Every Day

by Elizabeth Richards

  “How’s Simon?” she asked.

  “Fine,” I chirped, although that is always, no matter what situation it applies to, a lie of a word. The truth is we’re engaged in a project that doesn’t allow me to think in such terms, that is, as Simon said, more easily described as “a matter of function.”

  He’s gotten so much worse over October, he needs so much help, that much of my energy goes to arranging care: I get Isaac, Jane, and Daisy up early so that they can use the space I need for readying Fowler for the day before he gets up. We’ve cordoned off the porch, his bedroom, but now the nights are getting too cool for him to sleep out there and there is talk of bringing him inside, apportioning a corner of the dining room and setting up a screen around the bed. As it is, the hectic look of the house would turn any visitor away. In the evenings, after Isaac has done his schoolwork and when Fowler isn’t too tired, they play detective games on the computer. Simon bought a wand that attaches to a headband, and he’s angled the laptop so that Fowler can, with a swift flicking movement, the only movement his head is still capable of, punch the keys and play. The laptop stays on top of the dining room table, so Fowler can go there to type any time, and during dinner, which we all eat together, he can use it to take part in the conversation.

  Dinners are not weird. It is generally acknowledged that the important connection, the reason for Fowler’s staying with us, is the one between him and Isaac, not between him and me. The sexual element my older children were so quick to excoriate me for has receded into the realm of the ridiculous for them. Fowler is properly unsexed in their eyes. I cannot say the same for myself. I cannot say that the man who has drawn me to him all these years has disappeared. I think of this affliction, this monstrous insult to his beauty, as temporary still, and at night when Simon and I are in bed, our lovemaking is an effort for me, and I’ve stopped him, in favor of sleep, too many times.

  Last night, when I did so, he said, “You and he aren’t still . . . ?”

  “You’re insane,” I said.

  “Any man in my position would have to be.”

  But Fowler is still capable. Some mornings when Daisy’s at the nursery school and we’ve spread our work across the dining room table, we ignore it. Afterward we go for a walk in the neighborhood. I think of those French villagers in the movie who nicknamed Catherine, Jules, and Jim “the three lunatics.”

  This morning I’m stripping the garden. We had frost last night. I toss green tomatoes into a tall wicker basket, set the ripe ones aside, snap the eggplants off, and pull up the basil. The yard is brown. We can see through to next door’s garage, but the ground, when I sit to rest, is surprisingly warm. I hear the screen door slam, then the squeak of the chair as it descends the ramp.

  Irritated that this, probably my sole moment of peace for the day, has to be disturbed, I go to see what he wants.

  He points to the garden, says, “Please.”

  I push him to the garden’s rocky edge. Simon handpicked these large, white oval stones one night on a Massachusetts beach. We filled the trunk of the car, so that when our week there was up, the luggage had to ride on the roof.

  He points to the ground.

  I gather him to me in the way we do for the bath, from one side of the chair, under the arms. I lower us and settle his head on my bunched-up sweatshirt so he can look up at my devastation, the garden in sunny ruin. I start to pull away to finish the harvest, but he keeps a hold on me with one urgent hand.

  “Stay.”

  There is only one way to do this, with us now. I straddle his chest, put a hand on him while I unbutton my shirt with the free one. He’s already hard when I dip down, give him each breast, fill his mouth with my tongue. Then I take care of my lower half, graceless as it is to take off boots and jeans when you’re kneeling. Above him I watch for signs of release, hope, anything, from his stymied state, and when I’m wet enough to lower myself onto him, the muscles in his jaw, around his eyes, constrict and slacken, constrict again, slacken, over and over until we’re done. Only when he hushes me do I know I’ve cried out, who knows how much, a naked woman in her garden, making love, again, to a man not her husband. But I don’t care. I don’t care. It’s too hard, all of it, and it’s the last time. I can’t bear it anymore. I lie on top of him, my knees, elbows, even my mouth, filmy with earth. I fasten his lank arms around me, feel them recede, and then I sob loudly, an awful, ugly, animal sob. And Fowler shifts under me, sideways, away from my noise.

