Dale Loves Sophie to Death Read online

  “In the pre-Polynesian civilization on Easter Island,” he said, “the island was apparently quite lush. It may be the most isolated spot in the world, so the original population didn’t have any access to other resources. They only had what the island offered.” Martin was sheepish. “This is simply conjecture, of course. Well, there was a program about it on television…But what it all comes down to is that they exhausted their timber. Their food supplies dwindled. They took to living in caves. Well, they abandoned their gods, of course. I mean, those gods weren’t working! And they took up a peculiar religion. They worshipped the bird-man. A man who could fly, you see. Who could escape.” There was quite a pause. Vic was leaning back in his chair with his chin on his chest in an attitude of weighty consideration.

  “Well,” Martin went on, a little hesitantly, “doesn’t that put you in mind of the astronauts? Of course, it does. But the outward quest?” He simply couldn’t reveal himself any further, and Vic was nodding agreeably in any case.

  “I do remember something about Easter Island,” Vic said with what appeared at first to be sober enthusiasm but turned into a kind of glee. “Where did I ever hear this? Easter Island is called the ‘navel of the world’ by somebody I’ve read. Now, who? And I’ve always wondered why. It’s a revolting idea! It makes me imagine that the dregs of the earth settle there after the bathwater’s drained out.” Vic was greatly amused, but the idea had riveted Martin’s attention. A sudden image floated through his head of the earth as an aging, withered body, with Easter Island stuck to its belly like a wrinkled raisin on a gingerbread man.

  The next few days Martin was disconsolate. He spent his time between the kitchen, simply to eat his meals, and his and Dinah’s bedroom. He had strewn his work out on Dinah’s desk there, but he couldn’t concentrate very well. Now he found that all the articles he had accepted for publication were beside the point and tedious. But his thoughts also veered away from the alarming theories and ideas at the back of his mind, and he tended to think a good deal about his own family. He thought a lot about his wife. One morning an incident came to mind that he hadn’t remembered for a long time because it always unsettled him, and it had puzzled him and made him unhappy. He remembered once again what a peculiar state Dinah had been in immediately after she had had David. When she was helped back to her hospital room after the delivery, at which Martin had been present, she began to cry when she discovered that she had missed dinner. Martin had been oddly terrified to see her tears after the ordeal she had just been through, which she had weathered with ominous, guttural moans. Her doctor had sent him a comforting, knowing look across the bed as she lay there with tears flowing down her face, and advised him to go out and get hamburgers for them both. When Martin had returned with the food, she was alone and in a mortified rage.

  “I’m just embarrassed!” she said. “I’m embarrassed at the charade of it all! It’s a barbaric custom! By God, no one but women should be there—no one but women who’ve had lots of children. Next time, I want to have a baby by myself!” That had hurt his feelings very much, because he was strained and miserable to have seen her in so much pain, and toward the end of the whole thing he had felt guiltily exasperated that any pain could go on so interminably. But he had tried to suffer it as she did; he had tried to be loyal. When she looked up from her hamburger and realized that he didn’t understand what she was getting at, it made her cry again. “There’s nothing natural about ‘natural childbirth’ when the mother is forced into being a…forced into being a performer! God,” she had said, “the stupid pretense of enthusiasm. Do you know how I really felt after it was over? I felt tired. I didn’t feel one other thing—not one! Well, yes, I did”—and an odd, sly look came over her face; she wasn’t sure whether or not to trust him. “I knew that this was supposed to be what everything is about, and I thought, ‘But what’s the point?’ You see, it will go on and on. I might have more children. My children will have children. But still…I’ll die. You’ll die. We’ll still be dead someday.” She ran down then, like a record player when the power is cut off, and she seemed to decide, anyway, that she couldn’t explain.

  Now, at last, he saw what she had been talking about. Later, too, she had become quite fierce about the baby. She had found in the baby’s existence at least a stopgap to catch her emotions, and she had been in a situation that demanded she function. It was after that, too, that she had forced her energy into the formation of the Guild shop, and simply carried on. She had carried on.

