The Behavior of Love

by Virginia Reeves

  I have lost him as husband and lover, but it’s the idea of him I risk losing now. We build our lives on ideas.

  I still have not answered her question.

  “Do you feel responsible for Edmund’s accident, Laura?”

  “Yes,” I say. Do I? The doctors have given us no cause, no preexisting condition that led to Ed’s aneurysm. It could’ve been due to his smoking and drinking, which were always heavy but grew heavier after the divorce. Still, plenty of nondrinking, nonsmoking people develop aneurysms. Likely, it was some faulty piece of genetic code, passed along from his parents or grandparents, a dormant weapon crouching in the shadows of his brain, grating away at that one vulnerable spot, thinning and weakening it until it burst.

  Starburst. Sunburst. Outburst.

  “Laura, no one could’ve stopped this thing that happened to Edmund, not even Edmund himself. You are feeling guilty that Edmund is having to go through this without a spouse, and you are transferring that guilt onto something you have no control over. Tell me, why did you and Edmund divorce?”

  “He didn’t see me anymore.”

  “Ed was never home,” Tim tries to clarify, and I hate him for speaking now, the word hate sharp and defined in my mind. “He was completely devoted to his work and had an inappropriate relationship with—”

  “Ed’s and my marriage is not yours to discuss,” I say.

  Tim’s voice grows tight. “When it’s affecting our marriage, then I’d say I can talk about it all I want.” He turns his attention to Helen. “I’m going to wait outside.”

  “Are you sure, Tim? It’s good to work through these things together.”

  “I think Laura has some work of her own to do.”

  I watch him walk to the door, stiff and indignant. He wears short sleeves and shorts even though it’s October, and I watch the muscles of his calves, the thickness of his forearms. He is still tan from summer, long days outside building. He built the boys a multistory playhouse in the backyard, nicer than a lot of real homes. It has a balcony.

  “How would you describe your relationship with Tim?” Helen asks once he’s gone.

  “Good, like it’s always been.”

  “You sound disappointed by that.” She is a professional, versed in diplomacy.

  “It’s boring,” I say. “Boring and monotonous and safe. There’s nothing to complain about. Tim is everything I said I wanted Ed to be—attentive, available, open. He’s home for dinner every night. Half the time, he’s the one cooking. He takes our boys for walks and bike rides and trips to the library so I can have time alone to paint. He supports my artwork, asks about it every day.”

  “How’s the sex?”

  Bonnie is the only one who’s ever asked me this question—abrasive, bold Bonnie who asks anything, no subject off limits—and I’ve never answered fully. “Fine,” I’ve said. “It’s great.”

  “It’s all right,” I tell Helen. “Rare, I guess, but good when it happens.”

  She is staring at me, pen poised. Her face says, Why don’t you tell me the whole story.

  “It’s good and boring, like the rest of our lives. We have sex in one position in our bed on Friday nights unless something interferes.”

  She’s writing in her notebook, and I worry that I’ve said too much, that I’ve betrayed Tim, that I’m being too fussy.

  “Do you think it’s boring for Tim, too?”

  I have never considered what Tim thinks of our sex life, and it makes me feel even worse about my indictment.

  “I don’t know,” I admit to Helen.

  “How was sex with Edmund?”

  I am in the bathroom at Dorothy’s. I am in the bathroom at the hospital. I am in my classroom in Boulder.

  “Sex with Ed was exciting, but he used it to take the place of real connection.”

  Helen nods and writes. “Do you feel like you have a real connection with Tim?”

  “Yes.”

  Helen puts her pen down as though she’s just penciled out an answer to the troublesome equation we’ve been working for days. Sex times x equals intimacy plus y, in which x is of greater or equal value to real connection; y is less than excitement but greater than boredom. Solve for x and y.

  “It’s human nature to second-guess our decisions, Laura, especially decisions of this magnitude. There’s no way to completely eradicate that way of thinking. However, you can behave in ways that lessen it. It sounds like you and Tim have some things to work on between the two of you. By focusing your attention on Edmund, you avoid the issues with Tim. Does that make sense?”

