The Condition

by Jennifer Haigh

  He’d begun his life’s work on a girl who rode just such a bike, a farm girl named Elizabeth Wilmer. Her father owned three hundred acres on the other side of the forest, where coal country gave way to dairy land. Unlike the miners, who were mostly Catholic, the farmers were German Protestants. Every Wednesday and Sunday, the Wilmers walked to services in the next town, at a small white frame church called Living Waters. The denomination—considered extreme even in God-crazy Pennsylvania—demanded tithes and summer Bible camp and full-immersion baptisms, plus austere dress for women and girls. Lizzy Wilmer’s dresses buttoned to her chin and hung to midcalf; her lank dark hair lay flat as a bedsheet down her back. Yet despite her prim appearance, Lizzy could hit a ball farther than Blaise Klezek. Frank would never forget the sight of her running the bases, hair and long skirts flying, as though she might go airborne. He and Blaise and Lizzy played ball all spring and summer. In the winter they rode sleds and built tunnels in the snow, Lizzy in long skirts always, her bare legs pink with cold.

  One winter day Lizzy had crept up behind Frank in the woods, as he stood at a tree to urinate. He was eleven then, Lizzy twelve. Can I watch? she asked, shocking him. No girl had seen that part of him before. Write your name, she whispered, hands at his waist, and he did, or started to. The F and r were nearly legible, the hot piss melting the crusty snow.

  I ran out, he said, embarrassed, but Lizzy only laughed.

  Watch this, she said.

  He gaped in amazement as she tugged beneath her skirt and dropped her white underpants to the ground. She stepped out of them and raised her skirt to her waist, then crouched slightly, her legs parted. Her face was clenched in concentration, the tip of her tongue caught between her teeth.

  She drew the letters large and wide, crab-walking to make the base of the L, stopping the stream expertly to make a fresh start with the I. She paused a moment before beginning the last letter—laughing, her hips swiveling, ending with an exuberant whoop, like the finale of a burlesque act. The Z was soft and rounded, as Lizzy herself was not yet. Not that Frank could see her, really, with all the fabric she held bundled about her hips. That came months later, on the muddy spring ground, not far from the spot where Lizzy had pissed.

  She was an old woman now with a dozen grandchildren. Jesus, how life worked.

  Years had passed, and there was no rewinding them. Frank would never be young again. He had never cared about money; he’d always known that time was the only wealth that mattered. He’d spent all his on a single purchase: his career as scientist. It was the only thing he’d ever truly wanted. Foolish, foolish, this creeping regret.

  BRISKLY HE jogged up the stairs to his office. Betsy Baird looked up from her desk.

  “You’re my watchdog,” he told her. “I need half an hour to review my notes. Make sure I’m not disturbed.”

  “Frank, just to let you know—”

  “I’m serious, Betsy. Half an hour. And don’t worry about lunch. I’ll grab something at Harvard.”

  He charged down the hallway to his office and stopped short. In the chair opposite his desk sat his ex-wife, Paulette.

  “There you are,” she said irritably. “I’ve been sitting here half the morning. Frank, have you been running?”

  “No, no.” He paused to catch his breath. “What are you doing here?”

  She eyed him balefully. “I’ve been trying to reach you for days. Truly, I don’t see the point of these machines if you never listen to the messages.”

  He blinked, flustered. She wore a slim skirt. He eyed her shapely legs, crossed at the knee. He closed the door.

  “This is a surprise,” he said, slipping behind his desk. “Is everything okay?” He noticed, then, the high color in her cheeks. Her right foot, in its high-heeled pump, quivered rhythmically, as though itching to kick him. “You’re upset.”

  “Upset? Yes, Frank, I am extremely upset. Have you heard from Gwen?”

  “Gwen?” He blinked. “Why, no, not since Christmas. I thought she was on vacation.”

  “She was.” Paulette paused. “As a matter of fact, she’s still on vacation. I’m not sure when, or if, she’s coming back.”

  He listened in amazement as she told him the story.

  “Wow,” he said finally.

  “Wow?” Paulette looked at him as though he’d belched or farted. “That’s all you’ve got to say? Wow?”

