2
page had been turned.A It was that quiet and that simple, but Artie—having almost died— no longer wanted to.
—
IN THE HOSPITAL he stayed for two nights, and he was astonished at the sense of safety, the comfort, he felt during nighttime in this place. He had shivered and shivered—and been delusional—but they had slowly warmed him up, a cannula of heated oxygen had been hooked up to his nose. And even though they had kept him awake, they finally said he could sleep, and he was so peaceful he felt that he was a baby. He was aware of the slight sound of a nurse or two coming in to check on him. When he woke, he (a little bit) wanted to go home, but they said: One more night, “just to be sure.”
He had lost consciousness as he was dragged back to the shore alongside the boat, they had not been able to get him into the boat, but he fuzzily remembered the ambulance waiting, he (sort of) remembered the kind strong calmness of the EMT folks who lifted him from the water. He’d kept saying things, but he could not recall what. And then at the hospital a nurse appeared by his side, and he turned his head partly to see her better. Her young face was tired-looking, and her brown hair was sloppily tied up on her head; she
said, “Can you tell me your name?”
He just watched her.
“Do you know where you are?” she asked.
He kept on watching her, and then he said, “I’m not dreaming, am I?” He really wanted to know. The nurse placed her hand on his arm. “You’re not dreaming, Mr. Dam. You are alive and you’re going to be fine.”
“Okay,” Artie said. Then he said, “How did you know my name?”
“Your wallet,” she answered kindly. And then she walked away.
Looking around slightly he saw that he was alone in a curtained-off area of the emergency room; his clothes had been removed; he wore a johnny from the hospital, and a thin blanket covered him. He was very cold, he could not stop shivering, and they explained to him that they had to warm him slowly; they gave him spicy tea to drink, which he did. Machines were beeping behind him, and the light above him was bright.
—
AND THEN EVIE walked hurriedly in. “Hello, sweetie heart,” he said. She put a small pile of clothes down on the empty chair beside him; her mouth was moving but she did not cry. She handed him a pair of his old glasses, which he put on, and leaning down she hugged him, and then she sat on the bed next to Artie opening and closing her mouth with no sound coming out, holding on to his hand tightly. “Hey, hey,” he said. “It’s all fine now, sweetie heart, don’t you worry.”
“You scared me.” She said this finally, and her mouth moved again. “I
was so scared!”
He felt a great sense of surrender.
“It’s all just fine, Evie,” he said.
Later he was moved to a room where his bed was near the window, and he could see the water from where he lay. The other bed, behind a curtain, was empty. A doctor came in and told him that he had not had a heart attack, which they had been worried about, that he seemed to be fine, was recovering very well, but they would like to keep him at least two nights for observation.
Evie sat next to him the whole time; she still held on to his hand. “Artie, you could have died,” she said.
He watched her, and he thought of his last few months. As he thought about this, he understood: I did not want to die, I just did not want to live.
—
AFTER A MOMENT someone moved into the room, and when the person came into view Artie saw that it was his son.
“Dad?”
His son sat down in a plastic chair next to his bed.
“Robbie.” Artie said this with what he thought was enthusiasm, but his voice was not that strong; he could hear this in his voice. Evie stood and said, “Let me go to the cafeteria and find something to eat, I haven’t eaten
anything since I heard about you.”
Rob said, “Yeah, go eat, Mom.”
So they were alone, father and son.
Rob looked above the bed at the machines that were blinking and making beeping sounds. He pulled his chair closer to his father. Now his face was very close. “Dad.” Rob’s voice was low. “Dad, did you do it on purpose?”
Artie didn’t speak for a moment, and then he said, “Do what on purpose, son?”
“Did you fall into the water on purpose?”
“No.” Artie looked at his son and then at the ceiling. “No, I don’t think
so.”
“You don’t think so?”
“No, son. I couldn’t get into the boat. I slipped. What are you asking me?”
“I’m asking you if you were trying to die.”
“Why would you ask me that?”
“You haven’t been yourself for a while,” Rob said. He still did not sit
back.
“Is that what your mother said?”
“No. No, no, she didn’t say anything like that. I just wondered…” Rob put his face even closer to Artie’s. “Look, Dad. You and I have—” He
glanced up at the ceiling for a long moment and then back at Artie. “We’ve always had—I don’t know—some kind of understanding between us, ever since, you know…Heather.”
