Together we looked over swatches of material. I didn’t want leather, perhaps leather was a lifetime purchase and we did not have a lifetime. We did not inquire about warranties. We looked through books of swatches—lots of colors and a choice of fabrics. I spotted a bright red square and stopped. It leapt up at me. I asked John, could we be bold and choose red? “Why not,” he replied with his agreeable smile. I tried to picture the red chairs in our new living room. No question that they would be bright. No question that they would stand out. They would be contemporary. We would not be living in the past, surrounded only by possessions each of us had accumulated over fifty years. Our retirement home would be a sharp departure from that of the couple who had occupied it before us and had just been moved to assisted living. We were the young couple, moving in. I pushed away the questions: When would it be our turn? When would we have to move out to assisted living or skilled nursing in the Linden building? It had been hard for the other couple to leave. But they left nothing behind, and I was glad.
“Let’s go for the red chairs,” John and I agreed. The saleswoman was surprised, and I was pleased to see her reaction. We were not the beige, brown, or black-chair couple she had expected.
As the months went by waiting for the chairs to arrive, which had been specially ordered from Sweden, I began to have second thoughts. Would they work as I had anticipated, or would they be a disaster? Had we decided too quickly? Why hadn’t I deliberated longer, given darker colors a chance? When the chairs arrived, shrink-wrapped in heavy plastic, the two men who unloaded them had to use a knife to release them from bondage. There they stood: two solid walls of red.
“They’re so big,” I exclaimed. “They looked different in the showroom.”
My husband was dismayed. He had had a relapse of his insomnia and depression. “They’re not what I expected either,” he said. The chairs blazed in the room. I had hoped they would cure his insomnia and cheer him up, but instead they wore him down. They wore me down.
We tried placing one chair in the living room and the other in the study. Better, but not right. My stepdaughter came to fix the computer and sat in one of the chairs. “I like them. They’re comfortable.”
“Really?” I questioned.
John and I became obsessed with the red chairs. We talked about them over breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I would take a look at them before going to bed and again first thing in the morning, in case they looked any better. They didn’t. “Let’s stop talking about the chairs,” John said as his insomnia weakened him.
“Yes, we won’t talk about them anymore,” I agreed, but it was hard.
I called the furniture store to ask if we could return them. The owner was properly dismayed. He was polite, and didn’t want to displease a customer, but clearly he was upset. “Keep them until Monday and then tell me what you think,” he suggested.
The next day I placed a square black pillow with a brilliant red flower leaping to the edges in the corner of our beige couch. My son Daniel had given it to us as a housewarming gift. It lifted the couch out of its neutrality and tied it to the red chairs—a sudden improvement.
My son Adam came to dinner and my friend Veronica stopped by. Adam sat in one chair and Veronica in the other. The chairs looked different when someone sat in them. Their bodies blotted out much of the red. The color formed a frame.
“I like them,” Veronica exclaimed, resting her elbows comfortably on the armrests as she leaned back. She was used to bulky furniture. Her taste is not my taste, I silently demurred. “Two thumbs up!” my son said. “If you don’t like the color, you can get slipcovers.” His wife had done that with their cat-scratched couch. True, but why slipcover new chairs?
I looked at the chairs once more. I asked myself whether I could ever own them. Would I feel comfortable, or would they always jolt me, make me jumpy, on edge? Why hadn’t I chosen the light, neutral textures with which I had surrounded myself in the past—silent, relaxing colors that made the living room a calm refuge from the harsh and noisy world outside?
Part of me, I realized, no longer wanted a refuge. I wanted to bring life inside, not leave it at the door. And the red chairs did exactly that. They were loud. They were vivid. Day by day, I began to see that they had precisely what I wanted: brilliance. One bright morning, my husband and I arrived at the same decision.
“Let’s keep them.”
THE BED
These were my sheets and his bed.
These are not the right sheets, he said,
letting the corner limp down over the edge.
Just tuck them in, I said, with a hint of annoyance
that he didn’t know better. They always fit on my bed.
I said exactly what I thought, knowing that I might
not be understood, or worse, offend.
There was a slight grating echo in our words
which we heard in different ways.
In other times, with other people, it would have
shredded the tie that bound them, but in this
time, with the two of us, the tear was so
quickly rewoven, that we looked at each other
and laughed.
2
I Am Not Old
I COULD BE THE OLDEST PERSON IN THE AUDIENCE, but so what. My age drops to the floor and I step on it with my dancing feet. Mavis Staples is shaped like a muffin, dressed in a swishy black top and matching and swinging black silk pants. Her hair is like a blonde bowl. It sparkles. She is escorted onstage by the hand of a dark-suited assistant. She needs help, but when the band starts to jive, she rolls across the stage like a loose marble.
