by Brian Morton
“It would be a pleasure to have you,” Billie said. “It’d be like having a slumber party every day.”
Billie was smiling at her—calmly, trustfully.
What a feeling, to have someone’s life in your hands!
The strange thing was that it didn’t feel strange.
She thought of the afternoon, more than fifteen years ago, when Billie accompanied her to the funeral home after Margaret’s death and hadn’t been able to go in. She remembered standing near the entrance of the funeral home—how she’d looked back and seen her aunt on the bench, her arms wrapped around her body, shivering, in the full blue ease of early May. Remembering that moment, she felt as if she must have known, even then, when she was still no more than a girl, that she’d be taking care of Billie someday.
31
THIS IS HOW people disappear . . .
The next day, while Billie was sleeping and Joyce was knitting near her bed, Nora went out to do some errands. First she went to the post office and mailed her story to the Atlantic. It was still rough, but she wanted to get it into the mail anyway—she wasn’t sure whether she’d be able to write at all while she was staying with Billie, and sending the story out, even in its ragged state, was an affirmation that she was a fiction writer again. After that she went to the supermarket, where she bought soup and juice and tea and toast and frozen yogurt for Billie, and food and toys for the cats. At the video store she rented all three versions of Little Women—June Allyson, Katharine Hepburn, and Winona Ryder. They could have a video festival over the weekend.
When Nora got back to the apartment, Joyce gathered up her things and left for the night. As soon as she was alone, Nora knew something was wrong. Edwin and Louie were huddled together oddly near the kitchen door, as if they were trying to create one cat. Nora walked quickly into the bedroom; Billie was in bed, staring at the ceiling.
Nora came in quietly. “Hi,” she said.
Billie didn’t answer. She didn’t move her head. She moved her eyes in Nora’s direction, although not all the way.
“How are you feeling?” Nora said.
Billie didn’t respond.
Nora pulled a chair up next to the bed. “Do you want some soup?”
Billie shook her head and didn’t say anything.
This is how people disappear. Nora had been away less than two hours, but during that time, Billie had moved from one stage of dying into the next.
During the next few days, Billie’s strength fluctuated. At her best, she could still talk and go to the bathroom and watch TV. At her worst she wasn’t strong enough to lift her head from the pillow. Nora had to lift her head in order to help her drink.
As enfeebled as Billie was, taking care of her wouldn’t have been quite so difficult if not for the problem of helping her manage her eliminations.
Joyce was experienced in the use of bedpans, and things went smoothly when she was there. But Nora was new at this. One morning, changing the bedpan, she tipped it over and it spilled onto Billie’s sheets. She helped Billie out of bed so she could put new sheets on, and then, when she got her back in, but before she could get the bedpan under her, Billie soiled the sheets again.
Nora helped her back to her easy chair.
“I’m sorry,” Billie said.
“There’s nothing to be sorry about.”
“Well, maybe there is.”
Nora put fresh sheets on the bed. “Sometimes I think people just shouldn’t have bodies,” she said.
“If we didn’t have bodies we wouldn’t have any fun,” Billie said.
Nora thought of getting a wheelchair, but it became one of those things that you keep thinking about doing and never do. Instead she just tried to make peace with the bedpan, and with the smell of excrement, which had taken over the apartment.
Billie’s gums and tongue began to bleed. When Nora brought her something to drink, she would put a straw between Billie’s lips, and when she removed it, the straw was always bloody.
One night Billie tried to reassure Nora that things weren’t so bad, wanted to show her that she was still capable of smiling, but when she smiled, her teeth were red with blood.
On Billie’s torso, on her shoulders, on her neck, boils began to appear. The boils were blue and scaly and their edges were dotted with tiny purple pus-filled sacs. It was as if nature was reclaiming her, inch by inch.
Nora and Isaac had planned to get together one Saturday afternoon while Joyce was staying with Billie. Nora asked him if he’d accompany her to the hospice that Dr. Kanter had told her about. She wanted to see what it was like. She didn’t have the competence to take care of Billie anymore.
