Still Life with Monkey

by Katharine Weber

  Laura had not planned on lying to Duncan, but he misunderstood her hesitation and fleeting attempt at a smile as she tried to find the words to tell him that the baby, if there had ever been a baby, was gone.

  “Okay, fine, that’s still what you want, don’t worry, we can, even so,” he mumbled, before he closed his eyes and dozed off.

  She couldn’t tell him then. There was no point in forcing him to know the truth right now. What difference would another day or two make? He had lost enough this afternoon.

  While Duncan was questioned, Laura hovered. She had promised Sergeant Flahavan that she wouldn’t speak at all, as the interview had to consist entirely of Duncan’s unprompted answers. A lot of the questions were simple reiteration of facts on record, such as his date of birth, and who owned the car, and where his license had been issued, his driving history, and so on.

  Duncan had little to contribute once they got to the actual accident. Did Duncan have any recollection of a bee or wasp in his car just before the crash? Bees in cars were thought to be the number one cause of single-car loss of control fatal accidents in daylight on dry roads, the sergeant told them both. Laura thought this seemed a lot like prompting. Did he remember being stung? Sergeant Flahavan nodded encouragingly as he asked this again, his pen poised over the form on his clipboard. Yes? On his neck?

  “I don’t remember,” whispered Duncan, in response to question after question. He kept drifting off. Months from now, he would have no memory of this interview.

  Sergeant Flahavan and Laura walked out of Duncan’s room together, and Gordon, who had been hovering by the door, went in, heading for his usual corner, where he would settle in to spend the next few hours simply watching over his brother. The sergeant confirmed to Laura, as she walked him to the elevator, that the investigation had found nothing wrong with the brakes or tires on Duncan’s Volvo. Though her old Saab was far tidier than the Volvo, it was actually in less optimal condition, being overdue for an oil change and new rear brake pads. It had balding tires. One headlamp had been out for weeks, and Laura had reminded herself to get it replaced only two days before the accident, with a Post-It note on the bathroom mirror marked PADIDDLE, but she had still not gotten around to it. When Duncan and Gordy were children, they called one-eyed cars padiddles. In fact, they still did this whenever they were in a car together after dark; whoever was first to spot a padiddle on the road scored a point in their never-ending competition that somehow also involved cumulative points in an ongoing game of Hearts.

  Laura had promised herself to get all these things dealt with before winter, but she was as reluctant to put money into a fifteen-year-old car as she was to buy a new one. Now this frugality seemed insane. But it didn’t signify—Duncan had been driving the newer and safer of their two cars, and the hot summer day had been dry and clear. Of course it had not been her fault, but since the accident Laura had repeatedly scrolled through the possible ways that she had played a contributing part, by commission or omission. She had not delayed Duncan’s return drive by phoning him with a reminder about picking up corn at that excellent Branford farm stand after the Steiner site visit. She and Duncan had not argued that morning. There had been nothing like that. But if she had delayed him in those ways, maybe that would have saved him.

  In fact, it had been a particularly nice start to the day. How many times had she gone over that last morning? Together, they had been brimming with the possibility of her pregnancy, which they did not speak about, though it was a presence that floated with them in the room. They had eaten their granola and yogurt and blueberries in companionable silence (except for the crunching), while listening to a podcast of a public radio broadcast from some other moment, an interview with a dead poet laureate on the anniversary of something or other, one of those public radio significances. The interview concluded with his reading in his old man voice. The heart breaks and breaks and lives by breaking.

  Laura wasn’t responsible for the accident. Of course she wasn’t. She knew that, rationally. There was no sane thread of connection, as many times as she talked herself in and out of this feeling, but it kept coming back. She stood in the hospital corridor, watching the elevator door close, feeling guilty about something, but what? About not having been in the accident herself? About wondering what it would be like if Duncan had died in the accident? About wondering if he would have been better off if he had died, like Todd? About dreading what their life together could possibly be like?

