He supposes, too, that it would have been nice, at this point in his life, when retirement is not so very far away, to think that he belonged to someone, and they to him—to chin and be chinned.
He shifts the truck into third and catches a glimpse of himself in the rearview mirror. There are a few years on him, yes, but he’s in pretty good shape. He wonders if Candy Sullivan’s coming to the reunion. He used to think about her in a certain way, though he knew it was useless. He used to sit at his desk doing homework and then stop and look out the window and think of her. Maybe he’ll have a drink and tell her that.
He walks into his clinic, thinking about how fast time goes by, one’s whole life. When Jeanine sees him, she slams down the phone and stands up behind the reception desk. “I was just trying to call you. Samson’s back. He’s in trouble; his temp and heart rate are sky-high. He’s in room one.”
EIGHT
“DAMN IT!” COOP SAYS. “I JUST CAN’T BELIEVE THIS!” IT’S eleven o’clock, and Candy and he have just come back to the car after having met with Dr. Johnston. Coop sits slumped behind the steering wheel, his car door open to let out some of the heat that has accumulated—he’d parked the car in the sun, thinking they wouldn’t be longer than fifteen or twenty minutes. Candy’s door is not open. She doesn’t feel the heat. She doesn’t feel much of anything but a need to get home and get out of this suit, out of these heels.
Coop looks over at her. “Fuck. I don’t know if I can drive.”
“I’ll drive,” Candy says and starts to get out of the car.
Coop grabs her arm. “I’ll do it.” He holds on to her for a moment longer, then closes his eyes tightly and Candy can see he’s trying not to cry. “Just give me a minute.” She waits, staring out the windshield at the line of cars parked before her, wondering how many other people will walk to their cars feeling weirdly shaken. She wonders if she wins for worst diagnosis for the day.
“Candy, I… I’m so sorry for all—”
“Don’t,” she says. “You don’t need to do that. Let’s not do that. Let’s just go home.”
He sighs, puts the key into the ignition, and turns on the engine, the air conditioner. He shakes his head. “I really can’t believe it. Can you?”
She shrugs.
Coop puts the car into reverse and begins backing out. “Well, we’re not going to listen to that and just assume it’s right. We’re going to get a second opinion, maybe a third. Let’s just see what happens after that. Let’s see what they say.”
“Yes, all right.”
“I mean, I literally cannot believe this! You haven’t even felt sick!”
She laughs, a small sound.
“What,” he says. “What’s funny.”
“I don’t know. Nothing.”
They drive in silence for a while, and then Coop says, “He’s not that good a doctor, anyway. I don’t know why you insist on going to him. Is he even board certified?”
“Coop.”
“What?”
“I knew something was wrong.”
Now he laughs. “You always think something is wrong! And it never is!” He pulls out onto the freeway and sits back farther in his seat, more relaxed, now. “It’s not going to be anything this time, either. It’s a mistake, it’s got to be. You’ll see. They make mistakes.”
“Okay, Coop.”
He looks over at her. “Okay?”
“Yes.”
He looks at his watch. “We’ll go somewhere nice for lunch.”
“I want to go home.”
“I’ll take you anywhere you want to go.”
“I want to go home, Coop.” In his face, she sees a quick flicker of… what? Annoyance? Coop doesn’t like it when she doesn’t take him up on his offers for things he thinks she should like. Once, he told her such refusals reflected her self-loathing.
Remembering this confirms her decision to tell Coop about the reunion tomorrow. She will say that she is going, and that he is not going with her. He might say he’ll come now, but she’ll say no. She’ll say she’ll be fine, it’s just a weekend. Nothing has changed, except that they’ve heard some words, a first opinion.
When they pull into the driveway, their neighbor Arthur is outside moving slowly toward his house, carrying what looks to be a heavy bag of groceries. Candy tells Coop to go and help him. When he starts to argue, she says, “I’m fine. Go and help him, please.”
Coop gets out of the car and calls to Arthur, saying, “Hey there, need a little help?” For a moment, Candy worries that Arthur might be offended by the offer, but no, his face lights up and he hands his bag to Coop. She hears him say, “Tell you what, there are three more bags in the car. Thanks a million, awfully neighborly of you. It’s those big tin cans that’ll kill you! Those crushed tomatoes!”
Candy goes into the house and does not acknowledge Esther, though the bulldog greets her at the door and begins snorting and spinning in happy circles. She picks up the mail from the vestibule floor, sorts it by size, and lays it on the table. When she walks into the kitchen, she realizes she has no memory of who sent the mail she just picked up. But what does it matter.
She goes upstairs and into the bathroom and starts water running in the tub. Then she goes to the bedroom and takes off her clothes and puts on her softest bathrobe, the blue one she’s had for so many years now. She goes back down to the kitchen and pours herself a glass of Pinot Grigio and gets out a tray on which she arranges fancy cheeses, crackers, a bunch of grapes, and a bar of Vosges chocolate that features a combination of sweet, salty, and hot, her favorite. She adds a rose from the arrangement at the center of the dining room table and carries the tray up to the bathroom, where she balances it on the wide edge of the tub and turns off the taps. The tub is deliciously full, overfull, and wisps of steam rise and twist enticingly.