Isaac picked her up and they drove to the hospice, which was in a quiet part of Queens. It was a crisp October day, and the ride was pleasant, or would have been, if they hadn’t been headed out to visit a hospice.
She asked him if he’d heard from anybody about his show—gallery owners or reviewers—and before she finished the sentence she realized it was a bad idea to ask.
“Nope,” he said. “It was kind of silly of me to have thought I might.”
“It wasn’t silly.”
He seemed glum, and she thought it was because of her.
“I’m sorry we’ve been spending so little time together,” she said.
“You need to take care of Billie. I understand that.”
“Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure.”
The hospice was called Riverside, though there weren’t any rivers nearby. A large and motherly woman named Alice gave them a tour. The halls and the rooms were clean; the nurses seemed attentive and kind.
The place was billed as a “multidimensional care facility”; Alice was vague as to what, if anything, that meant. It seemed to mean that it was part hospice, part nursing home. Which itself seemed to mean that they took in people who weren’t necessarily going to die immediately, but who were expected to die soon.
A few times during the day, the thought of her story crossed Nora’s mind. She wasn’t sure she had the right to be relying on Isaac like this when her story was lying in wait for him, ready to strike.
Near the end of the tour, Alice had to take a phone call; while Nora and Isaac were waiting for her in the hall, an old woman in bed in a private room called out. “Young man? Excuse me? Sir?”
Isaac took one respectful step into the room. “Can I help you?”
“Yes, you can. I’d like you to help get me out of here, young man.”
“I’m not sure what you mean.”
“I mean I would appreciate it if you would call my father. I’m certain that he doesn’t know I’m here.”
The woman was at least eighty years old.
She looked at Isaac imploringly. “My daddy wouldn’t let me be alone like this,” she said.
“If you give me his number, yes, I’ll call him for you,” Isaac said.
Nora thought that this was probably as kind an answer as he could have given to her. But it didn’t seem to calm her. She didn’t say anything more, but she continued to look at him pleadingly.
Riverside was affiliated with a hospital, which was across the street. They visited the hospital for a moment; it was quiet and clean.
They found a coffee shop nearby. They each ordered something, although neither of them was hungry. They just needed a place to sit down.
Isaac asked her what she was thinking.
“I was thinking it’s good they have a hospital across the street. Maybe she’ll get better, and then they’ll transfer her to the hospital, and eventually she’ll be able to come home again.”
Isaac smiled at her sadly. It was as if he was trying to read her, trying to determine whether she was strong enough to bear up under the sadness of Billie’s death.
He accompanied her back to Billie’s. Nora talked to Joyce for a minute, then looked in on Billie. She was awake and alert, watching figure skating on TV. Nora asked her if she’d like to say hello to Isaac.
/> “Of course,” she said. “He’s a man who carries a girl very nicely.”
Nora brought him into the bedroom.
“How are you?” he asked.
“I haven’t been too peachy. But Nora is making things nicer for me.”
“Is there anything I can do for you?”
“Just take care of her, while she’s taking care of me.”
Isaac didn’t want to tire her out. He kissed Billie on the cheek and said good-bye.
Nora saw him to the door.
“I could stay here with you if you’d like,” he said.
She knew that Isaac wanted to be here, wanted to help her; she knew that it was frustrating for him that she wasn’t allowing him to help her more. But she was about to have a talk with Billie that wouldn’t be easy for either of them, and she wanted to be alone with her. She put her arms around him and whispered into his shirt, “I’m sorry.”
After Isaac left, Nora rejoined Billie, who asked her what she’d done that day.
Without using the word hospice, Nora told her that she’d visited the place that Kanter had told her about, a place where people could take better care of her.
“That’s what you did today?” Billie seemed frightened. “That doesn’t seem very romantic.”
“It wasn’t.”
“You think I need a place like that?”