Her shoulders pump up and down to the music, her arms are swinging, and her feet kick off gravity. Then she opens her mouth and out it comes: a powerful voice that blasts into the crowd. She’s got it, they clap, she’s still got it!
“How old is she?” I ask the woman sitting next to me, who seems to know all the songs.
“I don’t know,” she replies.
I guess. Mavis tells the audience that the Staple Singers have been singing for sixty-five years. Let’s see, eighty, or eighty-five, maybe?
“I’m so excited,” Mavis exclaims more than once between songs.
She is outrageously happy. Then she pauses, spotting a familiar face in the audience, and reaches down. He jumps on the stage. Tall, dressed in white pants and jacket, with lanky long hair, he runs to her side and hugs her. They sing a song or two together, and then they dance.
“Did you see me dance?” she coquettishly asks the audience. “I almost fell down, but he held me up.”
I clap with the crowd, moving my feet and shoulders, trying to keep up.
The crowd hoots and hollers. I release my voice. I shout, surprising myself.
When the bass guitarist has a solo, he bends his body in like a straw. He holds his instrument in a lover’s embrace. He makes it sing in a high-pitched voice, a voice so beautiful, so plaintive, like the singing of a loon.
The drummer has his turn. He builds up the sound to a mad tempo, like jazz drummers do, but this time, perhaps because his hair is white, I pound the drums with him. I allow myself to drum the hell out of those drums. It feels so good.
I am not old.
WHEN I WAS SICK
When I was sick with stinging cramps
I could not carry my eyelids open.
My intestines were like helpless
pebbles tossed in swirls.
I promised myself
that when I returned to
the land of the well,
I would secrete gratitude
from every pore—
God, she, he, whoever.
I would take a deep breath,
deeper than everyday breath,
and exhale a bellows-full that
could blow your house down.
I would thank God, or someone
very much like her,
for being alive, a while longer.
I would look a
t the lake until I was bored;
I would rest my eyes
where the sea and the sky meet.
I would be content,
with breathing in and breathing out.
3
Attraction
AFTER MY HUSBAND’S SURGERY, the neurosurgeon walks into the examining room wearing the power of his knife. He does not need to swagger. He wears his magic comfortably, and I give him everything he could have asked for—respect, deference, even adoration—because his hands have saved John’s life. That does not stop me from admiring his handsome tie, his well-tailored navy suit, and his almost portly body. I wonder if he flirts with the nurses, if he has a wife and if she is attractive, if she is a stay-at-home wife or has her own career.
“You’re looking good,” he says to John as he sits down on a stool across from him, legs splayed.
Then he turns to me. “You always look good.”
I smile, pleased, attracted.
In the car on the way home, after John has been safely buckled in the front seat and the walker folded into the trunk, I wonder when the zing of attraction will become dull.
I have less need for anonymous touch than I did during the ten years that I was single. Yes, as my husband has aged into infirmity, I do miss sex, not just the physical sensation, but the closeness John and I felt when we became lovers. But I can look back now to how I felt when John and I made love, folded together, skin against skin, sealed in love.
We didn’t fuck; we made love. I still rarely use the “F” word. It doesn’t come naturally to me. “Fuck” retains its shock value, even when it is blurted out without any reference to sex. Only when I watch a movie where “fuck” is used as often as “and” and “the,” does it become devoid of its meaning and into an act of aggression.
When I was becoming sexually aware, women were not supposed to be sexual creatures. Lust was reserved for men. Oddly enough, it is as we get older that we can say to ourselves, yes, we are. Jane E. Brody, health columnist for the New York Times, wrote what I already know: older people still enjoy making love, but we’re not supposed to talk about it.
The sensation of touch is a fundamental human need. Some women go to the hairdresser or get a manicure or a massage to find touch from a stranger. A doctor’s stethoscope can occasionally satisfy the hunger. One night during cocktails before dinner, after having spoken at a symposium, I found myself talking to a tall, middle-aged German scientist who had made a fascinating presentation on cook stoves and indoor pollution. I felt a special rapport with him. We stood in a corner, apart from the others. I took another sip of champagne and smiled when he complimented me on my outfit: a green silk jacket and my favorite suede boots—tall, forest green, trimmed with black leather, like a riding boot.
“You are the most fashionably dressed woman here. And you keep yourself looking so well.”
I felt a flutter of flirtation go through me and waited expectantly for what he might say next.
“So many German women let themselves go when they get older. They wear shapeless black dresses. Unlike you.” He paused and looked into my eyes. “You remind me of my mother.”
“Oh.”
WHEN I PUSH JOHN’S WHEELCHAIR, the top of his bald head looks up at me—a pale, clear landing field where I plant a kiss. I cannot see his face, but I hear his response: “Thank you.” My lips part. Even in my eighties I am capable of attraction, susceptible to flattery, something stirs.
