by Louise Penny
“No. Please. Don’t.” Alyce pushed at him, frightened.
“Sorry!”
The elderly lover would make a joke of it, if he could.
Still he was breathing hard. Harshly. Excused himself to go into the bathroom, swaying on his feet.
There came a sound of faucets, plumbing. Alyce sat up, swung her legs off the bed. What was she doing, why was she here? She would leave, before he returned. Or—she would wait for him in the drawing room, in her coat. For it would be rude, unconscionable, to rush away without speaking to him.
She would ask him for financial help. Please would he help her!
All she wanted was her old, lost body. The not-pregnant body. A girl’s slender body with narrow hips, small hard breasts, flat belly and nothing inside the belly to make it swell like a balloon.
How happy she’d been, in that not-pregnant body. Wholly unaware, oblivious. And now.
She had no doubt Roland B___ could put her in contact with someone who could help her. Roland B___ could provide the money.
An abortion. A doctor who could perform an abortion.
These blunt words had to be uttered. She, Alyce, would have to utter them.
After some minutes Alyce returned hesitantly to the bedroom. But Roland B___ was still in the bathroom. Something fell to the tile floor, clattered. Alyce came closer to the door, not knowing what to do. She had not wanted to think that something might be wrong with the elderly poet, that his breathing had been harsh and laborious, almost as soon as he’d urged her into the bedroom and onto the bed.
Alyce had balked, like an overgrown girl. She had given in, but stiffly. She had not returned his kisses except weakly, out of a kind of politeness. For a man of his age he’d been surprisingly strong. He’d been surprisingly heavy. But then, he was not old. She knew that.
Her face was wet with tears. Hair in her face. At last daring to call, “R-Roland? Is something wrong?”
How the name Roland stuck in her mouth! She could hardly bear to speak it. Like playacting this felt, speaking a name in a script.
The panicked thought came to her, Is he ill? Is he dying? Am I to be his witness?
Alyce approached the bathroom door. Leaned her ear against it.
“Hello? Excuse me? Is—something wrong?”
In poetry you chisel the most beautiful words out of language. In life you stutter words. It is never possible to speak so beautifully as you wish to speak.
Inside, a response she could not quite hear. Maybe it was a reply, No, yes, I am all right, go away. Or maybe it was a groan. A cry. A muffled plea. Help me, I am not all right. Do not go away.
A terrifying thought, that the elderly poet was ill. At the very moment of his declaration of love for her, his wish to help her, to marry her . . . Alyce had long suspected that Roland B___ was not entirely well: hearing him breathing laboriously, moving with unnatural slowness at times. Wanting to think at the time, Oh, he’s been drinking. That’s why.
Like seeing a spark fly out of a chimney and fall into a carpet.
In the next instant the spark may become a flame. The flame may become fire.
Is he dying? He doesn’t want to die alone . . .
Then, suddenly: the door was opened. Roland B___ emerged, trying to smile.
A ghastly smile. His skin pale as if drained of blood. And his eyelids fluttering. His hand pressed against his chest.
She would call 911, Alyce told him. They could not wait any longer.
Roland protested no. Not yet. His heart “played tricks” on him—sometimes . . .
No. No longer. Alyce would call 911, and save the poet’s life.
10.
“He is expecting me. He needs me.”
At the ER insisting that yes, she was Roland B___’s assistant, a student at the university enrolled in the professor’s course. For she could not bring herself to say that she was the elderly poet’s friend.
Still less that she was the poet’s Alice. The girl he’d offered to marry.
“He needs me, he expects me. I would have ridden with him in the ambulance but there was no room . . .”
A nurse led Alyce into the interior of the ER. She could not stop from glancing into small rooms with doors ajar—dreading to see what, who was inside. Smells assailed her nostrils, her eyes filled with tears. She thought, Oh God if he dies. If he has died.
Barely could she recall her own condition. What was growing, flourishing in her belly. Her aching and oddly full breasts. How she’d confessed to the poet, and how he’d taken hold of her hands, his kindness. His wish to help her.
