The Widower's Tale

by Julia Glass

  A few days later, Sarah came down with a cold. Almost immediately, she developed a fever. Trudy ordered her to visit a lab in Lothian where technicians could draw blood and look at her white-cell count. I learned this after she called to tell me that she’d flunked the count.

  It was Saturday. We had planned on taking Rico to the science museum, and I saw no reason to cancel that expedition. Now, however, we would drop Sarah at the hospital so that she could receive an injection of some warlord drug that would muster the immune troops pronto. The nurses would watch her until her temperature dropped. Rico and I would head to the museum on our own and pick her up later.

  “I now know why people talk about being held hostage to a disease,” said Sarah. “So if the museum closes before they unchain me, maybe you could take Rico somewhere for dinner.” I told her I’d be thrilled to do that.

  At the museum, the first exhibit we entered was devoted to the human circulatory system. Hordes of children were cavorting through felt-lined tunnels representing veins and arteries; fleece platelets hovered in the tunnels, along with other microcellular organisms rendered in fabric and foil. Video screens embedded in the walls showed a miniature movie taken inside the human heart—fuzzy and dark, like a bad art film from the sixties—along with cartoons of lungs and other organs doing their proper jobs to maintain the body’s irrigation network. All around us, like sci-fi Muzak, played the contrabasso of a beating heart.

  I tried to steer Rico to the upper floors, where we were promised dinosaurs, the solar system, a special show about robots in movies. But no luck. The lub-dub sound track had him in its thrall.

  After he’d made a round of the tunnels and caves, he found a display where he could push a button that set off a 3-D simulation of the heart performing its intricate valvular tango. Rico pushed the button over and over.

  “Mom’s blood is filled with drugs that slay the tumors,” he said when he finally turned away. “The drugs can find them anywhere. They can’t hide.”

  “That’s good to know,” I said. Perversely, I thought of the wily, malignant bin Laden, of Green Berets and Navy Seals searching those Afghan mountain ranges until the end of time.

  “Some people do die of cancer,” Rico said, leading me at last toward the elevator.

  “Well, fewer and fewer, now that they have such excellent drugs, like the ones your mom is taking.”

  Rico looked at me coolly. “But some do. It’s a fact.”

  I wondered if I was supposed to placate him by saying that his mother would not be among that “some” or affirm that he was right. Sarah had given me no guidance here, probably assuming I would never be alone with Rico when the subject came up. But why not? Why hadn’t she prepared me for this? Yet again, I felt wounded, left out.

  I was about to tell him that my best friend had had cancer many years ago and was now completely cured when Rico said, “If anything happens to Mom, I’ll live with Gus. He’ll be my dad. Gus is very healthy. And he’s younger than Mom. He has almost the same birthday as me.”

  We had entered the elevator. Rico punched the number that would take us back to a much safer time, when monsters ruled the planet. People did not die of cancer then, because people did not exist.

  I had no idea what to say to Rico’s news. But I knew what to feel. Indignation. I said, “Gus is your mom’s cousin, right?”

  Rico frowned at me. “No he’s not. I don’t have any cousins, and Mom says she’s got no cousins, either. Lots of people have cousins, like lots of people have brothers and sisters. But we’re just us. Us is plenty.”

  “No cousins,” I echoed. “Gus is a good friend, then.”

  Rico pondered this. “Yes, but he got married to Mom. Mom doesn’t live at his house, and I don’t, either, but we used to. So maybe we’ll live there again. If she gets really sick. It’s okay. There’s a playground with sprinklers.”

  “Married?” I said as the elevator doors opened. We faced a very hungry-looking allosauraus, jaws agape, pincers reaching out for prey. You’ll do fine, said the red glass eyes.

  Rico ignored my question. He ran ahead of me past the looming carnivore. “Come see the stegosaurus!” he called, and I followed. When I insisted we stop to rest on a bench, he explained to me the evolutionary relationship between dinosaurs and snakes. Snakes, I knew already, were his favorite animal.