Esther has not left her mistress’s side, and now Candy pats the top of the dog’s head. “Did I ignore you?” she says. “Did I? I’m sorry.” She gives Esther a bite of cheese and watches as she swallows it without chewing, then lies down, her chin on her crossed paws.
From downstairs, Candy hears Coop call her name.
“In the bathroom,” she calls. Back to the womb, she thinks. She has always taken baths when she feels bad, seeking out—and finding—an elemental comfort.
There is an unopened bottle of scented oil on the wide ledge of the tub that Candy’s been saving for a special occasion. She opens it now and adds it to the water, then steps in. She looks down at her dear, familiar body, her pale skin and the cheerful scattering of freckles across her chest, down her arms. She lowers herself slowly—the water is wonderfully hot—and feels a dull pain in her knees. She leans against the back of the tub, takes a sip of wine, and sighs. When did she start feeling it in her knees when she bends down this way? Will she never again in her life do a cartwheel? When was the last one?
She hears Coop coming up the stairs and then he knocks at the door and speaks through it. “You’re taking a bath?”
“Yes.” Another sip of wine. Very good.
“Didn’t you take a shower this morning?”
“Yes, Coop.”
“Can I come in?”
She looks again at her body, seeing it in a different way, now. Having no affection for it at all, and feeling embarrassed by her sagging breasts, her soft belly, the blueness of the veins that run close to the surface.
“Candy?”
“Come in.”
He opens the door, and she sees him take in the tray, her blue robe, Esther, then: her, though he looks quickly away from her body and fixes his gaze on her face.
He sits awkwardly at the side of the tub. “So… Are you comfortable in there?”
“Yup.”
“Need anything?”
“Nope.” She looks into his eyes and it is as though she hasn’t seen him for a long time. He’s a very handsome man, beautiful gray eyes, high cheekbones, and a strong chin. Silvery temples on an otherwise black head of hair.
She says, “You know what I was just thinking? I was in a department store the other day and I used the restroom, and there was a receptacle for tampons in the stall. And I thought, What do they need that for? You know? I thought that because I no longer use tampons, there was no need for a receptacle.”
Coop stares at her. He doesn’t understand.
Candy sits up and the water makes a sloshing sound. “I mean that I’ve become so incredibly self-centered that I—”
“You’re not self-centered,” Coop says. “Arthur was just telling me how you’re always running next door to ask them if they need anything, that you bring them turnovers from the bakery and pick up their library books and shovel their snow and everything else.”
Candy nods. She wants her husband to listen to what she is saying. She wants him to understand what she means by what she says. She may have an opportunity to try to explain herself now in a way she would not have been able to before. “But I am, Coop. And I’ve cut myself off from others, from important things, really important things!”
He makes the smallest gesture of impatience, but he does not speak.
She moves closer to him, tries to hold his eyes with her own. “You know, you get a diagnosis like this, and it’s like there’s a seismic shift or something. A very personal seismic shift. All I could think, after Dick gave me the odds, was, Oh my God, what I haven’t done! It’s as though… It’s like all around a person, the world goes on, all the time, all the goodness and all the evil. All the living and the dying and we always seem to forget that our time for dying will come, too. We walk in cemeteries and feel sorry for the people who are buried there. Like it will never happen to us! And yet now that I’ve been told I’ll die—”
“That’s not what he said!”
She looks at him.
“It’s not! He gave you some statistics. That’s all. And we don’t even know if he’s right. He could be wrong!”
“Well,” she says. “Anyway.” She smiles at him. “I’m fine, Coop. Really I am.”
“So… you want to just stay here for a while?”
She nods.
“Do you want me to read to you or something?”
He used to do that. In the early years, knowing that she loved to be read to, he would ask her now and then if she would like him to read to her. Always, she said yes. But it’s been years. It’s been a lifetime, truly. She could accept this gift he’s offering. But what she really wants right now is solitude. And for once, her needs are going to be honored over his. She says, “Oh, that’s sweet of you. But no. Not now. I’d like to just be in here and… I want to think. The warm water feels good. And doesn’t it smell nice?”
“Yeah.”
She doubts he’s noticed the smell at all, even now, when she’s pointed it out to him. But that’s all right. It’s for her, and she smells it just fine.
“Want me to bring you anything else?”
“No, I’ve got everything I need.”
“Well… Don’t you want me to just sit here with you? So you’re not alone?”
“I’m okay. You go and do whatever you want. I’d actually like to be alone.”
He stands and she can see him trying hard not to look relieved. “All right, so I’ll just go and work on the computer. Call me if you need anything.”
“Okay. Coop?”
He turns around. “Yeah?”
