Every picture before Barbara moved in, that is. Before we met, I imagined that efficient people would want nothing to do with me. Other teachers would tsk-tsk as I tried to make copies in the school office, turning what I copied the wrong way, accidentally running off twenty muddy unreadable versions. People wanted to take things out of my hands and do them right.
This included Barbara, but there was love behind it. “Here,” she said. “Let me.” Suddenly, it made sense that I would need in my life someone who managed things, who knew about air conditioners and dry cleaners.
On a Sunday, a week before our accident, I lounged in bed. Barb was as usual up early, getting dressed. Her bra was small for her—she’d put on some weight—and it cut into her breasts a little. That she did not notice pleased me. She never consulted a scale, never wore unforgiving clothing that would tell her about a few extra pounds. I thought: I know her body better than she does, the grayish thick skin at her elbows, the topography of her hands. This is what I know best. This is why I’m needed.
“I’m off to the store,” she said that morning, pulling on a T-shirt. I could see the same effect through the red cotton, an extra gentle swelling across the chest.
“Well, come here before you go,” I said, and lovely literal Barbara threw back the covers of the bed and crawled in next to me, fully clothed. I could feel the fabric of her clothing all along me, the tips of her shoes against my legs. I put my hand on her stomach, and almost told her how I loved those extra pounds. But I didn’t. It seemed at the time more my department than hers.
“Okay,” I said, and put out my hand. It was a game we played: I’d say, Here, give me your elbow, or hip, or knee, and offered the palm of my hand. She’d scoot something closer, and bend.
“You’re terrible,” she said, offering her hand, palm up. It opened and closed inside of mine. “Is that all I am to you, a set of knuckles?”
My eyes closed, I said, “Darling, what’s a body without hinges? Just a shut door.”
Now her weight was gone, and the rough skin, too, rubbed away by the Bayside’s loving lotions. I was still the expert, could tell anyone who asked what Barb was doing at that very minute: speech therapy, dinner in half an hour. And Barb would say, “Why is he telling you this? I can tell you’re not interested.” And now when we saw each other, I stood up and she lay in bed, perpendicular, two sorry planes that at best could meet at one sorry spot.
The next week was just a week, the regular progression of days between visits. I took out the trash, read newspapers, thought about making some phone calls but didn’t. Sometimes I thought about ringing up George Austin—he lived in Plymouth, I could have found the number—but what would I say? We had only bar chat between us, and in a bar that was enough: he was the only thing that made those Saturdays different from one another, not just a bead on a string. But he was a casual acquaintance. I didn’t know what he really thought of me. I’d spent my life piling up casual acquaintances, only to find, when I met Barbara, that all those friendships seemed flimsy and superfluous.
Still, I was glad to see him the next week at the bar; I always was. The minute he walked in he yelled, “Another drink for Jake,” as if we hadn’t stopped at three drinks the week before. Lately, he’d wanted me to drink more and more. I almost asked him, What’s going on here? But I was sure he’d make a joke, buy me another beer. “I want you to be happy,” he’d say, laying his money down. George did not respond to serious inquiries.
“So, Jake. What’s new?” he asked me after we’d finished a drink.
“Not a damn thing,” I said. “And you?”
He smiled. “Oh, you know,” he said. He crossed his right arm over his chest and tapped his left shoulder, and thought. “Nothing I can’t handle.”
“Good,” I said.
“Yeah.” Still holding his shoulder, he shrugged. “I guess.” Then he smiled at me. “You’re a good man, Jake. You’re a rare bird.”
I felt a little uncomfortable. “You too,” I said. “The good part, I mean.” I glanced at my watch. “About time. See you next week.”
“Already?” George asked. He looked at his watch, too, got off his barstool, got back on. “Okay. Be seeing you.”
When I first walked into the room at Bayside, all I noticed was that Mrs. Austin was gone; I figured that maybe they’d taken her down to the common room, though I’d never known them to do that. Then I saw that her side of the room was completely clear: the machine, the hyacinth, the radio. She had disappeared.