  I nod.

  “If you want to save your current marriage, you must invest in it, and to truly invest in it, you have to let Edmund go.”

  I stare at her, those giant amber eyes, rich as honey.

  “Can you do that, Laura? Can you let Edmund go?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Say Edmund is not my husband.”

  “Edmund is not my husband.” Have I ever said this before? Edmund is not my husband.

  “I divorced him four years ago.”

  “I divorced him four years ago.”

  “I am divorcing him again right now.”

  “I am divorcing him again right now.”

  I don’t know that I want to.

  “I’m just supposed to abandon him?” I ask.

  Helen’s voice is patient and gentle. “You can’t abandon something that isn’t yours.”

  Chapter 33

  “Dr. Ed?”

  Ed has been dozing in his chair. Not a wheelchair anymore, but a regular chair at a regular table in this regular room. He is walking with a cane and using his left arm again, the fingers starting to obey his thoughts. Pick up glass. Bring to mouth. Set down. There are moments when he forgets where he is—a hospital in Great Falls—and who he is—a patient—and instead finds himself back in Boulder, making his rounds. He hears his patients asking for him.

  “Dr. Ed?” A hand on his shoulder accompanies the voice.

  Ed opens his eyes. He tries to orient himself, tries to place the face before him into the situation his therapists keep telling him is true. You are the patient, Edmund. Yes, you are a doctor, but right now, you’re a patient. If that is true, how can this person be here?

  “Pen?”

  She sits in the chair next to him, scoots it close. “Hi, Ed.”

  His brain is a building gutted by fire, walls smoke-licked, ceiling blackened, floor crumbling. He trips down the damaged hallways. Every now and then, though, he finds an untouched room, everything just as he left it, and the memories rise up in vivid detail. He searches for the room marked Penelope. He’s sure he was just there.

  “Ah! Pen!” There it is, and he beams at her.

  She reaches for him and he leans toward her—a kiss!—but instead, she pulls the smudged glasses from his face and polishes them with the hem of her shirt.

  He blinks, a baby unaccustomed to the light. “What are you doing here?”

  “Visiting you. I’m sorry I didn’t come sooner. Dr. Pearson came into the library only last week and told me what happened.”

  She slides his glasses back on, and he takes in the brightly edged world before him, suddenly clear. He can see the common room where they sit, the board games on the shelf in the corner, the television on low, the bookshelves and coffee tables and sofas. There’s a table for coloring, and he wants to collect all those bright crayons, though he doesn’t know why. Maybe just to look at now that he can see them so clearly. I’ll have to talk to those orderlies about keeping the patients’ glasses clean. He files this note in the Staff Improvement room of his brain. He fills this room often, though he worries a window might be open, the screen damaged or gone, all his notes flying out into the grasses behind Griffin Hall, sticking in the sagebrush, fluttering up into the mountains.

  A woman is sitting next to him. Beautiful woman. Young.

  “Pen!”

  She smiles, and he remembers that smile, the warmth
and radiance of it. She worked with him, just down the hall. No, not quite. He searches, sniffs, opens and closes doors. Patient, he hears, and the room blazes before him, a jumble of images and words and moments. Seizures and standing near the river, near-drowning, hand on him, touching bodies pressed.

  “We’re lovers,” he says.

  She winces and shakes her head. “No, Ed. You were my doctor when I was at Boulder.”

  “Here!” he shouts, raising his hands to indicate the room. “You’re here, too?”

  “This isn’t Boulder, Ed. You’re at a rehabilitation center in Great Falls.”

  He shakes his head, the words misaligning, falling into rubble. This is Penelope, he knows, and he was her doctor, but the room said lover. The room said touch, and now a door is flying open across the hall, a door marked Laura, and he withdraws, unsure. Laura is his wife. Ben is his son. Penelope is . . .

