Real Life(66)
Wallace takes a seat on a bench under a couple of trees on a sandy patch adjacent to the running trail near the lake. He tucks his legs under him. The metal slats are hot, but pleasantly so. The view of the water is stunning. Blue and gray bands of water all the way out to the dark figure of the peninsula, which juts, sphinxlike, into the lake. Boats in the distance. The low, mossy branches of the tree overhead provide shade. Some clouds coming in out there, yes, darkening. There will be rain, he knows, and then the great cooling. Fall is so close he can almost taste it in the air.
He is seized by the urge to call his brother. They have not spoken since those frenzied weeks when his brother called him every day to communicate to him the facts and figures of his father’s death. The first prognosis, which had been good, his voice light and full of hope. The dwindling prospects, the tumor refusing to stop growing, the insignificant victories, a successfully installed feeding tube running through his father’s body, then the collection of water in the lungs, the swelling, the failing of the organs, one by one, each organ getting its own phone call—first kidneys, then liver, then finally the heart. His brother’s voice was like those old boyhood prayers they used to say before they went to bed, nonsense words to Wallace even then, and yet somehow necessary to get through it. Wallace knew early on how it would go, that the hope in his brother’s voice was a matter of self-deception, and yet when the end came, he found that he was surprised, despite what he knew, because his brother had somehow convinced even a small part of him to hope too, to believe too, that things might turn around.
The desire to call his brother, then, is another urge toward self-deception, about the end of something, the dwindling hours of his life here in this city by this lake. He could call his brother down in Georgia, where he works as a carpenter for the state, call him and tell him the facts. It would be easy. And his brother might have some hope for him too, a belief in the goodness of things, in the capacity of the world to turn around and change its mind. Wallace takes out his phone and stares down at it. He could do it. He could make himself less alone just by calling.
“How stupid,” he says to himself. “How stupid, Wallace.” He puts the phone away, gets off the bench, and takes the lakeshore path back to the pier, where the people are already gathering for the evening. It’s only late afternoon, but here they are, snagging the famous multicolored tables. This is the site of the city’s greatest confluence of university students and what Wallace and his friends call real people; that is, locals who are not affiliated with the university. It amazes him to think how quickly he has forgotten how to move among such people, who seem rough and ugly when they look at him, all bloated faces and missing teeth. They move through the world with a kind of clumsy ease, as if they don’t care how the next day will unfold because it holds so few possibilities for them. These are not people who spend their lives contemplating the minute shifts in their fortunes; they are like the happy, well-fed fish that grow in fisheries, hatched and grown to adulthood in tiny, controlled spaces. And then farmed for food.
Wallace climbs the gray steps from the lake’s edge onto the platform and looks around. He is close to his apartment. It would be nothing to go back there now, but he doesn’t like the idea of it. He’s too wound up to stay at home. The library is nearby. He could go there and read for a few hours, spend time in a quiet, cool corner, watching the water. A boy and a girl run by him, holding hands. They’re seven or eight, he thinks, small and white and fast. They’re laughing, their little blond heads bobbing as they go. Their parents bring up the rear, an attractive middle-aged man—Wallace has seen him on the app, he thinks—and a woman with a tight, mean face, dark hair, green eyes, lots of freckles, skin like an aging banana peel.
On the lower level of the platform a band is setting up, pudgy white college kids in dark sweatshirts and ratty jeans. The equipment looks expensive. There are a couple of black people, scattered throughout the tables, though not together, separate. One of them, a young woman with long braids and skin so smooth and dark that he gasps when his eyes light upon her, turns to him and smiles. There is a flicker of recognition, an easing of some tension inside him. She is with a group of white girls, all of them wearing sundresses in bright floral colors. The black girl is wearing yellow. She is the prettiest among them, but they are all talking over her, around her, and at a group of white boys standing on a platform below them, in casual khaki shorts and sweatshirts. One of the boys has his leg up on the platform where the girls are standing, his fingers tucked inside his belt loop, nodding aggressively. The black girl smooths her dress, flips her braids over her shoulder, and laughs, though there is boredom on her face.
Wallace feels sorry for her, but then also for himself, because this has been his life since he came to this place, alone among white people. He’s sweating again. It’s collecting on his forehead. The lake is lapping softly, its turquoise and gray water soothing. Little brown birds hop among the folded tables, pecking at loose bits of food. He could grab a table maybe, sit for a while. That might be nice, just to be in a place. He could ask Brigit to come, spend an hour or two by the lake. The prospect of seeing Brigit, who might be on her way to lab and therefore nearby, lifts his spirits. He feels equal to that task, texts her quickly before he loses his nerve. She is close by, she says, and could swing by for a little while. It’s a plan, he says, and looks around for an empty table for the two of them.