She looked away. “I have a bit of a headache.”
“Shall I give you a neck rub?”
“No, it’s okay.”
He sat down heavily on the bed. “You’ve changed your mind.”
She gave a little moan. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay.”
“No, it’s not okay. I hate myself for doing this to you. It’s just I’ve never…I’m not sure I can do something like this.”
He nodded. “I understand.”
“I’ll go halves with you on the room. I was going to anyway…”
“Please,” he said sharply. “Don’t insult me.”
He picked up the bottle of wine that was sitting on the side table and examined it. “It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have pushed you so fast.”
“You didn’t push me, Khaled.”
He set the bottle carefully back on the table. “I had a dream about you last night, you know.”
“Yes?”
“We were in a park together. We were lying on a blanket, eating a dessert—a dessert that we make in Egypt for special occasions, weddings. You liked it very much. You asked for more and more…”
Karla snorted. “That figures.”
“And then, after a time,” Khaled said, “I began to undress you.” He shot her a cautious, sidelong glance. “It was very quiet. There was no one else around. You had a beautiful smile on your face.”
Karla took a deep breath.
“It went very slowly,” he went on. “You were wearing many layers of clothing, and every time I removed a garment, I had to stop to look at you. There was honeysuckle nearby, and the scent was very strong. I wanted…” He paused. “Well, when I finally uncovered your…” He bowed his head. His hands were shaking.
Karla stood up and went toward the door.
“Don’t!” he said. “It’s all right. I’ll stop.”
She halted. “No, it’s not that. I just…if we’re going to…” She smiled apologetically. “I need the lights off.”
CHAPTER
18
“Thank you for coming in this afternoon,” Dr. Krauss said, shutting his office door and gesturing for Audrey and Rosa to sit down. “I hope the timing wasn’t too inconvenient for you.” He perched on the side of his desk with one buttock on, one buttock off. “I’ve asked for this meeting because—”
“Have you been away somewhere?” Audrey interrupted.
He paused, perplexed. “Uh, yes, actually. I was just in Hawaii with my family.”
“I thought so. You look like you got some sun damage.”
“Ha, yes.” His hand rose defensively to his florid neck. “You’re right, I did get a bit burned, I’m afraid.”
“That’s not good. I’d have thought you being a doctor, you’d be extra careful about the sun.”
He chuckled good-humoredly. “Well, we doctors aren’t infallible, you know.”
“Tell me about it,” Audrey said unsmilingly.
He pulled himself up straight. “Anyway, as I—”
“Hawaii, did you say? That must have been nice. Pricey, though I expect.”
The doctor’s eyelashes fluttered. “Well, we got a very good deal on the flights, so actually it wasn’t too—”
Rosa scowled at the ceiling, infuriated by her mother’s childish baiting of the doctor. “You were saying, Dr. Krauss?”
“Yes, right. Well, now…” His left foot began to beat a tattoo against the side of the desk. “In cases like Joel’s, there often comes a moment—a very difficult moment for all concerned—when we have to take a long, hard look at the value of continuing the rehabilitation effort. Joel is, as you know, dealing with a number of health issues. The influenza is obviously the main concern at the moment, but there is also the infection around his trach site and the decubitus ulcers—”
“What are decubitus ulcers?” Rosa asked.
“Bedsores,” Audrey said. “He means the bedsores. Which, by the way, Joel wouldn’t have, if he’d been getting proper care in this place—”
Dr. Krauss made an odd, gargling sound somewhere in the back of his throat: a synecdoche of laughter. “That’s not quite fair, Mrs. Litvinoff—”
“Yeah, yeah, whatever.”
Dr. Krauss ploughed on. “As you know, the most recent EEGs were not encouraging. On the basis of those results we have to conclude that Joel’s chances of regaining a reasonable degree of mental function are very slim indeed at this point. If we then take into account his age and the length of time that he has been unconscious, and the various infections that he’s fighting, there seems to me to be a strong case for reassessing his care plan.”
Rosa glanced at her mother. Audrey was sitting quite still, gazing at a vicious little bouquet of sharpened pencils on Dr. Krauss’s desk.
“What would that mean, exactly?” Rosa asked.
The doctor made a steeple with his hands. “Well. There are several options you might want to think about. Joel has never had a DNR order, so that would be a place to start. Some families who find themselves in this situation will choose to withhold antibiotics, which is really a way of allowing nature to take its course. There is also the option of taking out the feeding tube—”
“Joel’s got bedsores!” Audrey cried. “My mum had bedsores. No one suggested killing her off because of them.”
“No, no, of course not. Perhaps I didn’t make myself clear. The bedsores are just one of a raft of serious problems that Joel is confronting.”
“It was you who bloody gave him the bedsores, and now you’re using them as an excuse to exterminate him.”
“Okay,” Rosa said, quickly. “You’ve given us a lot to think about, Doctor. We appreciate your having been so straightforward. Perhaps the best thing now is for us to go away and discuss this with the rest of the family.”
“Joel’s not making them enough money,” Audrey said, once they had left the doctor’s office. “That’s what this is about, you know. They want to get rid of him, so they can put someone more profitable in his bed.”
