A Day in June

by Marisa Labozzetta

  “We didn’t have a big wedding, Joe.”

  “You have an answer for everything.”

  “While you’re going the old-fashioned route, you can wear my opal earrings that always discolor the piercing in my earlobes: something old, borrowed, and blue all in one.”

  “Thanks loads, but that parakeet I got tattooed on my left hip will cover the color requirement. Besides, opals are bad luck if you’re not a Libra.”

  “Okay, ladies. Easy does it,” Joe says.

  Ryan recognizes that they have ruined her parents’ evening, which will now be spent arguing about how badly Lauren handled the phone call. Followed by several hours of her mother not speaking to her father, who continues to cave in to his daughter’s every desire, according to Lauren. Followed by a lengthy discussion at the Chinese restaurant as to whether or not Lauren and Joe should have gotten back together, let alone Ryan and Jason. Followed by Joe’s concession to Lauren because he is still treading in very deep water. Followed by (Ryan hates to think of it) lovemaking and a commitment from both of them to start anew from that lousy point they always get stuck on.

  Chapter 23

  Friday, May 9

  THERE ISN’T MUCH prep work to be done for the computer classes; curriculums already exist, in addition to quite a few lesson plans left by the teacher. Still, Jason sits up each night at the kitchen table with his laptop and prepares. He does not want to fail—at anything in this experimental period of his life that has quickly become a done deal. He cannot help but warn his new students not to spend too much time with this technology that takes them away from time that should be spent cultivating new relationships, from learning and doing new things, from communicating in person with friends. There is no substitute, he tells them, for direct human contact, which means looking someone in the eye.

  “Yes there is. There’s Skype,” a student says.

  “Ah, but you can’t really look someone in the eye on Skype. It’s even worse than a phone call, because it’s forced—like you’re performing, like you’re onstage.”

  He knows they’ve tuned him out and, despite his beseeching, will carry on in their beloved cyberspace. This includes the girls who find the young rookie teacher irresistible and will later purposely pass by his classroom to catch a glimpse of him through the glass panel of the closed door and titter as they make their way down the hall. Today he’d like to stick around after school to chat with some of the teens who live within walking distance and don’t have to catch buses or run to an athletic practice or a music lesson, which he’s done since he began several weeks ago. Instead he heads over to Faye and Harold’s new apartment at Laurel Manor.

  When he knocks at number 31 he’s welcomed by a young Cape Verdean home health aide who’s been there since early morning, and who, at 6 p.m., will be relieved by a middle-aged woman from Minsk, the city Faye’s mother emigrated from so many years ago. Faye prefers the slender soft-spoken Cape Verdean to the bossy Belarusian who’ll spend the night dozing on and off on the sofa bed, waking up to Faye’s calls into a baby monitor and accompanying her to the bathroom. Faye has graduated to a walker and Harold has shed his completely, relying solely on a cane, and only for extra security.

  Harold’s inability to keep food down after his wedding went away, just as Ryan assured Faye it would. Its source, however, was not indigestion, or food poisoning, or a result of too much excitement, but an aborted attempt at something else. While he resumed his normal eating habits for a short time at the new dining hall in the independent living unit, a week ago he began to refuse to accompany Faye there, and when he did, he pushed the food he’d ordered around with his fork, leaving it scattered but untouched. His behavior was not lost on Faye, who asked Ryan to take him to the doctor. Once again Harold refused to be taken anywhere, returning to his recliner, where he remained until it was time for bed.

  He offered no excuses for his actions—no stomach aches, no constipation, no sore throat or tooth pain—except that he was not hungry. Four days ago, he began turning down liquids too. Three times a day a tray was brought to the apartment for Faye, who couldn’t bear the questions of fellow residents who sat at their table and inquired about Harold’s condition, for which she had no answer. Ryan and Jason brought him fish from Harbor View, and Boston cream doughnuts—his favorite. The Belarusian aide baked him an apple strudel. The Cape Verdean brought him canja, a thick chicken and rice soup.

