The Widower's Tale

by Julia Glass

  “I am so sorry to disturb you, but we’re in SOS mode, desperately seeking a Shop-Vac. Or a gigantic pile of rags.”

  “Well.” Percy smiled sardonically. “Happy new year.”

  “Oh yes, to you too!”

  Percy held the door open for Ira to enter. “Let me look in the basement. My grandson keeps track of these things, to the extent that anyone does.”

  “Let me go down,” said Ira. “I’ve troubled you enough.”

  “Sit.” Percy pointed to a chair at the table. “I wouldn’t want you to trip on the bodies. We do not cater to the squeamish.”

  Ira laughed nervously. He sat where he was told. Beside a plate holding half an English muffin, the Matlock town paper was open to the police log. He scanned the week’s misadventures: the greatest tragedy was that a dog had fallen through the ice on a local pond; the owner had been restrained from an attempted rescue. This snippet of news did not include the fate of the dog.

  Ira heard clattering from the basement. He went to the open door. “Everything okay down there?” He made his way down the steep stairs and, at the bottom, had to stoop severely to avoid cracking his head on one of the jagged rafters. The place was primeval in the extreme.

  Percy, bent over as well, pointed to a barrel-shaped appliance under a worktable. “Is this the contraption you seek? Either that or it’s some gizmo pertaining to Norval’s beer-making scheme. Which I knew to be ludicrous from the start. But guess who had the space for such an enterprise?”

  Ira did not ask who Norval was. Stepping over a coiled hose, a milk crate filled with extension cords, and a cardboard box labeled WINTER MISC., he discovered that the machine in question was indeed a Shop-Vac. “Thank you so much,” he said as he hauled it toward the stairs.

  Ira carried the body of the vacuum; Percy brought along the tubular accessories. In the kitchen, both men sneezed from the dust. Together, they laughed. Percy offered Ira a cup of tea or coffee.

  “I wish I could say yes,” said Ira. “But the kids arrive in fifteen minutes and we have Niagara Falls on our hands.”

  Percy stood by the table, glancing down at the paper. “All quiet on the eco-terrorist front. Do we think these crusaders head south for the winter? These—what do they call themselves—DOGS?”

  Ira hadn’t thought about the pranks in a month; Percy was right. “Like geese,” said Ira. “So maybe they’re fouling up pools in Palm Beach for a change. Ha. No pun intended!”

  Percy walked him to the door. “Pity. I rather enjoyed their shenanigans. Last town meeting was almost as good as a Woody Allen movie.”

  “Oh, I doubt we’ve seen the last of them,” said Ira. “They’re too crazy—or maybe too stylish—to simply fade away.”

  By the end of the day, Maurice Fougère’s glistening floors, cherry and tile alike, were scored and scuffed with muddy footprints. The children had tracked water into every niche in every room. The place looked dismal.

  Ira would have to stay extra late, not just to do his share of cleaning but because Rico’s mother had asked to meet with him after the other children left. Rico would stay in the classroom with Heidi; Ira and Sarah would confer in the tiny teachers’ room that overlooked the pond.

  Sarah was waiting for him, standing at the window. She’d lost weight over the break, that was obvious. Since she was a far cry from your typical bird-boned Matlock mom, this ought to have made her more attractive, but when she faced Ira, her entire body seemed to broadcast her anxiety.

  “Sarah, how are you?” He crossed the room to stand beside her.

  “Enduring.” She shrugged. “I dramatize. Maybe better than that.”

  Ira nodded and asked her to sit.

  “How’s Rico? That’s the important question,” she said.

  “Sarah, this is his first day back after nearly a month away. He was maybe a little more quiet than usual, but then, we had the Chatty Cathy Club trading factoids on their brand-new dolls. Guys couldn’t get a word in edgewise.”

  “He seems to get quieter all the time.”

  “All the time, or in the past few weeks? Can I suggest it might be because he’s listening? He knows something dire is afoot. Do I guess you haven’t told him what’s about to happen to his mom?” Ira made an effort to sound gentle.

