“Dad?” Trudy put a hand on my shoulder. “Dad, would you sit back down for a second?”
I felt her fingers on my wrist, checking my pulse.
“Daughter, there’s nothing wrong with me. I’m sharing a dream.”
Having forced me to sit, she sat beside me again. “Okay, Dad. Finish the dream. You’re looking a little pale, that’s all.”
“Your grandmother told me to calm down because she had something to tell us. She said, ‘Trudy always passed her exams. She passed with flying colors. She was at the top of her class.’ I hadn’t seen my mother look so happy in ages.”
Trudy sighed. “I don’t have to be Dr. Freud to interpret this one,” she said. “Let me tell you right now that Sarah is in the best possible hands.”
“As if I thought otherwise.” Hastily, I wiped my eyes.
“I’m not just bragging. I’m not the only one treating her. I’m sorry, Dad, but I really have to go. Chantal has paged me three times already. Where are you going now? I want you to take it easy.”
“Meeting Norval at the museum. He said he’s in the mood for Monet. Haystacks. Water lilies. France without the French.”
“Good idea,” said Trudy. She spread a hand against my back and urged me gently down the hall, up from the underworld, back toward the sunlit region of benignly, symmetrically flourishing cells.
“I suspect we married our wives for the same reason,” I said, breaking our comfortable silence. “Or have I mentioned this theory before?”
Norval laughed. “Can’t remember. Tell me again.”
“Camouflage.”
He frowned at me, taking mock offense. “We stand out too much when we’re on our own? Now that’s a good one.”
“Quite the opposite,” I said. “We risk invisibility without a colorful, earthy woman tethering us to the here and now. The practicalities and limitations.”
We stood before a glass case displaying three exquisitely vibrant kimonos. We’d had our fill of Parisian nudes, blue cathedrals, and the bourgeois blossoms of Giverny. So we’d paused for lunch in the café (a glass of Burgundy each), then wandered on sleepy autopilot into the Far East. Long ago, Poppy and Helena had agreed on the kimonos as their favorite collection at the museum.
Norval leaned closer to the case to read the label describing the kimono swimming with koi, orange and gold on silvery, striated blue. I could imagine what he was thinking: that if this were so, what had kept me anchored all those years since Poppy’s death?
“You know,” I said, “for most of my life, I’ve fancied myself a passenger on a train as it moves along through various landscapes. Some are repeated, some are unique—some ugly, some magnificent. But now … now I feel as if I’m a fixed point in the landscape itself, the trains passing me by. Each one faster than the one before.”
“That’s rather maudlin. So what sort of landscape are you?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea,” I said. “A field. Overgrown and weedy.”
“Or a very large, gnarled tree.”
“Hollow and half rotted.”
“Inhabited by wild creatures of a dozen species.”
“A zoo.”
“A healthy ecosystem.”
I turned to my old friend. “Norval, we are sounding perilously gay.”
He put a restraining hand on my shoulder. “You wish.”
“We shouldn’t have had that wine.”
“Nonsense. We deserved it.”
We left the kimonos behind. “Speaking of gnarled trees, where is that Chinese scholar’s room?” I said. “Do you remember that exhibit?”
Norval led us onward, pretending to know the way.
When we met that morning, in the museum lobby, he had asked me just enough about Sarah’s predicament to know that I needed a distraction, not a confidant. Helena would be annoyed, like all wives who want the most dire, intimate news, who can’t imagine what else two friends would discuss in the middle of a crisis. As we meandered through hallways, across centuries and oceans, I put my hands in the pockets of my coat. The fingers of my right hand encountered the three foil-wrapped candies. I tumbled them gently, reminding myself to return them to Sarah when I picked her up.
