His Wife Leaves Him

  His

  Wife

  Leaves

  Him

  ________

  STEPHEN DIXON

  Contents

  Chapter

  Someone knocks on his classroom door. “Come in,” he says. It’s his department secretary. “Excuse me for interrupting your class, but you have an urgent phone call.” “My wife?” “No, a man.” “He say what it was?” and she says no. “Let’s take a ten-minute break now,” he tells the class. “You’ve heard; I got what’s supposed to be an urgent phone call, so if I’m not back in twenty minutes, let’s say, or make it thirty, next week’s writing assignment and the readings from Short Shorts will be posted on my office door.” “Where’s your office again?” a student says, and he says “This building, room four-forty.” “Does that mean we won’t be critiquing my story today?” another student says. “Because last week we also never got around to it,” and he says “I don’t know; please, let me go,” and he leaves with the secretary. “The caller didn’t even hint what it could be?” he says, as they walk to the department’s office. “Maybe he meant ‘important’ instead of ‘urgent,’ and it’s good news; an award or nomination of some sort for my last book. Well, one can always dream, right?” and she says “No hint; nothing. He just said to get you.” It’s someone from a local hospital; his wife had a stroke while riding an exercise bicycle at a health club and was taken by ambulance to Emergency and is now in ICU. “Took us a while to find out who she was, since nobody at the club knew which locker her belongings were in, and then to reach you, since she’s unable to speak.” “Oh, geez; she only joined that all-women’s club last week. Before, she was in mine. I’ll be right over.” She’s hooked up to tubes and monitors and something to help her breathing, seems to be awake. “Darling…sweetheart,” he says when he first sees her. “I’m here; you look fine; you’re going to be okay,” and takes her hand, but she doesn’t give any sign she knows he’s there. He sits by her bed for as long as they let him—fifteen minutes an hour for about ten hours a day; sleeps on a recliner by her bed for a few nights after she’s moved into a regular room. She gets stronger and more alert, goes through several weeks of in-patient rehabilitation, and comes home. She’s paralyzed on one side of her body but gets back most of her speech. “Look at me,” she says. “Four months since my stroke. I still can’t do a thing for myself or anyone else. I can’t hold anything without dropping it. I try to walk with a walker, I get three feet before I feel I’ll fall.” “Look, that was some blow you took. It takes time, sweetie, time, and you have to admit you’re a hell of a lot better than you were a month or two ago. And from when you were discharged? —We won’t even mention what you were like when you first went in. I couldn’t have hoped for anything so quick. But back to normal? The doctors say what?—a year, year and a half from the time you had the stroke—but I’m sure, the way you’re going, it’ll be much sooner.” “I’m sorry I’m such a burden on you,” and he says “What are you talking about? I’m happy to do whatever I can for you. Really, it’s a privilege to help you, my darling.” “Oh, I know it’s not—how could it be?” And he says “Have I ever complained once? You know me. I can be impatient and I get frustrated easily, but I’ve never been angry at you concerning your condition or that it’s taxing me in any way or keeping me from my work. What can I do to make you believe me, get on my knees?” and he does and hikes up her skirt and kisses her kneecaps, and she laughs and says “All right, stop, I believe you; I just needed a bit of convincing. Thank you.” So he can teach and hold office hours and do other things like write at home and shop and go to the Y to swim and work out a few times a week, he has caregivers looking after her every weekday afternoon. Weekends, if one of their daughters doesn’t come down from New York, he takes care of her all day himself. Sometimes it’s hard—getting her started in the morning, lifting her out of bed or into a chair, her incontinence a couple of times a day, cleaning up when she spills some drink or food or knocks a mug or plate off the table—and he thinks, “God, not again; I don’t know how I can do this anymore, but what’s the alternative?” or looks at her and thinks “Come on, you’re a smart woman, so show some brains. If you know you’re not going to be able to hold something, have me do it for you.” Or “If you know you’re about to shit or piss, tell me, so I can get you on the toilet or a bedpan under you, because you just make things worse,” but never says anything or makes any kind of face that shows how he really feels. All he says is something like “That’s okay, that’s okay, don’t worry about it; this is what paper towels and those latex gloves are for. Complete recovery takes time, as I’ve said, but you’re definitely getting there. Each day there’s a little improvement, I mean it.” “I wish I could see it.” It takes a few more months for her to work herself up to walking from their bedroom to the living room with just a walker, and a couple more months, about the same distance with just a cane. “You see?” he says, “what did I tell you? Although the truth is, which I didn’t want to say a while back because I didn’t want to discourage you, I never in a million years thought you’d progress this fast,” and she says “I actually do now feel things are finally getting better for me. I can’t wait till I no longer need anyone’s assistance, and then can walk without the cane.” He always walks beside her in case she starts falling, which she sometimes does, and he always catches her. She also doesn’t drop or spill things as much, and goes for days without being incontinent and weeks without an accident. When she does have one, she says things like “Oh, dear, look at the trouble I’m causing you; I’m so sorry,” and inside he’s seething, thinking of all things he hates doing most—piss, he can handle—but this; it’s so goddamn messy and time-consuming. But after one accident, he says “Damn you, can’t you give some warning when it’s about to happen and then hold it in till I can get you over the potty?” and she starts crying and he says “Don’t; stop it; just let me get the job done. And I didn’t mean it. I’ll never say anything like that again.” “But you’d think it,” and he says “No, I wouldn’t. It just came out, as if it wasn’t even me saying it. It had nothing to do with my being on my best behavior and suddenly losing control. I know you’re not responsible for what happened and you want to make things as easy for me as possible, and for a few seconds I was a total putz. Please forgive me.” “Okay, though I wouldn’t blame you for thinking it. Just hearing it is what makes me feel so bad.” She has another stroke, same side, a few months later, shortly after she began walking around the house with a cane without him having to stay beside her, but this one a lot worse. She recovers much more slowly than she did after the first stroke, goes through months of physical and occupational and speech therapy, first when she’s in the hospital and then as an out-patient, but she still can’t walk a step with a walker, even with his help, and spends most of the day in a wheelchair. “Try pushing it yourself,” he says, six months after she comes home—he wanted to say it sooner but held back—and she says “I can’t. I can barely feel the wheels when I try to grip them. I have no strength left for anything, and my speech is still so terrible that I’m not even sure you understand a word I say.” “Oh, I understand; I’m hearing everything you say clearly, and I’m not being sarcastic. But just try, once, pushing.” “I have. Lots, when you weren’t looking. Maybe I need to exercise my arms and hands more, but I don’t have the strength for that either.” She’s depressed almost constantly. Getting up: “What am I getting out of bed for?” Eating: “What’s the use of food? Just means more time on the toilet and all the problems that go along with that.” Working on her voice-activated computer: “I used to be a thinker, and now I can’t think straight. And there’s no project I once wanted to do that I’ll ever be able to finish.”
Talking to their daughters or her friends on the phone: “Tell them I’m busy or sleeping or too tired to talk. I just have no desire for petty talk or conversation.” Sex: “No feeling: no interest. I know, though, how much of a deprivation it is for you.” Going out for lunch or what he calls “a walk”: “Why should I let myself be the object of other people’s stares and pity?” Listening to books on tape: “I can’t keep up with the story or lecture anymore.” Watching a DVD movie at home: “They used to be enjoyable when I was healthy and had some hope of recovery. Now everything I do and see tells me how sick and feeble I am and that I’m only going to be worse.” When he says “Come on, give me a smile, will ya?” she says “Would you be smiling if you were me, even one on demand?” “Sure, because, you know, it doesn’t help either of us if you’re always bitching about your condition and how weak you are and moping around all day with your all-suffering down-in-the-dumps face. I’m sorry: that was mean.” She’s already crying, and he says “Okay, okay, I said I’m sorry and I meant it. It was stupid of me.” “Oh, you apologize and you apologize and you apologize, but don’t once more tell me you didn’t mean what you said. As I’ve already told you: I’m a drag and a drudge and you should get rid of me,” and he says “And then what would I do with myself? Can’t live without you, so shove that thought right out of your head.” “I don’t believe you. But for now, just to make myself feel a little bit better and to show you I don’t think of myself as utterly hopeless, I’ll accept it not as a lie.” He bends down—she’s in her wheelchair—and hugs her and kisses the top of her head. She hugs him back around the waist and says “Thanks. I feel better but I’m not going to smile, even if what I just said could be construed as funny. But you really would be better off if I were gone and you were free to take up with another woman, one who wasn’t in a wheelchair.” “What did I tell you? I don’t want anyone else. And if anything, God forbid, did happen to you where you got much worse, there’s no chance I’d hook up with someone else. So get healthy, you hear?” She can do less and less for herself over the next year. He has to feed her most of the time, hold the mug or straw to her mouth so she can drink, catheterize her four to five times a day because she has no control over her bladder and gets lots of urinary tract infections, turn her over on her side and back several times a night, force her out of bed at ten to ten-thirty in the morning, or else she’d sleep till noon or one. “Gwendolyn. Gwen. Come on, get up, open your eyes, you’re losing the entire day.” Don’t say anything to make her feel bad, he keeps telling himself. Don’t make things even worse for her. “I mean, you can do what you want, but I’d think you’d want to get up now, am I right?” She opens her eyes, looks at her watch on her wrist and says “But what am I doing? I can’t see these little numbers, even with my glasses. What time is it?” “Past ten,” and she says “Let me sleep another hour. I got to bed late.” “You got to bed around eleven, which is when you normally start conking out,” and she says “Please, twenty minutes longer. And give me a very tiny piece of Ambien so I can sleep, because I hardly got a wink in last night.” He usually says “No, I gave you more than enough last night, and since you snored half the night, you obviously got plenty of sleep. You get more Ambien, you’ll sleep till the afternoon.” She sometimes says “Don’t be such a dictator,” and he says “I’m not. I’m just doing what I think’s the right thing for you. I don’t want you to waste your life away in bed. And I know what you’re going to say. Okay, twenty minutes; no more,” and he leaves the room, reads or goes to his typewriter in the dining room, comes back half an hour later and changes her, exercises her legs and feet, swings her around and sits her up so her legs hang over the side of the bed and massages her shoulders and back and neck. Every other week or so—doesn’t want to do it more or else she’ll think he’s only massaging her for this—while she’s sitting up in bed and he’s massaging her, he drops his pants or takes his penis out of his fly and says “If you can, could you play with it while I work on you? I can use a little pleasure too.” She tries to, while he rubs her breasts under her nightshirt or continues massaging her, but she usually can’t grab hold of it, even after he wraps her hand around it, or she pulls it a little and then her hand slips off and she tries getting it back on or he does it for her. “It’s good exercise for your hands too,” he says, “right?” and she smiles and he kisses her head or bends her head back and kisses her lips and says “Anyway, for the time you were able to do it, it felt good.” Then he raises his pants or puts his penis back in his fly and massages her some more so she knows he did it as much as on the days he didn’t get her to play with him, and lifts her onto the wheeled commode and unlocks it and gets her into the bathroom. Once, after struggling to get her from the commode into the wheelchair, he says “I hate saying it but it seems to be getting increasingly hard for me to lift you. Maybe you’ve gotten a little heavier the last year, although you don’t look like you have…in fact, I bet you’ve even lost a few pounds. Or else it’s the dead weight of your body that’s making transferring you so hard…that you’re not helping me because you can’t.” “Use the Hoyer lift like the caregivers do,” and he says “And then what? I’m to spend ten to fifteen minutes getting