by Pete Nelson
He headed downtown, Northampton a picturesque arcade of boutiques and businesses and a destination for travelers from Montreal to New York City, who came for the shops and the restaurants. He ran past Stanley Prochaska’s jewelry store, one of the oldest shops in town, and past the bridal shop, perhaps the only one in the country that featured matching bridal gowns for “hers and hers” commitment ceremonies, Northampton being famous as a major haven for lesbians. He ran past the leather goods shop, and the sporting goods shop, past couples clutching paper bags, men shopping with their women. He briefly recalled shopping with his ex-wife, holding her bag and saying things like, “Do we really need a new blender?” or “Doesn’t the old toaster oven still work?” He ran past Thornes Marketplace, once a traditional department store that now housed a variety of independent shops and was kind of the crown jewel of the Northampton shopping scene. He ran past the building where he rented an office for himself, where he kept his work mess separate from his home mess, writing and staring out the window, sometimes with binoculars, just keeping an eye on things.
Paul ran, unzipping his Windbreaker at the neck, though the temperature was only in the forties. His legs were starting to ache, and his lungs hurt, but he kept going, past a store called Faces, which sold cheap furniture and lamps and posters and things to go in dormitory rooms. He ran past Betsy’s Threads, a high-end clothing shop where Betsy had to keep track of all the social circles in town and remember which dresses she had sold to which women to make sure nobody showed up at the same party wearing the same thing. He ran past Intimate You, a sexy lingerie shop where the owner, a woman named Charlotte, knew everyone in town and, more importantly, knew who was wearing what beneath their clothes. She also had a good idea of who was having affairs and with whom, information garnered when men bought lacy bras or thong panties for their girlfriends, after which the mistresses brought them back to exchange them for the more appropriate sizes or styles.
He ran past Jake’s No Frills Dining, where he’d gone for bacon and eggs and toast and coffee (but no frills) every morning for the past fifteen years. While Paul sipped coffee, read the Globe, and did the crossword puzzle, Stella would lie quietly in the café doorway, bothering no one, at least until the day the city said they were going to fine dog owners twenty-five dollars for tying their pets up downtown (there was a fine for not tying them up too), regardless of whether the offending pooch was snoozing peacefully in the sun or gnawing the toes off babies in their strollers. Paul couldn’t begin to count the number of people in a typical day who smiled when they saw Stella lying contentedly in the doorway, but of course, nobody’s going to call the dog officer and say, “I’d like to report a dog — it’s not doing anything, but it made me really happy just to look at it …”
He ran down Main Street, where he often saw petitioners getting signatures to put candidates on ballots, and girls’ soccer teams collecting donations, and New Age people offering incense or poetry, and disturbed zanies muttering things like “You don’t leave witnesses, you never leave witnesses …” to themselves. Main Street was generally alive, seven days a week and year-round, with trust-fund mendicants, panhandlers and mooches, crow babies and white Rasta kids in Jamaican black, yellow, green, and red knit caps, Goth waifs and death punks who asked for spare change to make “phone calls,” and, one time, a kid squatting on the sidewalk with a sign that read, PARENTS SLAIN BY NINJAS — NEED MONEY FOR KUNG FU LESSONS! He ran past a used-book store, and another used-book store, and a new-book store, and a store that had once sold crystals but went out of business when the crystals apparently told the owners they didn’t want to be sold. He ran past importers carrying third-world knickknacks, and he ran past one of the dozen ice cream parlors in town, dairy being the last vice the local Birken-stockers allowed themselves. If a power failure were ever to shut down the ice cream parlor freezers, the streets of Northampton would be awash with slow-rolling waves of malted vanilla and lowfat frozen yogurt.
He kept running. He passed the Sunflower Laundromat, where everyone posted notes and notices on the community bulletin board. He ran past the Healing Cooperative next to the Laundromat, a kind of New Age clinic for psychic fairs and body workers and homeopathic remedies and treatments, with a pamphlet rack by the door, offering flyers for all the various local shamans and magical practitioners and caregivers. There he had to stop, wishing briefly that he’d brought along enough money to check himself into the Healing Cooperative for a full-body “gentle loving” massage.
He sat on the steps, panting, and felt light headed. He didn’t expect to get in shape right away, but evidently he had further to go than he thought. He’d just begun to catch his breath when first his right calf muscle began to cramp up, then his left. He stood and walked it off, and after about ten minutes, he felt better.
And a minute later, he also felt proud of himself. By his own estimation, he’d come about a mile and a half. Most of the fitness gurus said that when you’re starting out, it’s important to go easy on yourself.
When he got home, he unlaced his shoes. Stella asked him how his run had gone.
“Terrific,” he said. He filled the tub with water as hot as he could stand it. His feet hurt. His knees throbbed. He put his robe on again, went to the refrigerator, grabbed a beer, opened it, and then went to recover in the tub. After a moment, Stella came into the bathroom and stared at him.
“Is that part of your training too?” she asked him, staring at the beer.
