Ending

by Hilma Wolitzer

  My father came back later carrying a shopping bag. He put it on the chair and rubbed his hands together. “Shut the door,” he said.

  I looked both ways first. “All clear.”

  He had everything with him: a snowy apron for Jay, his own weathered shaving brush, a mug of soap, and a straight-edged razor that he held up for us to see with an almost maniacal pleasure. “That’s a beauty,” he said. “I’d like to see what this guy at the hospital uses.”

  I wanted to say, Get on with it, for God’s sake. Someone will come. It’s only a shave.

  But it wasn’t. It was a ritual, masculine and tribalistic. First the apron was flourished, like a bullfighter’s cape. The razor was lifted again to catch the flames of light, then laid gently on a fresh towel on the nightstand. My father wet the shaving brush at the filled basin and whipped the soap into a lather. “Now you’ll get a shave, son,” he said, and he brushed Jay’s cheeks with delicate strokes until a snowy beard flowered there. Jay grown old.

  My father whistled softly through his teeth. “Now you’ll see,” he murmured. “A shave.” His hands were full of grace as he wielded the razor without disturbing the fluids that dripped into Jay’s arm from a bedside stand.

  Whole blood now. It had a strange sound. Like whole milk. Pure creamery butter. Wholesome, nourishing.

  The razor scraped against Jay’s jaw. My father whistled, clucked, almost did a little dance step as he leaned back to survey his work. He patted, wiped, and then the apron was off with a final twirling flourish.

  “Bravo!” I said, and rushed to put my face against Jay’s.

  “Ah,” he said. “Thanks, Mr. B. That feels wonderful.”

  35

  I CALLED THE FLOOR nurse and asked if Martin had any visitors. She said that his parents had just left.

  He was in a room with three beds. There was a boy of his own age in one, asleep, while the television set mounted on the wall above him played soundlessly. It was a Biblical movie and great throngs raged silently across the Sinai Desert. The other bed was unoccupied and Martin was sitting in a chair next to his. “Martin,” I said. “Jay wants you to have this.” I put the camera on the bed.

  “Oh Sandy,” he said. “How is he?”

  I shrugged, unable to meet his eyes.

  “Isn’t there anything …?”

  “No.”

  I looked at him. He was getting well, gaining weight and losing that ethereal delicacy. He seemed less vulnerable to me.

  “I was lucky to be with Jay,” he said. “I don’t just mean because of the photography or because we were friends. This is crazy—but sometimes when the days were slow, I would just lie there and daydream and stuff. I would pretend that Jay was my father.”

  He looked down and gave a quick laugh that was more like a hiccup. “And that you were my mother. Crazy. I told you.”

  So we had common dreams. “Not so crazy.”

  “Well, I used to feel bad at night, when I would think about it. I would try to get back into the dream, you know, pretending that Jay and I were in a tent somewhere camping out or at the beach. I felt as if I was disloyal to my mother and father. They’re really good,” he said.

  “I know that, Martin.”

  “No, it’s not that. I mean, they can’t help being themselves. I know it, but there are times when I get angry with my father because of his voice. It’s not his fault, he can’t help it, but I feel like yelling at him to clear his throat or shut up or something. I wish that my mother was different, that she wouldn’t look at me like she’s trying to save me or eat me up. Even before I was sick. Then I feel lousy, because they seem so sad, like a pair of old babies. I feel older than them.”

  “Martin, that’s nothing new. We all become older than our parents, eventually. It’s a natural process. You just came to it a little early. It’s as if you’re up in some high place where you can see everything, their whole history, their future. I think that I know more than my parents, that I could solve their problems and their mysteries if I only had the chance.” As I said it, I realized that it was true, that I believed it.

  “With you and Jay,” he said, “it was only fun.”

  “That’s because you were pretending.”

  “I really love my parents,” Martin said doubtfully.

  “I know you do.”

  He reached out and touched the camera. Thanks.”

  “When are you going home?” I asked.

