26
THE FARMER was facedown, as instructed, his bald spot shimmering in the lamplight, gray hairs twisting across his shoulder blades, arms locked at his sides, a sheet covering his lower half.
She lit six candles and rubbed oil into her palms, which while pungent was no match for the deodorant and cologne diluting the dairy stench wafting off the pink-skinned sixty-two-year-old bracing for the first massage of his life. “Remember to relax,” she said gently. “That’s why you’re here.”
“What?” He grunted, his voice nasal.
“Breathe, Norm.”
“Can’t hear with my head in this thing.”
She lowered her lips to the face cradle. “Breathe nor-mal-ly”
She hadn’t told him what to wear or not wear, just to “undress in there.” So it was impossible to not look ridiculous. Leave his underpants on and he was a prude; take them off and he was a pervert.
To his disappointment, she started with his feet, her warm palms flat against his meaty arches, holding them. He was paying $45 an hour for this foot voodoo? Just thinking about it made his feet sweat, which made him self-conscious, and that made them perspire even more.
“Relax, Norm. Focus on nothing.”
Nothing?
He began talking when Sophie started rubbing his feet and ankles, because otherwise nothing could distract him from the sensation of her hands moving on his skin; he knew where that would lead and wasn’t certain yet whether it was supposed to go there. He raved about his healthy new calf, though the optimism sounded hollow. What he felt was desperation and foolishness. He wished like hell he’d kept his boxers on.
She set his feet down beneath the sheet as if they were fragile. He heard her lubricate her hands again, the squishy sounds alone arousing him. Then she started kneading his shoulders and upper back like a cat clawing a couch, her lower stomach tapping rhythmically against his head brace with the effort.
“What’d you do before massage?” he asked, desperate for a distraction.
“All sorts of things.”
“Stewardess?”
“Pretty much everything, Norm.”
“Like?”
“Relax.”
“Just name one.”
“Ran an art gallery.”
“Paintings?”
“And sculpture.”
“What else?”
“Just relax.”
After an uncomfortable silence, he said, “Do you think it’s possible that Washington and Jefferson grew marijuana?”
“Yes.”
“But not to get high, right?”
“Wrong. Jefferson got high on Sundays before he wrote letters. George and Martha made pot brownies every Easter.”
“Very funny.”
“Relax, Norm. Please.”
He waited a couple beats. “So you suddenly decided to settle down on the border and rub people?”
“Heal people.”
“Like faith healing?”
“No.”
“I heard you were an astrologist too.”
“Quiet, Norm. What does it matter to a Taurus like you, anyway? I’m your neighbor. Let me do my work here.”
She rubbed him harder, grunting lightly with the effort, focusing on points around his shoulders, then below and even beneath his shoulder blades, pressing to the brink of pain and holding it like some precise torture. Norm held his breath to avoid audible groaning. She found a particularly tender lump and wiggled it beneath her thumbs before flattening and spreading it elsewhere like rolling bubbles out of fiberglass. The strange smells, fake waterfall and primal flute music no longer seemed so hokey with what felt like more than two hands on his back, one pressing slow and flat like a trowel, another two or three coming up behind it with agile, probing fingers. It didn’t seem possible that Patera or the professor or anyone else could pay at the door and get this same treatment.
“Breathe,” she whispered. “When I press down you need to breathe.”
When the next whisper said it was time to roll over, he realized he’d slipped in-between dreams. How much time had blown by? Was it over already? He rolled clumsily, his knee barking. She held up the sheet to give him privacy, his self-consciousness returning like a fever. How long had he been out? Months of anticipation, then he falls asleep for most of it? He didn’t pay for a nap! She worked his neck from the underside, pawing at it, then held his chin and the back of his skull and tugged, as if trying to pop his head off. Again, the hands felt too powerful to belong to Sophie Winslow, so he finally peeked. Her lips were less than a foot above his. Thank God she started talking.
He tried to remember exactly what she’d just said, but before he could she asked what he thought about his son’s art.
Norm groaned. “Embarrasses me. Always has.”
“How’d you know he’d be so good on the Border Patrol?”
“I didn’t. I don’t.”
She lifted his left arm and stretched it slowly toward his ear, then held it there and massaged his left side in a way that made him want to kick his feet.
“You worry about him?” she asked, readjusting his ribs in slow motion.
