“What would be the point of seeing a doctor?”
“So that you can say you’ve seen a doctor.”
“You’re a doctor.”
“I’m the blind man’s lover.”
5
HE WOKE much too early, seeing the whole day ahead in Boston and feeling cross, thinking of how he loathed medical doctors, their absurd authority, their bossy arrogance, their airs — you were familiar, they were formal; you were small, they were large; “Wait here, Slade, the doctor is busy at the moment.” A doctor posed as a figure of power and wisdom, knowing how to ease pain and cure sickness and save lives. Those skills were like a higher form of plumbing, mastered by earnest drudges, yet they regarded themselves as shamans and did not want to be judged like ordinary mortals. They hated their learning to be called into question, and they never listened.
Ava was different from every doctor he had ever known. She read books for pleasure, she did not advertise herself as a doctor, and she did not disagree with him when he declared that doctors caused illnesses, that hospitals were disease factories, that most new drugs were poorly tested and overprescribed. Doctors made people sick with dirty drugs. The ideal doctor-patient relationship was his love affair with Ava, or the Secoya shaman’s with his ayahuasca-taker. To be humbled by the chanting shaman and granted visions by his drug — that was the purest healing.
That week of revelation on the Aguarico River reminded Steadman that they had not left the Vineyard since arriving back from Ecuador last November — had been buried alive all winter and spring and into the summer, those dazzling months of work and sex. And then at nine, starting for the airport, Ava at the wheel, Steadman furious in the passenger seat, scowling at an impenetrable line of traffic they were trying to join, they came to a dead stop at the junction of his country lane and the main road.
Summer people in crawling cars, sunburned and squinting in impatience, children’s bored bobbing faces at the windows — an unbroken line of cars going nowhere. Disgusted by all these intrusive strangers in their Jeeps and minivans and truck-like vehicles with big wheels and bumpers and bike racks, only ten minutes into the trip, Steadman regretted agreeing to the eye appointment in Boston.
“Take the shortcut.” He was staring at her leg, praying for it to articulate her gas-pedal foot.
“I can’t even get into the traffic.”
Trying to force a space for herself, Ava eased the car forward, but when a Range Rover hesitated and a space opened, a man on a moped darted into it, as though sucked into a vacuum, and after him a procession of bikes — dad, mom, wobbling kids, and another adult in skintight spandex on two wheels towing a bike trailer. Then the urgent inching cars closed the gap. A red-faced woman in the passenger seat of a convertible peered at Steadman, and with her arms folded and her head forward she opened her mouth wide, her nose pinched white, and yawned irritably, with a coarse goose-hiss that he could hear.
“Go home!” he called out.
The woman smacked her lips and blinked and calmly mouthed the words “Fuck you.”
Ava sighed at the slowly moving line of cars and headed into them, forcing open a space angled sideways, in the path of oncoming cars, but still only half inserted, for the traffic had stopped again in what was a two-mile backup into Vineyard Haven. The shortcut to the airport was still almost a mile away.
Mopeds veered in and out of the stopped cars, cyclists bumped along the side of the road, and two women jogged ostentatiously past, sweat-soaked in their scanty clothes — a dog barked at them, thrusting its loose spittle-flecked jaws out of a car window, sounding outraged. Someone’s radio — the convertible in front? — was very loud, and among the unmoving cars in the still summer air someone’s cigar smoke reached Steadman and Ava.
“The president was puffing a cigar at Wolfbein’s, did you see?” Ava said, just to make conversation, because the delay was so serious and she wanted to calm Steadman’s anxiety about the plane they had to catch.
“What the fuck is this traffic all about?”
Steadman’s anger was a gumminess in his mouth and grit in his eyes and his guts churning with frustration. He felt like an innocent loosed upon a mobbed and noisy world. He was upset and angrier for the way that Ava, with that pointless cigar remark, was trying to distract him from the bikes, smoke, noise, strangers, New York license plates, joggers, the leafy road blocked with cars — and the most annoying thing about slow traffic was the visibility of bumper stickers on the SUVs. The more expensive the vehicle, the more frivolous the message.
“Look at the size of them. They’re made for jungles and deserts.”
Ava said, “That reminds me. The agency wants you to sign off on a proposal from Jeep for some kind of Trespassing Limited Edition. Like the Eddie Bauer Ford Explorer.”
He imagined the vehicle in the Trespassing style, the safari look, the earth tones, the sturdy seats, the loops and brush guards and compartments, the compass, the altimeter, the gear bags, the khaki, the canvas patches, the leather details. All this because he had written a book. He went sad and silent.
Ava said, “Anyway, there’s another flight at noon,” and kept on, sounding hopeful, offering consolation, until she became aware of the silence from Steadman.
Gazing straight ahead, smiling slightly, licking his lips, Steadman held a small bottle in his hands that Ava could tell was empty.
“What did you just go and do?”
Instead of replying to that, he said, “The traffic’s moving”—though it wasn’t — so he added, “A mile down the road,” for he was blind again, in another dimension of understanding, relaxed, seeing past the jammed-up cars and the bikes, and calculating that they would easily make the flight.
At the airport, Steadman was smiling behind his dark glasses as they checked in.
“Just carry-ons,” Ava said to the woman behind the counter tapping the computer keyboard.
Steadman said softly, as though to himself, “That traffic was in my head.”
Swishing his white cane, he loped confidently toward the small plane, ahead of Ava but following the other boarding passengers.
“Brother Steadman, how’re you doing?” a man said from one of the forward seats.
“Bill,” Steadman said, recognizing Styron’s voice and, sensing him begin to rise from his seat, “Please don’t get up.”
“You’re doing just fine,” Styron said. “Wasn’t that a great party at the Wolfbeins’?”
“A historic occasion.”
“You made it so. You’re a brave guy.”
“Cut it out.”
“No, you’re a trouper. I was fetched by the sight of you talking to the president. He was mighty impressed, too.”
Ava’s embarrassment was visceral — Steadman sensed it powerfully, feeling what she felt, tightening like a cramp, reproaching him, and he said, “Please don’t say that, Bill. I’m the same as always, maybe a little brighter.”
“You’re right here, sir,” a woman said — the flight attendant, Steadman knew, directing him to a seat on the aisle. Ava took the window seat.
Steadman was aware of being close to Styron, just behind him, an odor, a mutter, the crunch of Styron’s folding a thick newspaper, the sense of his fragile fingers, his knuckles on the crease.
“You going to Boston, Bill?”
“Just to change planes,” Styron said. “Susanna’s filming Shadrach in North Carolina. She invited me down.”
“I’m seeing a doctor at the Mass. Eye and Ear Infirmary.”
“I hope it’s good news.”
“Whatever. I’m happy.”