. . . love enough for both of us.
The nurse was handing Alyce—what? A half-mask of white gauze. Slipped a half-mask onto her own face. Explaining to Alyce that until bloodwork confirmed that the patient didn’t have a contagious illness they must proceed as if he might have one, and that the contagion might be spread by airborne germs or viruses.
Contagious? Illness? Was this possible? Alyce fumbled affixing the mask to her face, and the nurse adjusted it for her.
Before the door to room 8. Preparing for what was inside, as the nurse opened the door.
And there was the elderly poet in bed, in a sitting-up position, bare-chested, partly conscious, staring and blinking at Alyce as if he couldn’t see her clearly or was failing to recognize her in the mask. Without his glasses he looked much older than his age—disheveled, distraught. The pale dome of a head, shockingly bare.
“Oh, my dear . . . What have they done to you.”
Bravely Roland B___ was smiling at his visitor. Quickly she came to him, took his hand. Fingers cold as death.
Her first impression was one of shock, yet relief. Roland was alive, that was all that mattered.
Thanking Alyce for coming. Begging her not to leave him.
How misshapen, Roland B___’s body in the cranked-up hospital bed! He might have been a dwarf, with foreshortened legs. Alyce had never glimpsed the elderly poet unclothed, always he’d been quite formally clothed; in the Poet’s House when he’d removed his tweed coat he wore long-sleeved shirts beneath, often sweaters, vests. Scarcely had Alyce thought of the poet as a physical being.
Until he’d urged her into his bedroom and onto his bed she had not once thought of him as a sexual being; such a thought was repugnant to her.
Now with dismayed eyes Alyce saw folds of flesh at the poet’s chest and stomach, of the hue of lard. Sloping knobby-boned shoulders. The flabby chest was covered in a frizz of gray hairs and amid these a dozen electrodes, wires connected to a machine. Was this an EKG? Monitoring his heartbeat? An IV dripped fluids into his right arm: antibiotics? Medication to slow and stabilize the rapid heartbeat? Oxygen flowed into the patient’s nostrils through plastic tubes. Like clockwork every several minutes a blood-pressure cuff tightened on the patient’s left upper arm with an aggressive whirring sound, then relaxed like an exhaled breath. Alyce stared entranced at the monitor screen. The numerals meant nothing to her—84, 91, 18. Green, blue, white. During the course of this first visit Alyce would surmise that the numerals in the high 80s measured the patient’s oxygen intake.
It was explained to her that Roland B___ would have a CAT scan and an echocardiogram in the morning. He would have further bloodwork after eight hours of antibiotics. The rapid heartbeat wasn’t tachycardia but fibrillation, which was more serious. Possibly the elderly man had a viral infection, which had precipitated the attack. Possibly he had pneumonia. Alyce tugged at the mask, which fitted over her mouth and nose uncomfortably.
It alarmed her how Roland B___ was coughing. (Had he been coughing at the Poet’s House? She didn’t think so.)
“They don’t know what is wrong with me, I’m afraid,” Roland B___ said, with an attempt at his old gaiety, “but I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about, dear. I hope it won’t be a cause of worry to you.”
Alyce insisted she wasn’t worried. Even as she felt sick, disoriented with worry.
Wondering if, in
his physical distress, the elderly poet remembered what she had told him. If he remembered what he’d told her.
. . . love enough for both of us.
For hours that night sitting with Roland B___ in the small room, much of the time holding his hand.
Even when he drifted off to sleep, eyelids fluttering and lips twitching, holding his hand.
At 11:30 p.m., when the ER was closing to visitors, Alyce was told that she could remove the mask on her face. Blood tests had established that the patient didn’t have a communicable disease.
Removing the damned mask, which the nurse directed her to discard in a bin labeled MEDICAL REFUSE.
Removing the mask so that Roland B___ could see her more clearly and unmistakably identify her: “My dear—Alyce.”
“Yes—Alyce . . .”
