The Corrections

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 turned to Chip for reassurance, but Chip himself was staring at the girl.

“Chip!” he said.

Chip took his eyes off her. “Yeah, Dad?”

Well, now that he’d attracted Chip’s attention, he had to say something, and what he said was this: “Tell your mother not to worry about the mess down there. I’ll take care of all that.”

“OK. I’ll tell her.”

The girl’s clever fingers and soft face were all around his head. She asked him to make a fist, she pinched him and prodded him. She was talking like the television in somebody else’s room.

“Dad?” Chip said.

“I didn’t hear.”

“Dr. Schulman wants to know if you’d prefer ‘Alfred’ or ‘Mr. Lambert.’ What would you rather she called you?”

He grinned painfully. “I’m not following.”

“I think he prefers ‘Mr. Lambert,’ ” Chip said.

“Mr. Lambert,” said the little girl, “can you tell me where we are?”

He turned again to Chip, whose expression was expectant but unhelpful. He pointed toward the window. “That’s Illinois in that direction,” he said to his son and to the girl. Both were listening with great interest now, and he felt he should say more. “There’s a window,” he said, “which. . . if you get it open. . . would be what I want. I couldn’t get the belt undone. And then.”

He was failing and he knew it.

The little girl looked down on him kindly. “Can you tell me who our President is?”

He grinned, it was an easy one.

“Well,” he said. “She’s got so much stuff down there. I doubt she’d even notice. We ought to pitch the whole lot of it.”

The little girl nodded as if this were a reasonable answer. Then she held up both her hands. She was pretty like Enid, but Enid had a wedding ring, Enid didn’t wear glasses, Enid had lately gotten older, and he probably would have recognized Enid, although, being far more familiar to him than Chip, she was that much harder to see.

“How many fingers am I holding up?” the girl asked him.

He considered her fingers. As far as he could tell, the message they were sending was Relax. Unclench. Take it easy.

With a smile he let his bladder empty.

“Mr. Lambert? How many fingers am I holding up?” The fingers were there. It was a beautiful thing. The relief of irresponsibility. The less he knew, the happier he was. To know nothing at all would be heaven.

“Dad?”

“I should know that,” he said. “Can you believe I’d forget a thing like that?”

The little girl and Chip exchanged a look and then went out into the corridor.

He’d enjoyed unclenching, but after a minute or two he felt clammy. He needed to change his clothes now and he couldn’t. He sat in his mess as it chilled.

“Chip?” he said.