“Oh, Ms. Chance. I thought you’d be ashore with the others.”
“I was just freshening up, dear.”
“Ah,” he says. “How are you feeling this morning? You are well?”
“Fine, thank you.”
“That’s good,” he says, averting his eyes. “We were concerned.”
Harriet’s ears burn.
“We weren’t sure who you were yelling at,” he explains. “And you wouldn’t let us help you off the ground. We tried to get the crab leg out of your hand, but you wouldn’t let go. The doctor kept asking you if were taking any—”
“Thank you for your concern, Rudy,” Harriet interjects. “Actually, I’ve got a bit of a headache.”
“Would you like me to come back later?” he says.
“Yes, dear. Would you mind?”
The minute Rudy leaves without replenishing the towels, Harriet finishes packing her handbag and doesn’t bother with makeup. When the coast is clear, she steals down the corridor toward the elevators, where she promptly runs into another one of the young stewards, Wayan.
“Ah, good afternoon, Ms. Chance.”
“Hello.”
Is it Harriet’s imagination, or is the young man hiding a smirk? Was he there? Is the whole crew talking about her?
“Going ashore?” he asks.
“Yes, dear.”
“This fog is supposed to lift. You should take the Mount Roberts Tram.”
This friendly exchange eases Harriet’s mind immediately.
“Thank you for the tip, dear.”
“Certainly,” he says. “And if you get hungry, might I recommend Tracy’s King Crab Shack on Franklin Street?”
“Oh?” says Harriet.
“The bisque and the rolls are superb.” Wayan pursues. “That is, I mean, if you’re not in the mood for crab legs.”
He is smirking, the little hyena—she’s sure of it!
A RUGGED LITTLE HAMLET of chipping paint, weather-beaten wood, and yellow brick, Juneau hunkers at the base of two gigantic mountains, half shrouded in fog. So sudden and precipitous is the terrain that the town has nowhere to sprawl. Even the hulking cruise ships ringing the harbor stem to stern—each one a city in its own right—appear tiny in the shadow of such grandeur. The little harbor buzzes with tourism. Everywhere Harriet looks she sees a guide in a windbreaker handing out brochures, a sandwich board promising discounts, a taxi crawling past. Everywhere, cruisers gawk and gander and graze, clutching digital cameras and street maps, their sweatshirts emblazoned with moose and grizzly bears.
Though the fresh air enlivens Harriet somewhat, her head still throbs, and she suffers from an unquenchable thirst, which seems to rise up from the pit of her stomach. She doesn’t dare eat, for fear she won’t keep down the food. She doesn’t dare wander too far, for fear she’ll collapse. Still, her condition has improved markedly and, with it, the day’s prospects. Indeed, the fog is just beginning to break, and the great craggy peaks are beginning to show themselves.
On a different day, under different circumstances, Harriet might be delighted. Here she is in Alaska. Think of the gift shops. The gem shops. The native art galleries. But if ever she’s felt like she was going through the motions, it’s now.
Maybe that had been her problem all along, going through the motions. Maybe that’s why she failed to hold Bernard’s attention all those years, or inspire his muse. Maybe her quiet steadiness and her stoic bearing had been dull. Maybe next to Mildred—spritelike, impulsive Mildred—Harriet had looked like a toadstool. And maybe Bernard, under Mildred’s provocative influence, really had been a different man. Surely Harriet had failed to tap Bernard’s potential. She hadn’t pushed him hard enough, hadn’t made him accountable for his flaws. Where Mildred had probably coaxed and challenged and dared Bernard, Harriet had accepted him, warts and all.
Though not a lover of heights, Harriet could use a little perspective. She stands in line for the Mount Roberts Tram. Maybe from the top, her difficulties will look like trifles. The close quarters of the gondola do little to improve Harriet’s discomfort. Nor does the vertiginous drop on all sides as the mountainside falls away. Halfway up, she’s sweating. Her stomach is rising when it should be falling. Pressing her face closer to the window, she forces herself to focus on the little outpost of Juneau below, growing tinier by the minute through the parting fog. Hugging the shoreline along the narrow channel, a flotilla of cruise ships encircles the harbor.
