by Sally Mandel
Sharlie’s hand in Brian’s was clammy. “Brian …” she pleaded. He picked up the bottle and with a flick of his wrist sent it flying into the underbrush. Then they walked back to Fifth Avenue in silence.
Chapter 49
Wednesday was a late night for Brian. At eight o’clock Sharlie fixed herself a “Diller sandwich”—waterpacked tuna with almost no mayonnaise and lots of lettuce. Then she curled up on the couch to watch the American Ballet Theatre reproduced microscopically on the minute screen of Brian’s television set.
The telephone rang, and she reached for it, thinking it must be Brian. But as soon as she answered, a woman’s voice, cheery and rehearsed, said, “Good evening. I’m pleased to inform you that you have been selected as the winner of a free gravesite at the Riverside Rest Cemetery in Yonkers, New York.”
“Excuse me?” Sharlie said.
The voice went on, relentlessly chipper. “Are you married, madam?”
“Yes,” Sharlie replied automatically, then instantly regretted answering at all.
“Is your husband home?”
“No,” said Sharlie. “Could you tell me—?”
“Your gift includes basic funeral expenses, our moderately priced coffin, with a credit toward the deluxe model, of course—”
Sharlie interrupted, “How did you get my name?”
There was a short silence. “What?” said the voice finally.
“How did you get my name?” Sharlie repeated.
The woman’s voice was wary. “We don’t know your name, madam. Only your telephone number.”
“But we’re unlisted.”
The voice was placating. “It’s purely random selection. We’re given the first three digits, and the rest we just make up ourselves.”
“You didn’t get my name from anybody?” Sharlie asked again, her voice rising now. “Not from the hospital or the newspapers?”
“I assure you, madam, we don’t have any idea…” The voice faltered. “You say your husband is not at home?”
“No, he’s not.” Sharlie said. “I don’t see what that has to do with anything.”
“Well, as a matter of fact, we prefer to make our offer to married people, and since you seem a little … well, I thought maybe I should talk to—”
“You mean if I wasn’t married you’d take away my free gravesite?” Sharlie asked.
Again there was a short silence, but after a moment the voice resumed courageously. “It’s all part of the package. My company will make available an adjoining site for your spouse at ten percent off the usual cost…”
“I want to know why you picked on me,” Sharlie interrupted.
“I explained already. We’re given—”
But Sharlie rushed on in a trembling voice. “How do you know what you’re doing to the person who answers the phone? I mean, it’s really a very personal thing, don’t you think, a person’s death?”
“Oh, we don’t talk about that.”
“Well, Jesus Christ, what are you talking about, then? I’m not going to jump into my free burial plot while I’m bursting with vitality, am I?”
“Listen, lady,” the voice said in an injured tone. “Our intention was to offer you an unprecedented value. There’s no need to get into the area of … passing away.”
“Well, how do you know a person doesn’t have a brain tumor or terminal cancer or something and you’re calling me up with this … what about my obituary? Don’t I get a free obituary?”
“I take it you’re refusing the offer,” the voice said.
“Oh, my God.”
There was a click, and Sharlie sat with the phone in her hand until the dial tone began again. The buzzing sound suddenly made her think of the soda bottle filled with dead and dying bees. She replaced the receiver carefully and sat huddled in a corner of the couch, her arms around her knees, staring blindly at the television set.
The next evening Sharlie sat on the floor by the fireplace watching her parents drink their coffee. How long, she wondered, have they been sharing one end of the couch like that? Their thighs were even touching.
“I’ve never heard much about the San Francisco trip,” Sharlie remarked.
“Oh, that seems like a very long time ago,” Margaret said.
“Did you enjoy it?”
Margaret glanced at Walter.
“Yeah, we did,” Walter replied. Sharlie thought she detected an unfamiliar quality in her father’s voice, almost a kind of carefulness.
