I look at myself in the rearview mirror to see if I’m ready, if I know what I want to say. What I see reflected back is a tired-looking woman with dirty-blond hair in a ponytail, who looks scared. I had a fantasy on the way over, that I would walk into Ted’s kitchen, which would look remarkably like mine. There would be a storm going on in his face. He would be wearing black pants, a black turtleneck. I would sit at the kitchen table, my folded hands in my lap, my knees together, and he would pace in front of the windows, stopping occasionally to smash a pane out with his fist. I would not react too much. I would understand. When he was finished, I would help bandage his hands. Drive him to the ER.
I put a little lipstick on, push back the stray hairs on the sides of my head, go up to the house. Ted answers the door almost immediately, which surprises me. “Lainey!” he says, surprised himself, and then, “God. How nice to see you. Come in.” He is not in black. He is wearing a plaid shirt, tucked into tan pants. The sleeves are buttoned at his wrist, and he has buttoned every button on the front, too. I believe I know something about the way he got dressed this morning. About the way he finds relief in simple activity.
We go into his kitchen, which is not like mine at all. It is mostly white, with the exception of a black stone counter. Granite, I think. It’s very modern. Not particularly warm. But pretty. I sit at the kitchen table. The chair is a hard white metal, black cushion on the seat. “Something to drink?” he asks.
“No thanks,” I say, and then, “Ted, I want to tell you how sorry I am. About Jeannie.”
He nods, sits down with me, so purposefully mild in his movements and his manner I think he might explode. “It was pneumonia,” he says.
“Yes, I heard.”
“Oh? Who told you?”
“Gloria.”
“They’re still talking about her, then.”
“Yes, they are.”
“Well, that’s good. That’s good.”
“Was the funeral …?”
“Day before yesterday. It was very odd, Lainey, picking out a dress for her to get buried in. It’s odder than you think it’s going to be. Not that you will. I mean, I hope you don’t have to.”
I say nothing, realize I am holding my breath, exhale quietly.
“So, here I am. It’s over. Which I used to wish for, you know, I used to wish it would just get over with. I would pull into the parking lot of that goddamn nursing home and I would hate it so much, I would just hate the sight of it.”
“Yes, I know.”
“I wanted it to be over with. I probably shouldn’t have wanted that.”
“No one would blame you for that, Ted.”
He nods, then looks up at me. “Something to drink?”
“No thanks.”
“I asked you that already, didn’t I?”
“Yes. But that’s okay. Ted, are you … Is there anything I can do?”
“No.”
“Is there anyone who’s helping you?”
He looks up. “There’s nothing to help with. That’s what’s so hard. There is only her absence. I suppose it’s like an illness I’ll have for a while. God, Lainey, when I wake up in the middle of the night … I can’t tell you what it’s like. I have this tiny moment of not knowing what’s wrong. And then this overwhelming …” He stops, attempts a smile. “It’s so quiet, real grief. I guess I didn’t know that.”
I open my purse, write my phone number down on a piece of paper, slide it across the table to him. The numbers look so black against the white. “Just in case you want to call,” I say. “You can call any time. Really.”
“Uh-huh,” he says. “Okay. Thanks, Lainey.” He folds the paper into fours and puts it in his pocket. “I think … You know, I hope you don’t mind, Lainey, but I don’t think I’m quite ready to talk to anyone. I’m sorry.”
“Oh, no, it’s … I’m sorry. I should have called. I just wanted to tell you, you know …” I stand up, slide my purse over my shoulder. “Okay, so …”
“Yes,” he says. “All right.”
I let myself out. What I know is that I will never, ever see him again. I’d thought we might embrace when I left. Somehow.
What I want, on the drive home, is to not think of anything. Of course this does not happen. I think, what outfit would I pick out for Jay? What would I do with the rest of his clothes? What would I do with the kit for the diesel airplane he was going to build? When I came home from the funeral, what would I do? Ask the kids to go to their bedrooms because it would be unbearable to see him in them? And then open the refrigerator, and stand there?
I think, he was only in the middle. He didn’t even have a chance to say good-bye. Isn’t it better if you get a chance to say good-bye? And then I think, maybe not. Maybe it’s better if it’s sudden and you don’t suffer. But maybe he’s suffering now. How would I know?
