Losing Julia (32 page)

I turned and looked through the large window into the recreation room, which glowed with a yellow warmth. It was bingo night and the white-haired men and women were hunched over their tables trying to find a three or an eight or a seven and I could tell by the way some of them looked sideways at each other that there was some confusion as to which numbers had actually been called and what game was actually being played. Then I saw Mitzie walk in and sit down with the slow, hydraulic movements of old age, and I thought of her dreaming of gentlemen callers who never called.

Returning to my room I walked past wheelchairs parked every which way, as though left over from some ancient and catastrophic traffic jam. Their drivers sat immobile, urine- scented blankets—the teddy bears of old age—draped over their laps. Urine and floor cleaner, that’s the smell, with a trace of Bactine or some similar antiseptic. I tapped my cane softly on the floor as I zigzagged past, feeling remarkably nimble under the circumstances. The few other patients in motion moved so slowly that they appeared to be some sort of special effect, while the nurses and visitors looked almost Chaplinesque in comparison.

First I washed my hands, and then I carefully unbuttoned my shirt and hung it on the first hook in my closet, next to my blue blazer. After putting on the top to my pajamas—plain, light blue cotton with ridiculously large buttons—I sat back on my bed and struggled with my pants. Finally I got back up and brushed what’s left of my teeth before returning to bed with a half glass of water. Martin was already asleep, flat on his back with the sheets tucked under his armpits and his bare arms resting on his stomach. Too tired even to read, I lay on my back and pulled the covers tightly to my chin. Then I closed my eyes and listened, first to the sounds of the hallway, the sounds of footsteps and muffled conversation; then to the sounds of my body itself. Gradually, as the sound of my breathing grew louder, I felt myself falling backward into oblivion, my arms cartwheeling in the air.

Will I comport myself with some dignity at the end, the proper carriage and grace, or will I shriek in holy terror like one of those Rhesus monkeys locked in some university basement with electrodes implanted on their exposed brains? More likely I will expire like most everyone else at Great Oaks: routinely and even meekly, my final diminuendo barely noticed. Then the sheet pulled over my head and away we go, the gurney squeaking down the hallway, my toes and nose jutting upward like goal posts as I’m hustled off to my eternal repose.

And after that? Pure nothingness? Are we expunged from the very earth itself? (Well, at least I like to think that death brings about a cessation of both anxiety and diarrhea, which is no small victory.) Or can I somehow triumph even in death? Failing religion, which has always failed me, what’s the best I can do? Leave behind an achievement, some painting or structure that can withstand another couple of hundred years before it too succumbs? I haven’t the talent. Do my children assure me some kind of biological immortality (though I shall be dreadfully diluted in a few generations), and if so, shouldn’t I have scattered the seed with great profligacy? Or can I inoculate myself from extinction by sheer love? How about a noble deed or act of charity that might assure me goodwill beyond the grave, perhaps even a statue in the town square? Might I then be sustained as a fond memory in the hearts of others? What happens when those hearts fail, as they must?

Certainly the problem with money is that you can’t take it with you, but that’s true for everything else as well: Mozart’s genius, friendships, love, a good recipe for crab cakes. And the more you have, the more you have to lose, which is why I no longer regret not learning a second language.

I rolled to one side and then another but couldn’t get comfortable. I returned to my back but only briefly; ever since I was a child I have been unable to fall asleep in such an exposed position. Instead I curl up in a protective crouch as though bracing for blows. I think people who sleep on their backs are more confident than people who sleep on their sides and stomachs. Or maybe people who sleep on their backs are just asking for trouble.

If I intended to be buried in a casket—and I don’t—I would insist on being placed on my side or stomach.

I rolled back to my left side and thought that the whole business of dying would be a lot easier if we had someone to blame. Instead we spend our last days shadowboxing with the vagaries of modern medicine. Mass genocide with no accountability whatsoever. I want war criminals in dockets and tribunals and convictions of crimes against humanity. I want, at the very least, someone to wag my finger at.

