Saul and Patsy Read online

  They lived smack in the middle of reality and never gave it a minute’s thought. They’d never felt like actors. They’d never been sick with knowingness. The long tunnel of their thoughts had never swallowed them. They’d never had sleepless nights, the urgent, wordless, unexplainable wrestling matches with the shadowy bands of soul-thieves. They were just a couple of Midwesterners.

  Goddamn it, Saul thought. Everybody gets to be happy except me. Saul heard Anne’s cries. The sun was sweating all over his forehead. He felt faint and Jewish, as usual. He turned on the radio. It happened to be tuned to a religion station, and some choir was singing “When Jesus Wept.”

  “It’s your play, Saul.”

  “I know, I know.”

  “What’s the matter? You got some bad letters?”

  “Duh. The worst. The worst letters I’ve ever had.”

  “You always say that. You whine and complain. You’re such a whiner, Saul, you even whine in bed. You were complaining that time just before you spelled out ‘axiom’ over that triple word score and got all those points last year. You do this act when we play Scrabble and then you always beat me.” Patsy was sitting cross-legged in her chair, as she liked to do, with a root beer bottle positioned against her instep, as she arranged and rearranged the letters on her slate.

  Saul examined the board. The only word he could think of spelling out was “paint,” but the word made him think of Emory McPhee. The hand of fate again, playing tricks on him. Glancing down at the words on the board, he thought he saw that same hand at work, spelling out some invisible story.

  Saul always treated Scrabble boards as if they were fortune-telling equipment, with the order of the words creating a narrative. Patsy had started with “moon,” and he had added “beam” onto it. When she hung a “mild” from the moonbeam, he spiced it up with “lust,” but she had responded to his interest in sex with “murky,” hanging the word from that same moonbeam. “Mild” and “murky” came close to how he felt. His mother, Delia, had said so on the phone yesterday. “Saul, darling,” she had said, “you’re sounding rather dark and mysterious lately. What’s gotten into you?” He had not told her about the accident.

  “I’m okay, Ma,” he had said. “I’m just working some things through.”

  “You’re leaving Five Oaks?” she had asked hopefully.

  “No, Ma,” he had said. “This town suits me.”

  “All that mud, Saul,” she had said, dubious as always about the soil and people who made large claims for it. “All those farms,” she added vaguely. “The slush. The snow. The fur. ”

  “Saul,” Patsy said. “Wake up.” She shook him. “You’re wool-gathering.”

  “Just thinking about my mother,” he said. He looked up at Patsy. “What are all those deer doing on our Scrabble board?” he asked. “Give me a swig of your root beer.”

  “No,” she said, before she handed it to him. He appreciated the golden color of the fine hairs on her arm in the lamplight. “Sweetheart, I think I saw some, as a matter of fact,” she said. “I thought I saw, what would you call it, a herd of deer, far in back, beyond the property line, a few nights ago. If you ever go back up to the roof, honey, give a look around. You might see them.”

  “Right, right.” He couldn’t put all five of his letters for “paint” on the Scrabble board. He removed the T. Pain. He held the four letters for pain in his hand, and he added them to the final T in “lust.”

  “Funny how ‘pain’ and ‘lust’ give you ‘paint,’” Patsy said. “Sort of makes me think of the McPhees and the heady smell of turpentine.”

  They glanced at each other, and he tried to smile. A fly was buzzing around the bulb in the lampshade. He was thinking of Patsy’s new expensive blue motorcycle out back, shiny and powerful and dangerous to ride. The salesman had said it could go from zero to fifty in less than six seconds. The hand of fate was ready to give him a good slapping around. It had announced itself. Saul felt a groan coming on. He looked at Patsy with helpless love.

  “Oh, Saul,” she said. “Honey. Shit. You always get this way during these games. You always do.” He saw her smiling in the reflection of his love for her. “You’re so cute,” she said, with a tone of patience that might soon run out.

