A Man of His Own

by Susan Wilson

  “Not much to tell. It was all right. More people showed up than I would have expected.”

  “Not unusual in a small town. In Mount Joy, everyone shows up at most funerals because it’s considered a civic duty.”

  “I found out he was married.”

  I could tell that this bit of ancient history stuck in Keller’s throat. He didn’t say it like it was interesting or puzzling, but as if it somehow bothered him. Like Clayton had been holding back on him. So I asked the next logical questions. “Did he have kids?”

  “No. She died in the influenza outbreak, just at the end of it. She was twenty years younger than he was. She was my age when she died.” For a man who had seen the youth of the country dead on the battlefield, he sounded surprised that a young woman might perish from disease.

  “That’s so sad.” So my intuition of unrequited love had been a little correct. Just a different lover and a different cause.

  “I keep thinking how miserable an old codfish he was, and wondering how different it would have been had she lived. Miss Jacobs said that he loved her.” Keller lifted his face and looked at me as he said this. He loved her. “I keep thinking how powerful love is. That losing it can change a person so deeply.”

  “Having it changes a person, too.”

  * * *

  With Rick out of the room, we decided to give it a good cleaning. Armed to the teeth with the tools necessary, we dragged or wheeled out all of the furniture, stripped the books off the shelf, and took down the venetian blinds, which I soaked in the bathtub in ammonia water. Pax curled his lips up in a hilarious mask of distaste and retreated to the breezeway. We each took two walls and washed them down until the pale blue brightened like an old master’s glory revealed. Keller scrubbed down the bed, removing the mattress and running a sponge all over the mechanism that raised and lowered it.

  By four o’clock, all that was left untouched in the room was the wheelchair, and Keller decided that would best be handled out in the garage, where he could give it a good going-over without getting the mopped floor wet again. “I’ll tighten up the bolts while I’m at it.”

  While he was occupied with the chair, I rooted around in the cellar for a couple of pictures we’d had hanging in our first apartment. I would put them up on the unadorned but sparkly clean walls. One was a landscape painted by a local Iowa amateur that my aunt and uncle had given us for our wedding and the other a view of the Public Garden we’d bought ourselves from a street vendor at Downtown Crossing. They were cheerful in an uncheerful space. The hospital bed was made up like a normal bed, with the spread tucked neatly under the single pillow. The books had been moved to the higher shelf and the radio was where it should have been all along; the table over the bed had been scrubbed clean and pushed out of the way for the moment; the bedside table had been neatened up, and I put a new lamp on it, swapping out the rather institutional one with a bedroom lamp abandoned in the basement. The sickroom looked almost, but not quite, like a real bedroom. But it didn’t look right. I stood in the doorway, my rubber gloves still on, the bucket of dirty water at my feet, and I couldn’t help but think that, without the wheelchair, it looked like we had expunged Rick. As if we didn’t expect him back.

  Chapter Fifty-five

  Keller and I went to the hospital together for evening visiting hours. Except for the fact that Rick had a roommate, an old gent with a prostate—or “prostrate,” as he kept calling it—problem, it could have been any evening with the three of us sitting around a small space filled with medical equipment. Rick was so much better, although they’d found another decubitus starting on his left flank. We tried so hard, and still we weren’t able to keep his skin completely healthy.

  When we arrived, Keller grasped the trapeze dangling over Rick’s bed. “We should get one of these. Think how much it would help.”

  Rick ignored the suggestion. “How’s my Pax?”

  “Pax will come with us when we come spring you out of this place.” Keller let go of the trapeze and it swung gently over Rick. “He’s missed you.”

  “I miss him. You be sure to bring him.”

  I shouldn’t have, but I couldn’t help feeling like Rick missed that dog more than he missed me. I thought it was true. I wasn’t jealous, not in any serious sense. I remembered so distinctly then the first time Rick had taken me to his place, Pax sitting there waiting for him, suspicious of me, and Rick’s absolute confidence that I would love his dog as much as he did. Now all I wanted was for him to love me as much as he did the dog. That sounds petty and dramatic. I don’t mean that he didn’t love me as much, but the quality of the love he had for that dog was so much purer, less troubled. The dog had gone to war and come home unchanged. Neither of us could say that about ourselves.