“Since before he was born. Jeanette spoiled him, practically took his breaths for him. I don’t care what she says, there’s always been more than dyslexia going on there. And of course it didn’t help that he was immature and so much bigger than kids his age. It’s more than that, though. He’s always related better to animals. Humans are a mystery to him. He sees everything but doesn’t know what most of it means.”
“We’re animals too.”
“But most of us aren’t straightforward.”
“What else?”
“Well, he sees shooting stars nobody else sees and feels earthquakes nobody else feels. ‘Feel that?’ he used to say all the time, especially one summer when he was twelve or thirteen. Jeanette called the earthquake people, and they said that in fact there had been an odd flurry of quakes in the area they’d assumed were too small for humans to detect. They were curious enough to send this timid little intern out to talk to him. So what’s a father supposed to make of all that? By middle school he could read well enough to pass and could act fairly normal if he wasn’t too excited or overwhelmed. But yeah, he still caught hell, especially after Danny Crawford left and there was nobody to look out for him. That’s when Jeanette homeschooled him, which spared him the razzings but increased the isolation.”
“So what’s it like living with him now?”
“Like having a child who never grows out of the awkward stage. It’s also kind of like having a priest in the house. I’ve never caught him in a lie. Don’t know that he’s capable of one. And …”
“What?”
“I keep dreaming he gets shot, but I don’t do anything about it.”
She moved to his legs, gracefully folding and tucking the sheet high on his left thigh. Her slick hands rubbed his left calf so vigorously that his entire body trembled, leaving Norm half-praying, half-dreading that her hands would climb above his knee.
“Cleve Erickson’s situation surprise you?”
“Yes,” Norm hissed.
“What about the Schifferlis?”
“No.”
“The math teacher, Pearson?”
“No. Heard he got fired because he partied with former students.”
“Has a young man who calls himself Michael visited you?”
“Yes,” he said, before digesting the delicate nature of the question.
“Did he offer you money?”
“Yes.”
“Are you taking it?”
“No.”
“Will you?”
“Doubt anybody wants to go through my farm now they’ve got the cameras up.”
Her hands rose to his left knee, her fingers studying its construction, then less gently maneuvering muscles and tendons on all sides of it. “You mentioned your healthy calves. Are things really looking better?”
He heard himself moaning. “One calf,” he managed to say. “I just need a break.” He caught a sob before it popped out. “I really, really need a break.”
Her fingers continued probing his wounded joint. “If you knew you wouldn’t get caught, would you take it?”
“The money?”
“For looking the other way.”
“At what point is it too late to try to be honorable?”
“Wayne Rousseau thinks he can find honor by experiencing other people’s greatness.”
“By what?”
“How tempting is the money, Norm?”
“I think about it every day.”
“Do you know how to sail?”
“Did it as a kid.”
“A lot?”
“Enough.”
“Enough to know how to sail across—”
“Wayne,” Norm interrupted, “is an ass.”
“There. That’s better.”
“Twice.”
“Twice what?”
“My grandfather took me out twice. That’s my sailing background. Only twice, but I don’t have any clearer memories than those two afternoons.”
“When I spoke with Jeanette at church, her spirits were as high as ever.”
“Some days,” Norm said softly, not wanting to mix the rubbing sensation with thoughts of his wife. “And other days making dinner’s an adventure. She kept saying, ‘Something’s wrong with my mind.’ And I kept saying, ‘We all get old and forget.’”
“Ever cheated on her, Norm?”
“Once. And I’ve waited too long to tell her about it to be adequately punished.”
“Or is it that you want to cheat on her again?”
His breath caught. “A man can’t help but wonder,” he ventured, “if a pretty lady other than his wife might have sex with him.”
A recorder wound to a clicking stop.
“What was that?”
“The music.”
“But … it’s still playing.”
“That’s good. Shhhhh.”
Five minutes of silent frenzied thigh rubbing later: “Norm?” Her voice barely made it through. “Let that energy exit through your feet.”
“Energy?”
“Just picture it leaving through your feet.”
“What the—”
“Or think about your mortgage, how much you still owe, that sort of thing.”
HE GOOSE-STEPPED back through the poplars toward his farm, cupping his hands to see if his breath stunk, his mind a jumble of virility and humiliation. How embarrassing! Well, at least she knows he’s fully operable, right? Then came the shame of what he’d shared, things he’d never said aloud. But the truth was his body felt oddly youthful, a strange and blissful lightness overtaking him.
“Full Bonnie?” somebody yelled.
