Chapter 30: The Knees

It happened on the thirty-eighth step. The thirty-eighth of seventy-two, the step that was in the watch room level, the step where the spiral passed the arrow-slit window that faced northeast, the step where the cold came through the opening in October and November and December and January and February and March, the step where the iron was coldest because the iron was closest to the outside air, and the step was the step and the knee was the knee and the combination produced the event.

The event was this: the left knee, the knee that had been filing complaints for eleven years, the knee that had been ignored for eleven years, the knee whose complaints had been received and acknowledged and disregarded in the way that a bureaucracy receives and acknowledges and disregards a petition, the petition noted, the petition filed, the petition producing no change in policy — the left knee stopped filing complaints and instead filed a refusal. The refusal was different from the complaint. The complaint said: this hurts, this is wear, this is the cartilage thinning and the bone meeting bone and the joint protesting the load. The refusal said: no. The refusal said: I will not bear this weight up this step at this angle on this morning. The refusal was absolute. The refusal was the joint locking, the mechanism seizing, the hinge that had been stiff becoming the hinge that would not move, and Eamon was on the thirty-eighth step with his left foot on the tread and his right foot one step below and his hand on the rail and his body stopped, arrested, the ascent interrupted by the body's declaration that the ascent could not continue.

He stood on the step. He stood on the thirty-eighth step and held the rail and the rail held him and the holding was mutual, the man and the iron, the hand and the rail, the grip that said: I am here, I am stopped, I need this, and the rail said: I am here, I have been here since 1874, I was cast for this purpose, to be held by the hand of a man on the stairs, to bear the weight that the stairs could not bear alone, and the rail bore his weight and the weight was the weight of a seventy-two-year-old man whose left knee had refused the thirty-eighth step.

The pain was not sharp. The pain was not the kind of pain that announced itself with the clarity of a breaking or a tearing. The pain was the other kind, the kind that arrived with the dullness of a thing that had been building for years, the ache that was the accumulation of ten thousand climbs, the cartilage's record, the joint's log, the biological entry that said: this many ascents, this many descents, this many steps, this many turns, and the total exceeds the capacity, and the capacity is the capacity, and the exceeding is the event.

He tried the step again. He shifted his weight to the right leg, the leg that was still functioning, the leg that had its own complaints but whose complaints had not yet become refusals, and he lifted the left leg and placed the left foot on the thirty-ninth step and the knee said no, the knee said what it had said before, the refusal repeated, the declaration confirmed, and he was on the thirty-eighth step and the thirty-ninth step was above him and the thirty-ninth step might as well have been the summit of a mountain.

He went down. He descended the thirty-eight steps he had climbed, the descent harder than the ascent because the descent loaded the knee differently, the weight bearing on the front of the joint, the kneecap pressing against the femur, the pressure the pressure of a man going down stairs who could not fully bend the thing that needed to bend for the going-down to happen, and the going-down happened but the happening was slow, was careful, was the careful going-down of a man who understood that the stairs were iron and the floor at the bottom was granite and the distance between the thirty-eighth step and the ground floor was considerable and the falling would be the thing, the falling would be the event that the rail prevented, and the rail prevented it, the rail held, the hand held the rail and the rail held the hand and the man went down.

The keeper's office. The desk. The chair. He sat in the chair and the sitting was the relief, the weight off the knee, the joint unburdened, the refusal relaxing into the complaint, the complaint resuming its regular petition, the pain diminishing from the acute to the chronic, from the refusal to the grumble, and the grumble was familiar, the grumble was the known condition, the grumble was the weather that had been the weather for eleven years.

He sat in the chair in the keeper's office at six in the morning on a Thursday in October and he had not cleaned the lens. He had not climbed to the lantern room. He had not taken the chamois from his back pocket and wiped the prisms in the order and the motion that he had wiped them four thousand times, five thousand times, the number that was in his body and that his body had produced and that his body could no longer produce because his body had said no, his body had filed the refusal, and the refusal was the data, the reading, the instrument telling him what he did not want to know.

