Beginners

  “You know what I mean,” he said. “Juice, a muffin, something, I don’t know. I don’t know anything, Ann. Jesus, I’m not hungry either. Ann, it’s hard to talk now. I’m standing here at the desk. Dr. Francis is coming again at eight o’clock this morning. He’s going to have something to tell us then, something more definite. That’s what one of the nurses said. She didn’t know any more than that. Ann? Honey, maybe we’ll know something more then, at eight o’clock. Come back here before eight. Meanwhile, I’m right here and Scotty’s all right. He’s still the same,” he added.

  “I was drinking a cup of tea,” she said, “when the telephone rang. They said it was about Scotty. There was a noise in the background. Was there a noise in the background on that call you had, Howard?”

  “I honestly don’t remember,” he said. “It must have been a drunk or somebody calling, though God knows I don’t understand. Maybe the driver of the car, maybe he’s a psychopath and found out about Scotty somehow. But I’m here with him. Just rest a little like you were going to do. Take a bath and come back here by seven or so, and we’ll talk to the doctor together when he gets here. It’s going to be all right, honey. I’m here, and there are doctors and nurses around. They say his condition is stable.”

  “I’m scared to death,” she said.

  She ran water, undressed, and got into the tub. She washed and dried quickly, not taking the time to wash her hair. She put on clean underwear, wool slacks, and a sweater. She went into the living room where Slug looked up at her and let his tail thump once against the floor. It was just starting to get light outside when she went out to the car. Driving back to the hospital on the damp, deserted streets, she thought back to the rainy Sunday afternoon nearly two years ago when Scotty had been lost and they’d been afraid he’d drowned.

  The sky had darkened that afternoon and rain had begun to fall, and still he hadn’t come home. They’d called all his friends, who were at home and safe. She and Howard had gone to look for him at his board-and-rock fort at the far end of the field near the highway, but he wasn’t there. Then Howard had run in one direction beside the highway and she had run the other way until she came to what had once been a little stream of water, a drainage ditch, but its banks were filled now with a dark torrent. One of his friends had been with him there when the rain started. They had been making boats out of pieces of scrap wood, and empty beer cans that had been tossed from passing cars. They had been lining up the beer cans on the pieces of wood and sending them out into the stream. The stream ended on this side of the highway at a culvert where the water boiled and could take anything under and into the pipe. The friend had left Scotty there on the bank when the first drops of rain had begun to fall. Scotty had said he was going to stay and build a bigger boat. She had stood on the bank and gazed into the water as it poured into the mouth of the culvert and disappeared under the highway. It was plain to her what must have happened—that he had fallen in, that he must even now be lodged somewhere inside the culvert. The thought was monstrous, so unfair and overwhelming that she couldn’t hold it in her mind. But she felt it was true, that he was in there, in the culvert, and knew too it was something that would have to be borne and lived with from here on, a life without Scotty in it. But how to act in the face of this, the fact of the loss, was more than she could comprehend. The horror of the men and equipment working at the mouth of the culvert through the night, that was what she did not know if she could endure, that waiting while the men worked under powerful lights. She would have to somehow get past that to the limitless sweep of emptiness she knew stretched beyond. She was ashamed to know it, but she thought she could live with that. Later, much later, maybe then she would be able to come to terms with that emptiness, after the presence of Scotty had gone out of their lives—then perhaps, she would learn to handle that loss, and the awful absence—she would have to, that’s all—but now she did not know how she could get through the waiting part to that other part.

  She dropped to her knees. She stared into the current and said that if He would let them have Scotty back, if he could have somehow miraculously—she said it out loud, “miraculously”—escaped the water and the culvert, she knew he hadn’t, but if he had, if He could only let them have Scotty back, somehow not let him be wedged in the culvert, she promised then that she and Howard would change their lives, change everything, go back to the small town where they had come from, away from this suburban place that could ruthlessly snatch away your only child. She had still been on her knees when she heard Howard calling her name, calling her name from across the field, through the rain. She had raised her eyes and seen them coming toward her, the two of them, Howard and Scotty.