  She felt guilty that she had misled him about still being pregnant. In another moment she knew she would have to go back into that room to poor, marooned Duncan, to tuck him in for the night, and then after that take Gordy somewhere low-key for dinner on this hot awful night, though she couldn’t imagine ever being hungry again. But Laura stood paralyzed against the scuffed hospital corridor wall, just barely holding herself together, wishing for a moment that she had a mother who would just sweep her up in her arms and hold her tight and carry her to safety, away from the nightmare of this accident that was not her fault.

  It began to rain while Laura and Gordon nibbled their dinner in the tapas place a block from the hospital. It had been a brutally hot day, so the rain was a welcome change; everything had been dulled and clotted with humidity on the short walk over. Laura had been here once before, with Duncan, late one night after a movie. Gordon rarely ate in restaurants.

  Their conversation was awkward and kept dwindling to silence. Gordon asked no questions and was perfectly content to sit at the table with Laura listening to the loud Spanish music, which had an insistent beat he liked, with no obligation to do more than choose his next bite of nice interesting food from an array of little plates in front of him. Laura had ordered their meal, along with a bottle of Spanish Rioja, which the waiter had poured into their two glasses, though Gordon didn’t really like wine and had a plan to bicycle home to Madison after dinner. He had certainly never eaten a restaurant meal like this one, composed entirely of snacks, and he liked it, though he was wary of attempting to utter the word “tapas,” which he mouthed silently to himself, experimentally, while Laura was reading the menu.

  But Laura kept trying to propel the dinner chat, like a good hostess, which meant that in between close analysis of each dish (the sardines and tomatoes on grilled bread with aioli were wonderful, it was true, but this was the first of many items Gordon preferred eating to discussing), she asked him questions about the bookstore (what were his responsibilities, his hours, did he like the work), about Ferga (what did she eat, how did he train her, what did she do all day, where did she sleep), about any good books he had read lately (she misunderstood his silence—he was thinking—for a non-answer, and urged him to read an Iris Murdoch novel, either Bruno’s Dream or The Sea, The Sea, two novels he knew well, though he remained silent), and about when to change gears on a bicycle (she always found hills very challenging).

  Gordon’s answers were brief and did little to sustain this colloquy satisfactorily. Gordon was always happy to do just one thing at a time, and he would have been content to eat this dinner with Laura without any talking. They had never before had dinner alone together in a restaurant. Laura found herself recalling that Duncan once told her, after driving his brother home on a cold winter night after dinner, that their mother had said more than once that Gordon was someone who tended to catch the conversational ball and put it in his pocket.

  The waiter kept refilling her wine glass until the bottle was empty. By the time they were having their flan and cookies, though she didn’t notice when, Laura realized she must have also finished Gordon’s untouched glass of wine. She had gone months without a drink, without missing it, but now that it didn’t matter any more, she had been greedy for the wine. She had also ordered ceviche. Laura had followed all those rules and restrictions so diligently, for nothing. As she finished signing the credit card slip, a white-haired couple who had been staring at them from across the restaurant for a while approached their table with huge grins
and semaphored waves.

  “Duncan! How wonderful to see you!” the woman cried out, as they neared. “We had heard your accident was serious, but look at you, already out to dinner! Does this mean you can still come up to the Vineyard sometime this fall, maybe for a weekend—”

  “You should both come!” Her husband interrupted. He held out his hand to Laura. “Stew Henley, Stew and Millie. Very happy to meet you, Laura, at long last, and to see you both here! That beard looks sharp on you, Duncan! Been rusticating since the winter, I see! Gives you a sagacious look. This is one of our favorite spots in New Haven. Whenever we visit our grandson at Yale we try to get in here, and they always find us a table, don’t they, Millie? We should make a plan to have dinner here together next time we’re in town. Don’t you love the brave potato things, what do they call ’em?”

  “So we really can count on you for our pavilion after all?” Millie persisted. “You still have us on your list? This is wonderful news!”