“No,” he told her, taking a sip. “This is my reward for exercising.”
“What does it feel like?” she asked.
“What does what feel like?”
“Drinking. I’m just curious.”
“It feels good. It relaxes you.”
“What do you need to relax from? You don’t do anything.”
“From stress.”
“What’s stress?”
“What’s stress?” Paul said. “Hmm. Well. You know when you see another dog coming toward you on the sidewalk, and he looks big and mean with his fur up on the back of his neck, so you get the fur up on the back of your neck too?”
“Horripilation.”
“That’s stress.”
“Oh.” She watched him as he swallowed. “So is there a big dog somewhere nearby or something?”
“No,” Paul said. “That was just an example for you. Human beings have a lot of other things that stress us out.”
“Like what things? You’re lying in a tub of hot, soapy water, doing nothing as far as I can tell.”
“Like stuff that happens. During the day. So people who have stressful days come home and get themselves a drink to unwind.”
“After the big dog has gone away.”
“Right.”
“Wouldn’t it make more sense to drink before the big dog gets to you?”
“I suppose.”
“I mean, after the big dog is gone, where’s the stress?”
“You have a good point,” Paul said. “That’s the difference between you and me. For you, when the big dog goes away, your fur goes back down and you forget all about it. People keep our fur up long after the big dog goes away.”
“Why?”
“Because we’re more highly evolved.”
Stella had to think a moment.
“You know, the more you tell me about evolution, the less I understand it. Evolution means improvement, right?”
“Right.”
“So thinking a big dog is there, when in fact there’s no big dog there, is an improvement?”
“Not in and of itself,” Paul said. “But we have a better long-term memory than you do. That’s an improvement, but it makes it harder for us to forget the big dogs we run into every day.”
“And that’s why people drink?”
“Some.”
“Do your mom and dad drink?”
“Never,” Paul said.
“How about your brother?”
“Not as much as he should,” Paul
said. “He’s got a lot of stress. Studies show that alcohol can relieve stress.”
“And you feel better when you don’t have stress?”
“Much better. I feel more like myself.”
“Who do you feel like when you don’t feel like yourself?”
“You’re still you, but you don’t feel like it,” Paul said, knowing that wouldn’t explain anything, not even to a human being. “You feel more in touch with things.”
“Then why do you always lose your car keys?”
“Not those kinds of things.”
“Then what kinds of things?”
“Look,” Paul said. “It’s like this. You feel sort of … in control and out of control at the same time. You’re in charge of how out of control you get. And being out of control feels good because then you don’t have the responsibility of being in control all the time, so you can kick back and be yourself. Like, when you’re a baby, or a little kid, you’re just you, just being yourself and not examining everything you do or worrying about what everybody else is going to think. You just basically feel good all the time. Then you get older, and you have to pay your bills, and other people expect things from you, and you never get a chance to just relax and feel good about everything.”
“Except when you’re drunk?”
“Not just when you’re drunk. But sometimes when you’re drunk, you feel very fine.”
“How often?”
“I don’t know.”
“Half the time?”
“I don’t know. Why? Why do you ask?”
“I don’t know,” Stella said. “Because you don’t seem very happy. Especially not when you’re drunk. Then you seem really sad. Is feeling sad feeling more like yourself?”
Now Paul paused.
“Does stress make you sad?” Stella persisted.
“No. Stress makes you anxious. It makes you feel up. But in a bad way.”
“Does winding down make you sad?”
“Sometimes, I guess. You feel sad when things don’t work out.”
“Like with Karen?”
“Exactly.”
“Or like when you can’t get a boner?”
“Yes. That makes me sad.”
“But getting a boner makes you happy.”
“It makes me very happy.”
Paul took the bar of soap and washed his hair. He wanted to change the subject. Stella was just trying to understand.
“Well, I think you have it backwards, if you don’t mind my saying.”
“Meaning what?”
“I mean I think you’re switching the order of things. I think first you get sad, and then you don’t get a boner. Or first you get happy, and then you get a boner.”
“What makes you say that?” he asked.
“Observation.”
“Observation?”
“How long have we known each other?”
“In human years?” Paul answered. “Almost sixteen years.”
“And in that time, you’ve had how many girlfriends and wives?”
“One wife, please,” Paul said. “What’s your point?”
“My point is, all those years, all the times that you were in bed with people, don’t forget — there were three of us in the room, not two. Ninety-nine percent of the time, I was watching you. I don’t go off duty just because somebody else is there, you know — I still have to keep an eye on you, even if you aren’t paying much attention to me. And what I’ve seen with my own two eyes, as a noninvolved observer, is first you get sad or stressed and then you don’t get a boner, or first you get happy, and then you do. And drinking makes you sad. That’s my observation. For what it’s worth, but hey, I’m just a dog — what do I know? I was just wondering.”
“Hmm,” Paul said. “I’ll get you a beer if you really want to know.”
“No, thanks,” Stella said. “I’m already relaxed.”
