by Sue Miller
From halfway down the block she could hear the hubbub of voices, the high lift of a throwaway female laugh. She was thinking that she would have a gin and tonic to celebrate. Yes, that's what she'd do.
To celebrate what? Oh, summer, let's say. The end of the week. Tom, resting on his bed in the dining room, waiting for her return.
They'd talked yesterday about the possibility of his coming along with her. They could have used the wheelchair or driven down with the walker in the car, or his cane.
But Tom had said no, he didn't want to spoil her fun. Though what he'd actually said was, “Shpa! Phnn!” He'd shaken his head, hard, his lips pressing together, and said it again, a little more clearly.
She got it, as she did more and more now. She told him he couldn't spoil her fun, her fun was in being with him.
Bullshit, he said, (“Buh! Shi!”), and then his mouth tightened into the familiar small smile that almost always made her smile back.
It was just as well, as it turned out. When he came home from rehab this afternoon it was clear that he wouldn't have been able to do it even if he'd wanted to. He was just too tired. He'd had a snack, and then he'd lain down. When she'd gone in to say good-bye, he was asleep.
She wondered who would be at the party this year. She saw as she turned up the walk that there were at least a few young couples she didn't know. She came up the steps onto the crowded front porch and introduced herself to the young woman standing at the top.
She was in an interesting conversation with her about Hillary Clinton and feminism when Gail Sterne saw her and came over, drifting up in one of the gauzy caftans she wore to hide her bulk. She wanted to know how Tom was—they'd heard about his stroke. She took Delia to the bar, set up at the end of the porch, and Delia ordered her gin and tonic. While she waited, she described Tom's progress. Then she told Gail that he was home, with her.
“Well!” Gail said. “My! Well, I won't say I'm surprised, but . . . Yes, I will! I am surprised.”
Delia had her first bitter sip of the gin and smiled at Gail. “You're not the only one. Nancy says I'm trying for sainthood.”
This was only one of the many things Nancy had said to Delia on the phone when Delia had finally told her what she'd done.
“You've definitely got my vote,” Gail said.
“Nonsense. It's mostly just a matter of arranging things. He has plenty of money. All I'll do is spend it on him.”
“But you're so used to your privacy, Delia, to your own life.” Her hand came up and rested on her bosom. She had large, glittery rings on almost every finger.
“Oh, I've had too much of that,” Delia said. “It will do me good to be caring for someone besides myself.” She'd made this argument to Nancy too, and Nancy had said, “So? Go work in an orphanage. Get a dog. You owe Daddy nothing, Mother.”
“I don't do it because I feel I owe it to him,” Delia had said.
“Then why? Why do you do it?” Nancy's voice was shrill, as it had been throughout this conversation.
“Because I want to. Because this is what I want to do.”
And though she had answered every argument Nancy mounted with equal assurance, equal conviction, Delia had been aware that this was only the beginning of the discussion. That Nancy would come back to it again and again, particularly if Tom stopped making progress. That everyone who learned of Tom's arrival at her house, of her decision, would wonder at it, and those who were close to her would ask her openly about it, would argue with her. The only ones who hadn't so far were Madeleine Dexter and Brad. Though Brad had assumed it was only temporary, his father's stay with her in Williston, and she didn't correct him. Because maybe it was. And a few times when she was feeling a little overwhelmed, she had comforted herself by saying that nothing was permanent. “We'll see how it goes,” she said to herself from time to time.
And now she said it to Gail, too. “Anyway, we'll see how it goes. How I stand up to it. Intestinal fortitude, as it were.” She had another swallow of gin and made a face. “What a revolting idiom that is when you think about it!”
But Gail was preoccupied, frowning. “Yes, it's all improvisation from here on in,” she said, her voice slowed. She started talking about Bob's open-heart surgery last fall. How they spoke together of each annual event now—this party, their summer on the Cape—as though it might be their last. “The point is to do everything you can as long as you can, isn't it?”