  “What were you hoping for?” Family crisis notwithstanding, he was due at Harvard in twenty-five minutes, and hadn’t so much as glanced at his notes. Paulette had never been any good at getting to the point.

  “What I’d like is for you to get involved, for once. Gwen has always respected your judgment. Heavens, it’s been fifteen years since she’s listened to anything I had to say.”

  “Well, I suppose I could call her,” he said.

  “Call her? I’m afraid that’s not going to do it. Somebody needs to go down there and meet this young man. Find out what sort of person he is.”

  “Go down there? Now?” He stared at her in disbelief. “Look, I know you’re concerned, but frankly you couldn’t have picked a worse time. We have a major paper coming out in a few weeks, and that means—” He glanced surreptitiously at the clock. “Now, for instance. I’m due at Harvard in twenty minutes. I have a talk to give, and then a plane to catch.”

  “You’re saying no.”

  “I’m saying I can’t. There’s no way I can leave.”

  She sighed wearily. “I should have expected this.”

  “Paulette, I’m sorry,” he said, reaching under his desk for his briefcase. “I wouldn’t do this if it weren’t extremely important. But I really do have to go.”

  chapter 6

  What he’d lacked his whole life—Scott understood this now—was a mission.

  He’d been slow to grasp this truth, despite the fact that everybody who’d ever known him—parents, girlfriends, teachers at Pilgrims and Pearse and Stirling—had pointed it out. Even Penny, who’d drifted through life waitressing and running cash registers, who’d let him keen for years the miseries of teaching Great Expectations to subliterate sophomores, had recently interrupted him: Fine, Scotty. But what do you want to do?

  For his thirtieth birthday she had given him, without irony, a book called What Color Is Your Parachute?

  At Concord High, where he’d touched down briefly after being booted out of Pearse, he’d spent a morning filling in hundreds of tiny ovals with a number 2 pencil, affirming that he preferred skiing to basketball, bowling to crosswords, rock and roll to jazz or folk. Based on such answers, a computer in Madison, Wisconsin, concluded that he’d make a fine soldier, fireman, or manufacturing floor supervisor.

  He did not share these insights with his parents.

  Only now, sitting in the first-class cabin of a Boeing 747 heading southward, did he experience the exhilaration that came from having a true mission. He was a man transformed. He drained his champagne glass, wolfed down the complimentary Brie and strawberries. His mother had paid for a seat in coach, but a flirty gate agent had upgraded him with a sly smile. Such a thing had never happened to him before, and Scott took it as a harbinger of good fortune to come.

  He sat staring out the window, his hand folded inside Great Expectations, which he’d recently assigned to his juniors. Scott hadn’t yet read the final two chapters; but he understood, now, that this wasn’t due to laziness; he was hampered by a medical condition. He put Dickens aside and took a flashy paperback from his rucksack. It was Man of Action, by Dashiell Blodgett, a brash Australian who’d climbed Everest and K2 (where he’d lost a toe to frostbite) and now stalked, with his camera, the most dangerous big game in the world, in a wildly popular cable television program aired around the globe. Man of Action was a narrative of Blodgett’s adventures—ice climbing and cave diving, traveling the perimeter of Africa by motorcycle. Really, though, it was a meditation on man’s true nature, his need for risk and conquest. Today’s man, Blodgett wrote, lives in a state of
full-body impotence. He’s been castrated by comfort. The softness of modern life has ruined him.

  Hear, hear, Scott thought.

  Blodgett had cowritten the book with his wife, Pepper, a stunning blonde who accompanied him on his adventures. A photo of the two occupied the entire back cover. In it Blodgett squatted in some rugged rocky landscape, holding open the jaws of a crocodile, his sleeves rolled back to expose his beefy forearms. Pepper leaned over him, grasping his shoulders, her breasts crushed against his back, her long blond hair brushing his neck. Blodgett grinned triumphantly, the very picture of masculine conquest.

  Scott had bought the book a week before, on a Saturday afternoon, shortly after receiving his orders. That morning he had borrowed Penny’s van—the Golf was ailing—and set off at first light, his nerves twinkling with adrenaline and exhaustion. He’d been up late with Penny discussing strategy. Just be direct, Penny had advised. She’s his grandmother, for Christ’s sake. It can’t hurt to ask.

