Equal Affections

by David Leavitt

  Instantly they broke apart, pretended not to know each other.

  After a few seconds they found each other again. “Let’s go,” Danny said, rather miserably, heading off toward the corridor bridge. But Walter said, “Hold it right there, ma’am. Ma’am, hold it right there.” He followed the nurse down another hallway, calling, “Hold it right there, ma’am.” His hand on her shoulder. Very loudly, so that people turned, he said, “I want to see your name. Jenkins. Mary Jenkins. Good, I’ll remember that.”

  She looked up at him rather timidly.

  “You’re making a spectacle of yourself,” she said.

  “I’m making a spectacle of myself! No, I wouldn’t say that. In fact, I’d say I’m making a spectacle of you.”

  The nurse’s eyes darted, checking for witnesses. Then she came closer. “There are children around here,” she whispered.

  “Mary Jenkins. Yes, I’ll remember that name,” Walter said. He turned, started walking away, before announcing to the lobby at large, “Please be aware that Nurse Mary Jenkins is a bigot.”

  “You’re just making a fool of yourself,” Mary Jenkins said, rather uncertainly and loudly.

  “We’ll see who your superiors consider the fool.”

  He walked in one direction. Mary Jenkins walked in the other.

  ___________

  When they got back, Louise’s fever was 105°. Kidney function was at a standstill. Skin healing nicely, Dr. Thayer added, as an afterthought. “Too bad, because now her skin is the least of her problems. Even with the antibiotics taking effect, we’re not out of the woods.”

  How was this different from any other moment in the last twenty years, with death always in the vicinity? This was the difference: What had been vague was now palpable. That elderly aunt in the attic, who sat in on all their meals but did not pay any rent—they had hoped she’d disappear one day, look for other lodgings. Now, it seemed, they were having to realize what Louise, perhaps, had known all along. Her lease was infinitely renewable. She would always be the last to leave.

  ___________

  Thursday night Louise’s fever was down to 100°, and Dr. Thayer used the phrase “guarded optimism.”

  Danny and Walter agreed to stay late so that Nat could take a rest. They sat for hours doing crossword puzzles in the dim waiting room. Around midnight they were just about to eat some Chinese food they’d brought in when Kitty, the night nurse, came out for a break.

  “Care for an egg roll?” Walter said.

  “Thanks,” Kitty said. “Boy, you guys sure have a lot of food out here all the time. It’s like a twenty-four-hour picnic.”

  “It helps to pass the time,” Walter said.

  Kitty put the egg roll on top of a napkin and then, taking another napkin, drew off the excess grease.

  “Your mom’s fighting hard,” she said as she took a bite. “They’re working on her again now. Some problem with the dialysis, but nothing too serious. But, boy, I’ve got to hand it to her. She’s got fight.

  “You must see a lot of that around here,” Walter said.

  “That’s for sure. Really, some of the bravest people ever. It breaks my heart, but it also makes me feel, like, the human race really is pretty amazing. You know, the guy I live with now, I met him when he was a patient on the unit.”

  “Really?” Danny and Walter said simultaneously.

  “Yup. He was in real bad shape, but we talked a lot, and it started getting pretty serious. At first I thought it was unprofessional—I was married at the time, though my husband and I weren’t living together—but then I asked my supervisor and she said, ‘Go for it.’ She understands that things like this are rare, you can’t pass them up.”

  “What happened to him?” Danny asked.

  “Well, he worked for the phone company, and he got electrocuted,” Kitty said, popping the last bit of the egg roll into her mouth.

  “Jesus,” Walter said. “Is he okay now?”

  “Oh, sure.” Kitty wiped her fingers with the napkin. “He’s paralyzed from the waist down, but other than that, he’s fine. And he’s about to get a big settlement, so we’ll be able to take a nice vacation for once in our lives. I mean, you know what they say. There but for the grace of God. Here today—” And she knocked on the hollow-sounding sheetrock wall.

  “Thanks for the egg roll,” she said. “I’ve got to get back now.”

  “You’re welcome,” Walter and Danny said simultaneously.

