“Would you like a test drive?” the man asks. “We have one in the stock room.”
“In cerulean?”
“In sand,” the man says.
“I’m game,” Fowler says.
The man calls the back of the store and then goes to hurry the retrieval along. When Mother and I picked out Pussy’s tombstone, there was a similar tone to our dealing—a let’s-pretend-we’re-talking-about-the-weather levity that Mother just ate up and I was tortured by.
“You can’t very well sulk over the choices,” she counseled, as we came away from the place in Pussy’s rattly Mercedes, which Pussy had been driving the day before and in which she’d left some crumpled Wash’n Dris and a half-eaten pack of Wintogreen Lifesavers.
“He didn’t have to be so fucking chipper,” I complained.
“You won’t succeed in offending him by using that language now,” Mother said. “If you felt so antagonized, maybe you should have used it in the shop.”
I ask Fowler if he’s offended.
“Sand is a pretty offensive name for a color,” he says. “I suppose I’m offended. Deeply offended, now that you mention it.”
When the salesman returns, we’re laughing so hard he waits a few paces off for us to stop before introducing the chair. The steel shines so brutally in store light that I have to turn away for a second.
“Let’s dance,” Fowler says, and he holds out an arm for me to help move him out of the stationary chair into the mobile one. The salesman goes at the buttons and levers to demonstrate the chair’s versatility, and then he wheels Fowler out into the store. Fowler sails off and returns an eternity later, sweating.
“It’s a keeper,” he beams. “I won’t need you anymore, Florence. I can go anywhere in this thing. How does it do on the highway, Sherman?”
“Maybe you should keep her around for the highway,” Sherman says. “Is there anything else I can help you with today, assuming, that is, that you’ll take it in sand?”
Fowler defers to me, and I talk quietly about rails and a ramp for the steps outside.
“That the building should take care of, but this is New York. I’ll see what I’ve got. The rails I can send you home with today.”
We get it all, rails, wheelchair, a huge pair of tongs for picking things up, which Fowler refers to as “grabbers,” and a wristband with an electronic button that will signal the local ambulance service in an emergency. We thank the salesman, and we cab back to the apartment in horrendous heat, no apology from the driver, who didn’t warn us in advance about the broken A/C, who probably figures that helping us to his trunk for the bulk items is all that should be required of him.
We’re back by eleven-thirty, time enough for me to get to Barry before he goes to lunch.
“We did well,” I say to Fowler, as if we’ve driven a hard bargain.
He slumps on the couch, the wheelchair facing him, positioned for any need that might arise.
“I can’t tell you how I hate this,” he says. His face is red, and I’m sure he will cry, so I join him on the couch and whisper how lucky we are that “sexual function remains unaffected,” and then I do with him what I did with Simon twelve hours ago.
• • •
I catch Barry at one, on his way to lunch, and he insists that I join him for Indian food.
“You looked flushed,” he says in the elevator.
“It’s hot. I’ve been running errands.” I hand him the outline for a chapter about Hadewijch of Antwerp, a Flemish woman of the thirteenth century, who relinquished private life for a community of the spirit.
“I’ll review it later. You’ll be happy to know your proposal was accepted without issue, and they’re talking about a first printing of twenty thousand,” Barry says as we leave the building. “Frankly, I’m surprised. This is unusual, this sort of interest in a book on centuries of complaint!”
He’s teasing me, I know. I wish I were more in the mood for it. I’m greedy for importance, but not diminished importance.
“Are you all right?” he asks me in the restaurant.
“What?” I can’t settle. I can’t seem to be here.
“You seem distracted. I thought you’d be ecstatic over this news.”
“Oh, I am,” I croon. “I am. Please don’t think I’m not. I’m thrilled. I’ll take a while to believe it, that’s all.”
“Believe it,” Barry says kindly. “People are impressed with you. You work like a bear.”
“I apologize if I seem ungrateful.”
“Not at all. Let’s see if I can recommend something to eat. What’s your pleasure?”
“I think I might just have an appetizer and a coffee. I’m not very hungry.”
