by Patti Abbott
“And it’s a boy,” he continued, not seeing her face. “They did the ultrasound yesterday. I’ll finally have a son. A little brother for my girls. A boy!”
Cheryl felt the cage door close.
“This ability to recognize when you are being treated unfairly is almost certainly one of the stages in the evolution of the complex sense of fairness exhibited by humans. Whether capuchin monkeys are, like humans, using emotion to drive these decisions is unknown. However, it is clear that the sense of fairness has a long evolutionary history in the primate lineage.” Sarah Brosnan
ON PALADIN ROAD
Donald Hauser has lived down the road from us since Eleanor and I moved here with our two boys. Our sub, on Paladin Road, was built after a local farmer, tired of turning over rocks instead of sod, sold his land to a developer. The houses are unpretentious ranches set back a ways from the road. I've never regretted buying the place and Eleanor still refers to it as her dream house, though more for the setting than its undistinguished architecture.
Donald was already here. His three acres lay just beyond the parceled farmland and he couldn't be persuaded to sell. He built the house during the war when top-quality building materials were scarce, and unlike our house, his sits close to the road. It snows up here, and he probably didn't want to dig himself out a dozen times each winter. Nor did he want to pour the concrete for a long driveway, or run the electrical, sewer and gas lines farther than was needed.
We became friends of sorts. I write books about antique guns and Donald collects them. Over the years, I’ve inspected many of his purchases and he’s seldom paid too much or been hoodwinked. There must be four-dozen firearms in the mahogany cases lining his front room. I wouldn't mind owning one or two myself, but I haven’t kept a gun in the house since the late seventies when Petey Burleson, a neighbor’s boy, shot his pigtailed sister with the rifle hanging over their fireplace. I had two kids of my own living here then.
Both of us are amateur woodworkers. Well, he may be a bit more than an amateur. His place, although not much to look at, has lasted half a century. It's warm in the winter and tolerable in the summer. A ball will stay put where it’s set; doors stand open till you push them closed.
Donald’s eighty-five now. He's taken on the stiff, shuffling walk of those old enough to fear a fall, and he's grown forgetful. He doesn't change his clothing enough and doesn't always dress “appropriately” for the weather. Of course, eighty-five’s old by any reckoning.
Sixty-five is old too and I can feel the changes. I grasp at names that would have leaped effortlessly from my tongue not long ago. Ideas are often lost amid the tidal wave of information flowing through my brain. It’s hard for me to look at Donald without seeing where my road leads.
A few years ago, Donald loaned me a few blades for a project. I don't like to borrow things, especially from Donald, who is particular about his tools. I don't care to lend tools either, but do so when asked, having decided long ago that people are more important than possessions.
It was a Sunday and the hardware store in town was closed. I woke up with a project in mind and couldn't wait to get started. I drove over to Donald's place where his wife led me out to his workshop. Years ago, Donald added a small building at the rear of his house and it was there that he did his carpentry. Though the building was modest, it boasted a collection of tools that rivaled any personal workshop. The steely gleam of sharpened tools, the bouquet composed of oils, wax and freshly cut wood, the familiar pitch of a blade making the first cuts into a good piece of Pennsylvania cherry, were intoxicating. Donald turned after a minute, sensing my presence in his chapel. He lowered his goggles as I explained my project, waiting impatiently while I made my selection. I was reminded of the elderly librarian in the mobile library of my youth who seemed determined to keep all her books away from my grimy fingers.
Donald stored his blades in heavily padded envelopes, each one as sharp as the day he bought it. That’s the way Donald did things, fastidious to a fault. Hurriedly, I slid the blades in and out of the envelopes until I had made my choice. Although he feigned disinterest, I was sure he could call out the manufacturer’s code on each one from across the room. I drove home, easily finishing the rough work that required Donald’s blades by dinnertime. I think it was a small pine cabinet for our good set of silverware. Nothing we needed but I craved the work.
