Before the Fall(24)

“Is that for me?” she asks, pointing.

For a moment Doug looks confused, then he realizes she means the coffee.

“Uh, sure,” he says, and hands it to her. Scott can tell from the way she holds it that the cup is almost empty. He sees her face get sad. Doug comes around the boy’s bed and stands near his wife. Scott can smell alcohol on his clothes.

“How’s the patient?” Doug asks.

“He’s good,” says Eleanor. “Got some sleep.”

Studying Doug’s back, Scott wonders how much money the boy stands to inherit from his parents. Five million? Fifty? His father ran a TV empire and flew in private planes. There will be riches, real estate. Sniffling, Doug hikes up his pants with both hands. He pulls a small toy car from his pocket. It still has the price tag on it.

“Here you go, slugger,” he says. “Got this for you.”

There are a lot of sharks in the sea, thinks Scott, watching the boy take the car.

Dr. Glabman enters, eyeglasses perched on top of his head. He has a bright-yellow banana sticking out of his lab coat pocket.

“Ready to go home?” he asks.

They get dressed. The hospital gives Scott a pair of blue surgical scrubs to wear. He puts them on one-handed, wincing as the nurse maneuvers his fragile left arm into the sleeve. When he comes out of the bathroom the boy is already dressed and sitting in a wheelchair.

“I’m giving you the name of a child psychiatrist,” the doctor tells Eleanor, out of earshot of the boy. “He specializes in post-traumatic cases.”

“We actually don’t live in the city,” says Doug.

Eleanor shushes him with a look.

“Of course,” she says, taking the business card from the doctor. “I’ll call this afternoon.”

Scott crosses to the boy, kneels on the floor in front of him.

“You be good,” he says.

The boy shakes his head, tears in his eyes.

“I’ll see you,” Scott tells him. “I’m giving your aunt my phone number. So you can call. Okay?”

The boy won’t look at him.

Scott touches his tiny arm for a moment, unsure what to do next. He has never had a child, never been an uncle or a godfather. He’s not even sure they speak the same language. After a moment Scott straightens and hands Eleanor a piece of paper with his phone number.

“Obviously, call anytime,” he says. “Not that I know what I can do to help. But if he wants to talk, or you…”

Doug takes the number from his wife. He folds it up and jams it in his back pocket.

“Sounds good, man,” he says.

Scott stands for a minute, looking at Eleanor, then at the boy, and finally at Doug. It feels like an important moment, like one of those critical junctures in life when you’re supposed to say something or do something, but you don’t know what. Only later does it hit you. Later, the thing you should have said will be as clear as day, but right now it’s just a nagging feeling, a clenched jaw and low nausea.

“Okay,” he says finally and walks to the door, thinking he will just go. That that’s the best thing. To let the boy be with his family. But then as he steps into the hall he feels two small arms grab his leg, and he turns to see the boy holding on to him.

The hall is full of people, patients and visitors, doctors and nurses. Scott puts a hand on the boy’s head, then bends and picks him up. The boy’s arms encircle his neck, and he hugs hard enough to cut off Scott’s air. Scott blinks away tears.

“Don’t forget,” he tells the boy. “You’re my hero.”

He lets the boy hug himself out, then carries him back to the wheelchair. Scott can feel Eleanor and Doug watching him, but he keeps his eyes on the boy.

“Never give up,” he tells him.

Then Scott turns and walks off down the hall.

*



In the early years, when he was deep in a painting, Scott felt like he was underwater. There was that same pressure between the ears, the same muted silence. Colors were sharper. Light rippled and bent. He had his first group show at twenty-six, his first solo show at thirty. Every dime he could scrabble together was spent on canvas and paint. Somewhere along the way he stopped swimming. There were galleries to commandeer and women to f*ck and he was a tall, green-eyed flirt with a contagious smile. Which meant there was always a girl to buy him breakfast or put a roof over his head, at least for a few nights. At the time this almost made up for the fact that his work was good, not great. Looking at it, you could see he had potential, a unique voice, but something was missing. Years passed. The big solo shows and high-profile museum acquisitions never happened. The German biennials and genius grants, the invitations to paint and teach abroad. He turned thirty, thirty-five. One night, after several cocktails at his third gallery opening of the week to celebrate an artist five years younger than himself, it occurred to Scott that he would never became the overnight success he thought he’d be, the enfant terrible, the downtown superstar. The heady exhilaration of artistic possibility had become elusive and frightening. He was a minor artist. That’s all he’d ever be. The parties were still good. The women were still beautiful, but Scott felt uglier. As the rootlessness of youth was replaced by middle-aged self-involvement, his affairs turned quick and dirty. He drank to forget. Alone in his studio, Scott took to staring at the canvas for hours waiting for images to appear.