Norval and I became friends during the temptestuous days in the spring of 1969. I was new to Reference; Norval, five years older than I, was already a seasoned, elite bibliographer. We’d crossed paths in the stacks, but we’d had no reason to converse. And then came the night of the bonfires and the chanting, the Yard filled with angry students clamoring for Afro-American studies—or using that cause as a colorful reason to voice their double discontent: that of any young person lusting for change in the stodgy status quo and that of Americans who’d had enough of the political malevolence that hung about us all like a dank, stifling fog. Partly out of devotion, partly out of curiosity and a sense of youthful sport—wanting to be part of whatever “action” might play out—Norval and I joined the tweedy, professorial group who decided to guard the library round the clock against the possible incursion of the youthful barbarians. They would not burn the books or deface the Sargent murals; we would protect these musty treasures with our very flesh!
Norval had a flask of some beastly fruited brandy that he shared with me and the one other staff member who stayed up that night. The professors formed their own vigil: a bow-tied brigade including a handful of liberal luminaries. That was also the spring when Norval met Helena, a graduate student in Slavic studies. Poppy and I loved her the moment she set foot in our kitchen.
So I felt a piercing sense of déjà vu when, the first time I saw Norval after Thanksgiving, he told me that Helena was “tickled pink” about Sarah. She couldn’t wait for an occasion when the four of us might share a luxurious meal; maybe Sarah would drag me from my lair just long enough to get me up to Vermont for a weekend. Of course, her little boy was welcome, too.
But neither Helena nor her husband had seen Sarah in the two months since that holiday. Too much had happened. And too much, I could see, had yet to happen.
Rico referred to the cancer and the proliferating symptoms of its treatment as “Mommy’s illness.” He uttered this noun so fastidiously that I wondered if he knew what it actually meant. It might have been synonymous with window or dog or automobile. “Mommy’s illness is making her stay home today.” “Mommy has a doctor ’pointment for her illness.” “I’m going to Gus’s house tomorrow so Mommy can rest her illness.”
I had yet to meet this cousin of Sarah’s, and I had grown irritated that she did not seem to trust me alone with Rico. “For God’s sake, I’m the retiree here, the one who’s free to watch soaps or drink scotch all day without letting down a soul. Make me useful!” I ranted to Sarah the week after her first infusion.
“I don’t farm Rico out to people just to help them feel useful, Percy,” she said. “And it’s not that I don’t trust you. It’s just that Rico’s known Gus forever. And honestly, you without a purpose?” At least she smiled.
Sarah allowed me to drive her into the city and pick her up after each of her treatments, but still she would not let me keep her company inside what she called “the suite.” (I kept forgetting to chide my daughter about the irony in that pun.) She did not even like me to linger in the waiting room and read. For several hours, sometimes most of a day, I would find diversion of one sort or another. I had now acquired one of those umbilical cell phones, simply so that Sarah could call me when she knew she was about to be released.
In keeping with the stubborn distance she now maintained, she turned down my offer to let her move in with me, at least for the first four cycles, during which she would, according to Trudy, suffer the worst side effects. I offered her Trudy’s old bedroom. Rico could stay in Clover’s room; why, he could roll out of bed right into his classroom. How perfect was that?
“You’re so generous,” she said, “but Rico needs to be at the home he knows. And so do I. Whenever I have the energy to work, I need to seize it.” She had a few small co
mmissions and no longer worked at TGO. I wondered how she was paying her bills, but I had learned not to ask about money. She was going to the doctors, and that’s what mattered.
Another source of my selfish irritation was the “meal chain” arranged and executed by Perfect Teacher Ira and the mommies of Rico’s Birch buddies. Every other day, in relays, they delivered prepared food and groceries to Packard. They ferried Rico to their homes for play-dates, birthday parties, sledding expeditions, and numerous outings that always involved what Sarah deemed the “healing” company of other children. Sarah had once confessed to me that many of these other mothers, however “nice,” made her feel uneasy, too unavoidably different. Now she referred to them as her “community” and even her “support system.” I had a hard time suppressing my idiotic jealousy.
