A Hand Reached Down to Guide Me

by David Gates

  He goes back up to the guest room to lie down again. For a nightstand, she’s put a lamp on a small mission bookshelf that she’s stocked with light reading. He picks out Try and Stop Me, by Bennett Cerf, and stacks the two pillows against the headboard. The idea is what, that Bennett Cerf has so many stories you better not try to stop him? Carl’s studying a cartoon of Dorothy Parker hurling a giant pen like a javelin when Aunt Lissa knocks on his open door.

  “I was going through some pictures the last time I came down here.” She holds up an envelope. “I was going to get these copied for you, and then of course I forgot all about it. Don’t ever get old.”

  “Yeah, you warned me about that.” He claps hands, then holds them out, meaning Throw it. She comes over and reaches it out to him.

  He flips through with Aunt Lissa in his peripheral vision. The one of him as a baby, held by his mother wearing a black dress and pearl necklace, his father in a tuxedo, grinning like Mr. Skeleton, his fingers making a V behind her head. The one of Uncle Martin pitching to him in the backyard in Albany, when he was like eleven and had Henry’s old Hank Aaron bat, with “Hank” in quotes. The one of him at six, in that red flannel cowboy shirt with the white pinstripes and slant pockets. Chubby cheeks. Little heartbreaker.

  “These cover the waterfront,” he says.

  “Now, you can’t have them until I make copies.”

  “I don’t know where I’d even keep them right now.”

  “Well, they’ll be here. You know, it’s such a glorious day. You really should go out and get some fresh air.”

  Outside, the cold makes his face sting, but he can feel no difference to his body thanks to Uncle Martin’s old Eddie Bauer coat. Maybe she’ll give it to him: a hoodie under a denim jacket doesn’t really cut it. He walks as far as the corner, to the house with the sign on the lawn that says STOP THE DREDGING. This is about the Hudson River.

  Walking back to Aunt Lissa’s he sees something else that could have spoken to her: the vine that—losing the word here—ornates? That ornates the porch in summertime and is now this brown wirelike arrangement clinging to the chalky posts. Does green somehow seep back up into it, or could a whole new vine grow quickly enough to replace itself every year? Both seem impossible, yet one must be true. But he remembers the name: Dutchman’s pipe. Now there’s something that hangs together: when he was a kid, Uncle Martin used to have this expression for a hopeful patch of blue among the clouds, Enough to make a Dutchman a pair of britches. It gave you the idea of big people living in the sky.

  —

  When the phone rings, he’s back looking at Try and Stop Me. He can’t really follow the anecdotes, but he’s into the cartoons. In one, captioned “Mankiewicz en riposte,” a smirking man removes a cigarette from his mouth and blows a cloud of smoke with an arrow in it at a quailing man. Now are we talking Joe or Herman? Carl knows this Hollywood shit cold.

  Aunt Lissa calls, “Carl? For you.” He gets up off the bed, pads out into the hall with socks sliding on the glossy floor and looks down the stairs at her looking up. “Elaine.”

  The phone on the kitchen wall is still the only one in the house. Aunt Lissa’s going to break her neck some night coming down those stairs. Because of the socks, he’s extra careful himself.

  “Carl. Hi. I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”

  “Oh yeah. You know, thanks.”

  “Lissa called me yesterday. Apparently she didn’t know that we, you know…”

  “Right,” he says.

  “I hope you didn’t mind that I told her.”

  “No, no. God no.” He picks up Aunt Lissa’s egg timer. Such an amazing touch, giving the Wicked Witch red sand. “So,” he says. Like, To what do we owe the pleasure?

  “I really didn’t call because I want anything,” she says.

  “Right.” He sees something move out the side window. Just a gray squirrel across the snow.

  “So are you using again? Or just drinking?”

  “Neither one. You know, to any degree.” He would actually like to steal this egg timer. Whip it out at parties. He puts it back, sand side down.

  “Well, so how come they busted you?”

  “Oh, you know. Just a stupid thing. Open container.”

  “I heard it was a little more than that.”