Bernard would have liked this. She can’t help but think it. Such thoughts are second nature. Even the most bitter of grudges cannot deter or distort their appearance. He would’ve liked the cables, the pulleys, the whole of the great gravity-defying apparatus that held them aloft and pulled them forward. He probably wouldn’t have even looked down, but up at the seamless workings of the thing. That she can’t stop seeing the world through Bernard’s eyes, that she can’t stop loving him in the face of his terrible deception, is at once maddening and heartbreaking.
Shuffling off the tram, she’s glad for the air and proceeds not to the gift shop but the viewing area, where she stands off to the side by herself, leaning on the rail for support, gazing down at the scenery through tatters of fog as the line of red gondolas ascend and descend, disappearing beyond the first bluff, then reappearing near the base of the mountain. How is it possible that she can still love him?
The fist in her stomach redoubles. My God, what is she even doing up here? With this hangover, under these circumstances. But even in her weakened condition, she cannot resist the pull of the gift shop.
She walks out forty minutes later, $186 lighter, with no less than four miniature totems, key chains for Caroline and Skip, and a lovely hand-carved Tlingit mask for herself. How refreshing to spend money heedlessly! Caroline is absolutely right: Harriet’s cheap with herself. Starting now, she’s going to spend money where she can. What’s she saving it for? Posterity? How many years has she been wearing this blue overcoat? How many times has she wanted to replace that dingy patio furniture? It’s time to spend money while she can.
On the tram down the mountain, Harriet stands with her back to the window, clutching the handrail with her free hand. She closes her eyes briefly as the car begins its descent.
“That mask was a little pricey, don’t you think?”
She opens her eyes to find Bernard, at forty, standing directly across from her, cheeks sunburned to a crisp, forehead peeling, his nose a triangular blotch of calamine lotion.
“You!” she says.
“I know I’ve got some explaining to do. I tried to warn you.”
“Don’t bother. Really, Bernard. What on earth could there possibly be to say?”
“Maybe you’re right.”
“Go haunt Mildred, why don’t you?”
Bernard winces.
“It serves you right, you know, that sunburn.”
“I know it does. Look, I’m not here to make excuses. It wasn’t you, it was me.”
“Well, that’s a big relief. Here I’ve been beating myself up for pushing you into the arms of my best friend.”
“That’s not what I mean. I mean, some part of me was, well, conflicted. I knew what I was doing was wrong, but somehow—”
“Oh, is this about your ‘troubled heart’? Because I’d be really interested in hearing about this troubled-heart business. Since the Bernard I lived with didn’t have a heart—more of a command center. And what about all this passion Mildred alluded to? The man I lived with was an automaton.”
“She expanded me.”
“While I washed your socks and ironed your slacks. Oh, this is outrageous, Bernard, really.”
“I’m just trying to explain.”
“What’s to explain? It all seem pretty obvious.”
“There were deficits to consider. Needs not being met. And I’m not blaming you, Harriet.”
“I should say there were needs not being met! All those years, I never even had time to think of my own needs, and ye
t somehow you had time to go fulfill yours with somebody else.”
“I was incredibly selfish.”
“Just tell me, what was so bad about me, Bernard? Was I a bad lover? Was I too boring? Not impulsive enough? Because if that’s the case, you might have said something before you went and had an affair for nearly four decades. You might have at least given me a chance to punch up my personality—dye my hair, read the Kama Sutra, something. Since when were you impulsive, anyway? You spent half your life with your face buried in a crossword.”
“I hate crosswords. That’s the thing of it. I just can’t stop doing them.”
“So you were hiding, is that it?”
“I suppose that’s one way of looking at it.”
“You took me for granted, Bernard, that’s another.”
“I got my punishment, though, in the end. In a way, you sort of exacted your revenge without ever knowing it, if you really start thinking about it.”
