by Mary Hogan
I sucked in a sharp breath. She didn’t want to use the word “dementia” yet she tossed out the A bomb?
“Getting lost in familiar places, severe memory and comprehension deficits, inappropriate behavior, language difficulty, blank stares, shuffling gait.” All of a sudden, she was a talking textbook, rattling off a litany of everyone’s worst nightmare. “Eventually, of course,” she said, with no affect whatsoever, “these patients are unable to care for themselves.”
My fingers, I noticed, were covering my lips. Kate piped up, “That’s not Paul. My goodness, he’s a judge.”
“Fay?” John’s voice jabbed at my eardrum again.
With a conk, the elevator doors opened.
“Dr. Fletcher?” Paul’s internist ambled off. I should have known he’d have a peacock strut. “How did you—?”
“I called him.” Emerging from the stairwell, gasping for air, was Brenda. Paul’s ex. She gripped a large potted plant. Between gulps of air, she bellowed, “Did no one . . . else feel . . . the frightening aura . . . in that elevator?”
Kate lunged forward. “Let me take that for you, Mom.” She lifted the spiky palm from her mother-in-law’s arms and carted it into Paul’s room.
“Southeast corner,” Brenda called after her. “Feng shui.”
Swiping her too-long hair off her sweaty face, Brenda planted a kiss on Dr. Fletcher’s cheek. “Hi, Richard.” Then she hugged her son and coolly said, “Hello, Fay,” to me. My hand slithered down to my throat.
“Thank you for coming so quickly, Mom,” John said. “You, too, Dr. Fletcher.” He pressed both of his palms together in front of his chest, prayer-style. I wanted to slap the holier-than-thou look off his face.
With her outfit in full view, I saw that Brenda wore flowy pajama pants and a gauzy oversized shirt. Despite the damp weather. Not at all generously, I said, “I’m so sorry John got you out of bed.” Then I added, “Everything is under control here.”
“Under control?” John’s nostrils flared into two white lines.
Dr. Fletcher extended his hand to Dr. Kanton. “I’m Paul’s primary,” he said. “Richard Fletcher. Is there a complication?”
Turning his back on them, John faced me. “Did Isaac ever say anything to you?” I’d heard that same accusatory tone in Paul’s courtroom. Did you, or did you not, use your key to open the victim’s door that night?
“About what?” I said.
“Fay.”
I turned on him. “I told you that your father was acting weird. Remember when he forgot Kate’s award dinner? I said I was worried.”
“That dinner was no big deal.” Kate rejoined the group. She looked like she might cry. “A fund-raiser, really. I didn’t mind that Paul forgot. Honestly.”
“You said it was Paul’s age, my fears.” I felt my face getting hot. “You dismissed it.” Pointing my flushed cheeks in Dr. Fletcher’s direction, I felt anger rise into my chest. “Remember when I came to see you? I told you something was wrong with Paul. You practically shoved me out of your office. You referred me to a therapist. Like it was all in my head.”
John glared. “You should have talked to Dad, not his doctor.”
Now, my nostrils flared. “I did. He wouldn’t listen. No one would.”
“You should have made us listen to you.”
What a joke. “Can anyone make any of you listen?”
“She has a point,” Brenda said. “About Paul, I mean.”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.” Dr. Kanton held up her hands.
“Paul will be fine.” Kate had gone white-eyed. “No need to get upset. He needs a few more days. Like the doctor said. Another week. Or month. That’s all. Right?”
“I’m familiar with cognition issues following cardiac surgery,” said Dr. Fletcher. “It’s well documented in the literature. Though it’s always difficult to pinpoint exact cause and effect in any case like this.”
In his scholarly tone, I could hear him trying to cover his ass.
“Risk factors for all postsurgical neuropsychological deficits include age and preexisting impairment,” Dr. Kanton added.
“Can we please speak English?” Brenda was practicing therapeutic breathing all over me. Her bulbous bosom ascended, perched midair, then dropped. I sidestepped out of her spitty exhalations.
“Did you ask her?”
Kate’s fluttery hands lit on her husband’s arm. “John.”
“Surely, Dr. Kanton, you asked about my father’s mental state before putting him under general anesthesia. Didn’t you? You know, because he was sixty-seven.”