  “I work at the library now,” she says, and something flashes, a hot coal of anger. She is yelling at him, and he has done nothing wrong, or everything wrong. Penelope is . . .

  “I could bring you books, if you’d like.”

  “I can’t read much.” The things his therapists call words sometimes make themselves into meaning when he looks at them on the page. He can see them in the blackened halls of his brain, etched into the glass of doors, typed across papers.

  “Your therapist said you’re regaining that skill. He said you’re making great progress.”

  Yes, his aides told him as well. It’s difficult to do his job without reading. He has to have Martha read everything aloud to him.

  “I could read to you,” Penelope says.

  Penelope. He hears the thrum of her words mixing with the rest of the room, the broken patterns of speech, the slurs and hoots and moans. He hears Chip (Chip!), his deep voice. Gillie and Frank. He hears Penelope’s voice reading to them, coaxing them through the language, dragging them toward meaning.

  And there is Ed in the doorway, spying on her, smiling. He can feel himself there, asking, “Is Caesar the fly?” He can feel her elbow in his ribs, the touch sending darts through his veins, a pulse at the base of his stomach. He hears her say, “You’re hopeless.” He feels her hand fall over his forearm, intimate. “His mind is the fly, moving upon silence.”

  “The fly,” he says aloud, the words tumbling, rushing out of his mouth. “ ‘Like a long-legged fly upon the stream / His mind moves upon silence.’ You’re teaching that in your reading group. The patients are doing so well.” He can almost see the next part, an outline, a ghost, wispy and threadbare. Ghosts trip down these halls. He can hear them skittering off, can feel them. The words. Where are they? “A woman?” he says.

  And Penelope recites, “ ‘She thinks, part woman, three parts a child, / That nobody looks; her feet / Practice a tinker shuffle / Picked up on a street.’ ”

  “Ah!” he shouts. “A tinker shuffle!” And he stands too quickly. His left leg works now, but stiffly—a dead thing he drags. Penelope is propping him up and reaching for his cane to help him balance. “You’ll dance with me?” he asks, waving the cane away, sliding his right hand around her back, just above her hip. Beautiful lover. His left hand interlaces with hers at shoulder level, and they move in a quiet, slow dance he can almost remember. One-two-two. One-two-two. One.

  Chapter 34

  Excerpts from interview between resident psychologist Jeffrey Holht (JH) and stroke victim Edmund Malinowski (EM), one year post-incident, conducted over the course of two sessions.

  JH: Anything to drink?

  EM: Coffee, no cream, five sugars.

  JH: Sweet tooth.

  EM: One or two of them. How do you take yours?

  JH: Cream, no sweetener.

  Coffee delivered.

  JH: Could you tell me how long it’s been since the incident?

  EM: A little bit.

  JH: Do you know how long, exactly?

  EM: Not long.

  JH: Can you tell me where you are?

  EM: The hospital.

  JH: Do you know what city we’re in?

  EM: Helena. No. Great Falls.

  JH: How about where you lived before you were here?

  EM: The house on Third Street. Laura and I bought it when we first moved to Montana . . . We brought Ben home there . . . His changing table is still in there somewhere, that piece of countertop and cabinet from the kitchen—one of those pieces you come by in older houses that doesn’t attach to anything in particular—we put that in his room. There’s the photo of Laura folding diapers when she was still pregnant, big old belly sticking out front, folding those diapers. I think it was the day before she went into labor. No. I wasn’t there. It had to have been taken earlier. Weeks before. A week?

  JH: Does your son live with you?

  EM: They had him all wrapped in blankets like an eggroll. No, a burrito, that’s what Laura called it—a burrito roll.

  JH: Does Ben live with you, Edmund?

  EM: I could tell he was smart from the start, quiet and smart. Instead of pushing the car on the floor and making those vroom-vroom noises, he’d turn the car over and try to figure out the axles and wheels, figure out what made—

  JH: Edmund.

  EM: Yes.

  JH: Does Benjamin live with you in the house on Third Street?

  EM: Benjamin and Laura.

