by Alan Shapiro
He leaned down and hissed, through clenched teeth, “Ma, this is not the time.”
“How would you know?” she replied. “You don’t wear a watch.”
A few hours later, he called to make sure she had gotten home all right. She said, “Sam, let me give you some advice.”
“Uh, Ma,” he said, “listen. I appreciate it, I really do. But I’m afraid we won’t be any closer after you give me the advice than we are right now. So I’ll take a pass, okay?”
“Suit yourself,” she said, clearly miffed. “It’s your show.”
Scene IV
Curly was sitting on the end of the bed in his boxers, staring at his feet, waiting for her to help him get his socks on. He hadn’t put his teeth in yet, and the sunken lips made him look older and frailer than he was. He looked like an old man, any old man, like Father Time. It made her feel old and frail just to look at him. She was thinking, either I’m dressing him, feeding him, cleaning up after him, or undressing him. No one had told her the golden years would be the color of piss.
“Come on, Curly,” she said, “pick your feet up a little so I don’t have to bend over so far.”
Slowly he looked up at her. He opened his mouth. What came out was, “Ma . . . Ma . . . Ma . . .” He couldn’t lift his arms. He couldn’t stand. A dumb smile on his face.
At the hospital, he had suffered another stroke. He couldn’t speak at all now. He couldn’t swallow. Movement had returned to his arms; just like her mother had, so many years ago, he kept trying to pull out the IV, or the catheter, or the feeding tube, so they put the big mitts on his hands. He pawed impotently at the tubes and wires; he thrashed his head from side to side, his eyes wide with pain and confusion, looking at Miriam as if to say, what the hell is happening, why can’t you help me? And then, when the distress subsided, he seemed lost in hallucinations. His eyes were following something above him, and now and again he raised his hand as if to point, as if to say, look Miriam, look, can’t you see? See what? she wondered. Ethan? Who is it, Curly? Who do you see?
Sam, of course, was the only person in America who refused to buy a cell phone. He said he couldn’t stand how everyone walked around talking to people who weren’t there, each the Caesar of an invisible empire—declaring through a bluetooth: I text, I fax, I phone. He called them cell-ots.
She had left messages on his home phone, letting him know what had happened, telling him to come as soon as possible. Would it kill him to check his messages once in a while?
THE FOOD THEY were feeding Curly through the feeding tube was giving him terrible diarrhea. And they wouldn’t give him anything for the pain, because sedatives and such would alter his brain chemistry and make it difficult for them to measure his “progress.”
Progress? He’s barely conscious, Miriam thought.
She asked the neurologist what the prognosis was.
“If you mean for a full recovery,” he said, “not very good.”
“What kind of recovery are we talking about, then?” she asked. “Will he ever get out of bed? Will he talk again?”
“Listen,” the doctor said, “he wasn’t in great shape to begin with. He was malnourished and frail. And the chances of him regaining what he’s lost aren’t good. Not impossible, but not good.”
“What about coming home?”
“Probably not.” He shook his head.
“So what, then, does rehab mean?”
He said he was sorry, but he didn’t really have an answer for that one.
“Well, doctor,” she said, “what you’re telling me is that my husband will spend the rest of his life in bed, a vegetable in a nursing home.”
“He’d be alive.”
She heard herself saying, “I want you to pull the feeding tube. I want you to give him something for his pain. I want you to . . . he should only just be comfortable. He’s eighty-seven years old. He just shouldn’t suffer, not if he can’t get well.”
“Does he have a living will?” he asked.
“Yes,” she answered. “It’s in his file.”
“What you’re asking for is that we stop treatment. You understand that, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“And that we move your husband to hospice?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, then. If that’s what you want.”