Barry hits himself in the forehead with his menu. “Forgive me. I’m a boor. I didn’t even ask you if you wanted lunch. Listen, we don’t have to stay here. Or we can stay and I’ll eat fast. Or I can just skip lunch in favor of a walk back to the office.”
“It’s fine. I’ll have an iced coffee. I don’t know any boors.”
I’ll go no further with Barry. While his charm is overwhelming, I’m not crossing the line with him.
“So . . . Hadewijch?”
“Hadewijch,” I say. And we go back to that.
• • •
“He’s not in pain,” I tell Simon, whose interest is bizarre but I don’t think distasteful. “Physical pain isn’t part of this. It’s the loss of control that’s so agonizing.”
For the second time today I stop myself from going into detail, realizing that in doing so I save myself a little from having to consider Fowler so ill.
“You look exhausted,” he says. “Why don’t you go upstairs and take a nap.”
I know I need a nap, but I can’t imagine taking one. There’s too much to do, to think about and prepare.
“What is there to do? I’ll get the dinner going. You’ve been running around all day. You should take advantage of Daisy being asleep and lie down.”
I look around me, at the straightened rooms, at Daisy, rump high in the travel crib, at Simon, whence cometh my help.
“Really, Leigh. You’re doing so much. Take an hour.”
“All right. Okay. Are Jane and Isaac—?”
“They’re fine. Adrienne. Ball practice.”
“Ball practice? On a Friday?”
“Game Sunday. Sleep.”
Upstairs in our quiet bedroom I open every window to the dead heat and lie down. The bed seems huge, edgeless, a flat, warm place for me to rest in the open air as people have done in centuries past.
• • •
I wake to a happy racket below, in the kitchen, the noise of dinner preparations and the older children returning. I smell garlic and butter, and when I arrive, stiff and bleary-eyed, in the kitchen, Simon has three things going at once—the food processor, the pan with the sautéed garlic and onions, and the water boiling in the lobster kettle for pasta. Daisy’s emptied the pasta box on the floor and is breaking each stick, and Jane, in an apron, is manning the food processing operation, holding green peppers and tomato chunks cavalierly above the wretched thing, happily sending them to their doom.
“What’s going on?” I say.
“We’re celebrating,” Simon answers. “I thought the book was worth an Italian meal, at least.”
“You’re going to be rich, Mom!” Jane says. “It’s so cool!”
“I didn’t think it was that much money,” I say offhandedly. In fact, I’ve spent it in my mind already, on piano and ballet lessons for Jane, on private college tuition for Isaac, on a vacation for all of us, on clothes.
“It’s enormous money!” Simon announces. “Have this outside in a chair. I’ll be out in a minute.”
He hands me a glass of our favorite wine and the Times.
“Jane and Daisy can come out with me if that would be easier.”
“I’m busy, Mom,” Jane says. “And Daisy has to finish breaking all the noodles.”
“Go,” Simon orders.
Mother’s Day in August. That’s what it feels like. I’m half expecting Isaac to appear at the edge of the garden with a torch of Tropicana roses and a promise of lifelong loyalty and forgiveness.
Instead, I read my paper in suburban splendor, unbothered by the heat. Sweating and disheveled and drunk am I after several sips of wine, and this is the mother who greets Isaac when he actually does appear at the screen door with his friend, the Alexandra of camp fortune and Miata fame, a girl whose beautiful languor, even as seen through wire mesh, can’t be disputed.
“Mom, this is Alex,” he says. “Is it okay if she stays for dinner?”
I adopt the casual pose of a person in the midst of a routine sit in the sun. I shield my eyes, draw a hand loosely through my tangled hair. I am wearing a wrinkled dress, and my breath is bad from iced coffee and Indian hors d’ oeuvres and sleep. I must appear at the very least slovenly, possibly insane.
“Of course it is, dear. Hello, Alex.”
“Hi, Mrs. Kaufman,” she says, nectar in words.
“I’m just reading my paper for a while, then I’ll be in,” I sing. I conjure a much more attractive setting for Mrs. Aidinoff at her reading, a solarium with glass tables and white cast-iron sofas with floral print cushions.