you in and out of the lift sling seven to ten times a day? Who’s got time for it? And also, just turning you over in bed at night isn’t getting any easier either. Let’s face it, all that’s becoming harder for me because I’m getting weaker with age, no matter how much I work out at the Y, and I’m scared to think what it’s going to lead to. Dropping you on the floor, which is all we need, for how would I get you back up?” “The lift, if only you’d stop being so stubborn and learn how to use it,” and he says “You’ll teach me at the time, if anything like that does happen. But I’m worried, I can tell you, and you’ll also probably get hurt in the fall, and then there’ll be more to do and further complications. Oh, God, everything is going from bad to worse, when things are supposed to let up a little as I get older. I’m not supposed to have so many responsibilities. What a freaking mess to look forward to.” “Then put me in a nursing home and be done with it,” and he says “I don’t want to, would never want to, and besides, though this isn’t the reason I wouldn’t want to, we can’t afford it. We can afford twenty hours of caregivers a week, and the rest has to be left up to me. That’s all right, I don’t mind, and you’d be miserable in a nursing home, thoroughly depressed and bored, and deteriorate quickly rather than getting better or just staying the same as you are now.” “Please, you know I’m getting worse by the day,” and he says “You’re not; don’t say it. If you were, do you think I’d be so, I don’t know, calm about it?” and she says “Yes, as an act. But you give yourself away enough for me know what you really think.” “What I really think is that you’re getting better, and I selfishly say thank goodness to that, for in a few years I’ll be the one who’s sick and weak and you’ll be fully recovered and will have to take care of me,” and she says “What B.S.” “Look at her, my wife of almost twenty-five years; she called me a bullshit artist. Believe me, I would never fool you, baby; never.” “I pass.” About a month later, after he gets her into bed, she looks like she’s going to start crying, and he says “What’s wrong now? I was a little rough with you getting you on the bed?” and she says “No, you were fine; it’s just that there’s no sense to any of this.” “What do you mean?” and she says “Will you stop saying you don’t understand? What the hell do you think I’m referring to?” “Don’t yell at me. Not after all I do for you. Look, life isn’t so great for me either. I’m not comparing our situations, but there’s a lot of work for me to do and, in case you don’t know it, it gets frustrating and hard and a little tedious for me too.” “I’m sorry. You’re right. And I won’t disturb you anymore tonight. Please turn off my light and cover your shade. I want to go to sleep.” “Oh, boy, are you angry at me for what I said,” and she says “Not true. I’m only angry at my body. Please, the light.” A few weeks later, after he gets her ready for sle
ep and is about to get in bed himself, she says “Don’t get angry—please—but I’m afraid I need changing.” “What, ten minutes after I catheterized you? You’re just imagining it: you’ve done that before. Or you don’t want me to get any rest in bed, right?” And she says “Will you check?” He feels inside her diaper and says “Jesus, how did that happen? You’re so wet, I’ll have to change the towel and pads under you too.” “Could be you didn’t catheterize me long enough; sometimes you’re too much in a rush to get it over with,” and he says “I kept the catheter in till I saw a bubble go backwards in the tube. That’s always been the sign you’re done. What do I have to do from now on, catheterize you twice a night, one after the other? I’ve done enough tonight; I just want to get in bed and read.” “I’m sorry. If I could avoid this, I would,” and he says “Try harder to avoid it. Think; think. If you feel it coming, say so, goddamnit, and I’ll get you on the commode without you soaking the bed. I should really just let you lie there in your piss…I really should.” She starts crying. “Oh, there you go again,” he says. “Great, great.” He turns around, slaps his hand on the dresser and yells “Stop crying: stop it. Things are goddamn miserable enough.” She continues crying. Without looking at her, he says “I need a minute to myself, but don’t worry, I’ll eventually take care of you,” and goes into the kitchen and drinks a glass of water and feels like throwing the glass into the sink but puts it down and bangs the top of the washing machine with his fist and yells “God-all-fucking-mighty, what am I going to do with you? I wish you’d die, already, die, already, and leave me in fucking peace.” Then he thinks “Oh, no. I hope she didn’t hear me; it’s the worst thing I’ve ever said.” He stays there, looks out the window at the carport, has another glass of water and rinses the glass and puts it in the dish rack, turns the radio on to classical music and thinks “Ah, what the fuck’s the use?” and turns it off in about ten seconds and thinks “She still needs to be changed, so get it done and go to sleep,” and goes back and says “Okay, I’m here. A few minutes was all I needed. Tried listening to music to change my dumpy mood, but who the hell wants to listen to music.” She says “What you said out there—what you shouted—that is how you feel, isn’t it?” “What’d I say? I stubbed my toe in the kitchen on the door frame. That’s what happens when I think I can run around barefoot from one room to the other in the dark. So I said out loud—maybe yelled—‘Goddamnit,’ and other stuff, that’s all.” She says “You hoped that I die. Don’t try to get out of it. ‘Die, already,’ you said, ‘die.’ You could only have meant me.” “I never used the word ‘die.’ You’re hearing things. Besides, what makes you think you can hear clearly from this room to the kitchen? If I remember correctly, and this isn’t completely exact, I yelled ‘Goddamnit, you stupid fool,’ meaning myself; that I’m the fool. For banging my toe. But really the whole foot. It still hurts.” “You’re lying. You’re fed up with helping me, and who can blame you? You’ve done it longer than should be expected from anyone. Or else it’s become too much work for you because I’ve gotten much worse. But you should have told me calmly, not the sickening way you did, and then we could have worked something out to get other arrangements for me. I would have understood.” “No, you’re wrong,” and she says “Please change me and the towel before I pee some more and you get even angrier at me and maybe hit me instead of whatever you hit in the kitchen.” “I’d never do that to you; please don’t think there’s even a remote possibility of it. And try to believe I was only yelling at myself over the pain in my foot that nearly killed me. You know what the hell a stubbed toe’s like.” She looks away and shuts her eyes and he says “Oh, well, you’re never going to believe me tonight, but it’s the truth, I swear.” She still doesn’t look at him. “Okay,” and he changes her, gets the wet pads and towel out from under her and puts clean ones down, says “Which side you want?” and she points and he turns her on her side so she’s facing her end of the bed, covers her, says “Are you comfortable?” she doesn’t answer, “Is there anything more you want me to do?” with her eyes shut she shakes her head, he turns off their night table lights, dumps the wet pads and towel into the washing machine and thinks should he do a wash? Are there enough clothes in it for one now? Nah, save it for the morning, when there’ll probably be more wet pads and towels, and the noise might keep her up, and washes his hands in the kitchen and gets into bed. “Why don’t you sleep in one of the girls’ rooms tonight?” she says. “I don’t want to be in the same bed with someone who hates me and wants me dead.” “You’re being silly and a touch melodramatic, Gwen. I never in my life said or thought such a thing. I’m here to help you. I’d never say what you’re accusing me of because I’d never feel it even in my worst anger to you, which, by the way, I was to you a little before—angry—but nowhere near to the extent you said.” “Do what you want, then. But don’t try to touch me, and sleep as far from me as you can.” “Without falling off the bed, you mean. —Okay, no time for jokes. Anyway, now you’re really being punitive, keeping me from doing what I love most, snuggling up and holding you from behind in bed. But okay. Goodnight.” Doesn’t say anything or look at him. He gets on his back and thinks What the hell does he do now? Stupid idiot. If he had to say it, to get out some anger, why so loud? Now she’ll be like this for a couple of days no matter how much he apologizes. She heard. He only made it worse by trying to make her think she didn’t. Of course he doesn’t want her to die. She can’t believe he does. “Maybe I should sleep in one of the other rooms,” he says. “I want to do what you want. I don’t want my sleeping near you to make you feel even worse.” Waits for a response. None. “You asleep or just ignoring me?” Nothing. “Say something, will ya? You’re not giving me a chance. Isn’t it possible—isn’t it—that you might’ve misheard? —Listen, if you don’t say anything I’m going to assume you’re asleep and my presence here is no longer bothering you.” Just her breathing. She might be asleep. Good sign, if she is, that she wasn’t so disturbed by what he said that it kept her up. “I’d love for you to say, though I know you’re not going to, that you’re so unhappy, and not necessarily because of what you think I said, that you want me to hold you. And it’s not, you understand, that I want you to be unhappy just so I can hold and console you, by…okay. I better drop it. I’m getting myself in deeper, I think. I just have to hope I didn’t make you feel even lousier by what I just said. Put it down to my being dopey.” She hear him? By now he’s almost sure not. He yawns, thinks Good, he thought dozing off would be more difficult, shuts his eyes and is soon asleep. Wakes up about three hours later to turn her over on her other side, then around three hours later to the side she fell asleep on, then around two hours later on her back, which is what he does every night and at around the same time intervals, give or take an hour. From what he could make out in the dark, her eyes stayed shut all three times. It’s now six-thirty and he tries to sleep some more, can’t, dresses, does some stretching exercises in the living room, gets the newspapers from the driveway and reads one while he has coffee. Looks in on her at eight, just in case, although it’s early for her, she’s awake and wants to get up. She’s still sleeping on her back. Usually she snores a lot in that position, but he hasn’t heard any. He goes for a run—a short one, as he doesn’t like leaving her alone, asleep or awake, more than fifteen minutes—showers and shaves in the hallway bathroom, and a little after nine, right after he listens to the news headlines on the radio, he goes in to wake her, or else she might complain he let her sleep too long. What he doesn’t need, he thinks, is for her to get angry at him over something else, especially when she just might wake up feeling much better toward him. She’s surprised him a few times by doing that; mad as hell at him when she went to sleep and pleasant to him in the morning, where he didn’t think he even had to apologize to her for what he’d said the previous night. One of those times she even grabbed his penis in bed and pulled on it awhile without him having to ask her to. Then she got tired and stopped. “T
hat was so nice,” he said. “I wish you had continued and there was more of that, not that I’m not satisfied with what I got,” and kissed her—tongue in mouth, the works, and she kissing him that way also for about a minute. Then he put her hand back on his penis, but she said “I can’t. No feeling left in that hand anymore, and the other one’s useless.” Anyway, best behavior today, okay? From now on, all days. Even to the point of being oversolicitous to her, because he has to take care of her better and wants to convince her that his bad moments and irrational outbursts are behind him. He just has to make a stronger effort, and keep to it, to make sure they are. Now he doesn’t know if he should wake her. Eyes shut, face peaceful, covers the way he arranged them when he turned her onto her back: top of the top sheet folded evenly over the quilt. “Gwen? Gwen, it’s me, the terrible husband. Only kidding. It’s past nine o’clock. Not a lot past, but I thought you might want to get up. You usually do around this time. If you want to sleep or rest in bed another fifteen minutes or so—anything you want—that’s all right with me too. I’ve got about fifteen minutes of things to do in the kitchen and then I’ll come back. Gwen?” One eye flutters for a moment but otherwise she doesn’t move. She normally would by now after that amount of his talking. At least open her eyes to little slits and maybe mutter something or nod or shake her head. “Are you asleep or falling back to sleep? Does that mean you didn’t sleep that well last night, although you seemed to have. I turned you over four times at night, more times than I usually do, and you didn’t seem to have wakened once.” Doesn’t give any sign she heard him. “I’ll let you sleep, then, half-hour at the most, because we both have to get started sometime,” and leaves the room, but a few steps past the door, thinks “No, something’s wrong; she’s too still and unresponsive,” and goes back and says louder “Gwen? Gwen?” and nudges her and then shakes her shoulder, moves her head from side to side on the pillow, puts his ear to her nostrils and throat and chest and then parts her lips and listens there. Knew she was breathing but wanted to see if there were any