Night Navigation Page 7

  Through the rain, she sees Richard's house, its floor-to-roof windows. Smoke. Richard's truck. Her fantasy of pleasing him with her unexpected warm presence fades. Maybe bad weather canceled the day in Ithaca. She heads toward the back, manages the door. The warm smell of the stove, something lemony. "Hello, it's me. Where are you?" She hears the screech of metal on metal from below. Richard is in his shop, deep in some project. She goes up the stairs. Richard's living room and kitchen are in one large room. His house is even more open than hers because two sides of one end are mostly glass; the outside world is always with them, especially the big snows.

  She pulls some venison cutlets from the freezer and sets them on top of a pan of hot water, then inventories the vegetables. Banging from below, again the squeal of a machine. If he were starting a new career, Richard says, he'd like to fabricate: special metal parts that solve the problem. She goes into the little bedroom where she keeps her clothes, the drafting table Richard gave her for Christmas. The tower of computer boxes is stacked in one corner. Storing Mark's computer here will work out fine for now. A couple of times a year, when Richard's son and daughter come for a visit, they need this bed; otherwise, the room is hers.

  The bathroom hamper is full. She carries it downstairs, sets it by the washer, and steps into the shop. The lathe stops and Richard looks up, still bent over the piece he's working on.

  "What's up?" he says. He straightens. Richard, tall and solid, hair so light, the gray doesn't show. He smiles. Richard has a lovely smile. There he is in his green corduroy shirt, sleeves rolled back, lovely forearms as well; the machine between them.

  She steps in closer and leans on his workbench. "You didn't go to Ithaca?"

  "Careful," he says, "that's greasy. No, too wet."

  "It worked out for me to come up a day early."

  "Good, I'm almost done here."

  Hanging on the wall beside her: hammers, screwdrivers, wire cutters; above these, shelves for electrical tape, staples, glues.

  "You've … put away. Everything in its place."

  "March," he says.

  Along the back of the bench, stacks of little drawers. Each of the other walls, floor-to-ceiling equipment and supplies. His tinkering shop, he calls it. A right tool for every job and it isn't usually a hammer. During major projects, it all jumbles again. The garage is where he keeps his automotive tools, his table saw, the air compressor, the setup for butchering deer. Sometimes she spends hours down here drawing: a wrench, the spirals that widen and tighten on the nut, the ridge of dark and light along the handle. His burnished carpenter's belt.

  Richard switches his lathe back on. She sees that his hair is starting to curl over his ears. He'll want her to give him a haircut. She pulls a bag of peaches from the big freezer.

  "Want to eat in about an hour?"

  "What are we having?"

  "Parmesan."

  He nods and again bends over the lathe. She sets the peaches on the landing and turns back to the laundry. The grind of metal resumes. First the towels, then the lighter stuff, spread evenly. Her machine calls for putting the soap in first; in Richard's, it goes last, sprinkled around the agitator. She always has to stop and remember this. It's a tricky washer, the balance delicate, and she hates to have to come rushing back down when a load shifts, causing the machine to bang and walk away from the wall. Especially if Richard's around.

  From the bank of cabinets beside the freezer, she takes a box of linguine; idly she surveys what's on hand. When Richard put in the downstairs cabinets, he took over the grocery shopping— never a job she relished. He likes to stock up, to figure ounces to prices. Often she runs the dinner choices by him. She does better with suggestions before than with instructions during or criticism after. Most of their battles, her subsequent flights, begin in the kitchen.

  Good that she brought onions from home, the few left from Richard's garden are past use. On her way up, she opens the door and tosses them over the bank. Then Richard is behind her, his hands, warm on her hips, up the next flight.

  "How about giving me a haircut tomorrow?"

  "All right," she says, "but the last time you told me never again."

  "It's not rocket science."

  Her stomach clinches. That expression would be near the top of the list of things she'd like to negotiate away if they ever went to a marriage counselor. Richard bends to inspect what's in the refrigerator. "Might as well use up the rest of this lettuce," he tells her. "It's going."

  "I was about to do that," she says.