  Keller and I were exhausted from our day’s labors, so weren’t very talkative, and Rick noticed. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing, just really tired.” I told him what we’d been doing.

  “So, you cleaned everything, even the chair?”

  Keller nodded. “Yeah. Even the wheelchair.” He was sitting to my left, and out of the corner of my eye I saw him lean back and cross his arms. I don’t know why Rick sounded like he was talking about something else, like the word wheelchair was a euphemism. Maybe I was just so tired, I was hearing things.

  The man next to Rick was trying to get out of bed and that didn’t look like a good idea to me, but before I could say anything, Keller got up to look for a nurse.

  Rick watched him leave the room. “Good time for me to get out of the way, then, I guess. Early spring cleaning.” I thought the topic had pretty much run out and I didn’t understand Rick’s combative tone. That wasn’t my imagination.

  “More like late fall. I never did give that room a proper going-over when we moved in.”

  “I’ll try to plan my hospitalizations to be more convenient.”

  I was too tired to rise to his bait. “Actually, I could only do it because Keller was there to help me.”

  “As always.”

  “Just being useful, Rick.” Keller was back in the room. “It’s what you pay me for.”

  “Right. Just doing your job.”

  That was enough for me. “I think it’s time to go. You’re getting tired.”

  “And cranky?” Rick looked away, and he did look cranky, like a little boy kept inside while his friends go outside to play.

  “Yeah. A little.” I bent and kissed his forehead, just like you would with a cranky little boy. “I love you anyway.”

  He took my hand and held it tightly, almost too tight, pulling me a little closer. “Good.” This time, we kissed like proper lovers, but I couldn’t help but get the feeling that it was for Keller’s benefit.

  Chapter Fifty-six

  Pax has inspected every room in the house. He’s listened, sniffed, looked in every dark corner, taken a lick at a missed drip on the side of the stove, lapped at his water bowl, and stood over the heat register to enjoy the blast of heat. Like a good sentry at his post, Pax feels confident that this house is safe. Safe and empty. It is the first time in recent memory that the dog has been left all alone.

  Pax eyes the living room sofa, leans against it a little, rubs his chops against the nubby fabric. One paw, then another, and suddenly he’s aboard. From the height of the sofa, he can sit and look out the window unobstructed. The neighbor’s cat pauses at the curb cut, stretches, and sits to wash her face, as if she knows he’s looking at her and she is taunting him. He has no quarrel with cats, but he doesn’t much like this feline’s attitude of entitlement. He barks. One full-bodied roof and the cat stops her washing and blinks. Moves on, question-mark tail in the air. Insouciant, but warned.

  The people in this house aren’t where they belong, and the routine has been disrupted. But Pax has long since learned to cope with disruption, to be flexible and to be alert to what he needs to do. Right now, he needs to sit on this couch and wait for the sound of the car to return. Once he detects
the singular sound of their car, he’ll jump down from the couch. Not because he knows he isn’t supposed to be on the couch, which he does, but because he always needs to greet them at the door; that’s part of his job. And, if a dog can hope, he’s hoping that all three of his people will be in that car.

  But only Francesca and Keller got out of the car this day, and Pax knows better than to look behind them to see if somehow Rick has been left outside. He greets them with the same enthusiasm as he would have his missing Rick. They talk to him as if he’s supposed to understand all their language. The only words he understands are Rick and tomorrow. Not tomorrow as a concept, but the word always means “later on, not now.” Ergo, Rick, not now.

