Abbott Awaits - читать бесплатно онлайн полную версию книги автора Chris Bachelder (AUGUST) #4

AUGUST

1 Abbott and the Clogged Main

This morning there is quite a bit of water on the basement floor, so Abbott checks the Internet. He flushes the toilet and then scrambles downstairs to see more water spilling from what he thinks are called pipe joints. What he has, according to the Internet, is a clog. He consults the Yellow Pages, trying to determine, based exclusively on fonts, graphics, and slogans, which plumbing companies provide prompt service and excellent work at a reasonable price. They all do, apparently, though most of them use strange quotation marks. One advertisement for a local, family-operated business features a smiling, large-headed cartoon plumber clutching an enormous wrench and sprinting clogward, trailed by the lines that universally denote alacrity. This looks good to Abbott, and so he calls. He is handling this problem. He is taking care of his house and family. His wife and daughter went to Story Time at the public library, and they are due to return in forty-five minutes. Abbott’s wife’s dismay about the clog and its consequences in a one-toilet home will be attenuated, Abbott suspects, by her discovery of his swift and frugal decision making. The nice woman who answers the family-operated plumbing business’s phone asks if it’s the main line that’s clogged. Abbott breathes into the receiver. For an instant he considers terminating the call. The woman says, “Is it the big pipe, do you think? The four-inch one?” Abbott walks downstairs with the phone and a tape measure. The woman waits patiently. He surveys the plumbing, the impressive copper network. He has not been adequately respectful of and grateful for this system, he knows. He traces the route of the water, considers the location of the leaky joints. Yes, he tells the nice woman, he thinks it’s the main pipe. “Well,” she says, “we don’t have that big a snake.” Abbott does not understand what she’s talking about. “I see,” he says. “We can only clean out a two-inch pipe,” she says, “but I can give you the name of a pipe rooter who can take care of you. He’s the best there is.” Abbott is impressed by her generosity and her loyalty, and he is proud to have located, through his own initiative, the best pipe rooter out there. He takes down the name and number. “Thank you so much,” he says. “Have a nice day,” she says. Under normal circumstances, Abbott would take a short break between phone calls, but currently he is feeling hale and capable, and so he immediately calls the vaunted Pipe Rooter. After four rings, he reaches an automated system and he is asked to leave a voice message. He ends the call, paces the wet basement floor, and constructs in his mind a succinct, forceful, and informative message about the pipe and the clog. Then he takes a deep breath, and he calls the Pipe Rooter again. This time the Pipe Rooter answers after one ring, flustering Abbott beyond hope of recovery. “Yeah,” the Pipe Rooter says, by way of salutation. “Hello?” Abbott says, considering whether to hang up. “Yeah?” says the Pipe Rooter. “I was going to leave a message about my clog,” Abbott says. “Clogged main?” the Pipe Rooter says. “My main line is clogged,” Abbott says, “and the plumber I talked to isn’t able to handle the width of the pipe.” Abbott does not want to mention the snake if he can help it, because it’s lewd and because he is not sure he heard the woman correctly. “Yeah, you’ll need a big snake for that,” the Pipe Rooter says. “That’s what I understand,” Abbott says. The Pipe Rooter asks Abbott for his address, and Abbott supplies the proper answer. The Pipe Rooter says, “I actually have a little time right now if that works.” Abbott is thrilled by the promptness, but the thrill soon fades to distress. If he arranges and then supervises the repair before his wife is even aware of the problem, then she will never understand and appreciate his role in the crisis. She’ll return to the house to learn that the main line was clogged and then fixed. It will be like it all never happened. The toilet worked when she left, and it will work when she returns, a scenario that dismays Abbott. He might as well tell her the roof blew off and he put on a new one. She’ll be left with a bill but with no real sense of the privation or exigency, or of his competent response. “Take your time,” Abbott says. “I’m on my way,” the Pipe Rooter says. “You come highly recommended,” Abbott says. “Just open the bulkhead, if you don’t mind, and I can get started right away,” the Pipe Rooter says. Ten minutes later, the Pipe Rooter’s van is in Abbott’s driveway, and the Pipe Rooter is dragging his equipment around to the back. He is probably sixty years old, gray-haired and ruddy. Through the kitchen window Abbott watches him descend into the bulkhead. Then Abbott walks downstairs to the basement. The Pipe Rooter is crouched behind the washing machine, and Abbott lingers silently across the room. The Pipe Rooter stands and puts a large red hand on top of the washer. “My kids never liked those things,” the Pipe Rooter says, pointing to a dismantled swing chair against the wall. “When I swung them myself, they loved it, but then as soon as I put them in the chair, they’d wail.” Abbott nods. “But my grandkids love that stuff,” the Pipe Rooter says. Abbott asks how many grandchildren the Pipe Rooter has. “Four,” he says. “And two are living with us now because their mom just got a divorce and she’s trying to get back on her feet. She got married young. So now she’s got to find herself. I told her, ‘Shit, you think your parents’ house is the place to look?’” “Right,” Abbott says. “The little ones are fun to have around, but they’re wild. It’s been a long time since we’ve had kids in the house. I’d forgotten what it’s like. It’s terrible. My wife remembered, but I didn’t.” The Pipe Rooter laughs. “It’s pretty bad,” Abbott says. “It’s a blessing, though,” the Pipe Rooter says. He crouches again behind the washer. If his daughter misbehaves at Story Time, Abbott thinks, perhaps his wife will return early. “I remember this house,” the Pipe Rooter says. “I’ve been out here a couple times over the years. The snake goes out about ninety feet and there’s a place where the big blade won’t go through. I think the pipes out there under the road aren’t quite matching up.” He stands up and makes his hands into mismatched pipes for Abbott. “Maybe a busted coupling, maybe some roots coming through. So I’ll bring the snake out that far and use the smaller blade. Should take about twenty minutes is all.” Abbott says, “It just goes in there like that?” “Just like that,” the Pipe Rooter says. The sun shines through the bulkhead and makes a golden rectangle on the cement. “Let me know when you’re done, and I’ll write you a check,” Abbott says. “I was here in this house maybe ten or twelve years ago,” the Pipe Rooter says. He breathes heavily as he turns his wrench. “I’ll never forget it. See how you’ve got this open drain in the floor here?” Abbott walks across the basement and peers behind the washing machine. “I was down here working just like I am now. I kept hearing this little chirping noise, and I couldn’t figure out where it was coming from. Then when I was packing up my tools, this little bird flew out of the drain. Right there.” The Pipe Rooter points with his wrench. “Flew right past me, out the bulkhead, into the sky. Scared me to death. Just a little brown bird, like a swallow. I told the guy who lived here, and I could tell he didn’t believe me. Hell, if I were you I wouldn’t believe me either, but I saw it and it’s true.”

2 In Which There Are no Hard Feelings

Just this morning Abbott came up behind his wife while she was at the electric range, and he put his arms around the hard lower slope of her belly. She did not lean back into him, and she did not make that small, wonderful sound from the back of her throat. She did not stop tending her omelet. And now, hours later, she leans over the wobbly arm of the couch, trying to kiss him while he reads, but Abbott closes neither his eyes nor his big book.

3 Abbott and the Good News First

At the end of the day, after helping his wife get their daughter to bed, Abbott lies facedown on the carpet of the family room. He is unclean and unshaven. He knows not the date. His joints ache from what the Internet has diagnosed as either hepatitis or Lyme Disease. There is something (is it Yellow Turtle?) jutting into his ribs. Still, that old-time languor does not descend. He rolls over onto his back, regards the pattern of paint and texture on the ceiling. The pattern of paint and texture he finds uninteresting. Abbott recalls the hours spent lying on floors, staring at ceilings, awaiting a feeling, any feeling at all. (The music from a band that tuned its guitars irregularly.) He remembers the moves — high chin, slow blink, heavy arms out in Savior or up in Surrender — but the moves don’t feel natural. Abbott is — tonight it’s evident — no longer listless. He’s bored, angry, exasperated, worried, gloomy, tired, sad, hot, afraid, and content, but not listless. Moreover, he’s hungry. He gets off the floor, puts a doll where she goes, and walks to the kitchen.

