The day he’s been dreading finally arrives.
Dr. Richmond smiles, claps Cuthbert on the shoulder, and says, “Well, my good chap. Time for you to go home.”
They have done their best for him. Two surgeries and enough pain medication over time to put down an elephant. They have come in every day to work with him. He is able now to use the wheelchair and get around—mostly—on his own, to dress and shower and feed himself, so when they ask about his home support system, he lies and says, yes, he has someone. He has no one, and there is still so much more therapy to do and another surgery in a few months. A long road, they say, but he is stable now and the odds are in his favor to walk again someday. Most people cry joyful tears; they laugh and smile for this news. Cuthbert asks if he can stay a few weeks more—he’s not sure he’s ready, you see; he’s still in so much pain.
Dr. Richmond shakes his head and claps him on the shoulder again. “Sorry, chap. We need the bed.”
The nurse brings him a sack of clothes—a pair of brown slacks, pressed and folded perfectly along the seam, a long-sleeve white shirt on a hanger, a silver-and-blue-striped tie, a clean pair of socks and underwear, his everyday work shoes polished to gleaming. He recognizes his clothes at once, but he does not wonder very long about how they came into the nurse’s possession. He is distracted, fumbling to dress and, at the same time, worried about how he’s going to make it home. It is too far to walk—roll, he means—and he does not know which bus can take him close enough, if there is even a bus at all. He sighs, buttons the last button on his shirt, and then leans back against his pillow to rest.
A few days ago, for the first time since his fall, Cuthbert moved his big toe, which seems such an insignificant thing, but Dr. Richmond said it was wonderful. He also said that if Cuthbert had fallen a few inches more to the right or left, if the building had been even a half inch taller, they would not be discussing the probability of a full recovery or anything at all for that matter. If the world had spun a little faster on its axis that day, or a little slower, if a butterfly had flapped its wings, Cuthbert would probably be dead.
“Mr. Wilson? Your ride is here.” The nurse pushes his wheelchair close to the bed. “Are you ready?”
He nods, grateful they’ve arranged something for him, so he doesn’t have to sit on the curb, waiting for a bus that might never come, as strangers gawk and stare.
Down to the lobby, and when the elevator doors open, the nurse pushes him into a stream of people who pretend not to notice how broken he is, though he can feel their pity, hear their sighs of relief that it is him, not them, who suffers so. He does not see her right away, but when he does, he slams his hands onto the wheels, bringing them both—himself and the nurse—to a sudden stop.
“Mr. Wilson?” The nurse bends down, and a bit of her hair brushes against his cheek. “Mr. Wilson, is everything all right?”
She’s standing outside the gift store, beside a giant toy giraffe. Her hair is combed and curled, and dyed a darker shade of brown. She is wearing a pale-green sundress, spotted with tiny white flowers. She smiles and lifts one hand to wave. In her other hand: the scarf. The one she made. For him. She takes a tentative step forward.
“Mr. Wilson?” The nurse tries to push, but he keeps his hands clamped over the wheels.
It would be easy enough to tell them there’s been a terrible mistake. He can’t go with this woman—this stranger. She’s the freak who tried to kill him. But then, that’s not exactly true, is it? After all, wasn’t he the one who followed her up to the roof? He who lost his balance? She did not push or threaten him, only made grand professions of love and destiny. Only offered her heart.
So maybe he had overreacted.
Cuthbert releases the wheelchair, and the nurse pushes him the rest of the way. They stop in front of the woman, who crouches beside him and wraps the scarf six times around his neck.
She smiles and brushes her thumb across his cheek. Her hands are soft. She smells like rain and laundry detergent. She says, “Let’s get you home.”
The nurse is still here. He can change his mind, have her call a cab. Or the police.
Cuthbert curls the tassels of the scarf through his fingers and stares at the automatic glass doors sliding open and closed. An old man gives his arm to an even older woman, helping her to the front desk. A teenager pushes a middle-aged woman in a wheelchair. Another woman carries a toddler on her hip. For all he knows, these people are strangers. That man, that woman, that child. They might know as much about one another as he knows about the woman who knitted him this scarf, who bends close to his ear now and says, “You won’t believe how much Goldie has grown. Oh, but she’ll be so happy to see you!”
Cuthbert spins the gold band on his finger.
“All right, then, Mr. Wilson?” the nurse asks.
Cuthbert is surprised to find himself nodding.
The nurse steps back from the wheelchair. “He’s all yours, Mrs. Wilson.”