  “Soon. In a week or so. I feel funny because I can hardly remember what it was like outside this place. I mean I can remember but I can hardly concentrate on how it felt, to go to school, to sleep in my room, to be with my friends. Now the hospital seems more like real life.”

  “You’ll go right back to things,” I told him. Then I thought for a while of last words to say to him. I might ask him to come and see me, to call, to keep in touch. I might ask to see the photographs that he would take with Jay’s camera or just to let me know what happens to him.

  The boy in the other bed woke then, blinked at the television screen and pushed the remote control button, bringing the roaring chorus of the throng to life.

  I saw that Martin was turned inward, arranging his thoughts into words. Then, before he could say anything, I gave him a violent hug and went out of the room.

  He was standing next to my car when I came out of the hospital. I wondered how long he had been standing there. What did he want?

  “I saw your car,” he said in greeting. It was very cold and he moved around in little dancing steps like a boxer, his hands in his pockets.

  “So I see.”

  “I wondered how you were.”

  “Is your friend still here? In the hospital?”

  “Who?—oh, Pete. No, he went home a couple of weeks ago. He’s even been to the office a few times.”

  I blew vapor from my mouth like dragon fire. “Then why did you come here?”

  He looked genuinely hurt. His brow furrowed and the smile left his face in a visible stroke. “I was nearby, in the neighborhood. When I saw the hospital, I thought of you. That’s all. I drove in and saw your car.”

  “Francis,” I said. “You have a family, don’t you? A wife, and children?” I remembered the baby seat in the front of the station wagon.

  “Yes. I have four kids …”

  I saw them suddenly, in my mind’s eye: the four children in sleepers, blond, sturdy, standing in order of size, and his wife, tall and thin, with ruined bleached hair and a worried face. “Then what do you want?”

  “I don’t want anything,” he said. “I was thinking of you. I feel sort of responsible for you, the way that you do when you save someone’s life.”

  “You’re not responsible for me.”

  “Oh, I don’t mean it literally. Let’s say that I felt, that I feel something for you because of what’s happening. I’ve appointed myself a sort of guardian angel to you.” He laughed, and in the cold lamplight I noted the perfection of his teeth, the prominent thrust of his jaw.

  “St. Francis,” I said, and was sorry when he blushed a deep color. “I’m sorry. Forgive me.”

  “It’s my own fault, I guess,” he said. “Maybe it does seem strange, but you were the loneliest-looking …”

  I patted his arm. It was startlingly solid. “Francis, I am sorry. You get sort of paranoid after a while. You question everybody’s motives, even your own. Why do I come here all the time, when he sleeps for hours? Why do I go home? Do I feel enough? Oh God, I’m always having a scene with you in this damn parking lot.”

  “Let’s get out of here,” he said, inspired. “Do you want coffee? Or a drink?”

  Now I owed him something. And it would be somewhere to go that was not the hospital or home again. “A drink,” I said.

  “Good. Fine. We’ll come back later and get your car.”

  I thought of what the parking lot would be like then, with the visitors gone and only the few cars of the doctors and night attendants left, as if it were an abandon
ed stage set.

  “No,” I said. “I don’t want to come back here. I’ll follow you.”

  Out on the street I drove behind him, signaling when he did, turning carefully after him, like an obedient child. We drove for a mile or so, and then Francis’ car slowed and he signaled a left turn at the parking lot of a place that called itself Freddy’s in blinking blue neon lights. There were a dozen cars or so already parked, and when Francis opened my door, muted sounds of life, music, voices seeped through the walls to us.

  We sat at a small table. I didn’t take my coat off, although Francis gestured with his hand for it.

  We ordered drinks and sat facing one another for an uncomfortable space of time, touching the coasters and matches on the table. I opened and shut my purse several times, peering inside as if I checked on some living creature imprisoned there. At the mirrored bar, people laughed, leaning toward one another in the darkness. Glasses clinked and the music wailed at a distance. What was I doing there after all? Now the question was new. Sitting there like a transient in my overcoat, I wondered what I wanted.

  “I have three daughters,” Francis said. “The baby is a boy.”

  “That must have made you very happy.”

