The Day I Ate Whatever I Wanted

by Elizabeth Berg

  “Get dressed, Ralph, I’m going to find the nurse. They said you could go home when you woke up. So wake up, already.”

  Ralph nods, then slowly sits up. “Where are my clothes?”

  Monica comes impatiently back to the bedside, pulls a plastic bag out from the bedside stand, and throws it at him. “Here!”

  “How should I have known that?” Ralph asks.

  “Oy. Don’t start a fight now!”

  “Get the nurse!”

  “I am!”

  Ralph pulls on his trousers but gets stuck trying to figure out how to put a shirt on over his IV. So he sits at the side of the bed, waiting. The bed across from him is empty, pristine-looking. You’d never know that someone had been in it before. Anything could have happened in that bed. He wonders if the beds get washed, if they go down to some gigantic car wash–type thing and then get put back into use. He hopes they get washed. God. Anything could be on them. Maybe somebody died in that bed. Or in the one he is sitting on now. Or gave birth in it. You never knew, from one day to the next what—

  “Mr. Aronson?”

  The nurse. A short little redhead, God bless her, big smile, real cute. “Hello,” Ralph says. He reaches up self-consciously to smooth down his hair.

  “What do you say we get rid of that IV?”

  “Be okay with me.” Ralph watches as the nurse—

  DIANNE, her name pin says—takes out the IV, then covers the site with a Band-Aid.

  “World War Three,” Ralph says, referring to the many bruises on his hand.

  “Guess you were hard to get a line in,” Dianne says, and from behind him Ralph hears Monica say, “He has bad veins.”

  The nurse instructs Ralph about what to watch for in the future, how he must never ignore such symptoms, he was exactly right to call 911, just sign here and he’s a free man. Then he and Monica are out in the sunshine and walking toward the car. Ralph climbs into the passenger side of the car slowly, adjusts his legs with great care, and draws in a long breath. He may not have had a heart attack, but he’s been in the hospital, by God! “It seems like so long since we’ve been out together,” he says.

  “We’ve been out,” Monica answers. Then, “Watch it, you idiot!” she yells at a car that has come nowhere near her.

  “Only on the deck. I mean, we’ve mostly been…”

  “I left him a can of cat food,” Monica says.

  Ralph nods. The dog loves cat food—they discovered this when friends visited with their Siamese; they put down cat food, and Dogling raced over and vacuumed it up. Ever since then, he’s gotten to have a can of cat food on special occasions. He likes the salmon supreme best. Liked.

  Monica drives home at speeds well over the limit, and Ralph says nothing. He wants to get there, too. Old Butchie.

  When they come into the house, Ralph hears the sound of the TV. “Is someone here?” he whispers to Monica.

  “No,” she says. “I turned the TV on for Dogling before I left. Animal Planet. First I had on channel five, but what did he need with that crap? It was some comedy that wasn’t even funny. And the Food Network, they weren’t talking enthusiastic enough.”

  “Jesus Christ, Monica. I was being rushed to the hospital and you were channel-surfing?”

  “He was being left alone, Ralph. And he’s dying!”

  “I could have been dying!”

  “You were not, it was only indigestion!”

  “You didn’t know that then!”

  “You were in the ambulance! What could I do? I was coming!” She takes in a breath, calms herself. “Now stop it. The least we can do is give him a tranquil environment his last few…” She takes off her jacket and hands it to him. Then she goes into the living room, turns off the television, and calls, “We’re home, sweetheart! Hiiiiiiiii, Dogling! Where’s my good boy?”

  It’s been a while since the dog greeted them at the door, Ralph thinks, hanging Monica’s jacket. She got yellow from the Cheetos on the sleeve, he sees, and he tries to brush the stain off, which only makes it worse.

  Yes, it’s been a long while since they walked into the house on a normal day and had Dogling run over to them, snorting and turning around in circles, his little tail wagging so fast it was a blur. Ralph tries to remember the last time it happened. A month ago? Two? So often, you never know the last time’s going to be the last time. There’s so much you don’t get to know. Something tugs at Ralph’s mind, some memory, some thought. But then he hears Monica cry out, and he walks quickly into the kitchen. Dogling is on his side, lying still in that unequivocal way, and Monica is crouched down beside him, her hands over her face, weeping.

