They May Not Mean To, but They Do: A Novel (3 page)

“They want to name her ‘Quiet,’” said Natalie.

“Convenient,” Eileen said. “They can call her and discipline her at the same time.”

“Mine is two years old next week,” Daphne added, holding up a screen with a picture of a little girl with an ice-cream-smeared mouth.

“‘Quiet’?” Joy was saying. “Why don’t they just name her ‘No’?”

They started laughing and couldn’t stop. They laughed until tears rolled down their faces.

“Oh, that felt good,” Joy said.

All around them well-turned-out young women picked at their salads, preserving their waistlines, as women of Joy’s generation used to call that mealtime behavior. Joy looked at them fondly, then slathered butter on a piece of bread, damn the torpedoes. She had no gallbladder, the surgeon had taken it out when he took out the colon cancer, “the blue-plate special,” he’d called it, and never mind her waistline, she was not supposed to eat fat with no gallbladder. She sipped her espresso. That was verboten, too, atrial fibrillation. Delicious, though. It did not do to ignore the delicious.

“I love food,” she said.

The tablecloths were pink and pressed. The napkins were large.

“I love napery,” she said.

“Now, Joy,” Daphne said, suddenly serious, “what are we going to do about Aaron?”

“I think he’s dying,” Joy said, and she began to cry softly.

Daphne put her hand on Joy’s, which was an enormous gesture of support, Joy knew. Daphne did not like touching people.

“Nonsense,” Natalie said.

“What do the doctors say?” Eileen asked.

Joy shrugged, and they waited for her to pull herself together and blow her nose.

“You have to take care of yourself, too, you know,” Natalie said. “Even nurses have shifts.”

“That’s what my children say. They say I’m grandiose, taking care of Aaron myself.”

“Children. What do they know?” said Daphne. “They think they know everything. But just wait.”

Joy smiled. “They are so bossy, aren’t they? I do miss Molly ordering me around, though.” The smile disappeared. “Now that she’s in California.”

“What about Daniel?”

“Daniel is wonderful, but…”

They all nodded. Daniel was not a daughter.

“Anyway, I’m fine.”

“Isn’t there some sort of adult day care Aaron could go to?” Daphne was saying.

“No, god, no, he would hate that. He gets so disoriented. Then he gets frightened. Then he gets angry. He would hate it. What’s he going to do? Sit in a drum circle? Make paper flowers?”

“What does he do at home?”

“Watch NY1. And eat. It’s a wonder he doesn’t weigh five hundred pounds. And a lot of time is taken up with, you know, showers and getting dressed and creams and applications of … things. I won’t go into it. But trust me, a day goes by. And on the days I’m at work, who knows what could happen? I come home at lunch to check on him and I never know what I’ll find, don’t ask, and then, when I come back again at the end of the day…”

She went to the ladies’ room. She put her bags down on a pretty little lavender table, shed a few more tears, washed her face, and sat gripping the arms of the lavender chintz chair, feeling faint. The doctor said these dizzy spells were nothing to worry about as long as she didn’t fall. But what if she did fall? What was to stop her from falling? She could very easily have fallen
just now
 …

“I know you all probably think he should go to a place,” she said to the girls when she got back to the table, “but he would be miserable. He needs landmarks, needs familiar things, needs his schedule.”

“But what about what you need?” they said.

“I’d be miserable, too. Visiting a nursing home? Every day? I’m exhausted just thinking about it. And they’re not very clean, you know. Full of infection.” There was something else, too, something no one seemed to realize: if Aaron went into a nursing home, he would be
gone
. “What about what you need”—Molly and Daniel asked her the same thing. But what she needed was so obvious. She needed Aaron.

“You’re a saint,” Daphne said.

It was not a compliment.

“One of those insane, self-destructive saints,” Natalie added.

The kind who wander around in masochistic determination until they contract an incurable disease or are roasted on a fire or skinned alive, they all agreed.

“Joy, sweetie, at the very least you need to hire someone.
Hire
a saint,” Natalie added.

When she got home, she noticed how gray Aaron looked, his hair, his beard, his face, and his hooded sweatshirt. He was not a man who was meant to be gray. Some men are, but Aaron ought to have been ruddy. He never had been, but he ought to have been. That’s what Joy thought.

