Cheapskate in Love

by Booth, Skittle

  His fingers almost clenched into a fist, as he cursed Donna’s boyfriend for pushing him off the porch. That cretin, he raged. “Calling me pops,” he said to himself. “I should have popped him. I would have popped him, if I was feeling better.” Although the idea that he could have defended himself against Frank some other day was satisfying to think, it was not believable to him after a moment’s reflection. So instead, he excoriated Donna for dating such a mentally challenged muscle head. “What does she see in that moron?” he asked, roiling in anger at her. “As good as she looks, she must be a nitwit. That guy’s a zero. The only thing he has going for him is his age.” Bill broke off this train of thought, because he was suddenly mindful of someone else, who had always wanted to date younger people. Unintentionally, he might be incriminating himself, which was intolerable, so he changed the subject.

  Madder than ever, because of all the money he had wasted, he railed against Donna and all the other women he had ever dated, including the one he had been married to decades ago. Flowers, candy, clothing, dinners, shows, vacations, all of those he had lavished upon them—within a budget, of course—and where had that brought him? To a hospital bed. He denounced their greed and selfishness, their self-interest and pickiness, their inconsideration. They had only wanted to use him and then toss him aside. Again, he seemed to be venturing down a path of self-indictment, because his past behavior fell short of an exemplary generosity. Now that he thought about it, they might have treated him that way, because they saw that’s how he was treating them.

  He switched his reflections to those women who had been grateful, as far as he could tell, who had accepted his gifts with the goodwill that was his intention, before they had turned against him. It was a short list, a very short list. There was only one woman he could recall, who had truly seemed to appreciate a gift from him. There was only one, who had come to his help before. And he couldn’t say he had actually had goodwill toward her. He remembered how he had treated her on different occasions, since her husband died. He couldn’t repress the flood of accusing thoughts that poured forth now, and tears began to well within his eyes.

  His injury and helplessness gave him a different perspective. He remembered how she had called him a fool. Stan and his sister had called him one, too. And for the first time, he felt that they were right: He had been a fool. He deserved to be left at church without a ride. He deserved to lie practically immobile in a hospital bed, at the mercy of others. He had been chasing illusions, youthful follies, while the best opportunity he had ever stumbled upon had been in front of him, his for the taking. It was an error as great, he thought, as running by a twenty-dollar bill lying on the ground, in his haste to get to a final-reduction clothing sale, where nothing remained in his size. Yes, he had been a big fool!

  The next action that Bill took may appear unsurprising. It would seem he was compelled to it by his circumstances. Dire need can force us to take a different course of action than we would have considered before, and to Bill, the risk of going to a nursing home was a dreadful danger indeed. The extremity of his dislike for spending six months in such a place would easily seem to alter his mind, so that he now greeted willingly an option that not long ago he would have held in the fiercest detestation.

  But a deeper, surprising change had begun in Bill, spurred by Stan’s advice and his own reflections, which is as rare as it is wonderful. Although events may force us to take actions, which we would have previously avoided, our customary feelings are not so easily altered and seldom reversed. A change of heart, an opening of our feelings for others, who were not close before, may be the most difficult accomplishment for any person of any age, because it must come from within. It can’t be wrung or coaxed from us by powers outside, even when there is a mortal threat. As difficult as it was, Bill underwent the beginning of such a change now. His fears, his shame, his regret, and sadness so softened his heart, scarred with greed and stinginess and hurt, that a little seed of real affection sprouted.

  A couple of tears glided down his cheeks, as he hoped there was still a chance that the twenty-dollar bill he had run past before was still lying on the ground for him to pick up.

  He pressed the button to call for a nurse. After a few minutes of waiting, since there was a nursing station near his room, he called out rather quietly, “Nurse.”

  A minute later, he called more loudly, “Nurse.”

  After another minute, he howled, “Nurse!”