  Ralph lowers himself beside Monica and rubs her back. Then he picks the dog up and cradles him against his chest. Already, the legs have grown stiff. “Ah, buddy,” he says. “My little man.”

  And then his heart seems to crack wide open and he sobs, hoarse, choppy sounds he has never heard coming from himself before. The dog died alone. He cries and cries, and snot runs freely down his face and he gets the hiccups. On and on he weeps, for what surely must be only minutes but feels like hours. He hears Monica saying, “Ralph? Ralph?” but she might as well be miles away. He cannot see her. He cannot feel her.

  Finally she says, “Ralph!” and he is able to turn to her and say in his anguished voice, “What? What, Monica?”

  She nods. “Okay. You know why I’m crying?”

  “Yeah. Because he died alone.” Another sob, unbidden, unmanly. What the fuck, who cares.

  “No. Not because he died alone.” She wipes broadly under her nose, then under Ralph’s.

  “Because he died,” he says.

  “No. It’s because he ate, Ralph.” She shows Ralph the half-empty cat food can. “He ate, he tried, oh, what a champ, what a great dog!”

  Through his tears, Ralph smiles, then begins to sob again.

  “He was!” Monica says.

  “I know he was.”

  “And…see? I’m crying from happiness,” Monica says.

  “I’m so glad that one of the very last things he did was eat that salmon supreme.” She folds her hands in her lap and speaks quietly. “Oh, Ralph. Everything’s so much more important than we think.”

  Now Ralph remembers what eluded him before. The sense of peace he’d had when he thought he was dying, how willing he was, for whatever came. For whatever had happened, to have happened. He lays Dogling out on his lap. One of the dog’s eyes is open, and he gently closes it. “Oh, God,” Monica says softly, but there is more relief than sorrow in it. And then—could you believe it?—she begins to laugh a little, and through his tears, Ralph does, too.

  “You know, Monica? When I was in the ER and I thought…I mean, I didn’t know. I heard voices, but I couldn’t speak, I felt kind of floaty and I didn’t know if I was dying or what. But I felt the opposite of you. I felt like nothing really mattered. In the good way.” He takes in a deep breath. He thinks he’s done crying, now. “You know?”

  “Maybe it’s the same thing,” Monica says. “Maybe we’re saying the same thing.” She strokes one of Dogling’s ears. “I think we are.” She looks over at Ralph, and there is in her face a girlishness, a lucent shyness he has not seen in a long, long time. “Ralph? I’m really glad you didn’t die.”

  Doi. Ah, Monica. Ah, Butchie. Ah, spring day, come to a close, with the night wind rising up.

  He kisses her forehead. “I’m glad I didn’t die, too.”

  “I want to bury him under the rhododendron bush,” Monica says. “He liked it there. When he was lying under there, he thought he was king of the hill.”

  “Yeah, he did. Do you want bury the rest of the cat food with him?”

  “No. It will get all on him.”

  “We could wrap it up in foil.”

  She considers this, then says, “Okay. And…Let’s get another dog. A puppy.” She sighs.

  “Okay,” Ralph says, the word wide for his mouth, barely able to fit. But yes. Okay.

&nbs
p; They sit for some time in the kitchen, in a silence rich with a shared sentiment that gives up nothing of itself to words. Finally Ralph stands and offers his hand to Monica, and she stands up, complaining that, oy, her elbows hurt. “Do they?” Ralph asks, and they head out to the yard together, continuing a quiet conversation up to and including a starlit graveside ceremony, meant to honor and say farewell to a dog who with his life brought them joy, and with his death flapped their future like a rug, straightening it out before them.

  TRUTH OR DARE

  After dinner, Laura ushers her friends out onto the front porch. It is a Friday evening in early spring, the buds tight on the trees, the grass greening in spots. Joyce settles herself into one of the wicker chairs, still stiff after the insults of winter, and sighs. “It’s so light outside,” she says. “I’m always so happy when it stays light later.”