Barb was awake, propped up with pillows. I kissed her absentmindedly, and she gave me back one of those slack-mouthed puckers she still handed out sometimes. “Your roommate move out on you, Barb?” I asked.
She seemed to shrug.
“Boy,” I said. “I didn’t even know she was sick.” George had not said a word to me. Clearly, he was right: I did not understand people. I reviewed the afternoon, could see no clues.
I sat down on Mrs. Austin’s stripped bed, feeling a little panicky, the tops of my feet full of prickles. Then I grabbed the button on the string that called the nurse and pressed it.
Then I pressed it again.
The head nurse came by in a hurry. She was one of the sourest people who worked there, a huffy young woman who had no time for anyone. “Thought it might be you,” she said.
“What happened to Edith?”
She glanced at her watch, then closed the door behind her. “It’s this way. Her family decided to move her.”
“They weren’t happy here?” I asked. “George never said a word. I see him all the time—”
“Well, he couldn’t say anything, not till things were settled and done. They’ve talked it over with their pastor, and with us. They’ve decided to withhold feedings.”
“I don’t understand,” I said.
She spoke a little louder. “They’re taking out her feeding tube. Our board of directors wouldn’t allow them to do it here, so they took her to a place in New Hampshire. Her son did want you to know.”
“I know George,” I said.
“They had to take her out in the middle of the night. They didn’t want it to get into the papers, because you never know who’s going to make a fuss. It happened to us once before,” she said. “We’re very careful now. We asked them not to tell anyone until the move was over.”
“I saw him today,” I said.
“Huh. All I can tell you is what I know,” she told me. “He told me he would tell you.”
I nodded.
The nurse took my hand in a pretty courtly way for a sour young woman. “It’s a crying shame.” She patted my knuckles. “They’ll be moving in another woman Monday.”
I heard somebody coming down the hall, a man who gallantly said to each of the girls in their wheelchairs, “Hello. How are you. Afternoon.” His sneakers squeaked at the door of Barb’s room; his hand clicked against the metal doorframe.
“Aha,” he said. “I’m not too late.”
“Too late?” I said.
“I was afraid I’d miss you,” said George.
I stared at him. He looked ten pounds lighter—too skinny to stand, I thought—but handsome, handsomer than I’d known he was. Then I realized it was this room’s fluorescent light, good strong light. I wasn’t used to that. He was young.
He smiled, embarrassed.
“I’ll leave you alone,” the nurse said. She pushed out past George, into the hall. He took a few steps in.
“I hope you don’t mind,” I said, and I put my feet up and lay down on the bed of a woman I’d met many times and never. My heart rode in the dumbwaiter of my stomach. There I was, fifty-five years old, the entire world of emotions open to me, and what had I picked? I could have grieved, been sympathetic, could have frowned in disapproval, felt comfort for the family. I longed even to feel unsure. Instead, I felt a sickening jealousy creep up through my jaw and into my face.
“Swear to God,” George said, “I wanted to tell you. But it’s like I’m a di
fferent person at the bar, you know?”
I didn’t say anything.
“Here’s where I talk about my mother,” he said. He pointed at the floor. “Correction: I talk about my mother everywhere. Except with you at the West End. I kept trying, but, you know—”
I looked back up at the white ceiling and tried to have a thought that would take away the jealousy. Sometimes when I caught myself reminiscing about Barb, a condition I knew would only lead me to more whiskey and tears, I imagined myself, my whole self, slammed in a door. I concentrated on what that would feel like. Usually it worked, but not now. Now I was gripped by a new feeling, something I had never felt before. I didn’t know what would take it away.
“It’s hard,” said George.
This is the morbid thought I had instead: the driver of the blue Dodge, the one that hit Barbara, might end up in Bayside. You read the newspapers after a murder, and they quote the victim’s family, who want either to forgive or kill the murderer. I had simply refused to think about the driver, but suddenly the driver was the only thing I could think of. Say it was a woman—she might move into the bed I was lying in. She’d have to have been a reckless driver, and that was the main trade of Bayside. Or if the driver was a man, his girlfriend could take the bed. Maybe the Dodge would try to race through a railroad crossing and not quite make it; he’d be killed and she’d be here. Or he would escape with a few cuts and she’d be here. Neither way quite satisfied me. I played it both ways in my head, I mean I imagined everything: the back of the car clipped and spinning on the tracks, a thin body thrown through a window. In my head she sailed, already prone, already ready for bed.
