The Corrections: A Novel (67 page)

In the morning, Gary drove over to Hospital City, the closein suburb where St. Jude’s big medical centers were concentrated, and held his breath among the eighty-pound men in wheelchairs and the five-hundred-pound women in tentlike dresses who clogged the aisles of Central Discount Medical Supply. Gary hated his mother for sending him here, but he recognized how lucky he was in comparison to her, how free and advantaged, and so he set his jaw and kept maximum distance from the bodies of these locals who were loading up on syringes and rubber gloves, on butterscotch bedside candies, on absorptive pads in every imaginable size and shape, on jumbo 144–packs of get-well cards and CDs of flute music and videos of visualization exercises and disposable plastic hoses and bags that connected to harder plastic interfaces sewn into living flesh.

Gary’s problem with illness in aggregate, aside from the fact that it involved large quantities of human bodies and that he didn’t like human bodies in large quantities, was that it seemed to him low-class. Poor people smoked, poor people ate Krispy Kreme doughnuts by the dozen. Poor people were made pregnant by close relatives. Poor people practiced poor hygiene and lived in toxic neighborhoods. Poor people with their ailments constituted a subspecies of humanity that thankfully remained invisible to Gary except in hospitals and in places like Central Discount Medical. They were a dumber, sadder, fatter, more resignedly suffering breed. A Diseased underclass that he really, really liked to keep away from.

However, he’d arrived in St. Jude feeling guilty about several circumstances that he’d concealed from Enid, and he’d vowed to be a good son for three days, and so in spite of his embarrassment he pushed through the crowds of the
lame and halt, entered Central Discount Medical’s vast furniture showroom, and looked for a stool for his father to sit on while he showered.

A full-symphonic version of the most tedious Christmas song ever written, “Little Drummer Boy,” dripped from hidden speakers in the showroom. The morning outside the showroom’s plate-glass windows was brilliant, windy, cold. A sheet of newsprint wrapped itself around a parking meter with erotic-looking desperation. Awnings creaked and automotive mud flaps shivered.

The wide array of medical stools and the variety of afflictions to which they attested might have upset Gary had he not been able to make aesthetic judgments.

He wondered, for example, why beige. Medical plastic was usually beige; at best, a sickly gray. Why not red? Why not black? Why not teal?

Maybe the beige plastic was intended to ensure that the furniture be used for medical purposes only. Maybe the manufacturer was afraid that, if the chairs were too handsome, people would be tempted to buy them for nonmedical purposes.

There
was a problem to avoid, all right: too many people wanting to buy your product!

Gary shook his head. The idiocy of these manufacturers.

He picked out a sturdy, low aluminum stool with a wide beige seat. He selected a heavy-duty (beige!) gripping bar for the shower. Marveling at the gouge-level pricing, he took these items to the checkout counter, where a friendly midwestern girl, possibly evangelical (she had a brocade sweater and feather-cut bangs), showed the bar codes to a laser beam and remarked to Gary, in a downstate drawl, that these aluminum chairs were really a super product. “So lahtweight, practically indestructible,” she said. “Is it for your mom or your dad?”

Gary resented invasions of his privacy and refused the girl the satisfaction of an answer. He did, however, nod.

“Our older folks get shaky in the shower at a certain point. Guess it happens to us all, eventually.” The young philosopher swiped Gary’s AmEx through a groove. “You home for the holidays, helpin’ out a little bit?”

“You know what these stools would really be good for,” Gary said, “would be to hang yourself. Don’t you think?”

Life drained from the girl’s smile. “I don’t know about that.”

“Nice and light—easy to kick away.”

“Sign this, please, sir.”

He had to fight the wind to push the Exit door open. The wind had teeth today, it bit right through his calfskin jacket. It was a wind unchecked by any serious topography between the Arctic and St. Jude.

Driving north toward the airport, with the low sun mercifully behind him, Gary wondered if he’d been cruel to the girl. Possibly he had. But he was under stress, and a person under stress, it seemed to him, had a right to be strict in the boundaries he established for himself—strict in his moral accounting, strict about what he would and wouldn’t do, strict about who he was and who he wasn’t and whom he would and wouldn’t talk to. If a perky, homely evangelical girl insisted on talking, he had a right to choose the topic.

He was aware, nevertheless, that if the girl had been more attractive, he might have been less cruel.