4 Abbott at the Edge of His Seat

“I just pray this one is a good sleeper,” Abbott’s wife says, pointing to her abdomen. “Well,” Abbott says, “the big sister was not too bad.” This morning they are up before their daughter, and it is amazing. Abbott is happy and optimistic, though lurking at the far edge of his contentment is the knowledge that the coffeepot is almost empty. There might be enough for another half cup. “Are you kidding?” his wife says. “She was terrible. Completely terrible.” “I mean, she wasn’t great,” Abbott says. “You don’t remember?” his wife says. Abbott smiles in the manner of someone whose personality has been drastically altered by head injury. Abbott’s wife always wants to know why there are long drips of coffee on the outside of Abbott’s mug. He says the mug rims are too thick, but the real answer, he suspects, is that he is gulping the coffee. “She was a monster,” Abbott’s wife says. “There was that stretch where you had to take her out in the car to get her to sleep.” Abbott’s memory is stirred very lightly. “Oh, yeah,” he says, “I remember doing that a few times.” Abbott’s wife says, “A few times? You did it every night for five weeks.” Abbott envisions himself driving through the foothills of the Rockies with a sleeping infant in the backseat. It’s not quite a memory, but it’s a nice image. Still, he understands that you couldn’t see Pikes Peak or Mt. Cheyenne because it would be dark outside. And also, there’s NORAD. “Did I like doing that?” Abbott asks. “You mean driving around with her?” “Yeah.” “I don’t think so,” she says. “And that one time you were gone for nearly an hour, and I was almost puking I was so worried. My breasts hurt, and my incision still hurt. Remember that? I was still having that feeling like my guts were shifting around. I was supposed to be getting some sleep while you were out, but I was pacing around the house, wondering what I would do if both of you were dead.” Abbott pauses at this fork in the story. He can choose. He says, “What happened to us?” His wife laughs. Abbott says, “No, I mean where were we that night? Why were we so late?” “You honestly don’t remember?” his wife says. Abbott shakes his head. He remembers now, but he wants to hear it from her. “First you got stuck at a train crossing. It was a long train, and then something happened to it.” “Oh, yeah,” Abbott says. “It just stopped.” “And of course when the car stopped moving she woke up and started screaming.” Abbott says, “Oh, man.” “It was a long time,” Abbott’s wife says, “and when it finally moved, you were trying to rush home and you got pulled over by that cop.” “You’ve got to be kidding,” Abbott says. “He pulled you over because our front headlight was out.” “I do remember that headlight,” Abbott says. “And remember, you bought a headlight, and you kept saying you were going to put it in yourself because you weren’t going to pay someone else to replace a stupid headlight, which is what we ended up doing.” “But I don’t think I got a ticket,” Abbott says. “No, because the officer said he had a little one at home about the same age. You two had a little moment. You shook hands and agreed that there wasn’t any sound worse than that.” “And then what happened?” Abbott says. “And then you finally came home,” his wife says. “When I heard the car pull up outside — I had actually been praying. Like actually saying a prayer.” Abbott says, “Was she asleep?” His wife says, “She was going insane. And she was hoarse by then. And you — I’ve never seen you look like that. You were like some kind of POW.” Abbott drops his head, rubs his palms on his knees. “I can only imagine,” he says.

5 Abbott’s Set Point

Right there on the brick wall of a Pioneer Valley bakery: HERE. WE. COME. DEVILS. The spray-painted letters are eerily neat and uniform, and the punctuation is terrifying. Had the vandal chosen a comma for direct address, the effect would have been lost. And then that ominous first-person plural … Everything about these words is calculated to inspire dread. All day long Abbott has been rattled by the bakery graffiti. This is no time for procreation, no time to make something that can get hurt. Late tonight, on a whim, Abbott types “here we come devils” into a dog-themed search engine and then clicks FETCH! The search turns up twenty-three thousand hits. Abbott learns that the phrase is featured loudly in a video game based on the career of General George Armstrong Custer (1839–1876), infamous American cavalry commander and Indian fighter who lost his life at Little Big Horn. Custer in Internet photographs has the kind of droopy, creeping mustache that obscures the mouth. Abbott is nearly giddy with the information. He feels emancipated. He wants to go look at his sleeping daughter and put his hand on her head again, but his wife has asked him to stop doing that because it disrupts the child’s sleep. He stays in his chair for quite some time, considering whether to assemble the crib, the pieces of which are stacked against the bookcase. A scrap of paper on the desk by the laptop is blank except for the word rash. Gradually, Abbott becomes less sanguine. Gradually, he returns to his prior state of agitation, what researchers might call his set point. The problem, Abbott realizes, is that the bakery graffiti signifies exactly what he thought it signifies.

6 Abbott near the Doorway

Abbott’s unborn child’s head is still facing the wrong direction, and his wife is quiet the entire ride home from the obstetrician’s office. “Maybe it will still flip,” Abbott says as his family lingers in the car in the driveway. “Or it won’t,” she says. Later, he finds her sitting in a chair she never sits in, her hair over her eyes. Nobody ever sits in this chair. “I’m sorry,” he says. He offers to turn on a light, not because it is dark in the room but because it would give him something to do. “Are you crying?” Abbott says. He stands near the doorway, ten feet from his wife. His impulse to leave the room prevents him from approaching his wife’s chair. His impulse to approach his wife’s chair prevents him from leaving the room. The countervailing desires create in him a radical stillness. He is near the doorway but not in it. Both his feet are on the rug. His arms hang loose at his sides. “I’m sorry,” he says again. Abbott’s wife says, “I was just thinking of a story about this guy I once knew. He told me that one time when he was eight or nine he had a horrible earache during a sleepover at a friend’s house, and he didn’t want to wake anyone up, so he just lay there and suffered all night. He said it was excruciating. He said he just gripped the side of his head and rolled around in bed, whispering for help, hoping his friend would wake up, but he didn’t. It turned out to be a bad infection.” The phone rings once and then stops. Abbott looks down at his wife, who is looking through the window at whatever can be seen from the chair. The wind has picked up. “Who knows what made me think of that,” she says. “Isn’t it awful, though?”

