Page 53 - WTP VOl. VIII #6

his complete failure as a man. He had always imag- ined himself as a father and husband: he’d believed that one day he would be a good father. Sometimes
it was stunning to him, the point he’d reached in life, how fast the years had gone. He thought of the faces at the party—how pitiful he must have seemed, in that moment, to the others! The ice formations in his crystalized bedroom windows were sharp, chaotic, lit by a streetlight below; shadows—triangles and rectangles—stretched every which way in the room. Occasionally Baker swore at the challenge of his ad- vancing age—at the way women looked through him now, rather than at him. He rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling.
What he might have said, what he might have told the drunken Dr. Louisa Moore-Hebert, was that he was taking care of his parents through his late thirties and forties—his father with Alzheimer’s, his mother with diabetes and heart complications. He might have told her he’d had to leave his job and create his own business to deal with the excess medical bills.
"Down, down he goes; he feels the descent in his
chest, the tar leveling into a small, snowy field."
He’d fought with Medicare, with the insurance com- pany; there were times when every day had seemed like a ferocious, calculating battle. He thought of the professor exposing him in his shame—what the hell did Dr. Louisa Moore Hebert know? She knew noth- ing about him. She saw Baker at a few gatherings,
she knew he worked with her husband on occasional projects, that was it. What did a woman like this understand about loving someone so completely that you couldn’t leave their side?
Restless, abandoning his bed well after midnight, Baker went down to his living room and watched the very late shows, where glamorous television stars, movie stars, were interviewed—their eyes bright with flirtation, their long, naked legs crossed. Their colorful light flickered over him. He pulled a blanket over himself, dozed in and out. He imagined wak-
ing on a small sailboat with one of these stars in the Caribbean; he imagined stepping with one of them into the next trade party—that moment when Dr.
Louisa Moore-Hebert would spy Baker and his date, when she and everyone would have to acknowledge that he lived a secret, vital life of passion. He got up, rummaged through his kitchen shelves, ate popcorn, candy bars; toward morning, wanting something more substantial, he could find nothing—so he is driving now for breakfast burritos and orange juice: he is driving to ease his soul, to get away from the truth of himself.
~
There is the old iron bridge ahead, the road turning right, the black river flowing fast beneath. The road curls by a set of neat, contained bungalows, and
the muddy trucks of hunters—Ford F-150s and Dodge Rams—are parked before them. The trucks seem to overwhelm the wooden structures. Snowy paths, leading away from the row of huts, lay in wait for fresh boot prints. Baker has grown up in New Hampshire; he fired guns at targets as a boy with
his father, but he’s never understood hunters. No matter how much they rationalize hunting as a ser- vice to thin a herd, no matter how they worship it as a kind of religion, hunters, to Baker’s mind, kill just for the sport of killing. What anxieties, Baker won- ders now—what insecurities and cruelties—must
a man have within himself to be soothed by pick- ing up a high-powered gun and blowing an animal away? Where in hell is the sport in that?
His thoughts tumble; the white and black unfolds before him. No wife, no children to show. It’s mighty late in the game, Mr. Viable—Baker wonders how Don Hebert lives with the woman, with her sarcasm and unappeasable anger. The dark gray sky sweeps above, lightening now just a little; a milky edge of sun tries to break through the forest-horizon to
the east. The sedan hisses over salted tar. Baker thinks of another woman—one he admired greatly; in his memory they are having lunch in a seaport
in Massachusetts—across the table she is wear-
ing a white blouse, golden hoops for earrings. Her eyes are olive-green, wet, staring at him. She leans forward, holds his hands, tells him she can’t live with his complications, she knows this makes her
a failure as a partner. Baker finally says, I under- stand, of course—giving her the graceful exit. But he should have fought for her—for the sanity this lover brought into his life: he should have demonstrated
to her, somehow, that he was capable of both taking care of his parents and romantic connection.
He imagines the nursing home, a hallway filled with
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