A Window Across the River

by Brian Morton

  But even before that, she needed to find out if she could get someone to stay with her. A nurse. Someone who knew what she was doing. She took her memo pad from her bag.

  1. Nurse, she wrote. 2. Hospice.

  She wasn’t even sure what a hospice was. She knew it was a place where you brought the terminally ill. But how do they really know when anybody’s terminally ill? There’s always the possibility of an amazing recovery. Do they give you medical care in a hospice, or do they just give you morphine and let you die?

  Mother Teresa used to run a hospice. But the witty and bibulous Christopher Hitchens had criticized Mother Teresa because some of the people she cared for in her hospice could have been cured. He said that her religious ideology made her believe that it was best for them to die and go to heaven. Therefore maybe things weren’t so dire with Billie. Maybe she could be cured.

  I’m not thinking right, Nora thought. I shouldn’t be thinking about Christopher Hitchens at a time like this.

  She needed to take a walk. She went downstairs and passed from the air-conditioned lobby into a humid, sweltering day. It was September, but it felt like July. Mankind had destroyed the weather; seasons no longer had meaning.

  Walking through the haggard, heavy-bearded air, she ended up in Central Park, at the reservoir. She walked around it slowly, stepping to the margin of the path whenever she heard joggers coming up behind her. Dragonflies hovered just above the water, which had grown a layer of stale green skin.

  When she and Billie had been there in the spring, it had been much nicer.

  Death moves in on you from a distance, taking things away. The circle of places you even dream of visiting becomes smaller and smaller. She wondered if Billie would ever walk around the reservoir again. She didn’t think so. It was as far away as Stonehenge, as far away as the Nile.

  Nora made her way back to the hospital. Billie was asleep, breathing in weak, unsteady gasps.

  Nora thought about how many years she’d known her aunt—all those years when Billie was healthy—and found it hard to understand why she hadn’t done more to treasure their time together.

  Treasure it now, she thought. Treasure this.

  27

  WHEN ISAAC GOT HOME FROM WORK there was a message from Renee on his machine. They were supposed to have dinner that night, and she was calling to confirm. She sounded excited. “I have some great news!” she said. “I can’t wait to tell you!”

  He wondered what qualified as great news for Renee. Perhaps she’d gone to a party and struck up a friendship with a former Sandinista minister of information. Perhaps she’d secured a new trial for Mumia Abu-Jamal.

  He cleaned up his apartment. This last week had been a downer. Nora was despondent about her aunt Billie. Poor Aunt Billie. And—although he felt shabby about worrying about his career while she was going through something so serious—he’d been suffering from a kind of postpartum depression ever since the opening of his exhibit.

  He’d been looking forward to it for such a long time—he’d spent a full six months selecting photographs, getting the invitations out—and now it was over. And nothing, absolutely nothing, had come of it. It hadn’t been reviewed—not in the Times, not even in the Register. The two-bit newspaper that he worked for had decided that his show wasn’t worthy of review.

  There was still a chance that some of the critics from the quarterlies would come by—the pictures would be up for another month—or that some of the high-profile gallery owners he’d invited would see the show and offer him something in the city. But none of these people had come to the opening, and it was hard to imagine any of them making the long journey out to Englewood to look at his pictures without the inducements of wine and cheese.

  Well, an hour or two with Renee would cheer him up.

  He was so downhearted that he wasn’t even having the mixed feelings he usually had when he was about to see her—that queasy intermingling of fatherliness and desire. He was just looking forward to seeing her.

  She arrived at his apartment breathless, twenty minutes late. “I’m so sorry I couldn’t come to your opening. But I have a good excuse. I have good news.” She was smiling mischievously, and for a moment he thought she was about to give him good news about him. His show was still the foremost thing in his mind—his show, and what it might do for his career—and he was still in that state where news that’s not about yourself seems bafflingly irrelevant.

  “The reason I couldn’t come was that I was in the city that day, having meetings. Can you believe it? I’m a grown-up now! I go to meetings!”

  He smiled at her indulgently and sat down. She was still standing, bouncing on her toes. She looked like a boxer.