7 Abbott and the Visiting Nurse

The change to Abbott’s life-insurance policy requires that a nurse visit his home to make sure he is not about to perish. She arrives this morning, right on time, carrying a large black bag. She moves up the driveway like a blade. What Abbott knows about nurses is that they are honed to a sharp edge. They don’t get paid enough, they work weird hours, they lift heavy things, they get dirty. They deal with ridiculous doctors and ridiculous patients within a ridiculous health care system. They’ve seen it all. Nobody appreciates them. They are righteously aggrieved. They have strong opinions, which they voice as facts. They develop their own strange, contradictory, and wildly divergent theories of well-being, illness, and recovery. They smoke. They are disgruntled, and their disgruntlement gives them purpose, energy, a quick step. They are not hopeful or cheerful or optimistic — just competent. Abbott admires them quite a bit, though naturally he is scared of them. First, Abbott and the nurse fill out paperwork at the dining-room table. Abbott reviews the policy. He understands that he can’t commit suicide for two years, and he initials. He understands, at least vaguely, what “the death of the policyholder” means. He understands they’ll be checking his blood for the very worst diseases. The thought is so sad Abbott can barely remain seated. It’s nearly impossible to imagine not being there to watch your children grow up. It seems easy to imagine, but when you imagine them without you, you imagine it as if you’re still watching from behind a tree or within a closet with the door cracked. The nurse pulls a scale from her bag, and Abbott steps on it. She measures his waist size. “What do you teach?” she says, and Abbott tells her. “Oh, God,” she says, laughing. Her hands are powerful. She smells like cigarettes. “Go pee,” she says, “and just leave this cup in there.” Abbott pees in the cup and leaves it in the bathroom. The nurse has been here less than ten minutes, and she has already made him feel like a visitor in his own house. When he comes back, she goes to the bathroom to handle his urine. Abbott hears the flush of the toilet. She returns to take his blood pressure and pulse. When she breaks the seal on a plastic bag and removes a needle, Abbott extends his arm across the table and turns away. “You’re one of those?” the nurse says. Abbott says, “I’d just rather not look.” The nurse begins a conversation to get him to relax. She talks about all these campus shootings. The guns, the mental illness. She asks if the university has been running any workshops or drills. She puts the needle in his arm. “I think so,” Abbott says. He looks out at the street, where three neighbors are talking and pointing up at something on a house — a gutter or a chimney. Abbott can hear the shouts of children, the rhythmic creak of a metal swing set. “I worry about society,” the nurse says, removing the needle from Abbott’s arm. He turns and sees the dark vial. “You know?” she says. “Society is just getting worse and worse.” This notion is central to Abbott’s identity. He has held it for many years. For a long time it was a way to choose friends and television programs. It was something like an animating force. It wasn’t necessarily that he wanted Society to be getting worse and worse, but the undeniable worsening of Society gave him a way to be in the world. “I think you’re right,” he tells the nurse. He still believes it. The difference now, though, is that he wishes he didn’t.

8 Abbott Concedes

Unconsciousness, however, eradicates the possibility of surprise. A man who remains conscious may find himself living a day he never imagined, various elements of his life coalescing, like words in a sentence, to create something new and fantastical. For instance, tonight Abbott bathes his young daughter, puts her to bed, and then bathes his wife. (Her hair, enhanced by pregnancy, is a gleaming rope. The shampoo he rinses with an orange cup shaped like an elephant.)

9 Discretion is the Better Part of Discreteness

It came as a revelation to Abbott when, several nights ago, he gleaned from an offhand remark of his wife’s that the tomatoes the family has been enjoying this summer are not from the grocery store but from some private residence on Rolling Ridge Drive, about a mile away from Abbott’s house. He found it simultaneously threatening and spiritually arousing that his pregnant wife could have been buying produce out of some vegetable gardener’s driveway for weeks without his knowledge. It wasn’t quite jealousy. It was the shocking autonomy of the loved one. “Is it like some kind of farmer’s stand?” he asked, trying to comprehend. “Or produce stand?” “No,” she said, with a nonchalance that may or may not have been feigned. “Just people. People with a card table.” Abbott then requested, with the firmness of a demand, that he accompany his wife the next time she buys tomatoes “right off the street.” “OK,” she said. “Sure.” So here we are, a sunny late morning in which Abbott drives his wife and daughter to Rolling Ridge Drive for tomatoes. On the way, Abbott learns that his wife has been making this trip on foot for most of the summer, but the heat and advanced pregnancy now make it difficult to walk. “So you drive?” Abbott asks. “Yes,” she says. “How many times?” he says. “What does it matter?” she asks. “A ballpark figure,” he says. Abbott’s wife says, “I don’t know. Four? Five?” (What must be most disconcerting to a spouse about a private investigator’s manila envelope of telephotographs, Abbott thinks — but certainly not right now — is not the demonstration of infidelity but the demonstration of separateness.) Abbott considers asking why she never told him about the tomatoes, but he does not. He wonders why he has not once seen his wife enter the house with a bag of tomatoes. Has he been that dazed and inattentive? Does he in a sense not want to see the bag of tomatoes? Or has she been sneaking the tomatoes into the house? These tomatoes — they are first-rate. Only a man desperate to believe they come from a grocery store could believe they come from a grocery store. “You might see a big black cat,” Abbott’s wife tells their daughter. “Sometimes there’s a big cat.” Abbott’s wife’s familiarity with the tomato vendor’s pet does not sit well with Abbott. “Tractor,” the girl says, transposing her adventures. And here they are in front of a split-level ranch on Rolling Ridge Drive. Abbott might have driven right past it had his wife not pointed it out. In the driveway there is indeed a card table, on top of which are small cartons of tomatoes and a sign too small to read from the road. Abbott takes his daughter out of her car seat. “Where is the proprietor?” asks Abbott. “They’re usually not around,” his wife says as she walks up the drive. All — or many — of Abbott’s questions are answered when he approaches the card table, on which he sees not only the sign and the small cartons of tomatoes, but a stack of plastic bags pinned down by a rock and an old Folger’s can with the lid on. The sign asks patrons please not to take the containers, but instead to put the tomatoes into one of the plastic bags beneath the rock. The sign also indicates that a carton costs two dollars, payable to the coffee can (in which a patron also might find ones to make change). Abbott’s daughter is on the front porch of the ranch, squeezing the tail of an enormous black cat. Abbott’s wife transfers two cartons of tomatoes to a bag, then returns the empty containers to the table. She takes the lid off the coffee can, puts in a five-dollar bill, and removes a dollar as change. She has obviously done this numerous times, perhaps nine or ten. Abbott can see quite a few bills at the bottom of the can. “So,” Abbott’s wife says, “this is it.” Abbott collects his daughter and buckles her into her car seat. On the short ride home, all three members of the family are in high spirits. Abbott’s wife loves these tomatoes. Abbott’s daughter loves animals with furry tails. And Abbott loves the theory of human nature that the unattended coffee can allows him to cling to. If Abbott’s wife has had occasion to speak to the elderly owners of the house and if she knows for a fact that thrice this summer some human has made off with the coffee can in broad daylight — the last of whom actually pelted the house with tomatoes before absconding — then that is something she keeps to herself.

10 Abbott’s Reminder

Abbott occasionally forgets that pregnancy culminates in childbirth. More precisely, Abbott only occasionally remembers that pregnancy culminates in childbirth. Abbott’s wife’s gradual expansion, though, is indeed caused by a very small and helpless creature with no reasoning skills. As that creature grows, it will eat sand and develop ear infections. From time to time Abbott remembers, always with a sense of euphoric apprehension. This afternoon Abbott, his wife, and their daughter are visiting the hospital, or, in the idiom of third-trimester checklists, touring the birthing facility. Touring a birthing facility is, Abbott discovers, a powerful mnemonic. He can see the weary parents and grandparents walking the halls. The women, the new mothers, move slowly and clutch IV stands, medical carts, bassinets, or nurses. They don’t clutch husbands. The husbands are useless. They are stranded in the old world, while the women clearly have visited a distant place on their own. And now they’re back and their bodies are wrecked and their eyes have that unfocused look that seems to be less about fatigue than transcendence — as if conventional sense perception is no longer interesting or even necessary. The husbands are goofy and exalted, happy and proud. They are incapable of walking at the appropriate pace. They walk too far ahead of the women, and then they come back and walk too far behind them, and then they begin walking too far ahead again. In the nursery the swaddled newborns lie peacefully beneath heat lamps, giving the false impression that they are good. One opens its eyes slowly. “Baby,” Abbott’s daughter says as Abbott holds her up to the window. They tour the recovery room, the kitchen. Abbott is pleased to learn that the chair becomes a bed, that the refrigerator is open to fathers. “Same as the last time,” Abbott’s wife tells Abbott, and he nods as if he remembers. Every nurse talks to Abbott’s daughter. “Look at you,” they say. “Aren’t you sweet.” They give her stickers that say I Was Brave and I’m a Big Sister. Abbott’s daughter peels the stickers and applies them to herself immediately. Roxanne, the nurse and tour guide, speaks only to Abbott’s wife, as if Abbott does not understand the language. “You’re cesarean, right?” Abbott’s wife nods, and Abbott nods too. “OK,” Roxanne says, “on the morning you come in, we’ll set you up in a birthing room. We’ll get you hooked to the monitor and get your vitals and prepare you for the section. We’ll need to get a catheter in. You know about that, Mom. We’ll put Dad in scrubs. Then we’ll take you to the O.R. and start the anesthesia. You’ll be awake the whole time, Mom. When that’s ready, we’ll come for Dad. After the delivery, we’ll clean up the baby right there in the room. If everything is OK, we’ll keep the little one in there with you. We don’t split up mothers and babies if we don’t have to. It’s not like the old days. When they finish stitching you up, Mom, we’ll take all of you to a different room for recovery. Do you have any questions?” Abbott’s mind is a vast windy plain at dusk, swept clean of word and thought. “No,” Abbott’s wife says. “Great,” says Roxanne. “We’ll see you in a few weeks.” Abbott tries to show his daughter the babies in the nursery once more, but this time the blinds are drawn. They leave the hospital then and go downtown for a large pizza.