Rosa stared bleakly down the corridor. “Let’s not worry about what they want, Mom. The question is, What do we want? What would Dad want? I mean, if there’s really no chance that he’ll get better—”
“Ohh, I see where this is going. You agree with Ichabod Crane, do you? You think we should just kill him?”
“Would you stop it, Mom? You’re not the only one who loves him, you know. This is difficult for all of us. I’m just saying, if he has no quality of life—”
“How the fuck do you know if he has quality of life? You’re not in his brain, are you? There’s this book I read that says there’s a lot of evidence to suggest coma patients have rich dream lives. Who are you to say that’s not worthwhile?”
“Oh, Mom.”
“What? This isn’t bullshit. Read the book if you don’t believe me.”
“He’s in a vegetative state, Mom. Vegetables don’t have rich dream lives.”
“Well, thanks for the morale raiser. Thanks a fucking lot. That really makes me feel super.”
“I’m not trying to make you feel good. I’m trying to figure out what’s best for Dad.”
“And I’m not? Is that what you’re saying?” Audrey hitched up the strap of her handbag and began to stride away down the hall.
“Where are you going?”
Audrey waved her hand vaguely. “I don’t know. I’ll be back in a bit.”
While she was waiting for Audrey to return, Rosa sat in her father’s room, going through the pile of CDs in his bedside cabinet. During the early stages of Joel’s coma, Audrey had demanded that music be played in his room at all times. But the hope that he might be triggered into consciousness by a familiar chord progression or lyric had long since faded: these days, the CDs were rarely brought out. Rosa gloomily inspected the titles: Strauss’s Last Songs, Louis and Ella, Aretha Franklin Sings Gospel, Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, Handel’s Coronation Anthems…. She smiled. She and her father had once
had a furious fight about the Coronation Anthems. She had attacked him for taking pleasure in “reactionary” music that celebrated monarchy.
“But sweetie,” he’d replied, “this is some of the loveliest music ever composed.”
“There’s no such thing as aesthetic ‘loveliness’ independent of politics and ideology, Dad.”
“Isn’t there? Well, then you’re just going to have to forgive your father his little weakness…”
“Why? Why should you be forgiven? Why shouldn’t you be held to account for your contradictions?”
“Well, you know, Rosa, I’ve always said, self-contradiction is one of the occupational hazards of being an American progressive—”
“Bullshit. You just want to have your cake and eat it.”
“Listen, I respect your need to establish your independence from me. Challenging your parents is a necessary and valuable stage in your development. But right now, you’re being a little bit of a pill—”
“You’re such a hypocrite! You sit around, congratulating yourself on how much you hate the system, how committed you are to the struggle. But the minute I object to one of your sacred pieces of classy art, you tell me to shut up.”
Joel finally lost his temper. “How dare you talk to me that way! You little brat! You think you can lecture me on socialism? I’ve spent my life—”
“Yeah, I know. You’ve spent your life protecting the few pathetic rights that the ruling elite sees fit to grant its workers.”
Oh, what an abominable creep she had been! All those years she had tortured him with her lectures—and for what? Not a single one of her precious principles had survived the test of time. Now her father was going to die, and she would never have the chance to say she was sorry or to ask his forgiveness.
She took the disc out of its box and slipped it into the CD player. It would have suited her remorseful mood to be slain by the beauty of what she had once so arrogantly dismissed, but in truth, the music still sounded pretty silly to her. A bunch of snobby-sounding Englishmen tootling fruitily about King-worship. She was about to turn it off when a tall woman with long, silvery dreadlocks came into the room.
“I’m sorry,” the woman said, “I was told there was no one with him. I’ll come back later.”
“It’s okay.” Rosa waved her in. “You don’t need to go.”
“Are you sure?”
“Sure.”
The woman studied her face. “You must be Joel’s daughter.”
“Yes, I’m Rosa.”
The woman did not introduce herself, and there was something grand in her manner that made Rosa hesitant to inquire her name. Perhaps she expected Rosa to know. She walked over to the foot of the bed now and considered Joel’s waxen form. “How is he doing?”
“Not too good,” Rosa said. “He’s got a bunch of different infections. They’re pretty worried about him.”
The woman nodded. “Right.”
Rosa glanced at her approvingly. A lot of Joel’s visitors felt obliged to convey their grief in tiresomely graphic ways. It was a relief not to have to cater to any showy misery.
“This is nice,” the woman said, gesturing at the CD player.
“Yes.”
They stood and listened.
Upon thy right hand did stand the Queen in vesture of gold
“It’s Handel,” Rosa said, after a moment.
The woman’s brows arched in amusement. “I know.”
“I’m sorry,” Rosa said, blushing. “I don’t know anything about classical music, so I stupidly assume that other people don’t.”
From behind them now, there came a cry—a piercing ululation of pain and surprise. They swung around to see Audrey standing wild-eyed on the threshold. “Get out, you whore!” she screamed.
Rosa stared at her in horror. “Mom, please, we have a visitor!”
“She’s the one I’m talking to!” Audrey screamed. “Go on! Get out! Get ooouut!”