Ashamed, Harriet turns partway toward the window as the tram clears the bluff and the ground falls away abruptly.
“I see,” she says. “You’re trying to strike some kind of bargain, is that what’s happening?”
“I take full responsibility—for Mildred, too.”
“Oh, is that so?”
“She tried to stop it, Harriet. Continually, she tried to stop it.”
“Don’t you dare defend her.”
“She always thought the world of you,” said Bernard. “And don’t think for a minute that she didn’t feel terrible about it, every step of the way. She hated herself and I hated myself. But damnit, Harriet, she loved you, she really did. She understood you so much better than I did. She gave me more practical advice about how to—”
“Stop right there, Bernard. You’re not helping your case.”
“I haven’t got one. Hell, if I were you, I wouldn’t forgive me, either.”
“Then what are you doing here?”
“I’m not sure what I’m trying to accomplish. And that’s the truth. At first, I just wanted to be near you. The Continental was nice, wasn’t it? That’s all I wanted. The familiarity, the companionship, some chicken à la king.”
“Stop,” she says, turning her back on him completely. “Just stop talking.”
Quietly, Harriet simmers as Juneau, its narrow harbor, its dirty little side streets, inches nearer. He’s actually defending her! Unbelievable. Harriet can hardly control her rage. When the tram eases into the station, she turns back toward Bernard, ready to lay into him. But standing in his place is a family of five, eyes painstakingly averted, except for the youngest child, a boy of three or four, who stares unabashedly at Harriet as he empties his juice box with a slurp.
August 20, 2015
(BERNARD, DECEASED, DAY 282)
CTO Charmichael looks exhausted slumped behind his sturdy desk, his forgettable shirt rumpled, his thinning hair a little unkempt. The stack of files on his desk is perilously close to toppling.
“It appears, Candidate Chance—and again, I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt here—that you’ve been laboring under a slight misapprehension recently regarding Section One.”
“Sir?”
“Specifically, with regard to the consequences of non-compliance, as clearly—dare I say, eloquently—outlined in Clause 1.4.”
“Yessir. After our last conversation, I checked on that, sir.”
“And?”
“You were right. Nothing will happen.”
“Precisely, Candidate Chance. Nothing will happen. As in, nothing.”
“With all due respect, that’s not much of a consequence, sir.”
“Oh no? Well, I beg to differ, Candidate Chance. Let us consider. Having been granted nearly a century to design and fulfill yourself, to have children, a wife, a lover, several careers, to have served your country, your community, your family, to have eaten and loved and slept and worried, ahem, in short, to have bumbled and mucked about ‘down there,’ as you refer to it, for nine decades, have you any idea of what nothing looks like? What it sounds like? What it feels like?”
“Uh, like nothing, sir?”
“That’s it precisely. Of course, ‘look’ and ‘feel’ are misnomers, technically speaking. It’s actually quite difficult to put into context. A few Greeks tried. But that was a while back, and they didn’t get much beyond shadows and caves. I think we can agree that’s not very far. Allow me to enlighten you: to experience nothing is to not exist, Candidate Chance. To never have existed. To never exist again. Period. To experience nothing is to be stripped of your every sense but one.”
“Which one?”
“The sense of nothingness.”
“So that’s the punishment?”
“We prefer not to frame it punitively. We look at nothing as a choice. Just as we look at everlasting life as a choice.”
“But sir, I can make a difference. I can be a comfort to her. At the very least, I can keep apologizing. Maybe she’ll give in eventually.”
“That may be the case. But it hardly matters in the big picture. And consider the risk, Candidate Chance. You’re not just risking everything here—you are risking anything at all. Do you understand that?”
“Yessir, I understand.”
“I hope you do, Chance. I’m rooting for you, I really am. We all are. I hope you won’t do anything rash. Go with the program, son. Reap the benefits. You’ve been given an excellent opportunity for transition here. Don’t squander this one by getting mired in the past.”
“Yessir, I’ll try not to.”
“You’d best not, Candidate. Or you’ll have nothing to pay.”