  He thought, It sure as shit can.

  He thought, Sister, you have no idea.

  Cowed, craven, he had hoped to make the mortifying request by phone. Mom, you’ve always been so concerned with the kids’ education (she had, after all, given them books for Christmas). And Fairhope is a wonderful school. I knew you’d want to help.

  He held the words ready in his mouth—like some hated food, liver or Brussels sprouts, turning to an acrid poo on his tongue. But his mother had cut him off. She was glad he’d called; there was a matter they needed to discuss. Could he come to Concord that Saturday? We’ll have a chat, she said. Just the two of us.

  He’d rolled into Horsham Road at eight in the morning and sat in the familiar kitchen, eating a plate of eggs Benedict. The kitchen, its sounds and smells, brought back memories long forgotten, the summers home from Pearse, when he dragged his lazy teenage carcass out of bed each morning to find his favorite breakfast in the works. His father and Billy were gone by then, and it was Paulette who’d greeted him at the train station like a returning hero and cooked his favorite dinner, prime rib and Yorkshire pudding, to welcome him home. She’d asked a hundred questions about his friends and classes and listened in rapt attention to the lies he told. She’d had hopes for him then. Her confidence was a burden, not heavy but unwieldy, like a huge empty box he’d have to carry until he could fill it. All these years later, the box teemed with failures, regrets heavy as hammers. He was staggering under its weight.

  He ate slowly, savoring the breakfast, dreading the conversation that would follow. Finally Paulette took his empty plate, and he could hang fire no longer. You always taught us the value of education, he began, consciously including his siblings; Billy, especially, was a saint you could invoke when praying for favors. And now there’s a situation with Ian—

  She raised a hand as if to stop him. The gesture was startling. His mother never talked with her hands.

  The boy needs help; I can see that. Simple as weather, an obvious fact. But first things first, dear. Your sister is in serious trouble.

  It took him a moment to understand. His whole life his mother had buried him in blessings, done for him until he was, truly, done for. Now, for the first time, she needed something from him.

  Not from his father, or Billy. From him.

  The notion staggered him. The men of his family were titans, endowed with vital powers. His father the wizard, an alchemist curing cancer; Billy the gentleman scholar, effortlessly superior with his movie-star smile. What was left for Scott to be? His father was a genius. His brother was a prince.

  In his mother’s kitchen it all came clear.

  Like a dream he recalled an earlier, more hopeful vision of himself. When he squealed out of Stirling College in that Pontiac Sunbird he’d imagined himself a rebel and a wanderer, rugged and fearless, living by his wits. He had longed to travel, to see the rough parts of the world. But along the way he faltered. His early life had been too easeful. He couldn’t—could anybody?—claw his way out of snug Concord. Then he thought of Warren Marsh, who’d grown up next door, graduated Williams and joined the Peace Corps, the path he himself should have taken.

  Another missed opportunity. Toss it, if you can lift it, into the box of regrets.

  So like Columbus dispatched by the queen of Spain, he received his commission, and drove back to Gatwick with a check in his pocket: twenty thousand dollars, the otherworldly cost of fourth-grade tuition at Fairhope. In return he would do what was asked of him, and go down in his family’s history as the bold savior of his sister. Even his father would have to be impressed.

  No problem, Scott told Paulette. Don’t worry, Mom. I’ll take care of it. He was overcome with gratitude, humbled by her faith

  He settled into his first-class seat. The plane was packed with students in Trinity and Wesleyan sweatshirts. A few of the boys seemed drunk already, red faced and jubilant, cranked up for a week of joyful parent-financed depravity in Lauderdale or Daytona. In their dumb happiness they reminded Scott of dogs, panting with the confidence that came from never having failed at anything. Gratefully he watched the girls, their glossed lips, their thighs in snug blue jeans, glad they drew breath in the world. Years of teaching high school had inoculated him, mostly, against the charms of the young, though he backslid briefly each September when he cast his prettiest students in riotous daydreams. These fantasies lasted a few days, a week at the outside; and ended as soon he heard the girls speak.