Her mouth was open so wide that Rosa could see the vaulted arch of her palate and the uvula waggling lewdly at the back of her throat.
The woman spoke with icy composure. “Calm down, Audrey. I didn’t come here to fight with you.”
There was a moment’s silence and then Audrey rushed forward, her arm held high in the air, ready to strike.
For a while, Karla feared disaster. She was graceless. Gargantuan. Her arms kept getting trapped in awkward positions. She did not know how to kiss properly. Khaled was sure to be disgusted by her. In a spirit of preemption, she grew cold and critical. His mouth was too wet. He was too heavy. His crowing enthusiasm was embarrassing and jejune. Mike, in his poker-faced decorousness, had never shamed her by looking at her or making her look at him. He had certainly never spoken during the act.
At length, Khaled got up to fetch a condom from his jacket. Lying back on the pillows, Karla watched him as he moved across the room in a knock-kneed trot, his arms shielding his belly and his hands cupping his groin, like a man in a sex farce.
“You’re shy!” she exclaimed.
He turned around. “A bit, yes.” He glanced down at himself. “I am not a hunk, I’m afraid.”
The candor of it astonished her. How trustingly he laid himself bare! It was as if the possibility that they would be anything other than kind and forgiving of one another had not occurred to him. The tight little fist of tension in her stomach began to unfurl now. She felt giddy, freed, like a child who has finally escaped adult oversight. In this hotel room—in this bed—they could do anything, she thought, and no one would stop them. “Quick,” she whispered, holding out her arms to him. “Quick, come here.” She was not making a discovery, it seemed to her, so much as retrieving long-forgotten knowledge. For once upon a time, before unhappy experience had inhibited her imagination, had she not assumed that adult love would be this way? Had she not, in her virginal innocence, had a presentiment of just this infinite sensual possibility?
Later, she slept. When she awoke, she found Khaled sitting on the edge of the bed, watching her. A thin shaft of blue light lay across the bedspread.
“What time is it?” she asked.
“Eight o’clock. Five minutes past. When do you have to leave?”
“Soon.” She paused. “Not for a while.”
They smiled at one another. “Did you look out of the window yet?” she asked.
“No.”
“Go look.”
She observed him tenderly as he went over to the window. His soft round torso and skinny legs reminded her of the figures that she and her siblings used to make with potatoes and cocktail sticks when they were children.
“Oh!” he said, when he pulled back the curtains. He stood looking out for a moment or two. Then he drew the curtains and came back to bed.
“My cousin, he owns a deli in Yonkers,” he said as he lay down beside her. “After 9/11, the police came to his home and took him away for questioning. They wanted”—he began to laugh softly—“they wanted to know why he had a picture of the Twin Towers on the wall of his restaurant.”
“You’re kidding!” Karla said. “How long did they keep him?”
“Oh, not very long. Maybe two days.”
“My God, that’s terrible!”
“Well, he didn’t like it, being put in jail like a common criminal. But there were people who had much worse.”
“There’s American justice for you.”
Khaled shook his head. “You’re always saying bad things about America. This is a beautiful country. You don’t know.”
Karla sat up. “How can you say that after what you just told me?”
“My cousin wasn’t beaten or tortured. He was set free after two days. In other places in the world, we would never have seen him again.”
“Khaled! America is bombing civilians in Afghanistan, and any minute now, we’re going to invade Iraq. That’s all okay with you?”
“Oh—” Khaled waved his hand. “All countries are like this. All of them—they would do j
ust the same if they had as much money and power as America. It’s the way the world works, the way people are.”
“But, Khaled, nothing would ever change if everyone took that attitude.”
Khaled shrugged again. “Things don’t change.”
“Yes, they do. You don’t think people achieve things by fighting for their rights? Look at the union movement. It’s transformed the lives of millions of American workers over the last century—”
“Oh, you’re probably right. I don’t know what I’m talking about.” He began to stroke her back. “Is this nice?”
“But wait a minute—”
“Let’s not argue.”
“We’re not arguing,” Karla said stubbornly. “We’re having a discussion.”
“Okay, let’s not discuss it, then,” Khaled said.
“Khaled, you really don’t have any interest in politics, do you?”
“If I say no, will you be disappointed in me?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, then, of course I am interested. Now, I would like to make love to you again.”
Karla looked down at him. His face was in shadow and only the whites of his eyes and the gleaming curve of his cheekbone were visible. When she was younger, boys had asked her to “go to bed” with them, or sometimes to “go all the way.” These days, she and Mike usually negotiated, in a businesslike way, about whether or not they were going to “have sex.” But no one had ever proposed making love to her.
Her cell phone began to ring. She rolled over to examine the caller ID screen. “It’s my sister.”
“Don’t answer it,” he said.
“I have to. It might be about my dad.” She picked up the phone. Rosa’s voice was garbled, and she was speaking very fast. “Slow down,” Karla said, swatting Khaled away as he leaned in to kiss her. “Tell me again.” She got out of bed and walked into the bathroom.
When she reemerged, she had put on a robe.
“What is it?” Khaled asked. “Is your father all right?”
“Yes. It’s…I can’t really work it out. My sister says my mom attacked someone at the hospital.”