Anything Is Possible(61)

It was strange for Abel to hear this phrase, reminiscent of a schoolyard taunt, yet it was not a taunt now. Still, he felt flushed. No, his daddy had died when Abel was very young. Once, briefly—was it days only?—there had been a man, and Abel remembered it mostly because after the man left, Dottie had got a store-bought dress and Abel had been bought a new pair of pants. These pants became too short quickly, and stayed that way almost a year. But they were the pants that allowed him the job as an usher, after his mother’s cousin—Lucy Barton’s mother—who did sewing had managed to lengthen them when he’d gone to stay with them.

“Oh, I can see the question hurt your feelings,” Scrooge said. “I can be awfully insensitive. And then I get pissed off at people because I myself am sensitive. I don’t like sensitive people who only feel sensitive for themselves.”

“I’m sorry,” Abel said, blinking his eyes, which seemed blurry. “You know—I’m not feeling very well. You see, I had a heart attack a year ago.”

Scrooge was on his feet again. “Why didn’t you tell me? Jesus. Let’s get you help.”

“No worries,” Abel said. “Do you think you could get the pony down for my granddaughter?”

Scrooge looked at him so searchingly that Abel looked away; he had not been looked at that closely—that intimately—in years. “?‘No worries’?” the man said in a voice almost tender. “Who are you?”

“A man who dresses well,” Abel answered, once more aware of the bizarre impulse to smile. “A man who doesn’t cheat on his taxes.” And again—the bizarre impulse to almost weep.

“You do dress well.” Scrooge opened the door and was gone from Abel’s sight. Abel heard him calling, “I’ve always known a tailor-made suit! Now I’m getting that pony and don’t you move. Stay calm, and stay right there!”

—

Abel’s tailor had been a man from London named Keith, and twice a year Abel strode into the Drake Hotel, arriving at a suite that provided vast views of the lake. In these overheated rooms, while the radiators hissed, Abel would be measured by Keith with a cloth tape, and in gestures so subtle, so assured and quick, Keith would place muslin against Abel’s shoulders, his chest, down the length of his arm, marking it with chalk. The swatches of fabric were laid out in the other room, and almost always Abel chose what Keith suggested. Only once or twice did Abel suggest that perhaps the fabric be more subdued, or that the stripes might just be—perhaps—too wide. “I don’t want to look like a gangster,” Abel joked, and Keith answered, “Oh, surely not.”

When word came that Keith had died of cancer, Abel was astonished. That astonishment had to do with death, with the wiping out of a person, with the puzzlement that the man was simply gone. The simplicity of the goneness was something Abel was familiar with; he was not a young man, he had known the death of others, starting with the goneness of his own father. But what followed this astonishment was a searing sense of shame, as though Abel had done something unsavory all those years by having Keith build his clothes. He found himself murmuring the words out loud, when he was in his car, or alone in his office, or getting dressed in the morning, “I’m sorry. God, I’m so sorry.”

Even while he voted as a conservative, even while he took his annual bonus from the board, even while he ate in the best restaurants Chicago offered, and even while most of him thought what he had thought for years, I will not apologize for being rich, he did apologize, but to whom precisely he did not know. Waves of shame would suddenly pour over him, the way his wife had endured hot flashes for years, her face instantly bright red, rivulets of perspiration forming on the sides of her face. She could not be jovial about these incidents, the way he saw some women at the office were. But he felt he understood better now, the uncontrolled assault she must have felt, just as he felt the uncontrolled assault of his shame, which, he was perfectly aware, had no basis in anything real. Keith had had a job. He had done his job well. He had been paid well. (He had not really been paid that well.)

But when Abel came across two men in the manufacturing department one day, the first making a snide remark about “being part of a company involved with sheer corporate greed,” the second rolling his eyes, replying, “Don’t be a stupid, cynical youth,” it was this second man that infuriated Abel, who said to him, “We need the cynicism of youth, it’s healthy. Stop degrading the efforts of mankind by calling them stupid, for the love of God!” He worried about this later, because the workplace was not what it had been for most of his career, it was now a petri dish of potential lawsuits, and Human Resources was kept busy, though admittedly far less than at other companies. Abel was, in fact, respected. He was even loved. (Dearly, by his longtime secretary.)

But the point was—the sense of apology did not go away; it was a tiring thing to carry.

—

“I married way up,” Abel said out loud, and for some reason he wanted to chuckle. “Oh, I did. She seemed as lovely as a Christmas tree to me. I don’t mean she looked like a tree, just that she represented all—”

“Here we go, here we go.” Linck McKenzie was back, holding out his hand.

“Thank you,” Abel said. He saw Linck McKenzie standing in the doorway; he heard Linck say, “You know, you’re a good man.”