  Within days Harold grew gaunt looking. His fair complexion became chalky and sallow. They tried to persuade his doctor of twenty years, who denied knowing of any secret illness on Harold’s part, to make an exception and do a house call, but he had come down with the flu and suggested the ER. Laurel Manor sent in their social worker; Harold would not speak with him.

  So today Jason stops at Friendly’s and picks up a chocolate fribble, hoping Harold will feel nostalgic and at least sip some of the milkshake. Jason has given up on the healthy smoothies laced with supplements he purchases from a juice bar in Davis Square at which Harold repeatedly turns up his nose.

  Jason unwraps a straw, places it in the hole of the cover, and positions the tall plastic cup at Harold’s lips. It has been seven days since his last intake of solids, three days since his last sip of liquid. Harold shakes his head; Faye wrings her hands.

  “Please, Harold, for my sake, darling,” Faye says, begging. “Drink. Just a sip.”

  “For your sake, darling, no. Only a little water with my blood pressure medicine.” He doesn’t want to have another stroke.

  “Ach!” Faye cries. “What? What’s wrong? Tell us, goddamn you! What is wrong?”

  “Nothing.” Harold waves his hand in the air and smiles.

  “Call a psychiatrist! I’ve married a psycho. My daughters were right. I should have waited. They were all right. I married a meshugganah. Call a psychiatrist! Jason, do you know one?”

  “Enough, Faye, darling.” Harold is calm as he speaks. “All right already. I’ll tell you what’s up.”

  “Thank God!”

  “Faye, dear, with you and Jason and—” He looks up at the aide, who utters her name—”and Jocelina, I say that I have never been happier in my life. To be here with you, such a beautiful and intelligent and loving woman, as my wife is a dream I never thought I’d see come to fruition in all my years on this earth. I am floating in the clouds, delirious, yes, but with love, with peace, with contentment.”

  They hang on his every word, awaiting further clues to his madness.

  “I’m eighty-nine years old. Thanks to some recent expert medical care, apart from a little balance problem and high blood pressure, I’m a healthy son of a bitch. I even have most of my hair. I could never be happier than I was the day I met you, Faye, except for the day you married me. And this is how I want to die—a happy, healthy son of a bitch, and not a broken-down, up-shit’s-creek burden to you, or worse, a man twice divorced. Be happy for me, Faye. I’m a lucky man.”

  They stare at him in disbelief. They are speechless.

  * * *

  A little after 5 p.m., Ryan approaches the T station at Downtown Crossing, where she passes a man holding a sign that reads Homeless with a family. He stands in the spot where her mother has told her that, when she was a young woman, Hare Krishnas, with their shaved heads and flowing garments, used to play music and dance and chant for hours on end to reduce their karmic debt.

  “Please, Miss, for my children,” he murmurs.

  She ignores him and is about to enter the station when, out of the corner of her eye, she realized he is not an angry drug addict or lazy shiftless individual who prefers begging to working but a man whose pained expression has gone from hope to despair with her passing. Whatever his reason for being there, she decides it is genuine, and she fishes in her bag for a five-dollar bill, turns around, and hands it to him, saying she’s sorry, but she hadn’t heard him. What’s five dollars to her, even though she and Jason are watching their spending? She’ll go without her morning cappuccino
tomorrow and the next day. She should have given him a twenty; Jason would have.

  She arrives at Faye’s at the same time as the Belarusian aide, Anastasya, to find Faye sitting at the kitchen table, head in her hands, an untouched dinner tray in front of her. In the bedroom, Jocelina folds laundry from a white plastic basket. In the living room, Harold is where she left him the day before. Jason sits in front of him on a footstool, his awkward wiry body bent like a paper clip, as he leans in toward the recliner and talks to Harold, eyes closed, who shakes his head from time to time. Jason acknowledges Ryan with a slight smile; he barely notices as Anastasya and Jocelina exchange shifts. He concentrates on Harold, murmuring something Ryan can’t hear clearly. He takes Harold’s hand, returning to long moments of silence, and then, as though having dug into a bag of spiritual tricks of persuasion, begins again.