He sat for a long time. He sat in the chair in the keeper's office and listened to the quiet of the tower, the quiet that was different from the quiet of the house, the tower's quiet the quiet of stone and iron and air, the quiet of a structure that had been designed to amplify sound — the fog signal, the bell, the keeper's voice through the speaking tube — and that in the absence of sound amplified the silence, the silence larger in the tower than in the house, the silence occupying the full height of the structure, from the granite foundation to the lantern room, the silence filling the seventy-two steps and the watch room and the lens housing and the gallery, the silence the sound of a lighthouse without a keeper at the top.

He opened the log. He took the pencil from the groove. He wrote:

0615. Clear. NW 10-15. Temp 41. Barometer 30.22. Lens not cleaned. Left knee — unable to complete ascent. Stopped at step 38. Descended without incident. Lens cleaning deferred.

He looked at the entry. Lens not cleaned. The three words that he had never written. The three words that had no precedent in his log, no precedent in fourteen years of entries, the three words that broke the record the way a missed watch broke the record, the gap in the continuous, the interruption in the uninterrupted, and the gap was the thing, the gap was the event, the gap was the data that the entry recorded and that the entry could not explain, could not justify, could only state.

Lens cleaning deferred. Not abandoned. Deferred. The word chosen with the precision of a man who understood the difference between the temporary and the permanent, between the deferral and the cancellation, between the knee that refused today and the knee that refused forever. The deferral was the hope. The deferral was the keeper's word for the thing that would happen later, that would happen when the knee allowed it, that would happen when the body relented, when the refusal became the complaint again and the complaint could be disregarded again and the climbing could resume.

He went to the house. He went to the kitchen. He stood at the counter and the standing was possible, the standing on the flat floor, the standing that did not require the bending and the lifting and the stepping and the turning that the stairs required, and the standing was the thing his body could do and the standing was not nothing, the standing was the beginning of the inventory, the assessment of what the body could still do, the list of the remaining functions.

He could stand. He could walk on level ground. He could drive. He could feed the starter. He could bake the bread. He could carry the bread to the truck. He could drive to Rockland. He could climb the stairs at Harbor Hill — the stairs at Harbor Hill were fourteen steps, not seventy-two, and the fourteen were straight, not spiral, and the straight was different from the spiral, the straight loading the knee differently, the straight possible when the spiral was not.

He could not climb the tower.

The thought sat in the kitchen the way the bread sat on the table at Harbor Hill — present, unavoidable, occupying space. He could not climb the tower. He could not clean the lens. He could not stand on the gallery and check the drains and inspect the railing and look at the bay from a hundred and three feet above the water. He could not do the thing that he had done every morning for fourteen years, the thing that organized his mornings, that gave the first hours of the day their shape, their purpose, the thing that was the keeping.

He fed the starter. It was a feeding day — Thursday — and the feeding was the thing he could do, and the doing was the relief, the small relief, the relief of the hands on the jar and the spoon in the culture and the flour in the cup and the water in the measuring glass, the doing that was available, the keeping that the body permitted, and the feeding was the keeping and the keeping was not nothing.

He called Patrick at nine. Patrick was at the lab. Patrick answered on the second ring, the way Colleen answered on the second ring, the efficiency of people who did not let phones ring because the ringing was a call and the call was a thing to be answered and the answering was the response and the response was the duty.

"My knee went," Eamon said.

"Which one?"

"Left."

"How bad?"

"I couldn't make the stairs. I stopped at thirty-eight."

"Thirty-eight."

"Thirty-eight. The watch room level. It locked. The joint locked and I couldn't lift it to the next step."

Patrick was quiet. The quiet was the quiet of a man processing data, the data arriving and being sorted, the data point — stopped at thirty-eight — being placed in the framework of understanding, the framework that Patrick had been building since June, since the week he came to the point and asked to be taught, the framework that said: the father is seventy-two, the father's knees have been filing complaints for eleven years, the father climbs seventy-two steps every morning, and the climbing is the thing, and the thing cannot continue forever, and the forever is the illusion, and the illusion is the thing the son must address.

"I'm coming up," Patrick said.

"It's Thursday."

"I'm coming up. I'll be there by six."

"You have work."

"The plankton will wait."

"Patrick —"

"The plankton will wait, Dad. They've been waiting for four billion years. They can wait until Monday."