“I’m going to my high school reunion tomorrow. I really want to. But you don’t have to come.”
“Well, I will, now.”
“I don’t want you to.”
He stands there, and she says, “What I mean is, I don’t need you to go. You said you didn’t want to when I asked you before, and that’s fine. But I want to go. I’ve got the tickets. I just need you to give me a ride to the airport, and pick me up when I come back. Or I can take a cab.”
He puts his hands in his pockets and nods. It’s all she can do not to get out of the tub and embrace him. She thinks of how her wet body would imprint on his dry clothes.
Two hours later, he knocks on the door again. “You okay?”
“I’m fine.”
“You don’t need anything?”
“No.”
“Can I… do you still want to be alone?”
“Yes. But take Esther out, will you? She needs a good walk.”
Many hours after that, Coop comes to the door and says, “I’m starving. You?”
“I’m not getting out quite yet, Coop. You’ll have to make your own dinner.”
“Well… What have we got?”
She almost laughs. “Why don’t you look?”
Twenty minutes later, he comes into the bathroom with toasted cheese and tomato sandwiches. “Coop!” she says.
“Dinner. I made these.”
“I know.”
“Wasn’t that hard, really.”
“I know that, too.”
“It wasn’t easy, either.”
She looks at him.
“The damn tomatoes were slippery.”
“Well. It looks very good.”
“But taste it.”
She takes a bite. “Yes. Very good.”
“I used two kinds of cheese.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Kind of fancy.”
“Yes, it is. It’s very good, Coop.”
They eat their sandwiches and talk a bit, and Coop does not ask again if she wouldn’t like to come out of the tub. It’s as though she lives there now, like a fish. He brings her a book she asks for, a gardening magazine, sets a radio on the floor and tunes it to the classical station she requests.
Candy lets her mind roam. She thinks about how she wanted to be a horse when she was a little girl. She thinks of a tangerine-colored scarf she wore under a brown leather jacket when she was in college. She thinks of a time when she and Cooper were on vacation. They were staying at an inn on the water in Connecticut, and she had awakened early and taken a walk alone across a causeway. On the way, she saw two swans sleeping, rocked by the water, their long necks wrapped around their bodies so that their heads could be supported on top of their folded wings. She spoke softly to them, asking them, absurdly, if they were asleep, though she could plainly see that their eyes were closed. It is Candy’s habit to speak to almost every animal she comes in contact with; she has a deeply grounded affection for animals similar to that which she has for young children, and she thinks it’s for the same reason: they are unapologetically themselves, and their default setting seems to be for happiness. On that same walk, she remembers, she saw a seagull flapping its wings against a strong wind, struggling hard just to stay in one place, and the image now has particular poignancy.
She thinks about how she went into a coffee shop yesterday and sat at a table next to one where an old woman and her daughter were sitting. The old woman was a mess: her hair long and stringy, her face thin and ravaged-looking. She looked homeless, but Candy didn’t think she was, not with her daughter sitting there with her official-looking papers. The daughter was dressed in a stained black top and loose-fitting black pants, Clark Kent–style glasses. She was overweight, her hair greasy, and there was a distinct smell of body odor coming from her. The daughter was giving her mother some sort of test, checking for Alzheimer’s or something, Candy thought, for she said, “Okay. Concrete is hard, or concrete is soft?” She repeated the question, and repeated it yet again, with no pause in between. Then, “Mother!” she said.
“Concrete is hard or concrete is soft,” the mother said quickly. Obediently.
“No, but which is it?” the daughter said. “Concrete is hard or concrete is soft?” And again she repeated the question two more times.
“Concrete is soft,” the mother said.
Her daughter sighed. Then she said, “Okay, that’s kind of a trick question. Because concrete is soft when they first pour it, isn’t it? But then it gets hard.”
Yes, Candy thought. One for the mother. Why don’t you ask her if a sidewalk is hard or soft?
> “Next question,” the daughter said. “Mother? Mother, pay attention, listen carefully.”
Listen carefully? Candy thought. The espresso maker is making such loud noises, people keep coming in the door and going out of it, there are conversations going on at every table—how can she concentrate? Take her home, to her own kitchen table. Give her a chance.
“Okay, next question,” the daughter said. “You keep money in a wall or you keep money in a wallet, you keep money in a wall or you keep money in a wallet, you keep money in a wall or you keep money in a wallet?”
I’m going to scream, Candy thought.
“I’m so hungry,” the mother said.
“Well, Mother, so am I,” the daughter said. “Okay? Now pay attention. Listen carefully. You keep money in a wall or you keep money in a wallet?”
If you say something over and over again, it begins to lose its meaning, Candy thought. Say anything enough times and it becomes gibberish. Then she thought, You could keep money in either a wall or a wallet. You could have a safe.
The mother said, “You keep money in a…,” and Candy didn’t move a muscle, waiting to hear the woman’s answer, praying that she would get it right, that she would have this small triumph.