“Are you okay, Jake?”
“I’m so sorry about your mother,” I said, ashamed I hadn’t said it earlier. After all, this happened to him, his family, not me.
“Well, we realized it was inevitable,” he said. “You know how it is. You get resigned. God helps you through.”
“Yes,” I said, though I thought no such thing. I’d never before heard him talk such trash.
“I’m sorry we didn’t get a chance to know each other better,” George said. Indignant, I looked at him to reply, and saw that he was speaking to Barbara, who was asleep and could not hear him. But of course, he thought that was usual, the dreamy look that does not let you know anything, that lets you translate hope anyway you want. She hears you or she doesn’t hear you, whatever makes you feel better.
He rubbed his eyes beneath his glasses.
“How long?” I asked him.
For a minute he didn’t understand; then he did. “Well, we just moved her last night. It will take a while. We’re still giving her water.” He rubbed his face again. “My sisters are there now. She has company. Me, I’m beat.” Then he looked at me. “You don’t look so great yourself, Jake.”
I sat up, and he sat down next to me on the bed, where the nurse had been.
“You want to go have a drink?” he said. “It’s been, what, forty-five minutes? About time, huh?” There was an almost mischievous sparkle in his eye, and I saw the truth: he was happy. Something had happened. Something had changed for him, and it gave him power. His carefree life in the bar was spilling out.
He touched my shoulder, just the ends of my hair. He said, “You know, there’s a great barbershop down the street, one of those guys who’s been cutting the town’s hair for years. I love that stuff. Could use a trim myself. Wanna go?”
Lying comes quick to the good-looking, to the relieved, have you noticed? George’s hair was bristly, just cut. But I realized he was a young man who had recently gotten into the habit of taking care of people, and it seemed like a duty. Sweet, somehow, too.
“Just a drink,” I said.
He stood up and walked to Barb’s bed. He held her fingers, tight, then turned her hand over. “Goodbye, Barbara,” he said. George kissed her knuckles, dropped her hand, and took three steps away, then came back and kissed her hand again. Like she was some kind of queen. It struck me as overly familiar.
“‘Bye, honey,” I said. “I’ll see you next week.”
“Well,” whispered George. “It doesn’t seem like she’s suffering.”
Her eyes opened, and it seemed to me that I’d been wrong, that she hadn’t been asleep during all this, that she had been listening carefully and biding her time.
She let out a string of vowels, the same one with the same inflection twice.
“I know, baby,” I told her.
“What’s she saying?” George blushed. I’d never before thought of him as a man who could blush.
“I don’t know.” But the fact of the matter was I did. The speech therapist might not be able to understand her, but I could, and I imagined that when that quack said to her, “The rain in Spain,” etc., it was this she repeated back, and he took it as nonsense.
She was saying, very politely, I’d like to die, too.
Billy the barkeep waved when we came in the door. Millicent was sitting in the middle of the room.
“Millicent,” I said to the dog. She wagged her tail as she sat on it. “You’re a nice pup.” I scratched her ears. This didn’t seem to satisfy her, and as I walked past, I felt her look at me over her shoulder.
I sat down at the bar, waiting for George to say something. I wanted a cigarette, but I remembered George hated the smell. I knew that much about him. Then I decided I didn’t care, found a cigarette, and lit it. I took a sip of the wine Billy served me and felt the muscles beneath my tongue relax a little bit.
George sat down next to me. He tried to pay for the wine, but I wouldn’t let him.
I smoked several more cigarettes and drank four glasses of wine straight through and felt drunk. I am not really a drinker, as Barbara, if she were there, would have been happy to announce.