The question was meant sincerely. Nora didn’t say anything. She just took Billie’s hand.
“I don’t want to go,” Billie said.
“You don’t have to. Not if you don’t want to.”
“Is it clean?”
“It is. It’s very clean.”
“Did the food look okay?
“I didn’t see the food. They showed me a menu, though. It looked pretty good. But I can bring you anything you want.”
“Were they nice there? Do you think people make friends there?”
“They seemed nice,” Nora said. “The ones I met.”
Billie watched another minute of the figure skating.
“I’ll miss you,” she said. “You’ve been a very jolly housemate.”
“You’ll still see me every day.”
Even though she herself had set it all in motion, Nora was disturbed by how easy this was turning out to be, how meekly Billie was accepting this fate. She didn’t want her to be so easily defeated.
Edwin was at the bedroom door, meowing.
“What about my sweeties?” Billie said. “Will I be able to take them with me?”
“I don’t think so,” Nora said. “But maybe I can sneak them in for visits. I’ll carry them in a picnic basket.”
This, of course, was pure fantasy, but Billie seemed to believe it. “That would be fun,” she said. “But I’m not sure Dolly’s well enough to travel.” She put her head back on the pillow. “It’ll be hard to say good-bye.”
32
SIX DAYS LATER, NORA CALLED Riverside, and they sent someone to pick Billie up. Billie had been continuing to slip away.
The man from the hospice brought a gurney up to Billie’s apartment. Nora helped him shift her to the gurney from the bed. He was a large man in his late fifties who looked like he should have been working down at the docks. Nora was surprised by the carefulness with which he handled Billie when he moved her. He had the air somehow of someone doing penance for a lifetime of mistakes.
Nora followed him as he wheeled her out of the apartment. It was one of Billie’s bad days. As they went through the living room, near the front door, Billie seemed to rouse herself—it was hardly perceptible—and turn her head slightly for a last look at her little lovelies. Dolly was in her corner, dozing, but Edwin and Louie were nowhere to be seen.
Even though Nora had told them that Billie lived in a fourth-floor walk-up, the man had come by himself, so she had to help him move Billie downstairs. By the time they reached the sidewalk Nora’s arm hurt so much that she was trying not to cry.
Nora rode in the front seat. They crossed the Triborough Bridge, passing a sign that said “Explore Beautiful Queens!” It was a rainy day, but the sun, somehow, was shining brightly, and the greenery bordering the highway seemed to be glowing unnaturally, radioactive.
At Riverside, Billie was given a room on the first floor. A high wide window looked out on a garden. There was another bed in the room; the woman in it was sleeping.
Nora spent the afternoon sitting next to Billie’s bed as Billie slept. It was hard to see how she could sleep through her own breathing: each breath was a long loud shudder. Nora was less than a foot away, close enough to lean over and kiss her without leaving her chair, and yet there was nothing she could do to protect her. Soon she would be gone.
33
NORA TOOK THE SUBWAY BACK to Manhattan. She was supposed to meet Isaac later that evening and accompany him to the opening of the photojournalism show, but once she got home, she couldn’t bring herself to go out again. She knew it was important to him, but she couldn’t face a party that night. She left a message on his answering machine, apologizing and apologizing, and told him that if he wanted to come over later, she’d love to see him. She didn’t say anything about Billie. She didn’t want to talk about it on his machine.
She put on an ice pack and then went back to work on the Gabriel story. Though she’d sent out a version to the Atlantic, she didn’t consider it finished.
After she’d been working on the story for an hour, she realized that she might finally be done. She printed out a copy and read it slowly.
She was always surprised by the way she could go over a story a hundred times on the computer screen, convinced she knew it in its every nuance, and then see new problems when she printed it out. The story wasn’t done. But it was very close. The changes she wanted to make were all minor: providing a better sense of what Jenny looked like; showing that Gabriel was in some way intimidated by his sister’s sexuality; describing Gabriel’s soft white chewed-up nails. (Isaac had stopped biting his nails, but Gabriel hadn’t.) She could finish the story with another hour or two of work.