  “I’ll leave soon,” he manages to say, at that painful pace.

  “Good,” I say.

  • • •

  That night I call Evelyn. “The course meets four more times. He wants to finish it.”

  “Leigh,” she says, still cool, still busy. “Are you the Leigh we knew so many years ago?”

  “I am.”

  “Oh, I can’t believe he didn’t mention that to me. When he said he was staying with an old friend and her family, I had no idea he meant you. Somehow a family didn’t fit with my image of you when we met.”

  “I was sixteen then,” I tell her.

  “Of course you were. And you’ve been so good to him. Can I talk to him myself?”

  “Well, that’s sort of a problem because he can’t manage too many words at once. He does most of his communicating by computer now.”

  For once she waits to respond and when she does speak her voice is colorless. “Thank you. Can you tell me when he’ll be returning?”

  “Within the month,” I say. “We’ll let you know the details as they become available.”

  “Before you hang up,” she rushes to say. “How is he?”

  “He’s very ill. He would like to come home. He hasn’t got a lot of time.”

  To move the bed into the dining room we have to take it apart. Simon gets out his toolbox, and Isaac hauls up the yellowed, peeling Japanese screen from the basement and makes a show of cleaning it with a damp cloth and Wood Preen for the joints. Fowler tells him, “Thank you.”

  “Sure thing.”

  When we get it all done, when our dining room is a bedroom too, I point to myself in question—does Fowler want my help getting ready for bed?

  “That’s okay, Mom,” Isaac jumps in. “Man’s work.”

  • • •

  Barry makes a sleeping pill recommendation.

  “I sleep fine, just not enough.”

  “You don’t have to work so hard,” he jokes. “You’ve got one check. There’s no threat to the second.”

  My advance, contracted to be made in two payments, is a gift, not a worry. I tell Barry as much, squeeze his large, freckled hand. “You’ve been a huge help these last two months. I like having work.”

  “Good! You’ve needed a little help! Maybe when you finish the book, you should take a vacation.”

  I smile. I should tell him some things, just to be clear, honest. But I can’t. I can’t verbalize to strangers these days, say how things are snowballing for all of us, moving toward a monumental place, how it’s impossible to think in terms of normal needs, sleep, food, routine. I’ve been reading Mirabai, the Indian prophetess.

  “ ‘I have felt the swaying of the elephant’s shoulders; and now/you want me to climb on a jackass? Try to be serious,’ ” I say to Barry.

  “You don’t have to live their lives,” Barry says affectionately. “You don’t have to suffer what they’ve suffered.”

  “I’m not,” I say.

  • • •

  I meet Pam at Sarabeth’s and we gobble the tomato soup. She can’t stop talking about how good I look, which strikes me as preposterous and indulgent, coming from her. She’s the one who is and always has been beautiful, and she’s wearing the clothes and jewelry to up that ante, to draw the stares of other lady lunchers just aching to find a flaw. They want us to be surfacey or gay or just plain stupid.

  “So where do you actually live?” I ask, in that slidey voice we had at Hastings.

  “In Providence. In a big, honking
brownstone. Dave’s an architect.”

  “I know. I read it in the bulletin.” I remarked, then, on Pam’s marrying someone who might not have money. But she could have married any fortune seeker.

  “Show me the kids,” I say.

  She takes out her leather case of wallet photos and shows me the girls, replicas of herself at Hastings, tall, blond, seriously beautiful, on an expanse of lawn leading to water.

  “Where was that taken?”

  “In Maine. At Dave’s parents’ house. This one’s Eloise, and that’s Madeline.”

  “You didn’t!”

  “I did. The only books I ever liked. Now my turn.”

  I get out my laminated photos that float in my bag, all done at Sears.

  “There he is,” she says, stopping over Isaac’s. “Big as life. God, it’s incredible. They’re clones.”

  “Almost as if I had nothing to do with it!”

  She looks up, confused.

  “Sorry. I’m letting myself say things.”

  She sips Pellegrino. “No. Go ahead. Don’t let me stop you.”

