He squeezes his empty bag into a cellophane ball, throws it across the room into the garbage, then asks, “Do you ever feel guilty?”
I shrug. “Sure. I mean, you know, about all the times I yelled at him, stuff like that?”
“No. What I mean is … do you ever feel like it was your fault?”
“Well, no. It was ice. It hit him in the head. I wasn’t even there.”
“Right.”
“Why, do you, Ted? It wasn’t your fault. She had an aneurysm! How could that be your fault?”
He nods, stares at the tiny table top, rubs at a stain with the flat of his fingers. He has graceful hands, like a pianist. He looks up at me. “I think I made it worse, though. I think I made the vessel pop, or leak, or … something.”
“How could you have done that, Ted? You didn’t do that.”
“Well, I … On the night she went into the hospital, they told her she had to stay in bed. But she wanted to go to the bathroom. I told her I’d go get a nurse to give her a bedpan. She said she didn’t want to use a bedpan, she was afraid it would spill, she’d mess up the sheets. She didn’t want to use a bedpan. She wanted to walk to the bathroom. So I thought, well, what the hell, I was there, wasn’t I, I’d help her not to fall, I could even carry her back to her bed if I needed to, she didn’t weigh anything. But she did fine—I really didn’t help her at all, just walked behind her. She had just gotten back in bed when the nurse came in, asked if she wanted to wash up a little before she went to sleep. She asked if she needed the bedpan. And we just sort of looked at each other, Jeannie and I, our little secret. And then the next day in surgery she hemorrhaged. See, I think maybe she shouldn’t have gotten up. I think that might just have been too much. And you know …” He looks up at me, starts to speak, stops.
“Ted. It wasn’t your fault.”
“How do I know that, Lainey? They told her to stay in bed. And then I just ignored them. I’m so fucking arrogant, sometimes; I think I don’t have to follow rules. I think they’re for someone else.”
He puts his hand over his forehead, then pulls it down across his face and when he looks up I see that his expression has changed. I used to play a game like that with the kids, where I’d run my hand down my face and change expressions each time: they liked to see my open-mouthed surprise turn into a wide smile or a crossed-eye crazy face. Ted has turned agony into composure. “Well,” he says. “Anyway.” He offers a downward smile, lips held tightly together to prevent trembling, the kind of smile that precedes an outburst of tears in women. And then, “Would you like to see her?”
I look at my watch.
“It won’t take long,” he says. “I know you have to go. It’ll just take a minute. She’s not much of a talker lately.”
“Yes, all right,” I say. It’s only fair. He’s met my kids; he’s peeked in at Jay; he’s listened to plenty of my stories in the last couple of weeks.
I follow Ted down the hall to Jeannie’s room, take a breath before I go in. The room is identical to Jay’s, but in this bed lies a dark-haired woman, thin, clad in a blue hospital gown. She is lying on her side, sheet pulled up to her bony shoulder. Her hair is neatly combed back away from her forehead. Her rings are loose on her fingers. She has high cheekbones, a beautiful nose, lips devoid of color. Over the bed, a floral handkerchief is Scotch-taped to the wall. Its colors are dusty pinks and purples; lace is crocheted around the edges. Seeing me looking at it, Ted says, “That’s her lucky hanky. She’s had it since she was a little girl. Her mother gave it to her to bring along on the first day of first grade, and she’s used it ever since. She took it to tests all through school, to her job interviews. On the day we got married, she had it tucked into her dress. Up the sleeve, you know, like old ladies do.” He stares down at her, hands in his pockets, rocks back and forth on his feet. “She was gifted in mathematics, a rare thing in a woman.” He looks up at me, to see if I’m offended, I presume.
“Uh-huh,” I say.
“I know you have to go.”
“Yes.” I really can’t stand being here. Jeannie has the same kind of eyedrops on her bedside table that they use for Jay, the same kind of lotion. She has a turning chart on her door, just like Jay, to assure that her position gets changed every two hours. I can’t stand knowing that this happens to other people, that coma might be a relatively common phenomenon, that the treatment is the same, no matter who the person is. I have a feeling that they are unlucky, Ted and Jeannie, and that I must not stay here or I will be unlucky too. I hate the blackness of my own self, sometimes, my awful selfishness.
