Then they arrived at the pet store, nestled next to a giant banner reading: “Celebrate American Leadership in the New Millennium.” It was an advertisement for the throbbing entirety of the mall, in letters so big that even Bill, half blind, could read them. Now every glimmer of light, every molecule of air bombarded him. An orange necklace screamed. A smell of beef jerky diddled his nose. Someone’s hot breath. Maybe it was his paralysis, intensifying other senses and peeling back the few nerve endings he had left. The mad crazy rush of the world, the world bent on self-suffocation—all of his exquisite awareness, his precious self-righteous sensitivities were now focused like a laser dot onto his sensory input. A child crying was a fire engine. Scents of perfume were knife blades. His senses so painfully acute that he could feel each molecule of smell, one atom of air against his stretched eardrum. He wanted to unplug. Anything to escape the push and the heave. Was that a humming he heard? Celebrate, celebrate, celebrate. The filthy hum.
They were in the pet store. Smells of hamster food and hamster turds, stench of fish tanks, chirps from parakeets. In front of his chair, a remote-controlled plastic mouse skittered over the floor. A grinning salesman pushed buttons on a transmitter shaped like a hunk of Swiss cheese. “Entertain your cat. You, sir, do you have a cat?” Aisles of merchandise like city blocks. At the cash register, people stood in line with arms of premium dog and cat food, pet magazines, pet cages, an electronically timed cat feeder. Bodies shoved against his chair.
“I want to go home,” Bill moaned, his throat dry. Alex had hurried off to the pet toy section and left him near a crate of plastic bones in the center aisle. Every ray of light, every molecule of air. Above the front entrance, a cardboard Lassie spun on a twisted string, jostled by each person who came in, her cardboard tail brushing people’s hair. Music pounded from ceiling speakers. Bill’s stomach churned. “Calm down,” a woman said from the next aisle, “you probably left it in the car.” Who was she talking to? Bill felt like he could not endure another sixty seconds. He began counting. One, two, three. He had to urinate and released himself into his diaper. Four, five, six. He could not endure. People walked by, talking loudly. Seven, eight, nine. Now he could smell himself. Urine. Was he not receiving what he deserved? Forty years of heaving and rush, and now this, sitting paralyzed in his piss in a mall. Seven, eight, nine. He would count until …
A man and his teenaged daughter entered Bill’s aisle. They were evidently in a hurry and pulled one item after another from the shelf, yet a certain calm and composure hung about the man. He wore a suit and held several packages easily under his arm. “It was here before,” he said. “Just give me a minute.” “I’ve got to go,” said the girl. “Shelley is waiting at Macy’s.”
With a painful twist of his neck, Bill turned and squinted at the man and was astounded to behold what seemed to be the same fellow he’d seen on the subway months ago, reading his Wall Street Journal in magnificent serenity. This would be the perfect store for such a man’s pet, the most advanced pet store in the world. Bill wondered what kind of pet this man might own, maybe some pedigreed cat or rare fish. As Bill stared at him, he again marveled at how easily the man moved amid the hubbub around him, unperturbed, in perfect synchrony with the mall. The perfect modern man was also a mall man, of course. The mall was clearly the most efficient way to shop, the maximum product in the minimum time. The rush was all part of it, an easy good rush. What were those packages in his arms? The man came closer and Bill imagined he could see his quiet blue eyes and pale skin, just as he remembered. Were those tassels on the shoes, as before? How satisfied and oblivious he was. Didn’t he feel the noise and the crush? Why couldn’t Bill adapt like the mall man adapted? He hated him. He strained to see into the mall man’s dim face. Surely, some sign of arrogance would show in the face. Yes, was there not a slight curl of the lips? Despite his poor eyesight, Bill imagined he could detect a slight curl of the lips. A man so superior would have to have some physical defect on which he could be called. Bill continued to squint as the man spoke to his daughter, and he became more and more convinced of the slight curl in the lips.
Then another thought occurred to Bill. By accident, the mall man would eventually bump into his wheelchair. The aisle was narrow. And that would be it. That would be the opportunity Bill had been waiting for. How dare you, he would shout at the man. Don’t you watch where you’re going? How could you be so careless? And shoving a paralyzed person. You should be ashamed of yourself. An opportunity had presented itself. A fortunate confluence of circumstances had brought him and the mall man together at this moment in time, in this particular spot of the mall. With this discovery, Bill almost felt pleasure. He began rehearsing what he would say. He would begin softly, but then he would shout, for he had a true grievance against the man, forty years of grievance. He would scream. How he hated this man. If only the mall man would brush against his chair. Bill didn’t require a large shove, just the smallest brush would do. Just the slightest nudge, a careless turn of the elbow, a knee, a foot. If he’d been able, he would have repositioned himself. They were very close now, the man and his daughter, talking to each other, examining merchandise, moving back and forth past his chair. He prayed for the accident, just the slightest miscalculation.
