Change of Heart

by Sally Mandel

  She cleared her throat, making a little rasping noise. Like that? she wondered.

  If I had my druthers, I would simply go right on lying here next to this beautiful man. But druthers have been in short supply these days, and besides, I am so very tired.

  Brian. Letting go of him is the supreme cruelty. It’s probably easier to be the one who’s going, not the one who’s left behind, although I’m not sure of it. It’s almost always been me who was abandoned, left alone in some hospital bed while everybody else went roller-skating or building snowmen or falling in love. Separating. All my life I guess I’ve been trying to figure out how to do it, and I think I’m finally getting the hang of it…

  Brian rolled over in his sleep and came to rest against her shoulder. His warmth was worth the discomfort, and she didn’t nudge him. As she looked toward the window, the blue light was fading, and she felt the shadows easing their way into the room. There was numbness in her body now, a curious sensation. First a slight tingling feeling, like faraway bells ringing a final farewell. Then nothing. It was not altogether unpleasant. How simple it would be to let go and slide away from everything in this gradual, merciful closing down of circuits.

  No, she must not leave Brian that way. He was entitled to his completed circle, too, and waking up to find her lying cold and dead beside him simply would not do.

  She gave him a little prod with her finger, wondering that she could get her hand to respond at all. There was no sensation of touching, but she saw the indentation of the fabric of his shirt as she poked at him. He turned his face to her, and it was the sleepy one that always made her smile. The creases from his pillow were etched in his flushed cheeks.

  She opened her mouth to say his name, but nothing came out. She felt brief panic but then resolution. Well, she thought, that’s gone already, is it? Good thing I woke him when I did.

  He looked into her face, and with his father’s eyes he saw inside her mind and read what she was silently telling him.

  “What can I do?” he whispered.

  She couldn’t answer him, just watched him with hungry eyes. He propped himself up on one elbow so that she could see him without straining.

  She had already begun to disappear from him, and he knew she woke him so that he could say good-bye. He lifted her hand from the bed and put it to his mouth.

  “Thank you, Sharlie,” he said. She gazed back at him wordlessly and soon the light began to leave her eyes. Then she closed them, and he knew that she was gone.

  Chapter 56

  Brian held a small ceremony in the apartment There was no minister. He knew what Sharlie thought of funerals, could imagine her wry smile, the slight shake of her head.

  “The funeral’s for us,” he said to Walter. “She would have thought we were nuts.”

  Brian’s father arrived that afternoon. He gave his son a white china pitcher in the shape of a cow, intended as a wedding present that he thought would amuse Sharlie. Brian began to cry when he opened the gift.

  “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have brought it,” John Morgan said gruffly. “Better throw it away.” He reached for it, but Brian held on to it tightly.

  “No. I want it. Thank you.” He smiled apologetically at his father and led him into the living room to be introduced.

  There were only a few of them—Walter and Margaret and Mary MacDonald and Ramón Rodriguez (Brian couldn’t bring himself to invite Diller, or even Barbara Kaye). Brian read some of the poetry Sharlie had been particularly moved by—Yeats, John Donne, Emily Dickinson. For himself, he read Elizabeth Barrett Browning, all the time imagining Sharlie’s amused face just behind his shoulder.

  They drank wine and talked quietly together, and even laughed a little. Then everyone left, and Brian, surprised to find himself glad to be alone, sat among the dirty wineglasses and bouquets of carefully cheerful flowers and let the room go dark.

  Acknowledgements

  I feel enormous gratitude to many people for en­couraging me to write, but in particular: Robert Cenedella; Ann Loring; Bridget Potter; my agent, Peter Lampack; my editor, Linda Grey; and Loring Mandel, without whom I cannot imagine having become a writer at all. My special thanks go also to Dr. Robert Lewy for his invaluable medical informa­tion and to my long-suffering friends and family, especially Barry.

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