Every Day (23 page)

“There’s no cause,” he says, as if I’m ridiculous for wanting to know. “It is not hereditary. The clusters, of which you’ve obviously read, have been sighted in Berkeley, L.A., Guam, and among teammates of the Forty-niners. And there’s the case of the famous baseball player, as you know. All the information sits there and there’s no conclusion. You’d think a man like Stephen Hawking, who’s got it, would be able to come up with a known cause and a cure. Some people say toxins cause it, some say dormant viruses in the nerves. There might be a drug, but there might not. I don’t think about these details anymore. I’m just living it. Your reading will supply you with all the facts you’ll need.”

“What about J.T. and Evelyn? Don’t they want to be part of this? Don’t they want to help?”

“Yes, they want to help. But Mama likes a manageable world where weakness only comes to the back door and never sets foot in the house. This is an ugly thing that’s happened to me. She can’t fathom it.”

This much I believe. “And J.T.? Can’t he fathom it?”

“He lives with Mama.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“Look, unless you want me to get someone else, we should get going, so I don’t keep you all day.”

I throw the trash from breakfast into the garbage can, tie up the plastic bag, and take it outside, where I wait for him to join me. I have read about the football players and the isolated cases, but I’m not living this yet. I’m still with the facts he’s got past. I’m part of the ugliness Evelyn wouldn’t invite in through the back door.

•   •   •

“I’m sorry,” I tell him in the cab. “I’m not being fun.” I rest my head on his chest.

“We’re going to buy furniture,” he says. “Let’s enjoy it!”

“I almost made you lose your humor.”

“Not even you,” he says with confidence, and kisses the top of my head.

“You’re so
small
,” he says. “How could I love a woman so
small?”

He has said this before, but I can’t remember when. It must have been at Hastings because I remember feeling I’d triumphed over the larger, fairer Pam. I remember liking his amused attention and thinking that this was as perfect an expression of love as any other. I love this man. I don’t want him to die, and I’m not sure I can bear for him to live. Those are the facts.

•   •   •

At the medical supplier we listen raptly but not distracted from the ludicrousness of our mission. We accept the offer of coffee from our salesperson, an older man with glasses, even though we’ve just had some. He brings out a binder containing pictures and descriptions of wheelchairs, manual and mechanized, for us to peruse.

“Would you both like to look at this?”

“I think so. Yes,” Fowler says.

I scooch over in my chair and consider the grim offerings.

“Do you think they’ll have this in a blue?” Fowler asks me, of an elaborate, multifunctional tan chair that I cannot imagine him sitting in, never mind operating.

“We can get that for you in blue,” the man says, coming around the desk to inspect Fowler’s choice. “It’s a cobalt, if that suits you.”

“Cobalt is nice,” Fowler says, not quite pleased. “But I prefer navy. Unless there’s a cerulean option.”

“Would you like a test drive?” the man asks. “We have one in the stock room.”

“In cerulean?”

“In sand,” the man says.

“I’m game,” Fowler says.

The man calls the back of the store and then goes to hurry the retrieval along. When Mother and I picked out Pussy’s tombstone, there was a similar tone to our dealing—a let’s-pretend-we’re-talking-about-the-weather levity that Mother just ate up and I was tortured by.

“You can’t very well sulk over the choices,” she counseled, as we came away from the place in Pussy’s rattly Mercedes, which Pussy had been driving the day before and in which she’d left some crumpled Wash’n Dris and a half-eaten pack of Wintogreen Lifesavers.

“He didn’t have to be so fucking chipper,” I complained.

“You won’t succeed in offending him by using that language
now,
” Mother said. “If you felt so antagonized, maybe you should have used it in the shop.”

I ask Fowler if he’s offended.

“Sand is a pretty offensive name for a color,” he says. “I suppose I’m offended. Deeply offended, now that you mention it.”

When the salesman returns, we’re laughing so hard he waits a few paces off for us to stop before introducing the chair. The steel shines so brutally in store light that I have to turn away for a second.

“Let’s dance,” Fowler says, and he holds out an arm for me to help move him out of the stationary chair into the mobile one. The salesman goes at the buttons and levers to demonstrate the chair’s versatility, and then he wheels Fowler out into the store. Fowler sails off and returns an eternity later, sweating.