  ___________

  At two Kitty appeared at the door again. They were both asleep on one of the plastic sofas. Danny jumped awake, startled.

  “I’m sorry to scare you,” Kitty said, “but your mom’s real lucid all of a sudden, and she says she wants to see you.”

  “Yes,” Danny said, his hand on his forehead. “Okay. I’ll be right there.”

  Her head slipped through the door, and Danny stumbled toward the box of robes. “Go back to sleep,” he said to Walter, who muttered something unintelligible, then buried his head again in the crook of his arm.

  Alone, Danny dressed himself in the now-familiar robe and paper shoes. “The burn unit,” he imagined writing, “was ablaze with activity.” Much of it came from Louise’s room, where the lights were on bright. Nat had returned while they were sleeping; already masked and robed, he was leaning over the bed, from which Louise gestured manically.

  Danny put on his hat, gloves, and mask, and went in.

  “Hi, Mom,” he said.

  Her eyes were more open than he’d seen them in three days. She reached a hand out toward him, and he took it. He squeezed; she squeezed back, weakly, did not let go. Like children pretending to be boyfriend and girlfriend, they held hands.

  It was an odd, unlikely gesture; they had always eschewed physical affection with each other. Now, it seemed, in the urgency of the moment, all the old rules had to be forgotten, and new ones learned.

  With her free hand Louise pointed at her chest, then at him.

  “What, Mom? What are you saying? I can’t understand.”

  She clenched her eyes shut in frustration. Then she pulled her right hand free of Danny’s and started drawing something on her own stomach. The hand moved in a relentless circle, and her face tightened with pain.

  “O?” Danny asked. “The letter O?”

  “D?” asked Nat. “D for Danny?”

  Louise shook her head. She made another motion, this time toward the pad and pencil on the night table. Obediently Nat handed them to her.

  Very slowly Louise grasped the pencil. It fell out of her fingers, and Nat picked it up for her. She could barely hold it and, with the bandages and tubes in her hand, could barely move it, but nonetheless, she managed to get something down on the pad of paper and push it back toward Nat.

  Nat picked up the pad of paper and looked at it before handing it to Danny. The paper had her initials printed on the top, in lacy blue script—it had been a gift from Eleanor, for grocery lists—and on it she had drawn a jagged heart. One half was bloated, the other atrophied, barely there at all.

  “A heart?” Danny said, and Louise smiled. She smiled and nodded. She pointed to herself, pointed to him, pointed to the heart.

  “You love me,” he said. And laughed. It had taken such a long time to get the message across! “Oh, Mommy, I love you too. I do.” But her eyes were already closed.

  “She seemed to feel it was urgent,” Nat said afterwards, while they were taking their robes off. “I guess she just had to get it out.”

  “I guess,” Danny said. He rubbed his eyes. “Listen, I think Walter and I are going to head back to April’s now.”

  “You do that, son. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  “Are you coming out?”

  “No, I think I’m going to sit here with your mother a little while longer.”

  “Okay.”

  But as Danny stumbled back toward the waiting room, shedding paper clothes along the way, he thought only of the oddness of it, and how much it wa
s like his mother: another message, the gist of which was, I am still myself.

  “She’s getting better,” he whispered to Walter, who was sitting on the sofa now, his head in his hands. “I know it. Now let’s go home.”

  “Okay.”

  They headed, arm in arm, across the corridor bridge. The windows were full of blackness and stars. And still Danny did not realize what his mother herself had realized, waking from sleep and pain just ten minutes before: This was the last moment for crossing over. From now on even the simplest of messages would be impossible to convey.

  Chapter 19

  “I just saw your mom,” Dr. Thayer said to Danny and April when he ran into them the next morning in the hallway. “I don’t know, I don’t like the looks of it.”

  “What?” Danny said. “What’s wrong?”

  “Well, her condition isn’t significantly worse. It isn’t significantly better, mind you, but it isn’t worse. The thing is—she just doesn’t seem to be fighting anymore. I look in her eyes, and I just don’t see that spark.” He shook his head. “Your dad’s in with her now,” he said. “She’s in bad shape, I’m afraid.”