  “I’m not deaf,” said the nurse, whose name was Gwen, bustling into his room. “No need to holler. It just so happens there are other patients here. You all seem to think this is some kind of fancy, five-star hotel, where I should come running every time you blink. But I ain’t ever seen one of you tip for room service. When that happens, it will be a blessing from the Lord! Now, how may I help you?” Despite the constant pressures of her job, Gwen, who was in her forties, tried to perform more than her duties demanded and was something of a busybody, although she always had her patients’ best interests in mind.

  “I want to make another call.”

  Gwen picked his Blackberry up off the nightstand and scrolled through the new messages. “There’s a message from Linda,” she said. That was the only new message that she thought worth mentioning. “‘Let’s go vacation in China. Hike Great Wall.’”

  “Tell her I’m in a coma,” he grumbled. “No, don’t,” he said upon a second thought. “She might come to try and cure me. Delete it. Now dial the number for Helen in the contact list, with George in parentheses behind it.”

  “I hope George doesn’t mind,” she said, with a whiff of suspicion.

  “He’s dead.”

  “Then he shouldn’t,” was her crisp reply. She felt much better about proceeding and held the phone next to Bill’s head, after dialing the number.

  “Helen,” his voice wavered, caught with emotion, when she answered. “This is Bill.”

  Helen briskly asked him what he wanted. Her feelings were not fluttering like his, and she wanted to end the call quickly. She thought he had little to say and nothing she wanted to hear.

  “Helen, I...I,” he stuttered. “Can...Can you...” The chaos of his conflicting emotions and thoughts, as he struggled to act differently than he had in the past—his desire still caught in the vice of former habits and held back by his timidity—caused new tears to trickle from his eyes and snot to drip from his nose.

  Gwen grabbed a tissue and clamped it down on his nose. “Blow,” she blared, and Bill complied.

  Both of them heard Helen’s voice, wondering in alarm. “Bill, what’s wrong? Where are you?”

  The situation required a professional’s expertise, Gwen thought, and she lifted the Blackberry to answer Helen herself. “Ma’am,” she said, in her most authoritative tone, “I hope you can come see this poor wretch. He’s in the hospital, helpless as a baby, and nowhere near as cute. Someone needs to care for him for a while. It’ll be a thankless task, I reckon. I should know. I’m a nurse and tend to the likes of him everyday. The headaches I have could kill an elephant. But somebody has to do it. He shouldn’t be too much trouble. Although he’s stiff as a log, I daresay he’s gentler than before.”

  Chapter 35

  That night at the French restaurant they favored, Helen met Sandra and Joan for dinner and an emergency consultation. While they sipped wine before their first course, Helen explained everything about what had happened to Bill and what he had asked her to do that afternoon when she went to the hospital.

  “He wants you to do what?” Joan exploded. The people at every table around them turned to look, wanting to know what he wanted, thinking it must be something extremely unusual, perhaps quite indecent.

  “You’re kidding, aren’t you?” Sandra said more quietly than Joan, trying to avoid attracting more attention, but she was no less amazed.

  “Tell us you’re kidding, so we can laugh about it,” Joan demanded. “And next time you want to be funny, talk about politics or some
thing else, where the humor is obvious.”

  The noisy surprise of Joan and Sandra didn’t upset Helen, because she expected it. She remained calm and a bit withdrawn. She was thinking about what she had seen and heard that afternoon, and she was trying to probe the future. During her hospital visit, Bill had apologized for his past behavior toward her. But she was unsure whether his feelings had really changed, or if he merely wanted a caregiver for six months, and she was the only possible choice outside of a nursing home. He hadn’t said anything about what he felt, but he had seemed uncertain about what he did say. Maybe he wasn’t ready to tell her more.

  “She’s not kidding,” Sandra commented, eyeing Helen’s quiet detachment.

  Helen shook her head no, so they knew she was serious. “That’s what he asked,” she said, in a tone that implied she hardly believed it, too.