“So if drinking makes me sad,” he asked her, “what makes me happy? By your observation.”
“People.”
“People?”
“Yeah.”
“Specifically how?”
“Meeting new people,” she said. “Doing nice things for them. Works every time. You should watch yourself sometime.”
“Hmm,” he said. “Interesting.”
8
Rules of Engagement
His mother said Harrold was doing better. The doctors believed the clot-busting drug they gave him in the hospital, a medication called tPA, for tissue plasminogen activator, had reached his brain in time to reestablish blood flow and limit what would have been catastrophic damage otherwise. He was still paralyzed and without speech, but he could eat and focus long enough to watch reruns of the Rockford Files and Gunsmoke and Highway to Heaven, which, she said, seemed to bring a tear to his eye every time, the genuine kind. They’d set his bed up downstairs, with a twenty-four-hour live-in nurse for the first week and a visiting day nurse after that, in addition to the speech and occupational therapists who visited three times a week to work his legs and arms or to electrically stimulate his throat. It was all quite amazing, Beverly said. “You should see how good they are.”
Carl made sure that the bills were paid and the checkbook was balanced and that the household was running smoothly again, for which Beverly was grateful. Carl and Bits and their families visited often or just took Beverly shopping when the day nurse was on duty. Paul’s job was simply to try to engage his father in communication, to stimulate the parts of the brain that affected speech and response. It could prove difficult to measure whether it was doing any good, the therapist warned him, but it was certain to be a slow recovery and these were the first steps.
“I’m just so amazed at what they can do these days,” Beverly said. “I remember a friend of my dad’s who had a stroke, and he just sat in a wheelchair for the last twenty years of his life. This is all just so good. It’s all good.”
Paul took her word for it. He kept his expectations in check and got online with his father one night after dinner. Beverly was there to help her husband and to show him how to operate the mouse.
PaulGus: Hi. How do you feel today? I know you can’t answer that question yes or no. I suspect I’ll be doing most of the talking, so
HarrGus: YES
PaulGus: Interrupting is good. Feel free to interrupt me any
HarrGus: NO
PaulGus: I’m confused. No, interrupting is not good?
HarrGus: YES
PaulGus: Okay then, why don’t
HarrGus: NO
PaulGus: Wait, wait, wait. Why don’t we just start over and practice a little bit until you get the hang of this. Can you click on the Yes box?
HarrGus: YES
PaulGus: Can you click on the No box?
HarrGus: YES
PaulGus: Then please do so.
HarrGus: NO
PaulGus: Uh … okay then.
PaulGus: Are you still there?
HarrGus: Hi, Paul. This is your mother typing. I think your father is feeling tired. Let’s try this again in a few days.
PaulGus: I don’t know what I’m doing.
HarrGus: That’s okay. We’re all new at this. His eyes are closed. Call me the next time you want to do this and I’ll make sure he’s rested.
Part of the idea was simply to let his father know that he wasn’t alone and that there was somebody willing to listen. Paul pictured his father as a kind of floating consciousness, like some low-budget horror movie from the fifties where the mad scientist’s brain was a bell jar full of glowing smoke.
The next time he tried, his mother assured him that his father understood how everything worked and was rested enough to give it another go. She said that she’d be in the kitchen but that she wanted Harrold to try to do it on his own.
PaulGus: Good morning. How are you feeling?
HarrGus: NO
PaulGus: I mean, are you feeling good?
HarrGus: NO
PaulGus: Of course not. So
you’re feeling not so good?
HarrGus: NO
PaulGus: Do you want to do this?
HarrGus: NO NO NO NO
PaulGus: Why don’t we try again tomorrow then?
HarrGus: NO
He tried not to become discouraged. It seemed to him that perhaps the format wasn’t working. The speech therapist Harrold was working with told Paul she thought Harrold’s reading comprehension was actually good. Some stroke patients developed a kind of dyslexia where written words and letters seemed scrambled and incomprehensible, but Harrold had passed the tests she’d given him for that. Something else was holding him back. The therapist told Paul not to worry. So many different mechanisms come into play during the adaptive rewiring of the brain following a stroke. She believed Harrold understood the things that were said to him, and the words on the screen, but simply had great difficulty formulating a response.
Paul tried again a few days later.
PaulGus: Good morning, Harrold.
PaulGus: Are you there?
PaulGus: You need to click the mouse to tell me if you’re ready. Are you there?
HarrGus: YES
PaulGus: This is Paul. I’d like to see if we could have a little dialogue here. Are you feeling up to it?
PaulGus: It’s beautiful here today. Blue skies. Is the weather there nice?
PaulGus: Would you like to try this some other time?
PaulGus: I’m clearly not doing this right.
PaulGus: Just so you know, I’m not enjoying this any more than you are.
PaulGus: I apologize for that. Once I click Send, I can’t take it back. I shouldn’t have sent that. It was supposed to be a joke. I’m frustrated because I don’t know how to help you.