  By the time Laura had introduced Gordon to the Henleys, explained that he was Duncan’s twin brother, and told them in vague, upbeat terms that Duncan’s prognosis was still uncertain but everyone certainly hoped for the best, and by the time the Henleys had chimed, oh of course, now they could see it, and yes, they knew Duncan was a fighter, he would beat this thing, give him our regards—their dismay and disappointment barely concealed—the temperature outside had dropped twenty degrees, a gusty wind was blowing in several directions, and the rain was falling in enormous, heavy drops. The sky flickered continuously, and thunder rumbled somewhere on the horizon.

  “Gordon Wheeler, you cannot bike home all the way to Madison in this! That’s crazy, and with the lightning, it’s not even safe,” Laura said, after they had stood together in the restaurant entrance for several minutes hoping the rain would ease, though it had actually intensified. There was an enormous simultaneous crack and flash and now the rain was pouring out of the sky, rushing rivers forming in the street against the curbs.

  “Come to the house,” Laura yelled at him over the noise of the rain crashing down. “You can ride home later, after it clears. We can put your bike in the back of my car—it will fit, I’ve got the back seat down flat.” Gordon hesitated. Even in the protected doorway of the restaurant, they were getting soaked by the rain bouncing up from the pavement in front of them.

  The relentless din of the rain was disorienting. It transformed College Street into an alien drumming surface. Whenever a car went by, slowly, windshield wipers dragging uselessly back and forth, it would throw up a furled sheet from the pool that had collected in a declivity of the street surface.

  “Come on, Gordy! Let’s go! We can’t just stand here!” Laura shouted, putting her hand on his sturdy, familiar arm to steady herself, suddenly feeling exhausted and desperate to get home. The encounter with the Henleys had been disconcerting, and she didn’t really know to whom, if anyone, she ought to report that Corrigan & Wheeler could lose these clients if they weren’t courted. But maybe it didn’t matter. She remembered now how much Duncan had been irked by their self-important demands, though they were no different from most of his rich, spoiled clients. She remembered reading a profile of the Henleys that quoted Stew saying he had changed his name from Horchatzsky to Henley because of the regatta.

  But she couldn’t just let Gordy pedal off in this deluge. Another theatrical crack of thunder and lightning together helped her to emphasize her point. “Just go right now and get your bike and walk it to the north parking garage exit!” she shouted over the fresh torrents of rain hitting the pavement. “I’ll go get my car up on three and meet you there at the bottom of the ramp—wait for me by the pay station, where it’s dry.”

  At the house, with Gordon’s bicycle dripping in the front hall, they settled in the living room with mugs of Oolong tea (Duncan and Laura had no idea how rare this particular tin of tea actually was; a very generous Christmas gift from a grateful client of Duncan’s, it had been sitting on a shelf in their pantry for a couple of years). While she made the tea, Laura directed Gordon upstairs to Duncan’s bureau for a change of clothes, as he was so completely soaked that there had been steam coming off him in the front hall. Now he wore Duncan’s jeans and an old blue work shirt that was soft and frayed at the collar and cuffs. It was perfect that Gordon had chosen this one threadbare shirt among all of Duncan’s crisp oxford cloth and tattersall shirts that he kept filed by color in wide drawers.

  Gordon sat in the big red armchair, which was Duncan’s usual spot because it had the best reading light. He held the damp towel he had used to dry his dripping hair and beard (at Laura’s instruction) in an awkward bundle in his lap until Laura told him he could just drop it on the rug. Laura had changed from her wet clothes into old yoga pants and a T-shirt. As she settled back into the sofa cushions with her legs stretched out on the coffee table, cradling her mug of tea, Laura gazed at Gordon. God, he looked like Duncan when he sat in Duncan’s chair and wore Duncan’s clothes, even with the beard and wild hair. Clothes do make the man. Gordon stared down morosely into his mug of tea.

  “Are you okay to be drinking wine with dinner like that?” he asked Laura suddenly, after a long silence. She had nearly dozed off, and his voice startled her.

  “Why? Did my driving alarm you? Am I slurring my words?” Why am I being so unpleasant to poor Gordy, Laura wondered without being able to stop herself. Nothing more about slurring words, for Christ’s sake. “Can’t a person unwind?”