Patrick arrived at six. He arrived in the Subaru, the rust at the wheel wells wider than it had been in June, the car aging the way all things aged, the maintenance deferring the entropy but not defeating it, and Patrick got out and the handshake was the handshake and the grip said what the grip said, the pressure and the duration and the warmth, and the grip said: I am here, I drove eight hours, I am here.

Eamon was in the kitchen. He was in the chair at the table, the chair that he had been in for most of the day, the chair that was the place the body could be when the body could not be on the stairs, and the being-in-the-chair was the new condition, the new normal, the condition that the knee had produced and that the knee would determine and that the knee, the knee, the knee was the thing.

"Show me," Patrick said.

"Show you what?"

"The knee. Show me the knee."

"I'm not showing you my knee."

"Dad."

"The knee is the knee. It's been the knee for eleven years. Today it was more the knee than it's been before. That's all."

"That's not all. You couldn't climb the stairs. You've climbed those stairs every morning for fourteen years. You couldn't climb them today. That's not nothing."

"I didn't say it was nothing. I said the knee is the knee."

Patrick sat at the table across from his father. The table, the pine table from Camden, the table where the conversations happened, the table where Nora had sat and Eamon had sat and Patrick had sat and the conversations had been the conversations, and this conversation was a conversation at the table but the conversation was different because the woman was not at the table and the subject was not the woman but the man, not the wife but the husband, not the person being kept but the keeper, and the keeper was the subject because the keeper's body was the subject and the body was filing its refusal and the refusal was the thing.

"I'm going to climb the tower," Patrick said.

"Now?"

"Now. And I'm going to clean the lens. And tomorrow morning I'm going to climb it at five-fifteen and clean it again. And Saturday morning. And Sunday morning. And I'm going to keep climbing it until your knee lets you climb it again."

Eamon looked at his son. The looking was the looking from the other side, the looking that he had given Patrick on the rocks in June of the first year and in the kitchen in June of the second year and on the gallery on the solstice, the looking that was assessment and recognition, but the thing assessed was different now, the thing recognized was different. On the rocks Eamon had assessed the son's concern and recognized the son's love. In the kitchen he had assessed the son's commitment and recognized the son's need to learn. On the solstice he had assessed the son's grief and recognized the son's devotion.

Now Eamon assessed the son's readiness. The readiness was visible in the way the readiness was always visible in a person who had been trained — in the posture, in the voice, in the certainty, in the absence of the question, the statement made without the rising inflection, the declaration that was not a proposal but an announcement, and the announcement said: I am ready, I have been taught, I have learned the lens and the chamois and the log and the gallery and the drains and the railing, I have learned the keeping, and the keeping is now mine to do because the keeper cannot do it, and the cannot is the thing, and the thing must be addressed, and the addressing is the apprentice becoming the keeper.

"The chamois is in my back pocket," Eamon said.

"I have one. You gave me one in July. I've been breaking it in."

"You've been breaking it in."

"On the weekends. When I clean the lens. I've been using it."

"Is it soft enough?"

"It's soft enough. It won't scratch the glass."

"How do you know?"

"Because I tested it the way you told me to — on the outer prisms first, the prisms where a scratch diffuses a fraction of the light. I checked after each cleaning. No scratches. The chamois is ready."

Eamon sat in the chair and his son stood in the kitchen and the son was ready and the chamois was ready and the lens was waiting and the tower was waiting and the seventy-two steps were waiting and the waiting was the opportunity, the opportunity that the knee had produced, the opportunity that was the crisis, the crisis that was the transfer, the transfer that was the keeping passing from the father to the son, the passing that had begun in June with the teaching and that was completing now in October with the necessity, the necessity that was the knee, the knee that had filed its refusal and in the filing had produced the opening, the space into which the son stepped, the step that the father could not take.

Patrick climbed the tower. Eamon heard him — heard the boots on the treads, heard the iron receiving the weight, heard the rhythm of the climbing, the rhythm that was not Eamon's rhythm but was close, was learned from Eamon's rhythm, the way the chamois motion was learned from Eamon's motion, the apprentice's version of the master's technique, similar but not identical, the same notes played by a different hand.