  “Everybody is,” Trudy says. She has stretched herself out on the little sofa, hogging all the room, so that Laura has to take the bad chair, the one with one leg ready to break off—when one sits in it, one fears moving. But Laura likes the way Trudy feels so comfortable taking the best seat, likes the way she is so unapologetic generally. It’s refreshing, a marked change from many of the women she knows, who routinely begin conversations with an apology. Even a phone call! Laura: Hello? Friend: Oh, I’m sorry, were you busy?

  The three of them are relatively new friends, having met a month ago, when they all signed up for Yoga Plus! in a just-opened studio. They were in the back row, next to one another, when the teacher told them to assume a certain pose and shout out, “I love my beautiful face!” (This, Laura assumed, was the “plus” part.) They none of them shouted it. They said it, but they didn’t shout it. When they assumed another pose and the teacher told them to shout out, “I love my beautiful rectum!” they all burst out laughing. “Focus!” the teacher said, but they couldn’t stop laughing, and finally they left and went across the street and had lunch, where they agreed they might have said, “I appreciate my rectum.”

  The women have a lot in common: they’re all in their late fifties, they’re all divorced, they all live alone in condos they’ve bought in this newly gentrified neighborhood, they’ve all had cancer scares, and Joyce has in fact had a mastectomy. This is the first time they’ve had dinner at Laura’s, and they have found it so agreeable, they’ve decided to have homemade dinners together once a week, rotating houses. Trudy has volunteered to be next and has already announced her menu: an Indian meal, all vegetarian. And a killer dessert. She complimented Laura on the dessert she made when they were served it; now she brings it up again. “That really was a good tart you made. Lemon curd and fresh strawberry. I really like that combination. And that cookie crust—it was like shortbread.”

  It is quiet for a moment; the women can hear the sounds of some neighborhood boys playing basketball a few houses down, the ball being dribbled. Then, “Dude!” one of them yells. Someone must have scored.

  “Was it shortbread?” Trudy asks.

  “Not exactly,” Laura says. “I’ll give you the recipe.”

  “Well, it was really good. Really buttery.”

  Joyce jumps up so quickly Laura thinks she’s been bitten by something. But it’s not that. “I want another piece,” she says. “I’m going to get another piece.”

  “Me, too,” Trudy says.

  Laura follows the women into her kitchen, and they all sit back down at the kitchen table and finish off the tart, thin slice by thin slice. Trudy tells them that she has been thinking about old boyfriends lately, and she has decided to call her favorite one up. Don, his name is, Don Christianson, and he’s someone she knew over thirty years ago.

  “You haven’t seen him since then?” Joyce asks. Her voice is like Georgette’s, on the old Mary Tyler Moore Show, a high, little girl’s voice, innocent and open. She actually looks a little like Georgette, too; blond, vacant-eyed, and dear.

  Trudy, licking off her fork, shakes her head. She looks a little like Lucille Ball, red curly hair always tied up on top of her head, big blue eyes, high cheekbones. She was quite a looker not so very long ago. Joyce and Laura weren’t bad themselves. They have admitted this to one another, each in her own way, how they used to be pretty. These young girls now? Ha. You want to talk about hot? Should have seen them thirty years ago. Well, forty.

  Laura says, “If you haven’t seen that guy for over thirty years, you’re going to have to reconcile yourself to the fact that he might be dead. Lots of my old boyfriends are dead.” She shakes her head and sighs.

  “Who died?” Joyce asks, her hand pressed against her chest as if she might have known them.

  “Well, one died of AIDS, one died of cancer, one—”

  “You have an old boyfriend who died of AIDS?” Trudy asks.

  “Yes.”

  “Was he gay?”

  “Yes. He was.”

  “Did you sleep together?” Joyce asks.

  Laura tilts her head, thinking. “Isn’t that the definition of old boyfriend?”

  Silence, and then the women agree that yes, in the context of what they’re talking about, and also considering that they came up in the sixties, when having sex was roughly equivalent to a handshake, “old boyfriend” means “slept with.”

  Trudy says to Laura, “You slept with a gay guy?”