  “He was hiding,” Howard said, laughing and crying at once. “I was so glad to see him I couldn’t begin to punish him. He’d made a shelter. He’d fixed himself up a place under the overpass, in those bushes. He’d made like a nest for himself,” he said. The two of them were still coming toward her as she got to her feet. She doubled her fists. “ ‘Forts leak,’ the little nut said. He was dry as a bone when I found him, damn his hide,” Howard said, the tears breaking. Then Ann was on Scotty, slapping him on the head and face with a wild fury. “You little devil, you devil you,” she shouted as she slapped him. “Ann, stop it,” Howard said, grabbing for her arms. “He’s all right, that’s the main thing. He’s all right.” She’d picked the boy up while he was still crying and she’d held him. She’d held him. Their clothes soaked, shoes squishing with water, the three of them had begun the walk home. She carried the boy for a while, his arms around her neck, his chest heaving against her breasts. Howard walked beside them saying, “Jesus, what a scare. God almighty, what a fright.” She knew Howard had been scared and was now relieved, but he hadn’t glimpsed what she had, he couldn’t know. The quickness of how she had gone into the death and beyond it had made her suspect herself, that she hadn’t loved enough. If she had, she would not have thought the worst so quickly. She shook her head back and forth at this craziness. She grew tired and had to stop and put Scotty down. They walked the rest of the way together, Scotty in the middle, holding hands, the three of them walking home.

  But they hadn’t moved away and they’d never talked about that afternoon again. From time to time she’d thought about her promise, the prayers she’d offered up, and for a while she’d felt vaguely uneasy, but they had continued to live as they had been living—a comfortably busy life, not a bad or a dishonest life, a life, in fact, with many satisfactions and small pleasures. Nothing more was ever said about that afternoon, and in time she had stopped thinking about it. Now here they were still in the same city and it was two years later, and Scotty was again in peril, an awful peril, and she began to see this circumstance, this accident and the not waking up as punishment. For hadn’t she given her word that they’d move away from this city and go back to where they could live a simpler and quieter life, forget the jump in salary and the house which was still so new they hadn’t put up the fence or planted grass yet? She imagined them all sitting around each evening in some big living room, in some other town, and listening to Howard read to them.

  She drove into the parking lot of the hospital and found a space close to the front door. She felt no inclination to pray now. She felt like a liar caught out, guilty and false, as if she were somehow responsible for what had now happened. She felt she was in some obscure way responsible. She let her thoughts move to the Negro family, and she remembered the name “Nelson” and the table that was covered with hamburger papers, and the teenaged girl staring at her as she drew on her cigarette. “Don’t have children,” she told the girl’s image as she entered the front door of the hospital. “For God’s sake, don’t.”

  —

  She took the elevator up to the third floor with two nurses who were just going on duty. It was Wednesday morning, a few minutes before seven. There was a page for a Dr. Madison as the elevator doors slid open on the third floor. She got off behind the nurses,
who turned in the other direction and continued the conversation she had interrupted when she’d gotten onto the elevator. She walked down the corridor to the little side room where the Negro family had been waiting. They were gone now, but the chairs were scattered in such a way that it looked as if people had just jumped from them the minute before. She thought the chairs might still be warm. The tabletop was cluttered with the same cups and papers, the ashtray filled with cigarette butts.

  She stopped at the nurses’ station just down the corridor from the waiting room. A nurse was standing behind the counter, brushing her hair and yawning.

  “There was a Negro man in surgery last night,” Ann said. “Nelson something was his name. His family was in the waiting room. I’d like to inquire about his condition.”

  A nurse who was sitting at a desk behind the counter looked up from a chart in front of her. The telephone buzzed and she picked up the receiver, but she kept her eyes on Ann.

  “He passed away,” said the nurse at the counter. The nurse held the hairbrush and kept on looking at her. “Are you a friend of the family or what?”

