The Punch

by Noah Hawley

  This was the sight Scott found when he showed up sleepless and jittery on that blustery winter morning, his father vibrating in his wheelchair, antsy to get to the hospital and see his wife.

  “Hey, Pop,” said Scott. His face was numb. His lips were chapped from the cold. He bent for a hug, feeling the unnatural protrusion of his father’s shoulder blades. Shouldn’t there be meat on those? Muscle?

  “Where have you been?” his father said. “It’s almost eight.”

  As soon as the wheelchair reached the street, Joe had a cigarette lit, the smoke billowing back into Scott’s face. Inside the ICU, they found Doris stretched out on a sloping, high-tech bed, sedated. She had a tube down her throat to help her breathe. There was a shunt in her neck, a blood pressure cuff on her right arm. At every point she was connected to a drip or monitor, like a radio with its faceplate off, wiry guts spilling out. Staring down at her, Scott didn’t recognize his own mother. They had pumped her full of so much fluid that her normally thin body was now a sausage, her face a giant moon, flushed and distressed. Hooked up to so many machines, she looked terminal. The power of the image made Scott feel small, inconsequential. He was a bug on a windshield, a speck of dirt on the bottom of a shoe.

  His father rolled over to the side of the bed, took his wife’s hand. He stroked her skin with his thumb.

  “Hi, beauty,” he said. “Hi, beauty. We’re here.”

  Scott stood at the foot of the bed watching them. They had come so far together, been through so much, and this was how it was going to end. They were being pulled apart by their own bodies. Scott pictured them lying side by side in the ICU, connected to each other by machines. Her blood would pump through his veins, his medicines cycling through her body. Their vital signs would be displayed side by side, as if finally here, at the end of the line, they could truly become one, interchangeable, symbiotic.

  Scott stood silently and watched his father commune with his mother. These two men, father and son, with no religion between them, were praying the only way they knew how, with grunts and curses.

  If you take this woman, this wife, this mother, there will be hell to pay. Don’t think there won’t. We will track you down. We will make you pay.

  The doctor came in, checked her chart.

  “We’re not pessimistic,” he said. “We think we should have her off the machine and breathing on her own in a few days, but it’s going to be tough. Is she a fighter?”

  Scott looked at his father. Neither really knew how to answer that. She fought, yes, but only when cornered. Out of fear, not strength.

  “She’ll fight,” said Scott’s father. He said it with absolute conviction. He had survived six years of illness. He was a soldier who had lived through a dozen blood-soaked battles. He didn’t fight all this way just to have his wife sicken and die in a weekend.

  A week later Doris came off the respirator and went on oxygen. Ultimately, even that was phased out, leaving her to breathe the impure air of the normal world like the rest of us. And now here she is, sitting with a glass of wine and an oxygen line, waiting for her husband’s doppelgänger to get back with the Chinese food. What Scott doesn’t understand is that whether or not she tried to kill herself that day in New York is irrelevant. She has, after all, been committing suicide for most of her adult life, killing herself on the layaway plan, a little bit every day.

  “Those were antibiotics,” he tells his mother. “This is antianxiety medication. It’s different.”

  She makes a face that tells him to stop kidding himself, that says, doctors are our enemies, not our friends. Scott is about to respond when he hears the sound of the key in the door. Roscoe comes back. They sit around the low coffee table, eating. They use paper towels for napkins. Scott can’t remember the last time he sat at an upright table with his parents and ate with real napkins. His father’s ashes sit in the center of the table, next to a container of Mongolian beef. Roscoe asks Scott about his work, and Scott rolls out the best stories. He has two beers with dinner. Outside the rain stops. The streets gleam under the city lights, and for a moment as they eat, everything feels strangely normal. Once again it is Doris and Scott and Joe sitting around the dinner table, though, of course, it is a different Joe, a strange hippie Joe, but there comes a point at the apex of emotional exhaustion where just sitting quietly around a meal can feel so deeply, reassuringly human. Because even in crisis you have to eat, even in the face of sickness and death.

