Different Seasons(86)

“What?” He twisted his head so he could see her. He was almost at the top of his aluminum stepladder. There was a bright yellow sticker on this step which said: DANGER! BALANCE MAY SHIFT WITHOUT WARNING ABOVE THIS STEP! Morris was wearing his carpenter’s apron with the wide pockets, one of the pockets filled with nails and the other filled with heavy-duty staples. The ground under the stepladder’s feet was slightly uneven and the ladder rocked a little when he moved. His neck ached with the unlovely prelude to one of his migraines. He was out of temper. “What?”

“Come down from there, I said, before you break your back.”

“I’m almost finished.”

“You’re rocking on that ladder like you were on a boat, Morris. Come down.”

“I’ll come down when I’m done!” he said angrily. “Leave me alone!”

“You’ll break your back,” she reiterated dolefully, and went into the house again.

Ten minutes later, as he was hammering the last nail into the rain-gutter, tipped back nearly to the point of overbalancing, he heard a feline yowl followed by fierce barking.

“What in God’s name—?”

He looked around and the stepladder rocked alarmingly. At that same moment, their cat—it was named Lover Boy, not Morris—tore around the comer of the garage, its fur bushed out into hackles and its green eyes flaring. The Rogans’ collie pup was in hot pursuit, its tongue hanging out and its leash dragging behind it.

Lover Boy, apparently not superstitious; ran under the stepladder. The collie pup followed.

“Look out, look out, you dumb mutt!” Morris shouted.

The ladder rocked. The pup bunted it with the side of its body. The ladder tipped over and Morris tipped with it, uttering a howl of dismay. Nails and staples flew out of his carpenter’s apron. He landed half on and half off the concrete driveway, and a gigantic agony flared in his back. He did not so much hear his spine snap as feel it happen. Then the world grayed out for awhile.

When things swam back into focus, he was still lying half on and half off the driveway in a litter of nails and staples. Lydia was kneeling over him, weeping. Rogan from next door was there, too, his face as white as a shroud.

“I told you!” Lydia babbled. “I told you to come down off that ladder! Now look! Now look at this!”

Morris found he had absolutely no desire to look. A suffocating, throbbing band of pain had cinched itself around his middle like a belt, and that was bad, but there was something much worse: he could feel nothing below that belt of pain—nothing at all.

“Wail later,” he said huskily. “Call the doctor now.”

“I’ll do it,” Rogan said, and ran back to his own house.

“Lydia,” Morris said. He wet his lips.

“What? What, Morris?” She bent over him and a tear splashed on his cheek. It was touching, he supposed, but it had made him flinch, and the flinch had made the pain worse.

“Lydia, I also have one of my migraines.”

“Oh, poor darling! Poor Morrist But I told you—”

“I’ve got the headache because that potzer Rogan’s dog barked all night and kept me awake. Today the dog chases my cat and knocks over my ladder and I think my back is broken.”

Lydia shrieked. The sound made Morris’s head vibrate.

“Lydia,” he said, and wet his lips again.

“What, darling?”

“I have suspected something for many years. Now I am sure.”

“My poor Morris! What?”

“There is no God,” Morris said, and fainted.

They took him to Santo Donato and his doctor told him, at about the same time that he would have ordinarily been sitting down to one of Lydia’s wretched suppers, that he would never walk again. By then they had put him in a body-cast. Blood and urine samples had been taken. Dr. Kemmelman had peered into his eyes and tapped his knees with a little rubber hammer—but no reflexive twitch of the leg answered the taps. And at every turn there was Lydia, the tears streaming from her eyes, as she used up one handkerchief after another. Lydia, a woman who would have been at home married to Job, went everywhere well-supplied with little lace snotrags, just in case reason for an extended crying spell should occur. She had called her mother, and her mother would be here soon (“That’s nice, Lydia”—although if there was anyone on earth Morris honestly loathed, it was Lydia’s mother). She had called the rabbi, he would be here soon, too (“That’s nice, Lydia”—although he hadn’t set foot inside the synagogue in five years and wasn’t sure what the rabbi’s name was). She had called his boss, and while he wouldn’t be here soon, he sent his greatest sympathies and condolences (“That’s nice, Lydia”—although if there was anyone in a class with Lydia’s mother, it was that cigar-chewing putz Frank Haskell). At last they gave Morris a Valium and took Lydia away. Shortly afterward, Morris just drifted away—no worries, no migraines, no nothing. If they kept giving him little blue pills like that, went his last thought, he would go on up that stepladder and break his back again.

When he woke up—or regained consciousness, that was more like it—dawn was just breaking and the hospital was as quiet as Morris supposed it ever got. He felt very calm... almost serene. He had no pain; his body felt swaddled and weightless. His bed had been surrounded by some sort of contraption like a squirrel cage—a thing of stainless steel bars, guy wires, and pulleys. His legs were being held up by cables attached to this gadget. His back seemed to be bowed by something beneath, but it was hard to tell—he had only the angle of his vision to judge by.