“You are looking so—pale, dear. Please don’t worry! I feel so much better already, just knowing that you’ve been here, and that we—we have—we will settle matters between us, as soon as I am back home. Won’t we, dear? As we’d discussed?”
“Y-Yes.”
“Kiss me goodnight, dear. I’m not contagious now. And will you promise to see me in the morning?”
Alyce promised. How exhausted she was, and how badly she wanted to escape the stricken man, to burrow into sleep in her own bed.
But Roland was blinking at her, his eyes forlorn without his glasses. The blood-pressure cuff jerked to life, squeezing his upper arm as if in rebuke.
Lowering his voice, Roland B___ asked anxiously, “You are—I mean, you are not—my wife yet? I think—not yet? No.”
Was he joking? Alyce wanted to think so.
The patient in room 8 did not survive the night. We had no number to call and we regret to inform you . . .
In fact when Alyce returned to the ER the next morning, trembling with fear, she was informed that Roland B___ had been moved out of the ER to a room on the fifth floor. His heartbeat had been stabilized: his condition was “much improved.” Yet he would probably remain in the hospital for several days, undergoing tests.
In relief Alyce bought Roland a small bouquet of fresh flowers in the hospital gift shop. It was heartening to see how his face lighted when he saw her, and the bright yellow flowers in her hand.
“My dear! You’ve come back. Thank you.”
Leaning over the hospital bed to kiss his cheek. Resisting the impulse to shut her eyes in a delirium of relief. He is alive. Alive! That is all that matters.
She’d scarcely slept the previous night. Many times reliving the shock of the poet’s collapse, even as he’d vowed to protect her.
Marry her, and they would have a child together . . .
It was clear to her now, nothing mattered so much as Roland B___. She had to be with him, at his bedside. For he had no one but Alyce, whom he loved and had promised to protect.
She’d ceased thinking of the other. The man who’d impregnated her and now shunned her. She did not even hate him, who’d so wounded her.
Roland had not asked Alyce who the father of the unborn baby was. Alyce seemed to understand that he would not.
Saying to her only, in a discreet lowered voice so that no one might overhear, “And you, dear? You are all right also?”
“Yes! Oh, yes.”
It was a relief to Alyce, Roland B___ did seem to have improved since the previous night. He was still inhaling oxygen through tubes in his nostrils, but the numbers on the monitor were higher, in the 90s. IV fluids were still dripping into his veins, but his color was warmer, his eyes more alert. With a droll gaiety he showed his visitor his poor bruised arms, from which “pints of blood” had been drawn.
As Roland B___’s assistant Alyce had much to do. She must notify his closest relatives, whose names he provided her; she must notify the English Department that he would be postponing his seminar for a week. Alyce did not want to say, But are you sure, Roland? One week?
Clearly he had a serious cardiac condition. Still there was a possibility that he had an infection, for he was running a slight temperature. Though he was eager to be discharged from the hospital, he tired easily and several times dropped off to sleep while speaking with Alyce; once, explaining to her what she should say to his relatives, to keep them informed but discourage them from visiting him.
As it turned out Roland B___’s relatives, who lived in the Boston area, were not very keen on visiting him. On the phone with Alyce they expressed surprise, alarm, concern, but said nothing about visiting him in the hospital. (“Is Roland out of the ER? Not in intensive care? That’s a relief!”) Alyce wanted to ask sarcastically why didn’t they come to see him now, before he was in intensive care? Wouldn’t that be more sensible?
Roland had said that he didn’t want to speak with his relatives just yet. Nor did the relatives express much urgency in speaking with him.
Often when Roland slept he woke disoriented, frightened. A nurse suggested to Alyce that she remain close by him, to assure him. “Older patients need reassurance that they haven’t been abandoned.”
Abandoned! Alyce was determined that this should not happen.
If she missed more than a few classes she would fail her courses, Alyce was warned. She would have to apply for extensions through the dean’s office, and even then such applications might be denied.