“Is,” I said, tightly. “And he’s sixty-eight.”
At the same time Dr. Kanton calmly said, “Mr. Agarra,” Dr. Fletcher calmly said, “John.” But neither could stop the freight train.
“Did you or didn’t you?”
“I know this is a distressing time,” she said.
“Distressing? I’d say this is more like a malpractice time.”
“He’s tired.” Kate pursed her lips.
“All I want is a simple answer to a simple question.” The muscles in John’s jaw bulged in and out like a frog’s gullet. “Did you ask my father’s wife if she had noticed any cognitive changes in my dad?”
As I always did when John called me his father’s wife, instead of Fay, I bristled. Dr. Kanton maintained a placid expression. It struck me that this very scene was probably role-played in medical school. Surely, surgeons faced angry, grief-stricken family members every day. Medical school wasn’t only about anatomy and biology, was it? Doctors must be trained in the skill of maintaining composure while a family vented all over them. Weren’t they? I wondered if Dr. Kanton was silently hoping John would lose steam in time for her next surgery.
“Your father had a severe proximal humerus fracture,” she said in a measured way. “Surgery was his only option. At any age.”
“You’re not answering my question.”
“John.” Now I stepped in.
“It’s okay, Mrs. Agarra. I know this situation is worrying for everyone.” She faced Paul’s son squarely. “All the necessary consent forms were signed. The risks were clearly written.”
My face went pale. Curtly, John asked, “It that true, Fay? Did you read about the risk of dementia?”
“Again, we don’t like to use that word,” Dr. Kanton said.
“There was no choice, John,” I said. “Your dad was badly hurt.”
“Why won’t anyone answer simple questions?” Now he was yelling. I wanted to smack him. How had Paul raised such a brat?
“Yes, John. I read the risks. I knew what might happen. There wasn’t any choice.”
I decided not to tell him that I’d forgotten my glasses that night, as well as my bra. I didn’t tell him that I’d been so consumed by guilt and fear I could barely remember my own name. That white coats intimidated me. That hospitals only reminded me how limited medicine really was. People were poisoned by chemotherapy there. They died there, no matter what doctors and surgeons did. Daughters were left without mothers. Sisters lost brothers. Dads left without saying goodbye. I wanted to tell my stepson that he didn’t have to yell at me. I already knew it was my fault. I was a spiteful wife and an inferior adult and I never should have been left in charge of another person’s life.
“Sorry it took so long.” The eager young volunteer with the cloud of flowers suddenly appeared. “I had to go to another floor to find a vase this big!”
No one said a word. We momentarily froze in place. Then, Dr. Kanton patted my shoulder and peeled away, with Dr. Fletcher on her heels. John and I stood with our pulses pushing out from our necks. Brenda continued her overdramatic breathing, now swooping both arms in the air on each inhale. With a stricken expression, the hospital volunteer scurried into Paul’s room with the flowers.
“Southeast corner!” Brenda hollered after her.
Through gritted teeth, John announced, “I need caffeine.” His mother asked, “Does the cafeteria h
ave green tea?”
They left. Kate followed her husband to the elevator bank. Pajama-clad Brenda bustled behind them fretting, “If that elevator’s energy is still black, I’ll have to take the stairs.”
With terror shooting through my veins, I scuffed into my husband’s hospital room, past his roommate who watched Dr. Phil on his TV. Paul was asleep. The rhythmic snuffle of his snoring joined the beeping of the heart monitor. A geriatric symphony. I took his hand and lifted it to my lips. My kisses made little noises on each fingertip. Pop, pop, pop. I pressed his hand over my heart. He didn’t wake up. Lowering myself into the chair next to Paul’s head, I sat beside the potted palm and watched the flowers begin to die.
Dear God, what had I done?
Chapter Twenty-Seven
I’D BEGUN PACKING A LUNCH AND EATING IT IN THE PARK with Lola. Not the park proper, where neighbors knew me and asked about Paul with downturned faces, but the shard of green between Hudson Crescent and Riverside Drive. Within its grassy borders, six curved benches encircled a sedate monument to honor military women. On a stone bench that was often damp and sometimes mossy, I sat and ate turkey sandwiches on sourdough and stared at your gleaming front door. I waited for the pediatrician to reappear. It had been months since destiny brought us together. That is, since I’d first seen him walking through the lobby we would one day call “ours.” Surely he wondered what had happened to me?