  “First of all, I was meeting with people from the anti-sweatshop coalition, and the fact-finding tour is really going to happen.”

  “That’s wonderful, Renee. Congratulations.” Not exactly his idea of a good time, but her enthusiasm was charming.

  She finally sat down. “And then I had another meeting. I think you’re going to be proud of me about this one. I was having a meeting with—the New Yorker! Your favorite magazine! They’re having a special photography issue this winter, and they want to use three of the pictures I took in Chiapas. Can you believe it? It’s so crazy I don’t even know how to pronounce the words when I tell people. They want to use three of my pictures! They want to use three of my pictures!”

  “The New Yorker? Really? That’s incredible.”

  He was happy that his voice hadn’t cracked. He wondered whether she could hear any of the things that he heard in his voice: envy, disbelief, rage, sorrow, a feeling that she’d betrayed him, a feeling that she’d emasculated him.

  He wondered, also, whether she could hear the note of sluggish stupidity. When she’d mentioned the photography issue, he had thought for a moment that she’d shown them some of his photographs—that she was telling him that she’d slyly submitted his work, and that they wanted to use it.

  The New Yorker. He’d been sending them photographs, and getting rejections from them, for as long as they’d been running photographs. More than ten years.

  “Thanks,” she said. “Can you believe it?”

  She was glowing. One of the things that was wonderful about Renee was that she was too guileless, too pure, to realize what was happening here—to realize that she’d struck him to the heart.

  “Gosh,” he said. “We have to celebrate. Can I get you some . . . decaf tea?”

  She smiled at this. Her ultrapure nature—her organic, herbal, free-range nature—was one of their standing jokes.

  He went to the kitchen for the tea; he glanced at the window, and he thought it might be a good idea to put his fist through the glass.

  He had always felt sure that Renee would eventually surpass him. He’d felt sure of it because of her zeal for life, her desire to do and see and experience everything. Taking good pictures has very little to do with technique, in the end; it has to do with appetite for life, and he’d always understood that Renee’s appetite for life was greater than his own. He’d always known that she would surpass him; he just hadn’t thought it would happen so soon.

  Renee had just attained a kind of success that he had never come close to, not in twenty years of striving, and never would. He was a known quantity now, and no one was willing to look at his work with a fresh eye. With some of life’s rewards, if you don’t get them when you’re young, you don’t get them.

  He wanted to kill her. Because she was killing him. She didn’t realize it, but she was killing him. She was diminishing him.

  “How was your show?” she called from the other room. She couldn’t have said anything more insulting if she’d tried.

  “It was nice,” he said. Yes, it was nice—he’d been praised by a roomful of old friends, none of whom knew anything about photography. And a woman from Latvia had told him about her grandfather.

  He felt his mind working to diminish Renee’s achievement. The New Yorker
was using her pictures because they fit in with a particular article, not because she was a good photographer; they wouldn’t be using her again. It was a lucky coincidence. It would look good on her résumé, but it was a one-shot deal.

  He ran quickly through his mental file of photographers who’d enjoyed early success and then fizzled out. He was wishing that future on Renee.

  But it wasn’t working. Renee wasn’t going to fizzle out. She was the real thing.

  He’d once read an article about how birds lose their plumage when other birds defeat them in the struggle for dominance. He felt himself losing his plumage. If he could take a blood test right this second, he was sure it would show a stark drop in serotonin, dopamine, testosterone, and whatever other chemicals contribute to feelings of confidence, mastery, well-being, vitality, youth.

  But you can’t be so upset by this! She once called you her mentor! You’re her teacher, in a way! Your role is to help her! The whole point of working with young people is that you hope they’ll surpass you! This is what you wanted! At least it’s what you claimed to want.

  He was making the tea. He’d cramped himself into a corner of the kitchen, hiding from her while all this played out in his mind.

  He came back out, bearing two steaming mugs.

  “This is just so fantastic, Renee.”

  What a fucking hypocrite I am. If I was being honest I’d scream at her. I’d throw her out.

