Soren turned on the kitchen radio. He tuned it away from NPR to a station that played classic rock, the songs that everyone knows. In his pleasant, well-trained voice, he sang along. Soren did have his talents, even if he didn’t put them to practical use.
Tommy dozed, waking when Soren called out, “Chow’s on, kids!” Outside, night had fallen—or late afternoon—and Tommy could see the lights in the studio window. She watched them flick off, one and two and three.
—
Had she not waited for another month, things might have turned out differently. But even if Morty’s eruptions of tearful sorrow seemed to cease after a few days, she wanted to give him a respectful margin of time. Later, she would look back and realize that the change in the air wasn’t the residue of grief—or not that grief. She did notice that things were somehow different between Morty and Soren, that she no longer heard them fighting, that they planned no parties, that Soren slept later than usual—and that, when he returned from the city, he had nothing to report. He seemed glum, at times even listless—not his usual prickly, prowling self. But weren’t these changes all effects of Frieda’s death? Even Soren had to feel Morty’s loss.
She decided that she would give her notice after Thanksgiving, offer to stay through February if he liked. Thanksgiving was always a crush. Morty reserved all six rooms at the Chanticleer, the one good bed-and-breakfast in the area, and filled them with a varying group of single or child-free friends from the city, those who looked forward to spending the holiday traipsing through dead leaves and drinking spiked cider by a radiant fire in an underheated country house. The past few years, Soren had cajoled everyone into playing charades. To witness this game played by a group of people who, for the most part, spent their lives crafting stories for children was supremely entertaining. Tommy would laugh so hard that she awoke the next morning feeling as if she might have cracked a rib.
A week beforehand, over breakfast, Tommy asked Morty when he wanted to sit down and plan the menu. They liked to change up the side dishes and make one new, adventuresome pie. “I read a recipe for a Sicilian date pie,” she suggested. “And of course I’ll make the plum.”
Morty stared over her shoulder out the window above the sink.
“Earth to Morty.” She waved.
He looked at her and smiled briefly.
“I ordered the usual gargantuan turkey,” she said.
“Already?”
“The farm was written up on Martha’s website last year. If you don’t order weeks in advance now, you’re in trouble.”
He nodded. “The thing is, I’ve decided we should go low key this year.”
“Okay.” She waited. “Then we’ll freeze a month’s worth of soup. I’ll learn to make tetrazzini.”
“Can you cancel the rooms? I think it’s not too late.”
“All of them?”
He shrugged.
“Morty?”
“I’ve been working hard on this book,” he said. “I need the holiday to be an actual holiday.”
How silly she had been to underestimate the fallout of his losing Frieda. “Of course. But are you saying…just the three of us?”
“Invite your dad,” he said. “He’s missed the last couple of years. Why is that? Let’s get him a driver if your brother won’t come.”
“I’m not sure he’s up for it, but I’ll see.” Tommy hadn’t told Morty that the large, loud gatherings were too arduous for her father, that he preferred being home in Brooklyn. Dani always had a girlfriend willing to pitch in, and there was a widow next door who flirted shamelessly, teasing out Dad’s dormant self, if just for the day.
“Or you could go in and be there for a change. I’m selfish, wanting you here every year. Soren and I could use a quiet weekend—whether he knows it or not.”
“You can’t play charades with two people.”
Morty laughed; he sounded so weary. “And thank God for that. Christ, do I hate that game. I always end up pulling or twisting something.”
“You just can’t stand it when you lose.”
“Not true, and look who’s talking.”
How could she tell him that it would be her last Thanksgiving there, at least living there? She realized that the moment had come, a week early. She told him there was something she needed to tell him.
Instantly, Morty looked scared. “No bad news,” he said. “Please.”
Tommy laughed nervously. “Well, I can’t say for sure if you’ll see it as bad or good—not all good—but…so I’ve decided it’s time to”—the problem was, she hadn’t yet planned her announcement—“time to spread my wings.”
“Wings?” he said, frowning. “What?”
“Morty, I don’t even want to say out loud how many years I’ve worked for you. I mean, it’s a testament to how much I’ve loved it. It’s been my life. You—your work—”
“What are you saying? Do you need a sabbatical? God knows I’ve never thought to give you real, decent time off. Paid, of course!”
“No, no, it’s not that. I’m the one who’s hardly taken time off. Because we went on amazing trips that felt like vacations—and there were weeks I probably put in ten hours tops.”
“Stop talking in the past tense, Tommy.” Morty was now sitting up quite straight, and he looked far unhappier than she had expected.
“Morty, don’t you think a change would be good for both of us?”
“No!” he exclaimed. “I am not a believer in change for its own sake. And now, Tommy, now is not a good time.”
She leaned forward, uncertain what might happen if she reached across the table to touch him. But she did. “What if it’s a good time for me?”
Tommy had seen Morty in physical pain, and she had seen him tearful, and she had seen him angry, even petulant and spiteful, but his reaction to her touch was nearly volcanic. He stood up, knocking his chair to the floor, and shouted, “You cannot desert me now! You can’t! I can’t tell you why, but you can’t. Not now.”