  “No, no, sorry, I don’t mean to be a jerk, you’re fine, I’m not judging, it’s just that Dunc told me today, when you went out of the room with that accident guy . . .” Gordon hesitated and then plunged in. “It’s none of my business, but he said you guys were going to have a baby. And so I thought you weren’t supposed to drink. That’s all. I wanted to say something at the restaurant, but I didn’t know how to bring it up.”

  “Oh, Gordy.” Laura put her tea down and flopped back in the sofa cushions with her eyes closed, heaving a huge sigh. “No. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to snap at you. I did think I was pregnant, we thought, but either I was wrong, or I was only pregnant for a little while. Either way, there isn’t a baby now. Duncan doesn’t know yet. I was going to tell him today, but then I just couldn’t. I was going to. I meant to.” Laura looked over at Gordon’s dear, kind face. Was he going to cry?

  “Can you try again, I mean, do you have, you know, like frozen embryos and sperm and eggs and things? I understand if it’s none of my business,” Gordon added, looking around for somewhere to set his mug down, but then once he had put it on the table next to him, he picked it up again and took another sip of his tea, and another, practically hiding behind his mug.

  “No, Gordy, nothing like that, we were just starting up that path, actually. We haven’t frozen anything. We had appointments—we have appointments—I don’t know how much Duncan ever talked to you about any of this.” Laura tried to hold eye contact with Gordon, but he kept looking away from her, casting his gaze all over the room, down at the rug, anywhere but back at her face.

  “But can’t you still, you know, do something, so Duncan can still be the father … you know?” Gordy trailed off.

  “Actually, there is something for men with spinal cord injuries called sperm extraction—I’ve read about it, but we could only try that if Duncan agrees, at some point in the future, and it’s way too soon even to bring it up, with everything else going on for him right now. I have no idea if it’s even an option for us.”

  “I hope you can do that,” Gordon said in a near whisper. “Whenever.”

  Laura got up and went over to the bar cart (which had been a prized possession of the late Helen Wheeler—Gordon had no use for it and Duncan loved it, though it was incongruous in their living room) and poured herself a cognac, which she carried back to the sofa. When she wasn’t trying to get pregnant, Laura had never really been a drinker of anything but wine, and she rarely liked the strong taste of spirits such as cogn
ac. On the rare occasions when she wanted a brandy or an eau de vie, it was on cold winter nights, but this bottle of cognac across the room had suddenly looked very desirable.

  She cradled the heavy crystal snifter, one of a pair Duncan liked much more than she did because it was a little too big and heavy in her small hands. Would he ever lift one of these glasses to his mouth again? She took a generous sip, settling back on the sofa and feeling the sweet heat all the way down her throat to her stomach. What time was it? The rain was still boiling outside, a real summer storm. This was a wild conversation to be having with Gordy. Laura felt a weird mix of anger and longing welling up each time she looked over at him sitting there in Duncan’s clothes, in Duncan’s chair, not being Duncan.

  “I wish there was something I could do,” Gordon said sadly. “I feel so useless. They didn’t want my blood for Duncan, even though it’s a perfect match.”

  Laura regarded him over the rim of her glass. “I know, you keep saying. So how serious are you?” She tipped the glass back to spill a little more of the cognac onto her tongue, and as it slid down her throat, it was burning and cloying and heady in that confusing way that reminded Laura that she was never certain that she actually liked cognac, although this was a really good bottle of VSOP which had impressed Jesse and Frank last summer. If only this wasn’t their sabbatical year away. “Give me an example of what you would do for Duncan.” Such an obvious remedy, but was she really going to ask him for this? Tonight she felt just hopeless and reckless enough to go for broke. Laura went over to pick up the cognac bottle so she could read the label, trying to remember what VSOP stood for. Very Special Something Something. Ah, Old Pale. She brought it back to the couch, where she poured herself a new splash.

  “What are you asking me?” Gordon said, rubbing his hands nervously back and forth on his thighs. Which looked like Duncan’s thighs in those jeans. “I think the rain is letting up. I can go now.”