“It’s a keeper,” he beams. “I won’t need you anymore, Florence. I can go anywhere in this thing. How does it do on the highway, Sherman?”

“Maybe you should keep her around for the highway,” Sherman says. “Is there anything else I can help you with today, assuming, that is, that you’ll take it in sand?”

Fowler defers to me, and I talk quietly about rails and a ramp for the steps outside.

“That the building should take care of, but this is New York. I’ll see what I’ve got. The rails I can send you home with today.”

We get it all, rails, wheelchair, a huge pair of tongs for picking things up, which Fowler refers to as “grabbers,” and a wristband with an electronic button that will signal the local ambulance service in an emergency. We thank the salesman, and we cab back to the apartment in horrendous heat, no apology from the driver, who didn’t warn us in advance about the broken A/C, who probably figures that helping us to his trunk for the bulk items is all that should be required of him.

We’re back by eleven-thirty, time enough for me to get to Barry before he goes to lunch.

“We did well,” I say to Fowler, as if we’ve driven a hard bargain.

He slumps on the couch, the wheelchair facing him, positioned for any need that might arise.

“I can’t tell you how I hate this,” he says. His face is red, and I’m sure he will cry, so I join him on the couch and whisper how lucky we are that “sexual function remains unaffected,”
and then I do with him what I did with Simon twelve hours ago.

•   •   •

I catch Barry at one, on his way to lunch, and he insists that I join him for Indian food.

“You looked flushed,” he says in the elevator.

“It’s hot. I’ve been running errands.” I hand him the outline for a chapter about Hadewijch of Antwerp, a Flemish woman of the thirteenth century, who relinquished private life for a community of the spirit.

“I’ll review it later. You’ll be happy to know your proposal was accepted without issue, and they’re talking about a first printing of twenty thousand,” Barry says as we leave the building. “Frankly, I’m surprised. This is unusual, this sort of interest in a book on centuries of complaint!”

He’s teasing me, I know. I wish I were more in the mood for it. I’m greedy for importance, but not diminished importance.

“Are you all right?” he asks me in the restaurant.

“What?” I can’t settle. I can’t seem to
be
here.

“You seem distracted. I thought you’d be ecstatic over this news.”

“Oh, I
am
,” I croon. “I
am
. Please don’t think I’m not. I’m thrilled. I’ll take a while to believe it, that’s all.”

“Believe it,” Barry says kindly. “People are impressed with you. You work like a bear.”

“I apologize if I seem ungrateful.”

“Not at all. Let’s see if I can recommend something to eat. What’s your pleasure?”

“I think I might just have an appetizer and a coffee. I’m not very hungry.”

Barry hits himself in the forehead with his menu. “Forgive me. I’m a boor. I didn’t even ask you if you
wanted
lunch. Listen, we don’t have to stay here. Or we can stay and I’ll eat fast. Or I can just skip lunch in favor of a walk back to the office.”

“It’s fine. I’ll have an iced coffee. I don’t know any boors.”

I’ll go no further with Barry. While his charm is overwhelming, I’m not crossing the line with him.

“So . . . Hadewijch?”

“Hadewijch,” I say. And we go back to that.

•   •   •

“He’s not
in pain
,” I tell Simon, whose interest is bizarre but I don’t think distasteful. “Physical pain isn’t part of this. It’s the loss of control that’s so agonizing.”

For the second time today I stop myself from going into detail, realizing that in doing so I save myself a little from having to consider Fowler so ill.

“You look exhausted,” he says. “Why don’t you go upstairs and take a nap.”

I know I need a nap, but I can’t imagine taking one. There’s too much to do, to think about and prepare.

“What is there to do? I’ll get the dinner going. You’ve been running around
all
day. You should take advantage of Daisy being asleep and
lie down.”

I look around me, at the straightened rooms, at Daisy, rump high in the travel crib, at Simon, whence cometh my help.

“Really, Leigh. You’re doing so much. Take an hour.”

“All right. Okay. Are Jane and Isaac—?”

“They’re fine. Adrienne. Ball practice.”

“Ball practice? On a Friday?”

“Game Sunday. Sleep.”