  Ira had worried about Rico already, just a little, before this unkind stroke of fate. His chronic reticence seemed more withholding than shy. The other boys had formed a closer alliance since September, accentuating Rico’s tendency toward solitude—though maternal Marguerite was forever trying to induct him into her circle of influence. She was the queen bee among the girls, directing all games involving theatrical roles. Rico was useful to her whenever she needed an Aladdin to her Jasmine, a Wilbur to her Charlotte. She didn’t mind if she had all the lines, including his.

  “My treatment starts next week.”

  “Evelyn told me.” He waited to hear her say something else. “Do you want my help to tell him what’s up? He doesn’t need all the gory details, Mom.”

  “It’s not the details about me, about how tired or sick I’ll feel—that’s not what I worry about explaining. That’s sort of the easy part,” said Sarah. “Right. Easy.” She laughed. “So, Ira, you know about my relationship with Percy.”

  “Sure,” he said. “I think it’s great.”

  She frowned. “I don’t mean to be rude, but I don’t care who thinks it’s great and who thinks it’s … not. I’m not happy that he lives right here, at the school, but I guess I wouldn’t have met him otherwise. Well, that’s not quite true.” She seemed to consider this briefly amusing. “But here’s the thing. The guy who helps me look after Rico—just sometimes, like when I have to travel for work, which isn’t often—is this ex-boyfriend of mine. He loves Rico. I met him right after the adoption. But things between us didn’t work out. I had a hunch he wanted kids of his own, and I didn’t think …” She sighed. “Not relevant here. Never mind. But Gus is going to be crucial now. He might even—well, you’ll probably meet him.”

  “I’m glad you have someone to back you up,” said Ira. He had questions—oh boy did he have questions—but he knew better than to ask them.

  Sarah stared out the window. She laid her hands on the table, palms down. For a moment, Ira thought she would put her head down, too.

  “Sarah?”

  “Percy doesn’t know about Gus.” She shook her head. “Why am I telling you this?”

  “Because I have to know what’s going on with Rico.”

  “Gus and I might not even be in touch anymore if it weren’t for Rico. They … I guess you could say they bonded. I hate that word. They’re friends. And feminist though I may be, I do believe little boys should have big guys to look up to, who care about them.” She looked fondly at Ira. “Like you. Right?”

  “Goes without saying.” He laughed, but carefully.

  She stared at him for a moment, as if contemplating just how good a role model he really was for her son. “I have friends who tell me I was stupid to break up with Gus. He was nice. He was dependable. Had a great sense of humor. All these things are still true! He just … we didn’t have enough in common.”

  Ira wondered if she thought she had more in common with Percy. Sarah seemed to him like a woman living a century or more ahead of Mr. Darling. But who knew? Then he thought about Anthony: nice … dependable … sense of humor …

  Sarah stood. “Wow. TMI. Right? All I really want you to know is how grateful I am that you’re here for Rico. He does look up to you.”

  Did he? Ira could point to the girls who adored him, the boys who watched his every move with an eye to imitation. Rico was obedient, even sweet, but he wasn’t on Ira’s roster of groupies.

  “You can count on me, Sarah. I will let you know anything, anything at all, that worries me. But again, you have got to talk to him. As soon as possible.”

  “I will. I promise.”

  In the hall, he stopped at the sight of Evelyn mopping. Evelyn Fougère the wa
sherwoman. Sensing Ira’s amusement, she looked up through her disheveled hair and held out the mop. “Your turn, buster.”

  14

  When forced to consider my age, I realized how curious it was that I had yet to watch someone I knew go through the idiosyncratic hell of chemotherapy. From outdated movies and a novel or two, I had visions of relentless projectile vomiting, physical diminishment, the shedding of hair. (Yes, conceded Trudy, hair would be shed.) You might guess that my naïveté on these matters meant I had few close friends; the more time I spent with Sarah, the more I began to see this might be so.

  Both of us had been surprised to learn that she would start chemotherapy—along with some companionable “biotherapy”—before surgery or radiation. Based on no concrete experience, we had shared a notion of chemo as the glowing cherry—or bushel of cherries—on the sundae of cancer treatment.