  She watches his thighs while she rinses the tomatoes. On his way by, he settles his face into her neck and sets the lettuce on the counter. He slides his hands under her arms, rests them on her belly. Richard always gives off heat. She leans into him, and they sway for a minute.

  The light's low, the parmesan bubbling between them, they face each other. Richard's green eyes. The morning paper is still open, close at hand, but he resists. Breakfast and lunch he reads. Meals are for eating, eating and reading the papers. Perhaps this is a result of growing up with ten other people at the table.

  A strange pink glob oozes onto her salad when she tilts the bottle. She looks at the label. "What have you added to this?" Richard, the ex-science teacher. Sometimes she sticks masking tape pleas on certain bottles: NO ADULTERATION! "How's it going in Ithaca?"

  "What could I have been thinking?" he says. "Two hours there, two hours back. A few days of working and I remember all the reasons why I retired." He scoops a mound of salad onto his plate, uses no dressing. "I've decided no more Ithaca work until the summer. If then."

  Work. A couple of hours of chores: bringing in her wood, doing the laundry, she doesn't mind that, but Richard takes on huge projects such as stretching out on his garage floor under his truck for hours converting it from two- to four-wheel drive. How on earth did you and I get together? she sometimes says to him.

  Richard waves his hand toward the dark windows, the rain blowing against them. "This weather makes a few weeks in Vegas necessary."

  She feels that rush of pleasure: a stretch of alone-time ahead. Richard often goes to Vegas toward the end of winter, but he didn't plan to this year because he thought their first trial month in Florida would be enough time away. She went to Vegas with Richard once. A terrible place: all neon and cigarette pallor.

  He leans toward her, gives her a full-attention look. "Don't suppose you'd want to go to Vegas? Stay with Will. A few weeks, until sun returns to this part of the world. We could do some desert exploring."

  This surprises her. He knows how she dislikes Vegas. "Hummm," she says, as if she's thinking it over. Anyway what would she do with Luke? "I don't think so. I'm needing to just hole up here for a while. Draw."

  "Suit yourself," he says.

  She checks his jaw, the look in his eyes. He seems okay. She's ready for him to say, How are you doing? Twenty years and she's still not sure what his not asking is about. She passes him the garlic bread. "Mark took the bus to rehab this morning. I'm feeling a lot less anxious."

  "Good," he says. "That's good."

  She watches the bony ridge of his brow, his big head bent to the task of eating.

  He sets his plate on the counter. "Want a toddy? New formula." He squeezes her shoulder on his way to the fridge.

  She gets up. "No, I think I'll wait until I get back." She starts the hot water, so the dishes can soak while she's gone.

  "Where are you off to?" Richard settles into his chair by the window, unties his boots.

  "Luke. I have to go let him out." She checks the closet for her raincoat. Richard is calling something from the living room. She wants him to be saying, Hey, why not bring Luke up here? "What?"

  "I said, How about 'Free Dog. Needs plenty of room to run.'"

  "You know I can't do that. Mark loves that dog. I love that dog."

  She's careful not to bang the door on her way out. God knows what Mark would do if she gave Luke away. From the dark driveway, she looks back at the h
ouse. A man, his shadowed profile, the glow of his reading lamp beyond, low in his chair, stocking feet up, his arms folded across his chest. A man thinking. What is he thinking about?

  As she approaches her road, an old truck turns in front of her onto the highway. Carla Morletti's truck? One of the brake lights is out. She slows to see if it makes a right onto Cobb's Corners Road toward the Morlettis'. It does. She speeds up, actually checks above the pine bluff for smoke. Always, now, just before the stone house comes into view, she feels a surge of apprehension. Even when there's no mystery truck. The barn is there. The house is dark. From now on when she leaves after her midafternoon visit, she'll turn on at least one lamp and both of the outside lights. Nothing looks amiss. No barking. As soon as she unlocks and twists the knob, Luke's nose pokes out, his whole back end wagging. "I know, I know. You're lonely."

