We pull into the nursing-home driveway and I park in the visitor’s lot, which is almost empty, which is exactly what I mean about nursing homes. I’ve driven past this place before, but now that Jay’s going in it on a gurney, it looks entirely different.
The attendants wheel Jay to the nurse’s desk. There’s no one there. They ring a bell on the chest-high counter, and a harried young thing comes around the corner. She’s wearing a nurse’s hat, which I haven’t seen in a long time. It looks sort of stupid, like she ought to be on a sitcom. Curls from her permed hair leak out around it. She yells down the hall, “Gloria! Your admission’s here!” and then she comes up to discuss Jay’s paperwork with the ambulance attendants. She tells me she’ll be with me in a moment. When the attendants have finished, they walk past me, nodding grimly, both of them; and then they wait, leaning against the wall, for the return of the gurney. It’s a funny thing, but I’m scared to give it back to them. Then Jay will not be connected to the hospital anymore.
It’s twelve noon. Probably the ambulance attendants will go eat lunch after this. On their minds will be what to order. They see this kind of thing all the time, people in comas. They won’t wonder about us, they won’t tell their wives about us at dinner.
The nurse comes up to me, holds out her hand. “I’m Pat Swanson,” she says. “I’m the head nurse here. You’re the wife?”
I nod. I’m the wife. “Elaine,” I say. “Berman.” God, I’m tired. I feel like my blood is mercury. I feel like my brain is a big steel square.
“Right. Nice to meet you. We’ll be putting him into his room—it’s number 203—and then you can come in. It’ll take just a minute.”
I repeat the number to myself. It occurs to me that perhaps I should write it down, so that I don’t have to come in here next time and ask, “Where did you say my husband is again?”
I stand there, watching, as they push him down the hall. His foot has come uncovered, and this hurts my feelings. His room is third on the right, close to the nurses’ station. Well, that’s good. I wait, staring out the windows so that I don’t have to look at any of the patients here. I’ve heard Jay isn’t the youngest, but I don’t see any evidence of that. There are a few very old people out in the hall in wheelchairs, most of them with restraint jackets on. One woman holds her purse on her lap, a squarish black patent-leather thing, and I have the sad feeling that it is probably empty. Well, maybe a handkerchief. Yellow lozenges covered with lint. She stares straight ahead, calm, impassive. She looks like she’s waiting for a bus. An old man sits near her, his head hanging, drooling onto his checkered shirt and weeping soundlessly. My God. I’ll go crazy leaving Jay here. I can’t leave him here. I can’t bring him home. I can’t leave him here.
I take in a breath, head toward Jay’s room, meet Pat coming out. “He’s all set,” she says. “You can go in. I need to call his doctor to clear up one of his orders, and then I’ll be back in. You’ll have to answer a few questions for me.”
He was walking past a building, I’ll say. Just like you do every day. I’m so tired of telling the story. At first, it was interesting to me. I wanted not to forget any of the details, so I could tell them to Jay when he came home and was soaking in the bathtub with a washcloth on top of his head. He used to like to put a hot washcloth there, let the steam rise as though his brains were cooling. It was a fantastic novelty at first, having a husband in a coma because ice knocked him out. It was a challenge to overcome, and I thought we might even go on television when it was all over, describe the way faith and magic got us through. “So, did you pray a lot, Mrs. Berman?” Oprah would ask me and I’d say, Please call me Elaine and then I’d say, “Well, not prayer, really. No, I didn’t pray. But I believed.” I do. I do still believe.
I go to the side of Jay’s bed, touch his hand, kiss his cheek. “Here we are,” I say. “This is the new place, where you’ll get better, Jay.” I put my hands to his face, fingers meeting in the middle of his forehead, then run them lightly over his eyelids, down along his cheekbones, into the curl of his ears. I smooth his hair along his temples, then run my hands along the back of his head, lifting his neck slightly, then letting it fall back into the pillow. A little massage. My love, translated.