  Sarah had held firm on seeing Trudy for the first time without me. As even I had suspected, my one attempt to make an end run by calling Trudy at home took me nowhere but into a wall. (“Dad, does the term patient confidentiality ring a bell?”)

  But Sarah did give me the honor of escorting her to her first “infusion.” She made it clear that she wanted to go through the nitty-gritty—the being hooked up and pumped full of poison—on her own, at least for the inaugural go-round. It might take several hours, she warned me, so I should find a way to occupy myself in the city until she was ready to go home.

  I made her sit on one of the couches. I went to the reception desk. Next to the sign-in sheet sat a vase of pink roses out of which protruded a large heart-shaped card covered in glitter. LOVE IS ALL YOU NEED! it proclaimed.

  “Oh is that all?” I said. “What a relief! I thought we were here for intravenous warfare.”

  Chantal allowed silence to linger a moment before she looked away from her computer screen. She offered me a scolding smile. “Perhaps you’d like to add a footnote. A petite little asterisk after that all. List the many exceptions.”

  “Literalists are boring, aren’t they?” Already I was failing to follow Trudy’s recent advice: to “behave like a normal human being,” at least in this context. Trudy had informed me that my particular brand of humor might prove tiresome for someone with a compromised immune system.

  Chantal turned to Sarah, who had joined me. “Honey, I can tell you’re terrified. But we take such good care of you here. That is a promise. Now put your hand out.” When Sarah obeyed, Chantal put something in her palm. “For later. Little pick-me-up.”

  In Sarah’s hand lay three chocolate kisses.

  “Best medicine I know of,” said Chantal. She stood. “And so. We begin with bloods. Come meet our world-class phlebotomists.”

  Sarah handed the candy to me. I slipped it into a pocket of my raincoat. She gave me a look I did not need help to interpret. Now is when you leave.

  “When will she … when do I pick her up?” I asked Chantal.

  “Not staying, Mr. D?” Chantal looked at Sarah.

  “He’s not. That’s my choice.”

  Chantal patted Sarah on the shoulder. “A go-it-aloner. Good for you. I see you have spunk, and spunk is a powerful weapon.” She pointed Sarah toward the nether reaches of the suite, but turned to me before leading her away. “Come back between three and four. But hang tight for a minute. Dr. B wants to see you.”

  The three women waiting on the couches stared at me. No smiles today.

  At least I’d remembered my book this time. Revisiting the greatest hits of Henry James, I was halfway through The Spoils of Poynton. But after reading the same paragraph several times over, I closed the book. The woman sitting across from me was whispering loudly into her cell phone, describing the sores in her mouth.

  I closed my eyes.

  “Mr. Darling?” A nurse I had not met before leaned over me.

  “I am just fine!” I said, too loudly.

  “I know you’re fine. Dr. Barnes is ready to see you.” She spoke so quietly that my outburst felt like a crime.

  A new clutch of female patients took over the staring. This time, one of them did smile. She pointed at my feet. “Your book.” I picked it up and thanked her.

  “Good luck,” she said.

  I looked at a clock as we passed through the halls. I had been asleep for half an hour. Quite likely I’d been snoring.

  This was only my second visit to Trudy’s little kingdom; would there come a time when I’d been here so often I’d know these mazy hallways as if they were mine? How strange that this is what I hoped for. Sarah had told me the stunning news that she would be coming here at least every two or three weeks for a year.

  As if to underscore my lack of orientation, I was shown into a strange room, not the one in which I’d seen Trudy the month before. An exam table stood center stage, while two chairs lurked against a wall. At the far end, Trudy sat on a rolling stool at a computer, her back to me. When she heard me enter, she pirouetted neatly, without rising, and pointed to one of the chairs.

  “Dad, I’m about to go in and get Sarah started. She asked me to go over her treatment with you. The big picture.”

  “She’s explained it to me. The pathology and whatnot. The heart tests she had. This ‘her-two’ business.”

  “Don’t get all bristly, Dad. Sarah needs to know you got this information from me. She has enough on her plate without having to answer all your anxious questions. That’s what I’m here for.”