“No, son. I wasn’t trying to kill myself.” Artie looked straight at Rob as he said this.
“Because, Dad—” Tears filled his son’s eyes. Rob reached and took Artie’s hand in his own. “Because, Dad? You can’t do that. You can never ever do that. Because you’re like my explorer. Remember when they sent those men to the Moon, they sent up robots years ahead to explore so they knew they’d be safe when they got there? That’s what you’re like for me, Dad. You’re my explorer, so if you ever did that it would mean that I could do it too, and so you can’t.”
Artie gazed into this poor boy’s anguished face. “I will never do that,” he said.
And Rob sat back, wiping his face with his sleeve. “Good. Okay. Good.”
THAT FIRST NIGHT in the hospital Artie woke and thought of how he had had his tonsils out when he was a kid. This was back when people still smoked in hospitals. He had seen a patient, an old woman (she had looked old to him, though as he recalled this he thought that she had probably been the same age then as he was now), and she was weeping. Back and forth she walked in the hospital’s corridor past his room in her bathrobe, weeping and smoking her cigarettes. Her story was this: She had tongue cancer, half her tongue had been removed, and she lived alone, and she was scared.
It was Artie’s father who had found that out. And Artie remembered his father speaking kindly to that woman, asking her about what arrangements she might have when she went home (she had no arrangements and no money either), and she was so grateful to Artie’s father as she stood there in her hospital gown, weeping and smoking.
As Artie recalled this now, he felt a stirring of a feeling he had had often in his youth, which he had never been able to describe to anyone, and had
never tried, but it was a feeling (almost) of a divine presence. It was not a God who stood above the Earth like a father figure, not at all. But it was a presence that was very large and, for Artie, always comforting, as it was now thinking of that poor smoking woman who was going home alone. By now she would have been dead many years, and he was glad—as he lay in his own hospital bed—to think that her suffering was over.
And that his father had been so kind to her.
—
ARTIE’S MIND SEEMED to go blank for a while, but then more memories began.
He remembered clearly the first night he had heard Francesca perform as a concert pianist. It was at Carnegie Hall in New York City. This was almost two years ago now, right before Christmas—Evie had ended up getting a bad cough and so Artie had gone to the concert of his new daughter-in-law with only Rob.
Entering the hall, Artie felt a sense of wonder; he had been there before but years ago, and it seemed different to him. It was smaller than he remembered, and yet with its balconies there were many seats, and he watched them slowly fill. Their seats were in the second tier, Artie could see Francesca perfectly from where they sat, he could see her face, her black slacks and black top and her red shoes on the pedals, it was only Francesca and the piano—alone. She had looked tremendously lonely to him as she walked onto the stage with its well-lit wooden floor and sat down. People applauded, but not the woman who sat next to Artie, a very tall woman, older than Artie, rather severe, he thought.
But what he saw that night was how much Francesca was giving to the audience, to the large-stomached men who sat in the front rows, to the tall, awful woman who sat beside him. Francesca was playing her heart out: When she reached for a high note, he saw her hand cupping itself after she played it, and the audience responded politely (the woman next to him never clapping once). And then, after the intermission, Francesca returned to the stage and gave them hell. This is what Artie thought now, and he had thought it then,
he had leaned forward in his seat, she had played with tremendous strength in her fingers, and by the end of that first piece after the intermission, the audience was wild about her. Rob had sat there with what Artie thought was great calmness; now Artie understood that Rob had believed in her totally. At the end of the concert, people even stood (though not all of them, not the tall, awful woman sitting beside him), and Francesca came back for three encores.
But Artie had been concerned about her.
Rob had told Artie not to go see her after the concert, that she would “be a wreck, always is afterward,” not even to text her, to wait a day, though Rob himself had disappeared to go find her backstage. And so Artie waited a day and then he texted Francesca something stupid—he felt it was stupid—about her outstanding performance, and she had texted back only “Thanks, Artie.”
She was a mysterious person.
Lying in the almost dark, Artie hoped she would be okay. (He wondered what she thought of as she played.)