“Can I help you with something?”
“What?” Bill sputtered. Incredibly, the mall man had spoken to him.
“Is someone with you?” The mall man bent down. Was he smiling? “It must be tough to be stuck in that chair. Please, let me help you. Are you alone? Would you like to go somewhere?” He laid down his packages and placed his dim face next to Bill.
“No thank you,” Bill whispered. “I’m waiting for my son.” What had gone wrong? He was suffocating. The mall man was smothering him with his kindness, mastering him with his total superiority. The ultimate insult. And that nauseating faint curl of the lips.
“Are you sure?” said the man. “I would be glad to help you with something.”
“I’m sure. Thank you.” Bill wanted to scream. But what would he scream about? The man had not bumped into his chair. Would he scream about the man’s self-satisfied superiority, his obliviousness to the world, and now, finally, his abominable niceness? Bill could do nothing. Leave me, Bill howled in his mind, take your success and your splendid oblivion and your superiority and get out of my sight.
But the mall man would not leave. He stood there talking to his beautiful daughter, examining items from the shelf, and now and then he glanced at Bill. Could he smell Bill’s urine, his stink? Was that it? Was that why he had been so polite, hiding his disgust so that his superiority might shine even brighter? Other people came and went down the aisle, but the mall man remained. Voices in Bill’s ear. Now, the aisle was throbbing, shaking, and the mall man kept glancing at him. Wasn’t he glancing? He had smelled Bill’s filthy body, and he was smiling, remaining nearby to rub in his superiority, to grind it in, grind it in. Bill closed his eyes. Twelve, thirteen, fourteen. He wanted out, he wanted out of the mall, he wanted to go home. Where was Alex? How long had it been? Bill could not see his watch. What time was it? How long? Something itched on his face, and he struggled to shift his head, to scratch skin against the metal of the chair. Fifteen. He could not endure. He could not endure.
“You’ve got to see this,” suddenly came Alex’s voice.
Bill opened his eyes and squinted. Alex was pushing him down the aisle. Indistinct shelves of merchandise rolled past, sounds of yips, then the next aisle.
“You’ve got to see this, Dad.”
“Alex, take me home.” Bill was dizzy and spent. Smells burned into his face. Shelves of wires and antennae, the remote-controlled pet toys.
“It’s only twenty-four ninety-five,” said Alex. “It’s the coolest thing I’ve ever seen. For Gerty. Gerty will love it.”
“Please, Alex. I want to go home. Take me out.”
“Dad. We can’t go home now. It’s only eleven o’clock. Do you have to go to the bathro
om?”
“Alex, stop. I don’t want to see it, whatever it is.” Aisles tumbled past, moving things, open mouths on shelves, people shoving around his chair.
“Dad.”
“Stop. Stop.” He found himself screaming, and the boy suddenly stopped and stood against a shelf. “Stop. Stop.” Bill continued screaming. Other people in the aisle stared and moved away.
“Have you stopped now?” Bill shouted at his son. “Have you stopped now?”
Alex was silent.
“Have you stopped?” Bill screamed again.
“Yes,” Alex whispered, almost inaudibly.
“You shouldn’t shout at him that way,” said a woman at the end of the aisle.
“It’s none of your business,” Bill barked at her. His mouth was working now, ugly and twisted. His cheek was wet from the spit and saliva. “Don’t you see what’s happening?” he shouted at Alex. “Don’t you see what you’re doing to yourself?”
Alex stood speechless against the shelves. “You’re becoming just like me.”
The boy started to say something but turned away from his father.
“Look at me,” shouted Bill. “Look at me. What do you see? Look at me. I am a paralyzed man. Look at me. I can’t move. I’m paralyzed.”
Alex hid his face.
A man ventured into the aisle and began speaking angrily to Bill. “Get away,” Bill screamed. “Get away, I’m talking to my son.”
“Do you know what’s happening, what’ll happen to you?” he said to his son’s back.
Alex remained slumped against the shelves, turned away, hiding his face. “I’m sorry, Dad,” he whispered. “I’m sorry.”
“I’ll tell you what’s going to happen to you,” Bill shouted. “You’ll get a good job, probably paying big bucks. Maybe you’ll work downtown like I did, in one of those skyscrapers with a view of the ocean. Then you’ll be in your late twenties and married, you’ll start to get indigestion.”
Another man was approaching Bill, a man talking to someone on a phone. A crowd of people stood behind him.