Tommy was speechless. “Morty,” she finally said. “Morty, do you need to think about this? Or can you sit down and—”
“No.” He shook his head vehemently.
“No, you don’t need to think, or—”
“No.” He took a deep, jagged breath, righted the chair, and sat down.
“Morty, I’ve never felt as if you thought you owned me, and I know you have good reason to assume I’m here forever, but the thing is—”
“The thing is,” he interrupted. He stood up abruptly again and went through the swinging door into the rest of the house.
Before she could decide what to do, he came back and sat down again.
“The thing is,” he said, “Soren is very ill.”
Tommy absorbed this. Soren did not seem “very ill.” She tried to capture Morty’s eyes, but he wouldn’t meet her stare. She could only hope she was wrong when she said, “Are you telling me Soren has AIDS?”
Morty focused on his hands, clasped tightly on the table.
“When, Morty?”
Still he said nothing.
“How long have you known?” Her mind careened down all the predictable alleys at once, but first, all she cared about was whether Morty, too, was sick. This she couldn’t bear to ask. “How long?”
“Two weeks,” said Morty. “I think he’s known, or suspected, for months. I made him get tested. And I am not, not supposed to tell anybody. Least of all you.”
“Least of all?” said Tommy. She heard herself make a sound that was angry. She was angry. “Morty, I’ve put up with Soren’s attitude, his freeloading, his…shit for years now, so forgive me if—”
“Are you leaving because of Soren?”
“No,” she said. “But what if I said yes?”
“I don’t know. All I know, Tommy, is that I will absolutely collapse if you leave now. I can’t be alone with this. I’m a coward, okay, but if you go…”
I’ll have blood on my hands, she might have said. She wanted to hear wha
t he would say instead. She stared at him, at his pleading expression, and she was shocked at how unmoved she felt.
“You are irreplaceable,” he said. “I love you in a way that is totally selfish and totally unfair to you, Tommy, but if you have to leave me, please give me more time. Please just…”
“Morty, I love you, too, but I am not irreplaceable.”
“Time, money, a house of your own, whatever you need—”
“Morty!” she cried. “Stop it! I have to think. Please let me think.”
What she needed, she realized, was someone to talk to. But other than Dani, there was no one she could call on outside the comfortable circle of Morty’s life—now, in part, her own.
“You won’t be a nurse,” he said, “I promise.”
“Is he that sick? He seems all right.”
“His counts are terrible. He’s lost a lot of weight.”
Had she failed to notice this? She paid as little attention to Soren as she had to.
“He’s been in denial, and obviously I have, too.”
“Morty? I don’t want to talk about Soren.”
“I know.”
“I’m so sorry. I really am. I don’t want to sound glib, but I’ve been reading that there’s a new class of drugs and that—”
“We can’t talk about this.”
She should have had a plan in place; that was her mistake. And yet even if she had, would she have turned her back on Morty? A craven thought occurred to her.
If Soren died, there would be no more Soren.
“If I stay,” she said, “Soren has to know I know. He has to understand that I should know. He’s never thought of me as more than your servant, has he?”
“That’s not true! Soren is insecure. He’s jealous of you.”
“Jesus, I said I wouldn’t talk about Soren.” She stood. “So I have to go think. I have to get away from you and I have to think.”
“Go wherever you have to go. Just please—”
“Morty.”
“Come back.”
“Stop. Please.”
—
It took Tommy nearly a month to confront Morty—to corner him, almost literally, when she took his mail to the studio one afternoon.
He was hunched at the computer, typing. He swiveled around on the stool to take the packet of envelopes. He laid it on the counter, then stood up to stretch. “My idiot back,” he muttered, arching to rub the base of his spine.
“You’re getting too old to be sitting on a stool all day,” said Tommy.
“Old habits keep me superstitious. And disciplined.”
“They do not keep you young.”
“I’m honing in on sixty, and I’m not going to pretend it’s the new forty. Let nobody tell you otherwise; even forty’s an age of decay.” He sighed.
There followed one of the long pauses that Tommy, until a few weeks earlier, had seen as natural between them. But since learning about Soren’s diagnosis, she dreaded some new unhappy bulletin each time their exchanges faltered toward silence.
“Can I ask about you, your health, your…status? Morty?”
His hand dropped from his back; he faced her. “Status? My…social status? Or are you referring to the fact that I am physically shrinking?”
“Morty, don’t fool with me.”
“I’m not fooling with you, Tommy.”
“You are belittling me. Talk about the elephant in the room. This is the brontosaurus.”
“Apatosaurus,” Morty said gently.
“Morty, am I going to lose you? Forgive me if I care less about Soren.”
“Tommy, I’ll be fine.”
“Don’t patronize me. Were you tested?”
“I’ll go get the fucking test, Tommy, but don’t push me about it.”
“I understand if you’re afraid the news might not be good, but even if—”
“Astute of you! Who wouldn’t dread the ‘news’?”
“So you’re just going to assume the worst.”
He swept an arm to take in the room. “Where do you think you are, Happy Outlook Headquarters?”
Where did she think she was? She glanced at the computer screen, filled with lines of text: words telling a story about three children with cancer. She turned away.
