The Call Page 17

  WHAT I THOUGHT: Oh, don’t put your head in your hands now, because look, there on the side of the road are two deer and they are looking at us, and see how beautiful they are, I wanted to tell the spaceman, but I could not interrupt his moment where he had his face in his hands. The deer ran off, leaping up the hillside into the darkness.

  WHAT THE SPACEMAN SAID: There’s a cop behind us.

  WHAT I DID: I looked in the rearview and saw the flashing lights. I pulled over. The town cop rolled down his window alongside me. Hello, Ed, I said. How’s your night going?

  WHAT ED SAID: Fine, Doc. And how are you? Ever get that inspection?

  WHAT I SAID: No, Ed. But I’ve been meaning to do it. I thought maybe I’d even go tomorrow.

  WHAT ED SAID: Well, don’t worry about it. Get it done anytime.

  WHAT I SAID: Hey, did you see those two deer back there? Looked like a doe and her fawn to me, I said.

  WHAT ED SAID: Oh, yes. I did see them. It might have been her fawn at that, but he was big. He might turn out to be a buck.

  WHAT I SAID: What were all the fires about last week? Was it just people starting rubbish fires?

  WHAT ED SAID: Yes, that was it. It’s too dry now to start a fire, but people are fooled. They think because in places there is still snow on the ground and mud on the roads that it’s wet enough. But it’s not. The dead grass on the fields is like tinder, and the leaves from last fall on the ground are like paper. They go up like that, Ed said, while snapping his fingers in the space above his blinking radio in the patrol car.

  WHAT I SAID: Well, let’s hope the fires are over.

  WHAT ED SAID: Yes, let’s hope so. Well, I’ll be seeing you then. Take care. And then Ed drove off ahead of me.

  WHAT THE SPACEMAN SAID: What did that cop stop you for? Were you speeding? Was your taillight out? The town cop stopped you for nothing, but meanwhile he sits in his car and lets the man who shot your son freely wander the town? What kind of town is this? said the spaceman.

  WHAT I SAID: Oh, no. That was just Ed, I said. Ed likes to chat sometimes. What is it you were saying before Ed stopped us? The spaceman leaned his head back on the headrest of the seat. He looked up at the ceiling of my truck.

  WHAT THE SPACEMAN SAID: I’ve got kidney disease.

  WHAT I THOUGHT: Was there someone he could see on the ceiling of my truck that he was talking to? Maybe I had left the shade to the sunroof of my truck slid open and he was talking to someone through it. Was his spacecraft up there floating above us, flashing its lights, talking back to the spaceman? Was he telling the spacecraft that he had kidney disease?

  WHAT I SAID: I didn’t know that. I’m sorry to hear that.

  WHAT I WANTED TO SCREAM: Alarm! Alarm! in a German accent, and I wanted to lower my truck to the safety of the depths of the sea.

  WHAT THE SPACEMAN SAID: I’ve been on the donors’ list too long. My father, the other one, he offered to donate one of his, but we’re not a match. I could have told them that at the hospital before all the tests, that we were not a match. It was something I knew from a long time ago. Maybe something I figured out while watching him swim, the way he swam only sidestroke that we were not a match, but he insisted on trying. He is that kind of father. Then the spaceman looked at me. I knew he was looking at me because we were going past the third streetlamp in our town and the streetlamp was on. It hadn’t been turned off to save the town money yet. The spaceman said, while he was looking at me, that he bet that he and I were a match. I bet we are a good match, he said, and then he put his face in his hands again. We now had turned up a road that eventually would take us home. It was one of the reasons I came to see you, to ask you, he said into his hands. The road we were on was dirt, and in the headlights I could see how the mud had turned the road into a washboard of ruts. The truck bounced over the ruts and I could see how the spaceman’s hands were moving up and down his face from the bouncy ride and then the spaceman took his hands off his face and set one on the armrest and one on the console between us. I noticed after I drove over a very deep rut that the CHECK ENGINE light in the truck went off, and I thought, finally, something’s been fixed, and I wondered if I were on some kind of streak and maybe my levels would be the next thing to be magically repaired. I started driving up our driveway, but I didn’t drive all the way up. I didn’t want the spaceman to have to get out of the truck and be close to the house, where the children might come running out to see us. One of them, probably Sarah, would see his face and ask right away why he had been crying. I stayed parked at the start of our driveway with the engine off.

