A Widow's Story

by Joyce Carol Oates

  I will take it home. I will hide it on a shelf. Never can I bring myself to look into it again.

  “Honey? I think they want me to go now . . .”

  My voice is thin, wavering. Perhaps it isn’t a voice but a faintly articulated thought.

  Staring at Ray on the bed. It is not natural—instinctively you grasp that this is not-right—to see a person so composed, unmoving.

  Yet there is the sensation—visceral, uncanny—that the person who is lying so still, not breathing, or breathing so faintly that it’s undetected, is well aware of being observed, and observing you through shut eyes.

  Helplessly I am standing here, thinking—the thought comes to me—There will never be a right time.

  Meaning, a time to leave the hospital room.

  Meaning, a time to turn my back, and walk away.

  To turn my back on Ray—my husband. How is this possible!

  Awkwardly, and very slowly, in small steps like a blind person I back my way out of the room. Very clumsily, for my arms are full.

  I am trying to carry too many things. So frequently lately I’ve been dropping things, surely I will drop something now. I am in dread of calling attention to myself. I am in dread of losing control in a public place. Suddenly it seems to me—I’ve left my handbag behind—I can’t quite see what I am carrying, in my arms. A wave of panic sweeps over me—though how trivial is this!—how ridiculous—at the possibility of losing my handbag, my car key, house key.

  This is the terror: I will lose crucial keys. I will be stranded, marooned. I see myself at the side of a highway—in the dark—frantically signaling for—what?—headlights rush past, blinding. Or maybe this is a dream. Recurring dreams of being lost from my husband are my most frightening dreams but this too is very frightening, for it is so very plausible. Ray is likely to be in charge of keys—to know where a spare key might be kept, outdoors—but now I am obsessed with keys, searching through my handbag for keys a dozen times daily. The relief of finding a key, which might have been lost!

  In fact I will lose some things. I will discover that a pair of dark-tinted glasses is missing out of my handbag. They must have fallen out when . . .

  I will leave behind Ray’s glasses! I will be utterly unable to comprehend how I could have overlooked them, hadn’t I held them in my hand . . .

  Ray’s wristwatch—this, I haven’t left behind.

  At the brightly lit nurses’ station—near-deserted at the hour of 1:43 A.M.—I tell one of the nurses that my husband is in room 539, and he has died, and what do I do now? It is the height of naivete, or absurdity, to imagine that the nurses are not well aware of the fact that a patient has just died in Telemetry, a few yards away; yet, I am trying to be helpful, I am even asking with a faint smile, “Do I—call a funeral home? Can you recommend a funeral home?”

  The woman to whom I’m speaking—a stranger to me—looks up with a frown. I don’t see in her face the sympathy I’ve seen in the faces of some others. She says, “Your husband’s body will be taken down to the morgue. In the morning, you can call a funeral home to arrange to pick it up.”

  This is so shocking to me—so stunning—it’s as if the woman has reached over the counter and slapped my face.

  It! So quickly Raymond has ceased being he, now is it.

  I feel that I might faint. I can’t allow myself to faint. I lick my lips that are horribly dry, the skin is cracking. Though I can see that the nurse would far rather return to whatever she’s doing at a computer, than speak with me, hesitantly I ask if she can recommend a funeral home and she says, with a fleeting smile, perhaps it’s an exasperated smile, that she could not recommend any funeral home: “You can look them up in the Yellow Pages.”

  “The ‘Yellow Pages’?”—I cling to this phrase, that is so commonplace. Yet I seem not to know what to do next.

  Another time I ask if she can recommend a funeral home—or if she could call one for me—(such a request, such audacity, I must be desperate by this point)—and she shakes her head, no.

  “In the morning, you can call. You have time. You should go home now. You can call a funeral home in the morning.”

  Deliberately, it seems, the woman does not call me by name. It is possible that, though the Telemetry unit is not very large, she doesn’t know my name, and doesn’t know Ray’s name; it is entirely possible that she never set foot in Raymond Smith’s room.