“You have to get some fresh air,” she said.

He waved an enormous hand at her, as if he were swatting a fly.

“You’ll get too stiff, sitting around all day.”

He waved her words away again.

“Do you hear me? Where are your hearing aids?”

“WHAT?”

“Where are your hearing aids?” Joy repeated loudly.

“What are you talking about?” Aaron said. “Hearing aids!” He shook his head at her folly.

“I’m going to kill you, Aaron,” she said.

“WHAT?”

“I’m going to kill you, I said!”

Aaron smiled. “So you say.” He took her hand and kissed it.

“‘
Joyful, Joyful, we adore thee
,’” he sang as she helped him up and over to the walker. He often called her Joyful.

“Well,” she said.

“‘
Hearts unfold like flowers before thee
.’”

Sometimes the songs were hymns, sometimes bits of British vaudeville from the last century, but mostly Baroque, mostly Purcell. The lyrics still came warbling out, even when he could not remember what the conversation was about, perhaps more so when he couldn’t remember, couldn’t keep up. Aaron had wanted to be a singer, a classical singer, but he’d gone directly into the family business instead. The Depression did that to people, made them think straight. Or warped them into shape, that was more the case with Aaron. It had taken Joy many years to understand that.

When they got outside, Aaron leaned heavily on his walker. It had wheels, which was a help. A shiny red walker with wheels. He called it his little red wagon.

“Lift up the front wheels,” she said.

“Get away. I know what I’m doing.”

“Tilt it.”

“I’m tilting, I’m tilting. It’s not moving. It’s broken.”

Joy took his arm. “Lean on me.” She tilted the walker and got the wheels on the curb. “It’s like a shopping cart.”

They continued down the street toward Central Park. She could see the trees, still leafy and colorful. It had been a warm autumn. “Aren’t they beautiful?” she said.

Aaron was breathing heavily. He was not singing. He was not calling her Joyful. He was not even answering her.

“This is ridiculous” was all he said, muttering it to himself.

She slowed her gait to match his, an excruciating shuffle. “Come on, come on,” she said.

But he had stopped completely now and looked around him helplessly. “Where are we going, anyway?”

“To the park. You love the park.”

“I hate the park. I’m going home.”

“You love the park. I brought your camera.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Where are we going, anyway?”

They ended up stopping at the little park in the middle of Park Avenue at Ninety-sixth Street.

“You can sit here and rest,” Joy said.

Aaron’s chin immediately dropped to his chest.

“Are you asleep?” she said. “Or dead?”

“Which would you prefer?” he asked, his eyes still closed.

“I really wanted to go to Central Park.”

Aaron opened his eyes and lifted his head. “Why?”

“Why? Because it’s a beautiful day.”

They sat for a few minutes silently.

“Pretty flowers,” Aaron said, pointing a shaky hand at some late roses. “Beautiful, beautiful. Right here in the city.”

Joy choked up a little. Because that was Aaron, her Aaron, the real Aaron. “Beautiful,” she said.

“I should take a picture.”

She handed him the little camera, and he fumbled with it for a minute, then said, “It’s broken,” and almost threw it back at her.

Joy put it in her tote bag. She had three tote bags, different sizes and different patterns. They hung on the handles of Aaron’s red walker, two on the left, one on the right. She unhooked one of the bags on the left and stuffed it into the one on the right. “That’s better.”

“What have you got in there, Joyful?” Aaron said.

“I don’t even know. But if I leave one bag home, it’s always the one that has something I need.”

He took her hand and held it. He stared off in the soft, blank way he sometimes had these days. His body sagged. The hand that held hers loosened and came to rest, like a large pale leaf, on his lap.

While he slept, Joy, too, closed her eyes. The afternoon sun was warm and comforting on her face. Sunlight was full of vitamin D. And cancer—that, too. Vitamin D, cancer … how to choose? She should have worn a hat. But how could a person walk around New York City in October in a sun hat? She refused to become an eccentric old lady padding around in bedroom slippers and a floppy hat. She pulled a thermos out of one of her bags, then another thermos. She shook Aaron awake. “Would you like a little Cream of Wheat?” she asked him. “I have an extra.”