He counted the steps. He could not help counting them. Twenty. Thirty. Thirty-eight — the step where his knee had refused, the step that Patrick crossed without incident, the young knee bending where the old knee had locked, the young cartilage bearing what the old cartilage could not, the step taken, the obstacle passed, the ascent continuing.

Fifty. Sixty. Seventy-two.

The sound stopped. Patrick was in the lantern room. Patrick was standing before the lens, the Fresnel, the fourth order, the forty-one inches, the two hundred and fifty-six prisms, and Patrick was there and Eamon was not, and the not-being-there was the thing, the thing that the knee had produced, the thing that was the absence, the absence that was not the same as Nora's absence but that was the same shape, the same outline, the same space left by the person who could not be where they had been, the keeper not at the lens the way the wife was not in the kitchen, the absence structural, the absence the shape of the person in the place they used to occupy.

He heard Patrick cleaning. The sound was faint — the chamois on the glass, the soft contact, the whisper of leather on crystal — but the sound was there, was audible through the floors of the tower, through the iron and the stone, the sound traveling down the way the sound of the fog signal traveled out, diminished but present, and the present was the thing, the present was the evidence that the cleaning was happening, that the lens was being cleaned, that the keeping was being kept, and the keeper was not Eamon, the keeper was Patrick, and the keeping continued.

Eamon sat in the chair in the keeper's office and listened to his son clean the lens that he could not climb to, and the listening was the keeping, the listening was the new form of the keeping, the keeping-from-below, the keeping that was not the doing but the hearing of the doing, the keeper who could not climb hearing the keeper who could, the father hearing the son, the old hearing the young, the worn hearing the new, the thing that was wearing out hearing the thing that was beginning.

Patrick came down at seven. He came into the office and he stood before his father and his father looked at him and Patrick said, "Satisfactory."

"The lens?"

"Clean. Top ring, twenty prisms. Second ring, twenty-four. Bull's-eye panels — I took extra care. Lower rings. All clean. Chamois folded, in my back pocket."

"The gallery?"

"Drains clear. Railing sound. No rust. Lightning rod connection secure."

"The log?"

Patrick went to the desk. He took the pencil from the groove. He opened the log to the page where Eamon's entry from that morning was written — Lens not cleaned. Left knee — unable to complete ascent — and below that entry Patrick wrote:

1900. Clear. NW 8-12. Temp 39. Barometer 30.20. Lens cleaned — P. Bryce. Gallery inspected — satisfactory. All systems satisfactory.

He set the pencil in the groove. He closed the log. He looked at his father.

"You wrote in the log," Eamon said.

"You taught me the format."

"I taught you the format."

"Weather. Wind. Temperature. Pressure. Maintenance performed. Conditions observed."

"The format hasn't changed since 1874."

"I know. You told me."

They stood in the keeper's office, the father in the chair and the son at the desk, and the desk was between them and the log was on the desk and the log held both entries, the father's entry and the son's entry, the two entries on the same page, the same day, the same log, the first time in fourteen years that another hand had written in the log, the first time since Eamon picked up the log in 2012 that the record had been made by someone other than the keeper, and the someone was the son, and the son was the keeper, and the keeping was kept.

"Thank you," Eamon said.

"Don't thank me."

"Thank you."

"Don't thank me, Dad. This is the thing. This is the thing you taught me. You climb the stairs. You clean the lens. You write the log. You do it every day. You do it whether anyone asks you to. You do it because the doing is the point. You taught me that. And now your knee is telling you that you can't do it today, and I'm telling you that I can, and the telling is the teaching, the teaching going the other direction, the son telling the father: you don't have to do this alone. You never had to do this alone."

Eamon sat in the chair. The chair in the keeper's office, the chair at the desk, the chair that was not the chair on the thirty-eighth step but was a chair, was a place to be, was the place where the keeper sat when the keeper could not stand on the gallery, and the sitting was the being and the being was the keeping and the keeping was not over, the keeping was changed, the keeping was different, the keeping was the father in the office and the son in the lantern room and the lens cleaned and the log written and the entry made and the record continued.

The record continued.