“It was the last movie I saw with Otto before he died,” Mrs. Clausen explained.
“We both liked it. I liked it so much that I wanted to read the book. But I put off reading it until now. I didn’t want to be reminded of the last movie I saw with Otto.”
Patrick Wallingford looked down at The English Patient. She was reading a grownup literary novel and he’d planned to read her Stuart Little. How many more ways would he find to underestimate her?
That she worked in ticket sales for the Green Bay Packers didn’t exclude her from reading literary novels, although (to his shame) Patrick had made that assumption. He remembered liking the movie of The English Patient. His ex-wife had said that the movie was better than the book. That he doubted Marilyn’s judgment on just about everything was borne out when she made a comment about the novel that Wallingford remembered reading in a review. What she’d said about The English Patient was that the movie was better because the novel was “too well written.”
That a book could be too well written was a concept only a critic—and Marilyn—could have.
“I haven’t read it,” was all Wallingford said to Mrs. Clausen, who put the book back in her open bag on top of her underwear.
“It’s good,” Doris told him. “I’m reading it very slowly because I like it so much. I think I like it better than the movie, but I’m trying not to remember the movie.”
(Of course this meant that there wasn’t a scene in the film she would ever forget.) What else was there to say? Wallingford had to pee. Miraculously, he refrained from telling Mrs. Clausen this—he’d said quite enough for one night. She shined the flashlight into the hall for him, so that he didn’t have to grope in the dark to find his room.
He was too tired to light the gas lamp. He took the flashlight he found on the dresser top and made his way down the steep stairs. The moon had set; it was much darker now. The first light of dawn couldn’t be far off. Patrick chose a tree to pee behind, although there was no one who could have seen him. By the time he finished peeing, the mosquitoes had already found him. He quickly followed the beam of his flashlight back to the boathouse.
Mrs. Clausen and little Otto’s room was dark when Wallingford quietly passed their open door. He remembered her saying that she never slept with the gaslight on. The propane lamps were probably safe enough, but a lighted lamp was still a fire—it made her too anxious to sleep.
Wallingford left the door to his room open, too. He wanted to hear when Otto junior woke up. Maybe he would offer to watch the child so that Doris could go back to sleep. How difficult could it be to entertain a baby? Wasn’t a television audience tougher? That was as far as he thought it out.
He finally took off the towel from around his waist. He put on a pair of boxer shorts and crawled into bed, but before he turned the flashlight off, he made sure he’d memorized where it was in case he needed to find it in the dark. (He left it on the floor, by Mrs. Clausen’s side of the bed.) Now that the moon had set, there was an almost total blackness that resembled his prospects with Mrs. Clausen. Patrick forgot to close his curtains, although Doris had warned him that the sun rose directly in his windows. Later, when he was still asleep, Wallingford was supernaturally aware of a predawn light in the sky. This was when the crows started cawing; even in his sleep, he was more aware of the crows than he was of the loons. Without seeing it, he sensed the increasing light. Then little Otto’s crying woke him, and he lay listening to Mrs. Clausen soothe the child. The boy stopped crying fairly quickly, but he still fussed while his mother changed him. From Doris’s tone of voice, and the varying baby noises that Otto made, Wallingford could guess what they were doing. He heard them go down the boathouse stairs; Mrs. Clausen kept talking as they went up the path to the main cabin. Patrick remembered that the baby formula had to be mixed with bottled water, which Mrs. Clausen heated on the stove.
He looked first in the area of his missing left hand and then at his right wrist. (He would never get used to wearing his watch on his right arm.) Just as the rising sun shot through his bedroom windows from across the lake, Patrick saw that it was only a little past five in the morning.
As a reporter, he’d traveled all over the world—he was familiar with sleep deprivation. But he was beginning to realize that Mrs. Clausen had had eight months of sleep deprivation; it had been criminal of Wallingford to keep her up most of the night. That Doris carried only one small bag for all her things, yet she’d brought half a dozen bags of paraphernalia for the baby, was more than symbolic—little Otto was her life.