Out the back of my head, the release of galaxies. From my mouth, oceans and granite. From my nose, the curl of new ferns, walls of roses. Climbing out of my ears, zebras, antelope, two by two. Out of my hair, dandelions and grapevines, spiders with stiff silk legs, reaching forth and testing with every normal step. Under the lids of my eyes, the sky, the arching up of a million rainbows.
“I’m here,” I whisper, my mouth close to his ear, and I see the sound going deeper, going somewhere I can’t, spreading out like ripples on water.
I straighten up, rub hard at the small of my back, look around. The room is a private, small. The curtains at the window are a brown-and-yellow print and a big tear in the corner of one of them has been sloppily repaired. Maybe these things make a difference. Maybe I’ll make some curtains to hang here that have been rubbed across my skin, and the girls’, and I’ll hem them by hand, think healing thoughts with each stitch.
There’s an orange plastic chair for the visitor parked in the corner. I pull it forward, station it by Jay’s side. I’ll bring a throw for it, a pillow.
I feel a slight breeze, notice that the window is cracked open. Outside, spring comes in spite of everything. There are moments when we think nature happens just for us, and there are other moments when the ridiculousness of that notion is revealed.
The sun is falling on Jay’s face. I turn his head slightly, so the light won’t be in his eyes. I see a spot near his left ear where they missed shaving him this morning. His beard just keeps growing. I touch the stiff hairs, remember so much in a moment I think I might choke.
Alice calls at eight o’clock that night. “I know you’re in your pajamas,” she says. “Get out of them. You’re going out with me. We’re going to a bar.”
I am stunned, silent.
“I mean it,” she says. “You have not been out one time since this happened.”
“Well. Because I don’t want to.”
“But you need to. You need to. Here: I need to, okay? Does that make it better? I’m bored over here, it’s boring. I want to go do something. Ed said he’d babysit, he’ll bring Timothy over, he can fall asleep there. It’s Friday night. Let’s go tip a few. You just have to promise not to be jealous when all the guys hit on me.”
“I don’t think so, Alice.”
“What are you going to do instead?”
Stare into the night. Think. Maybe weep, although you’d think something would have dried up by now. Try to figure out how much insurance coverage we’ve got left from Jay’s computer company. Try to figure out if I have to go back to work yet. “Okay,” I say. “But just to O’Gara’s. Just for a little while.” O’Gara’s is the bar a few blocks from us. It’s a neighborhood joint, lace curtains, brass rails, hamburgers served on thick tan plates. We took the kids there once, sat in a booth. Jay let the kids taste beer. Sarah screwed up her face; Amy asked for more. We said no, we told her she could watch Peter Pan that night instead. We all did. We all got in our pajamas and watched the ticking of the clock prey on Hook’s nerves.
I go into Sarah’s bedroom; she and Amy are playing Barbies there. Tiny killer heels and formal gowns turned inside out litter the floor. A naked Ken lies lonely on the periphery. They don’t like him. His head pops off all the time.
“You should get into your pajamas,” I say.
“It’s not a school night,” Sarah says, and Amy repeats it mindlessly after her, concentrating on the aggravating closures of the tight skirt she’s trying to fit a doll into. I think it’s the one they call Helen, whom they have made a librarian. Bless their hearts, I have done something right.
“I’m going out,” I say, and they both look up, then freeze, as though they have become photographs of themselves.
“With Alice. J
ust for a little while.”
“Where are you going?” Amy says.
“Just over to O’Gara’s.”
“Oh.” She refocuses on her doll.
Sarah says nothing, looks coolly away from me.
“Do you mind?” I ask her. And echoing behind that is, Am I so different to you now? Do you hate me? What is it? Is it your father? Is it your age? Is it inevitable? “Do you mind?” I ask again. I nursed you. I had you. I love you. Where are you?
“I don’t mind,” she says. And then, “Is someone baby-sitting us?”
“Actually Ed’s just going to come over, with Timothy.”
Sarah’s eyes widen. “I don’t want a man!”