  “I met the family last night,” Ann said. “My own son is in the hospital. I guess he’s in shock. We don’t know for sure what’s wrong. I just wondered about Mr. Nelson, that’s all. Thank you.” She went on down the corridor. Elevator doors the same color as the walls slid open and a gaunt, bald man in white pants and white canvas shoes pulled a heavy cart off the elevator. She hadn’t noticed these doors last night. The man wheeled the cart out into the corridor and stopped in front of the room nearest the elevator and consulted a clipboard. Then he reached down and slid a tray out of the cart, rapped lightly on the door, and entered the room. She could smell the unpleasant odors of warm food as she passed the cart. She hurried past the other station without looking at any of the nurses and pushed open the door to Scotty’s room.

  Howard was standing at the window with his hands together behind his back. He turned around as she came in.

  “How is he?” she said. She went over to the bed. She dropped her purse on the floor beside the nightstand. She seemed to have been gone a long time. She touched the covers around Scotty’s neck. “Howard?”

  “Dr. Francis was here a little while ago,” Howard said. She looked at him closely and thought his shoulders were bunched a little.

  “I thought he wasn’t coming until eight o’clock this morning,” she said quickly.

  “There was another doctor with him. A neurologist.”

  “A neurologist,” she said.

  Howard nodded. His shoulders were bunching, she could see that. “What’d they say, Howard? For Christ’s sake, what’d they say? What is it?”

  “They said, well, they’re going to take him down and run more tests on him, Ann. They think they’re going to operate, honey. Honey, they are going to operate. They can’t figure out why he won’t wake up. It’s more than just shock or concussion, they know that much now. It’s in his skull, the fracture, it has something, something to do with that, they think. So they’re going to operate. I tried to call you, but I guess you’d already left the house.”

  “Oh, God,” she said. “Oh, please, Howard, please,” she said, taking his arms.

  “Look!” Howard said then. “Scotty! Look, Ann!” He turned her toward the bed.

  The boy had opened his eyes, then closed them. He opened them again now. The eyes stared straight ahead for a minute, then moved slowly in his head until they rested on Howard and Ann, then traveled away again.

  “Scotty,” his mother said, moving to the bed.

  “Hey, Scott,” his father said. “Hey, Son.”

  They leaned over the bed. Howard took Scotty’s left hand in his hands and began to pat and squeeze the hand. Ann bent over the boy and kissed his forehead again and again. She put her hands on either side of his face. “Scotty, honey, it’s Mommy and Daddy,” she said. “Scotty?”

  The boy looked at them again, though without any sign of recognition or comprehension. Then his eyes scrunched closed, his mouth opened, and he howled until he had no more air in his lungs. His face seemed to relax and soften then. His lips parted as his last breath was puffed through his throat and exhaled gently through the clenched teeth.

  —

  The doctors called it a hidden occlusion and said it was a one-in-a-million circumstance. Maybe if it could have been detected somehow and surgery undertaken immediately, it could have saved him, but more than likely not. In any case, what would they have been looking for? Nothing had shown up in the tests or in the X-rays. Dr. Francis was shaken. “I can’t tell you how badly I feel. I’m so very sorry, I can’t tell you,” he said as he led them into the doctors’ lounge. There was a doctor sitting in a chair with his legs hooked over the back of another chair, watching an early morning TV show. He was wearing a green delivery room outfit, loose green pants and green blouse, and a green cap that covered his hair. He looked at Howard and Ann and then looked at Dr. Francis. He got to his feet and turned off the set and went out of the room. Dr. Francis guided Ann to the sofa, sat down beside her and began to talk in a low, consoling voice. At one point he leaned over and embraced her. She could feel his chest rising and falling evenly against her shoulder. She kept her eyes open and let him hold her. Howard went into the bathroom but left the door open. After a violent fit of weeping, he ran water and washed his face. Then he came out and sat down at a little table that held a telephone. He looked at the telephone as though deciding what to do first. He made some calls. After a time, Dr. Francis used the telephone.