“Well,” I say. “So.” I turn, start walking to the door.
Ted walks with me, stops at the hallway. “I guess I’ll stay with her for a while longer.”
“Right. I’ll see you next time.”
“Lainey?”
I turn around.
“There’s this woman at work, you know, she’s … attractive, and she keeps—”
“Ted.” I can’t believe he would say this so close to Jeannie. I look over Ted’s shoulder, see the rise of her hip under the covers. It comes to me that she never got to have children.
“I know. I’m sorry. I know you have to go.” A blush is creeping into his cheeks. He looks slapped.
“I’ll see you later, Ted.”
I walk quickly down the hall, go back into Jay’s room, kiss his forehead good night. I am thinking that if someone told me he would never, ever wake up, I would still not be unfaithful to him. I will never be unfaithful to him. Never. I am pressing my lips into his forehead saying this word inside myself like a mantra, Never, never; but a singsong counterpoint is saying, Yes, you would, yes, you would. I recall the time Ted checked under the hood of my car in the parking lot of the nursing home, looking for the source of a noise I’d noticed. I’d looked at the muscles in his back and felt a spasm of longing as involuntary as a hiccough. The body will separate itself from the mind, sometimes. The body will make demands. How will I feel if Jay stays like he is for three more months? Only this morning I lay with my hand against myself, my eyes closed, crying and working away, thinking, No, this is not it. This is not nearly enough.
I put my purse on the floor, lower the bed rail, sit beside him. It won’t come to that. I am not without power; I have a squared-off place within this life to exercise what I’ve been given. I will wake him up by sheer force of will, by my will alone. I take his hand, uncurl his fingers and then hold them. “Every day more flowers are out,” I tell him, in a voice barely above a whisper. Then, a little louder, “Sometimes I just can’t believe that they’re real. I mean, they’re so complicated, when you look at them. Their insides. It seems like there could just be dots of color outside and we’d be satisfied. You know, just little flat disks of color, like little plates. But not only do we get the color, we get the variety, and those complicated insides. Sometimes it reminds me of ears, those curls and kind of crevices, you know?” His breathing is quiet, steady. In a firm voice, loud enough to carry across the room, I say, “Jay, I don’t know what you need to hear. But I know you’re going to come home with me. Don’t be scared. I can feel you getting better, and you’ll come home with me soon. I’m just going to keep on telling you. I’m just going to keep on talking, and you listen, all right? That’s all you have to do, is listen. Tomorrow I’m bringing you a tape. You want some jazz?” I wait, absurdly. “You want that Monk tape?” Another beat. I let go of his hand, check my watch, smooth my skirt. I think I might have been yelling. I speak quietly now, say, “I’ve got to home and bathe the kids, honey. They don’t like to take baths together anymore. Sarah locks the door even though I tell her not to, scares me to death, what if she falls? But I guess she needs her privacy. Yesterday she told me she needs a bra, can you imagine? I remember when I wanted a bra, about that same age. I told my mother I needed one and she said, ‘Whatever for?’ and I said, ‘Well, it hurts when I run.’ That’s what my friend Sherry Fessman told me to say. My mother just laughed. Bu
t then she got me a training bra with a little pink rose in the middle. I thought it was beautiful. It smelled like baby powder, and it was real soft, but when I put it on it was incredibly uncomfortable because it was so tight. I didn’t care. I was thrilled to wear it even though all the boys snapped it. It was so humiliating when they did that. I hope you didn’t do that, Jay. I’m sure you didn’t. Did you?” I look into his face, his calm flesh palette, and decide no, he never did.
I go to the window and close his curtains tighter, so that it will be stronger when they open to the light. I pick up my purse, put it on my shoulder. I could make this purse, if I wanted to. I could tan the leather, forge the metal to create the buckle on the strap. These are things that are done on the earth, and I can do them. It is only a matter of deciding. I walk over to Jay. Then, once again, I kiss him. On the forehead. On each cheek. On his chapped lips, which I will also cure.