I put my hand up to my face. I pinch my cheek, to feel something else. It doesn’t work. I pinch my chin, my ear. It doesn’t work. I turn on the radio, then turn it off.
How foolish to think as often as I do that the force of my will can save him. But I can’t help it. It’s human nature. It’s because, once catastrophe has occurred, we expect our lives to behave. We accept the Awful Event because we have to. But after that, we would like our lives to follow a certain order, a design of our own making. This seems like reasonable compensation. This seems like what ought to happen. Only it hardly ever does.
I accelerate to make a yellow light, think about a friend of mine once saying that if she hadn’t met and married her husband at the time she did, she’s certain she would have met and married someone else at the same exact time. I said I didn’t know about that. I said I was the kind of person who, when I was a little girl, pulled kissing jacks out of the game so that they could stay together. I said I had great respect for seemingly arbitrary events.
I think of a time I’d pulled an all-nighter at college, then stayed up very late the next night, too. I had never been so exquisitely tired in my life. I felt like my hair hurt. When I finally went to bed, I wept with relief and when I woke up, the sky was a very peculiar color. I couldn’t tell if it was dawn or dusk. I looked at my watch, which of course did not help me. It said 5:45, you figure out the rest. I got this terrible, panicky feeling, and I called the operator, and, feeling very silly, said, “Can you tell me if it’s night or day?” She was very kind, an older-sounding woman, and she said it was night; and then she stayed on the line to make sure I was okay. That’s what Jay did for me. He was my operator. And I think I was his. I was. I was his.
I turn down my street, notice how many leaves there are now. Once I was visiting a friend whose backyard bordered an acre of woods. It was a pretty day, and we were sitting outside on the grass, talking. Suddenly it began to rain, but just in the woods. It was in isolated spots, and in only one spot at a time: here, then there, then over there. I looked up at the sky. Blue. I held out my hand. Nothing but soft summer air. I looked at the woods again and it was raining again: here, then there, then over there. I looked at my friend, puzzled, and she smiled and said, “I know. Doesn’t it look strange? It’s because it rained last night and the leaves are all full of water. The squirrels jump from one bough to the other and shake it off.”
“Oh,” I said. “It looks like it’s just choosing to rain in certain places.”
“Yes,” she said. “That’s what it looks like. But that’s not what it is.”
There is some comfort in that story, for the way it suggests that there is a reason for everything, even though it may not be apparent. But there is this, too: some places get to stay dry. Some places don’t get hit at all. I will take my comfort there.
At home, I take exquisite care with dinner preparation. Tomatoes sliced to be the exact same size. Lettuce washed, dried, washed again. Macaroni and cheese from scratch, the big fat elbow noodles that they like, the mild cheese. I am so grateful for the presence of my children, for the soft sound of their overlapping voices in the next room
. They are playing with their baby doll, making up a perfect life for her. “Here is her bedroom, where stars live on the walls,” Amy is saying.
“Give her here,” Sarah says. “I need to breastfeed her.” They giggle from behind their hands; the high sound is muffled. I reach behind myself, straighten the bow on the back of my apron. Fruit salad for dessert, whipped cream piled up high. Let me just have this little island. This floe.
The next morning, after the kids have left for school, Alice lets herself in, sits down at the kitchen table.
“Hi,” I say. And then, “What? What happened?”
She smiles, nods. “It’s not another woman.”
“Oh, Alice. Good. See? I’m glad. You talked?”
“Yup, and it’s not another woman. What it is, is a man.”
I stop pouring coffee, put the mug down on the counter. “He’s … It’s a man?”
“Late in the afternoon on the day we broke into that town house, I was putting away laundry and I found Ed’s sweater in his drawer. You know, the one we’d seen in the bedroom that morning. And I thought, Wait, what is this? And then I thought, Oh God, I think I know what this is. I think I know what this is. When Ed came home, I confronted him. And he told me. At first he denied it, but then he sat on the edge of the bed and wept and wept and wept. And he told me. They have matching sweaters, Lainey. Isn’t that cute?”
I swallow. I can’t speak.