  “I don’t understand,” Danny said. “Last night, she was so—animated. She was really there. ”

  “That’s what Kitty told me too,” Dr. Thayer said. “Well, I may be wrong. Let’s hope so.”

  Saluting them, he continued toward the elevator.

  ___________

  She did not wake up that morning, or in the afternoon. Several doctors, specialists in various things, came by to look in on her.

  At about three Dr. Thayer took Nat into the conference room for half an hour. They came out together, and Dr. Thayer went into the men’s room. Nat sat down in the waiting room with April, Danny, and Walter.

  “Dr. Thayer wants to change the direction of your mother’s treatment,” Nat said. “He wants to shift the emphasis from trying to cure her just to making her comfortable. He thinks, basically, that unless something drastic happens, she’ll probably die within the next three days, and we should focus, for that time, just on making her as comfortable as possible. Several other doctors have seen her, and they all agree.”

  He stared into his lap as he said this, and when he finished, he did not look up.

  There was no sound for some time.

  “You mean they’re giving up?” Danny said. “How can they give up?”

  “She’s given up. She’s not responding.”

  “He said she wasn’t significantly worse.”

  “This morning. Since then everything has started to slip.” Nat rubbed his eyes. “I think we should all start thinking about the serious probability that Louise is going to die. Soon.”

  Danny covered his eyes with his hands. “Yes,” he said softly. “Okay.” And very softly, April started weeping.

  ___________

  Our God, who art in Heaven, thy kingdom come, thy will be done. What was that shape on the ceiling, like a water stain in her childhood bedroom, water leaking through from the roof? She and Eleanor made it into pictures, horses and cars and people having sex. How odd to see it now—if seeing was the right word, her eyes were so heavy to open, and it was blurry. If only she could open her eyes a little more—there, she did it. Ah, yes—her vision was brilliant, twenty-twenty again! What a relief to have it back, after so many days of barely seeing at all. And now of course she could see, it wasn’t a water stain at all, it was someone—something—descending toward her from the ceiling. An angel? Angel of death, angel of mercy, angel of hope? She wanted to reach toward it. If only she could pull her arms loose from all those needles stuck in them! Just a good tug and pull them free! She curled her fists and tried, and to her surprise, they came loose, the tubes and needles fell away around her, dripping, clattering. What a relief, to stretch her arms up again toward the angel, the thing coming toward her from the ceiling! It seemed to be holding something out to her, holding something in both its hands. What was it? It looked like a tiny house—yes, a little house, like a dollhouse, with light coming from the windows. And then, suddenly, it was obvious. This was no angel descending. This was Tommy Burns. Blond, muscled Tommy Burns, naked as the day he was born, his penis hard, with his smell of grease and deodorant. “I’m gonna make love to you, Louise.” “Tommy!” she wanted to call, and reached her arms toward him, to touch him, to take him in. There was sand in her skirt and underwear, and it itched, and he was close, close enough; her hands touched him, and red blushes rose on his heated, pale skin. “Tommy,” she said, “Tommy.” His body falling over her like a blanket. The moon high. “I’m glad you’re back.” Gratefully she closed her eyes—under her, the cold hardness of sand in the small of her back. The white door in the tiny house in his hands opened.

  ___________

  That evening Eleanor was dispatched to fetch a portable tape player and some of Louise’s favorite music: the Brahms Requiem, Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony, a pair of Edith Piaf tapes. Next to the recorder one of the nurses affixed a sign that read: HELLO MY NAME IS LOUISE, PLEASE TURN MY TAPE OVER WHEN YOU COME IN. THANX.

  So there was always music. She lay swathed in music.

  “She looks almost happy,” April said. She and Danny were watching her through the glass, in that brutality of exhaustion, her head fallen to the side. Was it wrong to imagine she was turning toward the music?

  April was almost right. There was, on her face, a look—no, not of happiness. But perhaps of peace.

  Later Danny went into the room and sat by the bed, holding her hand in his. “Mama,” he said, “can you hear me?”

  He felt a faint pressure from her fingers, like the grazing of an insect’s wings.