I take about a half hour to read an uplifting article about teaching in the Bronx and to finish the wine. Then Simon comes out with the cordless.
“Fowler,” he says. “Dinner in five.”
I remember Mother handing me the telephone when a boyfriend would call out on Fire Island. She’d be in her apron, her hands floury from covering swordfish steaks or making fritters of some sort, and she’d bring the phone out to me on the small deck of our rental, stretching its white coil to maximum length and announcing the name of the caller in the same bored, can’t-be-helped way.
“Hello,” I say, with the muted anticipation I reserved for those summer boys, whoever they were.
“I’m calling to report some successes,” he declares. “The ramp will be put down Monday morning, the rails are going up as we speak. And I’ve got a new lease on life because of my new wheels. I’ve just been to the deli. Thank you.”
Under the cheer I hear something else, yearning, I suppose, for company.
“You’re welcome.”
He says he has yet another favor to ask, if I can bear it, and that is for me to arrange a meeting between him and Isaac, “before too long.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
“Soon,” he reiterates. I know why. He doesn’t want his son to see him for the first time later on, in the advanced stages of which I’ve read too much. I know it has to be soon, for everyone’s sake.
Simon and the girls are fixing six places at the table.
“Where’s Isaac?”
“Upstairs, listening to CD’s. Alex is staying for dinner,” Jane says. The challenge of adapting has become attractive to her. A cool acceptance of whatever gets dealt out here may mean victory over it.
“Evidently.” I sound wounded.
“Mom, you said she could stay,” Jane reminds me.
“Yes, I did.”
“So don’t act so pissed off.”
I direct my attention to the only one of us with a clean mouth. She’s happy to have me join her at piling up the animals and fencing from her Fisher-Price farm. For her I remain blameless and heavenly.
“What’s the news?” Simon asks. He’s barreled in with the sauce and noodles all in one bowl.
“He wants to see Isaac,” I report. “Before things get unspeakable.”
“Then he should.”
Simon disappears for the salad and bread, then adds, “And I should meet him. I’d sort of like to see what all the fuss is about.”
“I’ll talk to Isaac later, when he’s not so indisposed.”
Outside Isaac’s room I pause and listen for talking under the music. At Hastings there was a door-open, one-foot-on-the-floor rule during coed visiting hours. I thought it was funny that a person like Fowler was assigning proctoring duties and had to enforce such safeguards against promiscuity.
I rap loudly on the door. “Dinner.”
Then I hurry to the shower, shed my slept-in dress, soap, rinse and towel off, planning a youngish outfit all the while. I put on jeans and an ironed blouse, high-heeled huaraches, and I pin my hair back in a clip.
“Wow, Mom, you look pretty,” Jane says. “Doesn’t she look pretty, guys?”
Simon says, “Yes, she does,” and Isaac looks for salvation from all of us in his lap. Alex has risen from her chair to shake my hand. She towers above me, and her extended arm, sunned, sans hair or moles or extra flesh, is that of a ballerina and yet puts me in mind of God reaching down from the apex of the Sistine Chapel to desperate, adoring underlings.
• • •
After dinner I’m on the phone calling our friends. The kids want a party, a barbecue. During dinner we made up the guest list. So far everyone’s coming—Eliot, Garland and Travis, Fowler. I suggested Fowler’s coming to Isaac’s final ball game, and Isaac shrugged, “Whatever.” We sent him and Alex over to her house with an invitation, and we await word.
“I don’t get it,” Kirsten says when I call her.
“It’s a party,” I explain. “To have fun. After Isaac’s last game of the season. Fowler wants to see him play.”
“Hold on,” she says, covering the phone for a muffled consultation.
She returns with, “I don’t think so. It might not be good for Adrienne and Garrison. Ted thinks they might get depressed.”
“Not good?” I whine. “For Adrienne? I thought she’d jump at the chance to be close to someone who’s actually dying.”
I hang up, shaking. Their selfishness has sent chills all over me.