What measure of madness was it that Wallingford had even imagined he could entertain little Otto while Mrs. Clausen caught up on her sleep? He didn’t know how to feed the child; he’d only once (yesterday) seen Doris change a diaper. And he couldn’t be trusted to burp the baby. (He didn’t know that Mrs. Clausen had stopped burping Otto.)
I should summon the courage to jump in the lake and drown, Patrick was thinking, when Mrs. Clausen came into his room carrying Otto junior. The baby was wearing only a diaper. All Doris was wearing was an oversize T-shirt, which had probably belonged to Otto senior. The T-shirt was a faded Green Bay green with the familiar Packers’ logo; it hung past midthigh, almost to her knees.
“We’re wide awake now, aren’t we?” Mrs. Clausen was saying to little Otto.
“Let’s make sure Daddy is wide awake, too.”
Wallingford made room for them in the bed. He tried to remain calm. (This was the first time Doris had referred to him as “Daddy.”)
Before dawn, it had been cool enough to sleep under a blanket, but now the room was flooded with sunlight. Mrs. Clausen and the baby slipped under the top sheet while Wallingford pushed the blanket off the foot of the bed to the floor.
“You should learn how to feed him,” Doris said, handing the bottle of formula to Patrick. Otto junior was laid upon a pillow; his bright eyes followed the bottle as it passed between his parents.
Later Mrs. Clausen sat Otto upright between two pillows. Wallingford watched his son pick up a rattle and shake it and put it in his mouth—not exactly a fascinating chain of events, but the new father was spellbound.
“He’s a very easy baby,” Mrs. Clausen said.
Wallingford didn’t know what to say.
“Why don’t you try reading him some of that mouse book you brought?” she asked. “He doesn’t have to understand you—it’s the sound of your voice that matters. I’d like to hear it, too.”
Patrick climbed out of bed and came back with the book.
“Nice boxers,” Doris told him.
There were parts of Stuart Little that Wallingford had marked, thinking that they might have special significance for Mrs. Clausen. How Stuart’s first date with Harriet Ames goes awry because Stuart is too upset about his canoe being vandalized to accept Harriet’s invitation to the dance. Alas, Harriet says good-bye,
“leaving Stuart alone with his broken dreams and his damaged canoe.”
Patrick had once thought Doris would like that part—now he wasn’t so sure. He decided he would skip ahead to the last chapter, “Heading North,” and read only the bit about Stuart’s philosophical conversation with the telephone repairman. First they talk about the bird Stuart is looking for. The telephone repairman asks Stuart to describe the bird, then the repairman writes down the description. While Wallingford read this part, Mrs. Clausen lay on her side and watched him with their son. Otto, with only an occasional glance at his mother, appeared to be listening intently to his father. With both his mother and father near enough to touch, the child was getting sufficient attention.
Then Patrick reached the moment when the telephone repairman asks Stuart where he’s headed. Wallingford read this excerpt with particular poignancy.
“North,” said Stuart.
“North is nice,” said the repairman. “I’ve always enjoyed going north. Of course, south-west is a fine direction, too.”
“Yes, I suppose it is,” said Stuart, thoughtfully.
“And there’s east,” continued the repairman. “I once had an interesting experience on an easterly course. Do you want me to tell you about it?”
“No, thanks,” said Stuart.
The repairman seemed disappointed, but he kept right on talking.
“There’s something about north,” he said, “something that sets it apart from all other directions. A person who is heading north is not making any mistake, in my opinion.”
“That’s the way I look at it,” said Stuart. “I rather expect that from now on I shall be traveling north until the end of my days.”
“Worse things than that could happen to a person,” said the repairman.
“Yes, I know,” answered Stuart.
Worse things than that had happened to Patrick Wallingford. He’d not been heading north when he met Mary Shanahan, or Angie, or Monika with a k —or his ex-wife, for that matter. He had met Marilyn in New Orleans, where he was doing a three-minute story on excessive partying at Mardi Gras; he’d been having a fling with a Fiona somebody, another makeup girl, but he dumped Fiona for Marilyn. (A long-acknowledged mistake.)