“Yes,” Delia said. “To use yourself up.” And suddenly she had the image of herself having her solitary dinners, in the living room here, in her apartment in Paris. How wasteful that seemed to her now. How selfish.
Now Delia looked up and saw her neighbors, Meri and Nathan, just turning into the Sternes’ walk. He had one of those kangaroo pouches slung around his belly—the baby. Asa. She felt bad that she'd seen so little of them, but she had a proposition for them, an exchange she wanted to work out. She excused herself to Gail, who was turning to talk to someone else anyway. She stepped to the railing and called over to them.
Meri's face, which always had that slightly sullen look, bore the stamp of her fatigue—Delia had heard the baby in the night from time to time. It lifted now when she spotted Delia on the porch.
Delia beckoned them. “The booze is this way, my dears,” she called, and several of the young couples turned and smiled at her.
Meri and Nathan threaded their way through the clusters of people on the porch. Delia hugged each of them, leaning carefully over the baby in Nathan's case. As she stepped back, she peered in at him in the pouch. He was ridiculously small, curled in almost a half circle, his little hands at his face, his head flopped over sideways onto one shoulder, eyes closed.
“Now if you or I did that,” Delia said, pointing, “we'd have a stiff neck for a week.”
Meri said, “I wouldn't mind the stiff neck if Nathan would just carry me everywhere I went.”
Nathan grinned his toothy, boyish grin. “I would if I could, it goes without saying.” His big hands cupped the little shape at his front, just the way you did when you were pregnant, Delia thought. Maybe that's why they had these little pouches, so men could have the tiniest sense of the experience.
Now he announced that he was going to get a beer for himself—did Meri want anything? She asked him to bring her some sparkling water.
When he was gone, Delia turned to the younger woman. “How are you getting on? Do you need anything? Does the baby need anything?”
Meri shook her head. “Nothing. We don't use half of the stuff we've got. All he wears are little T-shirts and diapers. Or just diapers, it's been so warm.” She sounded hoarse and exhausted.
“And you? How are you? Any better?” Delia asked.
Meri shrugged.
“It's a trying time,” Delia said. “When they're so little and feeding and being changed all the time.”
“I sometimes feel I'm living in a big cotton ball. In a fog.” She tipped her head from side to side, almost shaking it.
“I wish I could be of more help. Once I get Tom settled in, I will. I'm actually quite fond of infants. Some people aren't.”
“Do tell,” Meri said. “And how is that coming, Tom's being here?”
“Early days,” Delia said. “We haven't sunk into a routine yet, though I suppose we will. We really have to. I want to keep on at the Apthorp house. It's a busy year—the sesquicentennial of Anne Apthorp's death. The college is publishing a new edition of the letters. Many celebrations.”
“A sesquicentennial? What, pray tell, is that?”
“The one-hundred-fiftieth year. But there's always something. Two hundred years from her birthday. Two hundred years from the building of the house, and on and on. And all of it's just about raising money, of course.”
Nathan came back with the drinks—Meri's silvery water and his beer, which was almost black.
Delia gestured at it. “A murky brew,” she said.
“Murky, but fantastic.” Nathan lifted it and drank.
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“Our host is peculiar about beer,” Delia said. “Or so it has always seemed to me. He specializes in the opaque.”
“I like opaque,” Nathan said. “In a beer anyway.” Nathan offered Meri a taste.
She tried it and made a little face. “I'm not even jealous of you. Though Delia's lovely drink with lime,” she lifted her chin toward Delia's glass, “is another story.”
“I'd hate to tell you how good it is,” Delia said. “It's very good.” She had another sip.
“Delia's still doing her volunteer work,” Meri told Nathan. “Even with Tom living with her.”
“Impressive,” Nathan said. He had a little mustache of brown foam.