Donald seemed distracted when I knocked on his door early that evening, but took the blades, nodding curtly at my thanks. He didn't ask about my project nor did he exchange a single pleasantry. The fate of his precious blades had probably gnawed at him all day.
A few days later, a hurricane blew up from the Carolinas. The early prediction was it would miss us in Connecticut, but Godfrey, a nasty storm, proved the prognosticators wrong. The electricity went off once the storm hit and several of our trees were felled.
When it was over, Eleanor was especially disheartened by the loss of a dogwood she had been nursing for years. I refrained from saying that a storm like Godfrey is nature's way of weeding out the weak. For the next few days, neighbors who rarely saw each other, came out of their houses to compare hurricane stories.
About a month later, I was in the post office when Donald stopped me. Naturally, we compared hurricane damage and he said that although his house suffered little injury, Godfrey had torn up his shed pretty badly. Some tools and a few nice pieces of wood he’d stashed away were lost or destroyed. When he finally turned to go, a hesitation in his step gave me the impression there was something more, but perhaps I only believe that in retrospect.
A year went by. I think he bought his Winchester during this period and called me over to see it. Then he phoned to ask if we would pick up his mail while he went with Nancy to see a specialist in Boston. She died a few months later and Donald settled into an even more hermetic existence.
Last fall, out of the blue, Donald stopped me outside the house and asked when I was planning to return his blades. It took me several seconds to recall the loan.
"Well, Donald, I returned them the same day I borrowed them. If I remember correctly, they were destroyed in a hurricane that fall."
Various emotions, fear among them, flitted across his face as he tried to remember. I wondered if Nancy's death precipitated some sort of cognitive dysfunction. But finally his face cleared and he grabbed my hand, pumping it vigorously.
"Of course, I remember, Martin. Have to forgive an old man. You just don’t know…" his voice tailed off. Shielding my eyes from the bright autumn sun, I watched him turn and walk down Paladin Road. I put his lapse down to age and shaking my head, went into the house.
"It's a good thing you had the hurricane to anchor the memory," Eleanor said at lunch. "We should have him over to dinner." I must have made a face because Eleanor laughed gently, saying, “Well, maybe I’ll take him over a cobbler.” And I did mean to visit him . The road to hell is paved with meant instead of cement, my mother used to say.
Two weeks before Christmas. I was hanging a string of lights on the blue spruce when Donald came up behind me.
"When are you going to return those blades?" he demanded angrily, shaking the ladder a little..
I got down off the wobbling stepladder, nearly turning an ankle. "Now wait a minute, Donald. I returned those tools years ago. You lost them in that storm! Can’t remember the name…."
He pulled back his arm a little, as if he were going to take a swing at me. If the situation hadn’t been so distressing, it’d have been comical to see a man of his age aching to throw a punch. Or a man of my age, worried about receiving one. But then his face cleared and he chuckled lightly.
"I guess my memory's not as good as it was."
Insisting he sit down a minute, I went inside to get a glass of water. When I came back out, he was gone.
"Go after him,” Eleanor called from the porch. "Could be a stroke."
"It's no stroke,” I told her. "Damned near landed one on my chin though."
&
nbsp; Eleanor shook her head, and shivering, closed the door.
This scene was eerily repeated in February, and then again in March. Each time, Donald was eventually persuaded his blades had been lost in Hurricane Godfrey. It was as if we were rehearsing a scene in a play and couldn’t get it right. I considered calling his daughter for help, but since I didn't know her, I did nothing.
Suddenly, the freakish encounters stopped, and when I saw Donald next, he waved pleasantly. I accepted the change gratefully. Still, I tried to steer clear of him. Once or twice, I dreamed about Donald grasping agitatedly at my arms or legs. In the dream, my limbs were easily removed and, in that peculiar landscape we travel in at night, I accepted their loss with equanimity. My conscious self was less sanguine, however, for I awoke shaking and tearful.
