He'd never wanted to divorce Katharine, though he'd been interested in other women. He'd had flings. But he'd never have left her. His marriage was part of himself, like being a surgeon. Each day he had waked up married to Katharine, and a surgeon.
Surgery had been the thing, the center of everything. The operations he'd performed were still part of his consciousness. He could go through each step of each one. They were like the house on the Cape— still there, still real, ready for him to inhabit.
Surgery had been his life. He'd done thousands of operations, over nearly four decades. It had engaged him utterly, it had given him his greatest pleasure. There was nothing more serious, more crucial, more delicate. He'd welcomed the challenges. He'd welcomed risk—he liked it—and often taking a risk was the right thing to do. He'd been good and he'd been lucky, and he'd been rewarded for both. Young doctors came to train with him, he'd been twice head of the National Association of Neurosurgeons, which he'd helped found. Surgery had been his life, a continuing challenge, one he always rose to. It had been intoxicating: the excitement, the urgency, the thrill of commencement.
Pushing through the swinging doors into the operating theater he entered a separate world, self-contained, professional, purposeful. The clean, cold, invigorating room. The bold, caustic smell of antiseptic, and the draped motionless body, stark and shadowless beneath the bright lamp. The pale, exposed, shaved skin, brilliant in its glowing pallor, vulnerable and still. The body was now defenseless, its mind absent. The body was no longer the house of the soul but the site of the performance. All of them drew near, the nurses, the assisting surgeons, the anesthesiologist. All of them ready.
Gowned, masked, gloved, costumed as his professional self. That first moment of infinite possibility: making the first incision, the bright metal edge sliding easily into the elastic skin, as he entered his world. Once the opening incision was made, everything else fell away. Then everything was in his grasp.
The crimson interior of the body was his landscape. Cutting through the dense carapace of bone, removing its protective helmet, exposing the secret tissues of the brain: soft, intricate, pulsing, full of their own mysterious life. Here was the true center of the organism, this rosy, glistening, underground labyrinth, coiled, folded, furled, lobed, branched, and connecting, each a part of the quick, mysterious response to life.
Standing under the lamp, leaning into the terrible exposure of the wound he had made, Edward was focused and intent, drawn into himself, to a place without connection to the rest of his life. He felt utterly aware, calm, capable. Masked people stood silently by, all of them part of it, ready to suction out blood, hand him instruments, take them away, raise or lower the level of consciousness. The thudding heartbeat steady on the monitor, a bass line of reassurance. Edward heard the sound without attending to it, aware only when it changed. His own breathing was muffled and magnified by his mask. He probed delicately among the glistening tissues; he took a narrow-bladed instrument.
All this was present for him still, but gone now, vanished from the real world like the house on the Cape. He had saved people's lives, their senses, their movement—but it was now like a movie about someone else.
His skills were gone, his hands were mitts. Edward could no longer even shave himself properly. It still looked all right, or at least he hoped it did, but his cheeks were unevenly smooth, rough in places, though he drew the razor carefully across them every day. He passed his hand across his jaw. It was worse on the left, the stubble coarser there. That was the side away from the window. He turned his head slightly, offering the others the smoother side of his jaw. It was humiliating. The flesh had no business betraying him.
“What are they doing right now?” Katharine asked.
For a moment he was confused, but it was the children again, Julia's children.
“Well, Steven's been in Seattle,” Julia said. “You know, he's been working for a conservation group there.”
“Oh, that's right,” Katharine said. “I can never remember what a conservation group is. Is it people who are conservative?”
“The opposite,” Julia said. “Very liberal.”
“That's right,” Katharine said. “And what's he doing for them?”
“Trying to save the forests.”
“Good for him,” Katharine said stoutly. “Somebody should save them.” She took a bite of sandwich. “From what?”
“Logging companies, mostly,” Julia said.
“I bet that's tough,” Edward said. “How's he doing?”
“He's kind of burning out. He's thinking of moving back East and doing something different. He's coming up here to talk about it.”
“Well good for him,” Katharine said again. “I'd love to see him. Will we get to?”
Julia shrugged. “I don't know. It's impossible to pin him down. My children come and go as the breezes of the air. They answer to no woman.”
“I think he should come up here,” Edward announced.
“I hope he will,” Julia said.
“And dear Jack?” Katharine asked. “Where is he?”
Julia frowned. “Jack's in Brooklyn.”
Julia offered no further information. She didn't like to talk about him, Edward could see. He couldn't blame her. Jack had always been a problem.
“Dear Jack,” Katharine said again. “Does he have a job? Or what is he doing?”
“He doesn't seem to have a job,” Julia said carefully. “It's not exactly clear what he's doing.”
“He must be living on something,” Edward pointed out. “He must be,” Julia agreed, “but it's impossible to say on what. He's still playing music, but there's no visible means of support.”
There was silence for a moment. Far out on the horizon, the line between sea and sky was becoming indistinct.
“Well, I'm very fond of Jack,” Katharine said loyally. “Give him my love.”
“I will,” Julia said, smiling at her.
“I'm very fond of him,” Katharine said. “And what is Steven doing?”
Julia looked at her for a moment.
“That's fog, out along the horizon,” Edward announced. His voice was flat, absolute, as though he dared anyone to contradict him. “That gray line.”
Steven shifted again, his seat entirely numb. He had been traveling for years, it seemed, for most of his life. These last two hundred miles would take as long as the first three thousand, and were the longest.
The bus roared steadily northward, the engine playing without pause its single plangent chord. Steven leaned, bored, against the window. Along the unfolding ribbon of the highway ran a high wooden wall topped by a dense mass of trees. Foliage foamed over the wall, as though from a container.
Next to Steven was another young man, his raised knees crammed against the seat in front. His head had fallen sideways, and he was snoring faintly on the indrawn breaths. The sound was mild and childlike. It was oddly intimate, listening to the soft exhalations of a stranger. Steven wondered if his girlfriend complained—though who would mind this faint high whistle?
Anything might tip the balance, though. Anything might make you recoil from certain flesh. The body had