  “Snakes,” I said as we made our way toward the advent of mammals, “are powerful symbols in many fairy tales and myths. I’ll bet I can dig up some wonderful stories about snakes at my house.” I made my best effort to sound chatty and bright.

  “You mean like sea serpents,” said Rico. “Like the Loch Ness Monster.”

  “All kinds of snakes,” I said. “Very ordinary snakes, in fact. The kind you might meet in your own backyard.”

  “I don’t have a backyard. But Gus does.”

  I heard a phone ringing inside my jacket. This phenomenon still startled me, but knowing it had to be Sarah agitated me further still. Rico watched me closely as I answered.

  “Percy, hi.” Barely a sigh. “They’re going to set me free in about an hour, but we have to go straight home. No restaurants for me. Can you buy Rico a snack on your way over? Anything other than candy is fine.”

  “No candy,” I said to her, winking at Rico.

  “I hate this,” she said. “I just hate this.”

  I wanted to tell her I hated this, too—this inability to tell her what Rico had told me, demand that she straighten me out. “I know you do,” I said, doing my level best to sound sympathetic.

  “French fries,” said Rico the minute I pocketed the phone.

  “This we can arrange.” I took his hand and squeezed it. I wished I could tell him how much I loved his mother; it didn’t matter how angry I felt. As we passed the exhibit on primates, I wondered if I was just another sad, predictable male Homo sapiens, wanting this female all the more because suddenly it looked as if I had competition. Then again, I might already have lost her.

  Robert had said he was “heavy duty into chem” but that he could meet me for a sandwich. “No Fac Club, Granddad. No time to spiff myself up.” We agreed to meet at a deli near the T.

  “Everything okay?” said Robert as soon as he saw me. His backpack made a loud clomp when he tossed it into the booth where I’d been waiting. The sound seemed to accentuate the weight and importance of the obligations from which I had waylaid him.

  “Why is it,” I said, “that members of your generation evaluate everything by such a feeble standard? And why should ‘everything’ fall into a single basket for evaluation? One’s health, one’s daily occupations, one’s property—”

  “Yo. Hey,” said Robert. “Granddad, what’s going on?”

  “As always, not a great deal.” I tried to sound contrite. “In fact, I wonder why I thought it a good idea ever to retire.”

  Robert nodded. “That’s a tough one, yeah. You’re like practically twenty years younger than you really are. But you could travel; that’s what I’d do. Hey, travel with Sarah! Take her to Paris or somewhere really romantic. I mean, after her treatment is over.”

  This left me speechless, but Robert wasn’t waiting for an answer. “So I’m famished. I’ll go order. What’s your pleasure? The pastrami’s great, though I’m trying to give up meat.”

  “Fine,” I said. I scrutinized a poster of the Heimlich maneuver while Robert stood in line at the counter.

  When he sat down again, he put two glasses of water on the table. He stared at me for a moment. “You do not look happy, G.”

  “I am neither happy nor miserable. I’m numb.”

  Robert looked nervous; much as he loved his grandfather (revered him, I like to think!), he did not want to plumb the murky depths of an elderly soul.

  “Number One Grandson,” I said, “give me an honest answer. What would you think if I were to sell the house?” For an instant, I thought I saw tears in his eyes. “If it would upset you too much, I’m not sure I could. Not that I�
�m sure I could under any circumstances. But you’re the only one who—”

  “Granddad!” he said, as if he were calling me away from danger. “It’s your house, to do with whatever you want. Doesn’t matter what I think. Or anybody else. That’s the truth.”

  I smiled at him. “What would your mother think?”

  The overworked waitress dumped two paper plates before us. Robert picked up his sandwich at once. “I think she’d be sad but sort of relieved.”

  “What is that?” I asked. The contents of his sandwich looked predominantly gray.

  “Eggplant. But are you serious, G.? You’re like putting it on the market?”

  “No. I am done with people traipsing through my home like a pack of stray dogs. Maurice Fougère wants to buy it. The architect. Or thinks he does.” I laughed. “One step into that cellar should change his mind. It could be colonized by skunks, for all I know.”

  “Wait. Mr. Skylights Galore? The dude who did the barn?”