11 Abbott’s Inadvertent Research on Prepositions

Abbott mows the lawn, secretly enjoying himself. His wife and daughter play with sticks in the driveway. He cannot hear them over the sound of the mower, nor does he want to. The mown lines are green and fragrant; the robins drop into his wake for worms. The lawn is filled with weeds, but even weeds look good after mowing. This old mower just runs and runs. The blade is new and scrupulous. Abbott installed it an hour ago, lying beneath the propped mower, tightening the bolt with two hands, a grunt. At the end of a long row, he turns the mower back toward the house and sees that his wife and daughter are no longer in the driveway. They’ve probably gone back inside. Now the evening is still good, but not quite as good as it was.

12 In Which a Gorilla Appears

Actually, it appears to be a minimum-wage employee in a gorilla costume, but Abbott feels neither scorn nor pity nor melancholy. He’s not speculating why it is that primates are comic, and he’s not reflecting pensively about Dian Fossey or evolutionary branching. This is because he’s with his daughter, and his daughter is, in the presence of the gorilla, enraptured. Just think about her afternoon. It begins with another rainy-day trip to the chain bookstore on Route 9, and suddenly it has a gorilla in it. And this gorilla appears to be improvising — it is bounding over children’s tables, knocking down display books, and pounding its chest loudly, at least for a bookstore. Abbott’s daughter stands with her fingers in her mouth, immobilized by ecstasy. She is a conductor. She conducts wonder. Wonder passes from the world to Abbott through his daughter. One could say that he is taking pleasure in the reckless bookstore gorilla, but he is not even looking at the reckless bookstore gorilla. He is looking at his daughter as she looks at the gorilla. Later — not now, thank goodness — Abbott will have to consider how it is possible that watching another person live so fully and directly can feel so powerfully like living fully and directly.

13 Abbott Makes a Move

Abbott and his wife walk toward each other in the cluttered family room, though they are not each other’s destination. There is only one narrow path through the clutter. As they meet, Abbott turns sideways to the left to allow his wife to pass, and as she does, he grabs her right breast. In fairness, he means to caress her right breast, but it is difficult to caress a moving body part. If pressed, Abbott would be forced to admit that there is not one erotic aspect of this tableau. Not one. It’s late morning, very hot. Abbott’s wife is deep in the third trimester of a rough pregnancy. Their daughter is with them in the room, squeezing old bath water out of a lobster. Abbott is wearing what he wore yesterday, and perhaps the day before that. Abbott’s wife laughs, but not in the right way. “What?” Abbott says, prepared to defend the indefensible. “I just don’t know what you were hoping to accomplish,” she says. Abbott does not know, either, so this conversation will have no brakes and no steering mechanism. “You just never know,” he says, “when a little spark can start a fire.” Despite the joke, he is not joking, which is to say his irony is ironic. “A fire?” she says. “Are you serious?” “Of course not,” Abbott says. “Then what—” his wife begins, but she stops and begins again. “I think it’s potentially sweet that you groped me,” she says. “But I’m sorry, you are just not going to start a fire.” She pulls her maternity blouse up over her stomach. There’s a watermelon. It’s her flesh, and it is exciting, but it is also looks at this point like a carnival exhibit. “This,” she says, holding her belly like a big potted plant, “this is inflammable.” “Right,” Abbott says. He is not so dumb as to think now is a good time to bring up the quirky lexical item that inflammable is in fact a synonym, not an antonym, for flammable. You can look it up. And thus his wife has just unwittingly suggested her sexual readiness, her combustibility. Abbott’s wife says, “She’s not drinking from that lobster, is she?” Abbott, typically so heedful, is unconcerned. There is a quirky lexical item he is determined to share.

14 Abbott, Pierced by the Subjunctive

Not entirely sober, Abbott finds his wife standing at a living-room window that looks out upon what might initially appear to be a low bright moon, but which is in fact a yellow streetlight in a cloud of moths. Abbott is reminded, later, of something he once read: A human might mistake a rock for a bear, but never a bear for a rock. This is the type of window in front of which you might hold a crying infant. He puts his hands on his wife’s shoulders, which neither relax nor tense. Indeed, it seems to Abbott that she has not noticed his touch. The cat watches them from the corner of the room. It looks unhappy. “You OK?” Abbott says. When his wife does not answer, he says, “Maybe we should have waited another year.” Without seeming to move, Abbott’s wife sheds his hands from her shoulders. He takes a step backward. With her teeth she says, “Be that as it may.”