But Roland was dependent upon Alyce for tasks he could not do from his hospital bed. Letters he must write, or believed that he must write, which he dictated to Alyce, who dutifully typed them out on the Remington in the Poet’s House, brought them back to him for proofreading, addressed, and mailed them. There were telephone calls Roland couldn’t bring himself to make, that Alyce must make for him; he’d grown to hate the phone because no one spoke loudly or clearly enough any longer. Since the shock of his collapse and hospitalization Roland seemed determined to show how alert, energetic, and assertive he was, how well—though he was still a hospital patient attached to monitors beside his bed and dependent upon Alyce or a nurse to help him make his faltering way to the bathroom when he needed it.
He’d been insistent the damned catheter be removed from his penis. No more! A man’s pride would not allow that insult.
Especially Roland wanted to display for Alyce his returning vitality, his good humor. He wanted the medical staff to see, his physician to see, how well he was becoming, in order that he might be discharged soon.
Wanting to suggest to Roland that she might spend fewer hours at the hospital so that she could return to her classes, catch up on her work. That she might write poetry of her own again, to read to him.
But she could not force herself to utter such words—I need more time to myself, Roland. I am afraid that I will fail my courses . . .
He would be hurt, she knew. Since his collapse he’d become extremely sensitive, thin-skinned and suspicious. If Alyce was late coming to the hospital by just a few minutes, he wondered where she’d been; if he dropped off to sleep and woke startled, not knowing at first where he was, he might stare at her almost with hostility, as if not recognizing her.
But then, when she spoke his name, it was wonderful how awareness and recognition flowed into his face again. “My dear! Dear Alyce. It is you, isn’t it?”
“Yes. Of course.”
“I love you, Alyce. You know that, I hope.”
Alyce was deeply embarrassed. Could not bring herself to say, Yes. I know.
“When I am discharged—which will be next Monday, I’ve just been informed—we will make our plans, dear. We—have—many—plans—to make . . .”
It was the pregnancy to which he was alluding, Alyce supposed. Yet he could not quite name it. Nor had he asked who the father was, as if (Alyce was beginning to suspect) he preferred not to know.
Soon after their nighttime meal Roland fell asleep with a book in his hand, which Alyce extricated carefully from his fingers and set aside, with a bookmark to mark his place. She stooped and kissed the poet’s high forehead with its faint creases which felt cool against
her lips; she listened to his shallow but rhythmic breathing, which was comforting to her as a baby’s breathing might be. Love for the man suffused her heart, but how vexing, just as she switched off the bright overhead light, preparing to leave the hospital for the night, a young nurse entered the room and switched it back on, rudely waking Roland, who fluttered his eyelids, confused.
Alyce watched as the nurse poked for a vein in his right arm, which was already discolored. “Be careful!” Alyce spoke sharply.
It was new to her, this sharpness. As if already she were the poet’s young wife, destined to outlive him and to bring up their child by herself, the renowned poet’s literary executrix whose life would be closely bound up with his.
Afterward she kissed the poet goodnight a second time and switched off the overhead light a second time, and in the corridor outside the nurse was waiting for her with a quizzical smile. “Is he your grandfather? Somebody said he’s a famous professor?”
It had been Roland’s third full day in the hospital, unless it had been the fourth.
11.
In Alyce’s mailbox when she returned late from the hospital a folded note with the terse message Please call me. S.
Clutching the note, her heart pounding. A rush of sensation came over her, of dread, apprehension, and yet such excitement, she felt for a moment that she might faint; had to lean against the wall, her head lowered, as a struck animal might lean, uncertain what has happened to it.
No. Go to hell. It’s too late, I hate you.
And yet she could not say no.
Asking Alyce to meet him the next evening at a Greek restaurant some distance from the university, a place to which he’d never taken her, dim-lighted, near-deserted, where no one from the university was likely to see them together.
He’d heard, Simon said bluntly, with no preamble, two things about the visiting poet Roland B___: the man was in the hospital, and Alyce, one of his students, was visiting him daily.