“Yes, I am,” Delia said. “And this brings up something I wanted to propose.” She set her glass on the wide porch railing. “You know I've hired this wonderful young man, Matthew, to take care of Tom for about an hour or so each day when he gets home from rehab and I'm still at work.” Meri nodded. “Well, it turns out he can't be there two days a week. Tuesdays and Thursdays. A class he needs to take this summer, which turned out to be held later in the day than he'd originally thought.” They were both waiting, attentive. “If one of you could possibly come over for about an hour and a half on those two afternoons for the duration of summer school, I would be eternally grateful. And I will insist on taking the babe for at least one evening a week in exchange. I'd been meaning to offer this anyway.” She turned to Meri. “Don't you remember I told you I would sit for you?”
“I do,” Meri said. “It's a lovely offer.”
“It wouldn't be any real work,” Delia said. “Tom, I mean. He'll likely just sleep, he comes home so thoroughly worn out from his day. There will almost certainly be nothing for either of you to do except perhaps get him something to eat or drink if he wants it. It's just that I'm not comfortable yet leaving him by himself. I suppose in six months I'll look back at all this elaborate hoo-hah I've arranged and think I was silly, but for now I seem to require it.”
Meri said she understood, absolutely. “I'd be nervous about leaving Asa, too,” she said.
“Not would be nervous, because I'm absolutely going to take him.” She smiled, she picked up her glass again. “You will be nervous, I'm afraid. Those are the terms. I will take him.”
They agreed on it. Meri and the baby would come over and stay with Tom, starting the following Tuesday.
Nathan said, “And if you ever need anything in the evenings, I could help too. It's just I'm trying to finish this book. But I'm free then, and if I can be of service . . .” He bowed slightly, his hand reaching up to support the curve of the baby.
“Wait a sec,” Meri said. “I get first dibs on any extra time.”
Nathan laughed, but Delia, looking at the younger woman, thought it was possible she wasn't joking at all.
“Let me take you to meet your hosts,” she said, and turned to try to spot Gail or Bob. The crowd on the porch had thinned a bit, so they went inside, and yes, there was Bob, only slightly less fat than Gail, in front of a painting.
In his rushing voice, Bob was explaining the artist's technique to two seemingly interested guests—the layers, the sanding down, the layers again. When he paused for air, Delia interrupted and introduced Meri and Nathan. Nathan immediately began to ask more questions about the work.
Delia took the opportunity to move away. Though she liked Bob, she'd heard the lecture, about this painting and many of the others, about the beers, about his garden, more than once. He loved his life, he loved to talk about every aspect of it. Admirable, but often hard to take, she thought. She stopped to talk to a few more old friends and then got into a long conversation with a woman she'd never met before, about O. J. Simpson and race relations.
When she looked around again a little while later, she saw the party was thinning out, that most of the younger couples had left, and now even the old ones were gathering purses and shawls. The student helpers were moving through the rooms clearing, carrying trays of glasses, some still half filled.
Delia found Gail in the kitchen and said good-bye, wished her a wonderful summer. They embraced, and when they stepped back, Delia saw that Gail's eyes were full of tears. But then, Gail's eyes were often full of tears. It didn't mean much of anything.
Delia walked slowly back down Dumbarton, savoring the anticipation of her arrival home, of Tom's voice welcoming her. The lights were coming on in the houses up and down the street. The moon was low to the east, low and orange and fat through the trees, though there was still an astonishing, almost navy blue high in the sky. Summer, she thought.
Her own windows were dark, though Meri and Nathan had turned the porch light on. Inside, it was silent, and she assumed Tom must still be napping, but when she opened the door to his room, he called to her, a soft sound.
“You're awake?” she asked.
“Uh. Ah pee.” I peed.
“You remembered! Good. Do you want anything from the kitchen?”
“Nhaa. Khaah.” Come. He patted the bed next to him. He'd left room for her, Delia saw. She went over to that side of the bed and sat, then swung her legs up and leaned back against the pillows.
“Tahk,” he said. Talk.
“What about? The party?” she asked.
“Uh.”
“Well. The party,” she said. “Would you like the list of who's still extant, among those you used to know?”
