Referred Pain: Stories Read online

  Now, with the task of clearing out her things, he wished she had taken on his orderliness instead. He emptied shelves and mused about his meetings with Loretta, and the more he mused, the more indistinct they became, as if each scene, once sharply reconstructed, degenerated into blurring fragments. After a while she was hardly more than a cloud that changed shape as it meandered across the sky. A shadow, a breath, a trace of something essential but indefinable. A name to which he attached feeling and longing, a memory diminished to a color or a vapor, a muted phrase of music in the mind. But without it there was no life to speak of.

  Finally the shelves in the closets were nearly empty, and what little that remained was stacked in neat piles. Near the door were four black plastic bags of trash. He was about to take them down in the elevator, pondering whether to do it in one trip or in two. Or maybe leave it for morning—it was past midnight. Surprising himself, he sat down on the floor and opened a bag stuffed with lists and notes in Susan’s loopy artist’s hand. He studied them. Her handwriting. She had used black thick-tipped pens, and her writing was bold and arresting, quite legible, except when the idiosyncratic “r’s” ran into the next letters. The capital “T’s” had a peculiar flourish at the upper right tip. The capital “S’s” were slim and snaky. He brought a page to his face and sniffed it. Nothing—the ink was too old. There was an ancient Chinese silk robe, almost in tatters, that she liked to wear, with a red and turquoise dragon on the back. He had joked that she could treat herself to a new one, had even bought her one in Chinatown while he was doing a story on immigration, but she was devoted to the old robe and wore his gift only once in a while, no doubt for his benefit. He brought the robe to his face and the scent hit him with force. Susan. There was a tiny makeup brush, stained beige from use. Those tiny hairs had swept her face. A pencil, for her eyelids, he supposed, worn down to a stub. This had grazed the liquid of her eyes. There was a half-used box of Tampax he had unearthed in the depths of a closet. It was some time since she had needed those. He took one out and stared at it. Strange to think of putting that unlovely, utilitarian thing where he had been.

  He began walking around the house touching surfaces she had touched: the kitchen counters, her drawing table, the computer keys, the handles of the dresser. Since her death they’d been dusted several times—it was an illusion to think he would find any trace of her fingertips, but he touched them anyway. From the bedroom, he dialed her studio number to hear her voice message, then remembered he had erased it after she died. Maybe even before, in those last weeks when she couldn’t possibly use the phone. He went into the bathroom, but nothing of her was left—for an instant he’d thought of using her toothbrush. Back in the bedroom he stared into her mirror and tried to envision her face there, but he saw only his own. His pleasant, squarish, aging face. Women would look at it and want him, and someday, later on, he might go with whoever made the most effort. He recalled Susan’s concentrated expression as she brushed her hair at the mirror. So intensely serious—she might have been puzzling out a mathematical problem. Maybe all women at the mirror had that look. He couldn’t recall whether the two women he had loved in secret did; he hadn’t often watched them dress, and in any case he had not paid much attention. Not to Susan either.

  He sat on the bed with horror seeping through him. He was ready to pay attention now. There were questions he needed to ask. Many questions, all the ones she said he never asked. What do you think? What do you feel? What is it about string beans that makes you hate them? How did you get so good at archery? Did you ever fire a gun? What was it like giving birth? Why do you never wear green or use it in your work? Did you really go around selling those Campfire Girl cookies? Did you ever love anyone else, after me? Did your mother ever hit you? Your father? What age did you learn to swim? He knew these things, or things like them, about Loretta. He had lived as if knowing them about her was enough. It wasn’t. A vast curiosity, dormant for years, rose to choke him.

  Why had Susan stayed, to be dragged through this wasteland? Love? Convenience? Could she have loved him that much, to subsist on the next to nothing he gave? It didn’t seem possible. Did you live this pallid life because you loved me, he longed to ask, because it was a shadow of what you wanted? Or did you give up? Maybe you were the same as me. He would never know. The people in the grief group were right; he had lost her. He had given himself to a vaporous dream, to nothing. He stretched out on her side of the bed and studied the blankness of the ceiling. He understood now why people talked to the dead. But he didn’t know how to begin. Susan, he whispered. Tell me.