  Chapter Fifty-seven

  We had worked hard on that room together, enjoying an easy companionship over buckets of Spic and Span. The radio was on and we sang along with some of the popular songs. Keller had a serviceable voice and I wasn’t too bad. We muffed the lyrics and laughed. A little water might have splashed, a sponge thrown playfully. We were like two kids on a snow day, released, however temporarily, from the burden of our daily routine. All right, I’ll say it, released from the burden of my husband. We both loved him; I know that. And that’s what made it all right for us to acknowledge that we were enjoying one day, maybe two, without his presence. His very paternal presence. His dark presence over the lightness in ourselves that we were holding down. We were still young. I sometimes forget that. Keller and I were still in our twenties.

  We’d come back from visiting Rick in the hospital less cheery than when we had gone. Rick’s grumpiness had put a damper on our spirits. We hadn’t said much on the way home, Keller driving my car. Our car, I should say, even though Rick would never drive it. I sat in the passenger seat and stared out the window until I felt his hand in its thick winter glove touch mine. “It’s all right, Francesca. He’s all right.” He gave my hand a little tug. How like Keller to read my thoughts. I’m not sure if I was grateful or a little afraid.

  Back at the house, we sprang Pax from his solitary confinement and walked to the beach. Keller threw sticks for him and Pax bounded and raced, splashed in the freezing water and barked at us as if he were a puppy without manners. The Harbor islands looked like great dark humps in the dusk and the Boston skyline glittered in the cold air, jewel-like and competing with the stars just emerging. As we walked back, the brightness of postwar illumination paved our way home.

  We’d left the lights on, so our house was as brightly lit as any we’d passed. Warm and welcoming. We stamped old snow and beach sand off our boots and left them in the breezeway. In unshod feet, we scampered over cold tiles into the warm kitchen. Keller fed Pax and I rummaged through the Frigidaire for something to cobble together for dinner. We sat at the same table and ate scrambled eggs and toast. Face-to-face, close enough that Keller reached across and tipped a flake of egg off my face. I spooned my leftovers onto his plate.

  The three of us flopped on the living room couch to listen to the radio—a little railroad train of hips and shoulders, mine next to Keller’s and Pax’s next to his in an unprecedented lapse of training—Pax especially enjoyed Jack Paar’s show. We stayed up well past our usual fall-into-bed hour. It was as if we didn’t want to let the day end. As if neither of us could figure out the best way to say good night without calling attention to the fact that we were, for all intents and purposes, unchaperoned.

  Pax jumped down and stretched fore and aft, then went to the front door for last call. Keller put on his jacket and out they went. I shut off the radio and the house was suddenly too silent. Without thinking, I headed into Rick’s room, as I did every night. The sight of the empty bed jolted me back into the moment. My husband was in the hospital and I was alone with Keller.

  Chapter Fifty-eight

  It’s an accident, this meeting on the stairs. She’s heading down to use the bathroom; he’s going up after taking Pax out for his late night walk. He should turn this way and she should turn that. Instead, as she is one step above him, they find themselves face-to-face, body-to-body. He can smell the faint mint of her favorite Lifesaver. She can, no doubt, breathe in the taste of his last cigarette. He touches the inside of her elbow. She touches his cheek. The moment lingers, as if, having made these experimental gestures, neither one has a way of making sense of them. Here is a question being asked, for which there is no answer. He traces his thumb against the soft surface of her skin. She fans her fingers against his stubbled cheek, holds it as if she is puzzled at the contours of his bones. He’s surprised to see that her eyes aren’t simply green, as he thought, but flecked with shards of amber.

  At the foot of the stairs, the dog sits, his gaze upon them, but he is silent.

  They need to invoke Rick.

  “I’m going to make cocoa. Come down.” Her hand is still on his cheek as she says this.

  “I will.” His hand is still on her tender skin.

  The moment passes and they continue on their separate ways: She goes downstairs, pauses, looks back at him, doesn’t smile. He goes to his room, where he shuts the door and sits on his cot. Is it possible that his fingers burn with the heat of her skin? Keller touches his lips with the hand that touched her so tenderly. He then touches the cheek where her hand had held it, holding him still so that their gazes matched. He doesn’t go downstairs to sit across a kitchen table from her, an unwanted mug of hot chocolate held in a hand already heated by a want that transcends mere lust. By the time she finally comes upstairs, he is asleep.

