Morningside Heights

by Joshua Henkin

  * * *

  —

  He woke up one night, coughing in her face. The next morning he had a fever. Soon she had a fever, too. “I should sleep alone tonight,” she said. “I don’t want you getting what I have.”

  Ginny said, “The professor is the one who gave you what you have. He’s already built up his immunity.”

  “So says the nurse,” Pru said, forgetting for a moment that Ginny had studied to become one. “It’s best to be cautious,” she said, but it was just an excuse. Spence had lost weight, but he was heavier-seeming, a cloddish man in repose, lying there as dense as cordwood. He would roll over and be pressed to her, and even when he wasn’t coughing, he was breathing in her face. The breath of him, the whiskers, the smell of bleach and disinfectant. The man who had never wanted a body, and now that was all he was, laid out like a piece of veal. She would try not to breathe, and then she would breathe, and she wouldn’t be sure if she was smelling herself or Spence, or if there was even a difference.

  She moved in to Sarah’s bedroom. She told Spence it would be just for one night, but one night of sleeping alone and she knew she wasn’t coming back. Every night, she lay down with him for a few minutes, and once he’d fallen asleep, she would get up quietly and leave the room, like a teenage lover sneaking down the hall, only now she was sneaking in the other direction.

  * * *

  —

  Soon Spence was waking up in the middle of the night and careening down the hall.

  “It’s four in the morning,” she said. “What are you doing up?” She took him back to his bed and lay down with him until he quieted once more.

  What had been an every-other-night occurrence soon became nightly, and then it became twice-nightly. “You’ll be exhausted in the morning,” she said. “It already is morning, and I’m exhausted.”

  Half an hour later she heard him again, standing outside her bedroom, breathing. “Pru, where are you?”

  “I’m right here.”

  “What are you doing in there?”

  “I’m sleeping,” she said. “At least, I’m trying to.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “Yes, Spence. I’m a little tired, but I’m fine. Go back to sleep, please.”

  One night, he left the refrigerator door open. Another night, she heard him trying to open the front door, and she had to run down the hall to retrieve him.

  She returned to sleeping in the same bed with him, but now she really wasn’t getting any sleep because he was thrashing around like a dolphin. Daytime wasn’t enough: she would need to hire someone for nighttime too. Maybe she could pay the night aide less: she got to sleep on the job. But only when Spence was asleep himself: maybe she’d have to pay the night aide more.

  She scheduled only one interview and kept it short. Elaine was reserved and not especially friendly, but her references were good and she came to work on time. And she was strong enough to roll Spence over so he wouldn’t get bedsores. And she was a light sleeper: that was most important of all.

  29

  The crowd swelled behind them, but in front there was no one but the players themselves. Courtside tickets: for the day, Pru had become a member of the city’s elite. She felt far removed from corporate America, but Walter engineered buildings for corporate America, so he’d been given free seats.

  “The Rockets are from Houston,” Walter said, and though Pru knew little about the NBA, she knew this. With such good seats, Walter felt liberated to express his views about the game, and especially about the referees, who weren’t, in his opinion, letting the players play. They were making ticky-tack calls, except for when they were missing the calls they should have made. “That guy’s been traveling all day,” Walter said. What had happened to the soft-spoken man Pru had eaten a cheeseburger with, the man who’d sat next to her at Thanksgiving? It was as if he’d become like the players themselves, fueled by the same testosterone.

  “The Knicks are terrible,” she said.

  “They’re the worst,” Walter agreed. He nodded at the scoreboard, which had the Rockets in the second quarter up by seventeen.

  In a break between plays Pru said, “Sixth-row seats. You must be an excellent engineer.”

