THENEWYORKER,JANUARY18, 2021 51
D
r. Cole eased his car from his
garage, then stopped, out of
habit, to watch in his rearview
mirror the garage door slide gently
down and the light above it extinguish
itself. This had once given him an ab-
surd, vain satisfaction; now it was his
only goodbye. The car was expensive
and comfortable, as was the house that
went with it: large, sedate, islanded in
lawns and leafage, like the others in the
discreet crescent.
As he drove off, the purr of the en-
gine and the crackle of gravel were the
only sounds, except for—though in-
side his car he couldn’t hear it—the
great anthem of birds. It was a little
after six on an April morning, but at
eight it would still be astonishingly
quiet. Except for the birds. They had
become extraordinarily loud, as if by
some conscious effort. But that was an
illusion. It was the contrast with the
silence. Less than an hour ago, he’d
been lying in bed, listening to them
and marvelling. A solitary man in a big
house, surrounded, hymned by birds.
And the roads, even the main ones,
would be empty. They would be just
as empty at eight. The phrase “ghost
town” sometimes came to Dr. Cole as
he made this journey. Ghost world. He
would reach the hospital within fifteen
minutes. Normally—when had “nor-
mally” ceased to apply?—it might take
forty-five.
As he turned out of the driveway, a
fox slipped nonchalantly through the
beam of his headlights. One morning,
he had counted six foxes. The birds and
the foxes. They had reclaimed the world.
This journey was his time not just
for counting foxes but for thought.
Or, rather, his corridor for memories,
which came thick and fast, unbidden.
Ghosts. He had proved what was com-
monly said: that, when we are old, it
is our earliest recollections that return
to us most pressingly, while the later
stuff recedes.
The later stuff could be soberly con-
densed: two marriages, one divorce,
no children in either marriage, and the
second much longer and more mean-
ingful than the first. His second wife
had been the love of his life—he could
say that without hesitation. But she’d
been dead now for most of two years.
The loss of his life. She’d died only a
year after he retired. For a while, they’d
lain together in the bed in which he’d
just been lying alone, listening, as dawn
broke, to the birds. She’d said to him
once, softly, “We can do this now.” As
if lying there together were the sim-
plest but greatest gift retirement could
bring. It was.
Despite or because of the empty
roads, he’d begun to leave earlier than
he needed to, so that he could delib-
erately dawdle, even take detours, to
permit the gush of memory to run its
course. It was memory, not thought.
His mind simply filled and throbbed,
a function of driving. He vaguely re-
joiced in the peaceful roads that al-
lowed it to happen. That word, too,
came to him. “Peace.” In a little while,
he would enter a scene of war.
He had come forward. How could
he not? He was seventy-two and re-
tired, but how could he not? He was a
specialist in respiratory disease. He had
retired shortly after his mother had
died. She was ninety-two. Decades ago,
after his parents’ divorce, it was his
mother who’d wanted him to be a doc-
tor. It was his mother who’d almost ex-
clusively claimed him, and he hadn’t
resisted. He had become not just a doc-
tor but, as it turned out, a top man in
his field. So he’d fulfilled his mother’s
dream, and more.
A top man in medicine, but he hadn’t
been able to save her. Or his wife. Within
two years they were both gone. The
women of his life.
He’d come forward. It was hardly
a choice. He’d come forward like a
called-up reservist. They’d been “hon-
ored” to have him back. But what did
that mean amid such havoc? A queue
of casualties. A queue of deaths. One of
which, he clearly understood, might be
his own. All of them understood it. It
might be any one of them.
What they didn’t know, as he strove
to be a figure of cool authority, was that
he actually liked being there. It “took
the mind off,” as they say. It gave him
something to do.
Except now it took the mind off
in a different way. It didn’t happen
on the journeys home. He did his ex-
tendable, unquantifiable “shift.” He
found something to eat. He drove
home, numb. He slept. Thank good-
ness, he could sleep. It was only here,
on these dawn rides, that his life re-
turned to him, from its wondrous dis-
tances. Otherwise, it had departed; it
had seemed already over. And now he
understood—accepted—that soon it
might be truly over.
A
s he held the wheel, he was a child
again. If it were a matter of cal-
culation, he could say with exactness
that he was ten. But he didn’t have to
calculate. He was ten.
He was ten, and he was lying in bed
on a sunny June morning because he
was ill. He saw his mother’s face as she
leaned toward him. She was sitting on
the end of his bed, now and then strok-
ing his covered foot or knee, and, though
he was ill, her face didn’t look in the
least bit troubled. It looked full of glad-
ness and even quite merry.
She would have been—what?—a
woman in her early thirties. And Dr.
Henderson’s face—Dr. Henderson!—
though it was the face of a doctor and
therefore provisionally grave, also looked
quite merry. This always happened when
he visited. Doctors “visited” in those
days. He would loom in the doorway,
holding his doctor’s bag, a forbidding
figure, more often than not still in his
black winter coat and bringing with
him a residue of chilly air. But very
quickly he would melt and become
friendly, even jolly. And how old would
he have been? In his late thirties. A
“young doctor.”
Now he would be dead, of course.
But on this morning Dr. Hender-
son wore a pale-gray lightweight sum-
mer suit. He sat down at the bedside
on the chair that was always provided
for him. It wasn’t part of the bedroom
furniture. His mother would fetch it.
The chair for Dr. Henderson! He could
see it now. It had striped upholstery,
red on cream, and he later learned that
the stripes were called Regency stripes.
Its usual place was in his parents’ room,
where it seemed not to be used for
sitting on, since when he looked it was
nearly always draped with items of
his parents’ clothing. So now Dr. Hen-
derson sat where his parents’ clothes
had mingled.
But even before he sat, even as he
crossed the room, he said, “Well, Jimmy,
you’re a lucky man. You could have been
poorly on your tenth birthday. Many