  At ten minutes past three o’clock, he rose out of bed to get a glass of water. When he looked out the back window, he saw them: just about where Patsy said they would be, far in the distance beyond the property line—a herd of deer silently passing. He ran downstairs in his underwear and went out through the unlocked back door as quietly as he could. He stood in the yard in the June night, the crickets sounding, the moon dimly outlined behind a thin cloud in the shape of a scimitar. In this gauzy light, the deer, about eight of them, distant animal forms, walked across his neighbor’s field into a stand of woods. He found himself transfixed with the mystery and beauty of it. Hunting animals suddenly made no sense to him. He went back to bed. “I saw the deer,” he said. He didn’t know if Patsy was asleep. During the summer she wore Saul’s T-shirts to bed, and that was all. Like a Crusader portrayed in marble on a coffin lid, Patsy slept on her back with her feet crossed at the ankle; it gave the impression that she had returned from seeing the Holy Land.

  Two days later, the letter containing the secrets of the universe came from the Wisdom Foundation in Cincinnati. Saul sat down on the front stoop and tore the letter open. It was six pages long and had been printed out by a computer, with Saul’s name inserted here and there.

  Dear Mr. Bernstein,

  Nothing is settled. Everything is still possible. Your thoughts are both yours and someone else’s. Sometimes we say hello to the world and then goodbye, but that is not the end and we say hello again. God is love, Mr. Bernstein, denying it only makes us unhappy. Riches are mere appearances. Our thoughts are more real than hammers and nails. We can make others believe us, Mr. Bernstein, if the truth is in us. Buddha and Jesus the Christ and Mohammed agreed about just about everything. Causing pain to others only prolongs our own pain. A free and open heart is the best thing. Live simply. Don’t pretend to know something you don’t have a clue about. You may feel as if you are headed toward some terrible fate, Mr. Bernstein, but that may not come to pass. You can avoid it. Throw your bad thoughts into the mental wastebasket. There is a right way and a wrong way to dispose of bad thoughts. Everything about the universe worth knowing is known. What is not known about the universe is not worth knowing. Follow these steps. Remember that trees will always be with us, mice will always be with us, mosquitoes will always be with us. Therefore, avoid mental cleanliness. Never start a sentence with the words “What if everybody . . .”

  It went on for several more pages. Saul liked the letter. It sounded like his other grandfather, Isaac, the pious atheist, an exuberant man much given to laughter at appropriate and inappropriate moments, who offered advice as he passed out candy bars and halvah to his grandchildren. This letter from the Wisdom Foundation was signed by someone named Giovanni d’Amato.

  Saul looked up. For a moment the terrifying banality of the landscape seemed to dissolve into geometrical patterns of color and light. Taken by surprise, he felt the habitual weight on his heart lifting as if by pulleys, or, better yet, birds of the spirit sent by direct mail from Giovanni d’Amato. He decided to test this happiness and got into the dented car.

  He drove toward the McPhees’. The dust on the dirt road whirled up behind him. He thought he would be able to stand their middle-American happiness. Besides, Emory was probably working. No: it was Saturday. They would both be home. He would just drive by, and that would be that. So what if they were happy, these dropouts from school? He was happy, too. He would test his temporary happiness against theirs.

  The trees rushed past the car in a kind of chaotic blur.

  He pressed down on the accelerator. A solitary cloud, wandering and thick with moisture, straying overhead but not blocking the sun, let down a minute’s worth of vagrant rainbowed shower on Saul’s car. The water d
roplets, growing larger, bounced on the car’s hood. He turned on the wipers, causing the dust to streak in protractor curves. The rain made Saul’s car smell like a nursery of newborn vegetation. He felt the car drive over something. He hoped it wasn’t an animal, one of those anonymous rodents that squealed and died and disappeared.

  Ahead and to the left was the McPhees’.

  It looked like something out of an American genre painting, the kind of second-rate canvas hidden in the back of most museums near the elevators. Happiness lived in such houses, where people like Saul had never been permitted. In the bright standing sunshine its Midwestern Gothic acute angles pointed straight up toward heaven, a place where there had been a land rush for centuries and all the stakes had been claimed. Standing there in the bright theatrical sun—the rain had gone off on its way— the house seemed to know something, to be an answer ending with an exclamation point.