  “Fowler’s going home next week. His doctors say he’s in the advanced stage. It’s happened faster than usual with him, although there really is no usual. Some people can last decades. Some go in three years. The point is, you’re not going to get to see him. He’s really too sick.”

  “What makes you think I want to see him?”

  “History.”

  “Look, I’m going to let you go,” Pam says. “I know you’ve got a lot to do. And I’m only in town until tomorrow. I’m going to hit the museums and Bloomie’s this afternoon. And Bianca has the world coming for drinks tonight. Here’s twenty. That should cover it.”

  I should apologize, but I can’t. I watch her shroud herself in a camel-hair cape.

  “Ciao,” she says.

  “Ciao.”

  I can’t do it, the lunches and the Biancas and the museums, now. I only came to tell her off, after all this time.

  It’s the beginning of November, cold, brilliantly sunny, the sort of weather that’s perfect for a city. The pleasure the chill affords me flares and is consumed by the next thing, the next plan, an afternoon of taxiing, from the house to the schools to pick up Jane, then Isaac. Then later, back in to the city for Fowler’s class, God willing he’s up to it.

  • • •

  Simon and Fowler are at the computer. Daisy claws the air for me. I throw my briefcase and coat on the couch.

  “Come, baby.”

  Daisy stumbles to me, whimpering. Jane comes out of the kitchen after checking the fridge.

  “There’s nothing for dinner, Mom. What are we supposed to eat?”

  “I’m getting to it.”

  “I’m hungry now.”

  “We’ll get Chinese.”

  “That’ll be the third time this week,” Simon reminds me.

  “McDonald’s it is,” I say. “I’ll go with Daisy. Any requests?”

  “That we not get McDonald’s,” Isaac bellows from the stairs.

  “Okay,” I agree. “You all figure something out.”

  Simon stands. “There will be a moratorium on McDonald’s until further notice is given.” He sits down. Fowler and he continue with their game, Sleuth, I think it’s called.

  “Then what are we going to eat?” Jane screams at Simon.

  “We’ll improvise,” I say, trying to keep peace.

  “I’ve done all the improvising I can,” Simon shouts, giving up on the game, getting on his jacket, leaving by the back door.

  Fowler gets himself out of the game with painstaking punches of the keys. Then he types me a message. “Soon,” it says.

  Sometimes an exalted life, whether it’s full of bravery and self-sacrifice or sin and degradation, isn’t glamorous. Sometimes what you get is just a group of people in a room screaming about hamburgers.

  • • •

  Fowler and I leave at seven, after grazing on peanut butter and crackers. When we get to the classroom the students barely acknowledge the shift in personnel, as if they’ve expected me all along. They wait while I plug in the laptop and angle it for his convenience.

  “Jim has asked me to help with some of the commentary here,” I explain a little too apologetically, as if I’ve got no business dealing with the written word at this level of its use.

  Some smile out of obligation; others just gaze at me blankly.

  “Do you want manuscripts?” one young man asks.

  Fowler gives me a “yes” with his eyes, and I collect them.

  “There’s a good chance this will be Professor Fowler’s last meeting with you,” I inform them, “which would mean that I will be substituting for him for the remaining meetings.”

  I look directly at the girl who reminds me of myself, waiting for her to fire off an objection.

  “Does that mean you’ll be giving us our grades?” she asks impatiently.

  Here I improvise because Fowler looks panicked. I tell her that the work turned in this evening should provide Professor Fowler with all the material he’ll need for a final evaluation.

  “Can’t you let him tell us?” she asks snidely, gesturing toward the laptop.

  My response to bad manners has never been graceful, but in light of my behavior toward Pam this noon, I keep quiet, except to say, “All right.”

  They move in close, to witness the results of the laborious typing.

  “Amazing,” a large, wrestler-type says.

  “Totally,” says the one who asked about turning in manuscripts.