  And so that’s what they do, scoop and chew and swallow, staring down at their plates, grateful for a moment’s peace.

  That night Scott has a dream that his father calls. In the dream, Scott is walking along a dark, winding asphalt road. It is a hot summer day and all around him are green fields. His phone rings. He answers. On the other end of the line his father says, I just want you to know, I’m okay. The sun is an orange fireball overhead. The connection is bad. His father’s voice clips in and out, then disappears completely. As Scott is standing there, the phone rings again. A different sound now, more insistent. Rising up from slumber, Scott realizes his cell phone really is ringing. He fumbles around for the sound, unsure of where he is. He sits up, disoriented. It takes him a long time to recognize his mother’s living room. He finds his phone. There on the LCD screen is Kate’s picture. He pushes SEND.

  “Kate?”

  “Oh, shit. Did I wake you?”

  He looks at the clock.

  “It’s two-thirty in the morning, Kate.”

  “Is it? I’m so sorry. Do you want me to go?”

  He rubs his face with his hand, trying to focus.

  “No. Just—what’s going on?”

  There is a long pause on the other end of the line. He is both hyperalert and still asleep. In his addled state, Scott can make out the box with his father’s ashes on the coffee table. He has been sleeping three feet away, dreaming strange, ashy dreams. Waiting for her reply, he feels like an inmate on death row, that same panicked optimism. The phone has rung. Is it a pardon from the governor or the beginning of an execution?

  “I just wanted to apologize,” she says.

  Finally, he thinks. His heart is a redwood tree grown a hundred feet tall. Their romance is every long shot that ever paid off, every team that ever came back from certain defeat to beat the spread, every crazy dream that became a reality.

  Scott catches motion out of the side of his eye, looks over. Roscoe is standing in the doorway, naked.

  “I heard talking,” he says.

  Scott covers the mouthpiece.

  “I’m on the phone,” he says.

  Roscoe stands there, peering into the dark.

  “I thought the phone rang,” he says.

  “It’s for me,” says Scott, worried he is now forever scarred by the sight of Joe’s bushy gray pubic hair and naked member. “Go back to bed.”

  Roscoe stands there for another moment, befuddled, then turns and goes back into the hall. Scott uncovers the phone, heart racing.

  “Sorry.”

  “That’s cool. I just wanted to say, don’t give up on me. I’m stuck at this party. For work. Boring. And now I’m totally drunk, but I’m still coming over. If that’s okay?”

  He runs a hand through his hair. She’s speaking English, but her words don’t make sense. He tries to clear his head.

  “You’re coming here?”

  Her voice drops to a seductive purr.

  “I’m not wearing any panties, baby, and I’m totally wet. I want you to tie me up like last time. I masturbated today thinking about your big hard cock.”

  It begins to dawn on him—the feeling rising up his gorge like vomit—that she has not, in fact, called him, but someone else. That she has drunk misdialed.

  “Kate,” he says, “it’s Scott.”

  Silence.

  “Who?” she says, finally, her drunken brain trying to comprehend this turn.

  “Scott. You called me.”

  “Oh, shit. Scott, I’m so sorry.”

/>   “Who did you think you were calling?”

  “I…nobody. How are you? I’ve been thinking about you.”

  And, finally, in that moment, there is clarity. The fever breaks. The shirt does not fit. It looks ridiculous.

  “Kate,” he says, “you are a drunken slut of biblical proportions. Please burn in a fiery hell of herpes and incontinence.”

  Then he hangs up and turns off his phone in case she calls back. The apartment is quiet again. He gets up, goes to the window. Rain is falling gently in the dark, speckling the windows and glazing the streetlights. Scott presses his forehead against the cool glass and closes his eyes.

  Sometimes you have to save yourself from what you want. Like how fucked up is that?