Then Margaret began a recitation about the scenic spots they’d visited in the Bay Area. As her mother talked, Sharlie let her eyes wander about the room. Everything was as it had always been—the clock on the marble mantelpiece, the heavy leather-bound books that once belonged to Margaret’s grandfather, the worn place on the Oriental rug beside the couch. Exactly the same as when the three-year-old Sharlie had sat on this floor and pointed out the shapes in the carpet, delighting her father when she named the hexagon.
The same, and yet all of a sudden so strange. The first time she’d come here to dinner with Brian, she’d felt the impulse to send her husband off with a goodnight kiss at the end of the evening and go upstairs to her very own bed that she’d slept in for twenty-six years. But tonight there was a museumlike quality about the place, the objects in the old house like relics from the past, reminders of another life she’d left behind forever.
“If he wasn’t going to make it, I don’t see why he didn’t just pick up the phone,” Walter said.
His voice jarred Sharlie out of her reverie. “He’ll be here,” she said.
“The man is chronically late,” Walter grumbled.
“Is this going to be get-Brian time?” Sharlie asked.
Margaret quickly interceded, “I’m sure he’ll be here in a few minutes. His meeting must have gone on longer than he expected.”
“Well, then, he could have called. It’s ten o’clock already,” Walter muttered.
“Why don’t you just go to bed and stop worrying about it?” Sharlie said angrily.
Walter, his face flushed, had begun to get up when the doorbell rang. Margaret pulled at his sleeve.
“I’ll get it,” he said, and left the room.
“Let’s have a nice time,” Margaret pleaded. “We don’t see each other that often.”
“I was having a nice time,” Sharlie said irritably.
Brian and Walter walked into the room, and Brian bent to kiss Sharlie. “Sorry. I got stuck,” he said.
“Why didn’t you call?” she asked.
“I couldn’t get out.”
“You couldn’t excuse yourself for one second to pick up the phone?” Her voice was rising.
“Brian,” Margaret said. “Can I get you some coffee?”
“Wait a minute, Mother. We’re fighting.”
“I can see that,” Walter said.
“Help me up,” Sharlie said to Brian, holding out her hand. He lifted her from the floor, and she faced him angrily. “If you’d been at home with me and had to interrupt our time together to call some client, you’d somehow manage to squeeze it in.”
“I said I was sorry,” Brian said, his voice low. “Let’s discuss this later.”
“Come on,” Sharlie said, pulling him by the hand. “We’ll go to the dining room.”
They left, and in five minutes Brian returned to say that Sharlie was bringing him a cup of coffee and a sandwich. He hadn’t had time to eat.
“Is everything all right?” Margaret asked.
Brian smiled. “Yes. I’m sorry to screw up your dinner. I hear I missed something special.”
Walter rose abruptly and excused himself. Margaret watched him stride toward the door, his shoulders tensed combatively.
“I’m afraid there’s going to be a little bit more temper tonight,” Margaret said.
“What else did I miss, besides dinner?” Brian asked her.
Margaret shook her head.
“Sometimes I think she gets more like her father every day. She was never so … temperamental,” she said with a sigh.
“Yes,” Brian replied. His voice was neutral, but his eyes twinkled at her. They sat in silence, wondering what was going on in the kitchen.
When Walter marched into the kitchen, Sharlie was spreading a thick layer of mayonnaise on a slice of bread.
“Hi,” she said, giving him a brief smile.
“I want you to explain something to me, miss,” Walter said. “Why is it you got up on your high horse when I merely pointed out that he was late, and the minute he walks in here, you let him have it for the very same thing. Explain that to me, will you, please?”
Sharlie’s voice held a menacing quaver. “First of all, don’t call me ‘miss.’ I’m not your ‘miss.’ And secondly, when you talk about my husband, you can call him Brian, not ‘he’ or ‘that man.’ He’s got a name.”