Underneath stirring, wave after wave. The sleepy sliding sideways tilt. My shoulder bone, porous gray, line of pain. Spaces between rocks, soft openings, the cool blackness. Eyes blinking, yellow thereness. What is that? A slick flash forward. Muddy river bank, the weeping willow, swaying hanging long green sickle leaves—no. No. Hair. Wait, your lips. You!
Nine o’clock. Sarah is in her bed, bedside lamp on, engrossed in a new book that is lying against her raised knees. She won’t break the spine of a book, even a cheap paperback. She cradles her books in her lap like she’s found the Grail. I don’t argue against such reverence. I think it’s right. When I was her age and finished a book I liked, I used to pet it, stroke the front cover, then the back; and then I’d kiss it.
Sarah’s book is one in a series about baby-sitters. Every time I’ve been in a bookstore on a Saturday I’ve seen girls her age reaching up into the shelves for one or another of those books, then sitting on the floor to flip through them, idly scratching their thighs or shoulders, or feeling with their bitten-nail hands along the edge of their sneakers. I like those girls best when their ponytails are sloppy, when they wear glasses. They are such strong and interesting creatures, not yet in the compromising grasp of boy-pleasing. Even though she’s only ten, I am poised for Sarah to start asking when she can wear lipstick, to start saying her nose is wrong. Jay used to worry about how he would deal with our girls going out with boys. “My God, I’ll have to kill the guy before they leave, just to be safe,” he said once. We were lying in bed with our eyes closed, seeing the future. But it bothered us to see the girls older. We opened our eyes, turned on the lights, came back to the relief of the present. Jay went downstairs and brought up a sliced peach on a saucer. “Want some?” he’d asked, and I’d eaten more than my half. That was a hot night. Three fans were running, the sound of summer. The outside of the peach was like baby skin; the inside so sweet it was faintly obscene.
“It’s five after nine,” I tell Sarah now. “Bedtime.”
“In a minute,” she says. “Let me finish this chapter.” She doesn’t even look up.
It’s an intriguing idea, a book series based on baby-sitting. Tremendous number of possibilities, what can happen when you baby-sit. Once when I was sitting, I snooped idly in the parents’ room after the kids were in bed. In his top dresser drawer, I found Polaroids of her naked. Well, not entirely naked. She was wearing her glasses. She was sitting on their living-room floor on an afghan in front of the fireplace, with only her glasses on. They were black cat-eyes. I wondered why she kept them on. I felt weird around those people after that, didn’t want to sit for them anymore. I thought if they were going to do something like take naked pictures at least they should do it right, have the woman take her glasses off. But mostly I just thought it was strange. It made something rise in my throat, thinking of it. The next time they called me to sit I said no, and the time after, and then they stopped calling. It was wrong. They were nice people. So he loved her body. So what. Jay wanted to take pictures of me, once. I said no. I said, What if we get in a car wreck and the kids find them? I was also thinking what is in the back of nearly every woman’s mind nearly all the time: just let me lose five pounds, first. Now I wish we’d taken Polaroids of each other.
I tell Sarah she can finish reading the chapter. Tomorrow’s Saturday, everybody can sleep late. Then I go into Amy’s room to tuck her in, sit on the side of her bed. She’s freshly bathed, her wet hair slicked back from her head. The area under her eyes is bruised-looking; she hasn’t been sleeping well. It is an unsettling thing to see circles under a child’s eyes.
“Can I have oatmeal with raisins for breakfast?” she asks.
“Yes.”
“Well, we don’t have any raisins.”
“How do you know?”
“I wanted some before, and Alice looked but we don’t have any.”
“I think we do. Alice probably didn’t look in the cupboard over the refrigerator. I have spare things up there.”
Amy shrugs. “I don’t know.”
I hope those raisins are there. After Amy’s asleep, I’ll check the cupboard. And if we’re out of raisins, I’ll go to the twenty-four-hour store on the corner and get some. It’ll take me five minutes, the girls will be all right alone. And then when Amy wakes up and wants breakfast I’ll open the cupboard and say, “Yes, here are the raisins. Just as I told you. See?”