15 Abbott and the Case of the Mysterious Thing in the Driveway

“Those couches,” Abbott says. “I know,” his wife says. “I saw one with hexagonal arms,” he says. “Did you see the one with rhinestones?” she says. “I saw that one,” he says. “It also had about twenty overlapping cushions.” Abbott’s wife turns off the engine and opens the door. She moves both legs to the side, so that her feet are on the driveway. Then she grabs the edge of the door with her left hand and the top of the steering wheel with her right. After a deep breath, she hoists herself out of the car. Abbott gets out, too. He knows it’s boring to talk about the heat, but my God it’s hot. In August it is hard to believe this is Ethan Frome’s hometown. As Abbott unbuckles his daughter from her seat, he sees his wife looking intently at the ground. “What is it?” he says, his head still in the car. His wife either does not hear him or ignores him. There is a big difference. He sees her kick at something in the driveway. She seems to be trying to nudge it into the grass, but without success. Then she leans down into a squat, picks the thing up, examines it, and tosses it underhanded into the grass. The motion of her toss might best be described as a scattering, as of birdseed or ashes. The tips of her fingers are together, her knuckles are facing up. “What was that?” Abbott says loudly. “Nothing,” she says. Abbott knows it was either nothing or something. “Well, what was it?” he says. Abbott’s wife comes out of her squat — the expression on her face suggests it is one of the most difficult things she has ever done with her body. Then she walks into the house without saying anything. Anyone with even the slightest knowledge of Abbott knows that he is not going to let this go. All afternoon his wife continues to say the thing in the driveway was nothing, convincing Abbott it was something indeed. He stops just short of pleading. He attempts to make his interest seem primarily academic, scientific. Then at dinner Abbott’s wife casually elaborates — she says she thought the thing in the driveway was a coin but then she looked at it and found that it was not a coin. “A coin?” Abbott says. “Yes,” she says. They pass food and say please and thank you. “Then what was it?” he says, trying to match her composure. “Just a little piece of foil or metal,” she says. “Hm,” he says. Then they tell some funny stories to the girl and have a nice family dinner. But later in bed, after the books are on the nightstands and the lights are out, Abbott says, “Let me tell you why that is a lie.” Abbott’s wife says, “What are you talking about?” “First,” he says, “if that’s all it was, some coinlike object, you would have told me right away. There would have been no reason to be so secretive. Second, if it was a coin — if you thought it was a coin — you would have tried to pick it up before you tried to kick it in the grass. But you tried to kick it first. Why would you kick what you thought to be a coin into the grass? You kicked first and then squatted down to look at it, which is not consistent with the actions of someone who thought she saw a coin and then discovered it wasn’t. Come to think of it, I don’t know why you would kick a little piece of foil or metal into the grass, either. You’re someone who is concerned about the environment and also about our lawn. Not to mention the fact that when I went out there after dinner to look for it, I didn’t see anything resembling the object you describe.” “The object I describe,” Abbott’s wife says. “And speaking of squatting,” Abbott says, “exactly what type of U.S. coin would entice you, in August, in the ninth month of pregnancy, to bend down and pick it up? A fifty-cent piece? A Susan B. Anthony silver dollar?” “It was a gold doubloon,” she says. “Lastly,” Abbott says, “nobody says coin. No native speaker of English would ever say, I think I see a coin in the driveway. You would say quarter or nickel or whatever it was, though again, I can’t imagine you would bend down to pick up a nickel, knowing you may never get back up.” “OK,” she says. “And also, lastly, the way you threw it, your throwing motion. That was not—” “OK,” Abbott’s wife says. “Please stop. Do you really want to know what it was?” “Yes, I do,” Abbott says, suddenly not at all sure that he does. “Fine,” she says. “It was a lock of hair. I tried to kick it off the driveway, but I couldn’t, so I picked it up and tossed it in the grass, using the motion you so scrupulously observed. It isn’t easy to throw hair.” “Hair?” he says. Abbott is momentarily confused by the fact that a lock of hair bears no resemblance to a coin, but he recovers. “A lock of hair,” she says. “Probably from earlier in the summer. Maybe it blew out of the pachysandra. On the driveway it looked, I guess, mildly disturbing, and I knew if you saw it you would have a—” Abbott says, “What would I have?” Abbott’s wife says, “You would have a reaction.” So many words in the dark. Abbott has imagined all this marital talk discoloring the walls and ceiling like nicotine. “So,” Abbott says, “you hid it from me, and then you lied about it all day.” “That’s right,” his wife says. “Because I know you.” The static of the monitor sounds to Abbott like the sound of his own thinking. He does not know whether his wife’s deception is an instance of compassion or cruelty. Furthermore, he does not know the scale or the degree of the compassion or cruelty. It could be insignificant, but it could also represent something large, some kind of turning point. It could be the moment he understands something — either the fact that the marriage is so deep he will never touch bottom or the fact that the marriage might not work out. This would be the time to go down to the basement and walk around for a while, but his wife rolls over and puts her hand on his chest. Her hand is warm and small. The pressure of her touch is not heavy, but neither is it light.

16 Abbott and the Online Questionnaire

Abbott struggles with number seven. Reading doesn’t count, and it hasn’t for many years. Mowing? Dropping rocks in a grate? One thing Abbott does often in his spare time is calculate the age he will be when his children graduate from high school, from college. The age he will be when they have children, if they have children at the age he had children. There are small discrepancies in the online life-expectancy figures, but Abbott is able to conjecture that he will become a grandfather shortly after his death. Give or take a few months. But browsing actuarial tables is not a hobby, or at least not a healthy one like gardening.

17 In Which Abbott and His Wife Are Unafraid

Just a normal afternoon until it isn’t. Until they’re lying naked on the bed, testing a hypothesis. This is the thirty-seventh week. They’re the first people in the history of pregnancy to try this, they’re certain. And now Abbott’s wife’s belly is like Cape Horn — it’s treacherous, but it’s the only available shipping route. Abbott and his wife circumnavigate; they go the long way around, and several times their hopes are nearly dashed upon the hard, venous outcropping. They persevere, sweaty and storm-tossed. They are lucky to be alive. Something occurs, approximate to intercourse. The bottom sheet rends and pulls up, exposing the mattress. Ejaculate shimmers on Abbott’s digital wristwatch. The laughter, they fear, will wake the napping girl.

18 Abbott and the Irregular Past Tense

Abbott, his wife, and his daughter are having a nice time in the family room with a big green ball. They are sitting in a triangular formation, rolling the ball back and forth to one another. The girl is doing well, though Abbott is not even thinking about her motor development in relation to average children. He’s just playing ball with his family, formulating a cocktail. “Mom throwed the ball!” the girl says. “And Dad catched it!” “Hey, that’s right,” Abbott’s wife says, raising her eyebrows at Abbott. Abbott interprets his wife’s glance to mean she is impressed with the girl’s verbal ability. Abbott has never told his wife this — he’s never told anyone — but he has a vision of himself as a father who, in the most gentle and loving and supportive way, corrects his children’s grammar. At the dinner table, say, buttering a roll and explaining, affably, the uses of lie and lay, for instance, or which and that. His intention is certainly not to demean or humiliate, and neither is it simply to instruct, really, but to share his passion and respect for the amazing system of English, its intricate rules and odd exceptions. In his mind, the strictures of grammar and syntax become a kind of fun family activity, with everyone very lovingly and entertainingly pointing out everyone else’s errors. And they’re all laughing and passing the corn and making up funny examples of dangling modifiers. And in this way the children are thoughtful practitioners of our language, and their sense of language, and hence thought, is (lovingly) honed. And it’s not actually the children’s childhood that Abbott is imagining. He’s imagining the children as adults so honed and remarkable that people want to interview them, and in these interviews they speak fondly (and correctly) of the family dinner table of their youth, the father who presided warmly over speech and usage. It sounds authoritarian, they know, but it wasn’t like that. It was fun. The father didn’t belittle them; rather, he found a way to bring the family together around clauses and phrases, subordination and antecedent. You just have to take our word for it. His tone was remarkable. The game continues, the green ball rolling across the carpet, Abbott’s wife and his daughter laughing and exclaiming. “You throwed it!” his daughter says, referring to herself. “That’s right,” his wife says. Abbott knows how difficult it will be to pull this off. If he misses his mark — even slightly — he’s a tyrant. “And Dad catched it,” his wife says. She reaches over and pats Abbott on the knee. “Right, Dad?” she says. Abbott throws the ball into the air and grabs it hard with two hands. He sticks out his tongue and makes his eyes wide. He rubs the ball on top of his head, making strands of his hair stick up. “That’s right,” he says, “I did.”

19 In Which Abbott Stays Clean

The corn on the cob is locally grown, and it is delicious. The dinner begins with five cooked ears on the table. Abbott and his wife eat two ears each, leaving one for their daughter. Abbott’s daughter can’t eat from the cob, or won’t, or Abbott won’t let her, so Abbott cuts the kernels off with a paring knife. This will not, though, be a story about wounds of the flesh. Abbott positions the ear vertically on his plate, much like a holder sets a football for a field-goal attempt. He presses the top of the ear with one hand and slices down the cob with the other. The girl does not like to eat the corn as a spoonful of kernels. She prefers large plaques of corn that she can pick up and eat with her fingers, so Abbott has to slice deeply and forcefully into the cob. The corn and the plate are slippery with reducedfat butter, and the ear shoots off the plate, directly toward Abbott. With startling celerity, Abbott pushes straight back from the table, rising to his feet in a crouched position, arms up, legs bowed slightly to avoid the free-falling corn. He looks, at the end of this maneuver, something like a gymnast who has just nailed a dismount. A gymnast with a paring knife. His chair capsizes loudly behind him as the corn passes between his legs to the floor, where the dog, its fear trumped by appetite, begins to lick it. One instant there is Abbott’s lap, the next it is gone. This is certainly Abbott’s most athletic deed in years, and his initial response, as he stands from his crouch, is pride. He sure evaded that corn. He still has it, the quickness, the reflexes. But then he hears the dog gnawing the cob, and he sees his daughter’s empty tray of food. He feels the upturned, surprised gazes of his wife and daughter. He notices, too, that the clothes he sought so athletically to protect are old, faded, and lightly stained. And Abbott knows — right now, not later — that his very pregnant wife, were she to be the only thing standing between the darting corn and the dog-patrolled floor, would leap or dive like a soccer goalie to preserve her offspring’s dinner. Abbott rights his chair. With his foot he nudges the dog and the corn out of the way and sits down again. He has the right to remain silent, but he waives it. He speaks down to his plate. “I didn’t even think,” he says, either confessing or absolving, but in any case telling the truth.