  He understood, now, that only one woman could move him, a woman halfway around the world, who’d dispensed with the miseries of Kosovo and was now braving the war-torn deserts of the Sudan. Last week, galvanized by his upcoming adventure, he’d typed out a brisk message on his office computer. Then, with a single click of the mouse, he’d inserted himself boldly into the universe of Jane Frayne.

  He had received an automatic response: Jane was traveling in the Sudan and unreachable by e-mail. She would return to New York in April or May or June, and would respond to messages then.

  Fair enough, Scott thought.

  AT THE airport in Pointe Mathilde, he took a taxi to the Mistral Inn, where his mother’s travel agent had booked him a room. Scott would have preferred to find his own lodgings, in the pleasingly random manner he and Penny had employed years ago, bedding down in the upper rooms of back-street cantinas, on the porches of near strangers, in sleeping bags by the side of the road. But the inn was small and charming, on a side street behind the Place de la Capitale; and he had no time to scrounge around looking for a hotel.

  The proprietor’s daughter, a shy black girl his daughter’s age, led Scott to a sunny upstairs room where a warm breeze riffled the lace curtains. The high bed looked plump and inviting. He kicked off his shoes and stretched out. The room overlooked a rear courtyard, lushly planted with flowering bushes and lemon trees. Those, at least, Scott could identify; they’d bloomed all over his old neighborhood in San Bernardino, in every yard except his own. NO LAWN MAINTENANCE, they’d been promised by the ad in the Sun; and this turned out to be true: the square lot, enclosed by a chain-link fence, had been paved over with concrete. In the front yard two trees had been spared. The squat palms were long dead, teeming with roaches; but the landlord, a dark, wizened man named Guzman, refused to cut them down.

  Scott still dreamed feverishly of that house, the pea-colored carpeting, the tiny windows barricaded with air conditioners that periodically overloaded the third-world electrical wiring. The first time it happened, Guzman showed up to shake his head in disapproval, a cigarette hanging out of his mouth. When Penny explained the problem in Spanish, Guzman continued to disapprove, shaking his speckled bald head.

  Thinking of this, Scott remembered he had a wife back in Connecticut. He picked up the bedside phone and dialed his own number; he had promised her a call. If the situation were reversed—his wife spending spring break on an island, himself stuck at home with the kids—he would have been torqued; but Penny had been excited for him. Scotty, an adventure!
she’d said, the reckless girl who’d loved camping in the desert, climbing in the Sierra, diving the depths of Crater Lake, her naked body bathed in starlight. He had taken her from those wild places and locked her in a tract house in the suburbs.

  The line was busy; he hung up the phone and unpacked his rucksack, a relic of earlier travels. Inside was a manila envelope, a stack of quizzes he would not grade. He tossed his few possessions—extra shirt, socks, and underwear—into bureau drawers. From a side pocket he took his razor and toothbrush. Then he felt a strange lump at the bottom of the bag. Recognition lit inside him, the briefest flicker. He unzipped an inside pocket and felt around inside it, for the tiny hole his younger self had cut. He withdrew a tiny Saran-wrapped package and a narrow wooden cylinder the size of a shell casing. It was his old friend, Smoky Joe.

  He’d bought the pipe a lifetime ago, at a head shop in La Jolla. The hollow tip was sized to hold a single, tightly packed hit of weed. He’d found it useful in emergencies: stuck in freeway traffic, or on breaks at the cavernous publisher’s warehouse where he’d once worked, loading bundles of magazines onto pallets that were to be moved, for no apparent reason, to another part of the building. Mostly, though, he’d used the pipe for skimming. Stealing. From the person who loved him most.

  At the beginning, he and Penny had split their pot evenly. For a time the arrangement worked seamlessly. They smoked only when they were together—they were nearly always together—and their appetites were perfectly matched. Later, when they were both working, they’d smoke a bowl on the terrace after dinner; but while Penny would be satisfied for the rest of the evening, an hour later Scott was ready for more. One night he moved to roll himself something extra, a dessert joint, remembering how his mother used to fill the dinner plates: heaping portions for his brawny father, more delicate ones for herself.