Paris Trout (17 page)

Which, in fact, it was.

He dropped the mayonnaise, and then all the
preserves, and then the eggs, and then two bottles of milk. The
little explosions seemed to come at minute intervals, and finally,
when she understood that he meant to break everything in the kitchen,
she put a robe over her nightgown and went downstairs to stop him.

She found her husband bent into the open
refrigerator, as if he were looking for something to eat. There were
pieces of broken bottles and jars all over the floor, most of them
still holding part of what had been inside. His shoes were splattered
with the same things.

He stood up, holding a jar of pickles, looking
carefully at the specks floating in the liquid. Then he seemed to
find what he was looking for, and he dropped it from eye level and
watched it all the way to the floor.

She watched it too — it broke near his feet and the
juice sprayed the wall. A pickle landed on the toe of his shoe, hung
there a moment, and then rolled off. When she looked up, his eyes
were fastened on her, and she held herself in the entrance. An act of
will.

"
This is a sin," she said. If there had
ever been an agreement between them, it was that waste was a sin.

"
Then I expect you'll be eating it yourself."

"
What has got into your mind?" she said,
and as soon as she had asked the question, she knew the answer.

He said, "An ounce of prevention worth a pound
of cure," and turned back into the refrigerator, coming out with
the catsup. This bottle did not break when it hit the floor, and it
didn't break when he stomped it with the heel of his shoe. He picked
a hammer up off the cupboard and hit it three times, finally catching
it square, and sprayed red all over himself and the closest wall.

When he looked at her again, he was holding the
dripping hammer.

"I sleep with my eyes open," he said, "and
I know everything that happens in my house."

He turned back to his work, selecting the bottle of
ice water. It turned the mess runnier than it had been, and little
pieces of relish floated a few inches on the tide and then were set
back down on the floor.

He was staring at her again. "Canned food,"
he said, and then he smiled.

. "There's nothing wrong with the canned food,"
she said.

"That's right," he said. "There
isn't."

This time he reached all the way into the
refrigerator and swept out everything on the top shelf. Part of it
landed on the floor, part was thrown into the wall. She took a step
backwards, and the doorbell rang.

He straightened himself and ran his fingers through
his hair. He washed off his hands in the sink, dried them with a dish
towel. The bell rang again, and she moved to answer it.

"
Leave it alone," he said, and she stopped.
"It's just my attorney, it don't have a thing to do with you."

He walked straight through the kitchen toward the
front of the house. Then he seemed to think of something, though, and
stopped.

"We'll have rats, you don't clean that up,"
he said.

She waited until she heard voices in the front room
and then left the kitchen. The second step she took, she was cut. A
piece of the bottle went into the first three toes of her left foot
so deep it stuck. She cried out, lifting the foot to protect it, and
slipped in something Paris had tracked out of the kitchen.

She fell, and for a moment she could not move. She
heard them in the front room. "What now?" the attorney
said. '

"Housework," her husband said.

"
It sounded like somebody fell."

She sat up on the floor and crossed her foot over her
knee. The glass had cut through her Christmas sock and was buried so
tightly into the fleshy parts of her toes that there was almost no
blood.

She pulled at the glass, testing it, and felt a nerve
connection all the way up her leg. She heard them coming now. She
shut her eyes and pulled at the glass again, a slowly increasing
pressure until the toes began to let go, one at a time, and then it
was loose. She held the glass up to the light and saw it was the
shape of a smile.

There was a throbbing in her toes, a deep ache
somewhere in her leg. Harry Seagraves came around the corner, holding
papers in one hand, and stopped in his tracks. She realized suddenly
that her foot was bleeding — she could feel it coming out of her
toes — and she realized at the same time how she must look to the
attorney, sitting in the floor in Christmas socks, holding her foot.

"I'm afraid I've cut myself," she said.

The attorney put his papers on a daybed near the door
and crossed the room. She saw her husband behind him. Seagraves knelt
beside her, and she pulled her robe together at the neck while he
inspected her foot.

"I'm sure it's all right," she said.

"
I believe it's cut to the bone," he said.
"Have you got a towel?"

He stood up, removing his suit coat, and checked
around the room for towels. He stepped into the kitchen and returned
a moment later with a cloth napkin. He pressed the napkin into her
toes and the ball of her foot, watching her face as he worked.

His own face had changed during the visit to the
kitchen. "Can you feel that?" he said.

"Certainly," she said.

Her husband was standing over them now, looking down
as the attorney applied first aid.

"We're going to need some tape," the
attorney said, "something to stem the bleeding enough we can get
you to the clinic."

She began to argue that there was no reason to bother
the doctor over a cut foot, but she was suddenly aware of the blood.
It had soaked through the napkin and was all over the attorney's
hands and shirt. It was on her own hands — she did not know how —
and had soaked the length of her Christmas sock.

She closed her eyes. "You don't have tape,"
Seagraves said to her husband, "get me some towels. Something to
tie it with."

And then Paris had moved, gone somewhere for towels,
and the attorney was helping her up, his hands under her arms and
touching her bottom, telling her things were all right. "It
doesn't mean a thing, Mrs. Trout," he said. "You're under a
strain. Everybody in the world does things when they're under a
strain."

She opened her eyes and saw that he meant the
kitchen. "No," she said, "nobody would do that."

The attorney led her to the daybed and laid her down,
pressing the towel into her foot. There was a line of blood on the
floor leading to the spot she had fallen. She felt light-headed and
panicky. The attorney patted her knee and said, "It's no
consequence at all. In six months this will of all passed and things
will be back how they were."