  Ryan has almost forgotten to say hello to Faye. She kisses her grandmother and pulls a chair up to her.

  “Oh, Ryan, bubeleh, it’s worse than we ever thought. He wants to die.”

  “What?” She looks to Jason for confirmation. He nods.

  “He wants to leave me. He’s starving himself. Some honeymoon, eh?”

  “Shouldn’t we call his children?”

  “I don’t even know who the ingrates are,” Faye says with disgust.

  “How does a good man produce two bad seeds?” Anastasya chimes—her accent thick—as she moves about the apartment, tidying up magazines and pillows that Jocelina has left out of place.

  “It takes more than good genes to raise a child,” Faye tells her, stirring sugar into the cup of tea Anastasya has poured her. “You should know. I thought you said you had children back in Belarus. It takes more than one person. You know, they say it takes a village. Well, it takes more than that. People are born with their own personalities.”

  There’s a knock at the door and a young girl with a chestnutbrown ponytail and a nametag that reads Amanda timidly pokes her head in. She knows about Harold. Everyone knows about the new residents, the man and his wife who haven’t shown up at the dining room for several days, about the man who refuses to eat.

  “Can I take your tray?” she asks Faye.

  “Yes, darling. Thank you.”

  “Are those earrings inside your ear?” Anastasya does not hold back, referring to the three-quarter-inch in diameter white disks nestled in Amanda’s lobes.

  “Yeah. They are,” Amanda says.

  “What in world you pierce your ear with?” Anastasya says.

  “They were just pierced like normal,” the girl says, laughing. “Then I stretched out the hole. It took a long time.”

  Anastasya shakes her head as though to ask why she would ever have done that. Amanda steals a peek at Harold in the recliner as she quickly picks up the tray and tiptoes out.

  “Such a sweet girl,” Faye says.

  “What a shame such sweet girl does that to herself.”

  “Have you eaten?” Faye asks Ryan and Jason. She is indifferent to Amanda’s ears.

  “We’ll go out later,” Ryan says.

  “I’ll ask them to bring you something. It’s on me. Here’s the menu. It might be too late for anything more than grilled cheese or a hamburger.”

  “Grilled cheese sounds good. How about you, Jase?”

  “Hamburger, please. Thanks.”

  “Good. That’s settled,” Faye says, who has finally accomplished something she hasn’t been able to do for the past week: she’s fed someone.

  Harold has confessed that he got the idea on the day of the wedding. What if this were the end? How happy he would have been to die that way. But he didn’t follow through then. He waited a month to be sure, and then put his plan into action. He didn’t say anything because he didn’t want to be dissuaded. He wanted to be far enough along to be sure of his decision. This is not the first time he has entertained the notion of killing himself: he had been a member of the former Hemlock Society, collecting information on methods for making a dignified exit.

  It was for people who are suffering, who are in pain, whose days are numbered, Faye said she had told him. And that’s what he had always thought, but even with Faye in his life—because of Faye—getting older seemed unbearable. He’d had a taste of what it was like not to be able to care for himself after the stroke. He didn’t want to wait until his lungs failed him and, like Fred, had to go around hooked up to oxygen, or until another stroke permanently left him in a wheelchair or impaired his vision so badly he couldn’t recognize Faye.

  “No,” he responds loudly to something Jason has whispered. “I do not want to sit across the table from that woman, deaf, dumb, and blind. I will not deteriorate before her.”

  “But we’ve already deteriorated!” Faye tells him, as though giving him the good news that the worst is over.

  “I do not want you to see me in diapers or with a tube inserted in my penis.”

  Ryan thinks she and Jason should leave. They are intruders on this intimacy. She motions to Jason, but his look tells her that it’s right for them to be there, that it’s weak for them to leave.