  Saul crept past the front driveway. His window was open, and, except for the engine, there was no sound, no dog barking. And no sign, either, of Anne or Emory or their baby, at least out here. Nothing on the front porch, nothing in the yard. He could stop and say hello. That was permitted. He could thank them for the help they had given him two months before. He hadn’t yet done that. Emory’s pickup was in the driveway, so they were at home. Happy people don’t go much of anywhere anyway, Saul thought, backing his car up and parking halfway in on the driveway.

  When he reached the backyard, Saul saw a flash of white, on legs, bounding at the far distances of the McPhees’ field into the woods. From this distance it looked like nothing he knew, a trick of the eye. Turning, he saw Anne McPhee sitting in a lawn chair, reading the morning paper, a glass of lemonade nearby, their baby in the playpen in the shade of the house, and Emory, some distance away in a hammock, reading the sports section. Both of them were holding up their newspapers so that their view of him was blocked.

  Quietly he crossed their back lawn, then stood in the middle, between them. Emory turned the pages of his paper, then put it down and closed his eyes. Anne went on reading. Saul stood quietly. Only the baby saw him. Saul reached down and picked out of the lawn a sprig of grass. Anne McPhee coughed. The baby was rattling one of its crib toys.

  He waited another moment and then walked back to his car. Anne and Emory had not seen him. He felt like a prowler, a spy from God. He also felt now what he had once felt only metaphorically: that he was invisible.

  When he was almost home, he remembered, or thought he remembered, that Anne McPhee had been sunning herself and had not been wearing a blouse or a bra. Or was he now imagining this? He couldn’t be sure.

  Patsy nudged him in the middle of the night. “I know what it is,” she said.

  “What?”

  “What’s bothering you.”

  He waited. “What? What is it?”

  “You’re like men. You’re a man and you’re like them. You want to be everything. You want to have endless endless potential. But then you grow up. In spite of yourself. And you’re one thing. Your body is, anyway. It’s trapped in this life. You have to say goodbye to the dreams of everything.” She waited. “You don’t want to do that one little bit, do you?”

  “Dreams of everything.”

  “Yes.” She rolled over so that she could look at him in the dark. “Don’t pretend that you don’t understand. You want to be a whole roomful of people, Saul. That’s kid stuff.” She let her head drop so that her hair brushed against him.

  “What about you?”

  “What about me? I’m not a problem the way you’re a problem. I don’t want to be anything else,” she said sleepily, beginning to rub his back. “I do want a better job at the bank, I’ll tell you that. But I sure as hell don’t have to be a great person. I just want to do a little of this and a little of that as long as I can make some serious money.” She waited. “You know. To get by. For that trip to Finland.”

  “What’s wrong with ambitions?” he asked. “You could be great at something.”

  Her hand moved into his hair, tickling him. “Being great is too tiring, Saul, and it’s boring. Look at the great ambition people. They’re wrecking the earth, aren’t they. They’re leaving it in bits and scraps. Look at the Lord of Misrule, our current president.” She concentrated on him in the dark. “Saul,” she said.

  “Your diaphragm’s not on.”

  “I know.”

  “But.”

  “So?”

  “Well, what if?”

  “What if? You’d be a father, that’s what if.” She had turned him so that she was right up against him, her breasts pressing him, challenging him.

  “No,” he said. He drew back. “Not yet. Let me figure this out on my own. There’d be no future.”

  “For the baby?”

  “No. For me.” He waited, trying to figure out how to say this. “I’d have to be one person forever. Does that make sense?”

  “From you, it does.” She pulled herself slightly away from him. They rearranged themselves.