  What do you believe is true, even though you can’t prove it? Christians believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. They believe he was the son of God and that he died for our sins. This defines the world they live in. A world where salvation is possible, redemption. If you believe that God is everywhere and in everything, then your world becomes a glowing, magical place, where the things that happen, the way people act, are infused with a deep, rich meaning. A chair is not just a chair if you believe in God. A thunderstorm is not just a product of atmospheric forces. Likewise, if you know in your heart that there is no God, then everything that happens is symbolic of life’s ultimate, random meaninglessness. A car crash, a giant wave that rises and swallows an island. It’s all just noise. The problem is, there are moments in life when we lose our faith. Something happens to shake our belief. Questions arise. Suddenly the world stops making sense. Imagine believing in God, and then one day, you’re not so sure. You stop seeing the magic in every living thing. The world takes on a cold, bluish tint.

  What do you believe? What can you prove?

  Doris Henry believed in marriage. This was her filter. She saw the world through the lens of partnership. For forty years she lived according to certain rules, scientific guidelines that defined her universe. Most of them were the same as everybody else’s: Water is wet, an object in motion tends to stay in motion, etc. But there were other beliefs she had that made the world hers, uniquely. Namely, that she was one of a pair, that deep down she was never really alone. Couplehood became her navigation tool, the way she judged her relationship to things, her distance. Her husband, Joe, of course, was the closest measurable point. All other points were measured in relation to him. After Joe were her children, David and Scott, then came other family, friends. Picture a grid and every person in the world occupies a place on that grid, but to reach any point you have to pass through Joe. Now you see the way her world was structured. After forty years of marriage, Doris didn’t live on the same planet as the rest of us. She lived on a small moon orbiting the planet, a snug asteroid defined and inhabited by two people.

  She wakes to the sound of a phone ringing, struggles up from sleep, listening attentively. After seven years of caring for her dying husband, she associates the sound of a ringing telephone with bad news. She can’t count how many times a hospital has called her in the middle of the night and said her husband wouldn’t make it through to morning. His death was imminent. And yet he always lived. Always. Until, of course, he didn’t. Until he died. But that came later, after years of false alarms, after surgeries and strokes, after a broken hip, after three bypasses, after liver surgery and heart surgery and who knows what else. There is no lonelier feeling in life than the one that comes over you once you hang up the phone, knowing in your marrow that at this very minute your husband is in pain, terrified, dying. Knowing that any minute now he will leave you finally and irrevocably alone.

  She puts on her glasses. The ringing sound has stopped. It is two-thirty in the morning. Her heart is beating fast. In the old days she would have lit a cigarette, but now that isn’t an option. When she first got it, she tried to sleep with her oxygen line, but one night she almost strangled herself, so now she slips it on only after she wakes up, feeling that reassuring hush of air, pure and delicious, floating up into her nostrils, flowing down into her lungs. The room is bathed in a flickering blue light, the TV still on. CNN Headline News is playing, the sound low.

  On TV she sees images of Mecca, pilgrims in turbans crawling on hands and knees up cobblestone streets, supplicating themselves before the majesty of Allah. There has to be a faster way to get there, she thinks. Bearded men circle shrines, kneel and bow in tandem. Crowds ripple, cluster. Women ululate. This is the kind of world we live in now, one where what you believe in is the most important signifier of who you are. It is time to take sides. There is no room for the dispassionate, the cautious, the reserved. Now is the age of absolute truths. We have left the age of reason behind, with its calculated scientific method. Now is the time for absolute, unyielding dedication. The world has become polarized, and there is no longer a place for rationality. Rationality, the politicians and preachers tell you, will get you killed. While you’re busy weighing the options, gathering data, the enemy is sneaking across your borders, working to exterminate your way of life. Never mind that your way of life is all about weighing options, making informed decisions. Never mind that by abandoning these scientific tools you are basically winning their battle for them. That is a rational thought, and rational thoughts will get you killed.