  Pax remains as he is, at the foot of the stairs, alert and panting gently.

  * * *

  His cheek was so different from Rick’s—his day-old beard darker, the angles sharper. His deep brown eyes softened the longer he looked into mine. The brush of his thumb against my most sensitive skin had sent a radiating pulse down into my deepest parts. For months—no, years—I had been untouched. Rather, touched only in dim affection by my husband, who had lost the ability to want me. Touched by Keller only within the confines of this platonic ideal we were living by out of respect and common decency and the love we both held for Rick.

  I heated the milk and got out two mugs, but I knew that he wouldn’t come down. I was relieved, to tell the truth. It was as if there was a thin membrane between us, a membrane that separated us from each other and temptation. On those stairs, we had pushed against that membrane. And so it was fragile right now and there was a grave danger that it would burst at the merest provocation.

  Chapter Fifty-nine

  It is almost time for his afternoon walk when instead Pax is asked to get in Keller’s car, something he loves to do, although this time he’s made to sit in the back, not next to Keller as he most often does. Francesca sits there and he supposes that that’s all right. Pax puts his head over the back of the front seat, in between Francesca and Keller. They are unusually quiet, but also unusually close, so he has to push a little to get his head in between them. She keeps adjusting her gloves; he keeps pulling on his earlobe, as if he’s about to issue a thought, but then keeps silent. They are making him nervous.

  Pax’s canine eyes are inadequate for detail, but he recognizes that they are traveling along familiar roads for a time. Then they turn, heading in a direction he’s never been before. When they park the car, Pax expects the command to stay, guard the vehicle against thieves. Instead, Keller asks him to get out and fall in. Francesca is on Keller’s right side and Pax is at heel at his left. They march to the front door in almost military precision. Left, right, left.

  Pax is aware of people standing on both sides of the walkway leading to the entrance of this building that harbors odors that remind the dog of his new purpose. At the entrance, a man speaks to Keller, but Keller clearly doesn’t see him as an obstacle, more like a subordinate, and keeps a firm touch on the leash. The door opens to them and Francesca and Keller, with Pax at his side, go in. Pax isn’t certain about the tiny windowless room that moves, but he betrays no concern, although he si
ts in order to feel more secure. The door opens again and everything has changed. He takes one deep investigative breath and doesn’t need any further guidance at this point. He knows where they’re going and whom they are going to collect. He can hardly make himself stay at heel as they walk down the long corridor to where Rick waits.

  Roo, roo. Pax forgets himself as he fairly leaps into Rick’s lap. He wriggles like a puppy and has no shame.

  “Good boy. Good boy.”

  All three of them say it: “Good boy, Pax.” It’s as if he’s done something of a heroic nature, although Pax doesn’t have any idea what it is. Still, it’s good to be the object of praise, even for a dog that has never lacked for praise.

  Chapter Sixty

  Keller wheels Rick to the car, where the awkward business of getting from wheelchair to front seat will be enacted. Pax is close by to lend moral support and Francesca is bringing up the rear with a bagful of his belongings. There is always something noxious about personal items brought home from the hospital, and she’ll be tossing everything into the washer as soon as they get home.

  The little pouch that holds his crossword puzzle books and pencils, and the precious trove of little white pills, isn’t attached to the wheelchair, and Rick scans Keller’s face to see if there is any suspicion; if, in giving his chair a good cleaning, Keller has found the twenty-one little pills safely resting at the bottom of that cloth pouch, hiding like fish beneath the reef of a crossword puzzle book. Keller betrays no hint that he’s found out Rick’s secret. But there is a tension in his jaw, something that makes him look like a man with something on his mind.

  Keller wedges him into the front seat and Francesca leans in to kiss him, as if she’s staying behind, not climbing into the backseat with the dog. Her lips are warm despite the frigid air, as if she’s held on to some of the warmth of the indoors. But she doesn’t look at him.