  WHAT I TOLD THE SPACEMAN: I think you’re very brave to come here and ask me this and I will think about it. Right now, though, we had better drive up to the house and we better see what there is to eat because I’ve forgotten that we didn’t eat. I forgot that we had said we would get something to eat on the road. Are you ready to drive up to the house? I said to the spaceman. He nodded and wiped his eyes and then said mierda, Spanish for shit, because he had lost a contact lens while wiping his eyes and I had to turn the truck light on above our heads so we could find it. It was on his knee the whole time; I saw it winking there like a splash of water. I told him I didn’t know he wore contacts and that I wore them too and that without them I was blind. He said he was also blind without his. I then told him how I could see perfectly without them. I just had to hold whatever I was looking at very close to my eyes. I told him that sometimes my wife made fun of me while I was reading without my contacts and she would push the magazine or whatever I was reading even closer up to my face so that it knocked into my nose. But it was just as easy to make fun of her, I said, because she now needed glasses to read. When she wasn’t wearing them she held the book or whatever she was reading very far away from her. She would stretch her arms out as far away as they could go and sometimes when she leaned over my shoulder to read the same article I was reading, I would hold the article close to my nose and she would try to push it far away and we would fight that way for a while, just trying to read the print.

  WHAT WE ATE FOR DINNER: The cold roast.

  WHAT SARAH ASKED THE SPACEMAN: Why are your eyes so red? Were you crying? Would you like to hold our rabbit? She can make you feel better.

  WHAT I SAID: Sarah, isn’t it your bedtime?

  WHAT SARAH SAID: Oh, Dad, Lyle says he knows a boy who eats bugs.

  WHEN THE SPACEMAN LEFT: Sometime in the middle of the night. I didn’t hear his car, but I did hear what I thought was the top of the rabbit’s cage being opened. Maybe the spaceman had taken Sarah’s advice after all and was petting the rabbit.

  WHAT THE WIFE SAID SHE HEARD: Something whirring outside in the dark, and she thought it might be the spacecraft. I figured it was his electric car.

  WHAT I THOUGHT: I would not find out the name of the man who shot my son now. The spaceman is too upset. The spaceman should be upset. I should not bother knowing the name of the man who shot my son when the spaceman is this upset. I don’t really even want to know who shot my son. I am okay not knowing. I can keep going on calls if I do not know. It is a good trade to make. I can keep admiring Dorothy’s sheep and Arlo’s ghost cows if I do not know. I can visit the calm Belgian whose throat I incised so that he could breathe from the plastic handle of a milk jug for the rest of his life. I could visit the woman with the hair so long it always became stuck in the buckles of her horse’s bridle. I could still visit the Zodiac Killer. He is full of advice. I’d like to know what design for a barn he’d suggest. I could still go to Phil’s. I could walk down his well-worn aisles where the floorboards creak and heave and I could stand in front of his glass meat case and I could order sausage he had made himself and bacon he had cured on his own. I could visit Arthur still and listen to the horse’s talk through him and watch the geese land on his pond, their feet out in a pose to brake, their wings not beating, coming down on water flat as glass on a windless day. I could still visit the Mammoth Mules and I could still see the minis, Molly,
Netty, Sunny, and Storm. What a good life I have not knowing the name of the man who shot my son.

  WHAT THE WIFE SAID WHEN I TOLD HER THE SPACEMAN NEEDED MY KIDNEY: No.

  WHAT THE DOCTOR SAID WHEN I CALLED HIM ON THE PHONE: I’m so glad you decided to call. I told him I wanted to schedule a time to talk.

  WHAT THE DOCTOR SAID: That’s a wise thing to do.

  WHAT I SAID: No, not for me, I mean not for my levels, for my kidney. I’d like a discussion, I said. Is it possible to talk over the phone?

  CALL: Jen screaming, telling me there’s a bat in the sink drain. She went into the bathroom to wash her face, and there in the sink was a small bat, nose crammed into the space between the drain and the metal stopper.

  ACTION: Called the children to the scene of the emergency. The bat is obviously sick, I said to the children. I sent Sam off to find a plastic container. Tore off a piece of cardboard from a Tampax box and scooped the bat up into a plastic container that Sam brought that once held fancy greens. Told Sarah to fold up toilet paper to put inside the plastic container to keep the bat warm. Sent Sam and Mia off to catch flies in our house. The bat needs food, I said. Sam and Mia were more than happy to go up to the window glass where the cluster flies were clinging and pinch the wings of the flies and put them inside the plastic container. We gave the bat water, but he was too weak to drink.