The phone rang; she answered, but no one was there.
She picked the story up again and wondered whether she really needed to finish it. It wasn’t as if she was going to do anything with it. Isaac had been having such a rough time. The kindest thing to do would be to spare him the sight of what she’d written. He didn’t need to see it; no one did. She’d managed to write it, instead of clamping down on her imagination: that was the important thing.
She went to the closet door and opened it and sat on the floor. There were three cardboard boxes against the wall. One of them contained the five stories she’d published. The second contained stories that she’d tried to publish, but hadn’t been able to, at least so far. There were eight stories in that box.
She leaned over and dragged out the third box, which was heavy, filled with paper. It contained stories that she’d never finished, or stories that she’d finished but had decided not to send out into the world. A few were simply misfires, stories that had never found the right shape, but most were things that she hadn’t wanted to show to anyone because of the unhappiness they might cause. There was a folder full of notes for the story about Benjamin that she’d never finished, that she’d barely even begun. There was “Problems of the Middle Game,” the unfinished story about Daryl and the death of his ambitions to be a chess champion. There was “What She Wasn’t,” about her old friend Sally Burke. There was a group of connected stories about her high school friend Helen. They were about Helen’s family, about the way her father’s mental illness had twisted their family life when Helen was young. There was the story about Isaac that she’d begun years ago and never completed. It seemed there was a story, finished or unfinished, about everyone who’d touched her life.
Maybe it was only because of what she’d been through earlier in the day, but she felt sick. It made her sick to think of putting the Gabriel story into the box—burying it as she’d buried all these others, and movi
ng on to a new story that she’d probably bury as well.
She didn’t want to do that anymore. If that was what it meant to be good to Isaac, then she couldn’t be good to him anymore. She’d have to finish this story, and then she’d have to ask him to read it.
She pushed the box back against the wall and closed the closet door. Then she stood up and tossed the story back onto the card table.
If anyone had been watching her—say, from an apartment in the next building—this would have seemed to be an insignificant moment. It would have seemed to be simply a woman dropping some paper onto a table. But it was more than that.
34
ISAAC WAS CHEWING ON STUFFED grape leaves. Mealy, mushy, slick, slimy, sour. Nora was late.
He was in a diner on Forty-second Street. The waitress was a gorgeous dark-eyed Arab girl. He watched her as she leaned over a table, stretching to retrieve someone’s plate. She was probably still in her teens.
When a man reaches a certain age, there are no more innocent pleasures. You see an attractive woman down the block, your senses leap, and as she draws closer and you see her more clearly, you suddenly feel like a child molester.
Nora was more than half an hour late. He tried to make himself feel worried. Billie had taken a turn for the worse. Nora herself was sick. He didn’t want to believe that she’d simply forgotten about the reception.
If this had happened a month ago, he just would have called her and said, “Where the hell are you? We’ve got a date.” But he couldn’t do that tonight. He was still feeling demoralized—because of the failure of his show, because Renee’s success had highlighted the limits of his talent. He was feeling weak, meek, mouseified.
And for another reason. Two weeks ago, he’d left a phone message for Nadine Lyle, telling her that he’d spoken to Yehuda Landau, and that, unfortunately but not surprisingly, Landau had no interest in taking part in the panel discussion in Washington.
He’d expected to get a call from Nadine in response—one of her flattering phone calls, in which she’d thank him for trying and find a few fresh reasons to tell him she thought of him as a god. But she didn’t call; instead, she sent him an e-mail, informing him that, because of a regrettable mix-up, one of the other conference organizers had asked someone else to moderate the discussion, so she had to withdraw her invitation to Isaac. But, she assured him, there was another panel that she hoped he’d moderate, “also filled with people who are very prestigious, though perhaps not as known”—people, in fact, whom even he, who had been in this world for two decades, had never heard of. She was offering him a place at the kiddie table.