“But you won’t realize what’s happening,” Bill continued shouting to Alex. “You’ll be making more and more money. You’ll live in a big house, you’ll have nice cars and suits. You’ll be promoted and taken to dinner at Locke-Ober’s by the top brass. And you won’t be able to stop because you won’t notice, you won’t realize what’s happening. And even if you did realize, you won’t do anything about it because you’re a coward. And when you’re in your forties and fifties you’ll gradually lose your mind. But you won’t notice. You’ll just lose it, until you’ve gone from a rat to a little jiggling blip on a screen. Or you might get a little too far behind, and they’ll fire you and have you in a coffin before you know what’s happened. You think—”
“Stop it,” said Alex. He was sobbing. “Stop it. Stop it.” He ran down the aisle.
For a few moments, Bill’s mouth continued twitching, as if he were still shouting. Something was burning in his body. He squinted at the lights overhead and at the crowd of people huddled and whispering at the end of the aisle. Then he stared across at the shelves where Alex had been and felt loathing for himself. What had come over him? What demon had taken hold of him? He twisted his head, straining to see where Alex had gone, and his heart broke.
“Alex,” he cried out, but the boy had fled from the store. How could he have said such things to his precious Alex, his dear Alex? Is this what he had finally become, a monster who devoured the person he loved most? He threw his head to one side. Where was Alex? Where was his son? Forgive me, Alex, forgive me.
In minutes, he convinced a woman with a straw hat to push him into the main corridor. “I must find my son,” he said. He offered her ten dollars from the wallet hanging around his neck. No, she could not take money for aiding a paralyzed person, she said. She was a Christian woman. Where did he want to go? They went back toward the fountains and the new cars for sale, glancing hurriedly into stores. She was not as strong as Alex and struggled with the chair. Now the roar of the mall seemed far away. All he could think of was Alex. Tender images of his son cut into him, Alex as a child holding out his hands, tucking Alex into bed in his blue-wallpapered room. How could he have said those things to his son? He would beg forgiveness. What could he say? There, over there, is that him? No. Faster. Please, faster.
It was 11:48. The woman took him out of the mall. She explained that she wanted additional help, her legs were starting to ache. When they had wheeled through the south doors and down the walkway, he saw Alex sitting on the sidewalk.
“Don’t come near me,” said Alex, standing up.
“Alex.” Bill pleaded with his eyes. He could hardly talk. “I didn’t know what I was saying.”
“I’m going to get more help,” said the woman in the straw hat, and she went back into the mall.
“Alex,” said Bill. “Please forgive me, Alex.” He was ten feet from his son.
“Why did you say those things to me?”
“I didn’t mean what I said.”
“Why?”
“Alex. I love you. I’m so upset about everything. I’m not thinking straight. I say things I don’t mean.” Tears were sliding down Bill’s face.
“You called me a coward.” Now Alex was looking at him hard.
“I didn’t mean it, Alex. I’m the coward. I was taking everything out on you. I’m out of my head. Please, Alex, please forgive me. I love you. I’m so proud of you. Will you forgive me?” He began coughing and rubbed his wet face against his shoulder. “Please, Alex. You’re my son. I love you.”
Alex walked over and put his arms around his father.
NEWS FROM MR. BAKER
He had been dressed for a very long time and waited without interest for the arrival of Thurston Baker. A blanket covered his legs. A steady hiss from the bathroom.
Listening to Melissa shower, he thought of their first time alone. She had taken off from work and made lunch for him at her apartment, lowering the shades so that no one would know she was home. He remembered a patch of light on the sill beneath the shade, oblong, the cries of birds. Neither of them could eat. After sitting in silence at the table, he had stood up, and she stood up, and they walked toward each other, to a distance just beyond touching. Every cell was exploding. He remembered shadows on the wall, objects on tables.
He had been dressed for a very long time now. Beyond his room, from downstairs, he could hear the voices of Virginia and her children, Alex, Peter Harnden. What time was it? He was deviled now by never knowing the time. His final curse.
Melissa’s voice from the bathroom: “I’m not going to make it. He’s going to be here in ten minutes. I can’t find anything.”
Alex’s voice, muffled, behind the door: “Dad. Aunt Virginia wants to know what you want for your birthday.”
“A tie.” He had not drunk anything since lunch, and his throat was dried up. He felt like all the air had been sucked out of his body. In his mind, he thought again of their first time alone, her standing against the lowered shades.
He heard her now, out of the shower and moving about in the closet. All the delicate sounds of her getting dressed. A silky breath that must be her slip against her skin, the flutter of a blouse moving over her shoulders. Her heeled shoes on the floor making little clatters, then a comb on his head. He felt her hand trembling.