  Martin sat gazing idly into their bedroom and formulated questions for her to answer as though he were making up an exam for his students: “If the world is finite, from what corner does one garner motivation? By what method does one fight legitimate torpor?”

  He could answer for her, because the question would make her impatient now. She might tell him that it was a perverse egomania to imagine that the permanence or impermanence of the earth had anything at all to do with the leading of one’s life. She might know that; that was certainly a thought she might have had. And then, when the phone rang just as he was thinking these thoughts, and he heard Toby’s voice husky with a peculiar agony, Martin was flooded with immediate and heartfelt fear, which superseded every other emotion. After he hung up, he no longer sat thoughtfully adrift; he made reservations for a flight to Ohio; he called and arranged to have Lawrence or Buddy pick him up at the airport; and he did all these things without a trace of hesitation. He went into action with efficient dispatch, free, at least for a while, of his enervating listlessness. His fear was astoundingly cleansing.

  Chapter Eleven

  Family Reunion

  Dinah began to believe that people who were long hospitalized and then died might end up surrounded by friends and relatives who could no longer register grief; they would already have been anesthetized by the tedium of an institutional routine. Everything in a hospital, and even the running of it, seemed to her to be designed to effect a reduction of human emotion. Sitting with Toby hour after hour was wearing. Playing games, watching television, reading aloud—all those things were gratingly dull to her now that there was no danger that might have made her boredom sweet. Even so, when she allowed herself to look at Toby, who seemed unnervingly fragile in the overlarge hospital smock, she begrudged him nothing at all. She redoubled her efforts to entertain him. She became almost frantic, in fact, and persuaded him into more dominoes, another book, or anything else that would distract him. The worst times of the day were those brief periods when he slept propped up against his pillows, with his encumbered right arm rigidly stretched in place beside him. Then she could not help but watch him, to be sure he didn’t turn in his sleep and pull the needle loose, and it caused her pain.

  She kept the family informed about Toby’s condition, so they knew he wasn’t in jeopardy, and she called her mother after lunch and found out that Martin was due to arrive any moment. “But, of course,” Polly said, “I told Lawrence to bring him right back here. He will have left in such a hurry that he’ll be exhausted!” This seemed to Dinah to be a clear case of not having her mother on her own side, but she did not remonstrate; she had used up all her force of objection. A nurse came into the room in midafternoon to tell her that her husband had called, but that Dinah would have to return the call on another phone, because they couldn’t tie up the lines at the nurses’ station.

  She waited until later in the day to call him back, when Toby was distracted by having his dinner brought in. She cut up his meat for him and buttered his bread so that he could manage it all with his left hand, and she asked the girl who had delivered the tray to keep an eye on him in case he needed help. She had to go to the pay phone down the hall to get in touch with Martin. Hospital policy didn’t allow any phones in the rooms in Pediatrics, nor did they allow those remote-control devices for adjusting the beds. When Dinah had asked about it, the nurse had looked at her as though the two of them were accomplices. “I can just see that now! You know how children are about gadg
ets!” she said, with a wink at Toby, who turned his glance away in embarrassment. It roused Dinah’s ire once again, but she supposed it made a certain sense.

  She got Polly first on the phone, and they chatted a moment; Dinah told her how Toby was. “I’ll get Martin for you,” Polly said. “You must want to talk to him. We’ve just sat down to eat, but it isn’t anything that needs to stay hot.” Pam had made a casserole, Polly a salad. To Dinah, standing in the corridor and looking back along the length of greenish linoleum while she waited for Martin to come to the phone, it all sounded attractively cheering and communal.