  ___________

  For hours Nat sat alone with her among the music, holding her hand. Edith Piaf, the little songbird—wasn’t that what they called her? She was always Louise’s favorite. Before, when the songs came on, Louise had sat back and closed her eyes, and Nat knew she was imagining herself away from their house, imagining herself in Paris, perhaps, or Berlin, some city with an edge. A black strapless dress, a martini glass. Was she there now? She wasn’t here, that was certain. The respirator breathed; all the little dials and digital displays read out the progress of her slow retreat. How strange, he thought, that she was about to die; even with all the illness, all the morbid doctorly predictions, Nat had somehow secretly assumed she would outlive him, she was so much more ferocious about it all than he was. A heart attack, quite sudden, perhaps, on a plane, was how he imagined he would go. Nonetheless, here he was, alive, holding her hand, nursing her through these final hours. When they had gone to see the therapist, she had complained that he became loving and responsible only when she was sick, never when she was well, and he hadn’t been able to answer her except to wonder, Was that why she was sick? Did she do it to make him love her? It had always felt to him as if some remote capacity for control and care started up in him when she went into the hospital. He knew what to do, understood the ropes, could reason with the nurses and interns. But when they were at home and she was well, he lost touch with all those generosities, they eluded him, his old restlessness started up again. She was irritable, and he was too, and he found himself looking, always, out the window. Then sickness again, and she needed him and him alone. The children would not do, her friends would not do. He accepted this; no one else knew how to take responsibility. During one of those first hospitalizations, either the lump in the breast or the gallbladder, April had arrived barefoot, she was actually barefoot, and perched herself in a corner and started eating the candies someone had brought Louise. It was almost too much. “Being a mother is a one-way street,” Louise had told the therapist. “I accept that. I accept the loss of my children.” Still, Nat wouldn’t forget that first afternoon Danny was gone, when she was unpacking the groceries and saw she had bought his favorite cereal, the kind only he ate, automatically, she was so used to getting that kind. She had sat down at the kitchen table and stared at the box, just sta
red at it, for what seemed like hours.

  There was an electrical shifting somewhere, like a car changing gears. One of the machines righting itself in some way. Nat pulled himself up in his chair, looked down at her face. Her head fallen to the side, her mouth and nose, stuffed with tubes, lay open in the unconsciousness of sleep. Just a few days before, when the itch was getting really bad, they had gone together to the new Neiman-Marcus store at the mall. She was in a pretty good mood that day, he wasn’t sure why. Maybe it was just the brightness of the store, that smell of new things, and the room where they had cookies and coffee while you filled out your charge account application. There was a magnificent food hall, where Louise was happy to find Port Salut, a cheese she had loved once and hadn’t had in years. And at the perfume counter they had Sortilège, her favorite, which was rare and impossible to get in the States, and in this case too expensive; she would have Joyce Rosen buy it when she took that trip next month to the château country. Upstairs, past the waterfall and the jewelry displayed in a magnificent tank of tropical fish, she found a matching pants and top, made out of a soft yellow chamois, which felt so good on her reddened skin he couldn’t have been happier to buy it for her. For two or three days after that, getting worse, she wore that outfit; it was the only one her skin could bear. Then the fever set in.

  Now the pants and top hung in her closet, among all her other clothes. Sorting through them was something he’d never imagined having to do, he had taken it so for granted that he’d go first. Well, April would help him. But what would they do with all the clothes? April would never wear them, goodness knows; they were too small and certainly not her style. They would fit Lillian. A terrible thought. Throw it out. Yet Lillian—he closed his eyes, made a small fist. A bud of happiness, a tiny marble of happiness he could roll in his palm, and no one would know. What a terror, and what a delight, that no one knew what he was thinking. And lucky. Would Danny understand? Would Eleanor? Would Joyce Rosen, or even Stan Rosen? How could he explain to any of them the secret, wide-eyed joy that had, at this moment, stolen into him; how could he explain it, or make them understand that it in no way mitigated his grief, his terror at the prospect of losing Louise? They would say, “You’re a shit, Nat. You’re a self-deluding, lying shit.” But he knew. And as quickly as it had come, the seizure of joy passed. He slumped back in his chair, watched his wife.