Once or twice a week, however, she would bring Rico to the house, and I would make us burgers or pea soup or macaroni and cheese, whatever Sarah’s appetite allowed. She had a frequent craving for pasta with a sauce I made, on her orders, from canned tomatoes, chopped garlic, and fresh basil.
When I worried that it would be too acidic for her drug-pummeled digestive tract, she told me it was one of the few foods that erased the bitter aftertaste of the chemo. “It goes into my veins and comes out everywhere else,” she said. “I can smell it when I sweat. Like burnt rubber doused with Dr Pepper. I’d much rather smell like garlic.”
She smelled no different to me. I desired her as much as ever, even—perhaps especially—after she began to wrap her head in India-print scarves, even after her face looked like a drawing to which someone had taken an eraser, rubbing away her eyebrows and lashes, the color in her cheeks. Her features took on a stark, bold clarity, the luster of a portrait by Vermeer. After she and I and Rico shared dinner, sometimes I would put a movie in the player for him; at the video store in Ledgely, I’d purchased a batch of discarded Disney tapes. I’d moved the television from Poppy’s dressing room down to my study. Sarah and I would go upstairs, undress, and lie together in bed. I would make her unwrap her head. She was almost but not completely bald. A scant few tenacious hairs, silver or dark, remained rooted in her pale pink scalp.
“I should shave them off,” she said, “but I’m superstitious. As if doing that would contradict wanting it all to grow back.”
“I like them,” I said. “They are the stalwarts.”
She laid a palm on my chest. “Percy, you are so strange. Nothing can derail you from your eccentricity, can it?”
“I hope not. Though Trudy is trying to reform me. I think she worries that someone at St. Matt’s will report me to the authorities for making politically inappropriate jokes to the nurses.”
“I hope she fails,” said Sarah. “I like your inappropriate jokes. Chantal thinks you’re wonderful.”
“Balderdash.”
This elicited the first giggle I’d heard from her in weeks. “She does, though. She says Trudy could use a little of your irreverence.”
“I think that might be dangerous, given her line of work.”
Mostly, as we lay in bed, we would talk. This had become the only time we really talked—talked in the timeless, delighted way we had during the early fall. Time was now strictly mapped out for Sarah: she kept a calendar telling her when she was to take which pills, when to have her blood drawn, when—at the so-called nadir point of each cycle—she was to coddle her immune system by avoiding crowds, contagious illnesses, and certain raw foods.
“As if you’re touring in Sri Lanka,” I said.
“Without the palm trees.”
“Or the political crackdowns.”
In bed, we could still laugh wholeheartedly. We embraced, but Sarah was reluctant to make love, and though she might be exhausted, she never came close to napping. She removed my hands if they strayed near her breasts; they were still whole, still so lovely, but the lump—that evil Reggie Kosinski with his puck-shattered tooth and cheap shiny switchblade—was still in residence. She was also mindful of Rico, keeping an ear out for his footsteps below. She could hear them through the most overblown of children’s movie sound tracks.
I still did not ask how she was paying for her treatment, and she did not mention it. This worried me, but not enough to disrupt the harmony we’d found. As long as I was taking her to the hospital on the schedule ordained by Trudy, as long as she was taking her many pills, as long as I could see her eat a meal, I felt she was as safe as she could be. She was silent more often than before the cancer, but still I hadn’t seen her cry.
The letter arrived the day of Sarah’s third bombardment. She had agreed, this time, to come home with me first, to rest a bit before resuming her life as a mother. I had lured her with the prospect of a roaring fire, a cup of the herbal tea she now favored over coffee, and maybe the last of Helena’s oatmeal scones, if Clover hadn’t filched it.
As usual, Clover had brought my mail in and left it on the kitchen table. This was her habit, since she fetched E & F’s mail from the roadside box that overshadowed mine. Sarah had collapsed on the couch, bundled in the homely quilt Clover had made for her mother in seventh-grade home ec. I’d lit the fire that I had so cleverly laid that morning, and now I had only to put on the kettle and hope to find that scone. I had my secret stash of Oreos as backup.