Who is Mrs. Wilson? he wonders. And then the woman from the roof grabs the wheelchair handles and pushes Cuthbert out the hospital doors, moving carefully over the slightly raised threshold. His car idles at the curb. The woman opens the passenger door, then says, “Here we go,” lifts him under the arms, and swings him into the seat like he’s no heavier than a child. He finds her strength comforting and holds her longer than he means to, lingering with his nose pressed into her hair. He breathes in deep and catches the faint and familiar scent of vanilla. The woman does not push him away.
When he lets go and settles back, she reaches across and buckles his seat belt, pulling it tight. “How’s that?”
He nods. She stands there another moment longer, holding the door open, lingering. Then she leans over again and her lips brush briefly against his cheek.
Before he can say anything, it’s over, and she is pulling away, saying, “It’s so good to see you again, my love. I’ve missed you dreadfully. Me and Goldie both.”
There is something in her voice, the way she says Goldie’s name, something that makes Cuthbert feel a little less in pieces, a little less alone, and he wonders if this is what people mean when they talk about love.
She starts to close his door, but he stops her and says, “I’m sorry . . . They never told me your name.”
About the Author
VALERIE GEARY is a full-time writer who lives in Portland, Oregon. Her short fiction has been published in The Rumpus, Menda City Review, Boston Literary Magazine, and Foundling Review. Crooked River is her first novel. Find her on Twitter @valeriegeary or at www.valeriegeary.com.
Valerie on Writing
This Great Love
Ian McEwan’s Enduring Love. I read this book many years ago and am still haunted by it, by this idea that with a passing glance—a single, brief encounter—the entire course of someone’s life can change. Coincidence becomes fate becomes destiny; a butterfly flaps its wings, and a story is born.
Anton Chekhov’s “The Huntsman.” At the end of this story, there’s a striking paragraph in which a woman is watching her estranged husband disappear over a hill, and there’s a desperate ache to the imagery, a reaching loneliness. Yet there’s a boundless hope, too, that someday, impossibly, he might return to her. This dichotomy intrigued me enough to start brainstorming my own story, which eventually became This Great Love.
My sister. She knits me charming hats, cozy socks, gloves to keep my fingers warm. She knits and knits, crafting so many beautiful things from yarn and love. I think of her every time I wear something she’s made. So when I was drawing Prudence in my mind, when I saw her struggling to connect, it seemed only natural that she would take up needles and knit something special for Cuthbert.
A broken back. Shortly after I started writing This Great Love, I slipped off the bow of our sailboat and landed hard on a metal cleat, breaking my L4 transverse process. A painful injury indeed, though nothing close to what poor Cuthbert endured! Five weeks’ bed rest, and my bone healed completely on
its own. But during those immobile days, when moving even my big toe caused pain, I was able to imagine and really get a sense for how much worse it would be without my husband around to take care of me—how impossible life would feel, and how lonely, too.
Social anxiety. I think, on some level, most everyone struggles with stepping out bravely and making meaningful human connections. I know I do. As a self-diagnosed shy introvert, I prefer books over concerts, and tables for two over crowded house parties. I have spent my fair share of lonely hours sitting in front of windows, watching the world pass by, and, yes, I absolutely tapped into those feelings and fears when writing This Great Love.
Forsyth Harmon © 2014
I’M YOUR SHADE
* * *
B.D. MAUK
There isn’t much to say about the Midweek offices themselves, where for the past six years I’ve worn down the speckled blue carpeting of the assistant editor’s windowless office and, more recently, the editor-in-chief’s windowed one. Just now I am lying on the floor of the latter, or actually five inches above it, on an inflatable air mattress, waiting for Jon, my dead boss, to appear.