  By a Dimming Light

  THERE WAS NO WORSE fate for a writer.

  The eye drops made the dim room more blurred than usual, and everything in it seemed to drift about on waves of air. Unable to write, unable to read. Nothing but drab life, unmitigated. The raw materials with no means of refining them.

  There wouldn’t be total darkness, the doctor told him, as if that were cheering. Instead the world would suffer a relentless meltdown. He would lose the details and edges; borders would merge, fixed objects would come loose and shimmer, suspended in mist. It was snowing outside when Eric finally left. It was snowing in the cab as well. It snowed everywhere. He kept forgetting that the snow was falling on his retina. It would snow forever, he thought with a savage self-pity.

  It had happened so gradually that the doctor’s sentence couldn’t be called a shock. Yet he’d trusted in stronger glasses and stronger lights, until the messages his fingers sent to the computer screen, destined for his revising eyes, ended up as dead letters. In the weeks after the prognosis Eric came grudgingly to admire not just the doctor’s accuracy but also his language. He couldn’t have put it better himself. The world’s fine seams, hidden but ready to spring into sharpness with the aid of a magnifying glass, were gone, glass or no; shades oozed into windows, food merged with the plate; squinting at the mirror, he couldn’t find the line between his sand-colored hair and his skin, and all was shaggy, atremble.

  Once he knew for sure that no light would ever be strong enough, he fell into despair, always an easy tumble. But for the sake of his new book he hauled himself out of the pit, summoning his resolution to call the nearby university where he had often been invited to lecture. It was the start of the term and students would be scrounging for part-time work. Send someone, he said, a perfect student. He would pay well. Male—and never mind whether such a preference was legal. He was in no mood for the distraction of a pretty girl—he thought he could still make out prettiness—nor for simpering adulation or kindly feminine concern. A literate boy, meaning not just literary, but one who could spell and punctuate—the two talents didn’t always go hand in hand. Unobtrusive, obedient, diligent, trustworthy, a regular Boy Scout. If such a student existed. All Eric’s hope and dread hung on the new book. His agent, Bill Benson, congenitally optimistic—well, that was his job—assured him that the publishers, however crass they’d grown, would be glad to hear from him again: Of course you’ll pull it off, it’s like riding a bicycle. But Eric doubted. The image of his rough phrases abrading the screen like flecks of grit tormented him far more than other losses—paintings or the slant of light on a tree or a woman swinging down the street, all sifted into dust.

  He was spared the worst indignities. He could dress and, with effort, prepare simple meals. He knew the phone digits by their location; his fingers kept the memory of locks and keys; and he could manage the elevator buttons in his building (but shuddered at the prospect of someday learning the pimpled Braille codes beside them—maybe he’d die before he needed to). Shopping was out of the question—he couldn’t read the labels. The bills in his wallet, even with their new kindergarten numerals, all looked alike. Fortunately his cleaning woman, Lucinda Perkins, was willing to take that on. She must feel sorry for him, he thought. Always a peaceful presence, now Lucinda glided silently through the apartment, as if his failing eyes made his ears and nerves more sensitive. Over the years, especia
lly the ten years since Ada had left him, Eric and Lucinda had grown mutually indulgent, tacitly comprehending. If only she were computer-friendly, he could ask her to help with the novel.

  Tad Hopwell, the graduate student, turned up at his door, earnest benevolence and competence written all over him, apparent even to Eric’s faltering sight. He stood stamping his heavy boots on the mat, glistening eyes and hair giving him a cherubic glow, until Eric realized the effect came from melting snow. The boy stepped in and with easy shrugs slid a bulging pack from his shoulders, then shed his down jacket. Tall, fair-haired, lithe and lean, he felt familiar, like some old college friend. His indistinct face was smiling tentatively; Eric couldn’t make out the color of his eyes or their expression. His voice was light, almost silky. Reassuring. An acceptable balance of confidence and deference, and thank goodness he didn’t claim to have devoured every one of Eric’s books, as did Grace, the girl his agent had been sending over twice a week to go through the mail.