  “Oh, he’s a terrific kid. All boy. But the girls are great too. I would have settled for all girls.”

  “I have two boys,” I said, trying to remember them.

  “But my wife is nervous since the boy. She says the baby makes her nervous, that boys are different.”

  “Well, I guess they are.”

  “No, not in the way she means. She said that even when he was an infant, just lying there. He made her nervous.”

  I wondered what he wanted me to say. Something reassuring? Something clinical about postpartum depression?

  But he swirled the liquid in his glass and said, “She’s a good girl. She tries hard, but sometimes I don’t know what she wants.”

  I smiled what I hoped was an appropriate smile.

  “Are you still cold? Shall I take your coat?”

  I was warmer by then, but somehow my coat had become a fortress. I shook my head. “I’d rather wear it.” I looked at my watch, not really noting the time. “I can’t stay too long anyway.”

  He signaled for the barmaid, but I shook my head again. “Not for me,” I said.

  “Ah, listen, don’t go yet. I haven’t even talked to you.”

  “I know,” I said. “But it’s getting late.” But my husband is dying. But I know what you really want that fast, desperate fuck in the back of the station wagon, among the domestic litter of your four children. But I think that I am dying too, some moral or spiritual death that defies definition. But I am falling from some unfathomable height forever and ever.

  “So then you’re going?” he said. “But at least you’re not angry. At least we’re friends.” He put his large hand on the back of my neck, that place that longs for comfort “I’m glad that you came,” he said. He walked with me out to the parking lot, past the bar, where a man said, “Hey don’t go yet, blondie, the fun’s just starting.”

  I paid Joseph and sent him home. Then I went into the bedroom and lay down with my arms folded under my head. I could only lie there for a few minutes. I felt a terrible restlessness, as if there were urgent errands I could not remember. I jumped up and went to the window and looked out at the street where snow had been pushed into dreary gray drifts. I walked into the children’s room and found Paul uncovered again, the blankets in a mad tangle between his legs. Sleeping, he resisted as I pulled them away. “No,” he said in his dream.

  “It’s all right,” I whispered, putting the blankets around his shoulders. He flung them off again with one violent gesture. In the other bed Harry was wrapped and curled like some hibernating creature. His mouth was open, as if in surprise.

  I went into the kitchen then and began to open cupboards and drawers and slam them shut again. I opened the refrigerator and put my face into the cold air. I looked at the double row of eggs, the bright containers of milk. In the back, on the top shelf, I found half of a lemon, blue-furred, its rind curling inward. I carried it, holding it away from me as if it were something dangerous, and put it on the counter. God, what else was in there?

  Methodically, I took everything out, found forgotten cheese, a dried half-sandwich from Harry’s lunch, a green lollipop welded to the shelf. It was true—for the past weeks I had noticed nothing, feeling weak and convalescent each morning. Sometimes I didn’t make the beds or clear the breakfast dishes. Even rising and dressing myself was a triumph over apathy.

  I filled a basin with warm water and ammonia and began to wash the inside of the refrigerator. The fumes burned my nostrils and made me cough, but I inhaled them as if they were the fumes of some marvelous hallucinatory drug, designed to cancel memory and longing. I scrubbed, reaching into corners, scraping sticky patches off with my fingernails. When I was finished with the refrigerator, I went out into the hall and dumped the rotting food down the incinerator. Then I came back in again and lit the oven light. Grease had baked into a hard dark crust on the walls of the oven. Using steel wool, I scraped and rubbed until they were shining and my fingertips were raw. Ah, just look inside here, Gretel, and help me to light the fire. Hee hee hee my old eyes can’t see …

  I took a rag and a can of polish and attacked the furniture in the living room until the rag was damp and black. Then I went into the bathroom and washed the tile and scrubbed the toilet and the floor of the stall shower, where thin slabs of soap had melted into thick cream. On my hands and knees, I washed the bathroom floor, seeking matted clumps of hair in the corners. Gotcha! I was breathless by then, and flushed, but I felt strangely excited and I went through the apartment looking everywhere, stalking dirt with a wild eye—polishing, scrubbing, wiping—take that! And that! And that!—as if this were my true enemy being vanquished at last

  Later I sat in the living room, panting, my hair falling forward over my eyes and I thought, now what? Now what? Now what? My fingers thrummed on the arm of the chair.