“Hey,” Walter said, “I’m not crazy about your tone of—”
Sharlie interrupted him angrily. “And I’m not crazy about your complaining to me about my husband.”
“But you said exactly the same thing to him the second—”
“That’s different.”
“Will you quit interrupting me? I don’t like it. It’s damn rude and disrespectful.”
“I want you to get this straight, Daddy. It’s one thing for me to have a disagreement with Brian. It’s quite another for you to sit harping about him to me. It’s not your business. I don’t give a damn what you say when I’m not around, but I don’t want you finding fault with him in my presence. Ever.”
“Don’t you threaten me, young lady,” Walter said, his face crimson.
“I hadn’t gotten to the threat part yet, but since you bring it up, here it is. If this happens again, you won’t see us. And I mean that.”
Walter was finally stunned to silence. The two stood glaring at each other. After a moment he said quietly, “All right. It won’t happen again.” Then he wheeled around and stalked out of the kitchen. When Sharlie brought Brian’s tray into the living room, he was asking Brian about the sex discrimination case he’d been working on. He didn’t meet his daughter’s eyes the rest of the evening.
Chapter 50
Sharlie sat on a bench at the Wall Street tennis courts gazing up at the roof of the bubble ceiling. As the sea gulls flew past outside, darting and diving above the East River, their shadows flickered through the white canvas expanse. Brian’s shout interrupted her, and she looked down to watch his body arch as he stretched for a lob. He crashed the ball down the line past Susan’s feet on the other side of the net.
“Bastard!” Susan called with a grin. He tipped his racquet to her in mock salute.
Sharlie felt a sudden wave of nausea, and she bent her head to combat the dizziness that accompanied it She held on tightly to the edge of the bench, lowering her head to keep herself from fainting.
She had felt the queasy discomfort all day, but blamed it on last night’s dinner—the monthly rebellion. Spaghetti carbonara and a slice of garlic bread at a trattoria in Greenwich Village.
But her symptoms had gradually intensified, until now she felt she couldn’t possibly wait to get into bed. The wooden seat seemed to pitch and roll beneath her, and she clutched at its rough surface, hoping to ride out the attack without alarming anyone. She lifted her head carefully to see the white figures darting back and forth, long legs spinning and turning. She felt herself falling as the bench rose on its side and tossed her off onto the green surface of the court.
She woke up in the back of Susan’s car, with Brian holding her tightly against him. She could hear the thumping of the pulse in his neck and smell the salty heat of him under his damp tennis shirt They were hurtling up the FDR Drive, with Susan weaving the car expertly through the heavy northbound traffic. Sharlie tried to move her head so that she could look at Brian, but he put his hand on her hair and held her still against his shoulder.
“I’m sorry,” she murmured.
“Shh,” he said.
“I thought we were home free.”
“How do you feel?” he asked.
“Weird. As if everything’s far away.”
“I’m not far away. You rest.”
She must have fallen asleep or passed out again because the next thing she was aware of was being helped from the car at Saint Joseph’s emergency entrance. As Brian and Susan propped her up, Sharlie said groggily to Brian, “Déjà vu?”
They put her on a flat table, and Brian sat next to her, holding her hand. He said to Susan, “Do me a favor and page Mary MacDonald. When you get her, tell her we’ve got Sharlie down here.”
Susan went off, grateful to be useful, and in a moment they heard Mary’s name over the loudspeaker.
She arrived almost immediately. Sharlie opened her eyes and looked up at the familiar round face with relief. Mary picked up Sharlie’s wrist. As she timed her pulse, she regarded Brian intently. “What happened?” she asked.
Brian shook his head. “She passed out.”
“Swooned,” Sharlie said drunkenly. “Your basic swoon dive onto the floor. Good form, poor recovery …”
“Hush,” Mary said sharply. Then dropping Sharlie’s wrist, she moved quickly about the Emergency Room issuing orders and enlisting a harassed attendant to wheel Sharlie upstairs to the eleventh floor. Brian tried to follow, but Mary put a firm hand on his chest.