  “I don’t want to go back there.” He points in the direction of the nursing home. “When I was a little boy, I helped an old man struggling to open the door to my father’s candy store. ‘Don’t ever grow old, sonny,’ he said to me as though I had a choice. I thought he was crazy. ‘Don’t ever grow old.’ When you’re young you can’t understand that getting old means losing your energy, your friends, your autonomy. I’ve had a full life. I’m the happiest now I’ve been since I can’t remember when. If all I have to look forward to is giving up things and people, I want to take control of my life before it takes control of me. That’s what that old man meant: make a choice before it’s too late. It’s taken me a lifetime to understand it.”

  Jason can only do this if he continues to try to convince Harold to live. Like a senator engaged in a filibuster he talks. But the more he talks, the more he appears to convince Harold that what he is doing is right.

  “Just pray. Your prayers help,” Harold tells him.

  “I’ll call a rabbi.”

  “No. Just you. I like the way you pray. I like your voice. I don’t care what you’re saying.”

  “It’s not fair to put this on Jason,” Ryan whispers to Faye.

  “Let him do it for me, Ryan. Please.”

  Jason offers Harold a sip of water. He refuses. “No more,” he says, putting up his hand. “Not even water.”

  * * *

  “It’s his choice,” Ryan tells Jason as they sit up in bed well after midnight. “Assisted suicide is legal in some states. We even had a ballot question here a few years ago.”

  “It was for physician-assisted suicide for the terminally ill, if I remember correctly. And it got voted down. Ryan, the man’s not sick.”

  “But he is suffering. He’s tormented by what he sees for his future.”

  “So we’re all going to commit suicide? That’s fucking insane.”

  “It’s dying with dignity. It’s making a choice.”

  “It’s still suicide. The Church is very clear on that. Listen.” He pulls up something on his phone and reads: “From the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith: Nothing and no one can in any way permit the killing of an innocent human being, whether a fetus or an embryo, an infant or an adult, or an old person, or one suffering from an incurable disease, or a person who is dying. Moreover, we have no right to ask for this act of killing for ourselves or for those entrusted to our care, nor can any authority legitimately recommend or permit such an action … a violation of person, crime against life, and an attack on humanity. That’s from the Declaration on Euthanasia.”

  “How old is that?”

  “It’s from 1980.”

  Ryan throws up her hands. “First of all, it’s outdated. Secondly, Harold isn’t even Catholic, so it doesn’t apply to him. And most importantly, you know I believe in a woman’s right to choose. That stuff drives me nuts.”
<
br />   “I know that. Let’s not get into that now. Let’s stick with euthanasia. And Harold may not be Catholic, but he’s asking me to be his accomplice.”

  “So what if it is suicide? So what?” She tugs at the sheet to cover her bare breasts while she fishes under the pillow for her oversized T-shirt. She’s cold.

  “I don’t know if I can be a part of this. We’re talking about, and I quote: a violation of a person, a crime against life, and an attack on humanity—”

  “Enough! He’s doing it with or without you. You have a chance to comfort him.” And end this torture between us. She pulls the shirt down over her head.

  “I wish I hadn’t taken this job. I’d be able to spend the day with him tomorrow.”

  “It’s already tomorrow. It’s a quarter to one.”

  “I almost had him there today. I know I did. I almost had him change his mind.”

  “And then he might have changed it again. You would just be prolonging his suffering, playing with his body that’s already pretty fucked up. Then how would you feel?”

  “Life is a God-given gift. To be taken by the giver.”

  “Not everyone believes that.”

  “Do you?”

  “I do believe it’s a gift. I also believe that once you give a gift, you relinquish your possession of it, your power over it, or else it wasn’t a gift a all.”

  “I’ll be back in five. Want anything from the kitchen?”

  “Tiffany hasn’t come home yet,” she says, reminding him that he’s naked. He gets out of bed and slips into a pair of jeans he picks up from the floor. She knows he’s going to pray for guidance, for Harold’s soul, and that he can’t do it with her beside him. He cannot help obsessing about everyone’s problems, from absorbing everyone’s angst. Being in bed with him is like sleeping with the entire city of Boston.

  “You didn’t ask what I would do if it was you doing this to me,” she calls after him.

  “I guess I can’t see us that far down the road.”