February 14, 2014
(HARRIET AT SEVENTY-SEVEN)
Here you are at seventy-seven, Harriet, still kicking, still marking your days with Bernard, though you haven’t had movie night in four months. Indeed, overnight, your life has once again become what you’ve been fearing: cloistered. You’re desperate for diversion, restless to leave the house, but that means taking Bernard, the 140-pound infant, along. And if you thought baby Caroline was a terror, think again.
Probably not a good time to remind you that it’s Valentine’s Day as you spoon-feed Bernard Cream of Wheat. No big surprise that Bernard has forgotten the feast of St. Valentine, seeing as how he’s forgotten his address, his middle name, and apparently how to swallow, as evidenced by the dollop of gruel oozing its way down his stubbled chin. A few things he hasn’t forgotten, a few useful platitudes upon which he leans all too heavily in his new version of conversation: “Speed will kill a bearing faster than an increased load.” “You wanna prevent rust? Vinegar.” And of course: “They used to call Okinawa the gray pork chop.”
It’s enough to drive you crazy, Harriet, literally.
You understand that caring for someone can be a thankless job. You were a parent, after all. You don’t expect gratitude. But the least he could do is cooperate. The least he could do is not rap you on the side of the head when you attempt to wrestle his pants on, or bite you when you’re trying to feed him.
Let’s talk about the ugly truth, Harriet: There are mornings, and this is one of them, when you want to smother Bernard with a pillow, mornings when you’re sure you’re capable. There are moments when your hatred for him is a blind red impulse you can neither control or contain. You scold him viciously when he fouls his pants, throws food, rails against your every kindness. Times like these, you can no more sympathize with Bernard than you could sympathize with an egg salad sandwich. He’s a thing. You have no earthly idea what, if anything, you are to him.
It doesn’t matter that his condition isn’t his fault. It doesn’t matter that the hellish degeneration worming its way through his brain is in itself punishment enough for a dozen men. It doesn’t matter what water has passed beneath your bridges the past half century. Living with him, caring for him, sleeping with one eye open, is a torture worse than physical abuse. Half the time he doesn’t recognize you. The other half he’s erratic, often hatefu
l, sometimes violent.
And it’s not just pillows. Oh no, Harriet. You fantasize about clubbing Bernard senseless like a harp seal. Pushing him down stairs, in front of UPS trucks, off of cliffs. Only halfheartedly do you fantasize, of course. It doesn’t matter that you’ll never act on these impulses, it doesn’t matter that they’re just aberrant manifestations of extreme frustration and grief, the sort of thing that any caregiving manual would caution you against, they are sick and unforgivable, and you hate yourself for these thoughts.
Face it, you’re out of patience, Harriet, out of pity, out of will, out of gas. Totally without the desire to go on living like this. And yet you keep going. Is it your unflagging sense of duty? Your unwavering commitment to service? Or is it just instinct? Surely, it’s not your love of Bernard, because this is not Bernard we’re talking about here. Bernard, as you once and always knew him, has been replaced by a human Brussels sprout.
What you ought to do, Harriet Chance, is strap Bernard into bed by the armpits, as your father once strapped you, then retire to the bathroom and soak your feet. What you ought to do is ask for help. Self-care, Harriet—they talk about it at the Partners of Alzheimer’s support group in the basement of the Calvary Chapel. The one you don’t go to.
March 17, 2014
(HARRIET AT SEVENTY-SEVEN)
All of which, in retrospect, Harriet, begs the question (and apologies for bringing up a sore subject), but where the hell is Mildred Honeycutt now that her lover of forty years is sitting before the television in a loaded diaper, with tapioca running down his chin, convinced that weatherman Steve Pool is hatching a plot to kill him?
As it turns out, Bernard would also like to know the whereabouts of Mildred. “Darling, you’re confused,” you say. “It’s me, Harriet, your wife.”
“You’re not Mildred.”
“No, I’m Harriet.”
“Where the hell’s Mildred?”