Ending

by Hilma Wolitzer

  That smile again. He rose from the chair quickly with an old-world gesture, almost a bow.

  At the same time, I raised my hand. “No, don’t get up, please. We’ll have some coffee.”

  But he moved to the stove where a pot of coffee was already waiting.

  “How nice of you!” I reached into the cupboard for the mugs and brought them to the table. “I’m sorry that I’m so late. Car trouble. I had to leave it somewhere between here and the hospital. I’d better call the garage.”

  The look on his face changed to one of concern. “But how …?”

  “Easy,” I said, gesturing with my thumb. “I rode home in style with a wedding party.”

  He was satisfied then. I telephoned the automobile service and told them the location of the car. Then we sat down and faced one another, hiding our eyes in the steam of the coffee. “Milk? Sugar?”

  Silence. All these new dead moments in my life. Throat-clearing, ahem, ahem. Smile. Sip. Silence. “Jerry Mann showed up at the hospital tonight.”

  “You mean the star? From the big show?”

  “The same. He was the hit of the century. The blind could see again. The lame threw away their crutches.”

  He didn’t know what to make of me. His head tilted to one side, the way a dog’s does when he expects a command.

  “Listen, he’s really very nice. It was nice of him to come. Wow, I don’t even know what I’m saying.”

  “Of course. The trouble.”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re very brave.”

  Not me, I thought. I’m going to live. And live. I sighed, nervous under his paternal gaze. His goodness seemed insufferable.

  “So,” I said. “It’s very cold out.”

  “I know. I could hear that wind. I had to cover the little one twice.”

  “Yeah. He fights the blankets off as if they were enemies.”

  “He talks in his sleep. Sounds only. I couldn’t understand the words.”

  “He finishes the day’s work. Settles battles and restores himself as the hero.”

  “Like everyone does in his dreams,” he said.

  “I don’t dream anymore. I can only sleep a little while at a time. Like a sentry on duty.”

  “You should take something.”

  I nodded.

  “Me too,” he said. “I stay up too. Sometimes the whole night. I hear the children next door wake up and I realize that I haven’t slept.”

  I wondered what time Estrella came home. Did he have a pot of coffee waiting for her as well? Now, whenever I was awake in the middle of the night, I would imagine Mr. Caspar awake at the same time, looking out at the empty courtyard, listening for the hum of the elevator.

  “Listen,” I said. “You were very good to stay with the boys. I appreciate it and they really love you.” Like a grandfather, I almost said, but stopped myself.

  He waved away my thanks. “I should thank you,” he said. “Because you know sometimes I’m very lonely.”

  I waited.

  “My wife is a sick woman.”

  “Yes.”

  “I know that she’s the joke of the neighborhood. But she doesn’t even know it. She turns everything into admiration.”

  How lucky she was to be crazy. To indulge in the luxury of delusion. Some of the dying do that in the hospital. They call out to loved ones who died long ago. The oldest men weep for their mothers again and imagine they are being comforted and cradled. “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “Thank you.” His face was solemn, a sweet release from that smile. A handsome gentle man. “I only hope that she’s safe,” he said. “I used to follow her, but she’s clever and she would elude me. Once I was stopped by the police and questioned.”

  “Oh God.”

  “They thought I was something … I don’t know. Maybe a mugger.”

  “Not you!”

  He laughed. “They come in all types today. I only hope she’s safe.”

  I wondered if he meant that he wished that she were not safe, that she would die somewhere away from him. That once and for all he would be done with it. Madness is even worse than dying for the watchers. In his dreams, where he was the hero, was there a great rage in him that shook the earth?

  I refilled the cups. Mr. Caspar picked up a deck of cards that were lying on the counter and began to shuffle them.

  “If you’re not tired,” I said, “would you like to play a game of something? I’m wide-awake.”

  “Yes, I would like to very much, but I’m not such a great player. You’ll have to be patient. Could I just use your telephone first?” I nodded and he dialed and waited and hung up.