20 Abbott Improves

Tonight Abbott cannot find his paint-can-opening tool, so he uses a flathead screwdriver instead. With a dusty garden stake he stirs the paint, even though he had it mechanically stirred earlier in the day. He places the gallon can on a folded sheet of plastic to protect the floor. All of the office and nursery furniture is out in the hallway. He removes the cardboard sleeve from the bristled end of a new two-inch cutting brush with an angled tip and wooden handle. He splurged because he’s tired of bad brushes. He dips the brush, rubs one side against the lip of the can, and begins to cut above the floorboard. The paint looks light, but he knows it will darken as it dries. He moves slowly along the walls, cutting around the trim of the floor, the ceiling, the two windows and two doors. (Then around the light-switch cover, the outlet covers, and the overhead light.) The brush is excellent. He uses a damp paper towel to scrub his mistakes from the glossy trim. The cutting takes an hour and a half. Abbott keeps thinking he’ll get up for a beer, but he never does. The steady deep breathing from the monitor, turned low. Abbott’s movements sound strange because the room is empty. He is reminded of other empty rooms, other painted walls. He wouldn’t go back if he could. How many men tonight are painting nurseries, feeling unique? When he’s finished cutting, he wraps the brush tightly in a plastic bag. He pours paint from the gallon can into a sturdy plastic tray, then blots the drips from the side of the can with a paper towel. He takes the plastic covering off a yellow roller cover and pushes the cover firmly onto the roller. He slides the roller back and forth in the tray, coating the yellow cover in paint and evening out the coverage. Then he rolls a vertical strip beside the door, overlapping his brushed line. The previous paint job is a bit rough and uneven, and Abbott knows that if he really wanted to do this right, he would spend a night sanding the walls smooth. And he might prime the walls before painting. He rolls three more strips, ceiling to floor, reaching the corner. The humidity makes the paint runny and slow-drying, so he keeps this first coat light, and he watches for drips. He puts his face close to the wall and turns his head to find the right angle in the light. Abbott’s wife makes her way past the furniture in the hallway and walks into the room. “This looks great,” she says. He nods, inspects. “It will dry a little darker,” he says. “I’m glad we didn’t choose the other one,” his wife says. “Me too,” he says. “You think maybe just one coat?” she says. “No,” Abbott says. “It’ll need two.” His wife says, “Can you bring in that chair for me?” Abbott walks out to the hallway and returns with his heavy wooden desk chair. He puts the chair in the center of the room, and his wife sits while he finishes the first coat.

21 Abbott Visits the Coffee Shop

While the earliest shoes that we have found are nine thousand years old, some scientists believe that humans began making rudimentary shoes as early as thirty to forty thousand years ago. Bombs date back at least as early as 1281 AD, when the Mongols lobbed powder-packed ceramic balls at the Japanese. (The shards are extant.) Two nouns, separated for centuries, finally conjoined. Two concepts made one. Do not talk to strangers, Abbott will one day warn his children. Nor to people with shoes. He sits in the coffee shop with his daughter in his lap. Her eyes are still swollen from crying. He scans the crowded room and does not see any bombs. Because he’s modern, he knows this means one of two things: Either there are no bombs in the coffee shop, or there are bombs in the coffee shop.

22 Abbott’s Supporting Role

This afternoon Abbott’s wife shuffles into the living room and announces that their daughter’s bed is covered in mold. “Right through the pillowcase,” she says, “through the pillow, onto the sheet, through the sheet, onto the mattress pad.” Abbott gets to be the calm one today. He thinks for a moment. “I bet it’s because we put her to bed with wet hair after her bath,” he says scientifically. His wife seems uninterested in causation. “Smell this!” she says, thrusting a pink pillowcase into Abbott’s face. He smells dutifully. The odor is quite bad, but he believes they’ll all get through this. He believes they’ll be stronger for it. “Moldy bed!” she exclaims. His wife’s hysteria creates in him a powerful sense of tranquility that borders on drowsiness. This means the marriage is working. “Is it mold or mildew?” he asks, yawning and slumping deeper into his soft chair. He means to diagnose, not jest. “Social services won’t care!” his wife says. “I bet it happens a lot,” Abbott says, “but it’s one of those things that people don’t want to talk about.” His wife appears to consider this remark. “My God,” she says, “we are horrible parents.” “No, we’re not,” Abbott mutters. “We’re average parents.” His wife flees the living room with the offending linens, and her wild exit plunges Abbott into a deep, narcotic sleep. Hours later, he will learn on the Internet that mold and mildew are essentially the same thing, and also that they are much different.

23 On Dormancy

The original Curious George (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1941) is making Abbott uncomfortable as he reads it to his daughter for the first time (morning, family room, carpet, sun, heat, coffee, triceratops). Perhaps it should be on a higher shelf at the library. Or perhaps it should have a warning sticker. Not banned, of course, Abbott would never say that. But the book is a surprise. Prior to this morning, Abbott and his daughter have read only George’s entertainingly dramatic and noncontroversial adventures: Curious George Makes Pancakes; Curious George and the Dump Truck; Curious George in the Snow; Curious George’s Dream. Now this, though, the original, in which the man with the yellow hat comes to the jungle and exploits George’s preternatural curiosity to capture him in a bag and forcibly remove him from his home. And later, in the big city, George has occasion to smoke a pipe — a pipe—and then he gets thrown into prison. Not jail — prison. There are rats eating George’s food. The pages of the old book are ripped and faded. Abbott’s daughter loves the story. George escapes prison but then ends up at the zoo. Abbott tries to read quickly and quietly; he mumbles, points to squirrels out the window. But the girl’s attention is fixed on George’s trauma. Abbott’s wife calls on the cell phone from the Big Y as Abbott hoped she would. These days, they have their best talks on the phone. “I’m sorry about last night,” she says. Abbott says he is too. He says, “Don’t stand on that chair, honey.” Abbott’s wife says she had a strange dream when she finally fell asleep last night and she was going to tell Abbott about it this morning but she forgot and now she can’t remember the dream. “Maybe you’ll remember it,” he says. “Do you need anything from the store?” she says. “I don’t think so,” he says. Abbott’s daughter wants to read the original Curious George again. “I ran into a woman from yoga,” Abbott’s wife says, “and she was telling me about this family fair coming up, and I said thanks, we’d definitely consider it, but then afterward I realized it was on the day we’re having the baby.” “Yeah, so,” Abbott says. “So,” she says, laughing. Abbott’s wife asks Abbott what they’re doing, and he says they’re reading the original Curious George. He tells her about the pipe. “This is just a hard time,” Abbott’s wife says. “Just a minute, honey,” Abbott says, “I’m talking to Mom.” Abbott’s wife says, “One of these days. You know?” Abbott says, “I know. I know.” He does not know what his wife means. He thinks she could mean any number of things, and he thinks he agrees with all of them.