  We discuss, verbally and by laptop, two unpromising dream sequences chosen by Fowler because of their coincidental use of dream, not their lack of promise. We go over ways in which they might be rooted to some context and thus improved, ways in which the dreamer and the dreamed could communicate more credibly. Then, of course, the matter of credibility as crucial comes into question, and references to Fellini and Bunuel abound. I like the informality of it, of Fowler typing in direction here and there, but not overwhelming the talk. I begin to see what is fun about this, which is the surprise in it, the fact that you don’t know what you’ll get when eight people sit down in a circle to talk. I see why he’s done it, the teaching, all his life, in addition to the films. It’s anything but safe.

  On the way home I vainly ask how I did.

  “They—loved—you,” he manages.

  “They loved me because they love you. Already!”

  He expels air, not letting himself laugh, for fear, I know, of losing head control.

  “I don’t know how you’ve done it,” I say.

  “Mm?”

  “I don’t know how you’ve kept doing it while all this happens to you. It’s totally amazing.”

  Again, a semi-laugh. “How—you—talk.”

  Then I laugh. I haven’t laughed, it seems, in months.

  • • •

  “I was about to call you,” Eliot says when I call him at work. “I’m going to do it. I want the number.”

  “What number?”

  “Travis’s number. I shouldn’t, I know. But that guy with the hair isn’t going to last with him, trust me. So I’m just going to call. I’ll need the work number.”

  I tell him I only have the home number.

  “Then I’ll call there and tell the stiff I’m an artist. Et cetera.”

  I get the number.

  “Now tell me what’s wrong.”

  “I just called the airline,” I say softly. I’m upstairs, away from Fowler, having a bad morning about it, not wanting him to know.

  “Oh, God. It starts.”

  “Eliot,” I say. “How does a person do this?”

  “Do what, dear?” he says, although he knows very well what I’m asking.

  “This. This death thing. It feels like it’s taking so long, and then you call an airline and it feels like there hasn’t been any time. I’m way out there, Eliot. I’m looking down at my house, at this big mess I made, as if I’ve j
ust decided to get out and leave it to get better on its own. This is horrible.”

  “Do you need me? Can I come out there, take him for a walk? I can tell them there’s an emergency, like the day with your tooth.”

  “No. No. I’m just having a bad moment or two. You don’t have to come.”

  “You call me after he leaves. You do that.”

  “All right.”

  I go back downstairs and sit across from Fowler at the table. He’s tired of his reading, and we’ve already eaten and walked and started in on the packing. He’s leaving. I’m staying. This is not so unfamiliar for us. It should be easier than it is.

  • • •

  It’s after two when I hear the “Marseillaise,” at casual volume, through the screen door. Eliot blows in shortly, encumbered with a shopping bag and a bouquet of apricot roses.

  “Knock, knock, who’s here!”

  I’m halfway through the second soup feeding of the day. I made tomato soup from our final tomatoes, even the green ones, and put Daisy to sleep with a bowl of it first. Eliot takes a brief look at Fowler and turns to me, probably done in by the bib I draped over Fowler’s chest.

  “I don’t know who looks worse!” he cried. “For God’s sake, friend o’ mine, fix thyself!”

  It’s true that I cry out for attention, my jeans and crewneck sweater in their third wearing, my hair flat and greasy. “I will shower,” I promise Eliot. “Soon.”

  Fowler backs his wheelchair off from lunch, upset by the intrusion even though he’s admitted to liking Eliot.

  “I’d hug you, but I might put you off your tea. You’ll want tea, won’t you?”

  “Need you ask. It was frigid walking from the cab to the back door. I’m a popsicle. Lots of milk and sugar, and don’t feel pressured to open the madeleines.”

  He sets the tin that once delighted Daisy and Jane in the Lenox Hill waiting room on our table.

  “You made madeleines?”

  “Well, you can’t buy them anywhere near the library! I figured it was the perfect dessert for a Francophile such as vous-même.”

  “Oh my God.” They’re piled, six per row, and they’re so spongy and sweet I feel I shouldn’t even have the one I’m eating. I hold one in front of Fowler, but he shakes his head, slowly, from side to side, then motors to the other end of the table where the remaining pages of the last student manuscript are propped up on two cookbook stands that Jean gave me when Simon and I got married.