If that’s what she wants? The little pisher, what does he know from want? She had been taking care of Curly for seventeen years. For seventeen years, a bowl of cherries it wasn’t. She couldn’t go anywhere; she couldn’t spend any time outside the apartment without disaster striking—he’d knock over something, he’d forget to take his pills, he’d soil himself. Day in, day out, she cleaned up after him; she cooked, she cut his food, she picked his food up off the floor, she dressed him, she changed his diapers, and lately changed the sheets every morning, like she had to do for the boys when they were little. And what did she get in return? Did he care how he put her out? Did he ever so much as thank her? And now what? He goes into a nursing home which they can’t afford, and every day, every single day, she’s there, visiting, because how could she not? Right there, every day, the devoted wife he couldn’t stand and couldn’t do without, until either he drops dead or she does. Want? She’s eighty-one years old. Sixty-three years they’ve been married. She’s tired. She’s buried one of her children and lost another. She has a right to be tired. She doesn’t have anything to prove to anyone. The good daughter, the good mother, the good wife, and where did it get her? Want.
WHEN THE DOCTOR left, she took Curly’s hand and said, “Darling, we’re gonna move you to a nicer place where you’ll get well. We’re gonna make sure you’re comfortable.” Then she took his dentures from the glass on his bedside table and put them in his mouth. “There, sweetheart,” she said, “now you’ll look just like yourself when they come to get you.”
FINALE
What should she do with Curly’s teeth? She can’t bring herself to throw them away, but it feels somehow inappropriate, even creepy to keep them. The pink and yellow dentures float in an aqua-colored plastic container the hospice nurse handed her the day after he died—she’d returned to his room for his radio, toiletries, and whatever else of his she’d overlooked in her haste to leave the night before. Taped shut, “Hank Gold” scrawled on top, the container now sits on the end table next to her recliner. She takes the dentures out from time and time, astounded, baffled that such an intimate part of him should now feel cool here in her hand. She can almost see his mouth and lips materializing around the upper and lower incisors, the darker canines and the molars echoing his jaw, the upward sweep of his cheeks. Even the gums, colored a dull brownish pink so like the tones of an old man, her old man, nearly make his wry smile visible, so that the more she stares at them, the more she wants to hear his voice say, “No one you would know, sweetheart.”
Funny how if he were alive, she wouldn’t notice them at all. They’d only be his teeth. She has distributed her pictures of Curly and his jewelry to the grandchildren. His clothes she sent to the Salvation Army since Sam didn’t want them. The radio she’s keeping for herself. But his dentures—what should she do with them? Maybe send them to Sam. They’re just the sort of thing he’d want.
ONCE THE YOUNGEST of her family, she is now the matriarch. Her cousins have long since died. Her nieces and nephews and their children (and theirs) have scattered across the continent; some of them she hasn’t seen in years; most of them she’s never met. Like a crumbling empire, the family has broken apart as it’s expanded. But she’s the matriarch and she alone, it seems, resists as best she can this process of disintegration. Her means of resistance is the greeting card.
At the beginning of each year, she goes to Hallmark to buy cards for everybody in the family, on both sides, from Julie to surviving cousins, nieces, and nephews, down to grand- and great-grandnieces and -nephews, and cousins three or four times removed. She even sends cards to Ethan’s ex-fiancée, Alice, and if Sam would just reme
mber to give her his Irish “wife’s” address she’d send her one, too. She buys birthday cards, anniversary cards, and holiday cards. Because you never know, she also buys a sizeable number of condolence cards and thank-you cards, and cards for showers, births, and illnesses.
She steers clear of the jokey ones, the ones full of sarcasm and lewdness. She likes the old-fashioned ones, the ones with sprays of flowers on the outside, and gold calligraphic lettering, and on the inside little rhymes that express thoughtful feelings, the general kind, the kind that anyone would or ought to feel on this or that occasion. She likes cards that do her feeling for her, so there’s nothing left to write except “Love, Miriam.”
When she gets home, she signs the birthday, anniversary, and holiday cards in advance; she seals, stamps, and addresses them, then places them in a file divided into months and weeks. Every Monday, she checks the folder for that week’s recipients and mails whatever cards she finds.
Whenever Sam tells her he’s going to a particular city, she says your cousin so-and-so is there, you need to look her up. And he says, “Why would I do that?” And she says, “Because she’s family, that’s why.”