"What is it?" Eleanor asked, hugging me. But like many dreamers, I shook her off. Then I lay in the dark for hours, listening to Eleanor's faint snore.
I ran into Donald Hauser today in town. I was in the pharmacy, waiting for my order to be filled, and without thinking I stepped between him and the door.
Donald shook my hand, and I sensed reluctance in the grip. "Martin," he said. "How've you been?"
"Fine. And you?"
"Good. Good." He never once looked me in the eye.
"I've been meaning to ask," I said, "did you ever find those missing blades?" I cannot for the life of me think of why I brought it up.
His face collapsed, but he quickly recovered and mumbled something.
"What?"
"I said you would bring that up again. Thief!”
He was nearly shouting and his face was the grimace that only the old can wear. He pushed by me, went through the door, and got into his truck. I looked around to see if anyone had heard him. The store was nearly empty, but a girl refilling the aisle with school supplies ducked her head. I was still standing there with my mouth open a moment later when the pharmacist motioned me that my prescription was ready. I could hardly hear his instructions with the beating of blood in my ear. Hauser’s harassment of me would have to stop. I was losing any respect I had earned in my years in this town. Who knew how many people would hear about this episode before the day was over.
I pulled up at Donald’s house a few minutes after him, but I could already hear the sound of his table saw. He was wearing goggles and ear protection and didn’t hear me. I looked up; there were the blades he’d been talking about hanging on the wall. The blades he had insisted I had. The beating in my ears moved into my head. He’d tortured me for years with an invented theft.
I backed out of the workshop quietly and went around to his front door, moving in almost a fugue state. The door was unlocked and I walked inside, headed for the one piece of furniture I was familiar with, breaking the glass on his gun case with an umbrella I found in the hallway. I loaded the Winchester and took it back into Donald’s workshop.
I hadn’t held a loaded gun in years; it felt good. The saw stopped suddenly and Donald turned around. I caught him with a bullet in the neck and then the chest. He dropped more quickly than his stiff knees should have allowed.
I pointed to the blades. “I don’t know why you’ve tortured me with those blades, but this is the end of it. My own wife is starting to look at me like I’m crazy. And now you’ve told the whole town your lie.”
Donald looked up, a look of sadness on his face: such sadness.
“It was Eleanor who returned them.”
I could hardly hear him so I moved closer. He put a hand to his neck, attempting to staunch the flow of blood.
“She said you were getting forgetful but didn’t like to be reminded. Said she’d handle it.” His eyes closed.
Forgetful? Some things you can’t forget.
I looked sadly at my friend, and then put the rifle in my mouth and pulled the trigger.
WHAT HAPPENED NEXT
He agreed to meet her for lunch, deciding uneasily on a sleek, anonymous restaurant at the top of an office tower. He’d been there once before, but all he remembered was the ride up, a rocketing glimpse at jigsaw puzzle people, buildings, and random pieces of sky.
She tracked him down through the Internet, her email signed, “Margaret Olson.”
It wasn’t a familiar name. His father always referred to her as “your mother”—the nameless person who—“washed the storm windows before storing them,” “dressed like a gypsy,” and “baked a chicken with garlic and lemon inside it.”
Within a few weeks of her desertion, every sign of Maggie Bolden was discarded, given away, or burned. Then it grew easier to avoid her name.
The maitre d’ showed him to the table, whispering that “the lady” was already seated. Margaret Olson wore the sort of dark, silky dress wealthy women bought for luncheons—no sign of the gypsy about her now. He was the one with damp palms and a too-tight collar.
She half-rose, and he saw, with a start, that she was arthritic, nearly deformed, in fact. The ideas he came with: that he’d strangle her, throttle her, drop cyanide in her coffee, were pushed aside. A cane lay on the floor beside her chair.
“Patrick, so good of you to come. I know it couldn’t have been….” Her eyes were still young: bright blue and large in her thin, scarred face.
Seated, he busied himself with his silverware and water glass. “The whitefish should be good.” He hadn’t even looked at the menu.