  Then again, once your husband of forty years dies, there are few rational thoughts remaining. As far as Doris Henry is concerned, Earth has suddenly showed itself to be flat. Gravity is a lie. E no longer equals MC squared. For the last three months she has suffered from a kind of existential vertigo. Her sense of balance has been disrupted. All the visible and invisible signs she used to orient herself have disappeared. Now, when she stands, she has to place a hand against the wall for balance, and no, it’s not because of how much she’s drinking. The drinking is irrelevant. It’s beside the point. This is about angles and motion. It’s about disorientation. What was once solid land is now water, air.

  On TV, Arab pilgrims are replaced by images of American tourists. She sees airports crowded with disgruntled fliers, queued up in long lines, arms outstretched like Jesus, as uniformed inspectors subject them to the most humiliating and invasive searches. There is no such thing as privacy anymore. It doesn’t matter who you say you are. The question is, what can you prove? Where are they all going? Doris wonders. What is the point of going anywhere anymore? And yet she herself has a trip to take, a long, winding journey to her husband’s final resting place. Maine, they will dump his ashes in Maine, and from then on this will be her point of reference, the place against which all things are measured. Wherever she goes, whoever she meets, the shape the world makes will always be a triangle, with her location as Point A, the things and people with whom she’s interacting as Point B, and the great, rocky beaches of Maine as Point C. And this makes her wonder, When your husband dies are you still married? He’s dead, sure, but the idea of him remains, the memory, and deep down there is always the suspicion that any minute now he’s going to walk through that door, looking healthy, rested, his arms open, a smile on his face, saying, I’m better now, beauty. You don’t have to be alone anymore.

  Believing this makes her worry she’s going crazy. It’s not a sane thing to wait for your dead husband to return, not a rational thought, but then again, now is not the time for rational thought. Now is the time for faith. Jesus came back, didn’t he? These days conviction is the prevailing currency. The problem is, Doris isn’t convinced. She doesn’t believe in anything anymore, even herself. She has lost faith.

  From the other room she hears the sound of voices. She listens, but can’t make out a word. It must be Scott, she thinks. Could he be on the phone? Who would call at this hour? Her heart is thundering in her chest. Anxiety. It is an ugly word. There is something about the x and the y, the way it looks, the long i sound, nasal, whining. It is onomatopoetic. And yet the true feeling of anxiety, the oceanic magnitude, makes the word seem pitiful, inadequate. This panicked, galloping fear should have an en
tire dictionary dedicated to it, a bible. And now, of course, is when it’s worst, at three in the morning. That’s the hour at which your brain reaches its maximum speed, ideas ricocheting around, growing in volume, magnitude. And all of it amplified by one question: What the hell am I supposed to do now?

  Doris Henry believes but cannot prove that her life is functionally over. And yet she is still alive.

  If you go back far enough, you will see that she has faced abandonment before. As a child she was dumped one day on an aunt’s doorstep. Her mother, Ruth, had met a man and they were getting married, but there was no room in their lives for a nearsighted five-year-old girl. Her mother’s fiancé didn’t want the stigma of Ruth’s earlier relationship haunting him. He wanted to start fresh, a new wife, a new family. So Doris was raised by her aunt, one of six kids, but never truly one of them. Always an outsider. In high school she started telling people she was an only child. The family would all get together at holidays, her aunt’s extended family, her mother’s. Doris would sit quietly at the kiddie table next to all the wanted children, who were giggling, unencumbered. She would sit across from her mother’s two new girls, who were fresh faced and carefree, watch her mother cut their food, fix the bows in their hair. In this way Doris came to understand the lie of family bonds. She saw the way that families can exist in a state of denial. The way they can ignore even the biggest elephant in the room. The only ones who didn’t know that Ruth was Doris’s real mother were her new sisters. And about this her mother made it very clear, the secret was to be kept from them at all costs. This is another way of being unwanted. To have the very fact of your existence denied. To be negated to your face, ignored. It is a powerful fuel for a young girl’s insecurity. You are nobody’s child, invisible, worse than an orphan, because even as you are isolated, you are surrounded by happy families.