Continental Drift

Finally, Bob gave up trying to fish, and to everyone’s relief, started to pack his gear in. He raised anchor and after five or six tries, got the motor started and headed the boat toward shore. All the way in, he sat in the stern and studied his family, their bodies: Ruthie’s stalk-like neck and large, dark, blossomy head, her narrow back and arms like twigs, her knobby knees, hard legs and long, bony feet — the body of a thoroughbred filly, it seemed to him, long and awkward now, a little brittle, but filled with promise of beauty, grace and power; and Emma’s cherubic pink roundness, her smooth lumps of flesh, all spheres, moons and fruit, and creases where they joined, and her hair, blond and silky, laid over her crown in thin, spiraling loops — to Bob, she had the nearly shapeless, compressed body of a puppy, foolishly good-natured, utterly unconscious of its fragility; and Elaine’s short, compact body, her muscular arms and freckled shoulders, her breasts, firm and, for a small woman, large and succulent-looking, her straight back and flat belly, her sturdy, lightly haired legs — Bob thought of the burro that carried Jesus into Jerusalem, a white one, large-eyed and sweet-tempered, diligent, patient, hardy and humble, but pretty too, a slightly glamorous version of an anciently rudimentary type.

All the way in to shore, Ruthie, seated forward near the bow, looked impatiently toward land, as the pine and spruce trees grew larger and more detailed and familiar, while Emma, her naked ass in the air, scrambled about on the flat bottom of the boat, and Elaine, eyes jammed shut, shoved her face, shoulders and chest toward the glow of the sun, until finally the boat scraped the gravelly bottom, and Ruthie jumped out and drew the bow onto land. Elaine scooped up Emma and stepped gingerly to shore and set the naked child on the grass.

Suddenly alone, Bob sat in the stern of the boat, and for an instant he saw these three female bodies in all their transience and fragility, their awful availability to pain and destruction. He was terrified for them, and he swore to himself that he would never strike their bodies, that he would never raise his stony male bulk and iron-hard strength against them. Then, at the same instant, he felt bubbling from deep within his chest a dark hatred for the very vulnerability he was swearing never to offend. He despised it.

Bob studies the bald spot on the back of the salesman’s head. There’s tissue, thin, pink skin, then eggshell bone, then fleshy brain, he thinks. And that’s it. That’s all there is between everything and nothing. “I’m sorry,” he says in a low voice. “Hey, really, I’m sorry, pal. There’s nothing wrong with Sears, you understand. Nothing. I like Sears. Shop here all the time. It’s just … it’s just that …”

The salesman has disappeared behind a tepee of skis stacked on their ends and has started to close out his register.

Bob’s face twists on its axis, a big, square-faced man writhing on the pole of his own pain. He lets his hands flop uselessly at his sides. “I want … I want … I want …” This isn’t going right; everything’s coming out wrong. He’s supposed to be talking nicely to this salesman, conning him, getting a good buy, a floor model with scuffs selling for wholesale, the way Eddie always gets things for his kid, one-third off and just as good as new, better, even, because new costs too much. Why can’t he make this salesman like him?

From beyond the skis, the man calls, “They’re locking the doors now!”

Bob says nothing, just stands there as if he were a mannequin.

The salesman peeks around the skis and sees Bob hasn’t left yet. “Come back tomorrow if you want skates!” he shouts, as if he thinks Bob is hard of hearing or maybe simple-minded.

“Tomorrow?” Slowly Bob’s face breaks into a grin, and he laughs, once. “Hah! Tomorrow, It’ll be the same tomorrow,” he says. Still grinning, he takes a step forward, as if to explain. “What I want is …”

“Look, you better get outa here or I’ll hafta call the manager.”

Bob stops, and quietly, somberly, he says, “I’m sorry. I just … I’m sorry.” Turning, he slowly walks away, plods past the copper-toned refrigerators and stoves, the pastel-colored washers and dryers, and up the stairs to street level. A janitor jangling a huge ring of keys lets him out to the sidewalk, where it’s snowing heavily. No one else is on the sidewalks, though cars occasionally pass sloppily by on Main Street. Jamming his hands into his jacket pockets, Bob lowers his head against the flying snow and quickly walks the two blocks to his car on Depot Street.