strange sounds. None; she’s breathing quietly and her heartbeat seems regular. But it might be another stroke, he thinks. This is how it was the second time; came into the room, couldn’t wake her up. Pulls her legs, pinches her cheeks and forearm, pushes back her fingers and toes, says “Gwen. Gwendolyn. Sweetheart. You have to get up.” Calls 911 and says he thinks his wife has had her third stoke. “Anyway, she isn’t responding.” While he waits for them to come, he kneels beside the bed and holds her hand and stares at her, hoping to see some reaction, then stands and puts his cheek to hers and says “I never meant any harm to you last night, I never did. I blew my top, but it was only out of frustration, all the work I do, one thing after the other, so exhaustion too. But I was such a fool. Please wake up, my darling, please,” and kisses her cheeks and then her eyelids and lips. They’re warm. That could be good. Straightens up, holds her hand and looks at her and thinks wouldn’t it be wonderful if her eyes popped open, or just slowly opened, but more to slits, and she smiled at him and said “I don’t hold anything against you. And I’m sorry if I frightened you. I was very tired and couldn’t even find the energy to open my eyes and speak,” and he said “I was so worried. I thought you had another stroke. I called 911. I’m not going to call them off. I want them to check you over, make sure you’re okay. That is, if you don’t mind. Oh, God, how could I have acted the way I did to you last night.” “Don’t again,” he’d hope she’d say. The emergency medical people ring the doorbell and he lets them in. He leads them to the back, tries to stay out of their way, thinks he didn’t hear a siren before they came. Maybe the absence of one’s a good sign too. By what he said on the phone, they didn’t think it that serious. No, there must be another reason for no siren. That there was one but they turned it off when they got to his quiet street because they no longer needed it. They work on her for about ten minutes, say she’s in a coma and they’re taking her to Emergency. He says “I’ll go with you, if it’s all right. If not, I’ll follow.” He thinks, as they wheel her out on a gurney, that if she dies he’ll never tell anyone what he said to her last night. That he took out of her whatever it was that was keeping her going. That he killed her, really. He holds her hand in the ambulance taking them to the hospital and says to the paramedic sitting next to him “If she doesn’t come out of this, then I killed her by telling her last night, when she was awake in bed, that she’d become too much for me and I hoped she’d die.” The woman says “Don’t worry, that wouldn’t do it, and she’s going to be just fine.” “You think so?” and she says “Sure; I’ve been at this a long time.” “She’s suffered another major stroke,” a doctor tells him in the hospital, “and because of her already weakened condition, I have to warn you—” and he says “Her chances of surviving are only so-so,” and the doctor says “Around there.” He calls his daughters, stays the night in the visitor’s lounge. She’s in a shared room in ICU and they won’t let him be with her after eleven o’clock. “Even for a minute?” and the head nurse says “I’m sure she wants you there. It’s the other patient who might be disturbed by your back-and-forths.” Next afternoon he’s feeling nauseated because he hasn’t eaten anything since he got to the hospital, and says to his daughters “I gotta get something in my stomach; I’m starving. I’ll be right back.” He runs to the elevator, gets off it and runs to the cafeteria, gets a sandwich, unwraps it and wolfs half of it down while waiting on line to pay for it, thinks maybe he should get a coffee too, he’s tired, and goes over to the urns, thinks no, he hasn’t time and he’ll have to walk slowly with it or it’ll spill, and runs back to the ICU with the rest of the sandwich, hurrying down the stairs instead of taking the elevator. His daughters are standing outside her room and the younger one says—the older one bursts out crying—“Daddy, Mommy died.” “Oh, this goddamn fucking sandwich,” he says, and throws it down the hall, and says “What am I doing? Why am I such a jerk?” and goes after it and picks up all the pieces and the plastic wrap the sandwich was in and looks around for a trash can, doesn’t see one in the hall, goes into the men’s room a few feet away and dumps everything in the can there. He washes his hands and goes back to his daughters, both are crying now, and says “I’m sorry, for everything,” and hugs the younger one from behind while she’s hugging her sister. When did she get so tall, he thinks, for he used to tower over her and they’re now about the same height? Two doctors come out of the room, or they seem like doctors to him, white lab coats, stethoscopes around their necks. One walks over to them and says “Mr. Samuels? Dr. Bender. Because of the shock of the news, I’m not sure how much of what Dr. Kahn and I said was absorbed by your daughters before, so I’d like to also provide you with a few details of your wife’s death and what efforts were made to try and save her,” and he says “They’re smart, they understand everything, much better than me, so they’ll fill me in. Thank you for all your efforts,” and the doctor says “Our condolences, then, in your deep sorrow,” and goes down the hall with the other doctor, reading something on a clipboard he’s holding. “I don’t want to know,” he tells his daughters, “and I’d forget whatever he said. She died of a stroke; they said her chances were slim; she was very weak to begin with; that’s all that’s important.” “Maybe someday,” Maureen, his younger daughter says, and he says “No, no day; never tell me. And I’m sure I’d immediately forget what you said too. Don’t ask me why—I don’t know myself—but I’m inured, and always have been, to those kind of facts and terminology, so you needn’t bother.” Just then a nurse comes over and says “Your wife and mother’s to be moved to a private room so you all can be alone with her,” and he says “My wife and mother?” and Rosalind, his older daughter, says “Daddy.” “No, I really didn’t know,” he says. “Excuse me.” Soon after, a body’s wheeled out of the room and past them, completely covered by sheets. “That her?” he says to the nurse steering the gurney, and she nods. They follow the gurney to a single room at the end of the hall. The two nur
ses and aide who brought her into the room stay there, door shut, for about fifteen minutes, probably to clean her up, brush her hair, put a fresh hospital gown on her, make her look better than she did when she died, he thinks. Or maybe they did all that in the other room. If they brushed her hair, what brush did they use, since she didn’t come in with one. He’d like to have that brush. He’d put it in his dresser drawer, the top one, where he keeps his socks and handkerchiefs and underwear. Stick it in a ziplock bag first. Take it out every now and then, touch the hairs still there, maybe smell the bristles. The nurses and aide come out, the aide pulling the gurney behind him, and they go in and he shuts the door. People can still see inside through the large window in the door, but it’ll be quieter this way. Rosalind’s holding his hand—when did she take it? He thinks—and he says “My sweetheart, no slight, but let’s do this individually,” and slips his hand from hers and then thinks What did he mean? And she could have only been holding his hand to help him. Did he hurt her? He doesn’t want to look at her and see if he did, and it’d be too confusing to her if he now took her hand. He’ll try to explain it later to her. He looks around the room, out the window to the trees across the road, at the television set on a platform suspended from the ceiling, at a poster across from her bed showing the sequence of smiling and frowning and grimacing faces of pain, then at Gwen. She’s on her back on a regular hospital bed, sheet folded over her shoulders the way he did the covers yesterday morning after he got her on her back, her head on a pillow. She looks like a corpse, he thinks. The bedrail closest to the door is raised all the way, the other’s down. Must be for a reason, other than the nurses and aide forgetting, why both rails aren’t one way or the other. But what’s he thinking about that for? His daughters kiss her forehead and say things to her he can’t hear. He goes around to the other side of the bed so they all won’t be crowded at one side and looks at her and says “This is so, so…something. It’s hard to see her like this,” he says, without looking up at his daughters, “Not only my eyes, because of the water, but just hard, difficult to take. One day she’s alive—not well, but wide awake and talking and even for a few minutes, cheerful. I forget what it was. Some joke I made. I wish I could remember it. And the next day, or day after the next—I’m losing track—she’s like this, dead. I’ve had enough. I’ve said goodbye. That’s what they shooed us in here for, right? Said it yesterday. I knew she was going to die. No clear-cut reason. There was a change in her. And it’s not that she was suddenly dramatically worse. I just had a feeling. Okay, I’ll kiss her forehead.” He kisses it, looks at his daughters and says “Please permit me; I can’t do this anymore. I’m also confused. I’ve never felt worse,” and leaves the room and shuts the door and cries outside it. Hands over his eyes, deep sobs, for a minute, even less, and then wipes his face with his handkerchief, swallows hard because his throat aches and neck feels tight, and waits for his daughters. He looks down at the floor. If he had a book with him, one he was interested in, he’d read it, but he didn’t take one when he left the house. Maybe the first time in fifty years he left the house without a book he was reading or planned to start. Oh, there had to be other times, and he’s not talking about activities like jogging or grocery shopping, but even there he usually has a book with him in case he has to wait on a long checkout line. And he didn’t take one when she was rushed to the hospital after her second stroke. Like this time, he just never thought of it, or he thought it the wrong thing to do, looking for a book for later on while the emergency medical team was working on her. But he even had one at his parents’ funerals. Maybe even two if he was near the end of one, but books small enough to fit into his jacket pockets. Would he really read now? Well, he thinks he would. He hates hanging around with nothing to do and looking up and seeing people looking at him. Some of the patients and their visitors and most of the staff on the floor must know his wife just died. “Please,” he says to himself, “nobody come over and say how sorry you are for my loss.” His daughters come out ten minutes after he did. Ten, fifteen: about. “You kids okay?” he says, and Rosalind hunches her shoulders, Maureen shakes her head, both are wiping their eyes. “But you’re done now?” and Rosalind nods. “I really had a stupid thought while waiting for you. I wanted to have a book to read to pass the time.” “I apologize we took so long,” Rosalind says. “No, it’s not that; please don’t think it. It was just, I’m saying, such an odd thought to have so soon after Mommy died. Where’d it come from? I don’t know. I even thought of the book I wanted to read and why. Of course I never thought of taking it when I left in the ambulance with her. The biography of a writer I like. I’d go right to the pages—my favorite part in all biographies of writers—where we’re approximately the same age, if the writer’s lived as long as I have at the time I’m reading the book, and if he hasn’t, then to the last years of his life. I like to see how he conducted himself then and where he was in his work and getting it published and the reception to it or if he stopped writing for a while after so many years at it or just gave up. Or, like Melville, switched mostly to poetry, although he did write that last short novel that was found after he died—I can’t remember the title. My mind’s a blank. I know it rhymes with mud.” “You’re being facetious,” Rosalind says; “trying to cheer us up.” “No, I’m serious; I wouldn’t say anything light now. And the writer I wanted to read about lived well into his eighties. Parkinson’s. Died of pneumonia. Anyway, crazy, those thoughts at such a bad time, huh?” and Rosalind says “I don’t think so. I’ve had some weird ones today too.” “Same with me,” Maureen says. “Thanks,” he says. “That reassures me, for you girls are anything but…well, something. You’re commonsensible and sane. I guess we should tell them we’re done with the room. We’ll all go?” They head for the nurse’s station, but a man comes up to them and says “Mr. Samuels? And I assume these are your daughters,” and gives his name and says he’s an administrator for the hospital. “And of course my condolences for your terrible loss, and from the entire hospital,” and his daughters thank him. “I know it’s so soon after, but we have to think about what you want done with Mrs. Samuels’ body. Do you have a funeral home to contact? If you don’t we can provide you with a list of reputable ones: nondenominational, religious, whatever you prefer.” “Not necessary,” he says. “She specifically asked me, though I’ve no documents to prove it—not that I’d think I’d need them—that she be given to science,” when she’d told him a couple of times the last two years that if she dies before him, and it’s almost certain she will, she said, she wants to be cremated and a box of her ashes buried in their garden under the star magnolia tree where the boxes of her parents are. “No monument; no marker; just that,” she said. “If you can’t or won’t do it, ask the girls to.” Rosalind says “Didn’t Mommy want to be cremated? That’s what she told me. And her ashes buried near the ashes of Grandma Gita and Grandpa under…what’s that white-flowering tree in the garden by the circular driveway called?” “Star magnolia?” he says. “That’s it. The flowers come up early and sometimes stay around for only a week. But that’s what she told me. I quickly cut her off and changed the subject because I didn’t want to think of her dead and her ashes and all that, but I remember.” “Did she say that to you too?” he asks Maureen. “It seems familiar,” she says, “but I can’t say for sure.” “It’s something you don’t forget,” Rosalind says, and Maureen says “I think it was you who told me she said it.” “When did Mommy say this to you?” he says to Rosalind, and she says “A while back. I believe it was right after her first stroke. She was feeling very vulnerable then and she also said she didn’t think she’d live that long, another thing I didn’t want to hear. Poor Mommy.” “She was wrong, though, wasn’t she? She didn’t live long enough, that’s for sure, and ‘poor Mommy’ is right, but she lasted much longer than she thought she would and her last two years weren’t entirely morbid and empty. In fact, we had plenty of good times together. Anyway, that’s what I meant when I a