“It’ll be fine. You can all play a game.”
“That’s what you always say. You think it’s so good to play games. Nobody even likes games. And I am not putting on my pajamas!”
“Fine. You can wait until I get home. At which time we will have a little chat about how we talk to our mothers.”
“I’m not putting on my pajamas either,” Amy says, and for a moment attempts a look of indignation she doesn’t quite understand the reason for. Then she hands me the doll. “Can you snap that? And make her a bun?”
I take the doll from her, get busy. I still like playing with dolls. The longer their hair is, and the blonder, the more excited I get. “Is this what she’s wearing?” I ask Amy when I’ve finished the hairdo. I see a lot of things I like better in the pile. The pink gown with the fabric rose at the waist, for instance.
“Mom,” Amy says. “Give her back.”
I go into the bathroom, run a brush through my hair. Should I put on makeup? He can’t even turn on a light. He can’t even turn over.
Who is it? Who’s calling me?
Bars never change. Neon light. Older patrons lined up over their drinks, shirtsleeves rolled up, cigarette smoke undulating at their sides. Younger patrons flirting, the women tossing hair back and raising chins to reveal their necks and their earrings. And their availability. Alice and I sit at the end of the bar and we haven’t even gotten our drinks when someone is on the bar stool beside me. I can feel him looking at me and then he says, “You haven’t been here before.”
You know, I am not spectacular-looking, but I do have long, blond hair and it gets them every time. Jayne Mansfield, they’re thinking. Marilyn Monroe. And then you turn around and you’re not like that, but they’ve gotten started so they just keep going.
I turn fully toward him: blue eyes, dimple in his chin, curly brown hair, faded blue work shirt open a couple of buttons. Maybe he’s a carpenter. I once was friends with a carpenter who used to tell me about all the housewives he seduced when he was wild and single. They would have coffee with him and tell him everything. One woman had had a mastectomy and she told him all about it. He said he fell in love with her and once he kissed her and felt her up a little and she pulled away and smiled into his face and said, “That’s the wrong one.”
I start to say something to the man beside me, I start to say something like, No thank you, but the whole thing is just too ridiculous. I turn away without saying anything, roll my eyes at Alice.
“So what brings you here?” he asks the back of my head. The persistent type.
I look at him. “My husband is in a coma. The grief is driving me crazy. I needed a break.”
The man pulls back a little, nods knowingly while he tongues off his back teeth. Then he says, “That’s not funny.”
“It certainly isn’t.”
“You all have a nice night,” he says, and leaves. The bar stool he vacates revolves back and forth slightly, then stops.
Alice takes a long drink of her beer. “I told you they’d be all over me,” she says. “But what are you going to do?” She is wearing her cowboy shirt, something she found in the Salvation Army. It features a number of men wearing chaps and spurs and huge white hats, whirling lassos. Some of the cowboys face forward, grinning; some are seen from behind. Branding irons float in the background, and a brand, too, A&S. I asked Alice if she liked cowboys, when she first showed me that shirt. I was hoping she did, because I love cowboys. As a little girl, I’d written many love letters to Roy Rogers, which I never mailed out of respect for Dale. Alice said cowboys were all right, but that the reason she bought the shirt was because the men’s asses were all so cute. And also, mainly, because her initials were all over it. “Your initials aren’t A. S.,” I’d said. And she’d said, “They used to be. Before I got married.”