I burned for her to be there to bawl me out, to tell me firmly, Enough. Don’t wallow in your own eccentricities. I won’t stand for you doing this, my friend, so you’d better reevaluate. I burned for all the things I could not let myself fully imagine, because if I started to, if I did for a minute, well. I wasn’t allowed to grieve for her and I wasn’t allowed to recognize her and my memories were in cold storage.
George was talking in a soothing voice. I wanted to hit him. Who are you, I wondered, to take on the troubles of the world when you have plenty?
“It’s all very hard,” he said.
“Oh, buddy,” I said to him, “how would you know?”
He looked at me, shocked, and I saw that George was drunk, that he was crying, that he was talking about himself.
“Oh, Lord,” I said. “Oh, George. I’m so sorry.” And then I took his hand. He let me hold it. It was an old rough thing on a young man.
Outside, the sun was setting, through clouds so thick and faraway it looked like a weathered billboard.
“For a while I felt better,” he said. “And now I feel worse.”
“The real thing,” I said, very carefully, and I was surprised at how blurred my speech sounded, “is that we never found the guy. I keep looking, you know.”
“Okay, Jake.” He was caught in his own grief. I could tell he didn’t know what I was talking about.
“It’s a matter of looking harder.” It was suddenly clear to me. We find the guy driving the blue Dodge, and our problems are over. He could tell me things. And I could tell him—wouldn’t he have to listen to me? Wasn’t he the one person in my life who would be obligated? I’d lost anybody else, that was clear. But I would practice. I’d tell the whole story to George, that very night, would make him listen to it all. Then I would tell Billy, and then Millicent, and whoever I sat next to on the bus, and when I got home I would call up Barb’s son, and by that time, by morning, I’d have it down, every detail.
“My mother slipped in the bathtub,” George said. “In my bathtub, when she was visiting me. You wouldn’t think such a little thing could lead to all this.”
I could smell the smoke in my hair, and the wine on my breath, and wa
s worried that if George could smell it, he wouldn’t listen. So I swept my hair away and spoke tight-lipped. I was aware, suddenly, that we were both unabashedly teary-eyed, that Billy was saying, “Gents, you okay?” and I thought: too much to drink, we’re sad men, we’re tired.
“I’m going to find him,” I assured George Austin, shaking his hand.
“Yes, Jake,” he answered. His glasses were off and he wouldn’t look at me. “You will.”
Mercedes Kane
When she was a little girl in the 1940s, my mother read books about child prodigies and got jealous. She wanted to be one herself, but her memory worked in all the wrong ways. She remembered bus routes, birthdays, and the latest hairstyles; she forgot Latin, the Moonlight Sonata, and how a transistor works. You can’t be a genius, she told me once, if you forget what it is you’re geniusing, and if you’re stupid, you might as well be absentminded.
“No point in holding on to foolishness,” she said.
She knew it didn’t work that way, mourned what she forgot and despised what she remembered. Sometimes I caught her in the kitchen, singing along to one of my father’s tapes of old rock and roll. She’d dance a little, or chop onions in time. Once I caught her standing stock-still in the middle of the room, both hands over her heart, like some crazy teen idol.
“Who knows why I remember all the words to that,” she said, scowling at the Everly Brothers’ voices like her memory was their fault. “A waste of brain space.”
But words stayed with her like that; she had a good head for poetry, too. When I was small, she’d recite poems to me while I was in the bathtub, sometimes from books, sometimes from memory. Her favorites were by Mercedes Kane, one of her child prodigies from the forties, who wrote beautiful poetry at the age of eight—long fantasies about invented towns and country dirt roads, sonnets about famous painters. Mama first read about her in the Register when she was seven: they were the same age, and Mercedes Kane lived in Chicago, a few hours away. When Mama went to visit her Chicago cousins, she’d look around the streets, sure she’d recognize a girl genius. The Register said that Mercedes Kane could multiply five-digit numbers without even thinking, that she knew six real languages plus Esperanto, that she was a serious little girl, and quiet. We had a book of her poems; it was wrinkled with steam from my baths.
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