To spot a personal letter among one’s mail nowadays is rather like glancing out the window to spot a hummingbird dining at a blossom. A rare sight, arresting and sweet. This particular piece of mail, the envelope unusually oblong in shape and the palest green in color, was addressed to me in dark violet ink, in a bold and declaratively European hand. I could not resist picking it up at once—to discover that, as typifies European correspondence, it bore no return address. It had been postmarked, however, in Matlock.
I forced myself to set it down again in order to get the kettle going. Once I’d found Sarah’s tea and tossed a few spoonfuls into the pot, I sat down at the table and tore open the envelope (lined in a violet paper to match the ink).
Dear Percy,
I hope you will not find the intent of this letter uncourteous or rash. Although we have met but a few times, en passant, I have been hearing antidotes of your charms and wits from Evelyn for many a year—even preceding your act of superb generosity to Elves & Fairies last summer—and so feel as if I have spent hours in your company. (You—I venture—do not share this illusion!) It has been our intention to invite you for a quiet dinner these many past months—we must beg your forgiveness for our negligence and delay. Such an invitation will be following soon—and quite irregardless of how you may receive this overture I propose.
Alors—to the point then! During one of my early visits to the barn—when I was investigating its spaces and moods—divining its soul—I was with your daughter Clover. I remarked to her how I have been curious about your house since a very long time—how I have driven past and wished for an entrée to explore the premises. Perhaps she also caught me, en pointe, trying to see into your windows—now I confess too much!
She took me one day for a quick tour of the house—where she so happily spent the days of her earliest youth—and I must tell you that I fell in love. It was—as we French say of that magnetic moment between two lovers—le coup de foudre. I was therefore among the first in line at the house tour last month—and my feelings at that re-encounter did not diminish. The lines of the roof—the windows with their many ancient lights—the kiltering stairs—the grand hearth; in your house, I find myself bouleversé—there is no other word—in the most exuberant way. In this world, everything—all the things we love, over time—must change. And yet, your house takes a stand against time.
You will now have yourself deduced that I approach you—humbly—with the offer that if you might feel it tempting, I would like to discuss the purchase of your house.
As an architect, I know that this may sound like a request to purchase your wife, or your child—so if my request offends, I beg your pardon. I also know what you will be thinking: I
s this the same Maurice Fougère of the glass house high on the hill—that Maurice Fougère? I can only assure you that I am a man of wide-ranging aesthetics and that it has always been my longing to one day live in a house that was built many generations in the past. Were I still in my native country, I would perhaps be courting a house medieval in its pedigree—but here I am—thanks to my wife and children a happy American now and for always—courting yours.
And I hardly need acknowledge that to take on the stewardship of the house would marry my dreams to those of my wife—house and barn—to put a fanciful spin upon it—conjoined as a single Eden.
The final paragraph was a litany of the various numbers and addresses through which he would be eagerly and patiently and humbly (emotions underscored by his Dickinsonian love of the dash) awaiting my reply.
The kettle had begun to mutter. I got up and turned off the burner, poured the scalding water into the teapot, stirred the leaves. I opened the breadbox and (eureka!) retrieved the scone, opened the cupboard and retrieved a mug. I arranged everything on a tray and carried it to the living room.
Sarah lay on the couch, quilt pulled to her chin, but she was awake. Though she tried to resist, I helped her into a seated position.
“So do you think that there could possibly be any antidotes to my charms and wits?” I asked her.
She did not demand to know what I meant. She said, “No chance. They’re far too potent. In some cases fatal.”
“Thank heaven. I was worried there for a minute.”
I pulled the letter from my back pocket and tossed it on the table. “Maurice Fougère wants to buy my house. Apparently, he became ‘exuberantly bouleversé’ when Clover saw fit to enable his snooping through the place. Frankly, that’s a sensation I like to restrict to the bedroom.”
Sarah, who was blowing on her tea, paused to say, “Me, too. Even if I have no idea what it means.”