  The stale smell of cigarettes. Though she has scrubbed lots of the surfaces, shampooed the rugs, the air is still foul. She makes a tour of the house, turning on lights as she goes. Two blinks on the machine. Her anxiety report to Richard, underestimated. Still a bed of coals in the stove. She stacks in about half of what the big firebox will hold and shoves in a few loose wads of paper. In a few seconds, the whisper of fire. Luke's head across her knees, she presses Play. "Del, this is Carla. Please have Mark call me. It's urgent." She scratches hard beneath Luke's collar. The final message: "It's me. Got here okay. Turns out this place isn't a rehab anymore. They just do the psychiatric thing. They're going to evaluate my meds. My social worker will start lining up a rehab in a few days. I'll be able to stay here for a few weeks while that comes together. My last call for seventy-two hours. Blackout time." Mark whistles a few bars of "You've Got a Friend," then says, "Hello, Luke." She plays the message again. Luke stands by the machine, raises his ears each time Mark whistles or says his name.

  Only the back light on at Richard's, the low orange glow on the stairs when she opens the door. She switches it off. They both love sleeping in the kind of darkness that night brings. Only nine and Richard's in bed. This is not unusual.

  The bathroom is warm with Richard's clean smell. Often her Richard-resentments dissolve when she breathes in this smell. Mouthwash, soap, the sweet sweat of work, the scent of trees. Whatever it is, she always takes it in with pleasure. The mornings, the same. She slips her nightgown over her head, the cotton grown soft from years of washing. The lace around the scoop neck, the cuffs. The careful flossing, electric toothbrushing, estrogen, baby aspirin, a dab of lubricant: the bathing ritual of the older woman. She smiles at that woman.

  A rising moon lights the bedroom. A gibbous moon. Beneath the comforter, Richard's a white ridge, stretching from corner to corner. She lifts her gown and drops it on the floor beside the bed and crawls into the warmth of his familiar body. She lays her hand on the flat of his belly. He lifts his elbow to let her roll against him, nestle her nose into the soft hair beneath his arm, stretch along his thigh, this thigh, this hollow beneath his hip bone that she knows so well. For a while the comfort of this flesh beneath her fingers: along his shoulder blade, the silken folds below his ear, the thin, square bones of his knee. His body, still, waiting. She lifts to kneel between his legs, takes him in her mouth. He hardens. This, they still feel as a sweet gift. For a long time after the prostate surgery, though they had always found ways to have sex, Richard never hardened enough to enter her. Slowly she lifts and lowers, runs her hands along his chest, his hips. He places his hands on her head, guides her. Then he lifts her onto her back, her legs high, she places him inside her. She cannot feel him as she once did. She misses this. They move together, her legs around his back. And when he comes, she cradles him, eases down, lets go beneath his weight. Beside her again, he knows she is almost ready. He touches her, touches her, his mouth, his hands, his fingers. And as she comes, she cries; sobs, she buries in his chest. He holds her, shelters her inside his warmth.

  8 : Ten-Foot Wall

  ONLY TEN MORE MINUTES of what's supposed to be Quiet Time. Mark takes up a position near the door, keeps the new roommate, Dick Goode—how apt—in his periphery. Guy's been here fifteen minutes maybe and already he's used up most of the oxygen. The room's small: fit for a monk or a solitary. Maybe two people who score high on the Sanity Test.

  He watches Mister Goode drag his bed over, make the aisle even narrower. "I can't be too close to the wall," new roomie says. The first few days he'd had the room to himself. That's over. "Soooo, what was your drug of choice?" Dick Goode asks.

  Mark answers this by opening the window-vent. Can't open the window itself. He taps the glass that isn't glass. Couldn't put a chair through this.

  Quick-Dick, oblivious, just keeps on yakkety-yakking, unloading his L. L. Bean backpack. "I could tell you stories," Good Dick says.

  He gives Dickie-boy the shut-the-fuck-up look, but this guy's so fogged in, floating around in his own little talk-bubble, nothing's getting through. Going to have to rip a hole, reach in and tape his lips. The increase in Zyprexa is giving him a strange zinging in his brain. His social worker isn't offering him much information on possible places to go from here. His new bass hasn't arrived and this latest addition to the community is wearing a black T-shirt which says in luminous letters LET THERE BE LIGHT. Trouble ahead.

  "Bet this is one of those I'm-a-good-person-with-a-bad-disease programs. The judge said I have to either come here or go to some therapeutic community. Hey, call me crazy, better than having some ape in my face. Right?"