24 Abbott Stumbles toward a Theory of Use

When the generous children’s librarian gives Abbott’s daughter a package of animal stickers, the girl wants to open them immediately, right there in the library. Abbott knows that if he opens the stickers, she will use them up within minutes. He kindly tells her no, explaining that she should save her stickers for a special time. Abbott’s daughter ignores his answer. “Dad open these?” she says. Abbott again says no. He says, “Let’s just wait and open these later, OK?” “Dad open these?” she says again. “Not now,” Abbott says. “You just got them, honey,” he says, which is of course his daughter’s point. Why is he taking a stand on this matter? What golden application does he envision for these stickers? “Dad open these?” the girl says. “I said no,” Abbott says. There is no end in sight. The child’s universe has contracted to this package of animal stickers, and there is no way Abbott is going to back down now, even if he wants to, his idea being that an unreasonable position held unwaveringly amounts to good parenting. His resoluteness is a value unto itself, regardless of the foolish notion about which he is being resolute. “I want these,” she says. “I know you do,” Abbott says, trying to communicate his empathy. “Dad open these?” “I said no and meant it,” he says. Fortunately for everyone, Abbott’s wife is in the library too. “You two,” she says. She opens the package with her teeth and gives the animal stickers to their daughter. Abbott knows that parents should not undermine each other’s authority, but he is grateful for the intervention. The girl sits on a bench and begins to put the stickers on her neck and throat. She peels off one after another and presses them onto her skin. Shouldn’t she at least save some of them? Abbott thinks. “Shouldn’t she at least save some of them?” he says, but nobody answers. When the girl’s neck and throat are covered, she begins putting stickers on her chin and cheeks. She uses every single animal sticker, probably two dozen. She is delighted. She smiles as she touches her face lightly with the tips of her fingers. She drops the sticker backing onto the floor, and Abbott picks it up. Abbott’s wife finds a small mirror in the library dollhouse and holds it up so their daughter can see. The girl loves the stickers. The generous children’s librarian who gave the stickers to Abbott’s daughter walks past, waving and smiling, apparently untroubled by the prodigality. Abbott grudgingly understands that this is what the stickers were for. The stickers were for his daughter’s neck and face. And he understands that had she done something different with the stickers, then that different thing would have been what the stickers were for. It is not difficult for Abbott to imagine his daughter bringing home a gentleman friend twenty-five years hence. (Make it a female lover if you want — it does not matter to the story.) Abbott, by then no doubt a full professor or perhaps even an endowed chair, will have four cocktails, and he will win over his daughter’s beloved with timely allusions to Oscar Wilde and Joe Montana. Later, in bed — Abbott and his wife will allow them to sleep together — the gentleman (or whoever) will lounge dissolutely on his elbow and say, “Your parents are great. Especially your dad. He’s really great.” Abbott’s daughter will make that face that can be traced back to infancy. She’ll say, “He’s mellowed a lot. When I was a kid, he was the kind of dad who wouldn’t let me put stickers on my face. And he’d correct my grammar in a way that he thought was fun and loving. And he’d tell me to be careful all the time. God, he’d tell me to be careful when I was making toast.” And then they will lie together in that old bed, most likely naked, and for a long time talk about fathers, the failures of fathers.

25 Abbott and the Parable of the Giraffe

Abbott’s daughter is having a hard time of it indeed. She is trying to lift the stuffed giraffe from the floor, and she cannot do it. She has been at it for some time — nearly a minute, perhaps — and she cannot lift the giraffe. The toy is not large, nor is it heavy. Abbott watches, refusing, out of some combination of principle and indolence, to facilitate. He admires her focus, her tenacity, her intrinsic dignity. She is a straight arrow of intent. Her faint eyebrows are squeezed in concentration and purpose, but she has not become frustrated or angry. She is leaning over, using both hands, pulling the giraffe’s head, and the world is simply not working as it supposed to, as it has up to this point. The reason that Abbott’s daughter can’t lift the giraffe is that she is standing on it. Once she steps off of the animal, she has a much easier time lifting it, which she does, with neither pride nor humiliation. And then, giraffe clamped in her armpit, she moves forth to the next thing.

26 On Containment

As Aristotle probably asked, Is it not prudent to diagnose the diagnoser? Briefly, then: Abbott’s parents were divorced when he was nine years old. Afterward, his parents had joint custody, so Abbott moved between their residences every two weeks. These transfers occurred on Sundays, in late afternoon or early evening. And there was, as in some convoluted geocentric model of the heavens, motion within motion: His mother, with whom Abbott lived half the time, moved six times in the eight years of the custodial arrangement. One consequence of this Ptolemaic childhood was that Abbott at a young age became preoccupied with luggage. Suitcases, duffels, bags, satchels, backpacks. And not just luggage, but any item within which other smaller items might be tidily placed. Chests, trunks, bins, tubs, baskets, folders, cartons, envelopes, pillowcases, pockets. The sturdy cardboard box. And tonight Abbott is in his garage, searching for something that he forgets immediately when he sees, tucked in the corner like some neglected pet, his rooftop carrier. It’s covered in cobwebs, but still modern and sleek. At thirteen cubic feet, it’s capacious enough to hold several large suitcases and a pair of nice water skis. (Abbott does not water-ski.) The carrier is durable and lightweight, surprisingly easy to install upon the car’s roof rack. Its latches, one on each side, can be locked and unlocked, locked and unlocked, with a small silver key that glints on Abbott’s key ring. He looks for the key there, on his key ring, and eventually finds it. He holds it between his thumb and forefinger. There is an extra key he can keep in a special place. Abbott would like to take a trip. He would like, actually, to have taken a trip. He would like to return from a trip. He would like to ease the carrier manfully off the car’s roof and wipe it down like a weary steed. He would like to take a firm but tender grip of its black aerodynamic flanks and then position it carefully on a custom-built pallet in the corner of the garage, which is, after all, yet another pleasing container. Abbott turns in a slow circle. He has no idea what he is in here to find. There are so many things in the garage — scattered tools, furniture, a grass-seed spreader — far more than could ever fit in the carrier. It’s a discouraging mess. The space is not used well. The pallet he could probably build if he ever had time. Today is, what, Sunday? On Friday Abbott will have another child.

27 Abbott and the Small Black Spot

Abbott’s daughter sits on the floor across the room from Abbott. The small black spot he sees on the side of her neck belongs to one of two categories — deer tick or not deer tick. This family room is ninety miles from Lyme, Connecticut. “Come here for a second,” he says to her. “I want to check something.” The girl keeps working on her fire-station puzzle. She does not come to him. Abbott is certain that the black spot is a deer tick. As he crosses the room, though, he reasons that most black spots are not deer ticks. It’s fear, he knows, that turns spots into ticks. He expands his categories — mole, mud, magic marker. The black spot is very likely not a deer tick, he realizes. He crouches to his daughter’s neck, and so what if the spot is a tick? So what? Some deer ticks do not carry disease, and some do not carry implication. Abbott removes the tick from her skin in the proper manner. He’s not even sure it’s a deer tick. He can look that up later. At present, his daughter needs help with her puzzle. The Dalmatian is tricky.

28 Abbott Looks out the Window

Long after the volunteer community search party disbanded, the missing girls have been found at a rest area four states away. They’re alive. They were playing shoeless in the picnic area when an alert motorist called authorities. They’re skinny, but they have always been skinny. The sheriff’s deputy back home wept at the press conference. He said, “Most of us working on this one have kids. The ones with kids are the hardest.” He said, “You just can’t—” but he didn’t finish. Abbott leans back in his chair and tries to recall which missing girls these are. The summer is full of them. Out his window he can see a maple tree, the top of a weathered wooden fence, his neighbor’s roof and chimney. The window is divided into twelve panes, four rows of three. Abbott imagines that each pane is a framed photograph. He studies the composition of each of the twelve panes. He moves along rows, left to right, beginning with the upper left pane. A cloud of leaves and a single red brick. A squirrel on new shingles. Sky with faded contrail. There is not one pane that is not beautiful.