The professor. “What?” Norm shouted, neither slowing nor veering from his path to the boat barn. Manners be damned.
“Full body?”
“What’re you saying?” Norm yapped, reluctantly straying closer to the ditch, daring him to repeat it one more time.
“Was it a full body massaaaage?” Wayne sang. “C’mon, I can smell the oils from here. Let me guess: It was perfect, except she missed one little spot, eh?”
Norm scowled at the scrawny elf, a marijuana cigarette burning between tiny fingers.
“You get naked in there? Or’d you leave your gutchies on? Don’t feel inadequate, Norm. From what I gather, you probably wouldn’t survive sex with that woman anyway.”
“Hah!” was all Norm could get out before Wayne said, “Last two guys? One went temporarily blind in the left eye, the other broke his penis.”
“Bull—”
“Oh, it can happen, my friend. If the ligament walls collapse and the chamber snaps, the whole thing fills up with blood.”
Without thinking it through, Norm tried to parrot what Patera had told him. “Your miracle medicine there induces mental illness and panic disorders, as well as bipolar and delusional disorders and schizophrenia paranoid.”
Wayne laughed at the sky. “That was truly wonderful. Would you repeat that please?”
“You shoot the camera out?” Norm demanded, jabbing his thumb down the road.
“Was gonna ask you the same thing.”
“People say it was you.”
“People will say anything, won’t they? They’ll say half the Americans along the border are on the take, that you’ve got the EPA crawling up your ass and that your son’s in the new gestapo. Who cares what they say. You miss the camera, Norm?”
“Not a bit,” he admitted. “They already replaced it, anyway.”
“That’s right, and I hear they’re gonna be flying drones and blimps along here in no time. Personally, I hope somebody shoots them down too.” Wayne scrunched his nose and sniffed melodramatically. “That yours?”
It took Norm a beat to catch up. Taking credit for the odor was admitting he’d been spraying much more manure than usual, which hinted at the trouble he was in—and Wayne, clearly, already knew all about it. One thing led to another.
“What’s the latest on that evildoer your boy caught?” Wayne asked.
“How’re those reinventions coming?” Norm countered. “Been thinking I might branch out too, maybe take up the cello and join some symphony that performs in Vienna.”
Wayne took his ball cap off and shook his shaved head—the latest disguise. “You should get more massages.”
Norm spun to turn and go, his knee almost entirely painless, awaiting the final retort. The professor never let him win; there always had to be another shot.
“What you don’t understand, Norm,” he began softly, “is that I envy you. You don’t have to learn the cello or read the classics or indulge in any other last-minute self-improvement crusade. You’re perfectly content being you.”
Norm examined the compliment from several angles, then stomped back to him. “That comment, more than anything else you’ve ever said”—all this under his breath, tit for tat, forcing the professor to lean closer—“proves that despite living across that ditch for thirty-one years, you still don’t know the first thing about me.”
“Touché!” Wayne shouted.
Norm’s fading triumph was interrupted by the sound of a plane flying slow and low over his dairy, forcing him to kink his neck and stub his left foot just enough to tweak his knee.
When he stepped inside, Jeanette was waiting on the couch, a stress rash rising on her neck, her face so creased with worries she didn’t look like his wife. In a flash Norm realized he’d forgotten that he was taking her to the memory clinic.
“Where’ve you been?” she asked.
JEANETTE FELT small and hollow in the large, brightly lit room across the long table from a young woman in a white lab coat who was lobbing questions at her as if she were a child. What was the date, the season, the month? What state, county and city was she in? The answers were easy, but she could feel the pressure and judgment behind them. This alarmingly loud girl asked her to repeat words back to her: bird, drum, lake. Next she was instructed to count backwards from a hundred by eight, which didn’t seem fair considering that she’d never been able to do math in her head.
The lab girl interrupted her—had she already messed up?—to wonder if she could spell the word earth. Then again, but backwards.
“A moment ago”—now she sounded like a recording—“I asked you to remember three words. Can you tell me those three words again?”
Jeanette froze, the words hidden behind a wall of fear.
But the questions and instructions kept coming: “Please read the words on this page and do what they say.”
What a horrible place! She was too nervous to be examined. This test wouldn’t prove anything! Then she was asked to connect numbered dots on a page.
The woman checked her watch and looked up critically.
Feeling like a mouse on drugs, Jeanette heard herself breathing. She snuck another look at the upside-down title on the examination sheet: DEMENTIA BATTERY SUMMARY REPORT.