Upstairs in our quiet bedroom I open every window to the dead heat and lie down. The bed seems huge, edgeless, a flat, warm place for me to rest in the open air as people have done in centuries past.

•   •   •

I wake to a happy racket below, in the kitchen, the noise of dinner preparations and the older children returning. I smell garlic and butter, and when I arrive, stiff and bleary-eyed, in the kitchen, Simon has three things going at once—the food
processor, the pan with the sautéed garlic and onions, and the water boiling in the lobster kettle for pasta. Daisy’s emptied the pasta box on the floor and is breaking each stick, and Jane, in an apron, is manning the food processing operation, holding green peppers and tomato chunks cavalierly above the wretched thing, happily sending them to their doom.

“What’s going on?” I say.

“We’re celebrating,” Simon answers. “I thought the book was worth an Italian meal, at least.”

“You’re going to be rich, Mom!” Jane says. “It’s
so
cool!”

“I didn’t think it was
that
much money,” I say offhandedly. In fact, I’ve spent it in my mind already, on piano and ballet lessons for Jane, on private college tuition for Isaac, on a vacation for all of us, on clothes.

“It’s
enormous
money!” Simon announces. “Have this outside in a chair. I’ll be out in a minute.”

He hands me a glass of our favorite wine and the
Times.

“Jane and Daisy can come out with me if that would be easier.”

“I’m busy, Mom,” Jane says. “And Daisy has to finish breaking all the noodles.”

“
Go
,” Simon orders.

Mother’s Day in August. That’s what it feels like. I’m half expecting Isaac to appear at the edge of the garden with a torch of Tropicana roses and a promise of lifelong loyalty and forgiveness.

Instead, I read my paper in suburban splendor, unbothered by the heat. Sweating and disheveled and drunk am I after several sips of wine, and this is the mother who greets Isaac when he actually does appear at the screen door with his friend, the Alexandra of camp fortune and Miata fame, a girl whose beautiful languor, even as seen through wire mesh, can’t be disputed.

“Mom, this is Alex,” he says. “Is it okay if she stays for dinner?”

I adopt the casual pose of a person in the midst of a routine sit in the sun. I shield my eyes, draw a hand loosely through my tangled hair. I am wearing a wrinkled dress, and my breath is bad from iced coffee and Indian hors d’ oeuvres and sleep. I must appear at the very least slovenly, possibly insane.

“Of course it is, dear. Hello, Alex.”

“Hi, Mrs. Kaufman,” she says, nectar in words.

“I’m just reading my paper for a while, then I’ll be in,” I sing. I conjure a much more attractive setting for Mrs. Aidinoff at her reading, a solarium with glass tables and white cast-iron sofas with floral print cushions.

I take about a half hour to read an uplifting article about teaching in the Bronx and to finish the wine. Then Simon comes out with the cordless.

“Fowler,” he says. “Dinner in five.”

I remember Mother handing me the telephone when a boyfriend would call out on Fire Island. She’d be in her apron, her hands floury from covering swordfish steaks or making fritters of some sort, and she’d bring the phone out to me on the small deck of our rental, stretching its white coil to maximum length and announcing the name of the caller in the same bored, can’t-be-helped way.

“Hello,” I say, with the muted anticipation I reserved for those summer boys, whoever they were.

“I’m calling to report some successes,” he declares. “The ramp will be put down Monday morning, the rails are going up as we speak. And I’ve got a new lease on life because of my new wheels. I’ve just been to the deli. Thank you.”

Under the cheer I hear something else, yearning, I suppose, for company.

“You’re welcome.”

He says he has yet another favor to ask, if I can bear it, and that is for me to arrange a meeting between him and Isaac, “before too long.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

“Soon,” he reiterates. I know why. He doesn’t want his son to see him for the first time later on, in the advanced stages of which I’ve read too much. I know it has to be soon, for everyone’s sake.

Simon and the girls are fixing six places at the table.

“Where’s Isaac?”

“Upstairs, listening to CD’s. Alex is staying for dinner,” Jane says. The challenge of adapting has become attractive to her. A cool acceptance of whatever gets dealt out here may mean victory over it.

“Evidently.” I sound wounded.

“Mom,
you
said she could stay,” Jane reminds me.