  “He came out after we broke up,” Laura says. “I loved him even more after we were just friends. He was so handsome. We always kept in touch, and once when he was making a lot of money and I didn’t have anything—I mean, I had nothing—he invited me out for dinner at a fancy restaurant. I didn’t have anything nice to wear, so he took me shopping and bought me a beautiful green silk dress at this store where nothing was even out—they just brought things to your fancy changing room. Which was way nicer than my apartment. But anyway, he bought me a dress there, and he bought me a purse to go with it, too.”

  “Shoes?” Joyce asks, and her voice is a reverential whisper.

  “I actually had shoes,” Laura says. “I’d had to go to my aunt’s funeral, and my mom had bought me some shoes and some nylons for that. But anyway, he took me to this really great restaurant, and he let me take home all the leftovers, and when we got home my puppy had pooped all over my apartment, I mean all over it, he’d gotten sick, and there was Jim in his beautiful gray-green suit looking like the cover of GQ and he said, ‘I’ll help. Where are the paper towels?’ And he took off his jacket and folded it neatly over the top of one of my awful chairs, and then he rolled up his sleeves and helped me clean up. On his knees.”

  “Wow,” Joyce says. “That was a good date.”

  “That was a good boyfriend,” Trudy says. “Even if he wasn’t even your boyfriend then.”

  “I know,” Laura says, and she misses Jim so much right then, it is as though all the love she felt for him has been redelivered to her solar plexus. She remembers the night when he first made exquisite love to her, he was the kind of man who could spend ten minutes describing the beauty of your neck to you, not only with words but with the light touch of his fingers. She remembers the pearl gray light in his bedroom, the moon coming through the window, the clanking sound of the radiator, the brown-and-white-striped sheets on his bed—oh, it’s all so clear! She remembers how, after they finished, he ran his finger down the side of her face and asked her to tell him something about her that he didn’t know. She told him she could make good chicken sounds and not only that, she could imbue the clucks with real emotions. “For example,” she said,

  “Chicken with a Broken Heart.” And she made long, drawn-out, sorrow-saturated clucks. He laughed so hard. “Now do Chicken Mad at the Rooster,” he said. And she did. Again he laughed. Then he got up and made her linguine with clam sauce because another thing she told him was that she’d never had it and she didn’t see what the big deal was.

  “He was good,” she tells the women. “And I miss him so much. It isn’t often you find someone so handsome who is also so kind.” She
sighs and unbuttons her jeans. In the back of her mind, she feels happy to be among people with whom she can do this. In the front of her mind, she’s thinking something else, and she asks Trudy, “What if Don is married?”

  Trudy shrugs. “So?”

  “If you were married, would you want some old girlfriend coming around?” Joyce asks.

  Trudy considers this, then says, “Maybe not. But I probably wouldn’t care if I didn’t know about it.”

  Joyce’s eyes widen. “So this is going to be clandestine?”

  “Oh, stop,” Trudy says. “I’m almost sixty years old. We’ll probably meet in a cafeteria and compare lipid levels. I just feel like calling him up again because…Well, because I’m almost sixty. Isn’t there anyone you ever wonder about, that you’d just like to see again? Just to talk to?”

  “Only if it doesn’t involve air travel,” Joyce says. “I am so through with airplanes. Last time I flew, I was wearing this really sheer top under a suit jacket, it was just to have that little triangle of fabric at the top of the suit. You know. And they made me take my suit jacket off to go through security. I would have refused if I hadn’t been running so late. I would have had them pat me down or something. But I was running really late, and so I took it off and then made my excruciatingly slow way through. I swear I could feel the eyes of the guy behind me just boring into my fat. Plus my bra straps were showing because of the cut of the sleeves of that little top, which was never meant to be shown in public.” She waves her hand, as though pushing the memory away, then says, “Actually, you know what? There’s a guy I used to date who lives only an hour’s drive away. I just heard from a mutual friend that he moved to Indiana. Roy Schnickleman. Not like it sounds, honest. He looked just like James Dean. He drove a motorcycle, too. God.” She smacks her hand down on the table. “Okay, I’m in. Old boyfriend. Lunch. Let’s all do it this week and then we’ll tell about it at dinner next week.” She looks over at Laura. “Want to?”

  “I’m telling you, all my old boyfriends are dead.”

  “All of them?” Trudy asks.