  “You’ll hear the elevator,” I said. “And then you can check again.”

  He shuffled the cards once more and asked what I would like to play.

  I shrugged. “Anything. I don’t know. I’m not exactly a sharp myself. Jay doesn’t play cards. When I was a child my father played Casino with me, or Stealing The Old Man’s Bundle. I always won. He would see to that.”

  “Well, maybe you will always win.”

  I laughed. “No, it’s all right. Honestly, I’m a better sport now. I’ve built up a tolerance to losing.”

  “Casino then,” he said, starting to deal the cards.

  We played a full game. Twice we heard the elevator and Mr. Caspar called his apartment and then sat down again.

  While we played, I remembered the kitchen of a place we lived in years ago. My father faced me across the table, and my mother sat somewhere near us, sewing or writing into the accounts ledger for the shop. The table had a swirling pattern of blue and green enamel and it reminded me of paintings I had seen of the ocean. While my father dealt (that was always his job), I ran my hands as if they were ships tilting across the expanse between us. “Pay attention,” he would say. “This time I’m going to get you. I feel a lucky streak coming on.”

  I would stand up suddenly, the joy of winning pushing me erect. My father held up my hand. “The winner! The world’s champion!”

  At the end of our game Mr. Caspar had won. “Bravo,” I said.

  “Only luck. We can have a rematch someday.” The elevator could be heard moving past the floor. “Excuse me,” he said, going to the telephone. This time I could hear the ringing end abruptly and a thin voice speak to him.

  “Ah,” he said. “So you’re home. Good. I was baby-sitting and I’ll be right there.”

  “She really doesn’t mean any harm,” he said to me after he hung up. “It’s very cold and she came home early.”

  So, I thought, not quite mad enough to stay out in the cold, to be found frozen in half-light like some bright and fallen bird.

  “Good night.” A small bowing motion at the door.

  “Good night. Sleep well,” I said, touching his arm.

  24

  THERE WERE PILLS FOR the sleeplessness now, but I didn’t want to take them, even though dear Mr. Caspar had advised it. You should take something. My mother called and advised exercise, open windows, vitamins, warm milk. After all, one has to rest.

  The pills were in the drawer of the table next to the bed. One at bedtime when needed. Red gelatinous capsules of sleep. I imagined them dissolving and blanketing light, saw sleep itself as the deep red comfort of their color, and was tempted. But there was still the other way. Things to think about, to recall like unfinished business. I tried Jay’s side of the bed now, a new trick to bring him closer. Only yesterday I had worn one of his shirts for a while, hoping it would bring an experience of the flesh. But it was only a shirt, faithless, falling to the contours of my own body.

  I tried to bring Jay to the room again as I lay in his place, but he was restless and evasive. Here, I said. Over here. Willing him to the bed, moving over slightly and making room for him. But I could only bring him to the window, looking out, and with his back turned to me. We were in the middle of an argument which went something like this:

  “Keep your voice down,” Jay was saying, thinkin
g of the neighbors, of the children in the next room.

  But my voice was my best weapon, sharp and deadly. “I’m not going to baby Harry,” I said. “He has to learn to deal with life, just like everyone else.”

  “For God’s sake, Sandy, he is a baby! What’s the matter with you?”

  “There’s nothing the matter with me,” I said. “There’s nothing the matter with wanting your own child to know what’s what. He can’t just do as he pleases all his life, can he?”

  “Sandy, there’s only one way to get to a kid, and that’s with love. You know that.”

  “I love him,” I said evenly, knowing how cold the words sounded, said that way.

  “I know you do.” He came to the bed at last, and sat down. “But it doesn’t matter if he eats his dinner or not. What matters is what he thinks we feel about him.”

  I crossed my arms, resisting his gentle flow of logic. “I’m his mother,” I said, “and he has to eat. He needs nutrition, doesn’t he?”

  “Leave him alone for a while. He’ll come around.” Touching again, playing with one of the places where my arms were joined.