  Walter looked at her uncomprehendingly, as if to say he hadn’t built the seats. “I’m a good enough engineer, but the seats aren’t for me. We have big clients, so we get good seats.” Now Walter was talking about Stephon Marbury, the Knicks’ recently departed star, whom he kept referring to as homegrown, as if he were a plant. Walter twice used the word disappointment, as if Stephon Marbury had personally disappointed him, Walter Cohen, which, Pru had noticed, was how a lot of people talked about sports. That was what football Saturdays had been like in Columbus: a whole town of people taking things personally.

  The Rockets were up by twenty-five, and one of their players threw down a monstrous dunk and the crowd rose in grudging admiration. A Rockets fan, solitary and emboldened, screamed out. Then a former Rocket, now a Knick, threw down a dunk of his own, and Walter shouted, “Show ’em, Tracy!” before turning to Pru and saying, “Not bad for a guy with a perennially bad back.”

  During a time-out, the Knicks City Dancers materialized on the court in their blue tops and short shorts, and when one of the dancers did a back flip, a fan called out, “Sign her up!” and another fan shouted, “Fire Isiah!” though that had already happened.

  The Knicks came back onto the court, and only then did the Rockets follow, as if trying to be deferential, with their twenty-five-point lead.

  As the game wore on, the novelty of sitting so close wore off, and Pru would have preferred to be high in the stands, the way she was at baseball games, where you didn’t have to worry about getting hit by a ball and you could allow your concentration to wander.

  At halftime Walter said, “Do you want to go? The Knicks are getting slaughtered, and you’re looking, how should I put it, a little…”

  “Bored?” She went through the motions of denying it, but Walter had already reached for his coat.

  They walked through the Garment District, where, during business hours, the streets were a hive, but now they gave off an air of quiet dissipation. There was nothing but the occasional taxi and the roar of the subway below their feet. The street cleaners were preparing for the end of the game, when the crowd would spill out across the avenue and down into the subway and the LIRR.

  But in Times Square the streets glowed neon and the tourists revolved as they always did. “Do you have time for a drink?” Walter said.

  Pru hesitated. She’d told Ginny she’d be home soon. She’d also told Ginny that she’d gone to the Knicks game with Camille; Ginny didn’t need to know about Walter.

  They ordered beers, and Pru told Walter she couldn’t stay for long, even as a languor settled on her and the small, incremental sips she took from her beer betrayed that she didn’t want to go yet.

  * * *

  —

  When they got to Walter’s building Pru said, “I can only stay for ten minutes.”

  “That’s plenty of time to meet Albert.”

  “Who’s Albert? Your manservant?”

  Walter laughed. “Albert’s neither man nor servant. He’s my dog, and I serve him.”

  But when they entered the apartment, Albert wasn’t there. Walter went from room to room, calling, “Albert! Albert!

  “Oh, Jesus,” he said when he came back inside. “I just remembered. I asked the neighbor to walk him.” He slung his coat over a chair. “What’s wrong with me? Fifty-eight years old, and I’m already losing my mind.” He looked up at Pru and he blanched. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean it that way.”

  “It’s okay,” Pru said, and when Walter continued to apologize, she said, “Really, it’s fine.”

  The living room was expertly arranged: the pile of Atlantics on the coffee
table, the little decorative ashtrays and porcelain bowls arrayed on the side tables just so. She didn’t know what she’d been expecting—not a bachelor pad, exactly, but not this either. The travel books were alphabetized—Denmark, Ecuador, Frankfurt, Maine—as if Walter were collecting the whole series.

  Then the front door opened and Albert burst in. Walter said, “Easy does it, Albert.” But Albert, a Labradoodle, didn’t do things easy. He had his paws up on Pru’s shoulders, and he was licking her face. “Albert, get down!”

  Albert sniffed at her shoes, moving around to her backside, surveying the nethermost reaches of her, while she stood, still as a Rodin, waiting for his next maneuver.

  Finally, he lay down at Walter’s feet. His tail moved across the floor like a paintbrush.

  Pru pointed at a cello case across the room. “Do you play?”

  “A little.”

  “Are you good?”