“Who should we call, Lainey? Phil or Oprah?”
“Jesus, Alice.”
“Oh. Right. I hadn’t thought of Him.”
Ten-fifty at night, a weariness I can feel over me like a second skin. I’ve just now arrived at Jay’s room because I spent the whole day and evening with Alice. We hired a sitter to come after school and we took off. We went to a bookstore, we walked in a park, we tried on bathing suits, we ate strawberry pie at the Woolworth’s counter and that’s the only time she started to cry. It was over quickly. “Whoops,” she said. “Sorry.” She wiped the tears away. “You can cry if you want to,” I told her. And she said, “I know. I don’t want to.”
She pushed her plate away, leaned toward me. “Do you think that every time we made love, he was wishing … or, you know, imagining …?”
“The thought did occur to me.”
“I mean, sometimes he wanted to try … uh …”
“Greek love?” I asked, exceedingly quietly.
“What’s that?”
“You know. Behind.”
She nodded.
“Well,” I said. “I think lots of guys like to try that, whatever their orientation.”
“And I’ll tell you, he always liked—”
“Well, they all like that,” I said, quickly.
The waitress came toward us with her full pot of coffee. “Fill her up?” she asked.
Alice and I looked at each other, stifled everything.
It was in the afternoon as we waited on the porch steps for the kids to come home that Alice said, “It’s a relief in a way. You know what I mean?”
“You mean that it’s not another woman?”
“Yeah. Not that it’s not horrible. And it’s … you know, complicated. God, is it complicated! But at least it’s not another woman. And it explains a lot of things. There was always a kind of holding back in him that was too … secretive. Not just male reticence. Well, actually, maybe it was male reticence. But now that he’s told me the truth, there’s such a relief in him, and a kind of softness I never saw. I actually think I like him better now, honest. I hate him, but I like him better.”
We saw the kids rounding the corner and stopped talking, waited to examine the contents of their schoolbags: the too-long PTA notices, the lunchbox rejects, the handed-back papers. Timothy got a smiling turtle sticker for doing all his work right, which he always does. He’s tired of stickers. He’s suggested to Alice that his teacher might pay him. Alice has suggested that feeling good about doing work well is reward enough. Timothy has suggested that’s ridiculous.
So now Alice is at my house, lying on my sofa. She’ll stay until I get back. I tucked the kids in before I left, didn’t tell them I was leaving. If they know Alice is there, they’ll keep getting up.
It’s different here at night. Much quieter, of course, but it’s more than that. The air feels charged, mysterious. There’s a little nightlight on in Jay’s room, and I’m sitting here in the chair watching him by its soft glow. I haven’t said anything yet. I was thinking I’d tell him about Alice and Ed, but that doesn’t seem like the thing to talk about. So I’m just watching.
The door pushes open and Wanda comes in with a flashlight. When she sees me sitting in the chair, she turns it off, walks over to me, and whispers, “Hello.”
“Hi.”
“Are you staying?”
“You mean … all night?”
“Yes.”
“No.”
“Oh. Well, you can.”
Our whispering seems strange. Isn’t he sleeping all the time? Why don’t we always whisper? On the other hand, it seems respectful to me that we would treat nighttime as nighttime.
“Are you the only one here?” I ask.
“No, there are a couple of aides working with me. But I’m the only nurse. It’s going to be wild tonight. Always is, when there’s a full moon.”
“Is that really true? That’s what Gloria said.”
“Sure. Everything happens on full-moon nights. The ones who are a little crazy go really berserk. Mrs. Eliot has been carrying on since the sun set.”
“Well,” I say. “I’ll take care of Jay. You don’t have to worry about him. I’ll let you know when I leave. But maybe I will stay all night.”
“Lie down with him if you want to,” Wanda says.
That has never occurred to me. The whole time he’s been like this, it hasn’t occurred to me to lie beside him. “Yes, all right,” I say. “Maybe I will.”