  “After what he did to you, does he expect that...” Sandra began to say.

  “You tell him no. No way, no how, no nothing, no NEVER.” Joan’s voice rose again, this time in a crescendo with a ringing climax. The surrounding tables all looked in their direction, longing to know more than before what he wanted.

  “You’re not really considering what he said?” Sandra asked.

  Helen raised her eyebrows and slightly shrugged. She wasn’t sure.

  “So Tom didn’t work out,” Joan fired off, exasperated that Helen could even hesitate over what Bill had asked. “Big deal. The phone book is full of men. Finding something better than Bill shouldn’t be that hard.”

  “She does have a point,” Sandra said to Helen.

  All through dinner, Joan and Sandra criticized Bill and his repugnant request—Joan much more strongly than Sandra—pressing upon Helen other better options. But the longer they talked, the more her opinion moved in the opposite direction: To forgive Bill’s past treatment of her and hazard another try. Before her arrival home, she had determined what to do and what she would tell him in the morning.

  Late the next morning, which was a Monday, Katie was again conversing with Bill on speakerphone, unbeknownst to him, so that everyone in the office could hear why he wouldn’t be in. Bill explained, that due to an accident, he would be confined to bed for six months. Katie elicited enough details from him about the accident, despite his reluctance to elaborate, that Claire, Debbie, and Matt were howling with laughter at his misfortunes. They tried to contain themselves by covering their mouths with their hands. But Katie had to vigorously gesture to them to quiet down even more, so that Bill wouldn’t suspect that others were listening.

  “Bill, I’m so sorry to hear that,” Katie said to him, trying hard not to giggle herself. The laughter of the others was so hysterical it was contagious. “How long will you be in the hospital?”

  “I’m going home today,” he said, with a bright sound in his voice.

  The staff was puzzled, and their laughing diminished. “How can you be there in a body cast?” Katie asked.

  “A neighbor will take care of me.” The brightness in his voice had the unmistakable quality of happiness, and the office was completely silent with surprise. They could sense that Bill’s life had undergone some kind of change, and they were unsure how to relate to this new person, this different person whom they were listening to. To them, it was unthinkable that someone would volunteer to help the previous Bill, who was the only Bill they knew, for any period of time. Old Bill was ridiculous, an adult aspiring to be a teenager, but this new Bill was an enigma. Suddenly they had respect for him, and there was a pause of several moments in the conversation.

  “Katie, are you there?” Bill asked.

  “Yes, yes, we’re—I’m here,” Katie rushed to say. More artfully, she continued, “Could you repeat what you just said?”

  Everyone in the office leaned toward her phone to better hear any revelation he might make of the mystery.

  The next day toward evening, a hospital worker brought Bill to his studio apartment in a wheelchair, while another hospital worker rolled in a hospital bed behind them. The adjustable bed was to be left in the apartment, so that he could more easily eat in bed and transfer to the wheelchair, when he needed to use the bathroom or move around for another reason.

  The journey to his apartment was a source of great stress to Bill, because he thought other residents and the building staff would snicker, when they saw his disabled condition. For someone who had always acted younger than the young, chasing the youngest women who would talk with him, he thought he would appear to them as having suffered a sudden, catastrophic decline. He thought he would look like a sad case, a cripple barely clinging on to life. His face was as rigid and stiff as his back brace, as he was rolled toward the entrance of the building, through the lobby, and down the corridor to his studio. Whenever he passed anyone, his facial features were totally impassive, and they grew grimmer and more stone-like, when he saw Jonathan at the front desk. He feared to hear what they thought. He didn’t say anything to anyone or even nod when someone greeted him.

  His mood changed, when he was wheeled into his apartment, where the door was propped wide open. Helen was inside, moving furniture around to make room for the new bed.

  “Welcome home, Bill,” she said.

  He smiled and relaxed.

