was initiating them against him—Steve didn’t know the details of it and thought only that divorce was spreading like a virus.
He decided to go for a drive, which he did as an offensive against depression more frequently than he cared to admit, occasions on which he’d go anywhere, didn’t matter, so long as he was moving and there was music and lots to look at and to distract him. His depression would be subdued temporarily, and he’d arrive home a few hours later, if not mentally restored then at least closer to being able to go to bed.
Today he drove to Table Bluff, a cliff and beach area five miles south of Eureka and near a recently built Wiyot community housing project, an evolutionary step forward in Indian reservations where the land was governed by the tribe but maintained by the State of California. With independent police and dependent roads. Steve passed it and thought, This is the sort of town where Anne and I could have ended up. Maybe not this particular town, because you have to be Native American to live in it, but somewhere this size where real estate is cheap. I could have made that concession.
He saw the ocean in the distance at intervals as the road wound up and down hills, with undulating fields of buffalo grass on the left and isolated homesteads and dilapidated barns on the right. Something was wrong. Steve pressed harder on the accelerator and found himself going slower. The fuel light had been shining empty for who knew how long. A gas can in the back? No, damn it. Embankment park and a leg stretch around the car and some self-reproach for not filling up the tank earlier. It wasn’t more than two miles back to the Wiyot housing project, though he didn’t remember seeing a gas station there. Noise up the road and Steve saw a truck round the bend at a dangerous clip and he stood helplessly—or with what he hoped was a posture of helplessness and entreaty—waving a hand for the truck to stop. It was maybe seventy yards from him when he saw, beggaring belief, a man clinging to the gun rack on the truck’s roof. Lying facedown and spread-eagle, holding the edges of the rack for purchase, this man was head forward and Steve thought he heard—yes, without a doubt he caught—him shouting “Stop! Stop! Stop!” Steve hoped that his and the man’s combined request would bring the truck to a halt, though this hope was dashed as the truck raced past him, its driver with the tensed and fearful expression of someone trying to escape the hounds of hell. Then the truck was gone and Steve stared after it. A haze of dust, nothing. He resigned himself to walking and the thought sank in that he’d just witnessed an act of recklessness for which he’d probably be called in to surgery later that day. And something else wasn’t right. Something even less right than the obvious not-rightness of two men barreling down a country road in equal states of panic and unequal states of personal safety. Steve thought he recognized the face of the man on the roof. It was the fleetingest of glimpses, but still.
At the Wiyot housing project he received a lawn-mower gas canister in exchange for ten bucks and the promise to return it to a stern-countenanced, gloriously ponytailed man also named Steve.
The days passing meant nothing. At the office, the mental exhaustion that used to take ten hours to develop now happened in less than one. Another patient? X rays to examine? Deposing for a malpractice case filed three years ago? His constant torpor made it all seem so useless and unmanageable, like he didn’t have the stamina and couldn’t everyone see how much effort living cost? How it was a trek too far? He had difficulty listening to people. They wanted to tell him things—“my wife’s cousin’s daughter was a finalist for the Rhodes Scholarship, but was disqualified for lying about her LSAT scores, which everyone knows can be taken a million times before applying to law school and they average the scores, should that even be what she wants to do, and believe me my wife’s cousin’s daughter has some real reservations about that”—that he didn’t want to hear. To foster the sense of self rapidly slipping away from him, he moved from his habitual stimulants (coffee, Coke, ginseng root extract) to borderline legal amphetamines that his friend and colleague and current house-guest, Greg Souza, prescribed for him.
This was unfortunate because as a surgeon he depended on his powers of concentration. It was his great gift as a doctor. He’d made a name for himself by being able to do a spine—seven hours of standing in place with his latexed fingers sawing and threading and manipulating microscopic tools—without taking a bathroom break or pausing for a candy bar or sitting down to let his legs uncramp. In another life he’d have made an exemplary monk. Or mime. Or sentry in charge of protecting kings and emperors and other representatives of God on earth.
Before the divorce started he’d spent much of his nonworking time building fantastic miniature reproductions of medieval towns using balsa wood and soft chromium. His Salzburg could hold its own against any model out there. His Venice was the work of a maestro. But now he’d sit down at his worktable with a stack of three-eighthinch wood squares and an X-acto knife and a tube of wood glue, unable to pick up anything without his hands shaking and a drifting—no, a darting—mind. In his current condition the only cities to which he could do justice were World War II–era Dresden or Hiroshima or Coventry. Maybe an earthquake San Francisco. And he’d reached a point in life where he hadn’t any friends. Or: he had friends, but not friends whom he could call and tell about the he-said/she-said of the divorce, the Thursday afternoon meetings at Anne’s lawyer’s office, where he and his lawyer and she and her lawyer sat at a diplomatic table using diplomatic language better suited to the Treaty of Versailles than to the breakup of two people who’d loved each other intensely once, who’d cried when the other got hurt and exulted when the other felt joy and said “forever” and “completely” and “unconditionally.” The end of this marriage foretold everything. It said that he was incapable of sustaining a loving relationship and doomed, at best, to serial monogamy until he died. No growing old with someone. No twenty-year anniversaries and wistful recollections of their younger bodies and younger passions and younger worlds.
His colleague friend Greg Souza’s divorce was because of rote infidelity and Greg had had nothing thoughtful to say on the occasion that he and Steve went through the verbal condolences with each other, the I-can’t-believe-how-everything-changes. Although Greg was technically staying with him until he found an apartment, he’d been spending his nights at Marlene’s and was never around.
So Steve was alone on Saturday, December 11, trembling knife in hand, when the doorbell rang. He’d managed to forget Anne for a minute and was remembering what Silas Carlton, an old patient, had told him about birds: they have extremely small lungs and so use their bones to circulate oxygen. “Very nice,” he said, and opened the door.
Elaine Perry stood with one foot on the welcome mat, holding two plastic garbage sacks. Hints of the previous day’s makeup were so subtle that he thought her lips were naturally the color of persimmons.
“Hi, Steve,” she said.
They hadn’t seen each other in maybe ten months. Anne had always praised Elaine as the best of his doctor friends’ spouses, as a woman wisely unconcerned with extravagant houses and her children’s orthodontic work.
“Hi,” Steve said.
“I don’t want to make this awkward, but Greg said he’d pick up these bags a couple of days ago and he never did. Do you mind if I drop them off? Is he here?”
“He’s out, but I can take them.” They were heavy and full of pointy, uncomfortable objects that dug into him as he held them against his chest. “I wanted to say—I should say I’m sorry about what’s going on.”
“Thanks. I’m sorry for you, too.”
They smiled more by effort than by natural feeling. Like so many outward signs of health and normalcy.
“Would you like to come in?” Steve asked, unsure of what else to say. “For a cup of coffee?”
“No, thanks. I shouldn’t be here when Greg comes back.”
Steve