  WHAT THE WIFE SAID: Rabies!

  WHAT I SAID: Not everything has rabies. It might be white fungus.

  WHAT THE DOCTOR HAD SAID OVER THE PHONE THAT I REPLAYED IN MY HEAD AS I LOOKED AT THE BAT THROUGH THE CLEAR PLASTIC CONTAINER, BREATHING EVER SO SLIGHTLY, HIS HEART IN HIS CHEST MOVING NO MORE NOTICEABLY THAN A VEIN IN A WRIST: You can live just as well with one kidney.

  WHERE WE KEPT THE BAT FOR THE NIGHT: In the pantry, on a shelf with a jar of green olives, next to a pipe the hot water ran through and where it was cozy and warm.

  WHAT I THOUGHT THE BAT WAS THE SIZE OF: One of my kidneys.

  CALL: The children are all calling for me. Jen is sitting on the toilet with the lid down. She is crying. The children have all come running to me to tell me they have found their mother this way.

  ACTION: I walk upstairs. I see her sitting on the toilet.

  WHAT I SAY: You may want to lift the lid before you pee.

  WHAT THE WIFE DOES: She looks up at me. I see the tears streaming down her face, mixing with her hair. Very funny, she says. I put my hand up on the top of the glass shower door to rest it there and look down at her. What’s the matter? I say, feeling how what I’m leaning on is slippery, probably because up high on top of the glass shower door is where I keep my bar of soap so that it doesn’t wash away and disappear while the shower is running.

  WHAT THE WIFE SAYS: I don’t think I can do it again. I can’t have someone else in this family in the hospital again. You can’t give your kidney away. You will not give it away. Your children need a healthy father. Your levels might skyrocket after losing a kidney. This kid, this spaceman, you didn’t raise him. You didn’t even know he existed a week ago. This is not about you! she says.

  UPDATED LIST OF THINGS MY LEVELS CAN DO: Beg, talk, appreciate food, join a swim team, have common sense, skyrocket.

  WHAT I THINK: I wish she were just screaming about the house being dirty, about the dishes in the sink and the clothes on the floor. Then I could just run outside. The kids could join me. We could run to the back field and check on the small trout as small as their hands in the stream. We could check on the brush piles we created last year and look into the dark of them to see if there are any beady pairs of black eyes staring back at us, it being a happy home to some furry creatures.

  WHAT THE WIFE SAYS VERY QUIETLY: Please.

  WHAT I THINK: That what I’m seeing is already in the past, she has already cried, and maybe the crying is over. Maybe now she has stood and wiped her nose and brushed her hair on the way out of the bathroom. She has made herself presentable. She has pulled down her sweater so that it lies smoothly over her pants. She has checked herself in the mirror. She has checked her eyeliner and with her fingertip she has smeared away any blurring black smudges. She has smiled into the mirror and has checked for telltale signs of food between her teeth.

  WHAT THE WIFE IS STILL DOING: Sitting on the toilet with the lid down. She has not risen, she has not arranged herself. The tears still fall. Things that I’m seeing may be in the past, but the past just happened so quickly, it wasn’t long ago at all. Is there a way to make the past longer, or the present further away? I take my hand off the top of the shower wall. Sure enough, there is mucky green deodorant soap on my polar fleece cuff now. I try not to look at it for too long. If I do she will know I am not paying enough attention to her. She will think I am not taking her seriously. I cannot reach for a washcloth and wet it and try to wash the mucky green deodorant soap away now. At best, the only thing I can do is hold my arm out a little to the side, so as not to get the rest of me covered in the mess.

  WHAT I SAY: It’s not the same. It won’t be the same as it was with Sam. I’m not going into a coma. Jen interrupts me. Why? Why? Why? She yells and so of course I think for a minute that she wants to know why it won’t be the same, and why I won’t be going into a coma, but I know better. I know she wants to know why I feel I have to do this for some kid who showed up at our door a week ago. I shrug my shoulders. I do this by first bringing my arms in close to myself. Now the mucky green soap is definitely smeared on my side. I shrug again and again. It doesn’t matter now, I have turned into the mucky green soap monster. When I go back down and see my children they will want to know what it is. Is it horse mucus? Is it cow cud? Is it alpaca spit? they will ask. I think I will tell them it is rearranged electrons from space-time travel, and maybe that is what it really is anyway because all of a sudden Jen is standing. She is saying, “Fine, they are your kidneys, do what you want with them,” and she is lifting the lid of the toilet and throwing wadded-up tissues she used to blow her nose into the water in the bowl.