A trivial statistic, but Wallingford couldn’t think of a woman he’d had sex with while traveling north. As for being up north, he’d only been there with Doris Clausen, with whom he wanted to remain—not necessarily up north but anywhere
—until the end of his days.
Pausing for dramatic effect, Patrick repeated just that phrase—“until the end of my days.” Then he looked at little Otto, afraid that the child might be bored, but the boy was as alert as a squirrel; his eyes flashed from his father’s face to the colored picture on the book’s cover. (Stuart in his birchbark canoe with summer memories stamped on the bow.)
Wallingford was thrilled to have seized and kept his young son’s attention, but when he glanced at Mrs. Clausen, upon whom he’d hoped to make a redeeming impression, he realized that she’d fallen asleep—in all likelihood, before she fully comprehended the relevancy of the “Heading North” chapter. Doris lay on her side, still turned toward Patrick and their baby boy, and although her hair partly covered her face, Wallingford could see that she was smiling. Well… if not exactly smiling, at least she wasn’t frowning. Both in her expression and in the tranquillity of her repose, Mrs. Clausen seemed more at peace than Wallingford had ever known her to be. Or more deeply asleep—Patrick couldn’t really tell.
Taking his new responsibility seriously, Wallingford picked up Otto junior and inched out of the bed—carefully, so as not to wake the boy’s mother. He carried the child into the other bedroom, where he did his best to imitate Doris’s orderly routine. He boldly attempted to change the baby on the bed that was appointed as a changing table, but (to Patrick’s dismay) the diaper was dry, little Otto was clean, and while Wallingford contemplated the astonishing smallness of his son’s penis, Otto peed straight up in the air in his father’s face. Now Patrick had grounds for changing the diaper—not easy to do one-handed.
That done, Wallingford wondered what he should do next. As Otto junior sat upright on the bed, virtually imprisoned by the pillows Patrick had securely piled around him, the inexperienced father searched through the bags of baby paraphernalia. He assembled the following items: a packet of formula, a clean baby bottle, two changes of diapers, a shirt, in case it was cool outside—if they went outside—and a pair of socks and shoes, in case Otto was happiest bouncing in the jumper-seat.
That contraption was in the main cabin, where Wallingford carried Otto next. The socks and shoes, Patrick thought—thereby revealing the precautionary instincts of a good father—would protect the baby’s tiny toes and prevent him from getting splinters in his soft little feet. As an afterthought, just before he’d left the boathouse apartment with Otto and the bag of paraphernalia, Wallingford had added the baby’s hat to the bag, along with Mrs. Clausen’s copy of The English Patient. His one hand had lightly touched Doris’s underwear as he’d reached for the book.
It was cooler in the main cabin, so Patrick put the shirt on Otto, and just for the challenge, also dressed the boy in his socks and shoes. He tried putting Otto in the jumper-seat, but the child cried. Patrick then put the little boy in the highchair, which Otto seemed to like better. (Only momentarily—there was nothing to eat.) Finding a baby spoon in the dish drainer, Wallingford mashed a banana for Otto, who enjoyed spitting out some of the banana and rubbing his face with it before wiping his hands on his shirt.
Wallingford wondered what else he could feed the child. The kettle on the stove was still warm. He dissolved the powdered formula in about eight ounces of the heated water and mixed some of the formula with a little baby cereal, but Otto liked the banana better. Patrick tried mixing the baby cereal with a teaspoon of strained peaches from one of the jars of baby food. Otto cautiously liked this, but by then several globs of banana, and some of the peach-cereal mixture, had found their way into his hair.
It was evident to Wallingford that he’d managed to get more food on Otto than in him. He dampened a paper towel with warm water and wiped the baby clean, or almost clean; then he took Otto out of the highchair and put him in the jumper-seat again. The boy bounced all around for a couple of minutes before throwing up half his breakfast.
