Goddamn it, Saul thought. Everybody gets to be happy except me. Saul heard Anne’s cries. The sun was sweating all over his forehead. He felt faint and Jewish, as usual. He turned on the radio. It happened to be tuned to a religion station, and some choir was singing “When Jesus Wept.”
“It’s your play, Saul.”
“I know, I know.”
“What’s the matter? You got some bad letters?”
“Duh. The worst. The worst letters I’ve ever had.”
“You always say that. You whine and complain. You’re such a whiner, Saul, you even whine in bed. You were complaining that time just before you spelled out ‘axiom’ over that triple word score and got all those points last year. You do this act when we play Scrabble and then you always beat me.” Patsy was sitting cross-legged in her chair, as she liked to do, with a root beer bottle positioned against her instep, as she arranged and rearranged the letters on her slate.
Saul examined the board. The only word he could think of spelling out was “paint,” but the word made him think of Emory McPhee. The hand of fate again, playing tricks on him. Glancing down at the words on the board, he thought he saw that same hand at work, spelling out some invisible story.
Saul always treated Scrabble boards as if they were fortune-telling equipment, with the order of the words creating a narrative. Patsy had started with “moon,” and he had added “beam” onto it. When she hung a “mild” from the moonbeam, he spiced it up with “lust,” but she had responded to his interest in sex with “murky,” hanging the word from that same moonbeam. “Mild” and “murky” came close to how he felt. His mother, Delia, had said so on the phone yesterday. “Saul, darling,” she had said, “you’re sounding rather dark and mysterious lately. What’s gotten into you?” He had not told her about the accident.
“I’m okay, Ma,” he had said. “I’m just working some things through.”
“You’re leaving Five Oaks?” she had asked hopefully.
“No, Ma,” he had said. “This town suits me.”
“All that mud, Saul,” she had said, dubious as always about the soil and people who made large claims for it. “All those farms,” she added vaguely. “The slush. The snow. The fur. ”
“Saul,” Patsy said. “Wake up.” She shook him. “You’re wool-gathering.”
“Just thinking about my mother,” he said. He looked up at Patsy. “What are all those deer doing on our Scrabble board?” he asked. “Give me a swig of your root beer.”
“No,” she said, before she handed it to him. He appreciated the golden color of the fine hairs on her arm in the lamplight. “Sweetheart, I think I saw some, as a matter of fact,” she said. “I thought I saw, what would you call it, a herd of deer, far in back, beyond the property line, a few nights ago. If you ever go back up to the roof, honey, give a look around. You might see them.”
“Right, right.” He couldn’t put all five of his letters for “paint” on the Scrabble board. He removed the T. Pain. He held the four letters for pain in his hand, and he added them to the final T in “lust.”
“Funny how ‘pain’ and ‘lust’ give you ‘paint,’” Patsy said. “Sort of makes me think of the McPhees and the heady smell of turpentine.”
They glanced at each other, and he tried to smile. A fly was buzzing around the bulb in the lampshade. He was thinking of Patsy’s new expensive blue motorcycle out back, shiny and powerful and dangerous to ride. The salesman had said it could go from zero to fifty in less than six seconds. The hand of fate was ready to give him a good slapping around. It had announced itself. Saul felt a groan coming on. He looked at Patsy with helpless love.
“Oh, Saul,” she said. “Honey. Shit. You always get this way during these games. You always do.” He saw her smiling in the reflection of his love for her. “You’re so cute,” she said, with a tone of patience that might soon run out.
At ten minutes past three o’clock, he rose out of bed to get a glass of water. When he looked out the back window, he saw them: just about where Patsy said they would be, far in the distance beyond the property line — a herd of deer silently passing. He ran downstairs in his underwear and went out through the unlocked back door as quietly as he could. He stood in the yard in the June night, the crickets sounding, the moon dimly outlined behind a thin cloud in the shape of a scimitar. In this gauzy light, the deer, about eight of them, distant animal forms, walked across his neighbor’s field into a stand of woods. He found himself transfixed with the mystery and beauty of it. Hunting animals suddenly made no sense to him. He went back to bed. “I saw the deer,” he said. He didn’t know if Patsy was asleep. During the summer she wore Saul’s T-shirts to bed, and that was all. Like a Crusader portrayed in marble on a coffin lid, Patsy slept on her back with her feet crossed at the ankle; it gave the impression that she had returned from seeing the Holy Land.
Two days later, the letter containing the secrets of the universe came from the Wisdom Foundation in Cincinnati. Saul sat down on the front stoop and tore the letter open. It was six pages long and had been printed out by a computer, with Saul’s name inserted here and there.
Dear Mr. Bernstein,
Nothing is settled. Everything is still possible. Your thoughts are both yours and someone else’s. Sometimes we say hello to the world and then goodbye, but that is not the end and we say hello again. God is love, Mr. Bernstein, denying it only makes us unhappy. Riches are mere appearances. Our thoughts are more real than hammers and nails. We can make others believe us, Mr. Bernstein, if the truth is in us. Buddha and Jesus the Christ and Mohammed agreed about just about everything. Causing pain to others only prolongs our own pain. A free and open heart is the best thing. Live simply. Don’t pretend to know something you don’t have a clue about. You may feel as if you are headed toward some terrible fate, Mr. Bernstein, but that may not come to pass. You can avoid it. Throw your bad thoughts into the mental wastebasket. There is a right way and a wrong way to dispose of bad thoughts. Everything about the universe worth knowing is known. What is not known about the universe is not worth knowing. Follow these steps. Remember that trees will always be with us, mice will always be with us, mosquitoes will always be with us. Therefore, avoid mental cleanliness. Never start a sentence with the words “What if everybody. .”
It went on for several more pages. Saul liked the letter. It sounded like his other grandfather, Isaac, the pious atheist, an exuberant man much given to laughter at appropriate and inappropriate moments, who offered advice as he passed out candy bars and halvah to his grandchildren. This letter from the Wisdom Foundation was signed by someone named Giovanni d’Amato.
Saul looked up. For a moment the terrifying banality of the landscape seemed to dissolve into geometrical patterns of color and light. Taken by surprise, he felt the habitual weight on his heart lifting as if by pulleys, or, better yet, birds of the spirit sent by direct mail from Giovanni d’Amato. He decided to test this happiness and got into the dented car.
He drove toward the McPhees’. The dust on the dirt road whirled up behind him. He thought he would be able to stand their middle-American happiness. Besides, Emory was probably working. No: it was Saturday. They would both be home. He would just drive by, and that would be that. So what if they were happy, these dropouts from school? He was happy, too. He would test his temporary happiness against theirs.