sked when did she say that. She might have expressed an interest in being cremated at one time. But the last year or so she told me numerous times—I don’t know why so many, for it wasn’t as if I wasn’t going to do what she said—that she wanted her body, for whatever good it’ll do organ recipients and research scientists, and she was dubious it’d do any good to either, donated to science.” “So,” the man says, “unless there’s any disagreement on this, I think your father should have the last word. But we have to move fast. Several of her organs need to be removed within hours and frozen or put on ice or they can’t effectively be transplanted.” “Okay with you girls?” he says, and Maureen says “If that’s what Mommy said she wanted, it’s all right with me,” and Rosalind says “I have a bit of a problem with there being nothing left of her to cremate and bury, which means nothing in the garden for me to go to when I want to be close to her like that, but I’ll go along with the two of you.” “We could arrange something to be picked up by a funeral home and delivered to a crematory,” the man says, and he says “Let’s leave it as it is. It’s sort of against what she wanted—which was, all of her donated—and it also sounds too gruesome. I wouldn’t be able to get it out of my head, knowing the ashes of a cut-up part of her were down there. I’m sorry, girls, if I’m being too graphic here, but that’s how I feel.” He goes with the man to an office to sign release papers. Leaving the office, he thinks Should he go back to the room and see her alone a last time? No, they’ve probably wheeled her away by now and he’ll never be able to find her, and the kids are waiting. Now she’s really gone, he thinks when he leaves the hospital with his daughters. “What do we do now?” Maureen says; she’s holding on to Rosalind’s arm as if if she didn’t, she’d fall. “Are you okay?” he says, and she says “I’ll live.” “Are you angry at me for some reason?” and she says “Why would I be angry at you?” “Just, your tone. I was mistaken. Well, as awful as this might sound to you both, we still have to eat. I know I’m so hungry I feel sick again. We’ll go to a quiet restaurant, if we can find one, and talk about Mommy and what a horrible two days it’s been, or just not say anything.” Rosalind says “It was all so cut-and-dried—whatever that dumb expression is…settled, final, so soon after she died, in like two hours. And now there’s no more of her, or will be, and she’s gone forever, and it upsets me. I couldn’t eat.” “I was thinking the same thing about the swiftness of it,” he says, “but what could we do? That’s how hospitals operate. Let’s go home, then, and find something, or I’ll get some prepared foods for us at Graul’s and whoever wants to eat with me, can. But I know I need to be with you girls today and I’d think you’d want to be with me.” “We do,” Rosalind says, “and I might have something.” Lying, lying, that’s all he can do and what he’s best at, he thinks, driving them home. He should have done what Gwen wanted, but couldn’t. He’d look out at the garden or walk along the driveway and see the spot her ashes were put and think of what he yelled out about her that night and how sad and demoralized she must have felt and what her face must have looked like hearing it. All because he couldn’t keep his big stupid mouth shut. She’d be alive now if he had, he’s almost sure of it. “Anyway,” he thinks, “I’ll never be sure if what I said didn’t kill her.” His daughters want to have a memorial for her, invite relatives and friends here and in New York. “It’s too much to ask of people,” he says to Rosalind on the phone, “to come that far, if they’re in New York. And if we don’t invite them and they get wind of the memorial, they’ll feel left out.” “We’ll leave it up to them,” she says, “but her friends and some of her former colleagues in Baltimore will want to come.” “Besides, Mommy didn’t want a memorial, funeral, anything like that.” “She said so?” and he says “Not recently, but one time. The subject of cremation came up, but not depressingly. This was, of course, long before she said she wanted to be donated to science—maybe even before her first stroke. I joked ‘Dump my ashes into a storm drain during a heavy storm, or down a toilet and then keep flushing till they’re all gone.’ And she said something like ‘Mine you can scatter around the garden as fertilizer, but first find out if it’s good or bad for the plants. If it’s bad,’ she said, ‘then just leave the ashes at the crematorium for them to throw out.’” “She said that? It doesn’t sound like her.” “I said she said something like it. I forget her exact words, but the ones I used were close, or at least the idea of what she said is there.” “Probably like you, she was joking. Mommy could be very funny.” “Nope, she was serious but only might have said it in a jocular way. I remember then saying something to her like ‘Really, what do you want done with your ashes if it ever has to come to that?’ and she said ‘Just what I said.’ Strange conversation to have but we had it.” “Okay, but we’re not talking about a funeral or burial, Daddy, or what she wanted done with her body after she died—we covered all that when we left her at the hospital. What Maureen and I want is a memorial for her, something simple and tasteful where people speak about her and perhaps Maureen and I can read some of her poems, and then refreshments after at the house, if that’s all right with you.” “You didn’t let me finish,” he says. “Or let’s say, I wasn’t finished. After your mother said that about her ashes, or her cremains, I think they call them, she said she also wouldn’t want there to be any kind of memorial for her either. ‘Nothing programmed or ritualistic,’ she said, ‘where people have to come together over me. If they want to do that,’ she said, ‘they can do it in a natural and less formal setting and where their feelings and thoughts about me come out spontaneously.’ Those were almost her exact words—maybe exactly what she said. No, that would be impossible. But I remember saying ‘I don’t know why you’re asking me this. Because I’m so many years older than you and don’t take as good a care of myself as you’—so this would have to have been before her first stroke—‘I’m sure to be the first one to go, much as I’d hate,’ I said, ‘leaving you and the kids.’ Then, like you, sweetie, I said ‘Let’s stop talking about this. It’s too damn depressing and macabre!’” “Maureen and I sort of anticipated how you’d take to the memorial idea,” she says, “so we’ve already decided to have one, with or without you. I’m sorry, Daddy.” “It’ll have to be without me, then. I love you girls and respect what you’re doing and see the value in it for you and everybody who’d want to attend, but I don’t want to go against your mother’s wishes and what she specifically asked me not to do.” “Then we’ll rent out a private room in a restaurant for the memorial and refreshments, which could be done informally,” and he says “No, that’ll be too expensive. Hiring out a room in a restaurant? Hiring out any place. And the high cost of restaurant food and booze, for they won’t let you cater it from the outside or bring in your own food and beverages. Okay, I’ll come and you can use the house and I’ll pay for all the food and such if you take care of cleaning up after. Nah, I’ll use Dolores, the woman who cleans the house every other week; I’m sure she’ll be free on a weekend. You just arrange the memorial and buy all the stuff you need and tell me what it costs and then see to your guests. One thing, though: don’t expect me to say anything at it, please.” While a few of Gwen’s friends reminisce good-humoredly about her at the memorial in his living room and his daughters talk about her and read some of her shorter poems, he remembers how terribly he treated her, not just that last night with what he shouted out, but for months, maybe a year, before she died. At the table, when she dropped a fork with food on it and then her spoon, he said “Can’t you hold a simple eating utensil anymore? Look at all the crap you spilled on the table and floor, and on your clothes,” and he slapped some food off her lap. “I can’t keep getting on my knees and cleaning up after you.” “I’m sorry, I can’t help it,” she said. “My hands aren’t working.” “Well, get them to work,” and she said “Wouldn’t I love to.” “So what does that mean, I have to feed you from now on?” and she said “For the time being, I’m afraid you’ll have to if you don’t want to keep cleaning up
the mess I’ve made.” “But I do enough. This, that and the other thing, and then something else. You’ve got me coming and going all day. But I especially don’t want to get into the habit of feeding you because you’ve given up and expect me to do everything for you and you don’t concentrate on doing the easier little things like sticking your fork into a piece of sliced-up meat or even signing you name. Concentrate harder and you’ll be able to control your hands better,” and she said “That’s ridiculous, contrary to everything you know about my condition. All right, I won’t eat,” and she pushed her plate away. He said “Forget it; you always win. Have I said this before? Even if I have a dozen times, I’ll say it again: ‘The tyranny of the sick.’ Here, let me help you,” and he got some spinach and chicken salad on a tablespoon and shoved it into her mouth. She said “Too hard; you hurt me, and you’ll break my teeth,” and he said “Sorry, didn’t mean to,” and fed her that meal and most of the ones after that, and from then on usually had to stick her pills into her mouth and hold her special large-handled plastic mug to her lips so she could drink them down or just when she wanted something to drink. “Uh-oh,” she said another time, and he looked up from the newspaper he was reading and saw she’d torn the temples off the eyeglasses she was trying to put on. “God, nothing’s safe in your hands,” he said. “Now I have to take you to the eyeglass place for new frames, and also the goddamn expense. Why didn’t you break the lenses while you were at it?” and she said “I tried but it was too hard,” and smiled. “Big fucking joke,” he said, “big fucking joke,” when he knew he should just smile back to make her feel better, and she said “You used to have such a good sense of humor. It helped us both in situations like this. I even remember my mother saying ‘You married a real funny guy,’ and that my own sense of humor had improved since knowing you. What happened? Where’d it go?” and he said “I don’t find much that’s funny anymore when it entails more work for me and time. Let’s get the damn frame business over with, what do you say? If we leave in a few minutes, we can be there before six, when I think the place closes.” “Good, because I’m lost without my glasses. But there are some preparations we have to do before I’m ready.” “Preparations, always more preparations. Always more work; always more for me to do, till I have no time for myself. And these chores are never when the caregiver’s here, or hardly ever.” “That’s not true,” and he said “Yes, it is. It’s almost as if you plan it that way so I can work my ass off for you. Oh, how did I get myself into this?” and she said “If you stop complaining and help me, we can be ready in half an hour and we’d make it in time. Though maybe you should call the place first. It could be a late night for them and we wouldn’t have to rush and you to get all upset.” “I don’t want to call. I don’t want to do anything. What I want is for you to stop making me do all these things.” And she said “I’ll try but there’s no guarantee. In fact, the opposite might be the case.” “What’s that supposed to mean? Not only your coordination and dexterity, but get your head under control too.” She shut her eyes, turned the wheelchair around and wheeled herself out of the room. “You can wheel yourself okay, when most times you say you can’t, so why you telling me you’re having such a tough time with your hands?” How could he have acted like that? How could he have? Getting her dressed—something like this happened a number of times—he’d say something like—she’d be in her wheelchair or on the commode—“Try to get your arm through the sleeve,” and she’d say “I can’t; it’s stuck inside.” And he’d say “Damn, can’t you help me even a little with this?” and pull her hand hard at the other end of the sleeve and she’d wince from the pain and say “What are you trying to do, wrench my arm off? Go easy, will you?” Or he’d put her shirt over