  “Well, you know. They throw in the kitchen sink to make it sound really dire.”

  “Did I tell you somebody called about the guitar? He wanted to know if you’d take less.”

  “Like how much?”

  “He didn’t really say. I’ve got his number here.”

  “Look, why don’t you just call him, get whatever you can get and keep the money, you know?”

  “Okay, look,” she says, “let’s not worry about the money for now.”

  But Carl heard that for now, don’t think he didn’t.

  —

  He wakes up to the smell of something yummy. It’s like a famous smell, but he can’t come up with the name. Not coriander—something more household. He goes down to the kitchen.

  “You must’ve needed that nap,” Aunt Lissa says. Something’s hissing in the skillet. Onion! She gets under it with the spatula. Louder hissing. “I thought I’d make a quiche to take up. Connie asked us for around seven.”

  “Cool.”

  “I know it’s not the most comfortable thing for you.”

  “You figured that out,” he says.

  “I must say, they have been wonderful.”

  “In all fairness,” he says.

  She pokes a fingernail through the plastic that covers a bouquet of parsley on a Styrofoam tray and plows it open. A nosegay? “You know, I often think we made a mistake keeping Henry at Mount Hermon after the accident. If we’d brought him back to Albany to finish high school, maybe you two would’ve had a better chance at…” She takes the parsley over to the sink.

  “Bonding?” he says.

  “It’s easy to make light of it.”

  “Yeah, I guess I’m just a merry Andrew,” he says. “Like a merry widow.”

  She turns the water on and begins washing the parsley.

  “God, I’m sorry,” he says. “I didn’t mean anything by that.”

  “I do all right,” she says.

  He watches her dry the parsley in a dish towel.

  “So when I get this in the oven,” she says, “what do you say we try on that suit? You’ll want to look as respectable as we both know you really are.”

  “Now that hurts,” he says.

  Up in her bedroom, she opens the closet door and pushes jingling hangers to the side. “I gave his suits to Goodwill, but he kept this one here just in case.” She holds up a gray suit with fat lapels.

  “I hear these are coming back,” Carl says.

  “Never you mind. Let’s see the jacket on you.”

  Carl pulls it on. Tight in his armpits and across the shoulders, sleeves too short.

  She lifts the pants up to his front. “They’ve obviously mistaken me for a much shorter man,” he says.

  “Maybe I can let the cuffs down,” she says. “We’ll make this work.”

  —

  By seven o’clock it’s already down in the zeros, but Aunt Lissa insists they walk up the hill. Carl puts on the Eddie Bauer, Aunt Lissa hands him the quiche to carry and they step out into the cold. She doesn’t know he found that vodka under the kitchen sink, so he keeps his distance. Sky’s so incredibly clear there looks to be nothing between you and the stars, as if “the atmosphere” were an old-school theory like phlogiston.

  “Jim!” he says when Henry opens the door. “They didn’t tell me you were here. It was grand of you to come.”

  Henry says, “Let’s not let the cold in, shall we?”

  “Where do I put this?” Carl says.

  “What is it?”

  “I thought I’d make a quiche,” Aunt Lissa says.

  “Christ, you didn’t have to do that.” Henry holds out his hands. “Should it go in the ov
en?”

  “Wouldn’t hurt just to warm it up,” Aunt Lissa says.

  She takes one end of the couch, Carl the other. Over on the sideboard, glass decanters with silver tags like good doggies: scotch, rye, brandy. At different levels, but all the same amber.

  Connie comes in from the kitchen, wearing black leggings as if she were a slim person, and a big sweater that comes way down. “Lissa, that was so nice of you. Carl? Good to see you too.” She bends down to give Lissa a kiss, and Carl can’t help but see her movieolas swing forward.

  “Now what can I get everybody? Tea? Hot chocolate?”

  “I wouldn’t mind just a touch of that port you had the other night,” Aunt Lissa says. “And I bet Carl would take you up on the hot chocolate.”

  “Yeah, let’s go crazy,” Carl says. That vodka could use a booster, but he can bide his time. Shit, if he gets a second alone in here, he can tip up a decanter.