  But honesty isn’t the important thing here, he thought. The important thing isn’t what you feel. The important thing, sometimes, is what you appear to feel.

  He believed in the authority of the visible. If all Renee saw was his generosity, then his generosity would be real.

  When he was in his late twenties, two of his photographs were acquired by the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, and when he told one of his former teachers the good news, the old man had said, “Yes, they’ve been after me to send them some things, but I’ve been too busy.” At the time Isaac hadn’t understood that the old man had no class, that his response had emerged from a stew of peevish envy. He understood it now. And he understood that if he gave Renee anything less than a generous response, it would condemn him, condemn him as a small-souled man, and that a generous response, even if it wasn’t sincere, would be enough.

  “This is just so wonderful, Renee,” he said. “It’s fantastic.”

  “I know!” she said. “It’s just so great! I can’t believe it!”

  The next generation was making its claim, and he hadn’t tried to obstruct it. He felt obscurely that this was one of the defining moments of his life.

  “Where shall we eat?” he said, wondering if he could possibly eat anything.

  He felt as if he’d been enlarged as a man. But that didn’t mean he had to enjoy it.

  28

  NORA TOOK BILLIE HOME in a taxi. Dr. Kanter hadn’t told Billie about the seriousness of her condition.

  “Maybe we can go for a walk later and get a snack,” Billie said on the way home. “I have a yen for some red licorice. There’s a candy store on Ninth Avenue that has that kind I like—Peel and Pull.”

  Nora had cleaned Billie’s apartment the day before when she’d stopped by to feed her cats.

  “You made it perfect for me,” Billie said. “You made it like a palace.”

  She had a funny cheerfulness. Nora wanted to think that Billie knew how ill she was—that she knew even without being told—and that she was being brave. But it probably wasn’t true. Probably when the news was explained to her, she’d fall apart.

  Billie looked in her refrigerator. “I have some Boca Burgers, and tomatoes, and buns. Maybe we can have a Boca-fest tonight. And then maybe we can rent a movie.”

  “That sounds like fun.”

  “I feel so lucky,” Billie said. “I can’t believe they just fixed me up in a jiffy. I think I might find out if I can volunteer in the hospital. I like that Dr. Candy.”

  Billie sat on the couch, and Edwin and Louie hustled up—Dolly lay on her pillow, too weak to move—and in an instant were all over her, licking her and pawing at her. Purring, pushing their paws against her, and pulling them back, each time having to make the effort of disentangling their claws from her shirt. Louie continued flattering her in this manner; Edwin went over to the door and meowed.

  Nora let him out into the hall and he went to scratch his back on the banister.

  “Maybe we can take a ferry to Hoboken tomorrow, if you’re free,” Billie said. “I heard on the radio that they set up a temporary amusement park near the river. We could ride the Ferris wheel. We could ride the Wild Mouse.”

  Nora went to the kitchen, made the veggie burgers, and put together a salad. She brought everything out on a tray and placed it on the coffee table, and they sat side by side on the couch eating dinner and watching the Summer Olympics. “What an adventure,” Billie said. “Who would have thought a week ago that I’d be in the hospital yesterday. And who would have thought, yesterday, that today I’d be back home.”

  During the track-and-field competitions, Nora started to nod off. She woke up to the sight of Billie moving to the bathroom, as quickly as she could move. Nora followed her. Billie was on her knees in front of the toilet bowl. There was vomit in the bowl and on the floor and on her blouse.

  “I guess it was a little too soon for a Boca-fest,” Billie said.

  “Let me help,” Nora said. She wetted down a washcloth and cleaned Billie’s face.

  “Thank you,” Billie said.

  She helped Billie back to the couch, got her a clean shirt, put the soiled one in the sink and ran water over it and rubbed it down with a bar of soap, and then found a sponge and some paper towels and a container of Ajax and cleaned up the floor.

  Billie looked pale and spent. “Maybe I could have some of that sleepy thing,” she said.

  Dr. Kanter had given her a supply of Tylenol with codeine. Nora brought her a glass of water and she swallowed a pill. She helped Billie into bed, got in beside her, and turned her bedside television on.