A FEW HOURS LATER, very early in the morning, a doctor showed up at the foot of his bed. The doctor was younger than Artie, and he said, “Glad to see you doing so well, Mr. Dam.”
“Yes,” Artie said. As the doctor moved toward him with his stethoscope
Artie said, “Can I tell you something?”
The doctor stopped moving toward him.
“I’m wondering if you’ve ever heard of something like this. But I had a dream one week ago that I was in the water floating, and it was exactly like what actually happened to me.”
The doctor looked at him from behind dark-framed glasses. And then, to Artie’s surprise, he sat down on the bed. “Precognition,” he said. “I’m interested in that stuff.” He glanced around. “Not all my colleagues are. But tell me.”
And so Artie told the doctor of his vivid dream, and how when he was in the water he understood that this had been his dream.
The doctor regarded him carefully. “Has that ever happened to you
before?”
Artie shook his head. “Never.”
The doctor sighed and said, “Well, I have no idea. But I have heard of such things, yes. Maybe you have a gift.” He stood up with his stethoscope.
—
THE SECOND NIGHT in the hospital was even better than the first, which Artie realized now he had only barely remembered. But as he began to feel more aware, more himself, he thought: Wow. And after kissing Evie good night, he looked at the television above his head for a few minutes and clicked it off and lay in the almost darkness.
What came to him then was this memory: the night he was awarded Teacher of the Year. The event had been held at a neighboring school, and at the reception beforehand, Artie had felt a growing unease while he greeted the teachers and superintendents from all over the state as he held a glass of wine from which he did not drink. Evie had enjoyed herself tremendously, he could see this in the glow of her face as she shook hands with person after person.
The dinner and the award ceremony itself had been held in the huge gymnasium of this same school. Long blue curtains had been put up on the stage part of the gymnasium and the place was packed. The dinner had seemed interminable. What helped save Artie was the fact that Flossie (with her husband) was seated at the same table. But Flossie was across from him, and the table was big. She had had too much to drink, he could see this, and he did not care. Her lipstick rimmed her wineglass, and every so often she would set her glass down and catch his eye and wave to him from across the table. “Dear Artie,” she boomed a few times, her pink polished nails wagging from her plump hand as she blew him a kiss.
—
IN FACT, ARTIE had been almost paralyzed with fear. As he sat at the table
while the introduction was made for him, he was honestly not sure that he would be able to stand and walk up the stairs to the podium. But he did. His written speech was dampened with wrinkles, and he smoothed it out and began to speak, and after the first page or so something in him calmed down, and he was able to look up more at the audience, and when he spoke of his excitement at teaching the Civil War—how each year he assigned a student to research an actual soldier or nurse from Massachusetts and had that student read all the letters written home—as he relaxed into this, he glanced up and caught Flossie’s eye, and she was positively beaming at him, and then, before he looked back down at his text, his eyes moved ever so quickly to her husband, Reginald, sitting stiffly beside her, and he saw—he was always certain of this—he saw Reginald roll his eyes.
The man had rolled his eyes at Artie.
Well, it didn’t matter.
—
IN THE YEARS to come Artie told no one but his wife that he had seen this.
“He’s jealous,” Evie had said dismissively, and Artie said, “Jealous of what?
He’s got an endowed chair of mathematics at Boston University,” and Evie said, “Yes, and how many awards has he gotten from his popularity? He may be brainy, but he’s not popular and you are.” Flossie he never mentioned this to as she would weep at their table in Spud’s Bar and Grille after Reginald died, telling Artie what an asshole her husband had been and how she missed him so much. Artie would just nod. And after a few minutes Flossie would say something that had them both laughing again.
—
AS ARTIE LAY THERE in the not quite darkness of the hospital room he thought about this, Reginald rolling his eyes at him, and Artie felt a real sense of sorrow for the man, to have such a poverty of spirit. These were the words that came to Artie: poverty of spirit.
And then turning slightly over—he could not turn fully because of the
intravenous needle they had stuck into his arm—he thought again of his sister, Maria. A sweet girl who had only wanted sweetness in her life.
WHEN ARTIE TOLD EVIE about his dream, early that second morning in the hospital, and how accurate the dream had been, she just watched him carefully. “Seriously,” Artie said. “Isn’t that strange?” Evie kept watching him. Then she said, “Really?” She said it hesitantly, as though she was not sure she believed him.