“I’m sorry. I can only face so much drama at once.”
“Right,” she said. “So just go back to work. Your personal rabbit hole. No wonder you’re so crazy for Alice.”
He reached to take her arm, hold her in place. “Tommy, I have no significant secrets from you.”
“So do it. Please. Get tested.”
Three months later, Tommy returned from shopping to find a letter, on Morty’s doctor’s letterhead, tucked between the toaster and the blender. It told Morty that his second test had affirmed the results of the first: he was free of the virus. Morty had scrawled at the bottom, Lucky me, the sarcasm evident to anyone who knew him.
The year following Frieda’s death and Soren’s diagnosis was a hushed time—Soren often behaved as if he’d been tranquilized (perhaps he was)—and a diligent time. Morty told Tommy to turn down all speaking requests. He worked like a dervish to finish the first novel about the three teenagers whom he called the Inseparables, titling it, simply, Diagnosis. Sometimes, after dinner, he would read a chapter out loud to Tommy and Soren. Soren had finally learned to listen, or it looked that way. His silences felt ominous to Tommy; she almost missed his tempestuous outbursts.
For a couple of seasons, Morty insisted on cooking dinner. The parties dwindled to one every two months or so, and they were small—six dinner guests at most. Had she not known why the volume of their domestic life had been turned down again, Tommy would have found the change entirely pleasant.
But because she did know, she had the eerie sensation that they were waiting for something: for Soren—who now took a dozen different pills and tinctures, though Tommy knew this only through emptying the bathroom trash—to turn a corner one way or the other.
She started spending most weekends with her father, whose memory, like old leather, grew less and less supple, increasingly riddled with cracks and fissures. Dani had moved in with his latest girlfriend, out in Astoria, and worked as a bike messenger for a lofty Park Avenue bank.
Diagnosis came out in 1997. It claimed the covers of Publishers Weekly and Library Journal. The reviews were strewn with stars and superlatives. Suddenly, Tommy had little time for her father, even less to think (or not think) about Soren. Morty agreed to a major tour; Tommy, as usual, went along. Every night, from whatever suite they shared, Morty called home to speak with Soren. Their relationship had become more like that of a father and son, Morty’s voice ranging from tender to tendentious. Sometimes, just to escape the unavoidable eavesdropping, Tommy left the suite with a book and read in the lobby or drank a cup of tea at the bar.
Soren complained of being too lonely at the house, and seeking the company of friends was a trial, since venturing in and out of the city on his own exhausted him now. He said he felt strong enough to fly, however, so Morty decided to bring him along to a festival in Aspen. “We’ll stay on a few days after and give ourselves a little vacation,” Morty promised. He splurged on the largest suite in an old hotel with high ceilings, deep fireplaces, and imperious portraits of cattle barons. A collection of antique western saddles stood in for barstools at one of the hotel’s three restaurants.
But tucked away beneath four floors of faux-frontier decor was the sort of well-staffed spa that every expensive hotel in the civilized world was now obliged to provide for its guests. And this was precisely what Morty had in mind—that Soren would enjoy being lathered and massaged and pumiced while he and Tommy talked up the launch of his trilogy and mingled with authors of everything from diet manuals to biographies of presidents and kings.
For two days, Soren was happy—happy enough. He ate well, and the altitude, which gave Tommy a headache unless she drank vast quantities of water, didn’t bother him. On the third m
orning, over another early breakfast, Morty looked up from his eggs and said to Tommy, “Soren’s getting cabin fever. He needs to go out and do something. I’m not sure what.”
“I think most of the tourists here go on hikes,” Tommy said. “Or shop for chaps.”
“Hiking is not going to work for Soren. As for the chaps…” Morty, clearly envisioning his lover in chaps, briefly held his napkin over his face.
Tommy said quickly, “Then…”
“I thought there would be more culture here. Museums. Georgia O’Keeffe. Custer’s Last Stand. That sort of thing.”
“O’Keeffe is New Mexico. And Soren going out to contemplate Custer’s Last Stand? How cruel would…” She stopped midsentence.
Morty regarded her steadily, holding his toast midway to his mouth.
“Are you fishing?” she said.
“Fishing?”
“Morty. Come on. You want me to entertain him, don’t you.”
He sighed. “I don’t know. He’s neither well nor seriously unwell. I never imagined this. This long…limbo we’ve been in.”
Tommy knew what Morty was implying: that after they had learned the news, after he had sat beside Soren in several doctors’ offices (consultations about which Tommy had asked very little), Morty assumed Soren would either get better—that the brand-new “cocktails” would give him a second chance at normal life—or die. Instead, he had become a dependent, not just financially but physically, emotionally.
“There’s the gondola,” said Tommy. “To the top of the mountain.”
Morty’s response was an unspoken plea, just a look.
“Okay,” she said. “You don’t really need me with you today. You have two radio interviews, both by phone, and you’re signing stock for distributors.” She looked at her agenda. “Gold Rush Salon, anytime from noon to three.”
“Thank you,” said Morty. “We’ll try that nice Italian place for dinner. The one you saw on that side street.”