her head and jerk her head or neck forward so he could get the shirt all the way down in back, and she’d say “Don’t pull me so hard; I’m in enough pain without you straining my neck.” He’d say, he almost always said, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to,” when he knew sometimes he did because of something she’d said to him before or because he wanted to get these chores over with so he could get to or go back to his work. She’d yell from their bathroom—this also happened a number of times—“Martin, can you come here, please?” He’d usually yell back “Give me a few minutes; I’m right in the middle of something,” and she’d usually say “I need you right away; please.” He remembers one time going to the back, telling himself “What the fuck is wrong now? Always something,” and seeing her plastic mug on the bathroom floor and juice or tea around it and her dress wet in front. “It fell out of my hands while I was drinking from it,” she said. “I think you’ll have to change my dress.” “One thing at a time,” he said. “First the floor, then you, or else my feet will get wet from your mess and track up the bedroom carpet when I walk on it.” He took a towel off the shower rod and she said “Don’t use a clean towel.” He said “It’s not clean; you used it yesterday,” and she said “Then a ‘good’ towel. Use paper towels or a rag.” “I’ll use what I want to; I want to get this over with. What the hell you think we have a washing machine for?” and she said “Please hurry, then, and take care of me. I’m getting cold I got myself so wet.” “Want to know something? It’s what you deserve for being so clumsy.” He thinks: “Did I really say that? I said it.” “It’s what you deserve for being so clumsy. Maybe next time you’ll be more careful, though I’m not counting on it.” And he wiped up the juice or tea on the floor, went into the kitchen with the towel and put it in the washer, came back and got her dress off and said “Let me get rid of this.” “Is that what you did with the dirty towel? I’m cold. Get a dress on me first and then deal with the wash. You’re only trying to punish me for the mess I made,” and he said “I’m not. I don’t know where to put the wet things.” “In the sink here.” He put the wet dress in the sink and got a clean dress on her, pulling her head forward to get it through the neck hole and tugging the dress down in back too hard and tearing it a little. “That was smart,” she said. “How many dresses of mine do you want to ruin?” and he said “I’m sorry. It was an accident.” He didn’t act like that all the time, he thinks. Most of the time he wasn’t rough and did what she asked without complaining, or not out loud. “Martin will you help me, please?” she said another time. He was working in the dining room and said “Damn, ‘Will you help me, will you help me, will you help me?’ I help you all the time. All right; coming.” And he went into her study—he didn’t think he said any of that loud enough for her to hear, except the “All right, coming,” and said “So what’s wrong?” She was using her computer’s voice-recognition system and said “My computer froze. Could you press the reset button, please?” and he said “Sure,” and did it, and she said, “Thanks. A kiss, a kiss,” and he pulled her chair back and moved the microphone away from her mouth and kissed her and then wheeled her back in front of the computer. He left the room and thought her computer’s just going to freeze again and she’s going to ask him to reset it and this is what happens five to ten times a day when she’s using it. “Get a new computer,” he should tell her, “or stop using them.” But this is the way he should treat all her requests: don’t argue or look like he’s cross or say he hasn’t time. Do it quickly and without protest or sarcasm so she doesn’t feel she’s a burden on him. Remember that next time. Another time, she was in the wheelchair and said “Can you change me, please?” he said “You always need changing. Do you realize what it entails?” “Of course I do. It’s a lot of work and I wish you didn’t have to do it, but it needs to be done.” “It entails getting you on the commode, taking your pad off without hurting your crotch, maybe cleaning the piss off the floor that leaked out of the pad before I could get it into the trash can, waiting around for about five minutes till you’re done peeing and sometimes a lot longer, putting a new pad down on the wheelchair if the towel on the cushion isn’t wet. If it is, changing the towel, and if you’ve soaked through the towel and the cushion cover’s really wet, getting a clean c
ushion and putting the soiled cover into the washer. Then lifting you onto the new pad and getting it to fit around you and you set up in the chair. I forgot that I also have to take the legs off the chair before I get you on the commode, and after you’re back in the chair, putting the legs back on and also your slippers, sandals or shoes, which, in all the hoisting and moving and setting you down, usually fall off.” “Good, now I know,” she said. “But no matter how much time and effort it takes you, why can’t you help me without always trying to make me feel I’ve done something wrong?” “I do that? Always? Sorry. Okay, let’s just get the darn thing done with. But, boy, you’re really an expert at making me stop whatever I’m doing to attend to you and then making me feel guilty.” The time he was transferring her from the commode to the wheelchair and the commode’s front wheels weren’t braked, which was his fault—it was his job to brake them—and one of them rolled over his foot and gashed the big toe. “Goddamnit,” he yelled, “your stupid fucking commode.” Yelling in front of strangers in an apartment building lobby when he couldn’t fit the wheelchair she was in through the elevator door: “Why is there always a hassle with you?” Yelling and slapping the back of her wheelchair’s headrest when their van’s electronically controlled ramp wouldn’t lower. Brushing her hair too hard a number of times when he was angry at her or because of something else. A couple of times she didn’t give any indication he was hurting her or tell him to stop brushing so hard, and after he tied the hairband around her ponytail and turned the commode around so he could transfer her to the wheelchair, saw she’d been crying. All of those really happen? Something like he remembered, and some very close to what happened and even a little worse, and there were a lot more. “Dad,” Rosalind says at the end of the memorial, “are you sure you don’t want to say something?” “No, everything seems to have been covered, and more eloquently than I ever could, so I’ve nothing to add. Besides, I’m a little overcome by what you and your sister and so many of the guests here have recounted about your mother, that I doubt I could say anything even if I wanted to. Thank you all for coming,” he says without turning around to the fairly large group of people behind him; he only looked at Rosalind standing in front and who ran the memorial. “Now I think we should all have something to eat and drink, don’t you, sweetheart?” “If no one else has anything to share with us about Mommy,” she says, “sure.” No one does, so she says “Then Maureen and I also thank you for coming to our mother’s memorial and we now hope you’ll help yourselves to refreshments in the dining room.” He has a glass of wine, talks briefly to a few people, mostly thanking them for coming. To one couple he says “It meant a lot to my daughters that you were here.” Then he thinks Maybe that was the wrong thing to say and the wrong tense to use. Is it “were”? Is it “are”? And “means” instead of “meant”? Maybe, he thinks, he should get out of here before he says something even worse. And save the drinking for when everyone’s gone, and he puts the glass down and says “I meant, of course, I’m very glad you came too. Just, you know, the day’s confused me, and I also haven’t been in the greatest shape since my Gwen died. ‘My Gwen.’ I never before referred to her that way. But not to worry, though, not to worry—I didn’t say it for that. For you to worry. I meant about my not being in the greatest shape. But you knew what I meant.” “Oh, God,” he thinks, “I’m losing it. Who knows what I’ll say next. I knew I shouldn’t be here. But then how would it have looked? I should have let them have it in a restaurant, paid for it all there too—room, booze, food, whatever it cost. Then they could have said “My father’s not feeling well and couldn’t be here.” But then people would be worried. “Are you all right?” the woman of this couple says. “Oh, yeah. Excuse me, I have to speak to my daughters about something important. It’s been nice talking to you. Again, thanks for coming.” And he goes over to his daughters, pulls them aside and says he’s become exhausted by it all, physically and emotionally, and if they don’t mind, he’s going to rest. “You can hold down the fort. I was never very good at it. Socializing? Not my forte. That was unplanned. I’m not making jokes today. Haven’t found anything funny in a while, really, and who knows when I’ll next say something funny. I’m all confused. That’s what I was just telling whatever-their-names-are.” “The Smits?” Maureen says. “Do I know them?” “She was a colleague of Mom’s—also French lit, but the century before—and I remember they once came here for dinner, so you’ve probably been to their house too.” “Oy, I’m really in a pickle. Don’t even know people I know. I hope I didn’t give it away when I spoke to them. All confused. And if I had pronounced ‘forte’ the way some people do incorrectly—the musical version—I wouldn’t be standing here like a schmo commenting about it. You know, the fort line. But tell everyone to stay as long as they want and that they won’t be disturbing me, if they ask. Incidentally, this was very nice—cathartic, in a way—and I’m glad you had it. See? Next time I say not to do something, also don’t listen to me. Oh, gosh, that almost sounded like a joke. I suppose I’m trying to sound lighthearted so you don’t worry about me. Don’t. I’m okay.” “You sure you are?” Maureen says. “Anything we can do for you?” “No. Hold down the fort. Keep things going as they are. It’s great.” His daughters look at each other. They think something’s wrong with him, he thinks. Okay. “You both look mystified. Don’t be. I swear, I’m all right. I know how to take care of myself, believe me. I took care of your mom. Now I’m going to take care of myself. I’m going to retire at the end of this academic year—I’ve recently decided this—and rest, read, work out more, maybe travel. No, I could never travel alone. Did it as a college student and then later in my late twenties when I went by bus and train through France, and was always so lonely. Just what I need right now, right? Though maybe to the shore one day to sit on a rock and look at the ocean or to some state park where there’s a mountain to look out at, but that should do it. But why am I making these stupid plans? It’s too early. It’s all come so fast. I don’t mean Mommy’s illness, but just two weeks since she passed away.” “It’s been more than a month, Daddy,” Rosalind says. “A month, then. Really. I can hardly believe it. Went by so fast when you’d think it’d be achingly slow. What was I doing the last month, that I didn’t notice? Walking around in a fog, sleeping a great deal, listening to a lot of lugubrious Bach, no doubt drinking more than usual and dozing off from it. That’ll kill time. I’m not sure I’m using that expression right. And gardening, seeing to your mother’s garden, something I didn’t like doing when she was well, but got into the groove once it was obvious she couldn’t do it herself. Making it nice and neat the way she instructed me to, as if I could still wheel her around outside so she could admire her garden and fruit trees. I can’t tell you how sad it made me to push her wheelchair from behind and only see the back of her head but sense her smile. Though here I am telling you. I’m making you sad, aren’t I?” and Rosalind says “No, you can tell us anything. It’s good you get it out.” “Is that what I’m doing? I’ll probably let the garden go, though. I don’t see myself continuing at the same pace, and I’ve no desire to keep it in the same condition as a monument to her. No monuments. I’ll snip here, there; that’s all, so it doesn’t entirely grow over and the property loses value. Maybe sell the house if you girls don’t want to assume ownership of it, and give you most of the money from it minus the capital-gains taxes, or whatever they’re called.” “If you retire,” Maureen says, “you’ll need all the money you can to live on, and where would you move to? I’d hope back to New York so we could see you more. But don’t make any important decisions for at least a year, I’ve been told to tell you.” “Who told you?” “People. Guests here.” “How come they didn’t tell me? Anyway, we’ll see. As for retirement, I should’ve done it sooner so I could’ve helped out your mother more. And I don’t need much—in fact, I like living on a little—and your mother made me promise to be generous with you girls. I’ve my retirement income and Social Security benefits an