  “Thank you. ‘Yellow Pages’—I will. In the morning.”

  How strange it is, to be walking away. Is it possible that I am really going to leave Ray—here? Is it possible that he won’t be coming home with me in another day or two, as we’d planned? Such a thought is too profound for me to grasp. It’s like fitting a large unwieldy object in a small space. My brain hurts, trying to contain it.

  The nurse has returned to her computer but others at the brightly lit station watch me walk away, in silence. How many others—“survivors”—have they observed walking away in this direction, toward the elevators, in exhaustion, stunned defeat. How many others clutching at belongings.

  In the elevator descending to the lobby I am seized with the need to return to Ray—it is a terrible thing that I have left him—I am filled with horror, that I have left him—for what if ?—some mistake—but sobriety prevails, common sense—the elevator continues down.

  Chapter 17

  The Arrow

  Returning to the lightless house beyond Princeton I feel like an arrow that has been shot—where?

  The front door is not only unlocked but ajar. A single light is burning in an interior room—Ray’s study. When I push open the door to step into the darkened hallway it’s to the surprise of a sharp lemony smell—furniture polish. In a trance of anticipation I’d not only polished the tops of Ray’s desks until they shone but the dining room table and other tables through the house; on my hands and knees, with paper towels, I polished areas of the hardwood floor that were looking worn. Humming loudly and brightly I had done these things not many hours ago.

  So happy you’re back home, honey! We missed you here.

  By we, I meant the cats and me. But where are the cats?

  Since Ray’s departure—since I drove Ray to the ER—both the cats have been wary of me, and have kept their distance even when I feed them. The younger, Cherie, has been mewing piteously—but when I approach her, she retreats. The elder cat, Reynard, by nature more suspicious, is silent, tawny-eyed. It’s clear that these animals are thinking that whatever has happened to disrupt the household, I am to blame.

  In a brave cheery voice I call to the cats—though I am an arrow shot into space I am determined to convince them that there is nothing wrong really, and there is nothing for them to fear.

  You will be all right. You will be all right. Nothing will happen to you. I will take care of you.

  I seem to be forgetting why at near 2 A.M. I am not in bed but still awake and in a state of heightened excitement. My brain is a hive of rushing and incoherent thoughts. Stranger yet—friends are coming in a few minutes. At this hour! There is that slight jab of apprehension—the social responsibility of entertaining others, in one’s house—why?—and where is Ray, to help greet them? Numbly I am putting on lights—in the guest room, which is where we usually have visitors—an addition to our house built for my parents when they came to visit us several times a year—along one wall overlooking the courtyard there is the white Parsons table at which Ray frequently had breakfast and spread out the New York Times to read—now the shock hits me—But Ray is dead. Ray has died. Ray is not here. I am seeing our friends by myself. That is why they are coming.

  In Ray’s hospital room I called three parties of whom one was asleep and didn’t pick up the phone and another, an insomniac, answered on the first ring; still another, also awake, picked up the phone and answered warily Yes? Hello?—knowing that any call, at such an hour, is likely to be bad news.

  It is a terrible thing to be the bearer of terrible news!

  I
t is a terrible thing to invade another’s sleep, to hear a friend murmur to his wife It’s Joyce, Ray has died and to overhear his wife exclaim Oh God.

  This is what I did, this is what a widow does, though perhaps not all widows call friends, or even relatives, perhaps I am exceptionally lucky, I think this must be so.

  My plaintive pleading voice. I’d left a message for the friend who hadn’t answered the phone—Jane? This is Joyce. I’m at the hospital, Ray has died. About an hour ago—I think it was. I’m at the hospital and I don’t know what to do next.