  I shrugged him off. “And he has to learn to put things away,” I said. “And he’s cruel to the baby sometimes. He twisted his foot today when he thought I wasn’t looking. And the baby cried.”

  “Oh come on, all kids hate the new baby, Sandy. He wouldn’t be normal if he didn’t.”

  “Boy, you know everything, don’t you?” The tears were readied behind my eyes. I knew that he was right, of course. Right and wrong. Good and bad. Black and white. I hated the sharp division of things. I knew with a sense of horror that I only wanted to win, with Jay, with Harry, maybe even with the infant Paul. To exercise my will over theirs. That little contained streak of cruelty in me threatened to break free. I had shaken a small child because he would not finish his meat, his carrots, his buttered bread. Jesus. How could Jay understand this if he had never witnessed rage in his own childhood? I thought how difficult it was, how impossible all marriages really are, each person coming to battle with separate and complicated histories. It made a case for incest.

  But I was wrong, and I wanted to be different. Why else did I feel so tearful and full of remorse? I would say it, given the right opening. I’m sorry. Tomorrow I’ll be a different woman, reasonable and fair.

  Yet I said nothing. I watched as Jay left the room and went in to cover the children. I listened for his footsteps, feeling strangely jealous of my own children, who could be loved simply for themselves, for their very existence. It struck me that this was what Harry felt about Paul, this was his impotence and his rage. The knowledge of shared love, like half-chewed carrots, cannot, will not go down.

  When Jay came back to bed, I tried to let him know without language that I was sorry, that I regretted past and future transgressions. I hung on the frame of his back and pressed myself against him. I’ll be better now, watch me. You’ll see. Until he turned around to face me, pulling me closer, taking me at my word.

  25

  “HE LOOKS TERRIBLE,” I said.

  Dr. Block frowned.

  “What about the medication?” I asked. “What about hope?” I thought that I sounded merely petulant.

  “I told you,” Dr. Block said. “We don’t know many things.” He coughed into his fist.

  I studied him for a while, found nothing hidden, and then I looked around the office, saw diplomas, pictures of his children, of a brown poodle, of a young man (Dr. Block himself?) in a naval uniform.

  Then I had the idea. I might have shouted Eureka! in that moment of discovery. I would take Jay home again. In the house he would grow well, nourished by what was dear and familiar. He would awaken at night and see remembered shadows cast by the friendly shapes of our furniture, and fall back into a deep and healing sleep.

  How could anyone recover in a place like this, a place that fostered illness, that negated life with its sterile surroundings, its relentless routine, its gift shop, its machines that pulled and sucked away at hope? How could he become well, surrounded by illness and despair?

  “I’ll take Jay home,” I said.

  “Don’t be silly,” Dr. Block answered. “We’re keeping him alive here. We help him to suffer less.”

  “If I take him home, maybe he’ll be less sad.” But I knew that I was pleading a hopelessly impractical case.

  “What you don’t understand is that there is a certain comfort in continuity. Jay is used to it here. Routine is less fatiguing and we’re equipped for emergency. If you take him home, he’ll be in pain. He would have to leave in a screaming ambulance. He would know.”

  “What do you think he knows now?” I said.

  “Sometimes we know things intellectually,” he said. “But not here.” He patted his chest. It was such a nonmedical observation that my feelings were softened. A doctor who could refer to the human heart as a place where things are realized and experienced, rather than a vital organ simply doing its mechanical job.

  “He has to know everything soon,” I said.

  Dr. Block made some nervous little gestures, touched and patted the clock and the pens on his desk. “Yes, I think now,” he said. “Yes.”

  “Then we tell him.” We. Somehow we had become allies in this threat to Jay’s innocence. We both waited then, arranging thoughts into words, and began awkwardly to speak at the same time. I smiled at the awkwardness, and Dr. Block, looking grateful, smiled back. “Go ahead,” he said.