  “Hi, Dinah,” he said finally, “I tried to get you earlier. I’m sorry about all this.” His voice became muted and confidential. “I meant to come straight on to the hospital, but all these arrangements had been made…” He drifted off helplessly, and Dinah knew it was true. Polly could never entirely convince herself that other people were sick or, at least, that other people were sick through no choice of their own. In spite of the fact that her grandson was in the hospital, she would move implacably on through the habitual patterns of hospitality. If Dinah or Martin had attempted to emphasize to her their anxiety on Toby’s behalf, their explanations would only serve to direct Polly’s nebulous suspicions of melodrama to Toby himself. Both of his parents knew this, though there was no need to say so. “I’ll be over just as soon as I can. I’ll stay the night with him. I’ve already got everything packed anyway, and I imagine they’ll give me a cot.”

  Dinah was grateful to Martin for having realized that she would be tired by now, and that she had needed him to be there sooner. He had made every effort to be conciliatory. Nevertheless, she went back to sit with Toby while he ate, and she finished the flaccid meat that he had left untouched on his tray. She ate it with a sullen sense of sacrifice.

  When Martin finally came into Toby’s room, he hugged his son without reticence or pretension, and Dinah stood up and they embraced, too, as sincerely as they could. Their bodies clasped together just briefly while each of them strained to dredge up the familiarity they remembered. For some reason they met each other after their long separation with an awkwardness tinged with irritation. They were both so tired, and Dinah was cross that Martin had not arrived sooner to relieve her. But always at the end of their summer separation they could only simulate, at first, their remembered affection, because, inescapably, there was a trace of shyness between them.

  “It’s good to see you!” Martin said. “How are you? You must not even have had dinner yet. I tried to get away earlier. I’m sorry it’s so late.”

  “Oh, no. I’m fine. It’s wonderful to see you, too.” Dinah stood back from him to smile. “I was so glad you could get a flight. I hope you didn’t have a long wait at the airport.” Martin looked the same, as she had expected he would look, just tired, and there shouldn’t have been any reason for her to be slightly watchful and on guard. It was always like this, she assured herself, after such a long time. She saw him take in the IV apparatus and not react, because they both instinctively pretended to Toby that nothing could be more natural than to have a needle stuck in your vein and fluid feeding through it. Dinah had no idea why they pretended this; Toby clearly thought it was decidedly unnatural and unpleasant and he had asked all day when it would be removed.

  Now, in the hospital room, both parents began to bristle. Their sudden impatience and unease was due to Toby’s circumstance, but there was no one around to hold accountable except each other. Dinah walked around the bed to be on the other side of it from Martin, and she sat on the edge next to Toby.

  “Daddy’s going to stay with you tonight. Okay, darling?” She brushed his hair back off his forehead. It seemed odd to her that his illness affected even his hair, which looked dirty and lank but shouldn’t have; she had washed it last night before he went to bed.

  “Okay,” said Toby. “Will they take the IV out tonight?”

  “I don’t know, Toby!” she said, not intending to sound so peevish. “Sweetie, I’ve asked them about it over and over, but the nurses won’t tell me. It doesn’t hurt, does it? Do you want me to have them come check it?” As it happened, she was as appalled by the contraption as he was.

  “It doesn’t hurt,” he said, “but I just don’t like it. I don’t think I can go to sleep with it. I can’t turn over.”

  “Oh, honey, I’m just so sorry!” She leaned down over the bed to hug him. She was tired, and she was so sad for him that she almost cried. “Maybe they will take it out tonight. Daddy’ll talk to Dr. Van Helder when he makes his rounds. Daddy will see about it, sweetie.” She wanted to hand over some of this burden to Martin; she shot him a cold look over Toby’s head, and then she straightened up. “I’ve got to go now,” she said to Toby, “but I’ll be back in the morning. Isobel’s had David and Sarah all day, and I’ve got to get home and put them to bed.”

  “Okay,” said Toby, and kissed her back when she bent down to him again. He was worried at seeing her leave.

