I thought about when Laura went with Richard to hear about what was wrong with him. I knew they’d been told in his doctor’s office, with its pale colors and diplomas on the wall and pictures of the doctor’s children tanned and smiling. I saw them hearing the news and then getting back in their car, very different people from the ones who’d left it an hour ago. They’d locked their doors. Things would never be the same. They’d buckled their seat belts. Things would never be the same. What anguish there is in knowing that things will really never be the same! Once, when my daughter was seven, I came into her room to tell her dinner was ready. She was standing at her window, looking out at the sunset. “Time to eat,” I said. And she said, not turning around, “There will never be another day exactly like this one ever, ever again.” I only swallowed, full of a mother’s regret for the necessary lessons of childhood. I only said, “It’s fried chicken, honey. Wash up.”
“Who is it?” I heard Richard yell. Laura stood, ground out her cigarette. “Wait here,” she told me. She went into the bedroom and I heard her say, “It’s the nurse. The one who came to the hospital to see you yesterday.” There was a silence then, and Laura came out and nodded. I wasn’t sure, suddenly, and I stood there until she said, “Go ahead. He’s waiting.”
The bedroom was dark, filled with bookshelves. The one over Richard’s head held hardback volumes about theater. I looked at them quickly, then at him. “Are you the one interested in theater?”
His look was one of contempt and astonishment mixed. He was lying on a bed that had been neatly made. There was a beautiful quilt, rose colors and greens, folded back at his feet. He pulled up his T-shirt to reveal his dressing. “Do it,” he said.
“Well, I need to ask you some questions first. I have to take this … sort of … health history.” In my armpits, I felt the deep tickle of perspiration starting. I opened my bag to pull out his chart.
“I’m dying,” he said. He meant that was all I needed to know.
I looked at him. “I know. And I need to tell you that I don’t have any particular way of being about that, Richard. I know it’s unfair what’s happened to you. I know you have a lot of pain. We can talk about it, if you want to. But I come in here and I see your books and my inclination is to try to get to know other parts of you. There are still other parts to you.”
He looked around me, yelled, “Laura!” She came into the room and he gestured angrily toward me. “Get her out of here.”
She sighed. “Richard—”
“Get her the fuck out.”
“Fine,” she said. “Then I’ll do your dressing.”
“No, you won’t.” He struggled to sit up.
“Look,” I said. “I’ll do it. I’m sorry, Richard, if I offended you. I’ll do your dressing and that’s all for today, okay? I’ll just do it and go. All right?”
He sat, swaying slightly from side to side, as though remembering a dance. I noticed the scent of lilacs coming through the open bedroom window, that bold, little girls’ perfume smell. I regretted myself, my too rapid move toward an unearned intimacy. After a moment, though, Richard lay back down, closed his eyes, and pulled up his shirt. I nodded at Laura, and she stood back, leaned against the doorjamb. I worked quickly, quietly. I finished in seven minutes. I said, “I’ll see you tomorrow, same time,” and left the bedroom.
Laura followed me to the front door. “I’m sorry. He’s not himself.”
“Oh well, how can he be?”
She smiled, a weary thing. “You know, three weeks ago, he was jogging every day. Five miles. He did real well for a whole year after he was diagnosed. But all of a sudden …” She looked down, then raised her head back up. “This shouldn’t be a surprise. But it is anyway. I feel like I’m going crazy. I really feel crazy.” She opened the door, sighed quietly. “See you tomorrow.”
I walked down the steps. They creaked. And I thought, Richard won’t hear this anymore. He’ll never walk down these steps again. But I was wrong.