d your mother and I have some savings and investments, which I’ll split in half with you or just take a third, and I seem to make a little each year off my writing, and the house is paid off. There’s also your mother’s retirement money, not much but which you kids will get all of. Maybe I’ll buy a small apartment somewhere, although I’m afraid, much as I’d love to see you more, not in New York. I was born and grew up there and went to school, college, my earliest jobs there—and then back to it for twelve more years; did everything there. Met your mother and lived with her in her apartment for a while, before we married there. We conceived you kids there, and then with Rosalind moved down here, though kept our apartment there for years, but that city now gives me the jitters. And I like the easiness of life here and no trouble in finding a parking spot and the tree and flower smells and sounds of the owl.” “What owl?” Rosalind says. “The neighborhood one out on a tree somewhere near, or else his hoots travel as if he is, which he does almost every night. Neither of you have heard him?” and they shake their heads. “You’re young; you’ve few regrets and done little that’s wrong, so you sleep soundly. Nah, that’s too pat. Your mother and I just happened to sleep badly the last two years, she worse than I. She used to nudge me in the dark—last time was about a week before her last stroke—and say ‘Do you hear the owl?’ She was so happy with it. I’d say ‘You woke me for that? Yes, I heard. Now try to sleep,’ and I’d get half an Ambien out of the container on the dresser and drop it into her mouth, only because she asked me to—I wasn’t drugging her so I could sleep—but it usually didn’t start working for a couple of hours. But I’m making plans again, aren’t I? And geese. You don’t get geese flying north or south overhead, depending which season, and their collective honks. You and your people are right,” he says to Maureen; “too soon. And if I get a simple one-bedroom condo, I think is what I’m thinking about and which’d be all I could afford, no owl or geese and probably no flower and tree smells, either, so that’s out. I’ll come up with something. Just so long as you kids get a hefty share. I doubt I can stay here with all my memories of her in it. And that expression ‘passed away’—what I used before? Another one I never say. ‘Died’ is ‘died.” Not ‘she passed away, he did, they all passed away’ or ‘on.’ On what? I never understood that wording, or maybe just not today. You can understand why. But, excuse me, I’m going to nap. Make all the noise you want, it won’t disturb me. I’m that tired, and sleep’ll clear my spaghetti head.” “Spaghetti head?” Maureen says. “I don’t know,” he says, “it just came to me. Isn’t spaghetti disordered and mixed up and roils around in water before it’s cooked? But I’ll be all right—I can see by your faces you don’t think so. Really, I’m fine. Say my goodbyes and thank anyone who asks. I didn’t see any relatives, mine or your mother’s, but I’m sure some were here.” He kisses their cheeks, goes into the bedroom and bolts the door. “Sure we can’t help you with anything, Daddy?” was the last thing one of them said. When he’s not looking at them, he often can’t tell which one’s speaking. Especially on the phone: their voices are that much alike. He thinks that’s why they always identify themselves when they call, because he made the mistake so many times. “Hi, Daddy, it’s Rosalind” or “Maureen.” What an odd thing, he thinks, looking at it; bolt on a bedroom door. It was there when they bought the house and he never thought to take it off. The previous owners, or the original ones before them, probably feared burglars would break into the house after they’d gone to bed and get into the bedroom if the door wasn’t bolted. For that—he’s had similar thoughts, though would never have gone so far as to get a bolt or latch on the door—he has a thick stick the size of a baseball bat underneath his side of the bed, which has been there for about ten years. The cleaning lady, after she vacuums under the bed, always puts it back in the same place and has never said anything to him about it. Would he use it? He would. Imagined himself several times grabbing the stick, if he thought he heard burglars in the house, and sneaking into the hallway naked with it—if the kids were home, he’d quickly put on undershorts—and jumping out at them and smashing down on their heads and hands till they couldn’t get up and their hands couldn’t hold anything and then calling the police, or yelling for Gwen to. He also has a shorter stick in the van lying alongside the driver’s door, but only since the day after the Towers were hit. Gwen was in the back bathroom that morning, the radio on, when she yelled “Martin, come in here, something terrible’s happened; turn on the TV.” He only used the bolt when he and Gwen were about to make love or a little after they’d started and the kids were home and it was daytime and he didn’t want them barging into the room. It’d be awful if one of them found them coupled, or worse. Gwen never wanted him to use the bolt. Kids will try the door, she said, find it locked and imagine much weirder things going on in there than they are. “We just have to make sure they know to knock and wait for permission to enter before opening the door.” Sometimes he quietly bolted the door—well, he always did it quietly, so the kids wouldn’t hear it, but he’s talking about the times he didn’t want Gwen to know what he was up to—when he thought if she was still in bed or washing up in the john, that he could get her to make love. He could, about half those times, and a lot of times she said something like “I was hoping you’d ask,” though more often she said “I’m really too busy right now” or “not in the mood.” But if he wants to that much, she added a number of times, and doesn’t expect but the minimum of help and participation from her and can be reasonably quick, okay. Actually, once, Maureen, or was it Rosalind?—anyway, one of them, when she was around nine or ten, came in without warning them while he was underneath Gwen and had forgotten to use the bolt, and darted out of the room and slammed the door. He didn’t see or hear anything, not even the door slamming; Gwen did. She later spoke to their daughter, saying something like “About this morning, when you came into our room when Mommy and Daddy were in bed without any covers on them? What you happened upon accidentally is an altogether voluntary physical act that adult couples occasionally do. It’s natural and healthy and normal in a marriage, and I’m not going to give you a phony-baloney explanation as to what you saw, for that would only confuse you more.” Gwen said to him “She looked at me as if I were crazy, and said ‘What are you talking about, Mommy? I wasn’t in your room this morning, or all day, so I couldn’t have seen anything you say.’ I said ‘Okay, maybe I was mistaken. I was still pretty sleepy when I thought I saw you in there, so I could have dreamt up the whole thing,’ and let it go at that. Did I say the right thing at the end?” and he said “I guess so,” and she said “With that dreaming-up-the-whole-thing excuse, she’d know it was a lie and think I was now trying to cover up something that I did feel was bad. Listen, we have to impress upon them more forcefully that we don’t bolt doors in this house but also that no one in the family can come into anyone’s room like that either. If the door’s closed, knock; knock; everyone has to knock.” He lies on his side of the bed. The cat scratches the door. He knows what will happen if he opens it. Cat will swagger in, wait till he gets back on the bed, then jump onto it and first want his head petted and then snuggle up to him. For a few days after his brother died—after his mother too—the cat stayed by his side on the bed, which made him feel better or at least comforted him somewhat. Since Gwen died, cat’s stayed mostly on one or the other of the kids’ beds or on the rocker on the porch, when before he almost always spent the night on either side of the foot of their bed. Cat resumes scratching the door. Should he let him in? No, and just have to hope he won’t start whining, which will bring back the kids. “Not now, Sleek. Go away. I want to be alone.” Cat continues scratching. “I said gegen weg. Or whatever it is in German. But why am I speaking German to you? Just stop hounding me. ‘Hounding me.’ What a joke. Just go; vamoose. ‘Moose.’ Another unattended joke. That one also. Oh, God, I give up. Scratch all the hell you want.” Cat stops scratching and slumps to the floor against the door, where he’ll wait awhile for him
to open it and then go somewhere else in the house and come back sometime later and probably scratch or tap at the door again. Maybe he’s hungry and wants him to feed him. But he doesn’t get his dinner till five or six, and last time he looked there was plenty in both food bowls, as if the cat had barely touched what he’d laid out for him this morning. Or it might be he’s thirsty. But if his water dish was empty or turned over—one of the guests, getting something in the kitchen, might have stepped on or kicked it—he’d go to the other bathroom and spread himself out on the toilet seat, or if the seat was up, balance himself on the rim of the toilet bowl, and drink from that, if the last person to use the toilet had flushed it. And if it’s that he wants to go out, he’d go to the kitchen or porch and scratch either of those doors or make the mewling sound he only makes when he wants to relieve himself outside and which his daughters are familiar with, and one of them would open the door for him. But he’s quiet now, so maybe he’s already left the hallway or is sleeping by the door. He shuts his eyes. He tried a couple of times since Gwen died to rest or nap in the middle of the bed, place he thought would be the most comfortable. But he felt—it’s a large bed, queen-size—too far from the edge. He likes to be in reach of his night table, where there’s always a pen and pad and where his watch and glasses and handkerchief, or sheet of paper towel, usually are. Also the night table light. He doesn’t like to have to roll over or stretch for it to turn it on or off. He takes off his glasses, folds them up and puts them on the night table. He used to slip them into their case when he lay down for a nap or sleep, but lost it long ago. He’s been meaning to buy one next time he’s in a drugstore, but whenever he gets to one, he always forgets. He even stuck a note up on the refrigerator door: “Martin, you numskull: get eyeglasses case before you break your glasses again,” but the note fell off, or whatever happened to it, and disappeared a few months ago and he never replaced it. “Why are you so down on yourself?” Gwen said after she’d read the note. “You’re not a numskull.” Maybe she was the one who took it off, but she couldn’t have reached it from her wheelchair. She could have asked one of her caregivers to do it for her and not told him. Gwen’s glasses in their case are on a bookshelf in her study; he moved them there from her night table soon after she died so they’d be out of the bedroom and he wouldn’t have to see them every day, but he doesn’t want to take the glasses out just for the case. He thinks he’ll give the glasses away with most of her things the kids won’t want, like what’s left of her medical equipment and supplies and he doesn’t know what else—some of her books, especially the scholarly ones and all those, except the dictionaries, in Italian and French; hair dryer, package of razors never opened and another of emery boards, things like that; costume jewelry, clothes, unsealed bottle of perfume, and her computer and portable phone—to some organization like Purple Heart. Sure, Purple Heart, that’s the one they always called for a donation pickup if it didn’t call them first to say its truck would be in their area on such and such a date. His watch he never put on today, which is unusual for him, he thinks, and is still where he left it on the night table last night, and he has a handkerchief in his pants pocket. He takes it out, blows his nose into it, folds over the wet part, and drops it on top of the watch. And he once, maybe a week after Gwen died, tried sleeping on her side of the bed. He thought that because she was much lighter than he—about fifty pounds, and after her first stroke, sixty to sixty-five—the mattress might not have as much of a depression on her side as it does on his, but he found it uncomfortable, or some other word, lying there. Like the eyeglasses case: just because it had been her side and all that’s attached to that. He’ll probably never even take the glasses out of their case. Doesn’t want to see them again and picture them on her face. As for her side of the bed: making love with her there (they never seemed to do it on his side or in the middle of the bed or not after her first stroke); turning her over and changing or straightening her pad; massaging her shoulders when he got her on her stomach; exercising her legs and feet every morning and night when she was on her back, and catheterizing her periodically or whenever she couldn’t pee on her own and was risking getting a urinary tract infection. Leaning over her, after he got her set for sleep, and kissing her, if she wasn’t angry at him or hurt by something he said that day, and saying “Sleep well” or “Sweet dreams” and “Goodnight.” Then he’d kiss her and shut off her night table light. But all on her side of the bed, he’s saying. Though some of those—turning her over away from him to massage her shoulders or change the towel underneath her or straighten her pad—a little to the middle of the bed. Anyway, tried resting every which way that one time on her side of the bed, but nothing worked. They have the kind of mattress—but how does he say it now? He has the kind of mattress that isn’t supposed to be turned over. Though they were advised by the saleswoman when they bought it to turn it a hundred-eighty degrees around every three to four months so no one side of it gets unevenly depressed. He never did it because he either didn’t want to mess up the bed and have to remake it or he didn’t feel like doing it on the days he thought of it or Gwen asked him to do it or he felt he didn’t have the strength at that moment to move a big heavy mattress around by himself, and