  And now like a dream it’s unfolding—whatever is happening, that seems to have little to do with me—as the dreamer does not invent her dream but is in a sense being dreamt by it—helpless, stunned. Though my mind is racing and my heart is racing yet my movements are slow, uncoordinated. The sound of car tires in the gritty snow in our driveway is shocking to me, though I know that our friends are due to arrive at any minute. A flash of headlights across a ceiling makes me cringe. I am concerned that the house isn’t clean—that I’ve left things lying about—the wadded tissues that Ray had scattered on the Parsons table—did I throw them away?—(teeming with E. coli bacteria?)—I am uneasy at seeing our friends, and Ray not with me—they will feel so very sorry for me—it will cost them emotion, to feel sorry for me—the practical idea comes to me to set books out on a coffee table—the books I’d brought back home from the hospital. These are Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s Infidel, Paul Krugman’s The Great Unraveling, the bound galleys of Richard A. Clarke’s Your Government Failed You which our friend Dan Halpern is publishing.

  These books—on the coffee table—we can talk about them—is that a good idea?

  Also, the book on the cultural history of boxing which I’ve been reading to review. Which I’ve been working on this past week in the interstices of the vigil. Returning home from the hospital and trying to write for an hour or two before going to bed and trying to sleep. As if I must allow my friends to know Joyce is all right, Joyce is working even now. Don’t worry about Joyce!

  I am not thinking clearly. But I am thinking. I am trying to think.

  Our friends arrive shortly after 2 A.M., in one car. Susan and Ron, Jeanne and Dan and their fourteen-year-old daughter Lily whom Ray and I have known since her birth. When they step inside, and embrace me—it’s as if I have stepped into a violent surf.

  Though our friends remain with me until 4 A.M. most of what we said to one another has vanished from my memory. Our friends will tell me that I behaved calmly and yet it was clear that I was in a state of shock. I can remember Jeanne on the phone, in the kitchen, making calls to funeral homes. I can remember my astonishment that a funeral home might be open at such an hour of the night. I can remember explaining to my friends how Ray died—why Ray died—the secondary infection, the fact that his blood pressure plummeted, his heartbeat accelerated—these gruesome words which I have memorized and which even now, at any hour of the day, along with my final vision of Ray in the hospital bed, run through my mind like flashes of heat lightning.

  My friends are extraordinary, I think. To come to me so quickly in the middle of the night as they’ve done.

  For the widow inhabits a tale not of her own telling. The widow inhabits a nightmare-tale and yet it is likely that the widow inhabits a benign fairy tale out of the Brothers Grimm in which friends come forward to help. We loved Ray, and we love you.

  Let us help you. Ray would want this.

  Chapter 18

  E-mail Record

  February 18, 2008, 9:26 A.M.

  To Elaine Pagels

  I was about to write to you to say that quite suddenly Ray passed away last night at about 1 A.M.

  I am too exhausted now to speak but Jeannie is coming to go with me to a Pennington funeral home to make arrangements.

  I have been thinking of you as a young—very young—widow and mother. I have seen in you the transcendence of this unspeakable wound and yet the shadow of it, which can never be forgotten.

  Much love,

  Joyce

  February 18, 2008.

  To Mary Morris

  Ray died at 1 A.M. this morning in the medical center of a terrible pneumonia. I am utterly dazed and will get back to you [regarding an interview for the Italian Storie] some other time.

  Much love,

  Joyce

  February 19, 2008.

  To Richard Ford

  Thanks, Richard. Much of my trouble—“trouble”?—is physical/ emotional—I just feel exhausted, groggy around people and want to crawl away somewhere and sleep.

  But I know that you are right. I am trying.

  Love,

  Joyce

  February 19, 2008.

  To Sandra Gilbert

  I was thinking of you, and your wonderful lost husband . . . It was something similar—though not a “wrongful death” I’m sure—Ray had been hospitalized for pneumonia—an e-coli infection which is one of the worst—and was definitely “improving” day by day—due to be released to rehab soon—then suddenly, I had a call at 12:30 A.M. to come quickly to the hospital—where he had just been pronounced dead. A secondary infection had caused cardiopulmonary arrest, and he was gone.

  It is just utterly unbelievable. I feel so completely alone.

  Though surrounded by the most wonderful friends.