“Unh!” he said. She could see his smile.
“Let's see. Well, Stan and Petra were there. She still wears those Marimekko dresses. The tent effect.” He laughed, a light, hoarse sound. “I wonder where she gets them anymore? Remember them? You used to say they made you dizzy, those wild prints. She's shriveled up to nothing now, though. She's more or less the tent pole. Remember how fat and jolly she used to be?” Delia sighed. And she went on, calling up the names: Peggy Williams, whose husband Rudy had died. Ed and Bettie Friedman, whom they always called Bed and Ettie, after a slip of the tongue Delia had committed a few times. “They've signed up for that retirement community.”
She talked about the new people she'd met, the array of Bob's beers, “everything either brown or black, and simply not potable, it seems to me. Like drinking mud.”
He had his good arm around her shoulders and she was leaned against him. She could feel his heart, its sturdy beat, under her head. Now his weak hand reached up and rested on her breast—her old drooping breast.
Delia shuddered with longing, and turned to him. They lay back, she curled along his side, and held each other. After a while, she could hear that he was asleep again. Even then she lay by him for a long time. The moon had risen above the roofline of the house next door, and its light lay across Delia's and Tom's legs, their stick legs, she thought. It crept higher and higher.
When it reached her chest, she got up. She stepped quietly into the hallway, leaving the door open behind her. As she was climbing the stairs she could feel her heart thudding slowly. This is it, she was thinking. The new adventure of her life, which would be, too, its final chapter. She had thought there would be no such event, that she'd have to hold on to life by charm, by effort. And she could have done that. It was her understanding, after all, that life was a matter of effort, renewed every day. She stopped on the landing of the stairs where the side window showed her again the moon, the enchanted summer night.
But now, she thought, now to have this unexpected, almost last-minute gift, this unlooked-for return to her of all that she had loved most—it was almost too much. A cloud skiddered across the golden moon. The crickets called to one another. She turned away, and continued up the stairs in the dark.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Meri, July 3, 1994
MERI GOT TO pick the restaurant, and at breakfast she told Nathan she'd meet him at Tony's, the pizza place.
“Tony's?” Nathan had asked. “Are you sure? Not someplace fancier, to celebrate?” He picked up his briefcase. He was about to leave for his office.
“It'
s the lowlife I miss,” she said, which was true. The ordinary times, the smallest freedoms, without Asa. Tony's was dark, it smelled of beer. The TV over the bar always had a game on. She and Nathan had met there a few times before she knew she was pregnant, and the thought of its cheesy darkness appealed to her now.
As the day progressed, though, she grew more anxious. No surprises there—she was full of anxiety about everything to do with Asa, and this would be her first time leaving him with anyone else. She nursed him as long as she could beforehand, jiggling him awake every time he fell back from her.
She had to make several trips across the porch to Delia's house with stuff she thought it would be possible Asa would need in her absence. She brought over what she knew was a ridiculous number of Pampers and a bottle of milk she'd expressed. She'd brought over the Snugli, the bassinet—which he was sleeping in—towels to mop up spit-ups, a music box that sometimes seemed to soothe him if he was upset. She'd written a page of notes on various aspects of his routines that she handed over to Delia.
After she'd sat in the car a minute, she abruptly turned the engine off and went back to knock on Delia's door, to tell her that sometimes Asa seemed to be waking when he wasn't, and that she should wait, maybe one or two minutes, if he fussed lightly, to see if he'd drop back off.
Delia had been patient and apparently receptive to all this, for which Meri was grateful.
And now she sat having a beer. The occasional beer or glass of wine was okay, the doctor had said, so she was sipping this one slowly, making it last. Nathan was, as ever, a little late. The TV over the bar was tuned to the brilliant green of a baseball game. It was the Red Sox, Meri noted. Nathan would want to check the score, and then he'd want to sit on the side of the booth with its back to the screen so his attention wouldn't drift that way.