Everything in St. Jude strove to put him in the wrong. But in the months since he’d surrendered to Caroline (and his hand had healed nicely, thank you, with hardly a scar), he’d reconciled himself to being the villain in St. Jude. When you knew in advance that your mother would consider you the villain no matter what you did, you lost your
incentive to play by her rules. You asserted your own rules. You did whatever it took to preserve yourself. You pretended, if need be, that a healthy child of yours was sick.

The truth about Jonah was that he’d freely chosen not to come to St. Jude. This was in accordance with the terms of Gary’s surrender to Caroline in October. Holding five non-refundable plane tickets to St. Jude, Gary had told his family that he wanted everyone to come along with him for Christmas, but that
nobody would be forced to go
. Caroline and Caleb and Aaron had all instantly and loudly said no thank you; Jonah, still under the spell of his grandmother’s enthusiasm, declared that he would “very much like” to go. Gary never actually promised Enid that Jonah was coming, but he also never warned her that he might not.

In November Caroline bought four tickets to see the magician Alain Gregarius on December 22 and another four tickets for
The Lion King
in New York City on December 23. “Jonah can come along if he’s here,” she explained, “otherwise Aaron or Caleb can bring a friend.” Gary wanted to ask why she hadn’t bought tickets for the week
after
Christmas, which would have spared Jonah a difficult choice. Ever since the October surrender, however, he and Caroline had been enjoying a second honeymoon, and although it was understood that Gary, as a dutiful son, would be going to St. Jude for three days, a shadow fell on his domestic bliss whenever he made reference to the trip. The more days that elapsed without mention of Enid or Christmas, the more Caroline seemed to want him, the more she included him in her private jokes with Aaron and Caleb, and the less depressed he felt. Indeed, the topic of his depression hadn’t come up once since the morning of Alfred’s fall. Silence on the topic of Christmas seemed a small price to pay for such domestic harmony.

And for a while the treats and attention that Enid had promised Jonah in St. Jude seemed to outweigh the attractions
of Alain Gregarius and
The Lion King
. Jonah mused aloud at the dinner table about Christmasland and the Advent calendar that Grandma talked so much about; he ignored, or didn’t see, the winks and smiles that Caleb and Aaron were exchanging. But Caroline more and more openly encouraged the older boys to laugh at their grandparents and to tell stories about Alfred’s cluelessness (“He called it Intendo!”) and Enid’s puritanism (“She asked what the show was
rated
!”) and Enid’s parsimony (“There were two green beans and she wrapped them up in foil!”), and Gary, since his surrender, had begun to join in the laughter himself (“Grandma is funny, isn’t she?”), and finally Jonah became self-conscious about his plans. At the age of eight, he fell under the tyranny of Cool. First he ceased to bring up Christmas at the dinner table, and then when Caleb with his trademark semi-irony asked if he was looking forward to
Christmasland
, Jonah replied, in an effortfully wicked voice, “It’s probably really
stupid
.”

“Lots of fat people in big cars driving around in the dark,” Aaron said.

“Telling each other how
wunnerful
it is,” Caroline said.

“Wunnerful, wunnerful,” Caleb said.

“You shouldn’t make fun of your grandmother,” Gary said.

“They’re not making fun of
her
,” Caroline said.

“Right, we’re not,” Caleb said. “It’s just that people are funny in St. Jude. Aren’t they, Jonah?”

“People certainly are very large there,” Jonah said.

On Saturday night, three days ago, Jonah had thrown up after dinner and gone to bed with a mild fever. By Sunday evening, his color and appetite were back to normal, and Caroline played her final trump. For Aaron’s birthday, earlier in the month, she’d bought an expensive computer game,
God Project II
, in which players designed and operated organisms to compete in a working ecosystem. She hadn’t allowed
Aaron and Caleb to start the game until classes ended, and now, when they finally did start, she insisted that they let Jonah be Microbes, because Microbes, in any ecosystem, had the most fun and never lost.

By bedtime on Sunday, Jonah was entranced with his team of killer bacteria and looked forward to sending them into battle the next day. When Gary woke him on Monday morning and asked if he was coming to St. Jude, Jonah said he’d rather stay home.

“It’s your choice,” Gary said. “But it would mean a lot to your grandma if you came.”

“What if it’s not fun, though?”

“There’s never a guarantee that something’s going to be fun,” Gary said. “But you’ll make Grandma happy. That’s one thing I can guarantee.”

Jonah’s face clouded. “Can I think about it for an hour?”