“You know what?” Amy asks now, after a huge yawn.
I stretch out on the bed, put my head on the pillow beside her, give her fragrant cheek a kiss. What is that smell children carry? Soap, mixed with clean kid sweat. Life. “What?” I answer. My jeans feel too tight. I unbutton them, slide down the zipper a little ways.
“Once I spent the night with Lizabeth Healey? And she was eating cereal? In the morning? And guess what, she found a bug in it!”
“Really?”
“Yes, it had about a million legs and she started crying. And you know her brother, Carson? He said it came from her head!”
“Well. That wasn’t so nice.”
“No.” She flips her teddy bear’s ear back and forth between her fingers. Then she puts her thumb in her mouth, talks around it. “Can we go to that big playground tomorrow? Behind Miller School?”
“Yes. I think maybe we should do that before we visit Dad.”
I stand up, pull her covers up, turn off her bedside lamp. “Good night, sweetie.”
“All right,” she says. It’s rare for her to say good night. She doesn’t like it, I don’t know why. She is turning into herself in these little ways. She is like stepping into the garden every day, when you know something is new, different from the day before. That’s how children are, growing up in front of you the way they do. Sometimes it’s a barely noticeable thing, like a stem that’s slightly taller. Sometimes it’s a blossom that’s burst forth, obvious as a Vegas showgirl. Wow, you think. I’d better not miss a day. I’d better be here.
I turn on the bedside lamp. Three A.M. The chair in the corner, empty. The extra quilt, fallen to the floor. The shadowy outline of my perfume bottles, still. And that is all. Well, what did I expect? That Jay would come out of the shadows, grinning at me and saying, “You should have heard the noises you were making! Bad dream?” That then he would slide into bed beside me, kiss me, stare with sleepy affection into my eyes before his hand went to my breast? His eyes are beautiful. I loved to look into them. I felt sometimes as though I would like to climb through them, to be into him. I thought that way I could achieve the intimacy our lovemaking hinted at. I wanted more than we had. I tried to tell Jay about this, once. At first he was offended, thinking I was talking about his technique. And I said no, no, it’s not that; it’s that I love you so much and I just want to be in there. And he said yes, he understood that, but he didn’t think it was possible. He asked me if I knew what the word asymptote meant. I said no. He said it was a mathematical term and I asked him if he were crazy asking me if I knew about that when he knew I got panicked if the person at the cash register said, “You want to give me a nickel so I can give you back
a dollar?” He said no, this was a kind of higher mathematics that he thought I could understand, because when you got into higher math it emulated the nature of human beings. That you could see longing in mathematics, and elegance, and grace. And then he showed me the configuration of an asymptote, the tangents and the curved lines, and the way that they came very, very close to touching, but never quite did. That you could follow them out to infinity and they would be so close, but they would never touch. I said yes, that’s right, that is a human longing and it’s not fair that we have it if we can’t have it fulfilled. And he said that it wasn’t unfair. That we lived with knowledge of a promise that later, later, all things would be returned to us. How much later, I asked, and he said, Oh, way later. But in the meantime, we had such fine compensation.
I get up, go into the bathroom, turn on the light and look at myself in the mirror. No change. No answer. Then I turn out the light and go into the hall, pad past the girls’ rooms. Both of them are uncovered, their limbs wild. Well. It’s not that cold. Let them be. I’ve gotten lax with child care, I suppose. I can’t keep up with everything I should. Just the other day Amy went to school with no underwear. I noticed when she came home and was sitting halfway up the stairs, looking at a book and waiting for dinner. “Amy?” I said. “Where’s your underpants?” She lifted up her dress, looked, and shrugged. “I forgot,” she said. I imagined her teacher noticing, then wondering together with the principal if they should send a letter home. And then last week, Sarah came into the bathroom while I was standing with a towel wrapped around me, putting on deodorant. “Amy ate some of that, you know,” she said.
“What?”
“Amy ate deodorant.”
I looked at the top of the deodorant. I didn’t see any marks. “This?”
“No. Dad’s. Aren’t you going to do anything about it?”