I think of the carpet as blue, which is what a man standing at full height under strong fluorescent lighting might call it at first glance. Although on closer inspection—say, by a man lying on an inflatable air mattress, the floor virtually in his face—it’s possible to see even in near-total darkness that the carpet has a speckled or dappled texture, resulting from the many constituent fibers woven about the plastic grid-work, and that these individual fibers are of at least eight identifiable hues (beige, rust, navy, cerulean, and so on), which from the vantage of six feet create the believable appearance—the gestalt, you might say—of a single color: the grey-blue of the sea under a sky that won’t rain. This somber color emerges from the component fibers, none of which is, on its own, the precise shade of their aggregate. I’ve had opportunity to study the carpet closely and at length since being rousted from home by Mandy two nights ago, and I’ve found that, in keeping with the rest of the Midweek’s decor, the carpet is a cheap thing: The “ear to the ground” editor will notice several threads uprooted by the sharp corners of chair legs and file cabinets, as well as slight molehills where the fabric doesn’t lie flush with the floorboards. These hills pop out a centimeter or so from the ground and can be pushed in to change the floor topography elsewhere, the result of which is an added third dimension to the dappled pattern of the carpet: a depth of carpet. From my supine position on the mattress, I’m reaching out to push on one molehill now, imagining as I do so that this will activate a secret wall panel or trapdoor installed by Jon—who in my fantasy would have prepared this final test for me while still alive—revealing some covert communiqué from beyond the grave. But when I push on the hill, I hear no clicking latch or electronic chime, and the only visible change in the office is that a new hill pops out several inches away, purple and zit-like in the gloom.
What else in the office? Exposed wires; cheap plastic blinds; windows in which loose panes rattle against the elements. Flimsy interoffice walls of plywood, foam, and fabric. Once, I’d believed that the Spartan decor was another manifestation of Jon’s stinginess. In fact, the paper is bankrupt. By cutting our freelance rates and strategically misplacing the interns’ paychecks, I’ve managed to scrape together printing and distribution costs for the past few issues, but if nothing more is done, we’ll soon be shuttered. In the months since assuming Jon’s position, I’ve grimly learned to appreciate every little savings, such as the fact that our flimsy walls obviate the need to buy actual corkboards for any staff. (The writing’s on the wall, he used to say when incensed, slapping a worker’s papered wall until thumbtacks rained onto the offending employee’s head.) By lifting my own head, I can see where on one such plywood wall I have tacked up the months’ worth of working proofs, P&Ls, and press releases of my brief tenure. Beneath these, I’ve pinned more permanent fixtures: business cards, typefaces, a photograph of Mandy. Even in the dark, I can make out—dimly, of course—the layered surface of this wall, my working wall, on the other side of which is the now-vacant assistant editor’s office. I know just what Jon would have said about my papered wall: Fitz, a disorganized office is the sign of a disorganized mind. The very sight of it would probably have sent him into one of his famous rages. But I like that when a gust of air circulates within my office—as happens when the door is opened quickly—a few of the pages lift and wave with ghostly comport, like strips attached to a vent. The papers worry in the air for a moment, seeming very much alive and purposeful—as they could not if each corner were pinned into permanent arrest.
At four thirty today, following just such an episode of waving, in the wake of Bernice’s departure from my office, I turned from my computer to gaze out the north-facing window. The windows are an undeniable perk of my sudden, otherwise tragic, promotion. They look out on Main Street, where the small-town vista offers respite from the voices that Jon used to speak of: the murmur and yelp of ledes, layouts, half-column ads, local politicians and business owners, crime-scene witnesses, conspiracy theorists, the flea-market din of the classifieds—the whole rancid rabble that harangues the small-town editor, who must be the paper’s ombudsman, design team, accountant, and head writer all in one. How pleasant to look up from one or another of these myriad jobs and see not pages of unfinished work, as was the case in my former office (where the desk grotesquely faced my working wall), but to see instead the placid Spielbergian town itself. There is something affirming in this. As Bernice’s antiseptic perfume lingered in the air, I lifted my gaze to the framed view of the Larwood post office and corner store, and was briefly overwhelmed. My throat tightened, and I was thankful the office secretary was no longer present to witness the small mammalian noise I made. Though I am thought by my coworkers and wife to be a reserved and even stoic figure (especially compared to my predecessor, a man of seriously unstable moods), for a moment I felt near hysterics as I looked out into the bright afternoon. The bankruptcy had me feeling in over my head—beleaguered, as Jon would have said. (He was always beleaguered, would pull me into his office, enraged or depressed, clutching a cigarette despite office regulations, and with his head in his hands would intone my name: Fitz Fitz Fitz. I’ve really stepped in it now.) Now I am the one beleaguered, driven not to illicit indoor smoking but to staring out my window at Main Street in exhaustion. So much as glancing at anything inside my office forces me to consider not only the budget crisis that had been looming for a year and which Jon kept hidden from me, but also Jon’s surprising and unpleasant death, which occurred just weeks after his announcement, and fast-tracked my promotion in what I suspect was a reckless manner the paper’s board of directors may already regret; not to mention the fact that for the past three days I have been living in said office, such that now it truly has begun to take on a disorganized or even crazed appearance, as Bernice put it this afternoon: I don’t know, Mr. Fitz. I’d lose my head with such a mess, wouldn’t be able to find my own brain.