“Yeah,” said Artie. He was sitting up in bed; he was waiting for his breakfast; he could hear the trays rattling in their big rolling container outside in the hallway. “I told the doctor, and he was interested. But he said that not all his colleagues would be. But the doctor—I mean, my doctor—said he had heard of such things happening. It’s called precognition.”
“I know what precognition is,” Evie said.
“Have you ever had clients who had it?”
“No.”
“But don’t you think it’s strange that that happened?”
“Very strange,” she said, and then a woman came in with his breakfast tray, and no more was said about it.
IT TURNED OUT that the man who had saved Artie’s life was called Kenneth Moynihan, and he had only recently moved to town. The younger man with him in his outboard boat was his son, who was visiting from Maine. Kenneth came to see Artie in the hospital; Artie was walking the halls with Evie that last morning there, waiting for his discharge papers so he could go home. It was Evie who saw Kenneth first. “Oh!” she said, letting go of Artie’s arm and moving toward the man. “Hello, hello!” She had met him briefly in the emergency room when Artie was still having delusions. And this man— beaming—walked over to Artie now and introduced himself; he was a nice- looking, vigorous-appearing man. He took Artie’s hand firmly but shook it
gently. “Boy, am I glad to see you,” he said, a large smile spreading across his face. Artie placed his other hand over the man’s and said, “Wonderful.
Wonderful to meet you. Thank you.”
A few days after Artie got out of the hospital, Kenneth Moynihan telephoned him at home. “You okay? Doing all right?”
“Yes, I am,” Artie said. A real pleasure filled him.
“I was thinking, do you want to go to Spud’s with me one of these Thursday nights? Say in two weeks? My wife has her book club and—sweet Jesus—I like to get out of the house when that happens.”
WHEN ARTIE WALKED back into his classroom the next week, a handwritten cardboard sign hung above his desk: WELCOME BACK DAMN-DAM! The sign had a clothesline threaded through it that had then been wrapped around the clock on the wall. His students seemed eager to see him, they looked at him with wide eyes. “What happened?” one young fellow asked, and so Artie told them. His later class, with Rhonda Lazarre and Danny Marino in it, was really abuzz, they had heard the news from other students over the course of the day. “Tell us what happened!” A few students asked this, and so Artie sat behind his desk and told them that he had fallen trying to get into his sailboat, that a man and his son had saved his life. And then he added, raising his eyebrows, “Lucky person, me. I’ll tell you that.”
“Did you black out?” one young man wanted to know, and Artie said that he had.
“No!” It was Rhonda who said this, she was stricken.
“Yup.” Artie stood up and clapped his hands in front of him. “But I’m alive now, so let’s get to work, everyone.”
But they still kept looking at him. Rhonda put her hand up.
“Yes?” Artie asked.
“Did you see anything? I mean, when you were unconscious? Did you see God or anything? Because I watch these things on YouTube about people who almost die, and they see things.”
Artie noticed that no one seemed to snicker, and he looked at her kindly.
“I did not see anything, I’m sorry to report.” He added, “But I felt very peaceful.”
“I don’t get it,” Danny Marino said. “How could you feel peaceful if you blacked out?” He seemed to really want to know.
Artie nodded. “Good question. I’m just saying that when I was fully alive again, warmed up, I felt quite rested. Peaceful.”
All the students in the room were watching him.
“Come on, come on now, let’s get to work.” Artie clapped his hands again a few times. “Let’s talk about General Lee. Did you all do the reading?
No? Come on, people! Did you all think I was dead? Did you think you wouldn’t have to study history ever again? Well, I’m here and we’re going to do our work.”
They settled into themselves after that, those who had read the assigned work had more to say than they had in the past, and Artie encouraged them.
“Exactly,” he said. “Exactly right.”
When class was over, Rhonda Lazarre came over to his desk and said to
him, “You know what, Mr. Dam?”
“What’s that?” he asked gently.
She said, very seriously, “You have a guardian angel here on Earth.”
RACHEL WAS A tall young woman.