after they had the new mattress set for a year or so—which would be about nine months after her first stroke—because he didn’t want her lying in the depression his body had made. So he did do some nice unasked-for things for her now and then. Of course he did, several a day. Just, they were heavily outweighed by the many instances of his rage and other awful behavior to her since a little after she got sick, and which made her look at him sometimes as if she hated him. “What I do this time?” he’d say. “Whatever it is, I’m sorry.” She usually just kept looking at him. “All right, I know what I did,” he’d say. “You don’t have to look at me as if I’m the worst shit on earth, and I’ll try not to let it happen again.” “That’s what you always say,” she said a number of times. “Your words aren’t to be trusted anymore. It’d be absurd (ridiculous, idiotic) of me to believe you can change.” “Believe, believe, because the last thing I want is to hurt you,” and he tried to hug her a few of those times and she pushed him away or she let him but never hugged him back. He sometimes thought right after: She’ll get over it and he will try not to act like that again. He just has to work on it: see it coming and stop it fast. Do that a couple of times straight and he should have the problem licked. That time they bought the mattress set. A good day for them. They went together—she drove—tested several mattresses in the store: he did it quickly: on and off in about ten seconds and without lying back on the beds: he thought he’d look silly. She lay back on each mattress she tested, turned over on her side, then on her other side, then on her back with her arms out, shut her eyes, looked like she was sleeping, even made snoring sounds once as a joke, causing the saleswoman and him to laugh, and finally, with one mattress, said while lying on her back with her hands behind her head: “I like this one; firm but not hard, and within our price range. What about you?” And he said “You choose, because they all seemed the same to me.” “No, they’re each a little different: soft, firm, rock hard, so I want you to feel as good with the one we buy as I do. Try this one again, but this time lie on it,” and he said “I don’t have to; I know it’s good on your say-so. And I never have trouble sleeping on anything, soft, hard or lumpy, so if this is the mattress you want, let’s get the woman to write up a ticket and we’ll get out of here.” “You’re so easy to please,” and he said “Thank you. But you know me: I hate shopping for anything but food,” when he should have said “No, I can be a horror.” But he was much less of one then, right? It was her illness that did something to him and he got worse and worse. He became so goddamn…ah, it’s old news. He has to stop thinking about it. He has to stop thinking about it. After, they had lunch at a Mexican fast-food restaurant next door and then lattes and a biscotti between them—little bits of chocolate and walnut in it, his latte with skim milk, hers wi
th soy—at a coffee place in the same shopping center. Only drinks sold in the restaurant were sweetened iced tea and soda. “We ought to do this more often,” she said when they were back in the car, she at the wheel again, he reading a book in his lap, “Go out for lunch or just coffee, take a break from work at home.” “Deal,” he said, and went back to his book. Someone knocks on the door. “Yes?” he says, and one of his daughters says “It’s me, Daddy. Just seeing how you’re doing.” And he says “I’m fine, I’m fine, everything’s fine. I’m going to take a nap.” “I didn’t wake you from one, did I?” and he says—it’s Maureen, he’s almost sure—“No, I’ve just been resting. We’ll go out for dinner tonight after the house is cleaned up, okay?” and she says “Good, we have no plans. Would it be all right if we invite three of our friends along? I don’t know if you noticed, but they came to the memorial—drove down together from New York this morning—and I don’t think it’d be right to just leave them like that.” “Sure,” he says, “invite anyone you want, and our treat. Very nice of them to come so far for it. They can even sleep over if you two don’t mind doubling up and you bring out the futon. Are they all girls? You’ll work it out. But we’ll eat Chinese, to keep the cost down, when before I thought we’d go to Petit Louis—okay?” and she says “Of course. I’ll tell them of your sleepover offer, but I think they want to get back tonight so they can be at work tomorrow.” “Maybe, then, you want to drive back with them—I’ll be okay alone,” and she says “We planned on staying two more days—that is, if you don’t mind us to,” and he says “What are you, kidding? I’m thrilled that you’re staying.” “And if you’re still napping by six, can I wake you so they can start off around eight?” “Sure, wake me, but I’ll be up. And forget the Chinese. What do I care about the expense? We’ll all go to Petit Louis. Make a reservation for six-thirty,” and she says “Let’s stick with Chinese. It’ll be quicker and Petit Louis is where we went most to celebrate our birthdays and New Year’s Eve once and your wedding anniversary a few times, even the twentieth, I remember. It’s too loaded. Have a good nap, Daddy.” “Yeah.” Did he turn off the phone ringer? Thinks he did. Doesn’t want to be jarred out of a nap. The twentieth. That’s when they had their best meal there. Told them to order what they want, don’t worry about the cost, it’s a special anniversary, by all rights they should be at a more opulent place but this will do, and he got a good bottle of wine, not the least expensive French red on the wine list, which is what he always did, though the least expensive of the various categories of red they have there are always good. She had filet mignon, said she feels like she wants a very rich piece of beef. “Strange, huh?” But she’s been a good girl, she said, with no red meat for several years, and what harm is one small portion of meat going to do her? And he, what’d he have? Oh, something with scallops and a plate of pâtés and crab soup to start with and a crème brûlée, when he usually had the croque monsieur or slice of quiche or some other less expensive dish, even on his birthday, and took a little from the appetizers and desserts the others had. So he has two hours. Enough time to rest, and he assumes everyone but his daughters and their three New York friends will be gone when he gets up. Suppose someone needs to use the bathroom here because the other one’s occupied? Just don’t answer. Does he want to be with their friends? Not much. Actually, not at all, but what’s he to do? Wants to make his kids happy. Does he want them around for two more days? Rather be alone, doing anything he wants, not worrying about having enough food in the house and getting them dinner and what time to sit down for it and so on. Drinking as much as he wants and falling asleep sloshed if that’s what it ends up being. But he has to do what they want and not anything to make them worry about him. He does, they might think of staying longer or urge him to speak to someone like a psychotherapist, something he definitely doesn’t want to do. All right, he knows he’s depressed, but whatever his problem, it’ll go away. He just wants to sit in his armchair in the living room and put on whatever music he wants, or not put any on, no music and none of theirs from their rooms or the TV or DVD going. Just silence except for things like the washer or dryer running in the kitchen or the cat’s tapping toenails on the wood floor as he crosses the room, and fix himself a drink and read the Times at eight or nine at night (the Sun he reads in the morning) and then who knows what? Eat a carrot and celery stalk and that’s all for dinner except maybe a piece of cheese on toast, masturbate in that chair, but better and less messy in bed. Sit with no undershorts on under his regular shorts or just in a bathrobe, but nobody walking through the room or sitting on the couch near his chair and saying “You okay? Need anything? Do you know what tomorrow’s weather will be like? Have you ever read” such and such book or author? “Is there anything you want to talk about, Daddy, that you may be holding back?” And disturbing his concentration or redirecting his attention or startling him, because he fell asleep in the chair. But why even think about it? He can’t change it. Any mail today? What’s with him? It’s Sunday, and even if there was, and there always is—not one delivery day in their thirteen or so years here (he always had to ask Gwen how long they’ve lived here or what year they moved in) except maybe in the first week or two, has there not been some kind of mail, and today there’d be mail from yesterday and the day before—not interested in it. Since she died, he’s only gone to their mailbox every three to four days, other than to stick something in, for a medical insurance check that might have been delivered and the bills that have to be paid. A large bird, maybe a crow or hawk—no, too graceful and fast for a crow—swoops past the picture window opposite the bed and then back again, if it’s the same bird, and it could even be a bluejay, and disappears. Loves this about the house: the woods around it and the birds and, a few times, one or two deer. “Martin, Martin,” she shouted once from her study, last time either of them saw deer by the house, and by the time he ran there, thinking something was wrong with her, they were gone. “You didn’t see them.” “Yes, I did. Three.” “Baloney. You just wanted to alarm me. Otherwise, you would’ve shouted ‘Martin; deer!’ What a faker.” “No, I’m not. You’re just sorry you missed them.” “Faker, faker.” “I swear.” Did he then kiss her? Might have. Wouldn’t have wanted her to think he was being serious with that faker business in even the slightest way. She was so excited by the deer. Why didn’t he say “Ah, you lucky stiff.” Not “stiff.” “You lucky” what then? “Doll.” Leaning up against the left side of the window is a 9-by-12-inch framed photo of her holding Rosalind in the air when she was…October: June; eight months, both smiling at the camera, Rosalind pulling on Gwen’s hair but apparently not hurting her, or maybe she’s tolerating the pain for the shot. Asked her about it a year or two ago and she said it was too far back to remember—only he pretends to remember exact wordings and actions from years before—and with her mind now in such sad shape, doubly impossible to. “I don’t even remember who took the picture.” “I know but I’m not saying.” He really say that? Something like it, he thinks. “Ask me something from today or even yesterday,” she said, “though even there I’m only good for remembering half the things that happened.” What a beauty she was, he thinks, looking at the photo from the bed, though with his glasses off—where’d he put them? Always has to know. Looks at his night table and sees them—he really can’t see it that well, though knows from before how beautiful she is in it, and such gorgeous hair. He’s looked at it he doesn’t know how many times; can hardly avoid seeing it in this room except when he’s getting ready for bed or is doing his stretching or barbell exercises and pulls the drapes closed, covering the photo, but this is the first time he’s thought of getting rid of it. It’s been in the same spot for years since one of the eyelet screws in back came out and the frame fell off the bedroom wall and the glass broke. Gwen said a few months ago—came out of nowhere, or that’s how he saw it—she had her back to it—that if he likes the photo on the window ledge so much—“I don’t like how I look in it, though I’ll admit I l
ook immeasurably better than I do today, with my sunken cheeks and frozen face.” “Oh, come off it,” he said; “you’re still a knockout,” and she said “Sure, enough to be first runner-up in the Mrs. America Stroke Victim pageant. Anyway, you should get a new frame for it, if for nothing else but to preserve the great shot of Rosalind,” something he thought of doing lots of times but never did. For what would it have taken? One of the four times a year or so he goes to Target to buy toilet paper and paper towels and such in bulk, he could have bought an inexpensive frame. Maybe Rosalind will want to take it. Why wouldn’t she? It’s a terrific photo of Gwen and her. So then why doesn’t he want to keep it? Doesn’t want to be reminded of Gwen ten times a day. So put it in a drawer. It’ll tear. Then on the top shelf of one of the closets. There are things of his he’s put up there that he hasn’t looked at in years and probably will never need, including unfinished and old unpublished manuscripts, so he should get rid of them. Also things Gwen asked him to put up there because she couldn’t reach any of the top shelves, before and after her first stroke—what should he do with those? Just start clearing out the place, get rid of everything he’ll never and he doesn’t think the kids will ever use, without even asking them. And maybe Rosalind doesn’t want to be reminded so much of Gwen either, though for different reasons than his. She’ll break down every time she looks at the photo, or not that much, but enough times to warrant not taking it. He wants to get up to turn the photo around so he doesn’t see it or put it away someplace, but feels too tired to. That pleasant ache in his fingertips that till now only seemed to come when he forced himself to stay awake to type some more. Was the photographer of that photo at the memorial? A good friend of Gwen’s from college, or good friend then, who came down from Princeton to take a few hundred photos for one she’d include in a photography book she was putting together of just literary mothers with their daughters, but he doesn’t think it was ever published. Gwen would have bought