  Thank you for writing. Much love,

  Joyce

  February 19, 2008.

  To Gary Mailman

  I have here the document “Last Will & Testament” of Raymond Smith . . . What does one do with the will, as a document? Do I present it somewhere? I’ve been told that I have to take “death certificates” to something called a surrogate court (?) in Trenton soon. Jeanne Halpern has offered to accompany me which is astonishingly wonderful of her.

  How grateful we are that you came through your hospital siege. . . . I truly did think that Ray was, too. Even after death he looked not ill at all, quite handsome, his face unlined and peaceful. In the hospital room, all the staff had left, and he was alone in the bed without the IV fluids and the oxygen mask, and the beautiful vase of flowers that you and Emily had sent was on a table just beside him. It is the most haunting memory I will ever have.

  Any [legal] advice you can give will be so much appreciated,

  Joyce

  February 19, 2008.

  To Gloria Vanderbilt

  [Ray] passed away at 1 A.M. of February 18—just yesterday!

  It is so hard to comprehend.

  I will write to you later. I would love to see you. I am inundated with tasks to be done—like a zombie plodding through the interminable day—yesterday was a nightmare that went on—and on—and on. There does not seem to be much purpose to my life now except these meaningless but necessary tasks (like speaking with a funeral director, buying a cemetery plot, looking for the Last Will & Testament.)

  But you are a solace just by existing, vividly in my thoughts if not here before me.

  Much love,

  Joyce

  February 19, 2008.

  To Eleanor Bergstein

  Eleanor, I am not good on the phone right now. I am overwhelmed and stunned and trying to keep sane by doing a multiplicity—an infinity—of small necessary tasks. Ray died only yesterday morning—so much has happened since then, it seems unbelievable.

  I know that you lost your mother and father long ago. What a raw terrible wound that must have been. Losing a spouse of 47 years is like losing a part of yourself—the most valuable part. What is left behind seems so depleted, broken.

  Thank you so much for your love and your friendship.

  Joyce

  February 20, 2008.

  To Dan Halpern

  There are bouts of utter loneliness and a sense of purposelessness. But I had a lovely evening with Ron and Susan, though it was strange that Ray wasn’t there, and Jeanne called this morning, and tomorrow I will be at your house with Emily & Gary & (evidently) Gloria.

  Jeanne and Gary a
re giving me helpful advice re. a lawyer and the “probate” about which I know nothing.

  This house is so lonely! It’s almost unbearable. But I will bear it . . .

  I am so grateful for your and Jeanne’s friendship and for other friends who have been so supportive.

  Much love,

  Joyce

  February 19, 2008.

  To Jeanne Halpern

  I like and need your presence when I am with people, I feel so easily breakable and I think that you can gauge these matters. I am so devastated, I’d just been listening to old messages—“old” meaning today and yesterday—since I rarely pick up the phone—there must have been fifteen calls and the last message (which was the earliest recorded, on Sunday afternoon) was from Ray, when I’d been en route to the hospital. I was stunned to hear his voice . . . now it is on the tape, the last I will ever hear of his voice. It is so utterly shattering. He sounded so good on the phone and was looking forward to seeing me. It is unbelievable that about 8 hours later he was dead.

  Much love,

  Joyce

  Chapter 19

  Last Words

  It is astonishing to discover, amid a number of telephone messages from the previous two days, these words of Ray’s which are the last words of his I will hear.

  This call made early Sunday morning when I was en route to the hospital, which I hadn’t known he had made.

  Ray hadn’t mentioned the call to me—it was of so little consequence, or seemed so—and so what a shock to hear this so-familiar voice on the tape, intimate as if he were in the room with me.

  Honey? This is your honey calling . . . If you want to talk can you call? Lots of love to my honey and kitties.

  Chapter 20

  “You’ve Said Good-bye”

  Many times on our walks in Pennington—a small “historic” town about two miles from our house—Ray and I took note of the Blackwell Memorial Home at 21 North Main Street—a white Colonial with blue shutters built close to the sidewalk.