You Are Not A Stranger Here by Adam Haslett Read Free Book Online

reassurances muffled by the distance of the hall. Frank had wept himself to sleep, pained to tears that he could do nothing to prevent his brother's suffering.
    He thought now how it had always been for him, ever since he was a boy sitting on the edge of a chair in the living room listening to his parents' friends--a divorced woman whose hands shook slightly in her lap as she told him with great excitement about the vacation she was to take, or the man whose son Frank saw teased relentlessly at school, talking of how happy his boy was--the unsaid visible in their gestures, filling the air around them, pressing on Frank. And later in college, at a party, drink in hand, standing by a bookcase, chatting with a slightly heavy girl hanging back from the crowd, tracked into every shift of her eyes, every tense little smile, as if the nerves in her body were the nerves in his, her every attempt to disguise her awkwardness raising its pitch in him.
    Sitting in front of this oddly compelling woman, he real43 ized more clearly than ever before this was why he'd become a doctor: to organize his involuntary proximity to human pain. He could use his excuse of debt to leave his position at the clinic; he could even leave his profession, move away, anywhere, but still there would be this opening in him. Mrs. Buckholdt rose from the couch and stood by the window. As she raised the shade, more of the waning sun flooded the room. Her shoulders tensed at the sound of a knock on the other side of the kitchen door. Frank watched her take a breath.
    "What is it, darling?" she called out.
    "Can I come in?" a quiet voice asked.
    She crossed to unlock the door. The boy edged his way into the room. Biting her lower lip, holding herself rigid, Mrs. Buckholdt managed to run her hand through her son's hair.
    "What is it, dear?"
    "When are we leaving?"
    "In a few minutes," she said. "Go ahead and get ready."
    The boy stared for a moment at Frank, his expression as mysterious as before. He turned back into the kitchen and they listened to his steps as he climbed the back stairs.
    "Mrs. Buckholdt," Frank began, knowing that by saying what he was about to say he was committing himself to remaining here, to finding some way to scrape by. People like this woman needed him, needed a person to listen. "In situations like yours, it can help a great deal if you have someone to talk with. I couldn't see you every week, but I could do it once a month, and if you were able perhaps to get down to 44
    my office, we might meet once every two weeks. We could sign you up for free care. The drugs can only do so much."
    She had remained standing by the door, her arms crossed over her chest. "That's generous of you," she said, taking a step into the center of the room.
    After a moment's pause, she looked again at the picture on the wall. "That print there," she said, "it was his favorite. He picked it out at the museum in Chicago. He loved all the different characters, the bits of activity."
    Frank turned to look. In the left foreground, a tavern overflowed with townspeople, drinkers spilling into the street, following in the wake of a large-bellied mandolin player wearing a floppy hat. In front of him, the obese leader of the carnival sat, as if on horseback, astride a massive wine barrel pushed forward by the revelers, his lance a spit of meat. Opposite him and his train, somberly dressed people stood praying in some rough formation behind a gaunt, pale man propped up in a chair--Lent holding out before him a baker's pole. He faced the leader of the carnival band, the two posed in mock battle. Behind these contending forces, the square bustled. Fishwives gutting their fish on a wooden block, boys playing at a stick and tethered ball, dancers dancing, merchants selling, children peering from windows, a woman on a ladder scrubbing the walls of a house. There were cripples missing limbs, almsmen begging by the well. A man and woman made love. Another couple, dressed in Puritan