Sam once told her, “You know, Ma, what the difference is between us?”
“I can’t wait to hear.”
“You’re a federalist when it comes to family feeling, whereas I’m more of a tribalist.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“For you,” he says, “family is family, no matter what. For me, some blood is thicker than others. After you, Dad, Julie, Ethan, and my nieces, there really isn’t anyone in the family I care that much about.”
“And if you cared so much about me, how come in all these years you never send a card on my birthday?”
SHE’S PACKING UP in preparation for the move back east, to be near Sam. Far back in the hall closet, she finds the mahogany memory box—the mother’s day gift she received from all three kids way back in the sixties. Inside the box, she finds the card they gave her: a picture of a nun on the front, with a caption inside that reads, “To a superior mother, if not a mother superior.” Under the caption Ethan wrote, “All my love and respect. You are always in my heart. Your middle one, Ethan.” Under Ethan’s signature, Sam wrote, “No, Ma, Ethan never loved you. I loved you. I was the only one who ever loved you.” And under his signature, Julie wrote, “No, Mom—Sam & Ethan are incapable of love. It is only I who love you.”
SAM PULLS UP to the front of the retirement home twenty minutes early for their weekly lunch; she’s sitting outside on a bench, next to the front door, ready to go. How long has she been sitting there in the cold, he wonders, sighing. She’s breathing little angry streaks of steam.
“You’re late,” she says.
“What do you mean late?” he says. “I said be here at one; it’s not even a quarter to.”
“It’s close enough to one; I’ve been waiting out here since twelve fifteen.”
“Out in the freezing cold? You’re gonna kill yourself.”
“You should have thought of that before you kept me waiting.”
She settles into the car and sighs the sigh that says “some life.”
“Have you talked to anyone today?” he asks.
“Who’s to talk to?” she says.
“Grandchildren?”
“They’ll call later,” she says. “Probably sometime tonight.”
“No one from Boston?”
“No.”
“So what’s new?”
“They’re raising my rent another eighty dollars. I’m now paying over two grand a month. Can you believe it?”
“How’s your money holding out?”
“What can I tell you?” she says, with a shrug. “Even with the Social Security checks and dividends, I’m basically living off my principal. But the way I figure it, I have enough to last me eight more years.”
“You’ll be ninety,” Sam says.
“Ninety,” she repeats. “I’m ready to go right now. Either way, I don’t want my money to outlast me. I want to outlast my money.”
“If Dad weren’t dead already,” he says with a laugh, “he’d drop dead hearing you say that.”
“And look where it got him,” she said. “Used to drive me crazy how he worried over every goddamn cent. ‘What, are you gonna be buried with your bankbook?’ I used to tell him. Like talking to a wall. ‘Can’t sell my father’s stocks,’ he’d say. ‘My legacy this,’ he’d say. ‘My legacy that.’ And I’d say, ‘Is that gonna make you any less of a dead man?’
“Eight years,” she repeats, shaking her head. “Eight years. Funny thing, when you look back, eight years is nothing, it’s like the bat of an eye, but when you look ahead, it’s a pretty long stretch of time.”
Sam says, “The years fly by, but the days are long.”
“What?” she says.
“Nothing.”
“I mean, if the doctors had figured out a way to give Ethan another eight years to live, he’d have felt like he’d won the lottery.”
At the restaurant, she says, “Did I tell you I had a bit of a to-do with a lady at lunch the other day?”
“What happened?”
“It was no big deal really. I was sitting with this woman, Margaret Whitfield, a nice lady, you know, pleasant, we were talking about this and that, and I asked what’s going on with the search for a new chef, and she pointed at a table near us and said, ‘Oh, the Jews over there, they took it over.’ I didn’t know what to say, I was so flummoxed, but it ate away at me, I had to do something, so at supper that night when Margaret sat down at my table, I said, ‘Margaret, you might want to sit with someone else.’ And she said, ‘Why, Miriam?’ and I said, ‘ ’Cause I’m a Jew, and you don’t seem to like Jews.’ ‘Why do you say that?’ she asked, and I said, ‘Because of what you said at lunch today.’ She said, ‘Oh I didn’t mean anything by that, I love Jews,’ and then she said, get this, ‘Some of my best friends are Jewish.’ Can you believe it?”