  Walter laughed. “You’d have to ask my teacher, but, sure, I’m good enough. I’d be better if I practiced more, but who wouldn’t?”

  “Will you play for me?”

  “Pru, come on.”

  But when she insisted, Walter removed the cello and ran some rosin over the bow. “Do you like Bach?” he said, and before she could answer him—she did like Bach—he was playing Sonata Number 3 in G Minor, his body swaying with the music, his arms like an extension of the instrument, his beard a shadow across the wall.

  She grew teary-eyed, and she turned away.

  “Am I that bad?”

  “No,” she said. “You’re good.” She didn’t know what it was. She just got so emotional. “I didn’t mean to lay this on you.”

  “You didn’t lay anything on me.”

  She looked at her watch. She’d promised herself she’d stay for ten minutes, and already an hour had passed.

  * * *

  —

  As she left Walter’s building, she checked her phone. Nine messages! And then she realized: her ringer was off.

  There was a message from Ginny—and another one, and another one. “Pru, call me immediately!”

  There had been a bicycle accident, Ginny explained; something had happened to Rafe.

  “Is he all right?” Pru said, and then she remembered: Rafe was a hemophiliac.

  “He’s in the emergency room,” Ginny said.

  “Where are you?” Pru imagined Ginny putting Spence in a cab, the two of them racing to Brooklyn.

  “I’m right here,” Ginny said. “In your apartment with the professor. I was waiting for you to call me back.”

  “Go straight to the hospital,” Pru said.

  “And leave the professor alone?”

  “I’ll have a friend come over. Just go.”

  From the back of a cab, Pru called Camille. She would be home in fifteen minutes, she explained. In the meantime, could Camille go over and hold down the fort? Spence would be where he always was: asleep in his chair, The New York Review of Books toppled across him.

  But when Pru got to the apartment, Camille said, “Spence isn’t here.”

  “Are you kidding me?” Pru went into the living room, the dining room, the study. Her heart kicked as she rushed down the hall. “Spence!” she called out. “Come out here this instant!”

  She checked the kitchen again, and the dining room. She ran down the hall, opening every door she passed. Frantically, she flung open the linen closet, as if he’d folded himself inside.

  She stepped out onto the balcony above 73rd Street, then over to the balcony above Central Park West. “Spence, this isn’t funny!”

  There was no response.

  “Professor Spence Robin, are you down there?” She turned to Camille. “Good God. He’s missing.”

  “How far could he have gone?”

  He’d been alone for five minutes, at most ten. Pru thought of him on the night they got engaged, sprinting around the block to propose to her. And now he was outside again, released into the city.

  When she rang the elevator, James opened the door immediately, as if he’d been stowed away. But he’d gotten on duty only five minutes ago, and he hadn’t seen Spence.

  Maurice, downstairs, hadn’t seen him either.

  “Come with me,” Pru said, and she pulled Camille onto the street. She would go north and Camille would go south.

  She entered bodegas and drugstores, asking everyone if they’d seen Spence. “He’s old,” she said, though he wasn’t. “He’s confused. Demented.”

  A restaurant hostess asked her to describe Spence, and Pru said, “He looks like someone who shouldn’t be out on his own.” And when the hostess asked if she had a photo, Pru removed from her wallet the only photo she carried of him, taken on their wedding day, thirty years ago.

  Then she was outside again, in and out of whatever establishments would admit her, reemerging onto the streets stunned with rain.

  “No luck?” Camille said when she got back to the building, and, seeing that Camille was alone, too, Pru started to cry.

  She ran roughshod through the apartment, opening and shutting the same doors. In a moment of lucidity she said, “Camille, you should go home.”

  “Are you kidding me? This happened on my watch.”

  But it hadn’t happened on Camille’s watch. Spence was gone by the time Camille had gotten there, and Ginny had already left. And Pru was to blame for that—not Ginny, not Camille—because she’d turned her ringer off.