Ida Brazinsky lived with her boyfriend, Frankie, in a falling-down duplex in Chelsea. Most of the time they sat at the kitchen table watching a tiny black-and-white TV and drinking whiskey. I knew Ida was seventy-four, and I put Frankie at several years older, although when people set about ruining themselves at an early age, it’s hard to tell. I’d stopped at a convenience store for something quick to eat, and the only thing that looked decent was a shrimp cocktail—the kind in a little glass, with a white under-the-sea motif painted on the sides. I asked Ida for a church key and a fork, so I could eat before I examined her. “Oh, sure,” she said, and shuffled over to where she kept the silverware. I saw something streak out of the way of the light when she opened the drawer. I wanted to ask her if I could rinse the things off before I used them, but I didn’t want to hurt her feelings. I needn’t have worried—Ida washed them off herself, muttering, “Goddamn roaches!” Then she handed the utensils to me.
“Take your time,” she said kindly, and Frankie roared, “Pull up a chair, for Christ’s sake!” He was already drunk, he leaned uncertainly toward the left. He watched me eat. I smiled at him a little after every bite.
Wrestling was on, two impossible-sized men circled each other like dogs intent on an introduction. Ida was glued to the action. “I love that one,” she said, pointing. “He’s my boyfriend.” She fingered the pink foam-rubber roller above her ear. This got Frankie’s attention for a moment. “I’m your goddamn boyfriend!” he said. “I’m the one sits here with you every goddamned day!”
“Oh, Frankie.” Ida smiled and waved her hand at him in a way that was—you could see it—flirtatious. And she had her head down, blushing a little. I have admiration for people who can take tenderness where they find it. I excused myself and went to wash my hands in Ida’s bathroom. As usual, she had laundry hanging to dry on a wooden rack that she kept in the tub. There were several pairs of her underwear, all the size of sails, and there were some of Frankie’s, too, stained hopelessly but draped with care next to hers. Sometimes the door to Ida’s bedroom was open and I would see that the covers were pulled back, and I’d think about them sleeping together, uttering boozy, outrageous words of love to each other. I have to say this: I think Ida was happy.
When I came back to the table, Frankie was holding my empty shrimp cocktail glass, turning it around and around. He looked up at me, one eye squinted against the brightness coming from the window. “Can I have this?”
Ida inhaled sharply. “Frankie! That’s a fancy glass! I’m sure she wants it for herself!”
“Oh, no!” I said, and then, seeing their two sets of eyes, blue and trusting, on me, I said, “I mean, yes, it is a very nice glass. It’s perfect for juice in the morning. But I have so many already, and I’d be pleased for you to have that one.”
“Well …,” Ida said doubtfully.
Frankie leaned onto the table, then pulled himself up. “I’ll wash it real good,” he said. “Then I’ll let my girl have a drink out of it.”
I pulled my stethoscope out of my bag. “Let me listen,” I told Ida, and she pulled down the neckline of her faded floral house-dress. She had doused herself with dusting powder, a well-intentioned gesture that had failed.
“What’s it singing today?” Ida asked, winking, smiling at me. Her dentures were out. I hoped she hadn’t lost them again.
“It’s singing ‘Peg o’ My Heart,’ ” I told her. “Sounds good. Your heart rate is fine, Ida. Slow and regular. Real good. You’ve been taking your pills, haven’t you?”
“I make her!” Frankie said. “I remind her every morning!”
“He does,” Ida said. “The old fart.”
I listened to Ida’s lungs, felt her ankles for swelling, checked her blood pressure. Then I left her and Frankie watching wrestling and sharing Four Roses out of the shrimp cocktail glass. They were yelling at the blond man on the screen for using an illegal hold. “That ref is fucking blind!” Frankie said, and Ida agreed with him. “Fucking blind,” she said, and
took a ladylike sip.
That night when my husband and I were in bed, I told him about visiting Richard. “I feel like I blew it,” I said. “I pushed him too hard. He’s not ready to talk to me.”
“I don’t know why you think you need to get so involved,” John said. “I’m sure he has people he talks to. Why does he have to open up to you?”
“I just … I feel like I do a better job if I know someone.”
“How much time does he have left?”
“His doctor thinks a couple of weeks, maybe.”
He nodded. “So forget the psychotherapy. Just go and do what you’re supposed to do.”
