The Corrections

inescapability, fell on the girls and the baggage and the Finnair personnel in their uniforms. Chip had nowhere to hide. Everyone around him was reading a novel. He hadn’t read a novel in at least a year. The prospect frightened him nearly as much as the prospect of Christmas in St. Jude. He wanted to go out and hail a cab, but he suspected that Gitanas had already fled the city.
    He stood in the hard light until the hour was 2:00 and then 2:30—early morning in St. Jude. While the Belgians watched his bag again, he waited in a different line and made a credit-card phone call.
    Enid’s voice was slurred and tiny. “Wello?”
    “Hi, Mom, it’s me.”
    Her voice trebled instantly in pitch and volume. “Chip? Oh, Chip! Al, it’s Chip! It’s Chip! Chip, where are you?”
    “I’m at the airport in Vilnius. I’m on my way home.”
    “Oh, wonderful! Wonderful! Wonderful! Now, tell me, when do you get here?”
    “I don’t have a ticket yet,” he said. “Things are sort of falling apart here. But tomorrow afternoon sometime. Wednesday at the latest.”
    “Wonderful!”
    He hadn’t been prepared for the joy in his mother’s voice. If he’d ever known that he could bring joy to another person, he’d long since forgotten it. He took care to steady his own voice and keep his word count low. He said that he would call again as soon as he was at a better airport.
    “This is wonderful news,” Enid said. “I’m so happy!”
    “OK, then, I’ll see you soon.”
    Already the great Baltic winter night was shouldering in from the north. Veterans from the front of the Finnair line reported that the rest of the day’s flights were sold out and that at least one of these flights was likely to be canceled, butChip hoped that by flashing a couple of hundreds he could secure those “bumping privileges” that he’d lampooned on lithuania.com. Failing that, he would buy somebody’s ticket for lots of cash.
    Cheryl said: “Oh my God, Tiffany, the StairMaster is so-totally butt - building .”
    Tiffany said: “Only if you, like, stick it out.”
    Cheryl said: “Everybody sticks it out. You can’t help it. Your legs get tired.”
    Tiffany said: “Duh! It’s a StairMaster! Your legs are supposed to get tired.”
    Cheryl looked out a window and asked, with withering undergraduate disdain: “Excuse me, why is there a tank in the middle of the runway?”
    A minute later the lights went out and the phones went dead.

Down in the basement , at the eastern end of the Ping-Pong table, Alfred was unpacking a Maker’s Mark whiskey carton filled with Christmas-tree lights. He already had prescription drugs and an enema kit on the table. He had a sugar cookie freshly baked by Enid in a shape suggestive of a terrier but meant to be a reindeer. He had a Log Cabin syrup carton containing the large colored lights that he’d formerly hung on the outdoor yews. He had a pump-action shotgun in a zippered canvas case, and a box of twenty-gauge shells. He had rare clarity and the will to use it while it lasted.
    A shadowy light of late afternoon was captive in the window wells. The furnace was cycling on often, the house leaking heat. Alfred’s red sweater hung on him in skewed folds and bulges, as if he were a log or a chair. His gray wool slacks were afflicted with stains that he had no choice but to tolerate, because the only other option was to take leave of his senses, and he wasn’t quite ready to do that.
    Uppermost in the Maker’s Mark carton was a very long string of white Christmas lights coiled bulkily around a wand of cardboard. The string stank of mildew from the storeroom beneath the porch, and when he put the plug into an outlet he could see right away that all was not well. Most of the lights were burning brightly, but near the center of the spool was a patch of unlit bulbs—a substantia nigra deep inside the tangle. He unwound the spool with veering hands, payingthe string out on the Ping-Pong table. At the very end of it was an unsightly stretch of dead bulbs.
    He understood what modernity expected of him now. Modernity expected him to drive to a big discount store and replace the damaged string. But the discount stores were mobbed at this time of year; he’d be in line for twenty minutes. He didn’t mind waiting, but Enid wouldn’t let him drive the car now, and Enid did mind waiting. She was upstairs flogging herself through the home stretch of Christmas prep.
    Much better, Alfred thought, to stay out