The Corrections

tightness—that his efforts soon became merely a pageant of spite and rage and incapacity. He caught his fingernails on the belt and then flung his arms apart, letting his hands bang into the arms of his captivating chair and painfully ricochet this way and that way, because he was so goddamned angry—
    “Dad, Dad, Dad, whoa, calm down,” the voice said.
    “Get that bastard! Get that bastard!”
    “Dad, whoa, it’s me. It’s Chip.”
    Indeed, the voice was familiar. He looked up at Chip carefully to make sure the speaker really was his middle child, because the bastards would try to take advantage of you any way they could. Indeed, if the speaker had been anybody in the world but Chip, it wouldn’t have paid to trust him. Too risky. But there was something in Chipper that the bastards couldn’t fake. You looked at Chipper and you knew he’d never lie to you. There was a sweetness to Chipper that nobody else could counterfeit.
    As his identification of Chipper deepened toward certainty, his breathing leveled out and something like a smile pushed through the other, warring forces in his face.
    “Well!” he said finally.
    Chip pulled another chair over and gave him a cup of ice water for which, he realized, he was thirsty. He took a long pull on the straw and gave the water back to Chip.
    “Where’s your mother?”
    Chip set the cup on the floor. “She woke up with a cold. I told her to stay in bed.”
    “Where’s she living now?”
    “She’s at home. Exactly where she was two days ago.”
    Chip had already explained to him why he had to be here, and the explanation had made sense as long as he could seeChip’s face and hear his voice, but as soon as Chip was gone the explanation fell apart.
    The big black bastard was circling the two of them with her evil eye.
    “This is a physical-therapy room,” Chip said. “We’re on the eighth floor of St. Luke’s. Mom had her foot operation here, if you remember that.”
    “That woman is a bastard,” he said, pointing.
    “No, she’s a physical therapist,” Chip said, “and she’s been trying to help you.”
    “No, look at her. Do you see the way she’s? Do you see it?”
    “She’s a physical therapist, Dad.”
    “The what? She’s a?”
    On the one hand, he trusted the intelligence and assurance of his intellectual son. On the other hand, the black bastard was giving him the Eye to warn him of the harm she intended to do him at her earliest opportunity; there was a grand malevolence to her manner, plain as day. He couldn’t begin to reconcile this contradiction: his belief that Chip was absolutely right and his conviction that that bastard absolutely wasn’t any physicist.
    The contradiction opened into a bottomless chasm. He stared into its depths, his mouth hanging open. A warm thing was crawling down his chin.
    And now some bastard’s hand was reaching for him. He tried to slug the bastard and realized, in the nick of time, that the hand belonged to Chip.
    “Easy, Dad. I’m just wiping your chin.”
    “Ah God.”
    “Do you want to sit here a little, or do you want to go back to your room?”
    “I leave it to your discretion.”
    This handy phrase came to him all ready to be spoken, neat as you please.
    “Let’s go back, then.” Chip reached behind the chair and made adjustments. Evidently the chair had casters and levers of enormous complexity.
    “See if you can get my belt unhooked,” he said.
    “We’ll go back to the room, and then you can walk around.”
    Chip wheeled him out of the yard and up the cellblock to his cell. He couldn’t get over how luxurious the appointments were. Like a first-class hotel room except for the bars on the bed and the shackles and the radios, the prisoner-control equipment.
    Chip parked him near the window, left the room with a Styrofoam pitcher, and returned a few minutes later in the company of a pretty little girl in a white jacket.
    “Mr. Lambert?” she said. She was pretty like Denise, with curly black hair and wire glasses, but smaller. “I’m Dr. Schulman. You may remember we met yesterday.”
    “Well!” he said, smiling wide. He remembered a world where there were girls like this, pretty little girls with bright eyes and smart brows, a world of hope.
    She placed a hand on his head and bent down as if to kiss him. She scared the hell out of him. He almost hit her.
    “I didn’t mean to scare you,” she said. “I just want to look in your eye. Is that all right with you?”
    He