5

Daniel emerged from the subway and smelled the overripe fruit from the fruit stand. It would be just a quick visit to his parents, he had to go to a school assembly, he could not remember what sort, a concert, a play, a reading of the “books” the children had written. That was the most surprising thing about the school Cora and Ruby went to, the number of artistic events held there despite the absence of a budget for the arts. All those underemployed artistic mothers and fathers filling in the gaps. He bought some strawberries from the vendor for his parents and a banana for himself, which he ate as he walked to their building.

“For me?” his mother said at the door, taking the banana peel. “You shouldn’t have.”

He waited for the story of the time he had absentmindedly put a banana peel in the medicine cabinet. He’d been daydreaming about girls, probably. Sex. One did in those days. One still did.

“Oh, it was so funny, Danny,” his mother was saying. “Do you remember that, Aaron? He was twelve or thirteen, just a little older than Ruby.”

He wondered if Ruby daydreamed about sex. Terrible stray thought.

“I brought you strawberries,” he said.

His father looked gaunt. He’d always been thin, a lanky cowboy sort of thin, and tall, too tall to reach sometimes. But he had never looked eaten away like this.

“You get a haircut?” Daniel asked him. “Tony still cutting your hair?”

When they moved to the East Side, his father had searched the neighborhood for a barber who could cut his beard the way he liked it. Daniel used to tag along when he was very small, and Tony would put a hot towel on his face.

“Tony?” his mother said. “Tony died years ago.”

Joy began talking about all the people in the neighborhood who had died. If they hadn’t died, they had gone out of business. She held the green plastic basket of strawberries and Daniel noticed her fingers were already stained pink with the juice.

“But
we’re
still here,” she concluded.

Daniel’s father took his hand and held it. “You making a good living these days?” he asked.

“Pay no attention to him,” said Joy. “I’d better wash the berries. Where’d you get them? On the street?” She licked a pink finger. “Now I’ll get mad cow disease and Ebola.” She went into the kitchen.

“I’m making a living,” Daniel said. “Let’s just leave it at that.”

“I don’t know why you work for that organization.” He said the word “organization” with distaste. “Go where the action is.”

“Where’s that, Dad?”

“Just ignore him, Danny,” his mother called from the kitchen.

“Wall Street.”

Daniel rolled his eyes.

“Well, you can lead a horse to water,” said Aaron.

Daniel left them sitting in the dining room eating the strawberries. As he closed the front door, he heard his father say, “Nice boy. Good work, Joyful.”

“Wall Street?” she answered. “You want your son to be a crook?”

6

Aaron was lying on his side, turned away from her, when Joy got into bed. She put her arms around him and they talked about the past. He remembered unexpected things, digging clams in Cape Cod right after they were married, the poem he’d memorized for freshman English (“
how do you like your blueeyed boy / Mister Death
”). She talked about the children, about the grandchildren. A little bit about work, though he was no longer interested in her work, could not really follow what she was telling him. He was very romantic these days, more romantic than he had been in what she sometimes thought of as their real life, before he began to drift away. He called her darling, asked what the hell the colostomy pouch was, apologized for it, thanked her for putting up with it and him. Then they fell asleep. That was how it went most nights. Sometimes when she lay down on the bed with Aaron, her face pressed against the back of his head, she would cry. When he asked her what was wrong, she would say she missed her parents.

But one night, just as Joy climbed into bed, when Aaron pulled up his pajama shirt and poked at the pouch and said, “What the hell is this?” he yanked it out before she could stop him.

She cleaned him up. She changed the sheets. She settled him back in bed. He told her he loved her. She held him and cried, said again that it was because she missed her parents.

It began to happen frequently, regularly, sometimes twice in a night.
What the hell is this
, and a yank. Joy didn’t tell anyone. That would have been disrespectful to Aaron. But beyond that, she knew if she told anyone, her children, her friends, they would tell her she needed to hire help or that Aaron ought to be in a nursing home.

“Please don’t pull out the pouch tonight, Aaron.”