“It’s not psychotherapy.” I turned out my light, turned on my side, away from him.
“Well, what would you call it? What is it, then?”
I breathed in, closed my eyes. “I don’t know. I just need to see him. To know him as something more than a patient with cancer of the pancreas who’s dying.”
“Why?”
I turned toward him, looked at him. “You know what? I have been married to you for fifteen years. And sometimes I think, Who the hell are you?”
He turned out his light, turned over.
“Good night,” I said.
Nothing.
Richard was up, sitting on the sofa and watching television. He nodded at me when I came in the room. “Ready?” I asked.
“In a minute.” He leaned back, picked up the remote, and turned off the television. “What’s your name, again?”
“Abby.”
“Abby.” He stared at me unsteadily I realized he was stoned. “You know what Abby means in Hebrew?”
“No.”
“Means ‘sweet refuge.’ ” He said it slowly, nearly seductively, watching my face.
I smiled. Nodded. “Uh-huh.”
“Did you know that, Abby? Did you know that you mean ‘sweet refuge’?”
“No,” I said. “That’s interesting. But let’s talk about you. How are you feeling?”
“Oh, fine,” he said. “And you?”
Laura came out of the bedroom, sat on the sofa beside him. “Cut it out, Richard. Give her a break. Jesus.”
He looked at her. “Laura. Know what Laura means in Hebrew?”
“No.”
He slowly sat up straight. “Me neither. Think I’ll have time to find out? I don’t think I’ll have time to find out.”
“He had to turn up the morphine pump,” Laura said. “He was having a lot of pain last night.”
I looked at him. He shrugged. “I tried to eat, is why.”
“No good, huh?” I said.
“No good. No, I can’t eat.” He stared into space, seeing something. “I can’t eat anymore.” He sat unmoving then, lost to his own thoughts. Half a minute passed, maybe more.
Finally, “Could I take a look at your dressing?” I asked.
Laura took his arm, pulled him up. “Come on, Richard.”
He shook her off. “I can do it, goddamnit, I’m going.” He turned toward me. “Come on, sweet refuge. Save me.”
He lay down on the bed, and I started loosening the tape around the edges of his dressing. “I wanted some ribs,” he said.
“Pardon?” My voice was muffled, coming from behind the mask I wore.
“I wanted some barbecued ribs, you know, all overdone and smoky and falling off the bone. I ate about half of one, and oh, man …”
I cleaned off the insertion site. No drainage, no redness, no swelling.
“I threw it all up, goddamnit. And then I got this pain. Jesus!” He looked at me. “I can have as much morphine as I want, right?”
I nodded. “We’ll keep you comfortable, Richard.”
“You promise, right?”
“I promise.” Here was what I’d been waiting for. An opening. A chance to provide some real comfort. I finished taping his new dressing on.
“You know what, Abby?”
His eyes were so weary. I laid my hand on his shoulder, pulled off my mask. “What?” I asked softly. I could stay for a long time. He was my last appointment for the day. I sat on the bed beside him.
“You can’t promise shit.”
I sat still.
“You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”
I swallowed, stood up. “I’ll do my best to keep you comfortable, Richard.”
“That’s better,” he said. “Now say, ‘But I have no idea how all this is going to go down.’ ”
I said nothing. He raised his eyebrows at me. “Done for the day?”
“Is there anything else you’d like me to do?”
“Yeah. Leave.”
I left.
When I arrived at Ida’s, I rang the doorbell and heard a faint “Come in.” I opened the door but ran into something that prevented its opening fully.
“Ida?” I called. “The door’s blocked.”
“Oh! Just a minute.”
I stood on the front porch, waiting. I heard a screen door bang, and saw that the woman who lived next door had come out to survey me, moving her head from side to side in short, reptilian jerks. She was a thin black woman with wiry white hair, wearing a housecoat and fuzzy slippers and huge glasses on a beaded chain. Her hands were on her hips and she was scowling furiously. “You that nurse?”
