She lay there, not moving. She didn’t speak. They lay in silence for a minute. Longer, probably.
“Al.Can you beat that?” he said. “Do you think it’s a phase?”
He was trying it out. Saying the name. Getting used to this. He might worry very briefly about Alison, but it wouldn’t eat away at him. He’d move on.
Cam was good at that.
45.
Happy Anniversary
Eleanor and Cam’s anniversary fell six weeks after the accident. That week, Eleanor had traveled to New York, a two-night trip to meet with her newspaper syndicate. She had noted the day, of course, but though she called the children that night, she didn’t ask to speak to their father.
After she greeted the children and gave them the presents she’d brought home for them (a pair of reflector sunglasses for Al, who didn’t want you to look her in the eye anymore, a jewelry box for Ursula, a stuffed monkey puppet for Toby), Cam led her into their bedroom blindfolded. “Happy anniversary,” he said, untying the bandanna over her eyes. He sounded excited. It took a moment for her to figure out what was different here.
In her absence, Cam had replastered the walls.
The color was a soft, creamy white, the texture like linen. The sun, coming in the window, made the room seem to glow.
This wasn’t Sheetrock. Cam had applied plaster, the old-fashioned way, and covered the whole thing with a beautiful coat of milk-based paint he’d mixed himself. After he’d finished, he had set everything back in its place, and there was a new bowl on the dresser—a very small one, made from a burl she recognized, found on a camping trip they’d taken long ago, back when she was pregnant with Alison. A good size for holding a pair of earrings or a necklace.
He had not given her jewelry. The gift was the plaster, and it was a beautiful plaster job, a beautiful bowl. But that day all she registered was the emptiness of the bowl.
While she stood there taking it in, Cam stood quietly in the doorway. He moved closer and placed his hands on her hips. Maybe he touched her cheek. If so, Eleanor didn’t notice.
“So when Darla asks what you gave me for our anniversary, I guess I tell her, plaster,” Eleanor said. Her voice was flat. Hard.
“It’s not an ordinary plaster job,” he said, more quietly now. “I did it the old-school way. I thought you’d like it.”
The truth was, she’d given him nothing to mark their anniversary that year. If Eleanor were honest with herself, nothing Cam could have offered her that summer would have changed anything. A stone rested on her heart. More than a stone. It might have been her son’s entire rock collection, piled on top of her. So many stones, you couldn’t even make out the presence of a woman’s body underneath them all.
There was a Jazzercise class their babysitter Phyllis attended now and then at the YMCA where she used to teach. She brought Toby with her one time. The motions practiced by the women in Jazzercise were too complicated for Toby, and the loud music made him uneasy, but on their way out of the Y he’d spotted a bunch of old-timers doing gentle yoga, and something about that appealed to him. Phyllis told Cam and Eleanor, later, that he had stood in the doorway for a long time, watching, and when she suggested they might go home now, he hadn’t wanted to leave.
Hearing this, Cam went to check out the class himself, and after, he brought Toby—the two of them the only ones under age seventy. He got a video of yoga postures and started working on them with Toby at home.
Cam’s idea was that maybe, if he got his son’s body moving in new ways, it might stimulate his brain. The good thing about yoga for a person like Toby—Toby, now—was how quiet it was. There were no explosive bursts of energy required. A person could move slowly through the poses, or just sit there in child’s pose if he wanted. Or no pose at all. The music was soothing. Nobody asked anything of anyone else.
The two of them shared a mat together, Toby in front of Cam, with Cam manipulating his limbs into something approximating the poses. Toby never initiated a move, but he never resisted when Cam put him into a new pose. When he got comfortable enough, Cam brought him back to the Y to join the class.
One day in class during downward dog—it was fall now—an elderly woman near the front of the room had let out a fart. The others in the class ignored this, but something wonderful happened to Toby at that moment.
He laughed. This was not the big, hearty belly laugh from the old days when they watched old Laurel and Hardy movies from the library. But it was the first time in the months since the accident when anything he’d taken in had inspired that much of a response.
When they got home, it was the first thing Cam told Eleanor. He found her standing at the kitchen counter, chopping vegetables for dinner.
“You won’t believe what our boy did at yoga,” he said.
“Let me guess.” She spoke in the hard, sarcastic tone that was her usual now with Cam. “Maybe he recited the first stanza of ‘Where the Sidewalk Ends’?” That one had been his favorite Shel Silverstein poem, before.
“Or maybe he sang along with the words to a Dylan track.” Her back remained facing him. Her knife made sharp, rhythmic clicks against the cutting board.
“A woman farted,” Cam said. “Toby laughed.”
“I guess I’m supposed to get excited about this,” Eleanor said. She did not look up. She had not stopped chopping.
“It just seemed so hopeful,” Cam told her. “If something like that can get through to him, other things can, too.”
She sliced into a carrot, the knife coming down hard. Her face, a wall.
