again snapping shut behind him, the bang arriving a split second later. Something about his posture, how he was angling his body, suggested that he was aware of being watched, or maybe just hoped he was. He stood perfectly motionless for a beat, then turned and looked up the hill. When it occurred to Lincoln that he might be about to wave, he quickly got to his feet and gathered his two bags of supplies, the sound of distant laughter following him inside his mother’s house.
Teddy
Teddy thought about heading out onto the ferry’s upper deck and soaking up some of the warm September sun but opted for a booth in the air-conditioned snack bar where the Wi-Fi signal would be stronger and he could get some work done. Most of his decisions these days were similarly utilitarian and estranged from the pleasure principle. An even keel, he knew from long experience, was always best. Avoid Sturm und Drang. Highs not too high, lows not too low. In this manner he was sometimes able to ward off his spells—he didn’t know what else to call them—before they gained purchase. Sometimes they manifested as full-blown panic attacks, hurricanes that battered him for a day or two before blowing out to sea, while others descended like fugue states and could linger, like an area of low pressure, for a week or more. And then there were the ones that were preceded by a kind of euphoria, a profound sense that something wonderful was about to happen, a promise of heightened understanding, even wisdom. These were the spells he feared most, because in their aftermath—with reality restored and the promised insight having failed to materialize—they felt like genuine mental illness.
Fearing that one of those might be in the offing, he’d seriously considered declining Lincoln’s invitation and paying a visit to the monastery instead. Brother John was always glad to see him, and he had a complete set of Marx Brothers movies, which Teddy suspected were probably more therapeutic than prayer and fasting combined. He knew for certain, though, that over the years the monastery had seen him through some rough patches, maybe even kept him out of the loony bin. Lately, however, he’d begun doubting the efficacy of his periodic retreats. When he was younger, they had provided a contrast to his life out in the world. Yet over the years a secular monasticism had crept into his everyday life, so the two worlds weren’t quite so different anymore.
No doubt about it, this trip to the island—in the company of old friends and recollected youth—was risky, a potential threat to his hard-won equilibrium. Jesus, sixty-six years old. He’d hoped that by now he wouldn’t have to be so vigilant, that given enough time the madness—because that’s what his spells amounted to—would ebb. After all, diminishment seemed to be the order of the day. Wouldn’t you think the spirit, unshackled at last from so many of the body’s youthful imperatives and bolstered by the wisdom of experience, would finally become ascendant? Wasn’t memory, that bully and oppressor, supposed to become soft and spongy?
But it was only for the weekend, and he would likely survive. Its pleasures would be modest enough. Morning walks among Chilmark’s rolling hills. Afternoon bike rides. Beer and white wine chilling in the fridge, though he’d do well to go light on alcohol. Lincoln might want to sneak in nine holes of golf at some point. On Saturday night Mickey apparently meant to drag them to some joint in Oak Bluffs to hear a local blues band, but otherwise it didn’t seem that much had been planned. Time would pass quickly. There was nothing to fear, as the saying went, but fear itself.
Still, best to keep vigilant, so instead of going outside and watching the distant island grow until it filled reality’s frame, he would put those forty-five minutes to good use. The manuscript he was editing was deeply flawed. Even when accepting the book for publication, he’d known he would come to regret the decision; that even if he could mitigate its flaws, the book would do little to advance Seven Storey Books, his beleaguered small press, which, as the name suggested, specialized in religious and “spiritual” titles, roughly half a dozen a year. The venture had been birthed a decade earlier when a colleague named Everett asked Teddy to look at a monograph he was having trouble finding a publisher for. When Teddy read it, he immediately saw why.