“Just let me do something first,” Wanda says. She moves to the side of Jay’s bed, pulls down the sheet. He is on his side, and she removes the pillow supporting him, holds him over with one hand while with the other she reaches for the bottle of lotion on his bedside stand. She’s proud of the way Jay’s skin has held up, no bedsores yet. She squirts some lotion into one hand, closes the bottle again and puts it back on the bedside stand. Nurses are good at this kind of thing, using one hand for things that normally require two. And if you get one like Wanda, you can see the caring along with the skill. She rubs Jay’s back with strong, circular strokes, and I watch, spellbound. There is a mesmerizing quality to watching someone do almost anything with care: tailors in their dry-cleaner windows, hunched over sewing machines. Bakers making art out of frosting. Children with a new pack of crayons and fierce intent. We are meant to use what we have, whatever it is. We are meant to be less mindful of our insides, more outwardly directed. That’s what I think, as I watch Wanda rub Jay down, as the minty smell of the lotion makes its way over to me. There is incredible value in being in service to others. I think if most of the people in therapy offices were dragged out to put their finger in a dike, take up their place in a working line, they would be relieved of terrible burdens. I always picture someone smartly dressed, their expensive briefcase at their feet, their finger in the hole, saying, “Oh. Well, this is better! I only needed to be essential.”
Wanda positions Jay on his back, uses a kind of swab to clean around his feeding tube, then covers it with a four-by-four and white tape. She uses another kind of swab to clean out his mouth. Then she looks over at me for a long minute. “I think I’m going to take his catheter out,” she says. “He’s due for a change anyway.”
I sit up straighter, my mouth dry. “All right.”
“I’ll be right back. I need a syringe.”
I sit motionless until she returns, then watch as she uses the syringe to deflate the little bulb of saline that holds the catheter in Jay’s bladder. She positions herself so that I don’t have to watch the tube come out. It b
others me to see that, even though all the nurses have told me it’s not painful in any way. “Just one more minute,” Wanda says. She wraps the whole apparatus up in a towel, carries it out into the hall, then returns, turns on the tap in the little sink in Jay’s room. She starts to wet a washcloth, then looks over at me. “… unless you want to do this.”
“Do what?” I say. “What are you doing?”
“Just washing him a little. Where the tube came out.”
“Yes, all right,” I say. “I can do it.”
“Call me if you need me. Otherwise, I won’t come in. No one will.”
I want to say, I know what you’ve got in mind, Wanda. Just forget it. Really. I mean, what do you think? What can you be thinking? But she is gone, and the washcloth hangs on the side of the sink. I wet it with warm water, go over to Jay, and, looking out the window, wash him off quickly. Then, since there is no towel, I dry him with the sheet. “There,” I whisper. “I’ll bet that feels better, huh?”
His hair is sticking up a little in the back. He looks like Alfalfa. I turn on the bedside lamp, find his comb in his drawer. His hair is getting longer. He needs a trim. He has beautiful blond hair, streaked like a model. They keep it clean here, at least. At the hospital, he hardly ever got his hair washed. I lean down, kiss the top of his head. He smells like himself, which seems astonishing to me. I kiss his nose, his ear. Then I straighten, run my finger down the side of his cheek. “Jay?” I say. “If you’ll just wake up and start eating, we can get rid of the other tube. And you can come home.” I sit beside him. “Jay, if you could just … Can’t you let me know? Can’t you tell me?”
I have to be careful. I have to be wordless. The outstretched hands drop everything, not seeing it. Never seeing it. Though they have been asking since the pyramids. Since the learning of fire. Since the first blink of the first eye.
“Jay?”
Lainey.
I’m so tired I’m dizzy. I think about getting in bed with him, but I can’t. It’s just too strange. I go back to the chair, sit quietly, look again at my watch even though I just looked at it. I take my shoes off, slide my feet under me, watch Jay, listen to his breathing. Then I get up and go into his drawer again, find his aftershave. I love his aftershave. He orders it from somewhere in Bermuda. It’s a light, seductive scent, the kind you want to lean in and smell deeper, which is the idea, I suppose. I put a little on my fingers, rub it on his face. He lies there, motionless. It’s such an odd sensation, doing things for people in a coma that they can’t do for themselves. Even though you’re helping them, you feel a little as though you’re being cruel to them. It’s that you could do anything, and they couldn’t protest. They are in a state of constant vulnerability.