Continental Drift

He stands in front of the Sears, Roebuck store, seeming to study the children’s clothes worn by the mannequins, but actually he’s thinking about his penis and testicles. The children in the window, schoolchildren, are blond and clear-faced, happy and chic, all good students with bookbags and briefcases, dressed in crew-neck sweaters and corduroy pants, wool wraparound skirts and nylon tights. They’re happy.

Snow is falling onto Bob Dubois’s cap and shoulders, his hands are in his pants pockets, and he is taking care not to touch his genitals, because they feel large and sensitive to him and have driven away the feeling of that hard, heavy bubble, and he is afraid that if he touches his penis and testicles, they will suddenly feel small and merely functional, and that hard, pressing, stone-heavy bubble will come again. He jiggles his change and keys, reminds himself almost forcibly that he must buy ice skates for Ruthie and enters the store.

The sporting goods department is downstairs in the basement, with appliances and tools. Surprised, Bob finds that he is the only customer on the floor. A portly, red-faced salesman with dark, slicked-back hair and wearing a white shirt and a loud yellow tie crosses from the skis and says, “We’re closing.” Then, when Bob seems not to have heard him, he asks in a quiet voice, “Can I help you?”

Bob hesitates a second, looks slowly around at the hockey sticks, pucks, pads and skates, as if he has stumbled into ladies’ lingerie, and mumbles, “I don’t know … I’m looking for something for my daughter … she’s only a kid, she’s only six….”

The salesman folds his arms across his chest. “It’s nine-oh-five. We’re closing.”

“Do they still make those old Eddie Bauer skates with the wooden toes? You know the kind I mean? With the tendon guards?”

“Not for small children, no. And not for girls. Look, maybe you can do this tomorrow; we’re open all day tomorrow,” the salesman says, and makes a half turn toward the skis.

“I played defense, you know. In high school, I played for Bishop Grenier, me and my brother Eddie.”

“I’m from Dover,” the salesman says, reminded, no doubt, that he’s got to drive twenty-eight miles in a snowstorm to get home to a stiff drink and stockinged feet on a hassock and the TV on. “Look, mister, we’re closed. If you know what you want, and we got it out here on the floor, I can ring it up for you, but you gotta be quick, okay?”

“Yeah, right,” Bob says. “I’m sorry. Skates, I’m looking for skates for my daughter.” He squints and looks around him at the counters and displays, as if trying to think of a word. “Figure skates.”

“Size?”

In his right front pocket, Bob’s hand, as if with a will of its own, reaches down and forward and cups his crotch, and what he feared would be true is in fact true — his penis is small, ordinary, a minor organ that urinates day and night and now and then ejaculates, and his belly feels full of slag again. “She’s only a little kid. It’s her first skates,” he says.

Reaching forward, the salesman places one hand on Bob’s shoulder. “You’ll have to do this tomorrow,” he says firmly.

Bob wrenches his shoulder away from the man’s hand, but the man ignores the gesture and simply walks off. “Hey!” Bob calls. “Hey, pal! You know what?”

The man stops and turns warily back.

“You know what? I don’t want your damn Sears and Roebuck ice skates! Your twenty-dollar specials! I want something better than that! Custom-made, maybe.”

“We’re closed,” the man says in a low voice.

“Better. I want something better.”

“I’m sorry,” the man says, and again he turns away.

Bob looks at the bald spot on the back of the man’s head. Bald as a baby’s behind, he thinks, and suddenly he remembers deciding never to strike his wife and children, remembers it as if it were a precise fall of light or an odor, when instead it was a complex, clearly defined event that occurred one Sunday afternoon two summers ago, when he and Elaine took Ruthie and Emma out fishing on Lake Sunapee.

Bob had pictured the day differently: a family outing in which Dad teaches the older child to fish; he catches a half-dozen small-mouth bass and she catches a perch or sunfish and is excited and grateful; Mom looks on proudly; Baby coos and plays with her fat fingers. But instead, the bass weren’t biting and the mosquitoes were, Ruthie thought fishing was a pointless activity and Elaine had to struggle to keep Emma, barely two that summer and downright annoyed with the project, from falling out of the boat. Though the sun was hot and the lake windless and still, they’d all dressed as if for a cool, breezy day on the water. By ten o’clock in the morning, after less than a half hour of it, they were sweating and wrinkled inside long-sleeved shirts, trousers, caps and jackets. First Bob and then Ruthie stripped to their tee shirts and jeans. A little later, Elaine pulled off her jacket and jersey and sat in the stern in bra and Bermuda shorts, and keeping an eye out for passersby, took off all Emma’s clothing.