And she was thin, like Rob. The moment Artie met her, taking her hand in his, he thought: Their kids will be tall and skinny. Rachel said, “It’s so nice to meet you, Mr. Dam. I’ve heard a lot about you.” Her voice was quiet, and Artie said, “Oh, speak up, my dear girl, or I won’t be able to know who you are!” Rachel laughed—sort of—and looked over at Rob, who was blushing and who smiled at her reassuringly.
“Woman, Dad,” Rob said. “They’re called women now.”
“Didn’t I say that?” Artie asked. He looked over at Evie, who stood to the side and shook her head.
“You said ‘girl,’ ” Evie said. “Honestly, Artie.”
“Sorry, sorry, sorry.” And Artie said, sweeping his hand toward the living room, “Why hasn’t anyone asked you to sit down?”
“This is a really nice house,” Rachel said softly, walking into the room.
It was more awkward than Artie would have thought. Poor Rachel’s very long legs were in black tights, and covering her small bottom was a black skirt, or maybe shorts, Artie could not tell, and she had a tattoo on her left hand that seemed to go up her arm, although the arm was mostly covered with a long-sleeved black T-shirt. At one point she said to Artie, “So you teach about the Civil War. That’s so cool.” It came to Artie’s mind that Francesca was a great deal more self-possessed than this young woman, but then Francesca was older, and had been in the public limelight for years. “I do,” Artie said. There was a gawkiness to Rachel, with her short brown hair (half of it pulled back by a child’s blue barrette), and both Artie and Evie struggled to make conversation.
Artie eventually said, “Do you like to sail?” And Rachel just shrugged and looked at Rob.
“No,” Rob said. “Sorry about that, but she’s like Mom, she doesn’t like boats.”
“Okay.” Artie held up both his hands. “That’s fine.”
As she and Rob were leaving, Rachel paused by one of the small tables in the living room and picked up a pillbox—it was tiny, and something that Artie had never really thought about; there were many such small old boxes on the table. But he said now, “That’s a pillbox. Belonged to some relative of Evie’s,” and Rachel put it back down on the table and said, “It’s really sweet.”
—
AFTER THEY LEFT, and Artie and Evie were back in the living room, Evie said, “She’s a kleptomaniac.” Artie laughed. “I mean it,” Evie said. She gestured toward the round table behind Artie. “She took that pillbox of my grandmother’s.”
Artie rose and walked to the table and found the pillbox he thought Rachel had noticed, and he said, “It’s right here,” and Evie squinted at it and said, “No, Artie, she took a different one.” At the time he thought only that this young (at least she seemed young) girl had threatened his wife in some way, but then when Evie began talking about what the girl had been wearing, Artie said—with honesty—“Oh Evie, if you saw what I see these days. I’ve told you this, people have no sense of dress, everyone is competing to look the coolest and no one can ever win that contest.” He sat down heavily in his chair again.
And Evie said, “I do see this, for God’s sake, Artie, what do you think the young women I work with are dressed like?”
But Artie only reiterated what he had said.
He meant this, because things had changed so drastically since he’d started teaching more than thirty years earlier. For years now girls had been wearing things that exposed their bare stomachs, and no matter how big their stomachs might be they showed them off. He had been glad that, as they now said, “fat bashing” was not allowed, except he saw—from some of the other girls in his classes—that it often was totally acceptable to “fat bash” a large young woman—privately, among friends. But he had watched this with interest. He and Evie had gone to a musical show in Boston a year ago, and in the chorus was a very large girl who moved and danced and shook her body in a way that Artie thought was amazing, just amazing, and he had (stupidly) breathed (almost) a sigh of relief to see this. The world was changing.
Except that it was not.
—
BECAUSE ON MONDAY MORNING he passed Rhonda Lazarre in the hallway, and two young women—whom Artie had in different classes—raised their hands to their faces as they walked by her, and he felt (or thought he felt) their disdain for their fellow student. At the last minute, he turned and called out, “Hello, Rhonda!” She turned around, and he also saw the two young women
turn and glance at him as well, and he asked Rhonda, who had stopped walking, how she was, and Rhonda said, “I’m good, Mr. Dam, how are you?”
Artie said that he was just fine, and smiled and gave her a wave and kept walking.