“OK, one hour. But then we have to pack and go.”

The end of the hour found Jonah deeply immersed in
God Project II
. One strain of his bacteria had blinded eighty percent of Aaron’s small hoofed mammals.

“It’s OK not to go,” Caroline assured Jonah. “Your personal choice is what matters here. This is your vacation.”

Nobody will be forced to go
.

“I’ll say it one more time,” Gary said. “Your grandma is really looking forward to seeing you.”

To Caroline’s face there came a desolation, a deep tearful stare, reminiscent of the troubles in September. She rose without a word and left the entertainment room.

Jonah’s answer came in a voice not much louder than a whisper: “I think I’m going to stay here.”

If it had still been September, Gary might have seen in Jonah’s decision a parable of the crisis of moral duty in a culture of consumer choice. He might have become depressed. But he’d been down that road now and he knew there was nothing for him at the end of it.

He packed his bag and kissed Caroline. “I’ll be happy when you’re back,” she said.

In a strict moral sense Gary knew he hadn’t done anything wrong. He’d never promised Enid that Jonah was coming. It was simply to spare himself an argument that he’d lied about Jonah’s fever.

Similarly, to spare Enid’s feelings, he hadn’t mentioned that in the six business days since the IPO, his five thousand shares of Axon Corporation stock, for which he’d paid $60,000, had risen in value to $118,000. Here again, he’d done nothing wrong, but given the pitiful size of Alfred’s patent-licensing fee from Axon, concealment seemed the wisest policy.

The same also went for the little package Gary had zipped into the inside pocket of his jacket.

Jets were dropping from the bright sky, happy in their metal skins, while he jockeyed through the crush of senior traffic converging at the airport. The days before Christmas were the St. Jude airport’s finest hour—its raison d’être, almost. Every garage was full and every walkway thronged.

Denise was right on time, however. Even the airlines conspired to protect her from the embarrassment of a late arrival or an inconvenienced brother. She was standing, per family custom, at a little-used gate on the departure level. Her overcoat was a crazy garnet woolen thing with pink velvet trim, and something about her head seemed different to Gary—more makeup than usual, maybe. More lipstick. Each time he’d seen Denise in the last year (most recently at Thanksgiving), she’d looked more emphatically unlike the person he’d always imagined that she would grow up to be.

When he kissed her, he smelled cigarettes.

“You’ve become a smoker,” he said, making room in the trunk for her suitcase and shopping bag.

Denise smiled. “Unlock the door, I’m freezing.”

Gary flipped open his sunglasses. Driving south into glare, he was nearly sideswiped while merging. Road aggression was encroaching in St. Jude; traffic no longer moved so sluggishly that an eastern driver could pleasurably slalom through it.

“I bet Mom’s happy Jonah’s here,” Denise said.

“As a matter of fact, Jonah is not here.”

Her head turned sharply. “You didn’t bring him?”

“He got sick.”

“I can’t believe it. You didn’t bring him!”

She seemed not to have considered, even for a moment, that he might be telling the truth.

“There are five people in my house,” Gary said. “As far as I know, there’s only one in yours. Things are more complicated when you have multiple responsibilities.”

“I’m just sorry you had to get Mom’s hopes up.”

“It’s not my fault if she chooses to live in the future.”

“You’re right,” Denise said. “It’s not your fault. I just wish it hadn’t happened.”

“Speaking of Mom,” Gary said, “I want to tell you a very weird thing. But you have to promise not to tell her.”

“What weird thing?”

“Promise you won’t tell her.”

Denise so promised, and Gary unzipped the inner pocket of his jacket and showed her the package that Bea Meisner had given him the day before. The moment had been fully bizarre: Chuck Meisner’s Jaguar in the street, idling amid cetacean puffs of winter exhaust, Bea Meisner standing on the Welcome mat in her embroidered green loden coat while she dug from her purse a seedy and much-handled little packet, Gary setting down the wrapped bottle of champagne and taking delivery of the contraband. “This is for your mother,” Bea had said. “But you must tell her that Klaus says to be very careful with this. He didn’t want to give it to me at all. He says it can be very, very addictive,
which is why I only got a little bit. She wanted six months, but Klaus would only give me one. So you tell her to be sure and talk to her doctor. Maybe, Gary, you should even hold on to it until she does that. Anyway, have a wonderful Christmas”—here the Jaguar’s horn beeped—“and give our best love to everyone.”