  When she got through to the police, she was put on hold for several minutes.

  She called back and said, “My husband’s missing.” The officer’s attention slackened; she could hear him thinking, Another person gone AWOL. “He has dementia,” she said. “Alzheimer’s disease.”

  “Have you checked the hospitals?”

  She had not.

  She said, “I’d like to file a missing-persons report,” and hearing her own voice filled her with resolve.

  She called the hospital and was caromed from one department to the next. Finally, she was deposited in the ER, where she was put on hold, interminably.

  Then the doorbell rang, and it was Annabelle Hanson from next door. She took Pru across the hall, where her husband, Tom, was cleaning up from dinner. “He’s waiting for you,” Tom said.

  “He’s been here the whole time?”

  Annabelle said, “I found him out on the street.”

  And it struck Pru that, even as she’d panicked that he was outside, she’d thought there had to be another explanation. “Where was he?”

  “Seventy-fourth and Amsterdam.”

  Pru had been on 74th and Amsterdam herself, but by then he’d already been rescued.

  “He’ll be glad to see you,” Annabelle said.

  But when Pru entered the guest room, Spence, seated in an armchair, appeared neither glad nor unglad. He regarded her distantly. It was only as she stepped back that she realized he was wearing tan slacks and a flannel shirt a little long in the sleeve. And dark green socks. And fuzzy slippers. Her thoughts collided with each other. Spence had soiled his clothes and the Hansons had had to change him. He’d been wearing no clothes at all. And there was Annabelle, to answer the question she hadn’t dared ask. Spence’s clothes were in the dryer; he’d gotten rained on, that was all, and Pru, shot through with relief, thought, Of course. She’d gotten rained on, too. “And his shoes?”

  “He was barefoot.”

  “Ten degrees colder,” Tom said, “and he’d have gotten frostbite.”

  A kettle shrilled in the kitchen; a clock ticked down the hall. As she helped Spence up, Pru turned away from Tom and Annabelle, too embarrassed to look at them. “Thank you,” she said. “I’m so, so grateful.”

  “What neighbor wouldn’t do it?” Annabelle said. “I hope you’ll do it for us someday.”

  �
��No,” Pru said. “Of course. I mean, yes.” As she guided Spence out the door, she shook Tom’s hand and followed suit with Annabelle. Then she took them each in a hug. As she maneuvered Spence out of the apartment, she said, “I’ll get those clothes back to you just as soon as I have them dry-cleaned.”

  “You don’t have to dry-clean them,” Annabelle said, but Pru had already shut the door.

  Then Camille was gone, too, and it was just Pru and Spence. As she took him down the hallway, her coat rubbed against the wall, leaving in their wake a pop of static.

  Then the phone rang, and it was Ginny.

  “Thank God it’s you, Ginny. How’s Rafe?”

  “He had some internal bleeding, but he’ll be all right.”

  “Internal bleeding? Oh, my God.”

  For several seconds they both were silent.

  “What about the professor?” Ginny said. “Your friend was there when you got home?”

  “Yes,” Pru said. “Camille.” She would never tell Ginny what had happened. She just hoped Spence wouldn’t tell her himself. Though she didn’t have to worry about that, because when he woke up tomorrow everything would be gone, vanished like the image on an Etch A Sketch.

  * * *

  —

  The next morning, Pru covered the radiators and electrical outlets. She installed safety latches on the medicine chest. She put the household chemicals out of reach. And she placed a safety lock on the front door so Spence couldn’t leave. “You big dummy,” she said. He’d been barefoot in the rain, his medical alert strung around his neck, and he hadn’t thought to push the button. Or maybe he simply hadn’t wanted to. She looked down at the tape and screws and discarded plastic, trying to tell herself it was a job well done, but Spence just sat there, as baleful as the night sky, silently staring back at her.

  * * *

  —

  When Ginny arrived later that day she said, “Didn’t you say Camille came over last night?”