At the moment of panic, seated in a leather armchair, facing a view of dying trees falling against each other at odd, disjointed angles, he was thinking about Congers, who the morning before had come in for an exam, a complete physical, the works (to make sure he was able to handle the stress of the house-moving project), and had stood before him — as a million others had before — with his aged body, his flabby pectorals hanging limp, and his gullet, thick and long; not to mention the wide-ranging liver spots on forearms and hands.
You’re fit as a fiddle, he told Congers. Nothing at all to worry about. For a ninety-year-old you are in supreme shape, indeed. Except, perhaps — well, just perhaps, it’s not exactly certain, but I do see some indications — from what you’ve told me — that there might be a gallstone problem. As you inform me you’re having troubles digesting fish …
Sloan found it hard to divide the moment when he was first feeling the ulcer in his throat from his sudden awareness of the silence on the road.
It was a profound moment, indeed, he told Jenny, during dinner that evening, sitting at one of the restaurant’s outside tables.
And why was that?
Well, it was because I was thinking of Congers, or at least I think I was thinking about him, and his house was being moved, and at the same time I was feeling this sensation in my throat, and, I have to admit, beginning to panic, wondering if the pistachio I’d eaten — one of those red ones — had caused a reaction.
And the house was being moved.
Right, right, yeah, the house was being moved. My view was being destroyed. And our property was starting to lose its value.
So maybe that sparked the thought of Congers coming in for his physical.
You see, you see it’s the fact that I told him about the gallstone. It’s probably nothing. I mean nothing just because he can’t digest fats. Who can? He was at the Cape and ate one of those, you know, those fried fish dinners — little plaid red and white cardboard dish — and he felt funny, those are his words; typical, nothing exactly specific in that is there? Can’t tell you the hundreds of times I hear someone come in with a big complaint, but when I ask them to tell me what exactly feels funny, they can’t nail it. It’s just, something feels funny. I feel funny. Just funny. We all feel funny, I want to tell them. We all feel really, really funny.
So you told him? So what? She touched her hair, just in the back, neatened it up. Freshly cut. Still brunette but patchy gray along the ends.
Yeah, but you see, normally I wouldn’t have told him, just no point in it. Tests have to be done, and someone his age, normally I wouldn’t bother unless there were more indications, aside from having trouble with fats, and so on … but I come right out and say, Sit up Frank, sit a moment, and let me check, do you want a drink of water? I give him a drink from the sink and tell him not to worry, but he looks, well, Jenny, I have to say I could tell he was worried because tough as he is, tough as nails, he’s a worrier when it comes to his health (Probably why the old guy’s hanging in so long. Living alone in that monstrosity.) So I tell him, Look, Frank, I’m concerned about this fish dinner — it’s an indication perhaps that we have a gallstone problem, and who knows what else. I give him a prod, I make him lie back on the table and, well, poke the hell out of him, both sides, thump him all the way up, back, not for any good reason, see, but to make him, well, I don’t know, to make him think …
Jenny held her glass up and waved it. The point, the point, she said.
The point is I have to wonder if I was telling him, you know, just to get him, to throw him off.
He touched his tie, fat tight knot, stripes white and red.
To get him to maybe postpone moving that house, so we could get those lawyers from what is it? Save the Earth? Preserve the Land? You know, the folks who go around buying land and then just let it grow to meadow or second-growth forest, or swamp. Just to give them a couple of days. Because that restraining order, the one the land group, the one about the river basin and all that, might’ve come through. He’d still be there. And the house still being there might sway the judge. You know. The house hadn’t been moved, yet, and the whole thing is still in process, judge might just throw it out. Judge Janson, is it? Janson’s old blood, tied to Congers, believe me; blood going back to old King George himself, right? He comes to me for a physical. The man knows the whole county. Says Janson, I know we’re different, politically, but when it comes to my health I trust you like you’re one of our own.
Along the curbside a motorcycle was parked; two getting off in leather jackets.
Is that Janet? she says, her voice catching. It couldn’t be Janet. Could it be Janet?
For a moment they watch the girl remove her helmet, speckled azure with a heavy dark visor to cover her face, slowly lifting it off, shaking a waterfall of black locks around her shoulders. How did she tuck so much hair up there in the helmet? They both wonder. Then they think: that’s not our beloved Janet, our daughter, who is lost to the elements, general wildness, not too wild, but always on the move and going from one place to the other. Our Janet.
Sloan took a deep long sip of his drink, and then another and then a quick little one and decided there would be no point in going further with the topic. Not that he wanted to shield his wife from the truth; just keep some balance between what was in his mind and what he spoke aloud. He didn’t tell her the following: that there had been that afternoon a small sliver of time between when he felt his throat begin to constrict and when he made the proper diagnosis (of the ulcer resulting most likely from the pain medication he was on for his joints); that in that small fraction of time he had panicked (looking out through the trees, falling every which way) and a void had opened up, a wide space revealing what might eventually yawn into a crevice and, with oncoming years, become an immense chasm: a loss of his abilities at making a brisk, proper, correct diagnosis, a careful balance of professional opinion with the symptoms available. In that panic came, he felt, what can only be called (as he sat drinking his vodka) the first slippage in his talents. Beneath him, life was giving way. Night was descending. The waitress came up and cleared the plates and offered up several desserts: cream puffs, cocoa mousse, ice cream cake. It went unsaid. The fear that he was reaching the end of his long career; the deep welling sense of loss he had when he felt his throat at that moment. His utter confusion over the whole thing.