  Tad came from Oklahoma, he told Eric. He grew up with horses, working on his uncle’s ranch. Also books: his mother was the town librarian. He had sung in the church choir all through high school. A graduate of Brown University, he was taking an advanced degree in comparative literature. Excellent. Not an aspiring writer who might seek guidance or, God forbid, make suggestions. Tad read The New York Review of Books and the TLS, or so he said. He liked reggae. He liked skiing. His dissertation in progress had something to do with the influence of his favorite author, Borges. He was fluent in Spanish. Eric could have hired him on the spot, but his natural wariness prevailed. Later, with Lucinda’s help, he called Tad’s references and reached all three immediately, a miracle these days. A good omen. The boy was a paragon, they raved, and could be trusted with anything. Even Lucinda liked him—she’d made sure to bring them coffee during the interview, to have a look. And she didn’t suffer fools gladly.

  Four mornings a week Tad arrived at eight-thirty, while Eric was getting dressed, a process much slowed down. As he passed the study, he liked seeing Tad bent over the big mahogany desk, deftly slitting open envelopes. Light glinted from the silver letter-opener, an ancient gift from Ada and sharp enough to slice a finger. The first morning, as Tad tilted his head to ask about sorting the mail, the serene reticence was again familiar. It might have been himself in younger days, that was it, Eric realized. The smooth good looks, bright hair and easy comfort in the body, the steady, reliable intelligence, the assurance held in check. The sense of more than met the eye. There was plenty of time for the assurance to become high-handed, the arrogance to show itself.

  Before he left that first day, Tad printed the forty-odd pages of the new novel, about an idealistic young lawyer named Brenner investigating the illegal trade in organ transplants. As Brenner moved through what Eric had in store, he would find his convictions gradually undermined until he ended up in the quicksand of moral ambivalence. “You’ll find it a far cry from Borges,” Eric said. And Tad smiled, or Eric thought he did. After a pause, as if weighing his words, the boy murmured, “Borges was blind, you know.”

  Eric had forgotten that. Of course, and Borges hadn’t been daunted. He had turned out reams, and he relied on assistants too. Well, fine. Tad would have a stake in his success. If the book revived his name, years from now Tad could contribute to the genre of self-effacing, self-serving essays recounting his aid to the famous author, complete with pithy quotes.

  The next day Tad began reading the pages aloud, with Eric interrupting to make changes. He read with ease, in a relaxed voice—the choir training served him well. As soon as he got the drift of the plot and characters he began injecting a touch of drama into the dialogue, until Eric stopped him: “No expression. Read deadpan, so I can hear the words. I know the story.”

  The days fell into a comforting pattern, beginning with the mail. If it was one of Lucinda’s days, she brought them coffee with croissants. Lucinda was built on a large and splendid scale, with big breasts and green eyes and an auburn-colored Afro cut close to her head. She padded around the apartment on bare feet, even in winter, and he used to like observing the changing hues of her toenails. He’d even used them in a novel, along with her distinctively broad cheekbones and tapering ankles. But he could no longer make out any of this. He wouldn’t hear her enter, but as she came near, he felt her vibrating presence; she had a delectable odor of oranges that mingled with the buttery croissant smell. His little family, he thought, watching her set down the cream and sugar. Mom and Dad with their successful grown son, passing through town on a business trip. Or, with a stretch of the imagination, since Lucinda was nearly forty-five, he might be the proud father of the handsome pair—Lucinda from an adolescent first marriage to a black woman (a daring act at the time), Tad from a more recent one. The wives had disappeared, either died or, like Ada, found true love elsewhere. With an even further stretch, he could become their near-helpless child, Lucinda taking care of his physical needs and Tad keeping his affairs in order.

