Different Seasons(91)
At least for a while.
20
For Morris Heisel, that Sunday was a day of miracles.
The Atlanta Braves, his favorite baseball team, swept a double-header from the high and mighty Cincinnati Reds by scores of 7-1 and 8-0. Lydia, who boasted smugly of always taking care of herself and whose favorite saying was “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,” slipped on her friend Janet’s wet kitchen floor and sprained her hip. She was at home in bed. It wasn’t serious, not at all, and thank God (what God) for that, but it meant she wouldn’t be able to visit him for at least two days, maybe as long as four.
Four days without Lydia! Four days that he wouldn’t have to hear about how she had warned him that the stepladder was wobbly and how he was up too high on it in the bargain. Four days when he wouldn’t have to listen to her tell him how she’d always said the Rogans’ pup was going to cause them grief, always chasing Lover Boy that way. Four days without Lydia asking him if he wasn’t glad now that she had kept after him about sending in that insurance application, for if she had not, they would surely be on their way to the poorhouse now. Four days without having Lydia tell him that many people lived perfectly normal lives—almost, anyway—paralyzed from the waist down; why, every museum and gallery in the city had wheelchair ramps as well as stairs, and there were even special busses. After the observation, Lydia would smile bravely and then inevitably burst into tears.
Morris drifted off into a contented late afternoon nap.
When he woke up it was half-past five in the afternoon. His roommate was asleep. He still hadn’t placed Denker, but all the same he felt sure that he had known the man at some time or other. He had begun to ask Denker about himself once or twice, but then something kept him from making more than the most banal conversation with the man—the weather, the last earthquake, the next earthquake, and yeah, the Guide says Myron Floren is going to come back for a special guest appearance this weekend on the Welk show.
Morris told himself he was holding back because it gave him a mental game to play, and when you were in a bodycast from your shoulders to your hips, mental games can come in handy. If you had a little mental contest going on, you didn’t have to spend quite so much time wondering how it was going to be, pissing through a catheter for the rest of your life.
If he came right out and asked Denker, the mental game would probably come to a swift and unsatisfying conclusion. They would narrow their pasts down to some common experience—a train trip, a boat ride, possibly even the camp. Denker might have been in Patin; there had been plenty of German Jews there.
On the other hand, one of the nurses had told him Denker would probably be going home in a week or two. If Morris couldn’t figure it out by then, he would mentally declare the game lost and ask the man straight out: Say, I’ve had the feeling I know you—
But there was more to it than just that, he admitted to himself. There was something in his feelings, a nasty sort of undertow, that made him think of that story “The Monkey’s Paw,” where every wish had been granted as the result of some evil turn of fate. The old couple who came into possession of the paw wished for a hundred dollars and received it as a gift of condolence when their only son was killed in a nasty mill accident. Then the mother had wished for the son to return to them. They had heard footsteps dragging up their walk shortly afterward; then pounding on the door. The mother, mad with joy, had gone rushing down the stairs to let in her only child. The father, mad with fear, scrabbled through the darkness for the dried paw, found it at last, and wished his son dead again. The mother threw the door open a moment. later and found nothing on the stoop but an eddy of night wind.
In some way Morris felt that perhaps he did know where he and Denker had been acquainted, but that his knowledge was like the son of the old couple in the story—returned from the grave, but not as he was in his mother’s memory; returned, instead, horribly crushed and mangled from his fall into the gnashing, whirling machinery. He felt that his knowledge of Denker might be a subconscious thing, pounding on the door between that area of his mind and that of rational understanding and recognition, demanding admittance ... and that another part of him was searching frantically for the monkey’s paw, or its psychological equivalent; for the talisman that would wish away the knowledge forever.
Now he looked at Denker, frowning.
Denker, Denker, Where have I known you, Denker? Was it Patin? Is that why I don’t want to know? But surely, two survivors of a common horror do not have to be afraid of each other. Unless, of course ...
He frowned. He felt very close to it, suddenly, but his feet were tingling, breaking his concentration, annoying him. They were tingling in just the way a limb tingles when you’ve slept on it and it’s returning to normal circulation. If it wasn’t for the damned body-cast, he could sit up and rub his feet until that tingle went away. He could—
Morris’s eyes widened.
For a long time he lay perfectly still, Lydia forgotten, Denker forgotten, Patin forgotten, everything forgotten except that tingly feeling in his feet. Yes, both feet, but it was stronger in the right one. When you felt that tingle, you said My foot went to sleep.
But what you really meant, of course, was My foot is waking up.
Morris fumbled for a call-button. He pressed it again and again until the nurse came.
The nurse tried to dismiss it—she had had hopeful patients before. His doctor wasn’t in the building, and the nurse didn’t want to call him at home. Dr. Kemmelman had a vast reputation for evil temper ... especially when he was called at home. Morris wouldn’t let her dismiss it. He was a mild man, but now he was prepared to make more than a fuss; he was prepared to make an uproar if that’s what it took. The Braves had taken two. Lydia had sprained her hip. But good things came in threes, everyone knew that.