Wallingford took his son out of the jumper-seat and sat down in a rocking chair, holding the child in his lap. He tried giving him a bottle, but the besmeared little boy drank only an ounce or two before he spit up in Wallingford’s lap. (Wallingford was wearing just his boxer shorts, so what did it matter?) Patrick tried pacing back and forth with Otto in the crook of his left arm and Mrs. Clausen’s copy of The English Patient held open, like a hymnal, in his right hand. But given Wallingford’s handless left arm, Otto was too heavy to carry in this fashion for long. Patrick returned to the rocking chair. He sat Otto on his thigh and let the boy lean against him; the back of the child’s head rested on Wallingford’s chest and left shoulder, with Wallingford’s left arm around him. They rocked back and forth for ten minutes or more, until Otto fell asleep. Patrick slowed the rocker down; he held the sleeping boy on his lap while he attempted to read The English Patient. Holding the book open in his one hand was less difficult than turning the pages, which required an act of considerable manual dexterity—as challenging to Wallingford as some of his efforts with prosthetic devices—but the effort seemed suited to the early descriptions of the burned patient, who doesn’t appear to remember who he is.
Patrick read only a few pages, stopping at a sentence Mrs. Clausen had underlined in red—the description of how the eponymous English patient drifts in and out of consciousness as the nurse reads to him.
So the books for the Englishman, as he listened intently or not, had gaps of plot like sections of a road washed out by storms, missing incidents as if locusts had consumed a section of tapestry, as if plaster loosened by the bombing had fallen away from a mural at night.
It was not only a passage to be reread and admired; it also reflected well on the reader who had marked it. Wallingford closed the book and placed it gently on the floor. Then he shut his eyes and concentrated on the soothing motion of the rocker. When Wallingford held his breath, he could hear his son breathing—a holy moment for many parents. And as he rocked, Patrick made a plan. He would go back to New York and read The English Patient. He would mark his favorite parts; he and Mrs. Clausen could compare and discuss their choices. He might even be able to persuade her to rent a video of the movie, which they could watch together. Well, Wallingford thought, as he fell asleep in the rocking chair, holding his sleeping son… wouldn’t this be a more promising subject between them than the travels of a mouse or the imaginative ardor of a doomed spider? Mrs. Clausen found them sleeping in the rocker. Good mother that she was, she closely examined the evidence of Otto’s breakfast—including what remained of the baby’s formula in his bottle, her son’s strikingly spattered shirt, his peachstained hair and banana-spotted socks and shoes, and the unmistakable indication that he
had puked on Patrick’s boxer shorts. Mrs. Clausen must have found everything to her liking, especially the sight of the two of them asleep in the rocking chair, because she photographed them twice with her camera. Wallingford didn’t wake up until Doris had already made coffee and was cooking bacon. (He remembered telling her that he liked bacon.) She was wearing her purple bathing suit. Patrick imagined his swimming trunks all alone on the clothesline, a self-pitying symbol of Mrs. Clausen’s probable rejection of his proposal.
They spent the day lazily, if not entirely relaxed, together. The underlying tension between them was that Doris made no mention of Patrick’s proposal. They took turns swimming off the dock and watching Otto. Wallingford once again went wading with the baby in the shallow water by the sandy beach. They took a boat ride together. Patrick sat in the bow, with little Otto in his lap, while Mrs. Clausen steered the boat—the outboard, because Doris understood it better. The outboard didn’t go as fast as the speedboat, but it wouldn’t have mattered as much to the Clausens if she’d scratched it or banged it up. They ferried their trash to a Dumpster on a dock at the far end of the lake. All the cottagers took their trash there. Whatever garbage—bottles, cans, paper trash, uneaten food, Otto’s soiled diapers—they didn’t take to the Dumpster on the dock, they would have to carry with them on the floatplane.
In the outboard with the motor running, they couldn’t hear each other talk, but Wallingford looked at Mrs. Clausen and very carefully mouthed the words: “I love you.” He knew she’d read his lips and had understood him, but he didn’t grasp what she said to him in return. It was a longer sentence than “I love you”; he sensed she was saying something serious.
On the way back from dumping the trash, Otto junior fell asleep. Wallingford carried the sleeping boy up the stairs to his crib. Doris said that Otto usually took two naps during the day; it was the motion of the boat that had lulled the child to sleep so soundly. Mrs. Clausen speculated that she would have to wake him up to feed him.
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