“She’s so out of it she won’t miss you. Go get yourself a stiff drink and come back in a couple of hours.”
Mary glanced at Susan, who was standing off to the side in her damp tennis dress trying to look unobtrusive. “And you ought to put some clothes on.”
Susan smiled weakly, not sure whether the brusque nurse was commenting on her risk of contracting pneumonia or her immodesty.
“What is it, Mary?” Brian asked.
Mary shook her head. “Won’t know until we run the tests.”
“You don’t think she’s rejecting,” he said.
Mary gave him a noncommittal look. “Won’t know until we run the tests,” she repeated.
Brian put his arm around her shoulder and gave her a squeeze. “Thanks for being around.”
“Oh, I’m part of the equipment in this place.”
“The best part,” he said, releasing her. She bustled off down the hallway, and before he and Susan had gotten to the elevator, they heard Dr. Diller being paged.
Her voltage had dropped alarmingly, and all her tests indicated rejection. Diller conferred with Jason Lewis in California. The cautious consensus was that they had caught the problem just on the brink of the acute stage. They injected her with the painful ATG serum immediately, pumping the powerful vaccine into her thighs while she lay absolutely still with clenched teeth, the sweat pouring off her body.
But in forty-eight hours she was well enough to sit up in bed and talk to visitors. Sharlie had insisted that Brian not interrupt his work again. Who knew, after all, how many times this sort of thing would happen over the years, she’d told him. If he took any more days off, he’d forget all his thereafter’s and hereto-fore’s, and none of the judges would understand him anymore. He had acquiesced reluctantly, but Sharlie knew he needed the activity and involvement away from the hospital. He hated feeling helpless, and she would rather think of him occupied in court than pacing back and forth in the waiting room.
And besides, she was tired. She had never been so tired. She felt as if she’d been fighting the Hundred Years War and that she was just about out of reserves. As she lay in bed waiting for her mother, it struck her suddenly that she no longer felt like fighting. The thought made her swallow hard, with guilt more than fear. Not to struggle—the greatest sin of all, at least in the Gospel According to Walter Converse. Giving up was unthinkable, and until now Sharlie had quickly forced such ideas back into the morass of her subconscious.
Maybe also it was because finally, finally
, she was happy. In the past there had been fleeting moments when she’d felt death would be preferable to the unmitigated suffering, but in general, it seemed unthinkable. How senseless to disappear from life after tasting only the misery, all those years of hurt and loneliness. She would hang on another hour, another day, in the desperate hope that she could go out saying she’d experienced a little of the good stuff, too. But now. In just a few months it was as if she had lived a thousand lifetimes. She had fought so hard—to last through one more attack, to endure another siege of searing pain—and now, after all the struggling, she could feel herself beginning to release her stubborn grip on survival. She looked out the window and stared into the pale-blue morning sky. Not so terrible to let go now, she thought.
Sharlie heard rustling at the door and turned to see her mother standing there watching her. Margaret walked to the bed and took her daughter’s hand. “What were you thinking about just then?” she asked.
“Woolgathering, I guess,” Sharlie answered.
“Looked like lofty thoughts to me.”
Sharlie laughed. “I was probably wondering what’s for lunch.”
“That’s a good sign,” Margaret said and sat down. “I talked with Dr. Diller this morning. He’s optimistic.”
“What’s he doing here? I thought he was going to stay out West and be a movie star.”
Margaret smiled. “Jason Lewis casts a long shadow, I think.” Sharlie giggled, and Margaret went on. “He says you’ll be home by the end of the week if you keep on the way you’re going.”
Sharlie smiled vaguely, her eyes fastened on the window.
“You don’t seem all that excited.”
“Mother, I could be back here again a day after I get out.”
“Don’t you want to go home?” Margaret asked. Her voice had deepened abruptly, and Sharlie stared at her.