The trees rushed past the car in a kind of chaotic blur.
He pressed down on the accelerator. A solitary cloud, wandering and thick with moisture, straying overhead but not blocking the sun, let down a minute’s worth of vagrant rainbowed shower on Saul’s car. The water droplets, growing larger, bounced on the car’s hood. He turned on the wipers, causing the dust to streak in protractor curves. The rain made Saul’s car smell like a nursery of newborn vegetation. He felt the car drive over something. He hoped it wasn’t an animal, one of those anonymous rodents that squealed and died and disappeared.
Ahead and to the left was the McPhees’.
It looked like something out of an American genre painting, the kind of second-rate canvas hidden in the back of most museums near the elevators. Happiness lived in such houses, where people like Saul had never been permitted. In the bright standing sunshine its Midwestern Gothic acute angles pointed straight up toward heaven, a place where there had been a land rush for centuries and all the stakes had been claimed. Standing there in the bright theatrical sun — the rain had gone off on its way— the house seemed to know something, to be an answer ending with an exclamation point.
Saul crept past the front driveway. His window was open, and, except for the engine, there was no sound, no dog barking. And no sign, either, of Anne or Emory or their baby, at least out here. Nothing on the front porch, nothing in the yard. He could stop and say hello. That was permitted. He could thank them for the help they had given him two months before. He hadn’t yet done that. Emory’s pickup was in the driveway, so they were at home. Happy people don’t go much of anywhere anyway, Saul thought, backing his car up and parking halfway in on the driveway.
When he reached the backyard, Saul saw a flash of white, on legs, bounding at the far distances of the McPhees’ field into the woods. From this distance it looked like nothing he knew, a trick of the eye. Turning, he saw Anne McPhee sitting in a lawn chair, reading the morning paper, a glass of lemonade nearby, their baby in the playpen in the shade of the house, and Emory, some distance away in a hammock, reading the sports section. Both of them were holding up their newspapers so that their view of him was blocked.
Quietly he crossed their back lawn, then stood in the middle, between them. Emory turned the pages of his paper, then put it down and closed his eyes. Anne went on reading. Saul stood quietly. Only the baby saw him. Saul reached down and picked out of the lawn a sprig of grass. Anne McPhee coughed. The baby was rattling one of its crib toys.
He waited another moment and then walked back to his car. Anne and Emory had not seen him. He felt like a prowler, a spy from God. He also felt now what he had once felt only metaphorically: that he was invisible.
When he was almost home, he remembered, or thought he remembered, that Anne McPhee had been sunning herself and had not been wearing a blouse or a bra. Or was he now imagining this? He couldn’t be sure.
Patsy nudged him in the middle of the night. “I know what it is,” she said.
“What?”
“What’s bothering you.”
He waited. “What? What is it?”
“You’re like men. You’re a man and you’re like them. You want to be everything. You want to have endless endless potential. But then you grow up. In spite of yourself. And you’re one thing. Your body is, anyway. It’s trapped in this life. You have to say goodbye to the dreams of everything.” She waited. “You don’t want to do that one little bit, do you?”
“Dreams of everything.”
“Yes.” She rolled over so that she could look at him in the dark. “Don’t pretend that you don’t understand. You want to be a whole roomful of people, Saul. That’s kid stuff.” She let her head drop so that her hair brushed against him.
“What about you?”
“What about me? I’m not a problem the way you’re a problem. I don’t want to be anything else,” she said sleepily, beginning to rub his back. “I do want a better job at the bank, I’ll tell you that. But I sure as hell don’t have to be a great person. I just want to do a little of this and a little of that as long as I can make some serious money.” She waited. “You know. To get by. For that trip to Finland.”
“What’s wrong with ambitions?” he asked. “You could be great at something.”
Her hand moved into his hair, tickling him. “Being great is too tiring, Saul, and it’s boring. Look at the great ambition people. They’re wrecking the earth, aren’t they. They’re leaving it in bits and scraps. Look at the Lord of Misrule, our current president.” She concentrated on him in the dark. “Saul,” she said.
“Your diaphragm’s not on.”
“I know.”
“But.”
“So?”
“Well, what if?”
“What if? You’d be a father, that’s what if.” She had turned him so that she was right up against him, her breasts pressing him, challenging him.
“No,” he said. He drew back. “Not yet. Let me figure this out on my own. There’d be no future.”
“For the baby?”
“No. For me.” He waited, trying to figure out how to say this. “I’d have to be one person forever. Does that make sense?”
“From you, it does.” She pulled herself slightly away from him. They rearranged themselves.
The following Saturday he drove into Five Oaks for a haircut. When his hair was so long that it made the back of his neck itch, he went to Harold, the barber, and had it trimmed back. Saul liked Harold and his pensive mannerisms, even though Harold was a pale Lutheran, and a terrible barber. Harold made up for it with his occasional affability, and he happened to be in the same bowling league with Saul and sometimes played basketball at the same times that Saul did. Many of the men in Five Oaks looked slightly peculiar and asymmetrical, thanks to Harold. The last time Saul had come in, Harold had been deep in a conversation with a woman who was accusing him of things; Saul couldn’t tell exactly what Harold was being accused of, but it sounded like a lover’s quarrel, and Saul liked that. Anyone else’s troubles diminished his own.
By coincidence, the same woman was back again in the barbershop with her son, whose hair Harold was cutting when Saul passed by the ancient barber pole before he rang the bell over the door as he entered. To pass the time and achieve a moment’s invisibility, he picked up a newspaper from the next chair over and read the morning’s headlines.
SHOTS FIRED AT HOLBEIN REACTOR Iraqi Terrorists Suspected
Somebody was always shooting at something. Shielded by his paper, Saul heard the woman whispering instructions to Harold, and Harold’s faint, exasperated “Louise, I can do this.” Saul pretended to read the article. The shots, it turned out, had been harmless. Even though there had been no damage, some sort of investigation was going on. Saul thought Iraqis could do better than this.
There was more whispering, which Saul tried not to hear. After the woman had paid for her son’s haircut and left, Saul sat himself down in Harold’s chair.
“Hey, Saul,” Harold said, covering him with the white cloth. “You always come in when she does. How do you do that?”
“Beats me. Her name Louise?”
“That’s right. The usual trim, Saul?”
“The usual. Torture by Mr. Harold of Paris. Harold, this time try to keep it the same length on both sides, okay?”