  The following Saturday he drove into Five Oaks for a haircut. When his hair was so long that it made the back of his neck itch, he went to Harold, the barber, and had it trimmed back. Saul liked Harold and his pensive mannerisms, even though Harold was a pale Lutheran, and a terrible barber. Harold made up for it with his occasional affability, and he happened to be in the same bowling league with Saul and sometimes played basketball at the same times that Saul did. Many of the men in Five Oaks looked slightly peculiar and asymmetrical, thanks to Harold. The last time Saul had come in, Harold had been deep in a conversation with a woman who was accusing him of things; Saul couldn’t tell exactly what Harold was being accused of, but it sounded like a lover’s quarrel, and Saul liked that. Anyone else’s troubles diminished his own.

  By coincidence, the same woman was back again in the barbershop with her son, whose hair Harold was cutting when Saul passed by the ancient barber pole before he rang the bell over the door as he entered. To pass the time and achieve a moment’s invisibility, he picked up a newspaper from the next chair over and read the morning’s headlines.

  SHOTS FIRED AT HOLBEIN REACTOR Iraqi Terrorists Suspected

  Somebody was always shooting at something. Shielded by his paper, Saul heard the woman whispering instructions to Harold, and Harold’s faint, exasperated “Louise, I can do this.” Saul pretended to read the article. The shots, it turned out, had been harmless. Even though there had been no damage, some sort of investigation was going on. Saul thought Iraqis could do better than this.

  There was more whispering, which Saul tried not to hear. After the woman had paid for her son’s haircut and left, Saul sat himself down in Harold’s chair.

  “Hey, Saul,” Harold said, covering him with the white cloth. “You always come in when she does. How do you do that?”

  “Beats me. Her name Louise?”

  “That’s right. The usual trim, Saul?”

  “The usual. Torture by Mr. Harold of Paris. Harold, this time try to keep it the same length on both sides, okay?”

  “I try, Saul. It’s just that your hair’s so curly.”

  “Right, right.” Saul saw his reflection in the mirror and closed his eyes as a reflex. He felt like asking Harold, the Lutheran, a moral question. “Harold,” he said, “do you ever wonder where your thoughts come from? I mean, do we own our thoughts, or do they come from somewhere else, or what? For example, you can’t always control your thoughts or your impulses, can you? So, whose thoughts are those, anyway, the ones you can’t control? And another thing. Are you happy? Be honest.”

  The scissors stopped clipping. “Gosh, Saul, are you okay? What drugs have you been taking lately?”

  “No drugs. Just tell me: Are your thoughts always yours? That’s what I need to know.”

  The barber looked into the mirror opposite them. Saul saw Harold’s plain features. “All right,” Harold said. “I’ll answer your question.” Then, with what Saul took to be great sadness, the barber s
aid, “I don’t have many thoughts. And when I do, they’re all mine.”

  “Okay,” Saul said. “I’m sorry. I was just asking.” He tried to slump down in his chair, but the barber said, “Sit up straight, Saul.” Saul did.

  Days later, Saul is asleep. He knows this. He knows he is asleep next to Patsy. He knows it is night, that cradle of dreams, but Earth’s mad lovelorn companion, the moon, is shining stainless-steel beams across the bed, and Saul is dreaming of being in a car that cannot stop rolling over, an endless flip of metal, and this time Patsy is not belted in, and something horrible must be happening to her, judging from the blur of her head. She is being hurt terribly thanks to the way he has driven the car, the mad way, the un-American way, and now she is walking across a bridge made of moonlight, and she falls. The door, Saul’s door, is being kept open for Elijah, but Elijah does not come in. How will we recognize him? Saul’s mind is not in Saul’s head; it is above him, above his yarmulke, above his prayer shawl, his tallis. When was Saul ever Orthodox? Only in dreams. Patsy is hurt, she lies in a ditch, and he has done this damage to her. Deer and doubt mix with the milky roar of mild lust on the Scrabble board. And here behind the barber chair is Giovanni d’Amato, sage of Cincinnati, saying, “You shouldn’t flunk people out of school if you’re going to get drunk and roll cars.” The sage is using his scissors to cut away Saul’s clothes. Saul the child is speaking to Saul the grown-up: “You’ll never figure it out,” and when Saul the adult asks, “What?” the child says, “Adulthood. Any of it.” And then he says, “Saul, you’re pregnant.”