  “Carl, you haven’t changed a bit,” Connie says.

  “Me either,” Carl says. She gets a look on her face like, What?

  They eat while watching Who Wants to Be a Millionaire; Connie says she’s “totally hooked on it.” It’s a new one on Carl, but he likes the part where the host guy and the person are sitting across from each other in the middle of space and the damned-soul voices are going, “Ah, ah, ah.” There’s a question asking if Mata Hari was a spy during (a) World War I, (b) World War II, (c) the Vietnam War or (d) the Gulf War? The person says, (b) World War II, and Aunt Lissa says it amazes her what people don’t know. Henry says it amazes him what people do know, like when they get into those questions about rock bands. Connie wants to know, what exactly is trivia? Because to one person it may be trivial, but. When the show’s over, Henry gets out the cards for gin rummy and asks what would anybody like. A touch more of that port for Aunt Lissa, Diet Coke for Connie, same for Carl. Henry gets himself a glassful of ice and pours in scotch. Carl is absolutely fine with this. If nothing else, he’ll eventually get another crack at that vodka. He fans his cards out and holds them up to his face for a sneaky smell of them.

  At ten o’clock, Henry puts on the news. Big fire in Albany, hoses arching icy rooster tails in the dark and a young woman talking into a microphone and blowing out white breath. “The apparent cause?” she says. “A faulty heating unit.”

  “A faulty crack pipe,” Henry says.

  “Now, you don’t know that,” Connie says.

  “I know that part of town.”

  She gets up. “I better put that stuff in the dishwasher.”

  Aunt Lissa gets up too. “Let me give you a hand.”

  Now there’s a thing about the dredging, people in parkas holding signs. “Those GE fuckers have got the yahoos stirred up,” Henry says. “The money they spend buying ads, they could have cleaned up the fucking PCBs.”

  “Wait, so you think they should dig up the river?” Carl had assumed Henry was a Republican.

  “What do you, just let sleeping dogs lie? That philosophy hasn’t gotten you too far. You go to court tomorrow, right? I guess if you manage not to lose your shit in front of the judge, they’ll let you off with a fine. Yank your license, of course.”

  “I don’t plan to lose my shit,” Carl says.

  “They’re going to want cash, probably. How much you have?”

  “Couple hundred.” That was before the clothes.

  “It’s going to be more than that. So you were going to do what? Hit her up?” Henry tosses his head in the direction of the kitchen. “Look, call my office. Here.” Lifts a hip as if to fart, digs out his wallet, hands Carl a card. “Or call my cell. I might be out showing. That’s got all my numbers. Let me know how much, and I’ll drive up there.”

  “You’re kidding. Well. Thanks.” Carl looks at the card, then reaches up under his sweatshirt and puts it in his T-shirt pocket.

  “So I’m assuming you don’t need to be here past tomorrow. Correct?”

  “I honestly haven’t been thinking.”

  “Well, why don’t you honestly get cracking and do a little thinking. I mean, I know you’re the one damaged soul in God’s green universe.”

  Carl gives him the finger, but Aunt Lissa’s coming in from the kitchen and he converts it to scratching his nose. “We should think about getting down the hill,” she says to Henry. “We need to be there by ten.”

  Henry gets up. “Well, let me run you down.”

  “The air’ll do us good. Do me good, anyway. That last glass of port was one too many.”

  “Then you should definitely let me drive you.”

  “Oh, pooh,” she says. She crooks her elbow at Carl. “I’ve got my protector here.”

  When they get outside, the moon’s up: big, round, alarming. Carl says, “George Lassos Moon. You remember she draws the picture?”

  Aunt Lissa stops walking. “This looks a little slippery through here,” she says. “Could I have your arm till we get past this part?”

  Carl raises an elbow and feels her hands clamp around the puffy sleeve. He takes a couple of baby steps: now she’s got him worried. “So what movie?” he says. “Easy one.”

  “I’m sorry, dear,” she says. “I’ve had enough for one night.”

