And Go Like This by John Crowley

Author:John Crowley
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: Small Beer Press
Published: 2019-11-05T15:29:14+00:00

Since so much of his work had to be done on Sundays, Stan had elected to give himself Wednesdays, or at least Wednesday afternoons, off. By Wednesday most people have stopped their Sunday-paper dreaming about houses, and not yet started on the new weekend’s possibilities. It didn’t always work out for him, but on this Wednesday nobody called that he wasn’t able to put off. By three he was able to toss his old and rather disreputable canvas bag of clubs in the truck and go out to the country club, as free as a retiree or a dentist to hit the fairways on a weekday afternoon.

Though he had gone away for some years in the long search to find or build a life that would please his first wife, Stan had been born and grown up in the Hills and along the rivers that ran among them. At the little country club, not so much club now as public amenity open to all, Stan had learned to play by caddying for his father, watching and learning, and the game of golf had retained from those days a kind of educational quality, involving the passing on of skills and the continuance of rituals; even now Stan, when reaching the bubbler on the eighth tee and swallowing water gratefully, couldn’t help wiping his chin with the back of his hand and saying Ah! Adam’s ale!—as his father always had done just there.

He’d just as soon have played nine holes by himself, but as he was teeing up at the first, his doctor appeared beside him, having finished nine and lost his partner, and he joined Stan for a second nine. Stan liked doing well at games but was profoundly uncompetitive; he usually went for Personal Best, which in practice meant not paying a lot of attention to the score. Today, though, an unusual intensity of feeling about the game grew up in him by the third hole, a flame of need to win. Gripping his driver, his chin out, he eyed the girt doctor, bald dome already tanned (Florida, no doubt) at the tee, impatient for his own turn to dig fiercely into the ball. Freshly angry at his irremediable slice. Dr. Beha won handily. The day stayed glorious.

“So can you explain something to me?” Stan asked with a little laugh as they sat in the empty clubhouse bar.

“Sure. Unless it’s a medical question. For that you’d have to see a doctor.”

Stan ignored that. “My wife, you know, Terry, has started this hormone-replacement therapy. She’s sort of early menopause, and it seemed like, well anyway the gynecologist recommended it for her, and it seems to do her a lot of good.”

“Uh-huh.” The doctor seemed to be aware of what was coming next.

“It’s improved her, well, her hot flashes and whatnot.”

“Uh-huh.” Dr. Beha sipped his drink, unwilling to be helpful, Stan thought. “And your question is?”

“Well. It’s certainly changed the. Well, the family dynamic.” He laughed, swallowed beer for cover, wiped the foam from his lip with a cocktail napkin.

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