The Corrections

ready for him,” Enid said. “I made his favorite dinner—”
    “I specifically warned you—”
    “I got tickets for Waindell Park tonight!”
    Gary shook his head and walked toward the kitchen. “So we’ll go to the park,” he said. “And then tomorrow Denise is here.”
    “Chip too!”
    Gary laughed. “What, from Lithuania?”
    “He called this morning.”
    “I’ll believe that when I see it,” Gary said.
    The world in the windows looked less real than Enid would have liked. The spotlight of sunshine coming in under the ceiling of cloud was the dream light of no familiar hour of the day. She had an intimation that the family she’d tried to bring together was no longer the family she remembered—that this Christmas would be nothing at all like the Christmases of old. But she was doing her best to adjust to the new reality. She was suddenly very excited that Chip was coming. And since Jonah’s wrapped gifts would now be going to Philadelphia with Gary, she needed to wrap some travel alarm clocks and pen-and-pencil sets for Caleb and Aaron to reduce the contrast in her giving. She could do this while she waited for Denise and Chip.
    “I have so many cookies,” she told Gary, who was washing his hands fastidiously at the kitchen sink. “I have a pear that I can slice, and some of that dark coffee that you kids like.”
    Gary sniffed her dish towel before he dried his hands with it.
    Alfred began to bellow her name from upstairs.
    “Uch, Gary,” she said, “he’s stuck in the tub again. You go help him. I won’t do it anymore.”
    Gary dried his hands extremely thoroughly. “Why isn’t he using the shower like we talked about?”
    “He says he likes to sit down.”
    “Well, tough luck,” Gary said. “This is a man whose gospel is taking responsibility for yourself.”
    Alfred bellowed her name again.
    “Go, Gary, help him,” she said.
    Gary, with ominous calm, smoothed and straightened the folded dish towel on its rack. “Here are the ground rules, Mother,” he said in the courtroom voice. “Are you listening? These are the ground rules. For the next three days, I will do anything you want me to do, except deal with Dad in situations he shouldn’t be in. If he wants to climb a ladder and fall off, I’m going to let him lie on the ground. If he bleeds to death, he bleeds to death. If he can’t get out of the bathtub without my help, he’ll be spending Christmas in the bathtub. Have I made myself clear? Apart from that, I will do anything you want me to do. And then, on Christmas morning, you and he and I are going to sit down and have a talk—”
    “ ENID .” Alfred’s voice was amazingly loud. “ SOME BODY’S AT THE DOOR! ”
    Enid sighed heavily and went to the bottom of the stairs. “Al, it’s Gary .”
    “Can you help me?” came the cry.
    “Gary, go see what he wants.”
    Gary stood in the dining room with folded arms. “Did I not make my ground rules clear?”
    Enid was remembering things about her elder son which she liked to forget when he wasn’t around. She climbed the stairs slowly, trying to work a knot of pain out of her hip.
    “Al,” she said, entering the bathroom, “I can’t help you out of the tub, you have to figure that out yourself.”
    He was sitting in two inches of water with his arm extended and his fingers fluttering. “Get that,” he said.
    “Get what?”
    “That bottle.”
    His bottle of Snowy Mane hair-whitening shampoo had fallen to the floor behind him. Enid knelt carefully on the bath mat, favoring her hip, and put the bottle in his hands. He massaged it vaguely, as though seeking purchase or struggling to remember how to open it. His legs were hairless, his hands spotted, but his shoulders were still strong.
    “I’ll be damned,” he said, grinning at the bottle.
    Whatever heat the water had begun with had dissipated in the December-cool room. There was a smell of Dial soap and, more faintly, old age. Enid had knelt in this exact spot thousands of times to wash her children’s hair and rinse their heads with hot water from a 1½-quart saucepan that she brought up from the kitchen for that purpose. She watched her husband turn the shampoo bottle over in his hands.
    “Oh, Al,” she said, “what are we going to do?”
    “Help me with this.”
    “All right. I’ll help you.”
    The doorbell rang.
    “There it is again.”
    “Gary,” Enid called, “see who that is.” She squeezed shampoo into her palm. “You’ve got to