  “Yes, dear Robert, that very dude.”

  “Wow.” Did he have tears in his eyes? “Well, here’s what I say: take him for all he’s worth. But where will you go?”

  I shrugged. “Sky’s the limit. World’s my oyster. Right?”

  Now Robert looked worried. “Not, like, far away.…”

  I hadn’t eaten pastrami in ages. For a moment, I savored its leathery texture, inexplicably pleasant; the sting of the mustard in my nose. “All I wanted was to ask what you thought. Please don’t mention it to anyone, certainly not your mother. I haven’t even spoken to Fougère. He’s halfway around the world.” We’d exchanged only a few e-mails, yet Maurice, ever efficient at global operations, had arranged for Matlock’s toughest home inspector to conduct a walk-through later that week.

  “Well,” I said, “on to you. Have you plotted out your summer yet?”

  Robert told me that he wanted to spend the summer in New York and would be interviewing for a couple of internships at save-the-poor-trees organizations based in Manhattan. He planned to drive down with his roommate for a long weekend.

  “We’re staying with Uncle Todd. Which I have to admit is weird.”

  “You’ll see Filo and Lee. That’s good. No need to feel any guilt.”

  “Mom says Aunt Clo’s going off the deep end and has too much time on her hands.” He shrugged. “Mom’s hard on everybody who doesn’t work an eighty-hour week.”

  “I venture to say that your aunt is working awfully long hours, contrary to your mother’s assumptions.”

  Robert had finished his sandwich and was eyeing the second half of mine.

  “Take it,” I said.

  “Nah.” He took my pickle instead. “Simply giving up beef is like one of the biggest steps you can take toward reducing carbon emissions.”

  “Oh. So who recommended that I order this sandwich?”

  “You get a pass.”

  “Because I’m teetering at the edge of my grave and will shortly amount to nothing but a carbon emission?”

  Robert smiled. “No. Because that way, at least I got to smell the pastrami.”

  We laughed. I felt marginally better, more connected to the world.

  “Gotta split, Granddad. Thanks for coming into town. If you want to see something cool, check out the Carpenter Center. A friend of Turo’s has this amazing video up. About the Great Barrier Reef.”

  “How it’s being destroyed by the evil humans, I suppose.”

  “No! It’s like a celebration of all that life. It’s a major up. You need that.” He shrugged on his backpack. He clapped me on the shoulder. “You’ll like it, I promise.” And then he left.

  Robert had not asked after Sarah. Perhaps, despite his youthful oblivion, he sensed that this was not a good time to do so; more likely, I remember thinking, he was transfixed by his own, far safer concerns. Later, I would realize that I’d had it backward: I was the one with pedestrian concerns, I the one who ought to have probed more deeply into his affiliations and plans for the future.

  I’d called Sarah the day before, at eight o’clock the Sunday morning after our day in Boston. Once again, it was too muddy for running; had I been able to burn off some of my anger, my enervating confusion, our conversation might have ended differently.

  I did not care if I woke her, but she was already up. “I need to see you today,” I said. I did not ask how she was feeling.

  “Percy, I’m spending today with Rico. He gets dragged all hither and yon these days. He needs a day of doing nothing, with his mom, at home. I feel bad enough I had to miss the museum.” She paused. “Rico had a nice time with you.”

  “I have to talk to you, Sarah.”

  “I am so grateful for everything you’re doing, Percy, and of all people, you deserve to have me on tap—but only after Rico. Today I belong to Rico. And to this hideous drug they gave me yesterday, which made me feel like my bones were imploding all night.”

  For the first time, I had no patience for her disease, how easily it became her shield. “Then we’ll talk on the phone. Now. Is Rico with you? Right there?”

  “He’s watching a video. The idea was that I could lie down for an hour.”

  “That hour will have to be postponed.”

  “Percy, don’t talk to me like this. What is this attitude all of a sudden?”

  “Your attitude might be called on the carpet before mine,” I said. “Your secrecy, your withdrawal—not because you got this terrible news but because, if not for me, you might never have heard it. Or so you think. You’ve been killing the messenger, haven’t you? But slowly. Torture him first, by all means.”