  The next ten minutes felt like a flashback to high school science. Would there be a test demanding that I discriminate hormone receptors from monoclonal antibodies, adjuvant therapies from axillary nodes, neuropathy from neutropenia? (Was Trudy showing off?) The evil “her two” was, in simple terms, a protein that Sarah’s tumor was “over-expressing.”

  I cut in. “Like a bad Shakespearean actor?”

  “Cute, Dad. I’ll keep that in mind for my show-business patients.”

  Trudy and Dr. Wang did not like the aggressive nature or the size of this cancer. (I pictured a fat playground bully: Lester McClintock from second grade.) Sarah would require a mastectomy, but first, they would attack the tumor systemically. “This means six months of chemo, plus antibody therapy that targets the her-two factor,” said Trudy. “Then comes the surgery, and after that, probably radiation and hormone therapy. The bad news is that Sarah’s cancer has spread to her lymph nodes. The good news—very good news—is that her scans show no metastis.” Watching Trudy’s face, I saw her change from doctor to daughter. “I’m summing it up for you, Dad. It’s a long haul.”

  “I gather you doubt my stamina.”

  Trudy moved to the chair beside mine. “Sarah’s a tough cookie, but she has a lot of things to face here. Personal as well as medical. You guys haven’t been together that long; you’re not her husband.”

  “She doesn’t have one, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

  Trudy stared at me tenderly. Did I read pity in her expression?

  Finally I said, “Are you trying to tell me I should abandon her? ‘Break up’? I’m not a catch-and-release type of fellow, in case you wondered.”

  “There’s no need to get hostile, Dad. I just want you to know what you’re up against. I’m thinking about her child, too. Her son. His life should be as consistent as possible now, around the margins of all these changes.”

  Norval had recently expressed the opinion that doctors, like lawyers, were well trained, sometimes unwittingly, as master practitioners of euphemism and obfuscation. “So,” I said, “is this tumor going to kill her? Is that what you’re preparing me for?”

  “I am absolutely not saying that, Dad. There are factors we don’t know yet, but I will tell you this: that tumor’s not one I’d like to meet in a dark alley, even in broad daylight.”

  “Very funny.” Lester McClintock morphed into the far more sinister Reggie Kosinski, captain of the high school ice-hockey team.

  “Dad, you’re the one who brought up the Shakespearean actor.” She touched he
r pager, letting me know my time was up.

  “Did she mention the insurance business to you?” I asked. “She’s losing a lot of sleep over that.” Sarah had told me that just one of her drugs, if you could run down and buy it at the CVS, would set you back forty thousand dollars for a year’s supply.

  Trudy shook her head. “Can’t discuss that with you, Dad. She’ll have to work it out with financial. I’m going to help her as much as I can. And that, by the way, is a favor to you.”

  “I want you to know that I’ll pay for anything she can’t. Anything.”

  “I’m not going to discuss the money stuff with you, Dad. And right now, I have to catch up with my patients. Including Sarah, who’s getting hooked up as we speak.”

  When I stood, I had to steady myself with a hand on the wall. My legs tingled slightly.

  “I had a dream about your mother while I was waiting. And you.”

  Trudy’s formal smile faltered. “Mom?”

  “I dreamed I was taking your mother out to dinner for Valentine’s Day. We were at that Thai restaurant, where we had your sister’s birthday dinner. We had our own table—I had so much to tell her, after all this time apart—but people all around us kept crowding in, interrupting. The waitress. That teacher Ira from Elves and Fairies. Norval and Helena—who said she wanted to paint your mother’s portrait. I was very angry and lost my temper. I told everybody to get out, leave us alone. But your mother told them to stay. She acted as if it were any other day, as if she’d never left us. I wanted to ask if she was back for good, but I knew that would be a mistake.…”

  “Like Orpheus.” Trudy had turned away from the door and faced me fully, hands in her pockets.

  “So then,” I said, “along you came. You were wearing your doctor regalia”—I gestured at what she wore—“and you sat right down at our table without so much as greeting me, and you held your stethoscope to your mother’s chest, and you said, ‘Mom, your heart is still beating. Mom, please order something healthy and we’ll split it.’ So there I was, my reunion with my wife after all these years invaded right and left, when who should walk through the door but my mother. And she walked right up to me and said—”