Dignity’s what I’m lacking, no doubt about it. Why should I babble and quake before the firing squad when I can stand unbowed, perhaps even cheating my assassins of their cheap thrills? Why not flip them the birdie and leave this earth with a defiant smirk on my face, like a martyr who refuses to change allegiance even at the stake?

But a martyr for what? I’m tied to a stake with smoke filling the air and my lungs and my nostrils and I don’t even know the charges. What are the charges? Will somebody please read me the charges?

CAMUS WROTE
that man carries on a kind of “gloomy flirtation” with God. I have stopped flirting altogether.

I WANTED
to take hold of Julia but I didn’t. What would I do, just reach for her? Ask her? What would she do? Yet she was still grieving for Daniel, and I, well I was married. Maybe that’s why she felt comfortable with me. I was a safe man. Like a brother. But I hardly wanted to be seen like a brother. And the days were slipping by. Was it possible that she felt none of the attraction that overwhelmed me?

She was quiet on the hike back to the car but on the drive to the hotel she told funny stories about her childhood, sometimes laughing so hard that she folded her hands tightly across her chest as though trying to keep herself from coming apart. All the sadness seemed to have fallen away from her so that she looked lighter as she talked, changing her voice to capture different characters and even singing bits of old songs. But as it got dark she grew silent again, concentrating on the single yellow flower she had picked from a field and now held by the stem with both hands.

“I’ve enjoyed spending this time with you,” she said, turning toward me. “I’ll never forget it.”

“Neither will I.”

“You’ll be glad to be back with your family.”

I looked at her, about to say something. But no words came. I turned away.

She spun the flower in her fingers. “I’ve decided that the preachers are right: if we can’t find meaning in our suffering we won’t find meaning in our lives. The pain just overwhelms everything.”

“‘A deep distress hath humanized my soul.’”

“Who’s that?”

“Wordsworth.”

“Say it again.”

I did. Then I said, “I think he was saying that his own sadness or pain made him more sympathetic to what others go through; that suffering should bring us together, bring out the best in us.”

I slowed the car as a farmer led a donkey across the street by a thick, frayed tether. To my right I noticed a small street sign with faded German lettering nailed against a white, mortared wall.

After a moment Julia said, “I think that most people feel that their lives are private martyrdoms to some secret fear or passion.”

I turned and looked at her. She held my gaze. “Can’t you see it in people, especially older people?” she asked, tilting her head slightly. “I saw it in my mother: in her eyes and the deliberate way she controlled her gestures and the way she walked with her neck straight and her chin up. Maybe that’s what courage and grace mean when we grow old; maybe they mean not talking about it.”

ABOUT WHAT,
Julia? What?

“MARTIN?”

“What is it?”

“I don’t feel so good.”

“You want me to call the nurse?”

“No, I just wanted to say that I don’t feel so good.”

“I understand.”

“I know you do. Too bad we didn’t meet earlier. We would have made great roommates. Can you imagine us with a nice walk-up in Greenwich Village? We would have had a good time, you and me. Think of the parties.”

“But I was married then.”

“I know you were. I’m just dreaming here,” I said.

“Yeah, I’m with you.”

“You never complain, do you?”

“No use in it.”

“What do you think about, lying there?”

“I don’t know. Places I’ve been, that sort of thing.”

“Nothing in particular?”

“No, not in particular. My mind sort of wanders.”

“Yeah, mine too. After all these years I think of it as an old dog who still explores every inch of the backyard each day even though he’s been living there for years. He trots back and forth, smelling the same old bushes and the trees and checking for openings in the fence.”

“You always find something new, don’t you?”

“Yes, you do, don’t you?”

“I hope you feel better.”

“Thanks.”

I CAN ALMOST
feel her hands on me. And her lips and the press of her soft skin against mine. So many years ago, and yet, suddenly, there she is, staring right into my eyes, pulling me toward her, whispering my name. Over and over and over again.