“Yes. I’m Abby.”
“I know.”
I smiled at her and for a moment she stopped scowling. But then her face grew fierce again and she pointed her finger at me. “I’m ’on tell you something. You lucky to be alive!”
“Well.… Yes.”
“Das what I said!”
“And how are you today, Mrs. Johnson?”
“Don’t be fooling with me, now.”
“I’m not.”
“All right, then.” She closed her door at the same time that Ida opened hers. “Frankie’s got an engine in here,” she said. “He’s going to fix it up and the guy’s going to pay him a lot of money for it, and then we’re going out for a steak dinner.”
I stepped past a greasy engine laid out on newspaper.
Frankie, sitting at the table with his coffee cup of what was probably whiskey, said, “And what else?”
“Baked potato.”
“And …?”
“Cheesecake!” she said, and then looked quickly over at me. “I can cheat sometimes. Sometimes I can just cheat.”
I said nothing. What the hell, I was thinking. We’re all lucky to be alive.
Toward the end of the week, Richard was watching an old black-and-white movie when I arrived. A man and a woman, both wearing huge shoulder pads, were standing in an office pretending to talk business, but mostly making eyes at each other. Richard nodded at me in a way that was almost friendly. “How are you?” I asked, and then instantly regretted saying something he’d surely use against me.
But he only stood up and said, “A little better, actually. I’ve been able to get around the apartment pretty good today.”
He headed for the bedroom and passed Laura, coming out. She was adjusting a brightly colored scarf around her neck. “Gotta go to work,” she said. “But could I talk to you for just a minute first?”
We went into the kitchen and Laura said, in a whisper, “I think he’s losing it.”
“What do you mean?”
“I think he’s getting … I don’t know, confused. He talks about food all the time. He says that’s the worst thing, that he can’t eat. He never cared about eating before. But now he stares at food commercials on television like he’s seeing a ghost. He’s just … mesmerized by them. And then he wants me to eat for him. Like he’ll see something on TV and I’ll have to go and get it. Then I have to sit down and eat it in front of him, and he keeps saying, “What’s it feel like? How does it taste?” She laughed a little, embarrassed.
“Well,” I said, “are you … uncomfortable doing that for him?”
She stared at me for a long moment. Then she said, “I do anything Richard asks me to. It’s not eating in f
ront of him that bothers me. It’s just … I’m worried about his mind. I mean, is he going to go crazy before he dies?”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “I don’t know. But I don’t think so. There’s no reason for him to.”
She looked at me.
“I mean physiologically.”
“Right,” she said.
I put Richard’s new dressing on, checked on his equipment, and prepared to leave. “Wait,” he said when I picked up my bag.
“Yes?”
“Have you got a minute?”
I hesitated, then put down my bag. “Sure.”
He sighed, looked away from me, out the window. “I wanted to tell you that I’m sorry about the way I was to you. I’m not like that, really.”
“I know, Richard.”
He nodded, looked down, and when he looked up again, I saw tears in his eyes. “I was thinking today about what’s going to happen to me after I.… You know. I was thinking about being in the ground.”
“Uh-huh.” I felt something like fear come into me, sit down in my stomach.
“It’s just so weird, you know. That you won’t be.”
“Yes.”
He wiped his eyes. “Well, I just wanted to tell you that it’s not you I’m mad at.”
“I know that.”
“You’ll be here tomorrow, right?”
“Eleven o’clock.”
“Okay.” He nodded. “Okay.”
He walked me to the door, shut it softly behind me. I heard the stereo come on as I walked down the steps. Billie Holiday. “Rocky Mountain Blues.”
He began wanting me to stay for at least an hour a day. I told my agency that I wanted to have just him as a patient, and they gave Ida to another nurse and took me off the available list for the moment. I didn’t tell my husband—he would complain about the income we’d lose. I’d deal with that later if I had to. Perhaps I’d never have to tell him at all.