I take a drink of my beer. It tastes too strong. I haven’t had a beer since the night I got the call. I’d come home from the grocery store, late, after I’d been gone all day, and I’d started making dinner, and I was really tense because I knew it would never be ready on time and I cracked open a beer to calm down. I saw the answering machine flashing with a message when I sat the kids in front of the Mickey Mouse Club but I thought the hell with it and I started making the tomato sauce—eggplant parmesan, we were having. Once things had gotten going, I went in to pick up the message, told the kids to turn down the TV so I could hear. “This is Dr. Matthews at St. Luke’s hospital,” a too-calm voice said. And I remember I looked at the girls and thought, No, this is a mistake, they’re right here. And then I thought about who wasn’t here. “You can turn the sound back up,” I told the girls when I finished writing down the number to call, and I went into the kitchen and turned off the sauce. Then I went into our bedroom and shut the door and I called and while I was dialing I thought, Please just let him be alive I will do anything you want all the rest of my life if he is just alive. Then Dr. Matthews came to the phone and I said yes over and over again. I believe that’s all I said that whole conversation. I was holding the top button on my shirt so hard it left big dents in my finger.
“Alice?” I say now. “I’m sorry. I don’t like being here. I want to go home.”
“Give it a minute,” she says.
“What for? This is awful.”
“Do you know,” she says, “that I never once got hit on? What’s it feel like?”
I stare into my beer. “You’ve been hit on.”
“What is that, are you being polite?”
I look at her to protest, but then say, “Yeah. I suppose.”
“Well, don’t be. I don’t need that. I was never hit on, and that’s that. Except once by a woman. You know how women have the good sense to look beyond looks.”
I start to say something, then realize the beer I’ve gulped is still in my mouth.
“What?” Alice asks.
I swallow. “You never told me about that.”
“I never told you about that?”
“No!”
“Oh.” She takes a drink from her beer, stares straight ahead, taps her fingers in rhythm to the music from the jukebox.
“So?” I finally say.
“So what?”
“Come on, Alice.”
“Oh, it was no big deal. This woman was visiting another woman in my dorm, two doors down from me. We’d all heard about her, we knew she was a lesbian. She was gorgeous. One of those black-haired, blue-eyed types straight out of romance comic books. She was leaving and she walked past my open door and saw me playing my guitar and singing, and—”
“You play guitar?”
“Yeah.”
“You play guitar?”
“Yes. Quite well, in fact.”
“Well … Jesus, Alice. I didn’t know that either. Why don’t I ever hear you?”
“I don’t play anymore.”
“Why not?”
“Oh, because Ed …” She stops, stares at me. “Listen. Do you want to hear this story or not?”
“Yes!”
“All right then. So this woman pokes her head in and listens for a while and then she says, ‘Buffy Sainte-Marie, right?’ and I say, ‘Right.’ She comes in and we start talking about Buffy Sainte-Marie and she asks me to play a few more songs and I do and then she says she loves music and the onl
y thing she might like more is dancing and did I like dancing? I said it was all right. She said how about if I danced for her. I said I didn’t think so. She said, Oh come on, she’d close the door, no one would see. I said I had to go somewhere.”
“And?” I say.
“And what?”
“And what happened?”
“Nothing. That was it.”
“That was it?”
“Disappointed?” Alice asks.
“I don’t know. Yes. Of course.”
“Real life hardly ever does it the way you want to tell it later, Lainey.”
“I guess.”
“I should have done it. I’ve always been sorry I didn’t do it. Now it’s too late.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. You have a kid, you stop picking up hitchhikers. You know.”
I nod, stare at the rising bubbles in my glass. I’m a little drunk from just one beer. It makes things easier. I feel insulated from myself, a sympathetic bystander to my own predicament.
“So what is it like being hit on by a man?” Alice asks. “Is it fun?”
“I was never hit on that much. I was never really into the whole bar thing. The closest I ever came was before I met Jay, when I dated this fraternity guy. He was like … You know what? He was like a wild pig. I swear to God. Like a big hairy boar. I don’t know why I dated him except that he was in this big-deal fraternity, and my roommate was crazy about him. When he called me the first time she said, ‘Jake Lazar? Oh my God, are you kidding? Jake Lazar? Do you know who he is?” So I went out with him and we partied a lot and I always felt like I was doing exactly the wrong thing. I’d be putting on all this makeup and borrowing earrings and thinking, I don’t even want to go. I don’t want to do this at all. I thought I had to do it. I thought I’d never meet someone I could say the real things to. And …”