 "
How they were when, Mr. Seagraves?"

He looked at her, with his hand still on her knee,
and said, "Before this happened."

"
It didn't just happen," she said. "The
day was a long time in the making."

Paris was on the stairs then, coming back down, but
the attorney left his hand where it was.

"What he did is one thing," he said softly,
just before Paris came back into the room, "what he is, is
another."

' "
Do you know what he is?" she said.

And finally she heard him tell her the truth. "No,"
he said.

There was no tape in the house, so Trout brought
towels. He handed them to the attorney and stood at the door.
Seagraves removed the dish towel and got a fresh look at the toes. He
whistled, and in a moment she felt her blood on the underside of her
foot and then spilling over the ankle.

"
I don't think we ought try moving her,"
Seagraves said. Trout did not answer but stared at the blood.
Seagraves pressed one of the towels into the ball of her foot again,
then wrapped another towel around it, as tightly as it would go. The
foot began to throb.

"
Let me give Dr. Hatfield a call," he said,
"and see if we can't interrupt his supper."

Dr. Hatfield lived on Park Street but was doctor to
most of the families on Draft. He had a more cordial manner than Dr.
Braver, whose house was on Draft, and kept track of patients' names.
Hanna Trout had never seen him as a patient, she had not been to a
physician since the physical examination which was a condition of
employment for the state.

Seagraves went into the front room and dialed the
doctor's house.

Trout stayed where he was, staring at her foot. "I
heard you talking," he said.

Suddenly she could not remember what she'd said.

"It must embarrassed him to be caught in the
middle of personal matters."

"I expect he's used to it," she said.

"
I expect I'm not."

She closed her eyes and dropped her head into the
pillow behind her. She heard the attorney describing the nature of
her injury. "It looks to be cut straight to the bone," he
was saying, "all three toes. . . . Well, I did that, but I
didn't have much luck yet. It's soaked through the towels .... Right,
that's what it looked like to me. . . . All right, we'll be here."

Seagraves came back into the room and said, °°Dr.
Hatfield will be by directly."

Trout put his hands in his pockets and began to pace
the length of the floor. He went from the door which led to the
hallway entrance to the kitchen door, stopping at each end of the
room to stare.

Seagraves sat quietly on the bed with his hand
resting on her ankle. Every now and then he checked his watch or the
bottom of her foot and told her not to worry, that the doctor would
be there directly. Once he called her "honey."

And once he spoke to her husband. He said, "Paris,
it wouldn't hurt none if you were to clean some of that up in the
kitchen before Dr. Hatfield arrives."

Paris took a long look into the kitchen and shut the
door. He resumed his pacing. "Some things don't clean up on the
spot," he said.

"That's what doors are for."

Dr. Hatfield was there in twenty minutes. He had a
head as big as a bear's. He sat down on the foot of the bed and set
his bag down next to him. Her foot had turned sensitive, and it hurt
when he removed the towels and sock. He apologized for her
discomfort.

He dropped the towels and the sock on the floor. They
fell heavy and wet, she could hear them land. Paris and Harry
Seagraves stood together off to the side. Dr. Hatheld held her foot
in his hands, which were warm and soft, and bent his head for a
closer look.

"We got to take some stitches," he said.

She did not answer, but at the word "stitches"
she felt a renewed panic. It was no accident that Hanna Trout had not
been to a doctor since she started work for the state. He set her
foot back on the bed, so gently she could hardly tell when it left
his hands. Then he opened his bag and found a short, hooked needle
and his thread.

"
I'm going to need some light," he said.

Seagraves took the shade off the lamp at the window
and moved it to the foot of the bed. The doctor did not thank him or
in any way move his attention from her foot. "You had stitches
before, haven't you?"

She shook her head.

He said, "Well, the idea of it's gruesome — I
see that's already occurred to you — but the operation itself isn't
so bad."

She held on to the bedcovers and closed her eyes, and
he began to work on her toes. He cleaned them with something cold and
sharpsmelling, and then she felt the tugging as he began to sew. It
took him a long time, and once, near the end, she opened her eyes and
saw Paris near the window. The uneven surfaces of his face cast
shadows in the light from the bare bulb and darkened his eyes and his
mouth and one of his cheeks until she could barely see them. It was
like trying to place someone from the distance of time, someone she
knew but could no longer see clearly in her mind.

When the doctor finished sewing, he pressed gauze
into her toes, and between her toes, and then taped her foot all the
way to the ankle. "We'll need to change that dressing day after
tomorrow," he said.

"I'm not sure I know how," she said.

"I'll change the dressing," he said, "you
hold on to the sheets." He looked around the room then. "You
need to stay off that awhile. Is this the room where you want to be?"

"
Upstairs," she said.

He picked her up, without seeming to notice the
weight, and carried her up the stairs. At the top he stopped, looking
directly into her husband's room. Then her husband was in front of
him, shutting the door and leading him down the hall. "It's over
here," he said.

Dr. Hatfield followed him to her room and then
carried her to the bed. She was not as embarrassed as she would have
expected. He laid her down and then checked the bandages. He pushed
the hair off her face. "That's going to bother you later,"
he said. "I'll leave some codeine .... "

She had never taken codeine and had no intention of
starting now. He leaned closer and spoke in a hard voice. "If it
infects, I have to put you in the clinic."