“Good girl.”
Lola didn’t move when a Chihuahua mix scampered past us. Clearly, those dogs will have sex with anything. Though her hackles spiked up, my girl didn’t lunge. Nonetheless, I gripped her harness with one hand. Just in case. Then I bent down to run my thumb along the silk of her ears. She shot a tetchy glance at me. Outside, Lola wanted nothing to do with affection. Passing dogs might think she’d gone soft.
While I watched your door, I got to know my future neighbors. “Beats” began her park run on your granite steps, securing her wireless earphones and tucking her cell into an inner pocket of her sports leggings. “Goldman Sachs” met his idling town car at the curb in slate gray suits and pink ties. “Cowgirl” was a dog walker with a model’s body who picked up and delivered purebreds. On hot days and cold, she wore Ugg boots and a curly-rimmed cowboy hat over her long blond hair. Whenever she passed Lola, she flicked a knowing glance at Lola’s long, slender legs. They were both members of that rarefied club.
I also saw “Benny’s Mommy.” She was the elderly woman I’d met when I first sat in your stunning lobby, on your antique bench, and listened to her Pomeranian bark until he was hoarse. Each time I saw her—and her yippy powder puff—my heart lurched because I’d first seen Blake, the pediatrician, when I first saw her. Back then, I regularly wore my Hamptons outfit to the park in case I ran into him. Once or twice a skirt, if I’d shaved my legs.
In those heady days of anticipation—when I was sure I’d bump into Blake around every corner—I spent twenty minutes at the magnified mirror applying sunscreen, foundation, brow pencil, shadow, mascara, blush, lipstick—blotted once, then reapplied. I packed only tidy fruits for lunch: apples, bananas, dried apricots. Nothing drippy or sticky. I avoided salads, especially spinach, which tended to deposit green flecks in my teeth. I ate nothing with poppy seeds, ever. With my back straight and my ankles crossed elegantly beneath the bench, I sat in the parklet across the street from you waiting for my life to change.
Eventually, the tableau I’d created withered like lilies after Memorial Day. Who had time for so much self-care? Plus, didn’t frequent showers strip the moisture from your skin? Why do laundry every week when Africans were thirsty? I mean, how selfish is that? Haircuts were expensive; color was ridiculous. Possibly carcinogenic! Removing mascara nightly was a pain. All that rubbing was probably ripping my eyelashes out. Why wear it at all? And my eyebrows? Well, I happened to see a headline on a beauty magazine in the subway: “Unruly Rules!” Seems a wild hedge over your eyes was in. Last time I took Paul to the doctor, I noticed that a makeup ad at the bus stop featured a model who practically had a unibrow.
My sunscreen ritual was all that remained from my beauty regimen. Rain or shine or snow. Though I suspected it was a scam. My hands—slathered in sunscreen daily—were as freckled as Lola’s long legs.
By the time the weather warmed again, I’d fallen back into a slipshod style: pulling on whatever I’d left on the chair or the floor the night before. Obviously, the pediatrician was in Yemen helping those poor babies. Or maybe in Turkey vaccinating refugees?
Then, one slightly cool day, I saw him.
I almost missed him entirely. He sat on an opposite bench, behind the monument in the little park across from your door. Had Lola not pulled me over to the grass so she could poop, I never would have circled around in search of a trash can for her laden baggie. Had the clementine sun not illuminated the reddish-gray curls that swirled above his open newspaper, I never would have been lured to look his way. Had fate itself not been in play, our paths would not have crossed again. But there he was. My savior.
He sat alone. No wedding ring. My chest was on fire.
“My apologies,” I said, as sweetly as Scarlett O’Hara herself. I do declare, my voice lilted the tiniest bit. The pediatrician lifted his head and regarded me with a quizzical look. “There’s no other dustbin,” I said, accidentally slipping into Britspeak.
