage was permanent. But Mrs. Grouse took as a vindication of her own view his decision to admit Mather Grouse for further tests.

Over the years, Mrs. Grouse’s only complaint with the family physician, who attended their church and was middle-aisle usher, was that he lacked sufficient sternness. Another doctor might have frightened her husband into quitting smoking sooner, whereas Dr. Walters, she suspected, secretly sympathized with her husband’s backsliding. As a result, the entire burden had fallen on her. He never smoked in the house, but she suspected Mather Grouse of lighting up whenever he went outside to work in the garden or walk around the block “for exercise.” Mrs. Grouse faithfully reported her husband’s cheating, hoping that Dr. Walters could be induced to deliver a stiff lecture, but the more she detailed the lengths her husband would go to to sneak a cigarette, the more the old fool would smile and nod at her. And so Mrs. Grouse gradually took to sharing her husband’s previously solitary walks through Choir Park and to poking her head outside every few minutes when he was gardening, to make sure he was all right. Insuring that he was never alone was no easy task, because Mather Grouse was slippery where smoking was concerned, and Mrs. Grouse estimated that
despite her vigilance, he probably managed at least four cigarettes a day.

All along it was Mrs. Grouse who had looked after her husband’s health, and for that reason she had no intention of allowing her daughter to claim credit for saving his life. They’d exchanged no words on the subject, but clearly Anne felt not even a twinge of remorse. And while her daughter would never dare say so, it was equally clear to Mrs. Grouse that Anne was critical of Mrs. Grouse’s calm, responsible posture in waiting patiently for the ambulance, just as she had been instructed to do. Actually, Mrs. Grouse was a little foggy about what she was told on the telephone when she had called the emergency number. But she was pretty certain that she had not been instructed to do anything and, as anyone could see, that was practically the same as being instructed to do nothing. She was assured that the ambulance would be right there and imagined the vehicle rounding the corner onto their street even as she hung up the phone. And while it took longer than she had anticipated, the white-jacketed medics who threw the oxygen mask over Mather Grouse’s mouth were responsible for her husband’s salvation. Or, if not the ambulance people, then she herself, who had calmly dialed the number and explained the situation and given the address without the slightest hysteria. Had she not practiced that drill every night for nearly three years, and responded with skill and courage? All her daughter had succeeded in doing was fracturing Mather Grouse’s jaw.

Now, with Mather in the hospital again, things were bitterly civil between Mrs. Grouse and Anne, who stayed strictly in the upstairs flat where she and Randall lived.
They took turns visiting him and could not agree on his condition when they compared notes.

“I think he’s going to be
just
fine,” said Mrs. Grouse when her daughter stopped downstairs on her way to work.

“Not fine, Mother. Just out of immediate danger. Have you made arrangements for the oxygen yet?”

“That’s for your father to decide, dear,” Mrs. Grouse said, her lips thinning perceptibly, as they did whenever Anne stepped across the invisible line. “But I can tell you right now he won’t have one of those big tanks sitting in the middle of the room for everyone to see. He’s a proud man.”

“As long as he’s alive.”

Mrs. Grouse set her jaw firmly. “Don’t start worrying him as soon as he gets home. You know what upsets do to him.”

“I know what not being able to breathe does to him. I don’t understand what you have against the idea.”

“Me?” Mrs. Grouse pretended surprise, though she hated the prospect of an oxygen tank in the house. They were not only huge and ugly, but dangerous, too, or so Mrs. Grouse suspected. She knew the tanks were filled under enormous pressure, and she was unable to dispel from her imagination the possibility that the cap might come off one day and the tank fly around the room like a leaking balloon, bouncing off the walls, killing them all in the process before crashing through the front window and coming to rest in the middle of the street. “It hasn’t a thing in the world to do with me,” Mrs. Grouse said. “I just won’t have your father killed with all these upsets.”

Anne stopped at the door and turned to face her.
“We both know what he’s going to die of, Mother.”

Confronted with this obvious truth, Mrs. Grouse did what worked best in such situations. She changed the subject. “I think I’ll have a pot roast for his first supper home. And banana cream pie for dessert.”

“Whatever,” Anne said. “Do you want me to pick anything up on the way home?”

“Like what?”

“Like a pot roast? Or bananas?”

“Don’t be silly. I’ll go right down to Howard’s.”

“I didn’t think I was being silly, Mother. I was offering to save you a trip.”

“What trip? Two itty-bitty blocks.”

“Fine.”

“I don’t like things from those big supermarkets anyway.”

Anne knew the best thing was to let her mother have her own way, since she’d end up doing as she pleased regardless. “Don’t plan on me,” she told Mrs. Grouse. “I’ve missed a lot of work and tomorrow’s Friday. I’ll probably have to stay late.”

“I think that’s terrible,” said Mrs. Grouse, who never missed an opportunity to suggest that Anne was ill-treated at work.

“I’ll tell my boss. He always looks forward to hearing your opinion.”

“Well, I mean really.…” Mrs. Grouse elaborated, “I never heard of such a thing.”

Anne resisted the impulse to tell her mother that there was a good deal she’d never heard of. Married to Mather Grouse at seventeen, she had never held a job outside the home she ruled as absolute mistress, whereas Anne, since her divorce, had been a professional
woman and took pride in it, something Mrs. Grouse had no experience of. During the years Anne and Randall spent in New York, she and her mother remained at cross-purposes, Mrs. Grouse doling out advice in long letters to a daughter whose life was already broader and deeper by half.

“When Randall gets home, I want him to pick up his room. No heading off to the hospital until it’s done either. I’ll stop by the ward on the way home.” When Mrs. Grouse didn’t answer, Anne said, “Did you hear me, Mother?”

“Of course I heard you. I’m not deaf.”

“Goodbye, Mother.”

On her way Anne took the garbage pails to the curb and set them on the terrace. Mrs. Grouse called to her from the front window, “Did you put the handles up? The dogs—”

“Yes, Mother. I’m not a child.”

Her mother was still talking when Anne got in the car and closed the door on her voice. Instead of driving away, she sat where she was and massaged her throbbing temples with her fingertips. Then she checked her appearance in the rearview mirror, suspecting for some reason that she must look terrible. She didn’t, though. There were the lines beneath her eyes that had begun to appear shortly after her return to Mohawk two years before, but they had not deepened significantly. And besides, it wasn’t really age she feared.