“I won’t be able to help with the shopping,” I tell Simon.
“You’ll be doing the shopping,” he says.
“What about Fowler? He can’t get here by train or bus, not in that chair. He’ll only have had it a couple of days.”
“I’ll pick him up.”
“Oh no, Simon, really. That’s above and beyond.”
“Everything about this is above and beyond, so why make distinctions? Why draw lines? If you’ve taken him on, I have too. Let’s not try to be discerning at this point. I am going to get him.”
I worry about this, naturally. “Just don’t kill him.”
Simon laughs. “I don’t have to do that.”
“Simon!”
“I mean, that isn’t on my mind. I’m not entirely without scruples, you know.”
“I know. You have many, many scruples. I’ve met you before.”
“I’m taking Isaac with me. It isn’t a good idea to have a first meeting occur at a public sporting event. First we’ll go to a diner, Isaac and I, and then pick up Fowler—could I call him by his other name? It’s too preppy for me, this last-name-as-first-name business.”
“Call him Jim.”
“I’ll do that.”
“I’ll let him know you’re picking him up, in that case.”
At one point, when she is married to Jules, Catherine drives to pick Jim up at the train when he comes to visit her and Jules and their daughter, Sabine, on the Rhine. She has dressed up for him, and Jim has the impression that all is not right for her in her life with Jules and Sabine. In the village, they become known as “the three lunatics.”
Simon is sparing me the extra melancholy here. Perhaps I won’t have to drive myself and one of them off an unfinished bridge.
• • •
At ShopRite I decide to put everything on a card instead of using the cash Simon took out last night. A hundred dollars isn’t going to suffice, in the end. I send Jane off with a list she can fulfill in one half of the store, with her own cart, and Daisy and I work on meats, beverages, and deli salads. By the end of our separate foraging we stand at the checkout with two carts piled over capacity, and the bill totals just under two hundred dollars.
“
That’s nothing for us now,” Jane says proudly.
We load in, assembly-line style, Jane as middleman between me and the cart, Daisy in the driver’s seat of the Mustard Bomb. I’m grateful for this project; all morning I’ve been thinking of the other car, its volatile cargo, its bizarre destiny. As we are meeting them at the field—Isaac left in uniform, cleats and all—I will have no idea what to expect on arrival.
“Stop worrying, Mom. You’ll get wrinkles,” Jane advises.
“I’ve already got wrinkles.”
“You’ll get more!”
Anyway, we have much ahead of us before game time, which is twelve o’clock—arranging the outdoor furniture, the bar, transferring the food into more appealing conveyers, providing a general welcome for our guests, a welcome that has so much riding on it.
• • •
From our camp behind home plate I have a clear view of the wagon when it pulls in. Isaac is the first out, and he opens the trunk where Simon joins him to help with the chair. Fowler’s head appears on the far side of the car and then disappears, as they help him into the chair. Simon walks ahead, purposefully, with a folder of colored pages in one hand. Isaac pushes. I wave madly until they see us and start heading over.
“How was the ride?” I holler before they reach us, a real Mother question, a pleasantry that eludes answer, inane, idiotic.
Fowler’s got Daisy’s favorite cap on, and he tries to acknowledge me by tipping it, but the arm can’t manage the arc up. Isaac releases one hand from the chair and gives a thumbs-up.
“I’ve got coffee in the thermos. Does anyone want?”
Now I’m Daddy, focusing on the food to steer through tension. But the tension is my own.
“He wouldn’t let me show off,” Fowler says. “He had to push.”
“Take the help,” Isaac teases, just like Simon does with me when I play Iron Lady and insist I can do everything myself.
I’m stuck on the two faces, identical, one above the other. Simon occupies the girls with some bakery cookies, then attends to the straightening of the stack of papers in the folder, half an inch high, mint green.
“She brought all the stuff you like, Dad,” Jane says, forever smoothing. “We have milk in a carton, sugar, hot cups, coffee, juice, and croissants. Even jam. And you should see what there is for the party. We set it all up, all the tables and chairs and the ice and sodas. Mom’s really nervous.”
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