  Tear a little hole; reach in with a piano wire.

  Good Dick lowers his voice. "The staff isn't the most competent when it comes to…"—he unwads a pair of socks—"searching for contraband." He waves a small brown vial. "Strictly for medicinal purposes. Percocet. Glad to share should you feel the need."

  Fuck. Time to call Rozmer. The pay phone is actually free. Ring, ring, ring. No Rozmer. Going to get his machine, Rozmer's Word for the Day. Instead it's a computer voice: "Leave a message."

  "What's up with the zombie greeting? Got a little situation here I want to run by you. Have a session now. I'll try to get you again after lunch." He's actually disappointed not to get a Rozmer koan. Try his mother. Four rings. He hangs up before the machine comes on. Try Richard's.

  "Hello." His mother's voice, distant, nervous.

  "It's me. I only have about a minute. Think you could look up some places on the web?" He finds the wad of paper in his pocket. Ding-ding: progress. "Okay. Besides rehabs, you might check for something long term." "Long term" will bring her to full attention. "Places that have been recommended by people here." He knows she has a stack of little papers, cut up and ready, a jar of pens. "My social worker's name is Lindsey Clarke. You can fax the stuff to her. The fax number is 715-367-9920. None of the social workers here have access to the internet. I forgot New Vistas is not that good at lining up 'After.'"

  "Richard's leaving for Vegas soon. That's why I'm up here instead of home. I'll have some extra time."

  "If you send the info, I can make the calls to the places that sound good. Ready? First, try typing in capital S … A … M… H … S … A. Don't know what that stands for, but it's supposed to get you to a list of places."

  "Like go to Google and type in those letters?"

  "I guess. Now these are rehabs: Smithers in New York … St. Mary's in Troy … Good Samaritan in Brooklyn." She's getting it all down. "Got to make sure they take dual diagnosis." Beatabeat, next request. "Still no sign of the bass. I was wondering if you could check UPS, see what's up. Should have been here yesterday."

  "Okay."

  Exit time. She's getting edgy. "All right, got to go to study hall. They give us assignments."

  "I'll start right away."

  He knows "right away" is just how she'll do it. He falls in with the crowd heading out for a smoke. A lot of extra poundage in the covey: one of the side effects of the anti-psychotics. No fat on him yet. Have to start tonguing the Zyprexa if that happens. Ten men, ten women in the
Mentally Ill Chemical Abuse section. MICA. MICA Mouse Club. Everybody tramping out into the rain for a butt. Choke down two if you suck them up quick enough. One woman, Lorraine, young, in her early twenties, all the time giving him the look. No-contact rule. Lorraine is pretty. Porcelain. More trouble. Good Dick is talking up one of the aides.

  Percocet. Jesus. Now what's he going to do about that?

  Study hall. Assignment: one paragraph on your assets, one paragraph on your defects. Got to do the assets first. Ten guys arranged in various attitudes of reflection: ten junkies bent over their clipboards, trying to figure how to hustle this one.

  One of my main assets is … I need something, I know how to get it. He's got the best study hall seat: near a window, near the door, back to the wall. Easy view of the clock. Could take the boys' room pass. Stall in the stall. But wannabe roommate's already copped it. Oh, just another rainy day at the loco motel. Assets? American Heritage Dictionary at your disposal. The alphabet a little wobbly like what comes after March—albatross, ambulance, Apocalypse, April. If he was in a paranoid state—synchronicity abounding—he'd say the dictionary was all part of the plot.

  asset 1. a useful or valuable trait or thing … possession, belongings, resource … an item that can be turned into cash.

  Hey, any asset in his possession that could be turned into cash, long gone. A valuable trait: I do not steal from my mother.

  Wannabe's back. Parents named him Dick Goode. Think of all the wolf-pack possibilities, sixth-grade extrapolations. No wonder he wannabe bad. Whiff, whiff. Macaroni and cheese. Olfactory factory in production again. Your better quality M & C—Westchester quality. Got your better class of dual diagnosis here as well. White on white. Mostly private insurance. New Vistas does not accept Medicaid. I love my dog.