THAT MR. DAM had turned and asked her how she was that day as she moved down the hallway was—Rhonda Lazarre would always believe this—when she decided she would become a minister, even if she had not fully understood it at that moment. But as these things happen, she carried with her that memory and connected it to the future, and it was a good future for her; she understood more and more as she got older that she had helped people, people like she had been, awkward, scared, lonely, and people also like the other girls in her class had been, popular and pretty and suffering—as she found out through her career—from terrible pains and fears of their own.
God bless Mr. Dam.
—
SO BLIND WE humans are—so blind. To each other and to ourselves, moving through life as though through shadows, putting out a hand in the dark and thinking we have touched someone. And maybe we have, as Artie did with Rhonda Lazarre that day. But mostly we travel through life unsighted, grasping only the smallest details of one another’s selves, including our own.
Thinking all the while that we can see.
—
AND SO: What about Evie and the shadows she was moving through at this point? Evie had been having troubles that Artie did not know of, and she was vaguely aware—in a way that made her feel a quiet self-loathing—that she compartmentalized, meaning that she put different emotions into different places in her mind, and the reason she realized this was because of various
clients she had in whom she recognized this trait. And she was often a tiny bit uncharitable to them, knowing that she should not be, then overcompensating the next time she saw them. She should have returned to the therapist she had seen briefly before she went to social work school, but she did not care to do so, and she did not.
She had been privately (so privately that she almost did not know it) grieving, or at least feeling deep pockets of an abrupt sadness at times; this had been going on for many months. This had affected her feelings toward Artie; she was aware, as she always had been, that there was something soft about Artie; through her work she had come to realize that this (sometimes) happened with people who had not gotten enough love from their mothers when they were young: They ended up wanting to please, to be good. And this especially irritated her these days about Artie. She did not believe that he had precognition, she thought that he had dreamed about falling into the water and then it had fulfilled itself because he unconsciously thought it would. But had she known—because who could say if what she was going through with her deep and sudden pockets of grief might have had something to do with Artie wanting to kill himself?—had she known such an effect of her sorrow on her husband, she would have felt terrible. Much worse is what she would have felt.
—
DANNY MARINO WAS a mess; his mother had moved out, and then returned three days later. A seesaw Danny was on. Up and down went his hopes, his feelings. His father wept, which frightened Danny the most. At night, unable to fall asleep, Danny thought: I hate everyone.
—
ANNE MERRILL WAS still in a kind of state of shock that Artie Dam had almost died that day. Privately, her reaction stunned her; she loved him that much.
The idea of coming into school each day and not finding Artie in the teachers room frightened her, and she kept saying to herself: Well, it did not happen.
And after many days her fear receded, she became more balanced once again in her life.
—
ROB LOOKED AT his beloved Rachel in the tiniest bit of a different way after introducing her to his parents. He could barely admit this to himself, but she seemed to change before his eyes into an adolescent girl at a school dance, and this embarrassed him, his reaction. Francesca was back in the country now, and she had been very kind to him. They held each other in bed one night. He was to start looking for an apartment soon, Francesca said that she would help him, but he demurred. She was to be on her way again for another European tour, ending up in Paris this time, and he said that he wanted to wait until she got back to move out. She said that she understood.
“DAD, WEAR YOUR sneakers, please don’t wear those fucking rubber boots.”
Rob said this to him that Saturday—two weeks after Artie had almost drowned—as Artie got ready to take a sail. He was excited about the sail, and he had spoken to Rob on the phone about it. Rob sounded uncertain. “Can’t you take Mom?”
And in fact, Evie had offered to go. On a boat she hated she had offered to go, and he said No no no, he would be fine, and he told her that Rob was right, he would wear his sneakers (which he put on over his white socks).
And so Evie came down to the wharf and watched him as he rowed a (new) dinghy out to the boat and tied it up; he waved to her when he was in the boat; she waved back with both arms. And off he went.
—
AND THE GLORY of that day! The glory of being back on the water and the sea around him sparkling and the sails billowing and the sky a bright blue—it was unspeakably beautiful with the foliage now changing along most parts of
the shore, and Artie sat at the tiller and kept saying quietly, “My God. My God.”
—
FOR A COUPLE of weeks, Artie was one of the happiest men alive on Earth.