“Ah.” He nodded and returned to reading his paper. I cursed myself for showing him how unattractive a person could look. I cringed at the stink of Lola’s load. How could I breach park etiquette by depositing a full poop baggie in a trash receptacle near an occupied bench? Unless, of course, it was the long stretch of grass opposite the crab apple grove inside Riverside Park. The section with only one trash can at the very end of it. What, they expected us to carry the dangling baggie all the way to Hippo Playground?
After Blake and I were married, I’d devote myself to volunteering around the neighborhood. After I secured more trash cans, I’d tackle the thornier problem of stopping people from dumping stale bread to feed the “birds.” Didn’t they know they were only fattening brown rats that can produce as many as two thousand descendants a year?
With an apologetic giggle, I dropped the swaying baggie into the only available receptacle and backed away, sensing that the pediatrician, my Blake, preferred women without childbearing hips even when they’d never used them for that specific purpose. When I got home, I told myself, I’d regroup. I’d rev up my resolve to do daily squats. Before it was too late. Along with pelvic-floor contractions so I wouldn’t feel like I had to pee all the time. I’d prepare for my new life as a doctor’s wife.
A bus galumphed down Riverside Drive. I used the distraction to settle myself and Lola on a bench closer to the pediatrician. Surreptitiously, I blew into my palm to check my breath. With a life in free fall, how can a person remember to floss? I sat up straight and tucked my sneakers beneath the bench in a finishing school sort of way. I smoothed my hair and bit color into my lips. I sucked in my stomach. Then, I waited for the pediatrician to curl down the corner of his newspaper, drink me in, cock an eyebrow and ask, “Don’t I know you?”
He licked his thumb and turned the newspaper page. I winced. After we were engaged, I’d lovingly remind him that there were more germs on an unwashed finger than there were on a toilet seat.
“Hmm. Do you?”
In my head, I practiced. Once he spotted me, I’d be coy. I’d flick my hair. I’d smile, but not overly so. No visible teeth. Not yet.
On that bench, beneath the leafy trees, I sat with a whimsical look. I waited for the pediatrician to say, “Seriously, I know you from somewhere.”
“Hmm. Do you?”
“I do.” I’d blush at how easily those two words danced off his tongue.
With a throaty chuckle, I’d chirp, “Of course you know me, silly. We’re neighbors. I walk my dog here every day.”
No. Lose the chirp. Too earnest.
“I live in a brownstone a few blocks
away.”
Better. Nicely vague. He needn’t know that I didn’t own the whole building. Not that my outfit made that likely. Dispassionately, I’d add, “I’m looking to relocate,” allowing him the freedom to brag about you—his beautiful building—and invite me over for a drink and an unobstructed view of the river. One floor below the penthouse.
Quietly, I sat. Waiting. Breathing shallowly to keep my muffin top from spilling farther over my waistband.
Admittedly, I was unsettled to see the pediatrician reading the New York Post. It ran “health” pieces like the one about a man who had his penis cut off after it got stuck in a bottle. Instead of simply breaking the bottle and releasing himself, he left it attached for four days until his penis died of necrosis. The only reason I saw the story at all was because Anita e-mailed it to me under the subject line, “Necessary birth control.” She doesn’t have kids, either, only her childlessness is by choice.
Unlike the New York Times, my morning obsession, the Post ran daily horoscopes and celebrity gossip. Its cover headlines were quips in giant type, like “Putin on the Pressure” about our problems with Russia or “You May Now Cuss the Bride” about a brawl at a lavish wedding. Perhaps the pediatrician was researching a cure for attention deficit disorder? Maybe he read every newspaper in the city every day to avoid living in an elitist bubble. I swiveled my neck and smized in his direction. I smiled with my eyes. I let him know I wasn’t one to judge. Often, I watched BBC World News America for an alternative point of view.
The pediatrician didn’t look up. He licked his thumb again and turned another page. After swallowing a wave of disgust, I felt a flush of pride that my future husband was a speed reader. I pictured the stack of nonfiction hardcovers on his bedside table that he devoured nightly while propped up on goose-down pillows in his king-sized bed with a Duxiana mattress. The expensive mattress would be a thank-you gift from Doctors Without Borders. One he initially refused to accept. Though finally, humbly, with his hands pressed together Namaste-style, he’d tear up at their thoughtfulness. His tireless work in Syria had strained his back.