  WHAT I SAY: It’s the right thing to do. What that hunter did to Sam, that was the wrong thing to do.

  WHAT THE WIFE SAYS: You don’t owe this kid anything. You didn’t shoot him.

  WHAT I SAY: I gave him life.

  WHAT THE WIFE SAYS: Oh, Jesus fucking Christ, you’re not fucking Jesus, you know.

  WHAT I SAY: Okay, it sounded like too much, but I am part of the reason why he’s alive now.

  WHAT THE WIFE SAYS: I married an egomaniac.

  WHAT I SAY: I’m not. Then Jen says, Oh, sure, and she takes a washcloth and wets it and starts wiping off the mess of the green deodorant soap that is on my sleeve and on my side. She uses such strong strokes to brush the soap off that my body turns to the side with her every downward stroke. When she’s done she wads up the washcloth and throws it down onto the basin of the sink and says, Dinner is ready.

  WHAT DINNER IS: Great. It’s breaded pork chops cooked to tenderness in broth and sweet potatoes mashed with butter and cream and maple syrup and green beans sautéed with oil and garlic. I want to tell her how good it is, but I can’t. She will think I am just trying to smooth the waters between us. So at first I am thankful for when Sam starts to say, Mom, this is delish-delish-delish, but I wish he didn’t have signs of slurring when he’s trying to say it because while he’s trying to spit it out the wife looks at me as if to say, And this proves my point, here is an example of how precarious life is, it has left us with our son who still slightly slurs and if you give this space kid a kidney, the aftereffects may be worse. So I say, Delicious, ending Sam’s sentence for him and noticing that the green beans may not be that good after all and they might be somewhat burned and a little bitter tasting.

  WHAT VIDEO WE RENTED FROM THE LIBRARY: How we love the library and leave it with armloads of books and movies, even if the service at the library is slow, and the librarian who has been there for years always looks at the scanner gun for a few moments first before he uses it on our books’ labels as if he’
s never seen the scanner gun before. And I know this librarian and he is also on the master’s swim team and I have seen him in his swim trunks, and there is a huge scar on his belly that even pulling the waistband of his trunks way up past his navel does not hide and I wondered what part of him was surgically removed or rearranged. He is a very slow swimmer, and it seems as if he goes backward instead of forward in the water, or that he goes nowhere at all. It was the librarian who recommended the video to Mia. The video was about mammals and Mia had watched it first and then wanted me to watch it with her. The cheetah, I learned, will let one of her offspring share her kill with her even years later, even when the offspring is an adult she will remember it, but she will never let any other adult share with her. Isn’t that amazing? Mia said.

  WHAT I SAID: Yes, it really is amazing, and I hugged Mia on my lap while I said it and I smelled her hair that smelled faintly like our house when we walk into it after we’ve been away for a few days. It smells good, like wood smoke and meringues made with cocoa, and it smells earthy, too, maybe of the small pine needles the dogs trail in with them on their fur after hiking with us in our woods.

  WHAT SAM WANTS TO KNOW: What the wife and I were fighting about.

  WHAT I SAID: Fighting?

  WHAT HE SAID: Yes, you know, her crying on the toilet with the lid down, the way she always does when she’s upset with you.

  WHAT I TOLD HIM: Everything. How the spaceman wanted my kidney. How the spaceman knew the name of the man who shot him by accident. How I had seen the spaceman bribe my client’s son, and the son had whispered the name of the man in the spaceman’s ear. Sam looked outside when I talked. Was he looking at our pond, noticing the snow beginning to melt on the surface? When I was finished talking, he nodded his head. What if it were me, he said? Would you have given me your kidney? Of course, I said. Then you should give him yours. What happened to you while you were in a coma? I wanted to ask him. Had a part of him changed? Had he been visited by a higher being? This wasn’t the boy who called his sisters jerkface and cheesebutt. He sounded older. He cleared his throat. He’s your son, too, he said. It doesn’t matter that you didn’t raise him here with us. You can help him, that’s all that matters, he said. Besides, it’s cool. How many kids have dads that saved a man’s life?