  “Is there anything else I can do for the moment?” he asked them.

  Howard shook his head. Ann stared at Dr. Francis as if unable to comprehend his words.

  The doctor walked them to the hospital’s front door. People were entering and leaving the hospital. It was eleven o’clock in the morning. Ann was aware of how slowly, almost reluctantly she moved her feet. It seemed to her that Dr. Francis was making them leave, when she somehow felt they should stay, when it would be more the right thing to do, to stay. She gazed out into the parking lot and then looked back at the front of the hospital from the sidewalk. She began shaking her head. “No, no,” she said. “This isn’t happening. I can’t leave him here, no.” She heard herself and thought how unfair it was that the only words that came out were the sorts of words on the TV shows where people were stunned by violent or sudden deaths. She wanted her words to be her own. “No,” she said, and for some reason the memory of the Negro woman’s head lolling on her shoulder came to her. “No,” she said again.

  “I’ll be talking to you later in the day,” the doctor was saying to Howard. “There are still some things that have to be done, things that have to be cleared up to our satisfaction. Some things that need explaining.”

  “An autopsy,” Howard said.

  Dr. Francis nodded.

  “I understand,” Howard said. “Oh, Jesus. No, I don’t understand, Doctor. I can’t, I can’t. I just can’t.”

  Dr. Francis put his arm around Howard’s shoulders. “I’m sorry. God, how I’m sorry.” Then he let go and held out his hand. Howard looked at the hand, and then he took it. Dr. Francis put his arms around Ann once more. He seemed full of some goodness she didn’t understand. She let her head rest on his shoulder, but her eyes were open. She kept looking at the hospital. As they drove out of the parking lot, she looked back at the hospital once more.

  At home, she sat on the sofa with her hands in her coat pockets. Howard closed the door to Scotty’s room. He got the coffeemaker going and then he found an empty box. He had thought to pick up some of Scotty’s things. But instead he sat down beside her on the sofa, pushed the box to one side, and leaned forward, arms between his knees. He began to weep. She pulled his head over into her lap and patted his shoulder. “He’s gone,” she said. She kept patting his shoulder. Over his sobs she could hear the coffeemaker hissing, out in the kitchen. “There, there,” she said tenderly. “Howard, he’s gone. He?
??s gone and now we’ll have to get used to that. To being alone.”

  In a little while Howard got up and began moving aimlessly around the room with the box, not putting anything into it, but collecting some things on the floor at one end of the sofa. She continued to sit with her hands in her pockets. Howard put the box down and brought coffee into the living room. Later, Ann made calls to relatives. After each call had been placed and the party had answered, Ann would blurt out a few words and cry for a minute. Then she would quietly explain, in a measured voice, what had happened and tell them about arrangements. Howard took the box out to the garage where he saw Scotty’s bicycle. He dropped the box and sat down on the pavement beside the bicycle. He took hold of the bicycle awkwardly, so that it leaned against his chest. He held it, the rubber pedal sticking into his chest and turning the wheel across his trouser leg a little way.

  Ann hung up the telephone after talking to her sister. She was looking up another number, when the telephone rang. She picked it up on the first ring.

  “Hello,” she said, and again she heard something in the background, a humming noise. “Hello! Hello!” she said. “For God’s sake,” she said. “Who is this? What is it you want? Say something.”

  “Your Scotty, I got him ready for you,” the man’s voice said. “Did you forget him?”

  “You evil bastard!” she shouted into the receiver. “How can you do this, you evil son of a bitch?”

  “Scotty,” the man said. “Have you forgotten about Scotty?” Then the man hung up on her.

  Howard heard the shouting and came in to find her with her head on her arms over the table, weeping. He picked up the receiver and listened to the dial tone.

  Much later, just before midnight, after they had dealt with many things, the telephone rang again.

  “You answer it,” she said. “Howard, it’s him, I know.” They were sitting at the kitchen table with coffee in front of them. Howard had a small glass of whiskey beside his cup. He answered on the third ring.