  Sarah’s laughter was desperation, not mirth. “I knew you’d reach the end of your rope, sooner or later. I can’t blame you for venting. But Percy, you have it all wrong. I know it looks like I’m blaming the cancer on you, and in the beginning I did have this childish sense—”

  “We’re past that point,” I said. “Gus. That’s where we are now. Or where I am. Finally! This cousin, right? Or did I get it wrong? Is he simply a ‘friend’? Or even more than that?”

  I could hear Rico’s movie, the hammed-up voices of actors lurking behind animation, a world where the laws of physics do not apply.

  “I should have introduced you to Gus months ago. I’m sorry.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “Because we used to be … involved. But we’d broken up long before I met you. Months before. He’s known Rico since he was a baby, so we stayed friends. But mostly Gus and Rico. Rico could stay overnight with him. That bond was too important for me to cut. Can you understand that?”

  “A friend of Rico’s,” I said. “Would that explain why Rico tells me that you and Gus are married? It’s a fantasy then. He only wishes that Gus were his father? Or am I the wishful thinker here? Please. Set me straight, Sarah.” I laughed at my inadvertent pun. “Why, that’s your name, isn’t it? Sarah Straight. Sarah the Truthful.” (Oh God, had I conflated Sarah with Trudy?)

  “We need to talk this out in person.”

  “We talk it out now. Or I come over there now.”

  “Percy.”

  “Are you married to this man? Yes or no.”

  “All right, Percy, the technical answer to that is yes, but—”

  “Thank you. Then let your technical husband be your cancer slave.”

  “Percy!” She lowered her voice. “Percy, I love you. I haven’t said so enough, but it’s true. It’s been true almost since I ran into you, dripping wet, in that ridiculous pink bathing suit.”

  It was my turn to shout. “Oh what is love, Sarah? What is a proclamation of love but something for a sonnet or a maudlin TV show? What does that mean to me, your telling me you love me, when your entire being, in my presence, tells me otherwise? Love is deed, not word, Sarah. Even you are old enough to know that by now.”

  If we had been together, not on the phone, we might have been calmed by the ability to see and touch. Instead, anger had won us both over.

 
; “Shut up, Percy. Shut up for two minutes,” whispered Sarah. I could tell she had taken the phone somewhere far from Rico’s movie. I pictured her locked in her tiny bathroom, staring at herself in the artful mirror, framed in a gaudy mosaic of glass. “I married Gus to have his insurance. He offered. And to lend me money for the first months, before …”

  “Before what!”

  “Until my treatment is actually covered. Listen!” she said desperately. “We went to the courthouse, downtown. No friends, no family, not even Rico. It’s not about being married; it’s about saving my life. Or stretching it out a bit longer.”

  “This man offered you all that because he loves you!” I said. “Don’t be a fool. He wants to be married to you, honestly and truly married, doesn’t he?”

  “Percy, this is about what I need, not what I want.”

  I am ashamed to say that I did not even wish to believe her. “You’re the one who broke it off with him, aren’t you? He’s always wanted you back. That’s what you’ve been hiding, why we haven’t met.”

  “He loves Rico. He’s doing this for Rico.”

  “That’s nonsense. Extravagant, trumped-up nonsense.”

  “You can think what you want, Percy. And you can do what you want. Never see me again—whatever feels right to you. I don’t have the energy to persuade you of the truth. The only lie I ever told you was that Gus is my cousin. That was stupid, and I’m sorry. I couldn’t bear the thought that you might get jealous. I didn’t know you well enough then.”

  I was sitting in Poppy’s dressing room, staring out the window at the series of puddled ruts my driveway had become. Mistress Lorelei’s house looked prim and lonesome; she’d been away for weeks.

  “I could have been the one to marry you,” I said. How could I convince her now that, just a few days before, I’d been planning to propose?

  She said nothing.

  “Why didn’t you tell me you were going to do this, Sarah? Why didn’t you give me any choices?”

  “Percy, you’ve made it clear that, however much you love me, you intend never to marry again. I understood that. I respect that.”