“Michigan and its whitefish. I’d forgotten.”
She took a sip of her cocktail and reached for her purse. For a second, he wondered if she was searching for a gun—if perhaps he wasn’t the only one who’d come with murder in mind. But she pulled out an envelope of photographs.
“Go ahead, look,” she commanded, and as obedient as the five-year old she once knew, he did.
The photos seemed to have been taken at a park somewhere. His two brothers and he wore Detroit Tigers tee-shirts, tube socks, and the shapeless athletic shorts popular in the early eighties. Richard and Chuck were young teenagers, Pat, a decade younger. His mother—Margaret Olsen nowadays—wasn’t in any of them.
“A park near Ann Arbor,” she explained. “Where’s that waiter?” She raised a hand, bare but for a small garnet ring. With hands as deformed as hers, short, unpolished nails seemed appropriate. The waiter hurried over and took their order.
“Would you like to keep them?” she said when he’d gone, nodding toward the envelope. “The photographs? Maybe your brothers would like them, too. I have copies at the hotel.”
He shook his head, and stuffing the envelope into his pocket, suddenly rose.
“Look, I thought I could do this, but I can’t.” Could she possibly not understand how much they hated her? A mutual hatred of their mother was the one thing the three brothers shared.
“Patrick. I shouldn’t have….” She paused a second. “It was the last day, you know. I took a camera along on the last day.”
Swallowing hard, he threw his napkin on the table, resisting the urge to cover his ears, to drown out her voice, unfamiliar and intimate at the same time. He tossed three twenties down.
“You can get back to your hotel okay, right?” She nodded, resigned.
He nearly knocked down the coat check girl, who stepped aside, her back glued to the wall as if it were a routine maneuver. Didn’t notice the elevator doors were standing open, or that the quick trip down reassembled those disparate puzzle pieces. The sun was still shining, the engine barely cool when he got back to the car. Less than thirty minutes had passed.
Back home, Pat took two aspirins and sat wearily on the one remaining chair in his living room. Stef had taken the rest of their furniture to her new job in Chicago, forcing him on moving day—as the three men waited impatiently—to choose a chair to keep behind. He’d chosen the one that seemed most masculine, not realizing it wasn’t the one he preferred. She laughed about it on the telephone later.
“How like you not to know what chair you sit in every night.”
He lined the photographs up
on the small table he had trash-picked, having no memory of that day, no recollection of his brothers being so young. Rick and Chuck were obviously embarrassed at having their pictures taken and made faces or moved their heads as the photographs were snapped. But Pat, at five, smiled eagerly at the photographer. Upside down on the monkey bars, he could count his ribs.
Maggie Bolden took little with her when she left. He’d been told this now and then by aunts with hands over their mouths, frightened of angering his father. A small suitcase, a few books, some clothes, her cassettes. He wondered what music she’d listened to—was it Bruce Springsteen, Joni Mitchell, jazz, or classical? Why take her music and not her sons?
His father roamed the house in an alcoholic bewilderment for days, looking for definite proof of her flight. Only weeks later could Tom Bolden pinpoint things that were missing—and then only with a cousin’s help.
“Did she wear a blue raincoat,” Pat heard him say once. “Did she like mystery novels?”
Pat picked up the phone an hour later. “Got back okay then Mom?”
Her hotel was on the river, encircled by offices, condos, lofts, all daringly installed in abandoned factories a few years before the bust. He was impressed with the air of prosperity the area seized from who knew where. Two blocks west, burned, deserted houses waited demolition.
Today she wore a lilac suit, the jacket hanging from her shoulders like the vinyl bag from an expensive store. He’d no idea where to take her, what he wanted from her, or she from him.
“Could we drive out to the country?” she said suddenly, solving the problem.
He headed toward Ann Arbor, wondering if one or both of them intended to relive their last day together. Would he hang on the monkey bars for a picture again? Would he smile eagerly into her eyes as she snapped away?