From my position on the inflatable mattress I can make out the corner windows—rhombuses from this angle—which the half-raised blinds cause to resemble two sleepy pink eyes. The pinkness is due to the stoplight at Main and Cooper. I’ve watched the light in the room change dozens of times tonight, hundreds of times this week, so I am accustomed to its rhythm, to the fact that in fifty minutes an internal timer mechanism will cause it to begin blinking, which is when the frightening spectral phenomenon that I first encountered by happenstance two nights ago, following the argument with my wife, will appear. This is why I must sleep in Jon’s former office and not elsewhere, despite its being filled with bad memories and the mummified stench of cigarette smoke. (He’d refused to cut back once his health began to fail him, and in fact he was smoking as he admitted to me his intentions to retire, pulling me into his office as though we were going to have one of our usual chats—even then he was puffing his Pall Malls conspiratorially, exhaling
a theatrical gust of smoke before the key phrases: doctor more or less ordered, more time with my family, recommended you, best man for the job, not doing you any favors. Nothing about the money trouble, of course. I didn’t make that discovery until later, when I was tasked with cleaning out not just his precarious ashtrays but also the files and computer in his office, and I stumbled upon—or rather, reluctantly deduced over several long, withering days—the damning evidence. And rather than present it to the board, as perhaps I should have done, I actually phoned him up—just two days before his death—and asked about the money. He fumbled at some sort of explanation: not what it looks like, something I’ve been meaning to tell you, I’ve been piecing together. Then he stopped returning any calls, because he was dead, leaving me to look out his office windows for an explanation that would never come. Is it so outrageous to consider this to be the sort of proverbial unfinished business so common in paranormal lore?)
My watch reads twenty minutes past midnight. As the stoplight changes and washes the room in green, I turn my head back to the carpet, whose effect of appearing blue at a distance yet multihued up close reminds me of a standard cathode-ray-tube television on which seemingly fluid and uniform moving images—a woman’s screaming mouth, say, or the furrowed eyebrows of Craig T. Nelson—on closer inspection reveal themselves to be constructed of intricate mosaics of identical red, blue, and green rectangles. Thousands of these tesserae interlock to form a smooth image via simple gestalt principles familiar to any student of psychology. My carpet’s mosaic does not, of course, regularly present such images, although in a sense this would be possible—say, if the carpet were an intentionally patterned tapestry. Such eyebrows might conceivably emerge out of some planned pointillism on the part of the carpet manufacturer. A client—a megalomaniacal boss, say—might even request of the manufacturer a tapestry featuring not just his eyebrows but his entire face to adorn an office floor so that every day he’d tread over his own stern visage. Although obviously that would be completely insane. In the light of day, at least, my office carpet projects only the familiar piebald blueness. What’s more, for the carpet to further manifest or “televise” moving images, its component fibers (beige, rust, etc.) would have to be not constant in number and brilliance, but fluctuating, like the red-blue-green rectangles that become visible on a TV only when one stands close to its bulbous glass screen, and which are created by the passage of three electron beams through a gridded mask, comparable here to the hidden plastic grid that forms the backing of inexpensive carpet panels. No, the carpet has no such dynamism, no explicable properties of movement—a wild carpet that’d be! For it is a TV’s fluctuating components that create the dynamic brick-like or mosaic effect that, as one backs slowly away from the television screen, is smoothed by the limits of our visual acuity at the usual viewing distance several feet away. I do find it fascinating that, in a supremely complicated version of the carpet’s blueness, these few nodes of color are responsible for such diverse emergent images as frown or Craig T. Nelson eyebrow. I have often planted my face up against the set in our bedroom—the bedroom Mandy and I have shared for twenty years—in order to reassure myself that this is still the case, and I experience unmitigated pleasure in those moments when my eyes breach the acuity threshold and are able to deconstruct a televised image into its constituent atoms. And when I bend over far enough to identify the component colors of the “blue” carpet in my office, I again experience this strange, unmitigated pleasure. I find it oddly relaxing, and, as my stress levels have lately increased, I’ve been at the screen more often, putting nose to glass and experiencing the beauty of gestalt properties for a few minutes each night. It is not bizarre or creepy; rather it is a sort of meditation, little different from the widely accepted practice of gazing out one’s office window.
Day One, Year One: Best New Stories and Poems, 2014 Page 4