Bob gets up from the chair, and his back sticks to it as he rises.
He reaches out in the dark for the phone, realizes he can’t see to dial, and switches on the kitchen light, then dials his brother’s number. He lets it ring a half-dozen times, ten, twelve. No answer.
8
It’s raining when Bob arrives in Oleander Park, a steady, heavy rain from low clouds, and it’s cold. He’s got the heater of the old Chevy on, and the dry smell of it reminds him of driving in New Hampshire on cold, wet spring mornings along slick highways, stomach growling from too many cigarettes, too much Dunkin’ Donuts coffee in paper cups, heading out from Catamount alone like this, early in the morning like this, to fix somebody’s oil burner. In those days, he knows now, he was constantly depressed and, to avoid the fact, had gone to some secret place deep inside himself, where he went over again and again the trivial details of his life, as if fingering the beads on a rosary, rehearsing, always rehearsing, how he’ll fix the porch steps, how he’ll clean out the cellar this weekend, how he’ll stop tonight on the way home for a few beers at Irwin’s, how he’ll clean his fishing gear this week so he can go out the first day of trout season — filling his mind with scrupulous visions of the actions that most people do automatically and without anticipation, living his life as a constant, slow-motion preview of coming attractions in which the boring, linking, low points are in fact the crucial scenes of the movie.
For a second, as Bob turns off Highway 27 a few miles south of Oleander Park, he forgets why he’s done this, why he’s left his home and family at four in the morning and driven north across Florida for five hours. He knows where he is and recognizes the roads, marshy lakes, trailer parks, palmettos, orange groves, recognizes the acrid smell of the citrus-processing plants, the signs pointing with excitement to Cypress Gardens, the Water Skiing Hall of Fame, Disney World, recognizes on his left the Lake Grassey trailer park and back on Tangelo Lane the blue trailer he owned for close to a year, and recognizes the white cinder-block building out on Route 7 where he worked and where he shot one black man and chased after the other. The windows are covered with sheets of plywood now, the store blinded and abandoned by the side of the road. He sees the road to Auburndale, where Marguerite Dill and her father live, and his chest suddenly fills with a mixture of shame, nostalgia and longing that momentarily frightens and confuses him. Then he recognizes the turnoff to the country club, and he remembers Eddie’s birthday party, the way he saw himself then, poor, stupid, clumsy and inept.
Finally, as he approaches Eddie’s house, low and dark, with an acre of lime-green lawn in front, a plain of slate-gray lake behind it, he remembers why he has come here. He’s come to provide aid and comfort to his elder brother, simply to be present in the man’s time of troubles. He knows there’s little he can do or say, but he believes that his presence will be helpful, that together they will be able to remember who they are and will in that way be able to withstand the awful pressures of the moment. He believes, too, that Eddie will help him as much as he will help Eddie.
Bob is not angry anymore, and he’s not worried. He knows Eddie will be all right as soon as he sees his younger brother’s face, sees that Bob has raced through the Florida night and cold, gray, rainy morning to be at his side, to be family, the Granite Skates, the two of them against the rest of the world. They’ll hug each other, Eddie will gruffly welcome him in, and they’ll sit down, maybe at the huge dining room table, where they’ll drink coffee, smoke cigarettes and discuss possible solutions to these problems, both their problems, and now and then they’ll remember something amusing or touching from their childhood, and they’ll laugh a little.
Bob will tell Eddie about Ave and about Honduras, and maybe he’ll tell him about what happened years ago between Ave and Elaine and how it still bothers him. He’ll tell him about his money problems and about Ruthie’s emotional problems, and he’ll let his brother know what a fool he was last night. He’ll tell about Marguerite, too, at last, and what she meant to him and how confused loving her became for him because she was black. Everything will be made clear in the telling.
He’ll admit that Ave fooled him, though not deliberately, into thinking he could make good money by selling his trailer in Oleander Park and buying into the Belinda Blue. They’ll curse the Republicans and the Democrats, Reagan and Carter, and blame the recession and the Arabs for the falloff in the tourist trade. Bob will even tell his brother about Doris Cleeve back in Catamount and the night he saw his life there for what it was and decided to trade it for another. And he’ll tell Eddie how his feelings toward Elaine have changed, how, even though she does nothing wrong that he can point to, she still manages to make him feel guilty all the time, which he never used to feel, even when he was now and then sleeping with Doris Cleeve, an act no better or worse than fucking Honduras last night or falling for Marguerite last summer. He’s no different from the way he’s always been, he’ll say to Eddie, and yet now he goes around feeling guilty all the time, especially toward Elaine and the kids.
Eddie will understand, and there’s probably a lot of it that Eddie will be able to explain away. And by the same token, there’s probably a lot in Eddie’s life that’s just as confusing to him, things that Bob will be able to explain for him. Bob will know what to say when Eddie tells him how he got himself into debt to people he never should have borrowed money from. He’ll know how to reassure his brother that he did everything a man could to make Sarah happy and that her desertion of him now is an act that should never be forgiven. Bob will tell him not to worry about losing his daughter, you never lose your children, no matter what. They eventually discover the truth about you, and they come back, he’ll say. Bob will tell Eddie he can start over. He’s only thirty-three years old, a young man, and he’s smart and energetic. His epilepsy will get better as soon as the pressure on his daily life has eased.
They’ll come up with a plan, two plans, one for Eddie and one for Bob, and by God, then they’ll crack open a bottle of Scotch or maybe Canadian Club, and they’ll drink the sonofabitch dry, talking about the old days, remembering their parents, growing up in Catamount, the house they were raised in, the winter days they skipped school together and played hockey with the American Legion guys down on the river, the way their father used to snore, the way their mother constantly nagged them to go to church early with her and then, when they did, told them to go to late mass on their own because they made her so nervous with their fooling around and whispering that she was too distracted to pray. They’ll remember everything together!
Parking the car before the closed garage door, Bob gets out and runs under the rain across the lawn to the front entrance and pushes the doorbell. A new pink Lincoln driven by a woman wearing a pink pillbox hat and veil sloshes past and turns into the driveway of the pink stucco house next door. The garage door lifts automatically, and the pale car slides into the darkness, and the door descends.
Bob pushes the brass button again. Maybe he’s asleep, Bob thinks, and he holds the button in until it sounds angry to him, or worried.
He pushes the doorbell a third time, with no response from beyond the thick oak door, and it occurs to Bob that Eddie may have driven into town or gone to his office early, though he’s not sure Eddie even has an office anymore, or a car. The liquor store is closed, the store in Lakeland never even opened, his birthday boat is gone, either sold or repossessed, and Eddie said that the house was about to go too.