Abbott Awaits

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The bulb in the desk lamp burned out eleven days ago, yet Abbott continues to twist the knob every time he sits down. It’s habit, not hope, Abbott thinks, though he pauses over the distinction. He sits in the dark, awaiting connection. Across the hallway there is no light beneath Abbott’s bedroom door, which means his wife is either asleep or not asleep. She is an insomniac, and six months pregnant. Would he wake her if New York were rubble and ash? Charlotte? But tonight the empire is more or less intact. Abbott clicks “Child tied in hot car as couple dines,” but he discovers that the article fails to answer the questions raised by the headline. For instance, Why do people do things? And just what is going on? Given the restaurant in whose parking lot the child, 9, was allegedly tied, the verb dines seems to Abbott not only inaccurate but editorially wicked. Elsewhere, a former celebrity has chosen death over middle age. A sleeping-bag prank has taken a life. A trap door has revealed a dungeon. In smaller type, the functioning and malfunctioning of military equipment has killed many, many people, all of whom, Abbott presumes, would rather have continued to exist, in spite of everything. Abbott’s yard needs mowing, he remembers. He ought to go to bed. He knows that sleep is necessary for temperament, energy, long- and short-term memory, healthy skin, brain, heart, back, and feet. There are people who die of sleeplessness. But tonight at a righteous, low-traffic site he finds a photo essay about a Chernobyl orphanage, two decades after the Mishap. There is a warning about disturbing images. He cannot very well turn away now, lest he be someone who turns away from the disturbing. But first, Abbott’s six-point safety check: (1) time (12:42 a.m.); (2) child monitor (quiet); (3) light beneath bedroom door (no light); (4) strength of dial-up Internet connection (49.6 Kbps); (5) tall stack of final exams (half-graded); (6) fluid level of cocktail glass (low). Abbott walks through the dark house to the kitchen to top off his drink, then returns to the dark office. It’s not as if there aren’t packages of light bulbs in the hall closet. He settles into his chair, turns the knob of the lamp. He knows this one is going to hurt: slow-loading photographs of deformed and radioactive children, while his own developmentally normal child sleeps down the hall in her blue-and-green pajamas. Her skin is perfect. He minimizes the running box score of the West Coast ball game, and then, already disturbed, selects a disturbing image.