  Without them, the evenings were long. He had never been a television watcher and was even less inclined now that his eyes shed clusters of graininess on already grainy blobs. Nor could he sit still listening to music. It was through sight that the world reached him. In the old days—not really so old, no more than six months back, but another epoch—he used to wander through museums and galleries. That was his reward, especially after hours of patiently working out plots and time lines. He took pride in the intricate plots, mapped on sheets of squared paper like webs, as cunning as if he were writing spy novels, but the plots were only the material reflection of the psyche. He’d used that phrase once with a radio interviewer: the material reflection of the psyche. He would never say anything so pompous today. Loss, he thought, makes you humble. It wasn’t age that bred pomposity, but the robust entitlements of youth.

  And not of youth alone. Of tangible success. He’d held it in his hands, but not firmly enough; it slipped from his grasp like a frantic fish. Despite some excellent reviews of his last two novels, one about corruption and racism in the South during Reconstruction, the other set in the political turmoil of Jamaica in the ’80s, with a character based loosely on Bob Marley, sales had been disappointing. He didn’t mourn the money: in better days he had invested wisely. What ate at him was the sense of sliding into eclipse. Always painful, now the term made him wince. That was also the time when Ada left. For her announcement, she chose a benign moment when they were unpacking after a ski trip. She was so, so sorry—clutching a folded sweater to her chest like a shield—but she had found out belatedly, at forty-two, what real love was. Eric sank down on the cluttered bed and stared. And ours wasn’t real? Isn’t? It was, of course it was, darling, but this is different. He felt a fool for not noticing. You were busy, I guess, said Ada, not even with the resentment of a neglected wife, which made it worse. So it wouldn’t have made any difference had he not been busy. He’d thought she was busy too—she grumbled about the many evening receptions her foundation job demanded. They had no children by choice, and now Eric regretted that more than he regretted Ada. Fifteen years of her had granulated—rock crushed to sand. His own heroines were more solid.

  The address book he could no longer read was crammed with names, the harvest of decades, yet there was no one he wished to see. A few friends still asked him to dinner, but it was like visiting a foreign country where he only half-grasped the passing scene. He missed the visual nuances, the small stitches that wove the social fabric of the evening. And he hated his hesitancy at the table; he hated being helped to food and not recognizing the food, waiting for taste to do the work of sight. Taste wasn’t all that reliable. Taste, he discovered, worked on the instructions of sight: if you couldn’t see the dish, often you couldn’t identify what you were eating, and he wouldn’t insult his hostess by asking. He couldn’t trust himself to pour anything—the rim of the glass wouldn’t stay still. Practicing at home, he found the best solution was to fill everything half-full, taking
no chances, and since he couldn’t help seeing metaphors everywhere, his half-filled glasses and bowls became an emblem of his future.

  As if Tad could sense his acrid resignation, he arrived the morning after one of those dinners with two thick catalogues listing books read on tape. Eric bristled. Occupational therapy? He wouldn’t be patronized.

  “Hold on a minute,” said Tad. “Let me read you what they’ve got. They’re good books. And they’re not just for the blind. I listen at the gym all the time.” In the end, he acquiesced. Tad was right. The evenings were no longer an agony of exile; the tapes gave back a world he belonged in and had all but renounced.

  Tad was a paragon, as heralded. A good researcher, he returned from library missions aglow with success, bearing tidbits of data like a happy dog fetching the ball for his master. He could trawl the Net, compose letters, field phone calls and e-mail, pay bills, and handle tedious dealings with Eric’s accountant and stockbroker. Sorting the mail, he had an uncanny sense of which appeals Eric would respond to: yes to Habitat for Humanity and earthquake relief in India, no to Alzheimer’s, yes, definitely yes, to Recordings for the Blind. Most of all, he willingly read long passages again and again so Eric could feel their shape. And his sentences in Tad’s genial young voice and unaffected Western diction sent hope through his blood. The study was electrically charged again, the air humming with words. Vigorous, compelling, precise words. Contemporary, as if kin to Tad’s sky-blue jeans and battered pack and what might be a stud in his right ear—Eric thought he glimpsed a golden flash each time the boy turned his head.

  After Tad left, Eric scrawled notes for revisions on legal pads; he couldn’t read them and feared they might resemble hieroglyphics, but Tad had no trouble. The method was laborious, but the thought of Borges consoled him. Also of the aged Henry James dictating to a secretary what turned out to be his best work.