  Martin had only been able to stand there looking on and feeling more and more fearful of being left to fend for his son in this chilling atmosphere. He hated hospitals. Also, it had suddenly seemed to him just now when he met Dinah’s glance across Toby’s bed that he really did owe it to her to be honest; he felt he must tell her about himself and Claire, right away. He believed that it would be a crisis of valor on his part to make any delay. And, too, he was sure he would have wanted her to be honest with him. He watched her with detachment as she gathered her things together and made ready to depart. She always moved with an air of intimidating self-possession—the more intimidating because she didn’t know she had it. She considered herself a person easily unnerved by other people’s self-assurance. He followed her out into the hall after assuring Toby, who had turned his attention to the television, that he would be right back.

  They stood uneasily in the corridor, moving apart for a moment to allow a man with a floor-cleaning machine to pass between them. “David and Sarah aren’t with Isobel,” he told her. “They’re at Pam’s. Isobel and Buddy were going out to some party this evening. Lawrence drove me over. He’s waiting for you in the lobby. I couldn’t find the keys to our car. I guess you must have them in your purse.” Nothing bothered him so much as not being able to find things where they were supposed to be.

  Dinah nodded that she did have them, but she didn’t offer any apology or explanation. She was thinking in another direction altogether, and somehow, what he had just told her caught her at precisely the wrong moment. She didn’t believe that anything had made her as angry today as the fact that Isobel and Buddy would be out being charming, being frivolous, while she went home exhausted, and apart from her husband, to put two tired and cranky children to bed. She didn’t say anything at all, but Martin saw her face become rigid as she put on her raincoat.

  “Dinah…” he began with what even he recognized as an insinuating hesitation. He knew that his face had assumed an expression of martyrdom, but it was involuntary. “Can you wait just a minute?” he went on with that same careful tone, tenderly contrite already. “I want to talk to you if you have a second.”

  She looked back at him steadfastly and scathingly. Several things clicked in her mind. Odd phone calls, the fact that she could never reach him at their own house when she called him or returned his calls. Somewhere, too, was the knowledge that she had left him alone again, that she had been away from him all summer, and so had his children. But that idea only passed along the outside of her thoughts, the way bacon frizzles at the edges first before it cooks through to the center.

  “Martin,” she said with fatigued patience, “there’s not a whole lot I want to know right now.” She just stood there a moment, and then she reached her head up to give him a quick goodbye kiss. She walked away down the hall, and Martin stood there a moment looking after her, then went back into Toby’s room.

  Dinah walked the whole length of the hospital corridor to the only elevator that serviced Pediatrics. S
he punched the button and stood looking straight into the face of the elevator door while she heard the machinery bring it to her floor. It opened its doors, hesitated, then closed them and descended again with a rasping pneumatic whine while she stood absently staring straight ahead of her. She turned back and walked down the long hall until she came to Toby’s room again, where she only leaned around the door frame.

  “Martin,” she said, and he looked up with surprise from the book he was reading aloud to Toby, “it’s not Ellen, is it? Did you want to tell me something really important?”

  Martin was already ashamed of himself, and she saw the remorse that crossed his face; she knew that eventually she would need to know what he was sorry for. What he regretted now, however, was his spiteful desire to confess. “Oh, no, Dinah! It’s nothing like that. It’s just…nothing, really. We can talk about it any time. It’s about the Review. I just don’t know how interested I am in doing it anymore…well, I’ll tell you about it some other time.” He came to the door and kissed her the way they had learned to kiss each other—a gentling of the mouth against the other’s—an honest kiss, not striving for anything. Dinah waved again to Toby and walked away, simply settled into weariness this time. She purposely dampened her curiosity.

  The kind of fatigue she had developed by sitting for a day in the hospital could not have resolved itself in sleep. The pose of civility she had been forced to maintain in the face of the ebb and flow of nurses and nurses’ aides had had the effect of numbing her genuine reactions. She was glad to see Lawrence in the lobby; he was a good and comfortable friend.