  —

  The morning sun’s on their right as Aunt Lissa drives them up to Albany. Carl’s pulled the visor over, but he can’t face too far left because he had a couple of pulls at that vodka bottle when she went up to brush her teeth after breakfast; he’s opened his window a crack to let out fumes. He also shook his Paxils into an envelope and poured the vial full; only a shot, but it could come in handy. Another blinding day. The Eddie Bauer is draped over his seat back. The pavement’s wet and Aunt Lissa has to keep squirting fluid and using the wipers to clear the salt spatter.

  “I wonder,” she says. “Do you remember much about when you first came to live with us?”

  “Yeah, I thought it was weird that all my stuff was there but it was in the wrong room,” he says, at the windshield. “That incredible wallpaper. The bucking broncos?”

  “Now that,” she says, “was Martin’s idea,” and he knows the whole rest word for word. I remember he came “I remember he came back from the store with the rolls under his arm, and he said,” Now this is what “ ‘Now this is what a six-year-old boy would like.’ ” Aunt Lissa’s spin on this deal has always been that she and Martin just picked up where his parents left off, as if it deeply made no difference who anybody was.

  “You know,” Carl says, “I don’t think I ever even said I appreciated what you guys did.”

  She does another wiper thing. “You can’t be serious. I still have that lovely letter you wrote the day you graduated from high school.”

  “That,” he says. “Yeah. But I guess the point is, here I am again.”

  “This too shall pass,” she says. “I’m just glad I’m still able to help.”

  “What, the son you never had?” He says this as an experiment, to see how it would feel to do a one-eighty and be mean.

  “I imagine there’s something of that.” Aunt Lissa shakes her head. “Do you want to really talk?”

  “Probably not,” he says.

  Sign for the New Baltimore Travel Plaza.

  “I need to use the restroom,” she says. “Shall we get you some coffee? They have a Starbucks now.”

  “I thought it was bad for you.”

  “You told me I was an enabler,” she says. “You know, you still make the mistake of thinking you can see everyone and no one can see you. It was cute when you were six.”

  He shades his eyes and looks out his window below the visor. A farmhouse with a metal chimney goes by.

  “Have you thought about what you’re going to do?” she says.

  “I guess take a bus back down to the city.” He needs to make some calls and see who he might be able to stay with.

  “I mean in the longer term.”

  “Oh. Yeah, I thought I’d run for Congress. Mah fellamericans…”

/>   “Give me strength,” she says. “Isn’t there a chance that you and Elaine…I don’t know. I’ve barely met Elaine.” She swings left to pass a station wagon, a golden retriever pacing behind the dog gate, then into the right lane again.

  “Well, I would say you could come up and stay with me until things get straightened out. It’s not that you’re not welcome.”

  “But what would Henry say, right?”

  “Henry can say whatever he damn well pleases. I suppose he’d be right.”

  In the service area, she parks next to a Sidekick with skis on the roof rack. A leg sticks out the driver’s window: sheathed in metallic blue, the foot in some robot sneaker. It’s a pretty woman with iridescent blue sunglasses and big blond kinky hair, tipping a flat silver flask into her mouth. She sees him looking and lifts the flask as if to toast. Outlaw recognition? Or does she mean to scandalize, mistaking him for what he must look like, in his suit and tie?

  Aunt Lissa, getting out of the car, misses the whole thing. “Aren’t you coming in?”

  “I’ll just hang.”

  He watches her go inside, then gets out of the car. He pries the cap off the pill vial, raises it to toast, says “Cheers” to the woman and drains the fucker. In goes her leg and up goes her window. He walks around to the front of Aunt Lissa’s car, squats, feels behind the bumper and plucks away the little metal box. Then he walks over to the Sidekick and circles his fist counterclockwise. The woman puts her window halfway down.

  “How about I race you to New York?” he says. “Loser buys the first round.”

  “I’m waiting for my friend,” she says. “Anyway, aren’t you going north?”

  “So I’ll race you to what? Lake Placid.”

  She puts up her window.

  “Bitch,” he says. But again just experimentally, like pretending to be somebody who’d hit on a woman and then call her a bitch.