  Then the doorbell rang and when I looked through the peephole, Mr. Caspar’s sad brown eye looked back at me. I opened the door and saw that he was carrying a cake, still hot, its fragrance rising in steam from the pan. He looked at me quizzically, and I brushed my hair back with my hand. It stank from ammonia and chlorine. I tried to tuck the tail ends of my shirt into my skirt and then I gave up, my hands making jerky gestures. “Well, come in. Is that for us? It’s lovely.”

  He set the cake on the kitchen counter and sniffed at the air.

  “Oh,” I said. “Just tidying things up. Everything was a mess. It’s the ammonia. My hands smell, they look like prunes.” I held them out and then quickly withdrew them and put them behind my back. I laughed. “I probably have housemaid’s knee, too.”

  Mr. Caspar smiled. “I thought about you all day and then I baked that.” He nodded toward the cake.

  “Let’s eat it then!” I said, suddenly hungry, ravenous.

  “Maybe it’s too hot …” he said, but I began to put dishes and coffee mugs on the table with a nervous clatter, thinking he’ll think I’m mad. Then I ate three pieces of cake, greedily, even licking my fingers after the last slice.

  “Oh,” I said, shutting my eyes. “Heavenly. Marvelous.”

  “Then you’re all right? I thought …”

  I took a deep breath. “Yes, yes,” a sense of peace and order returning. “Just a little crazy. You’re a quieting influence, you know.”

  “Me?” He stood up and began to collect the dishes from the table and put them into the sink. He swept crumbs up neatly with his hand and wrapped the rest of the cake in foil.

  I leaned against the table, watching him with my chin resting on my folded arms. “Is she gone again?” I asked.

  He nodded. “And I will have to listen for the weather report. Someone in the elevator today said maybe heavy snow again tonight.”

  “Again and again and again.”

>   “What we need are green things. Spring.”

  “To restore hope and destroy memory. Ah, you’re a romantic, Mr. C.” I took a towel and began to dry a cup.

  “Her real name is Edith, you know,” he said. “She was eighteen years old when we married and I couldn’t convince her of her beauty. ‘Am I?’ she asked. ‘Am I?’ ”

  I put the radio on, listening for the weather report. “Jay was going to do a wonderful essay on life in the city. Someday I’ll show you his photographs.”

  “The things that happen to us aren’t fair,” he said.

  “Today, I said good-bye to Martin. He’ll be going home soon.”

  “That boy in the hospital?”

  “Yes.”

  Mr. Caspar went to the kitchen window. “If the weather would only be warmer …” His words trailed off. On the radio a dance band of the forties played a forgotten ballad. He turned around, and thinking of nothing, I walked toward him and held my arms out. To embrace? To be embraced? His hand circled my waist and he began to lead me into a dance, a slow, dated fox-trot. My forehead rested against his cheek, and I shut my eyes, my feet remembering the music for me, and the rhythm. We danced closely and I put both arms around him. I could feel his heart flutter against me. Out of the kitchen then, slowly, slowly, and into the hallway, where the music became faint, and our feet were silent on the carpet. We turned into the bedroom, where a small bedside lamp was lit. Then the music was too distant, and we only stood together, rocking gently.

  I looked at his face, clasping it between my hands. The mask-smile was gone at last. He turned my palm up to his mouth and kissed it. “Yes,” I said, and together we opened his shirt. Then I sat down and pulled my shirt open as well, while he watched with this new face, intense, waiting. As he undressed, I watched him too. I had never seen a man of his age without any clothes before and I saw that he was like a detailed drawing for an anatomy class, a drawing that stresses frayed muscle and sharply drawn blue veins and bony structure. I took his hand and curved it to my breast. Then I looked at him and saw that an erection had risen from the ruins. Magic, magic man.