  Later that evening, when he was settled into his new bed, and Helen had fed him the last spoonfuls of a soup she had made, she placed the dirty dishes in the sink and returned to his bedside with an emergency call device.

  “I’ll try to come before the home care attendant arrives in the morning,” she told him, “but if I don’t, the front desk will let her in. If you need anything before she gets here, or there’s a problem, call me. Just press this button, and I’ll come.” She showed him the device and placed it near his hand, wrapping the cord around his wrist.

  “Where did you get this thing?” he asked.

  “I bought it. I knew it’d come in handy.”

  “Tomorrow, I’m going to write you a check for it and for the home care attendant. You shouldn’t have to spend a dime on me. If my health insurance won’t pay, then I need to. I was the foolish one.” The magnitude of the astonishing change that had begun in Bill was apparent in how easily he had assented to a home care attendant earlier in the day, when Helen had suggested hiring one for a few hours everyday, to help him bathe and do other tasks. The change in Bill was still visible now, as he calmly took responsibility to pay for such assistance.

  “Are you sure your hand can write a check already?” she teased.

  “If not, I’ll give you my bank card and my password, so you can withdraw the money. Without your help, I don’t know where I’d be.”

  “Since you were so foolish, maybe I should bill you for my services,” she said breezily. Since she could tell that suggestion greatly disturbed him—fireworks of fear lit up his face, as he mentally calculated the enormity of the expense—she reassured him, “I’m kidding. I don’t mind helping out an old friend. Now, remember, if you need anything tonight, don’t hesitate to call me.”

  “Thanks, Helen,” he said, his momentary fright relieved. “I should be OK. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “Have a goodnight, Bill,” she said, patting his hand. “Tomorrow, I think I’ll try to do some cleaning up around here. If that’s OK with you. Seems like it’s been a while, since anyone tidied up.” She looked around his apartment disapprovingly.

  “Only if you want to,” he replied, accepting her offer with a submissive deference, entirely unlike his response to her first scouring of his apartment. “The place sure needs it, but only if you want to.”

  “I don’t mind. A clean house is a happy house, I think.”

  Bidding each other goodnight, she turned off the lights in his apartment, except for a light in the kitchen, and left, locking his door from the hallway.

  Alone in the semi-darkness of his apartment, Bill did one of the few things that he could still do: He thought. Memories of his many former, miserable relationships with women
came to haunt him, as they had so often in the past, while he was at home, but he sent them away. He was no longer under their spell. He was thinking about the future, and for the first time in his existence he was thinking realistically about life with another person.

  In his current physical state, where he was entirely dependent upon the efforts of other people to help him live, the things that were important for his future and his present were different from what he had desired in the past. Although his infantile dependency would be over in six months, if his recovery progressed normally, his paralyzing experience had changed him forever. Youth and beauty were never going to be the primary qualities by which he judged any woman from now on, as appealing as those traits can be. Instead, he wanted—at the moment he needed—someone who would care for him and appreciate him. If he had never had the accident, he might not have arrived at this simple truth, but that thought didn’t make him grateful to Donna and Frank. He railed at his stupidity for not discovering on his own, a long time ago, what others seem to know intuitively, without coming close to the severe humiliation and crippling injury he had suffered.

  The more he thought, the more his thoughts circled back to Helen. The sprout of love, which had germinated in him while in the hospital, was rapidly sending out roots in the rocky, dry soil of his heart; tiny, tender, branches and leaves—the arteries and veins of living affection—were spreading throughout his body. His flourishing emotional state, he could feel, was improving his physical one. Even his financial state showed every sign of thriving in the future, if she was a part of it. In the past, Helen had been perfectly delighted with a fifteen-dollar bouquet and a free donut social, so he wouldn’t have to purchase costly gifts or plan extravaganzas for her. She might not be the woman of his former dreams, but she promised to be the most suitable woman that he had ever known, someone who could cherish his well-being, as well as his wallet.