  JH: Who is Laura?

  EM: My wife.

  — —

  The following initial questions prompt familiar stories supplied by close friends and relatives, used to establish a sense of safety before questioning the patient about telephoning his ex-wife (occurring nightly for seventeen consecutive days).

  JH: Would you mind playing a game, Edmund?

  EM: Depends on the game.

  JH: It’s called If/Then, and it’s very simple. I’ll make an if statement, and you’ll have to fill in the then part. For example, I could say, “If I drink too much coffee, then . . .”

  EM: I won’t be able to sleep.

  JH: Exactly. Could we do this?

  EM: All right.

  JH: If I drink too much milk before bed, then . . .

  EM: I’ll have to use the toilet in the night.

  JH: If I go camping with my son, then . . .

  EM: I’ll burn Ben’s leg with bacon grease. Grease burns take a long time to heal because they cook the flesh more. That’s what the doctor said, and the grease stays on. It’s sticky, and we didn’t know what we were doing out there, all of us a couple beers gone, even though it was morning—breakfast time, that’s why I was cooking bacon—and Benjy didn’t cry, is the thing. He didn’t cry.

  JH: If I drop my beer in the Smith River, then . . .

  EM: I’ll get wet, and so will Pete.

  JH: If I call my ex-wife, then . . .

  EM: Not even one tear, and the boys and I didn’t take him to the hospital. We didn’t realize it was serious, thought it was just on the surface, and Laura had let me take him on my own, just little Ben and his dad and his uncles, and he was so little, but he didn’t cry, and when I brought him home, Laura took one look and rushed him off. I mean, we rushed off, the both of us, or more, the three of us—we rushed off to the emergency room.

  JH: Edmund, listen. If I call my ex-wife, then . . .

  EM: I didn’t call her. I just came home, and we went to the hospital.

  JH: Right now, Edmund. If I call my ex-wife right now, then . . .

  Several minutes pass before Edmund speaks. He does not make eye contact.

  EM: When I call my wife tonight, we’ll talk about dinner. I’ll pick something up for us on my way home.

  JH: Ex-wife, Edmund.

  Patient ends interview.

  — —

  Note: The patient’s memories have become his current reality, though some are confused. His memories appear to stop after the stroke, though he has some awareness of his surroundings. The patient does not recognize his divorce, contradicting previous diagnosis of stable lo
ng-term memory.

  Diagnosis: Moderate to severe brain damage producing confusion, memory loss, delusions.

  Independence

  * * *

  APRIL 1980–OCTOBER 1981

  Chapter 35

  Ed awakens thinking about Laura pregnant with Benjamin, past midway, five months, maybe six. He needs to talk to her, and she should be here in bed with him, but she isn’t, and he’s learned that he has to call her now when he needs to talk to her, though it doesn’t make sense, but it is a rule, and rules are rules. He reaches for the phone. It’s five-thirty in the morning.

  “Hello?” Laura’s voice is tired.

  “Good morning, sunshine.”

  “Ed?” He can hear her waking up, and he can see it, covers falling away, some small nightgown barely covering her. “Is everything all right?”

  “Fine, fine. I just wanted to see if you’re free for lunch.”

  “Ed, you can’t call this early. We’ve talked about this.”

  “I’m worried about Benjamin.” Ed doesn’t know where the words come from, and he doesn’t fully know that they are a lie, either. He knows they can help him get what he wants—time with Laura—and so they can be used. What are words for if not to be used?

  Ed hears a man’s voice in the background. “Want me to talk to him?” Ed has learned that voice belongs to a man named Tim, whose role in their lives Ed can’t quite place right now, this early in the morning. He had it yesterday, understood it fully. He remembers Penelope explaining it. Penelope. He’ll call her next.

  Laura’s voice returns. “What are you worried about?”

  Ed doesn’t know. Is he worried? “Let’s talk about it over lunch.”

  “Ed.”

  “My treat. I’ll see you at Dorothy’s at noon.”