ON WEDNESDAY, after Artie’s magnificent sail, there was a soccer game at the school and Artie sat in the front row of the bleachers next to Carl LeBlanc.
The sky was cloudy, and it was cold, people clutched their coats, some folding their arms against themselves. Artie clapped as their team ran out onto the field; Danny Marino scored a goal within five minutes, his foot against the soccer ball making a resounding and satisfying smacking sound, and Artie and the fans clapped hard.
But in the second half of the game a fight broke out. Artie, who had turned to speak to a neighbor he knew behind him, missed exactly what happened, but apparently the referee had made a call that infuriated the father of one of the players for the other school’s team. The father ran onto the field, shaking his fist. And the referee kicked him off the field, blowing on his whistle hard, sticking his hand out again and again and then having a conference on the edge of the field with the other referees and the two coaches; the man was sent home from the game. And then students began to fight with one another. It was unbelievable.
Artie could hardly tell who was fighting who. He saw two young men he had had in class three years ago—they had since graduated—fighting with each other in the mess of fists that were flying around near the sideline a little downfield from where Artie sat. Whistles kept screeching and Coach Clark and the other team’s coach ran over to the group of fists and legs and arms and some parents joined them, trying to pull them all apart, and then Artie saw two parents he knew yelling at each other also.
When everyone was finally separated, Hoover Lakeland, the principal, got on the loudspeaker and said with real energy that this was not
sportsmanlike behavior and would not be tolerated again, that any person caught fighting in the future would be banned from playing the game and also expelled from school. And that if this happened again soccer would be canceled for the season.
He was booed by some people in the stands.
Artie was really disturbed, and it was not until a few minutes later, as the game progressed, that he sensed that this had to do with politics, because he heard a person behind him yell, “Jew hater!” And someone yelled back, “Shut up, you fucking asshole!” Coach Clark turned in the direction of the stands behind him where these yells had come from, and he called a timeout.
The refs came to the sideline, and the two people who had yelled these things were removed from the stands, again to sounds of booing.
When Artie’s team won the game, there was not the explosion of happiness there usually was; people were tense as the players trotted off the field, and Hoover Lakeland stood guard along with the coaches as the visiting team was escorted to their bus.
“Whoa,” said Carl LeBlanc to Artie as they walked off the field together.
“That was ugly.”
“It sure was,” Artie agreed. An uneasiness settled into him that did not disappear, even as he told Evie—who was horrified—about it that night after
she arrived home from work.
“Such a world,” Evie said.
Artie said, “I’m afraid it’s going to get worse.”
“I know, I know you think that,” Evie answered. “You are a doomsayer about the state of this country. Why don’t we just wait and see.”
But Artie was still taken aback, and he thought: There is a lot of anger out there these days, even more than I had known.
THE SUN WAS setting as Artie pulled into the parking lot of Spud’s Bar and Grille. The water was moving gently, and the color of the setting sun—an orangey deep yellow—shone through the few clouds and spread itself against
the water, a thing of absolute beauty. As he got out of his car, Artie saw Kenneth Moynihan getting out of his car as well, and the men greeted each other with enthusiasm. “You all good?” Kenneth shook Artie’s hand, and
Artie said, “I’m perfect. How are you?”
“Good! Good! Happy to see you.”
Inside, the place was not as busy as usual, the tables with their white cloths waiting with a kind of shy expectancy, the glasses and silverware shining. A hostess who knew Artie walked him and Kenneth to a table that looked out over the water, and they sat down. “Does Spud know you’re here?” the young woman asked Artie with affection on her face, and Artie said that he didn’t think so.
In a few minutes Spud came out of the kitchen to welcome Artie, thrusting out his big arm and saying, “Artie, how you been? Long time, man!
Hey, how’s our friend Flossie doing?”
Here was the thing about Spud: He had a hole in his head. His head was bald, and the hole was up front right above his forehead, maybe an inch deep, the skin grown over it. Years ago, he had been working on a house and a bolt had gone through his head—this was all Artie knew about the accident.
Somehow it had not affected Spud’s brain, but Artie noticed that as Spud got older, the hole seemed deeper. After the accident Spud had opened this restaurant and it had done very well. It was not a big place, but it was often full and active, waitresses bustling about.