  They watched a little more of the Olympics. They watched Ping-Pong, and then they watched synchronized swimming.

  “I guess it’s pretty,” Nora said, “but I’m not sure it’s a sport.”

  Nora couldn’t tell if Billie was awake. Her nose was barely peeping out from under the blanket.

  “You know what sport they’re having at the next Olympics?” Billie said sleepily. “Slinky.”

  Nora put a glass of water on Billie’s night table, kissed her on the forehead, and went out to the living room. It was eleven. The home-care worker was supposed to have arrived an hour ago.

  When Billie was in the hospital, Nora had called the “extended-care” office and arranged to have someone to stay with her after she got home. Medicare would cover this for fourteen days; after that, they’d have to reapply.

  Nora had put in a request for a woman she knew, a soft-voiced grandmother named Joyce who’d worked for her friend Helen’s mother when she was ill, Joyce was one of the gentlest people she’d ever met; if Joyce were taking care of Billie, Nora would feel at ease. But she’d found out that afternoon that Joyce was unavailable, taking full-time care of someone else.

  The home-care worker finally showed up at 11:30. She was an attractive young woman from Russia; her name was Sofia. She was wearing a short tight skirt with a slit up the side. She’s dressed to kill, Nora thought, and immediately felt worried.

  Nora talked with her for a few minutes and then took the subway uptown.

  The phone was ringing when she walked in the door. Something bad had happened to Billie. She moved quickly to the phone.

  “Hi,” Billie said. “Did I wake you?”

  “No. Not at all. I just got back.”

  “I woke up to go to the bathroom. I just wanted to thank you.”

  Nora didn’t feel as if she deserved to be thanked. She should have still been down there, sleeping on Billie’s couch. “How are you feeling?”

&nb
sp; “I don’t know. I’m feeling a little misty, like parts of me are floating away. But I’m okay. I’ve got the TV on, and Edwin and Louie are snuggling right next to me.”

  They spoke for another minute; Nora told Billie that she’d see her the next day, and they said good-bye.

  Nora wanted to stay up and write for an hour or two, but she needed to rest for a minute first. She closed her eyes. Her apartment was very quiet; she could hear an occasional car horn, but nothing else. She lay on the couch listening to her own breathing.

  She felt so attuned to her aunt, so at one with her, that it seemed, in this quiet, as if she could feel her presence, from blocks and blocks away. Billie was sleeping, breathing wheezily, with difficulty. The medicine and the illness, the painkillers and the pain—her body was a battleground. She was being peeled open and pulled apart. Peel and pull. Nora’s own breathing grew more shallow and more rapid, as if it were taking on the rhythms of her aunt’s. She tried to calm herself, to make each breath longer and slower and deeper, so she could send healing breaths into her aunt’s body, from all these blocks away. She knew it wasn’t possible to have the connection she thought the two of them were having—she knew she was connecting only with her own idea of her aunt. And yet she felt connected.

  It had rained that evening, and after a hot day the night air had turned mild. The windows of her apartment were open, and a breeze was moving softly through the room.

  Billie was sleeping, unmoving in her bed, but Nora could feel that within her, in her spirit, something was shifting. She could sense that her aunt was edging closer, hesitantly, toward the hugeness of death. She was like a shy young bride, gathering up the courage to give herself away.

  Let it take you peacefully, Billie, let it take you sweetly. I swear it can take you sweetly if you let it.

  How did Nora know that it could take you sweetly? She didn’t. She merely hoped that it was true.

  29

  NORA WOKE AT ONE IN THE morning and heated up some water. Even though she didn’t always have the strength to do it, she believed in the idea of writing through everything, refusing to let any event or emotion interrupt her work. If she felt too sad or too spacy to write, she tried to write nevertheless; she tried to bring her sadness or her spaciness to the keyboard. She wanted to keep faith with that idea tonight. She was feeling sorrowful and tired, and her arm, from the effort of helping Billie up four flights of stairs, was speaking in tongues, but she made two cups of coffee and set them side by side on her card table and started to scroll through the Gabriel story.