“What did you say?”
“What did I say? I said some of my best friends are goys. And we laughed. Listen, so we won’t be best friends. I can still eat lunch with her.”
“Hey, I have some news, too,” he says after a moment. “Good news and bad news.”
“Give me the good news first.”
“I heard from my wife.”
“And what did the Mrs. have to say?”
“Well, she’s back in Ireland, been there for years now.”
“Terrific. Tell me her address. I’ll send a birthday card.”
“Yeah, not only that, she’s married, my wife, and has three kids.”
“Is that the bad news?”
“Not exactly.”
“You never told me you got divorced.”
“We didn’t. She got the marriage annulled.”
“How long ago?”
“I don’t know, maybe ten, eleven years.”
“Why didn’t you ever mention it?” she asks.
“What, so you can start nagging me to marry. Anyway, that’s the good news.”
“And the bad news?” she asks.
“The bad news,” he says, “is that from now on, I can’t say anymore that I’ve never cheated on a single girlfriend. Not even with my wife.”
“So why don’t you find a nice girl and settle down already? You’re no spring chicken.” And now she laughs, “I’m not gonna be around forever.”
“Me, neither,” he says. “I’m married to my work, Ma. And anyway, I’m more a love ’em and leave ’em type of guy. Sometimes I forget the love ’em part and cut straight to the division of property. As Dad would say, it’s a life, even if it ain’t much of a livin’.”
“Maybe if you settled down, and this time with a Jewish girl for a change, your work wouldn’t be so gloomy. You remember, Sam, what your grandmother used to say, ‘You wanna be a writer, get married; it’s a regular Valley of the Dolls!’ ”
“Peyton Place,” he
says.
“What?”
“Peyton Place. Not Valley of the Dolls. And she wasn’t talking about marriage but the nursing home. She said the nursing home’s a regular Peyton Place and that maybe I’d write a best seller if I hung around her a little more than I did.”
“She was right about that,” she says. “You could’ve dropped in to visit her from time to time. That wouldn’t have been so terrible. You were always her favorite. But Peyton Place, Valley of the Dolls, what’s the difference? The point is you could have a wonderful life—I mean you got your health, a house, a pension—it wouldn’t kill you to get married, and maybe then, who knows, you might write something cheerful. Come to think of it, it wouldn’t kill you to write a best seller either.”
THE RESIDENTS TAKE a day trip to the area’s Museum of Art. Miriam was never much of an art buff or museum-goer. Paintings either bored her with all the Christian nonsense, Christ-this or Mary-that, or they made her squeamish with all the nudity. And then there was the modern abstract stuff she didn’t understand or like. Standing in front of triangles or circles, or dull blocks of color, she couldn’t shake the feeling of being caught in a joke and laughed at, as on that old TV show Candid Camera. She glanced scornfully at every canvas, as if to say to the invisible cameraman that no one was going to make a fool of her, try as they might.
This museum is no different from the others she’s visited. But one piece in the contemporary section does capture her attention. It occupies an entire wall, an enormous white canvas almost covered over in black squiggles, and number-like shapes. The painting, if that’s what it is, looks like something by that Jewish painter from the fifties, a canvas filled with wriggling lines and curls—like a swimming pool full of worms. When she steps up close, she sees that the lines are names, and the numbers are dates, they’re signatures, each bearing its own distinctive loops and flourishes, its own particular day and year—names and dates written beside, beneath, over, and on top of names and dates, each one in another’s way, each one obscured by others. Some of the names are smudged beyond recognition, some seem to be disappearing back into the canvas, some seem to push up against the names beneath them in order to be read, and they would have been if not for the names that in turn were pushing against them.