“She’s okay,” Artie said. “Out in Ohio near her daughter.” And he introduced Spud to Kenneth Moynihan. The two men shook hands vigorously, and Spud said, “Any friend of Artie’s is a friend of mine.”
—
KEN MOYNIHAN HAD known the family of Heather Morrison. This amazed Artie and he felt himself draw back, but Ken said, reaching across the table and touching Artie’s hand, “Terrible thing to happen to your son. Just terrible.”
“It was,” Artie agreed. “But much worse for her family. Obviously. My
God.”
“Of course,” Ken said, sitting back.
Artie talked that night. He talked in a way he felt he had not talked since dear Flossie had left town. He talked about the fight at the soccer game, how deeply upset people were these days, he spoke about the hostages that had been taken in Israel a year ago, which was just terrible, and how awful it had turned out to be for the Gazans. Ken agreed that it was a terrible thing, the whole ongoing mess of it, they both nodded extensively in agreement. (They did not talk about the upcoming election in their own country.) “You know,”
Artie said, leaning forward slightly in his chair, putting an elbow on the white tablecloth. “I teach history and I have been thinking about free will lately.
What if there isn’t any?”
Ken looked startled. “To tell you the truth, I’ve never seriously thought about that,” he said. He told Artie that his job was selling ads online. Artie waved his hand dismissively. “Don’t worry about it, some stupid thing I’ve been thinking about, that’s all.”
Then Artie asked about Ken, where had he grown up, and Ken said that he had grown up in South Boston, his father had been a postman. Ken spoke about his two sisters, the different lives they had these days, one had stayed in South Boston, she was a bookkeeper at a car dealer’s, and the other one was in Virginia, she was a doctor. “Who knows why certain things happen to people?” Ken said, and Artie laughed and said, “That’s my point about free will. Who knows?”
“Ah-hah!” said Ken, pointing a finger at Artie. “Exactly. Now I get it.”
Artie told Ken about how his father had been a super for those three buildings in Revere. “And I can’t even fix a leaking faucet,” Artie said. He told him about the plumber who had come that day the week before Artie’s accident, how the man had wept on the bathtub’s edge because his wife was having an affair. (Although he did not mention the plumber’s name or the fact that Artie had his son in school.) “God,” Ken said. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, that’s an awful thing. When you think you’re getting your faucet fixed.”
“Oh, he fixed it,” Artie said.
ARTIE CALLED FLOSSIE that week, during third period, which he had off. He walked outside with his phone and down the steep blue steps that led to a public basketball court, and he told her what had happened to him, that he had almost drowned. “No!” She screamed this. “No, no, no, don’t tell me that!”
He chuckled and said, “But it didn’t happen.”
Still, she was tremendously upset. “No!” And then she said, “If you die, I will have to die.”
Artie turned around and watched as two senior boys who had also exited the school walked into the woods behind the basketball court, probably to smoke weed. “Don’t say that, Flossie,” he said, but her voice warmed him.
“Tell me how you are.”
“Oh Artie. I’m okay, really. But I’m not sure why I moved out here.
Sophie can’t stand me, she’s just looking for a husband, who can blame her, and she kind of hates having her old mother living in a condo a few blocks away. Why did I leave?”
“It seemed like a good decision at the time,” Artie said.
“I don’t believe you almost drowned. What the fuck? You couldn’t get yourself into the boat?”
“Oh, listen to this.” And Artie told her about Kenneth Moynihan and how he had gone to Spud’s with him. As he spoke, he sat down beside a small table by the basketball court that had a wooden roof over it; he and Anne Merrill sometimes took their lunch break down here.
“Okay, now I’m just jealous,” Flossie said. “I could bite his head off.”
Then she said, “Listen to me. I’m coming back for New Year’s. I have to spend New Year’s Eve with the Fitzgeralds, you know that dull old couple we were friends with, but I already called up Spud’s and they are taking reservations for the day—the day—of New Year’s Day when everything else
in the world is closed, so I’m going to make a reservation for us, the two of us, for New Year’s Day night. Okay?”
“That sounds wonderful,” Artie said. “Cannot wait.”
He whistled as he walked back up the blue steps slowly—his heart was banging—and then into the school, swiping himself into the faculty entrance with his pass.