Now I seek out his hands when they are within reach. At a performance of La traviata, I reach across my seat to his lap, and his hands sandwich mine. Dying Violetta’s aria floods both our bodies. I feel his strength—one hand pressing down from above, the other providing warmth from below. We are clasped. It isn’t sex, it isn’t making love, but it is good.
CAN THERE BE MORE TO SAY
Can there be more to say after
we have said everything there
is to say about oatmeal, warm toast,
and sliced bananas?
The weather has words.
I find them and report
that I wear gloves
but no boots, not yet.
He is inside and I am out
where the air is colder
than it was yesterday.
Chances of snow
mixed with rain.
One never knows
which way it will come down.
We have no plans that
have to be changed.
We talk about dinner:
what time, what place,
dining room or café?
Small morsels of words fill
us up until we pause,
take a breath, and devour
another sentence.
4
The Cane, the Walker, the Wheelchair
I REACH OUT to hold my husband’s hand during a concert, a private gesture in a public space. Sometimes I just lean into him, enjoying the feeling of our shoulders touching. I push gently in and he pushes lightly back. We listen to the music through each other’s bodies, an ethereal way to make love.
We talk about who will die first. It is a difficult conversation because, even at our ages, being in love has made us push death into the background. We pretend that we will live forever. The final stretch of life that lies before us is a gift that we know will expire. John suggests that I engrave the words “carpe diem” on my wedding band. I inscribe the same words on a paperweight I give him for his birthday.
Sometimes I wish to die first so I will not have to lose him, but it is more likely that he will die first because he is almost nine years older than me. Whatever happens, I will have had the unexpected experience of our love-filled marriage. I will have known what love is at the closing chapters of my life. I will always remember John’s presence, as I still feel my brother’s. I don’t want to probe the inevitability of death further. Not now. We both overslept this morning.
JOHN’S HEALTH began to decline soon after we returned from a ten-day vigil at my dying brother’s bedside in Tucson, Arizona. When we got home, John was diagnosed with pneumonia. His body was severely weakened and he had difficulty sleeping. He could not travel to Edgar’s memorial service with me because I had to leave early and return late from Springfield, which was less than two hours away. I was grateful to good friends who drove him there just in time for the service and brought him back right after, holding onto his arm to keep his body steady. We had planned that he would come to Oxford University with me for a symposium on women and children’s health in which I would participate. He had to cancel. It took him several months to recover. Now that I look back, I see that he never completely recovered.
It was the beginning of a life that moved in cycles, good months alternating with bad months. Over time it turned into good weeks, then days, and then hours. He became unsteady on his feet. He had trouble getting a good night’s sleep. The most mysterious and intractable symptom was a black depression that periodically overwhelmed him. When the depression lifted, he was exuberant. We could do anything. Upon my return from Oxford, he proposed that we make the move to Wake Robin. He had found the perfect cottage, the best one by far. If moving to Wake Robin would make him happy, I readily agreed. Then, a month later, just before our new chairs arrived, he became anxious. Was this the right move? How could we furnish our new place; what would we take from our condo? As his anxiety increased day by day, I took more responsibility for the move, trying to assure him that everything would go smoothly, even though I myself had doubts.
By the beginning of March his mood had lifted, and he proposed that we travel around the world on the Queen Mary II. I looked at the itinerary and started to imagine us in all the places I had always wanted to see: Hong Kong, New Zealand, Australia, and the Cape of Good Hope. How exciting! Three weeks ago he hadn’t wanted to go to the store to buy milk and orange juice. Now he buys three of each. I tell him that we can’t fit them in the refrigerator, but he just smiles and I smile back. So what if th
e refrigerator is too full and the milk turns sour? He is out of his depression. We share kisses, morning, noon, and night, punctuating them with the words, I love you, to assure one another, to reassure ourselves. We are near delirious with refound happiness. The sky is bluer, and the grass, greener.
Then he began to approach ninety. He said, “I ignore birthdays. I don’t want a party, please don’t do anything,” so we had a nice dinner, just the two of us. I had written a poem to mark the day, and he accepted it as “the best present,” holding his magnifying glass steady over each word while I waited for his smile.
But he could not put a stop to birthdays. Neither could he climb fully out of his depression. He could no longer make decisions about our move to Wake Robin: what colors to paint the walls, how to pick out carpeting, and how to connect our phones. We couldn’t get cell phone connection. Our computers didn’t work. Every glitch became a monster. My stepdaughter spent days trying to get everything to work.
Totally frustrated, John could not sleep past one or two in the morning. He lifted himself from the bed slowly, as if there were too many thick blankets bearing down on him. The weight burdened him all day. His spirit became mummified in layers of cotton. He was inside his depression, and I was left outside. I could not reach in to pull him out.
Coming of Age Page 2