29 Abbott and the Cold Shudder

Abbott’s office is nearly a nursery. The chair and books he has already moved to the basement. Only the desk remains, crowded on one side by a changing table and crib, now assembled, and on the other side by a rocking chair and a chest of drawers filled with tidy stacks of clothing that seem too small to fit anyone. Alphabet letter-cards span the walls, spaced uniformly. A Kite likes wind. A Lamb is soft. The Moon is full. Abbott stands in front of his desk, awaits connection. The room still has the new-paint smell. Today is the anniversary of tragedy, but which day is not? Abbott’s eyesight is not what it used to be, but if he squints and leans down toward the laptop screen he can read, in the archival photographs, the messages handwritten on the signs held aloft by dark-skinned people trapped on rooftops of flooded buildings. One sign says HELP US, one says WE NEED WATER, one says PLEASE HELP. Darwin was troubled by the eye, its “inimitable contrivances.” How could natural selection, working so gradually upon only the modest, incremental variations produced by random mutation, have created something as complex as an eye? What adaptive benefit is one one-thousandth of an optical organ? Or even half of one? “The eye to this day gives me a cold shudder,” he wrote after the publication of On the Origin of Species. But the mechanism of the eye is the easy part to believe, as any insurance executive can tell you. “One might have thought of sight,” wrote the vice president of Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company, “but who could think / Of what it sees …?” Abbott’s wife knocks on the open door. Abbott turns, keeps his body in front of the screen so his wife cannot see. “When are you going to move the desk?” she says. “Right this very instant,” he says. Abbott DISCONNECTS NOW and crawls beneath the desk with a screwdriver. He begins to take the desk apart, keeping the screws in a sandwich bag he will affix to the inside of a drawer with masking tape. On the tape he will write DESK SCREWS in black marker. At some point during the disassembly, a juncture of interest to philosophers, the desk ceases to be a desk, the office an office.

30 Abbott on the Roof

The stars are far behind the clouds tonight as Abbott climbs a borrowed ladder to his roof. He does not have wine or a blanket. He sits on the flat roof above his family room and rests his back against the gentle slope of the garage. He presses his palms against the shingles, still warm from the day. He knows the warmth is from the late-summer sun, but it is easy to believe that it comes from inside the house, from all the bodies and breath and motion. The heat of a family, radiating out. He does not have marijuana or an old acoustic guitar. In two minutes he’s self-conscious. In five minutes he’s bored. In eight minutes his lower back hurts. He sees a firefly blink below him, and he counts the seconds until it blinks again. He hears his neighbors through their screens: the bright clatter of silverware on plates, spouses and children calling for one another through the houses. Where are you? Can you come here for a second? Have you seen Matt? Someone is running a power saw. Someone is dragging a can to the curb, though it is not, Abbott thinks, trash night. The wind pushes small sticks and branches across the roof and off the edge. No moon, no constellations, no meteor showers. Abbott climbs back down the ladder. In the family room his wife says, “What were you doing?” Abbott fixes a drink in the kitchen. “Just checking,” he says. His wife says, “Come in here.” She is lying on the bad couch. The family room is still a mess from the day. “Let’s clean this up later,” she says. Abbott lifts her legs and sits beneath them. The veins in her ankles look terrible. You poor thing, the nurses always say. “Are you scared?” Abbott says. “Sure,” she says. “Do you wish we had done the amnio?” he says. “No,” she says, “I don’t think about that.” Abbott sees a bulging garbage bag slumped against the front door. It probably is trash night, then. “Everything is going to be fine,” he says. “Look at this,” she says. “Is that an elbow?” he says. “Either an elbow or a knee.” Abbott tries to kiss it but it’s gone. He keeps his lips on his wife’s stomach for a while, then he says, “Just a second.” He slips out from beneath his wife’s legs and gets off the couch. He leaves the family room and walks the length of the house to the bedroom. From the drawer of his nightstand he takes a wrapped gift and returns to the family room. “This is just something small,” he says. “I got you something too,” his wife says. “Go get it. It’s in my nightstand.” Abbott walks back to the bedroom and pulls a small wrapped gift from his wife’s nightstand. Then he walks back to the family room. “Did you wrap this?” his wife says, holding up the gift. Abbott shakes his head. “It’s nothing big,” he says. Abbott’s wife begins to unwrap the gift. “You know,” she says, “when I first heard you up there, I was angry. But then I realized you are not the kind of man who would ever fall off a roof.”

31 Abbott Chooses a Side

Monitored, amplified, the fetal heartbeat sounds to Abbott like the hoarse bark of a guard dog. “Or like a marching band far away,” his wife says. The nurses take her blood pressure and talk about their distant pregnancies. “Back then they just knocked you out,” says one. Then they roll Abbott’s wife out of the room. She smiles weakly and waves as she disappears. Abbott puts on his scrubs and waits. He knows that eleven thousand babies are born in the United States every day. Nothing else so ordinary is ever called miraculous. He sits, stands, walks to the window. Three stories down, morning commuters drink coffee and talk on their phones. They do not even glance up at the Childbirth Center, this hub of life. They do not seem to notice or care. Abbott surmises that he has driven past dozens of births while opening CD cases or eating crackers. He sits, stands, picks up items and puts them down. Finally someone comes for him, leads him out. His wife is at the center of the operating room with a drape over her chest. Abbott can choose which side of the drape: belly or head. He chooses head, because it is crying and because he does not want to see — ever — his wife’s abdominal wall. Her headache is caused by a rapid drop in blood pressure, and the anesthesiologist is making things better. His voice is soothing and kind through his mask. “Is it still bad?” he says. Abbott’s wife nods. “In just a second you’re going to start feeling better,” he says. There are many people in the room. The nurses and doctors joke about speeding tickets, and Abbott wishes they would be quiet. Then they all grow quiet, and Abbott wishes they would start joking again. He does not know whether the procedure has begun. He is with his wife, though it is true that the doctors on the other side of the drape are with his wife, too. He strokes her hair through the thin fabric of her scrub cap, worried that it might not be the right thing. (Later she will tell him it was the right thing.) Her arms are out to her sides. The doctors use what sounds like a vacuum. Abbott, sitting by his wife’s head, can see, over the drape, the eyes of the doctors above their masks. The birth feels secretive, covert. He can feel the hot air pooling in his own mask. The thing he’d like to tell all of them is Please be careful with this woman and this baby. It’s always possible to be a little bit more careful. He leans down to whisper to his wife. He puts his covered lips lightly on her ear and says nothing. He makes a whispering noise but not words. The doctors tug hard at the hole they have made, and here now there’s a human baby aloft over the drape, looking not at all ready for existence. Her skinny legs, for instance, are curved like parentheses. It has already happened and it is over and it has begun. The doctors begin to repair Abbott’s wife’s body. Her head is smiling, weeping. “Is she OK?” she asks. Someone says, “She looks great.” This time the camera has fresh batteries, but Abbott forgets to take a picture. Fortunately, the anesthesiologist is there to help. Here’s the red-throated howl. Here are the curled toes. Here’s the knit cap too big. Here’s the yellow cord with bright drops of blood. Here’s the pediatrician’s forearm. Here’s the scale. Here’s the wife, so close and so far away. Here’s the terror, the full and expanding heart. Here’s what happened to Abbott.