  “No, you,” I insisted.

  He cleared his throat and opened his hands on the desk blotter. “Would you like me to tell him?” he asked.

  Ah, easy, easy. That offscreen movie scene. While I hold my fingers in my ears and say wah wah wah until it’s over. Eyes shut, breath held. Is it all over?

  “No,” I said.

  “Oh.” He was clearly relieved. “Then you …?”

  I nodded. Me. I. Myself. I could not imagine doing it, could not visualize the moment and the act. But I could not imagine anyone else doing it either. Certainly not Dr. Block, who was good enough, really a decent man, but a stranger to the unit that was Jay and me. Our twinship, kinship. My brother, my love. Pow! Bang! Right in the balls, in the heart. My God.

  “But don’t …” Dr. Block said. “We don’t want to make it irrevocable …”

  “But it is!” I said. “It is! There is nothing. Why can’t we decide once and for all if he’s to be treated like a baby or like a man?”

  To my surprise there were tears in Dr. Block’s eyes. “There isn’t an easy way,” he said. “Don’t you think I know?”

  “Why don’t you do something then, why don’t you perform miracles in this damned mystical place?” My voice was shrill and Dr. Block’s secretary opened the door and looked in.

  He waved her away with his hand.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, not feeling sorry at all, only dull and resigned.

  “Do you want something for yourself?” he asked.

  I shook my head and stood up.

  He rushed from behind his desk so that he could open the door for me.

  26

  I WANTED TO DO it while he was still able to walk. It seemed immoral somehow to tell a dying man the miserable and imminent truth when he was helpless, lying down in the very path of the words. Maybe I expected him to be able to run, believed that I could give him a fighting chance. Driving to the hospital I remembered old movies where the girl came to the hideout and warned the rotten but lovable crook that the law was coming. Sometimes she said, Give yourself up, sweetheart. They’ll get you in the end. Other times she said, Run for it. You still have a chance.

  I was supposed to tell Jay that too. There’s always a chance. It seemed like the most terrible of lies. He could look in the mirror, couldn’t he? He could see the truth in the wasting of himself, in the way he felt. How do you feel? Fine. How do you feel? I’m dying.

  My hands and feet were cold, even though the heater blasted away. Maybe Jay would make it
easier for me. He knows already, I told myself. How could he not know? It was just a matter of acknowledgment now. I know that you know that I know. That sort of crap. Oh Jesus. I had read it somewhere once. They always know. They. An unfortunate exclusive club of mortals. He was like his father, would be like his father, would be dust.

  “That was the first blow to my innocence,” he told me in one of our earliest night talks. “When my father died. It’s like an old movie in my head that I can roll out whenever I want to. Sometimes when I don’t even want to.”

  “You were in school, weren’t you,” I said, helping him to begin.

  “Yes. They called me down to the principal’s office. Boy, in those days it really meant something. The principal had never spoken to me before. He was as remote and glorified as the president.”

  “Knowing you, I’ll bet you thought you had done something wrong,” I said.

  “The worst. What the hell could they have on me? I did my homework. I paid my G.O. money.”

  “You played with yourself.”

  “Not in school, kiddo. Anyway, Dr. Summers called me down to his office. They all had a doctorate then. His secretary was an old lady in orthopedic shoes. She called me James and I didn’t correct her, but I felt relieved. They had the wrong kid!”

  “Oh you sweet dummy,” I said. “Then what happened?”

  “ ‘Go inside, James,’ ” she said. “I can still see that dumb kid opening the door, a frosted glass door with gilt letters on it. Dr. Summers sat behind a big desk that was loaded with papers and books. He wore eyeglasses and he had silver-gray hair. The PTA mothers thought he was a knockout.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “That was it. He told me. He called me by my right name. He kept that desk between us and he told me.”

  “Oh Jay.”

  “Yeah. I didn’t believe him for just a minute. But Jesus, he was the principal. The flag was right there over his shoulder, and my father was dead on the job.”