a copy, even if she was given one by the publisher or photographer—she bought almost all the books by writers and scholars she knew, even the prolific ones and even when he told her not to because she knew neither of them would ever read it and the scholarly ones didn’t come cheap—and shown it to him. Or maybe she did get it and showed it to him and he forgot. Maybe he’ll give all the photos he has with Gwen in them to the kids and they can do with them what they want. Only one he’ll keep is a small one in a plastic sleeve, or whatever it’s called, in the wallet compartment with his credit and health insurance cards and driver’s license and so on and which he only sees when he takes the bunch of them out when he’s looking for one. Gwen once said, after he laid all the cards and IDs out on a table to go through them for the one he wanted, “You have a stacked deck. I’ll raise you mine.” He laughed but wasn’t then and isn’t now sure what she meant, unless—just thought of this—he heard “mine” when she said “nine.” In other words…in other words, what? Nothing. She was simply commenting that they looked like a deck of playing cards, and because they did, she used card game and betting terms—“stacked,” “raise you,” and, for no special reason he can see, the number nine. Or maybe he’s missing something and the number is significant and he should think about it more. Some other time. Photograph of her in his wallet was taken by another photographer friend of hers at an art gallery opening they were at a few weeks after they started seriously going together. In other words, not long after they first made love. Here’s something odd. She claimed he didn’t tell her he loved her till about a year after they met, although, she said, she knew he did by the way he looked at and acted toward her and made love. He said once “You’ve said that before and it can’t be true—it’s absolutely not like me to hold back like that,” and she said “Believe me, my dearie, it’s not something I’d make up, and it always stuck with me.” And she? Said she loved him about a month after they met. A weekend morning, bright out, she just woke up, it seemed, he’d been reading awhile in bed beside her—her apartment was on the seventh floor, faced the Hudson, and didn’t have curtains or shades. When she was sick—the flu, a virus—and wanted the bedroom dark so she could rest or sleep, she had him stretch a blanket across both windows and fasten the ends to the old curtain-rod brackets up there. But that time, she just looked at him, head still on the pillow, smiled, said it, and started crying a little. Must have seemed a bit strange to her that he didn’t, instead of saying “What’re you crying for? It’s all right. I’m glad about it,” say flat out he loved her too, since by then, she later told him, she knew he did. She said that what he used to say that first year—in bed, on the phone, at a restaurant once, etcetera—whenever she told him she loved him, and she didn’t say it more than a few times, were things like “Same here” or “Me too” or “I feel the same about you,” but never “I love you” or “And I love you” or “I love you too.” Her eyes, in the wallet photograph, are looking off to the right, as if someone or a particular art work had caught her attention. She has on a white turtleneck, an opened suede jacket or coat (to fit the photo into the plastic sleeve he cut off the lower part just above her breasts), a shoulder bag strap’s over her left shoulder, and her long hair’s rolled up and knotted or tied or whatever it is in back but where it stays above her neck, and is still very blond. “A beautiful Jewish natural blond,” he said to her around this time; “what more could I ever want? And, oh boy, would my father have been happy. ‘Finally,’ he would have said—and not because you’re a real blond; in fact, that might’ve made him suspicious—‘finally, one of my boys does the right thing.’” Photograph’s been in the same plastic sleeve in a series of wallets for the past twenty-five years. Before that it was in a billfold she gave him as a Christmas gift the year after they met and which he never used—wanted to; because she gave it to him, but had no pocket to put it in his clothes except a sport jacket he wore once or twice a year—and kept in a dresser drawer for about two years before giving it to Goodwill in New York when he took his teaching job in Baltimore. “I don’t know why,” she said, “but I thought you’d like to move up to a billfold. I promise, that’s the last time I’ll try to change you.” He’s feeling even tireder now, so maybe a good time for a nap. Also feels cold. One of his daughters turns on the central air conditioning or fan because of all the people in the house? Doesn’t hear any air blowing through the room’s register, but that goes on and off, depending on what temperature was set. Tries to just lie there without a blanket, but now he’s feeling chilled. Doesn’t want to get under the covers. That’d be too much like sleep, and he’d never wake up. Gets up, turns the frame around on the window ledge—now she’ll be looking at what she wants to, he thinks, but oh, so hard on himself, so hard, but he deserves it—and gets a cotton blanket off a chair—same one he used to put over her when she napped in bed or in the wheelchair—and gets back on the bed and covers himself with it. Puts the satin border or hem or edge—he always had trouble with the right words for certain things and would go to her for them—to his nose. Doesn’t smell of her and he didn’t think it would. But she was practically odorless, even when she hadn’t had a shower, which means he hadn’t given her one, in days, and also her hair, without a shampoo for a week, never seemed to smell, and her mouth, if she didn’t brush her teeth that day, and if she ate a food that usually gave one bad breath, then he did too, so he didn’t smell it. Cunt, too—he doesn’t remember ever detecting an odor there, but that she probably took care of before they made love. But she couldn’t have all the time. They’d be waking up, or he’d nudge her in her sleep or fondle her till she awoke, or he’d interrupt her working in her study and say “I don’t mean to bother you, but like to take a break?” or “like a change of scenery?” and often they’d go straight to the bed without stopping in the bathroom. Gets a hard-on. Well, what’s he expect? Their sex was always good before she had her first stroke, and after that he just took it when he could. Only time she had some aroma about her was when she had him spray her one perfume on her left
wrist, she’d always stick out the left wrist, which she’d then rub on her neck or somewhere. Then she’d ask him, or she’d ask him before the perfume, for one of her necklaces and for him to put it on her, and they’d go. Last times for that were about a year ago, when they went to a concert or play or opening party for his department or dinner at some couple’s house. It was always a couple’s. But maybe he’s wrong about the blanket. Smells it. This time, takes a deep whiff. Smells like a cotton blanket that hasn’t been washed in a while. Tomorrow, if he remembers—anyway, one of these days soon—he’ll stick it in the washer, and after he dries it, put it away for Purple Heart. And the perfume. Spray bottle’s not even half finished and she’s been using it for about ten years. Cost a lot—she had him buy it for her birthday—and he knows it’s still good. That will also go in one of the boxes for Purple Heart along with her socks and bras and scarves that are in the same drawer with the necklaces and perfume. First he’ll ask the kids if they want any of it—the necklaces he’ll just give them—and if they don’t, out all the rest of it goes. He won’t offer them the bras. She was a lot larger there than them, though they have her round rear end and long torso and sort of short strong legs, although hers, the last year or so, became atrophied. But he likes the feel of only this thin cotton blanket over him for a nap. So he might have to keep it, for where would he buy a new one, and when? Hates malls. He’ll deal with it all later. So many things to. Of course, he could always ask the kids, as long as they’re here, to go to the mall to buy him the same kind of blanket, though different design. But bank stuff, investments, safe deposit box, titles to the house and van and just about everything else—income taxes, home and car insurance—all in both their names and which he hasn’t done anything about yet. Feels himself drifting. Did he turn the phone off? Thinks so. Yes, definitely remembers—sees his finger switching the on-and-off button to the left. And his wallet. When he’s home he always keeps it on the right side of the top drawer of the table linen chest in the dining room so he always knows where it is. All right. Nobody’s going into that drawer, and if someone did, for some reason—can’t think of one now. Looking for a napkin?—he wouldn’t go through the wallet or take it. Was his brother here today? No, my goodness, what’s he talking about?—he really must be out of it. Died four years ago—five, in March. He’ll never get over it. Photographer’s a much celebrated writer and just a few years older than him. Photographer’s husband, he means. Makes a bundle off his work and readings and commencement addresses, he’s read, and has been doing so for more than forty years, and he’s a serious writer, though not one he likes. Well, who does he, of living writers? Used to see him—his counter on the main floor faced the Third Avenue entrance—when he worked in the men’s pajama shop at Bloomingdale’s: Burberry raincoat—collar up—floppy hat. He must have used the store to get from Third to Lex, probably when it was snowing or raining, or it was just a more interesting route than the long boring streets on either side of the store. Only time he met him was in front of the Whitney, when the photographer—Hilda—yelled out to Gwen. The women talked. He held Rosalind in a baby sling on his chest. Writer didn’t want to talk to him. Looked every which way but at him. Might have known he was a writer, he thought then, and was afraid he’d hit him for a future blurb. But he wouldn’t have. He’d never do that. Wanted to tell him about Bloomingdale’s. Though he was envious of his early success and all that brought. His mother would have taken the memorial badly, if she was able to come down. Well, if she had wanted to, he would have driven to New York to get her and then, after a few days, if she was strong enough, put her on the train back. If he couldn’t, what would he have done, driven her? She loved Gwen, thought of her as her daughter. Used to tell him on the phone “You always be good to her, or you’ll hear it from me.” “Why,” he once said—oh, God, when they were both alive and Gwen thriving—“she say anything to you?” “No, she’s too good a wife to; just I know you always had a temper.” His dog Joan. What happened to her? Fifty, sixty years ago—sixty-one: just disappeared. She had to have been stolen or hit by a car and dumped in an ashcan, because she never would have run away. She loved him. He never feared she’d get lost or not come home when he let her out on the street to make, which he did that day. People sometimes said they saw her sniffing around blocks away—they recognized her by the limp in her right front leg—but she always found her way back and then would wait in his building’s vestibule till he or his mother came out to get her. What a loss. Woman at the memorial he hasn’t seen in a long time. Forgets if she was originally his friend or Gwen’s, and now can’t even think of her name, Hilda? No, that’s so-and-so. Rhea? Rhoda? Rosetta? Something like that, though not necessarily where it starts with an “R,” but what’s the difference? He’ll never see her again. He’ll come out and everyone but his daughters and their friends will be gone. And he won’t be able to go out for dinner, even something as simple as Chinese. Not tonight. There’s also the car bicycle rack he’s been wanting to get rid of for years. He’s sure Purple Heart will take that that too. Plus her wheelchair and overbed table and things like that, though maybe those he’ll give to the same stroke victims loan closet Gwen gave a number of things to—collapsible cane, walker, four-wheel rollator—when, as she said, she grew out of them. Hears ringing. Doorbell? No, he wouldn’t be able to hear it with his door shut and from way back here. Must be a cell phone with a real phone ring, right outside his room. Listens for someone answering it but doesn’t hear anything but people’s garbled voices from farther inside. Sounds like a cocktail party. Good, let everyone have fun. Gwen wanted to get one of those phones but he said it’d always be falling out of her hands and breaking, so one more complication and expense to deal with, was the way he put it. But he should have, early on, gone to the phone store with her for one that she could operate and then taken her to lunch at a nearby restaurant. He should have said “Hang the expense. And it shouldn’t be that much, It can be on the same plan Rosalind and Maureen share.” Why was he always saying no? Anyway, the kids went to the phone store with her and got her one. Wasn’t there something she bought and wanted him to plant her last few weeks and he didn’t? A rose bush? Two? Probably dead by now, if he did want to do it. He also should have said “Good idea, for both of us, the cell phone, in case an emergency on the road and things like that, and you can talk free to the kids all day if you want.” Blanket’s slipped down below his shoulders, and he pulls it up and then over his ears. Way Gwen liked to sleep after her first stroke, both on her side and back. She’d wake him at night and ask him to pull the covers up over her ears or she couldn’t sleep.