Stuart left the room. Margo went after him, patting my back as she went. When I’d composed myself, Gloria let me go. We stood at the counter, looking out toward where Dennis stood in the swimming pool with Lola, lifting the water-filled weights above his head one at a time. I saw him struggling with each movement. I saw his muscles trembling. “I would have thought I’d be stronger,” I said.
“You’re plenty strong,” she said.
“I’ll stop feeling sorry for myself now.” And as if something had jarred loose inside me, I felt suddenly that I could do it. I could stop mourning what I’d thought I would have.
“No one blames you,” she said. “Except the boy, of course.”
I laughed a little and she joined me. Then she picked up the pitcher of lemonade and headed outside. When she reached the door, she paused. “It would be a shame if you left,” she said.
In August, almost a year after Dennis’s diagnosis, Dr. Auerbach’s nurse fitted him for a palatal lift, which made speaking easier by keeping air from escaping from his nose while he talked. We also bought a voice box, which Dennis held up to his mouth when speaking, to amplify and save his voice. The palatal lift was covered by insurance, but the amplifier was not; it cost $350. That same week, my car engine started knocking. I took the car in and was told in no uncertain terms that I needed either a new car or a new engine. Dennis and I debated—we would get nothing for the car if we sold it without a new engine, but there was no reason to keep both cars at that point. At the end of that week, Paul took Dennis’s car to a friend’s lot and sold it for $3,500, and we used the money to buy a new engine for my car. Then, the following week, Paul and Marse stopped by for dinner, and during dessert, Paul said to Dennis, “I hate to be the one to tell you, buddy, but I think you have termites.”
Dennis brought his voice box to his mouth. “Where?”
“I saw some loose wood on your garage door, then more in the baseboards in the living room. I did some digging—you’re infested.”
I could see Dennis tensing up. “No problem,” I said. “We’ll tent the house. We’ll vacation at the Biltmore for a few days. You and Lola can exercise in that gorgeous pool.” I tried to keep my voice light, but I was thinking: How much does a termite treatment cost? Was it hundreds or thousands? Was it ten thousand? There was the possibility of getting a line of credit against the house, but that presented a new problem, one to which I’d scarcely given any thought: When Dennis died, would I sell the house? The house that had been given to us? Would I ever feel right profiting from Dennis’s parents’ investment? But if I didn’t sell, what then? No home loan could ever be repaid, so no loan could ever be taken. By accepting the house, we’d put ourselves in this position: no real equity, no real assets. If our positions were reversed, Dennis could certainly sell the house—it was his birthright. But it wasn’t mine.
“You’ll stay at my condo,” said Marse. “I’ll stay at Paul’s.”
“There’s a guy at my church who can cut you a deal,” said Paul.
That week, I volunteered for more weekend shifts at work, and from then on Stuart and Margo came almost every weekend day, and when I arrived home in mid-afternoon, I found them—and usually Gloria and Grady or Marse and Paul—either on the back deck, or in the pool, or in the living room playing a board game. Or I’d find the house empty and a note stuck to the refrigerator: OUT FOR A RIDE (BOAT), or OUT FOR A RIDE (CAR). I had taken up the habit of posting a calendar of my schedule on the refrigerator. Dennis had rolled into the kitchen after I’d posted it the first time. I’d seen him take it in, then turn away.
One Sunday, Grady approached me in the kitchen while I made a pitcher of iced tea. “I come as an emissary,” he said, “for Gloria and myself.” He covered my hand with his. “We want to give you some money.”
I sat down at the kitchen table and sipped from my water glass. “I can’t, I’m sorry.”
“This is not something one prepares for,” he said. He sat down across from me. “Marse told us about the termites—we should have had the place tented years ago. I knew it when we left. We did it once—let’s see, it was ’seventy-five—but honestly, you have to do it every decade with these old houses. It’s my responsibility.”
“You’re very kind.”
“I mean to be convincing.” He pulled a checkbook from his back pocket. “Do you have a pen?” he said. And this was the most humiliating part—not the weakness of my protest, not the relief that must have been obvious on my face, but the act of getting up and crossing the room to fish a pen out of the junk drawer, and walking back to him and handing it over. He gave me the check and I folded it without looking.
“I don’t think I know how to thank you. I wish we’d—” I stopped. “I wish we didn’t have to accept this.”
“This is what you do for your children. You’ll do it for Margo.”
We left unsaid the fact that, given the present situation, I would probably not be able to do it for Margo. I hugged him before we left the kitchen. “Thank you very much,” I said.
“Dennis is my son,” he said, as if this were all the explanation required. He added, “And you are my daughter. If you need more, you tell me.”
That evening, Marse and Dennis sat in the living room with magazines, and I told them I had forgotten to fill one of Dennis’s prescriptions, and needed to run out. I went to the bank and used the drive-through machine to deposit Grady’s check. I didn’t look at it until I filled out the deposit envelope: it was for $20,000. I cried out when I saw it. I covered my mouth with my hand as relief pulsed through me. Even after we paid for the tenting—the estimate we’d gotten from Paul’s friend was $1,500—this would last for months. If we were frugal, it might last a year. From time to time, even now, I think about Grady’s words—This is not something one prepares for—and about how we might have better anticipated this wrinkle in our lives. We had not saved enough, I suppose. We’d planned for retirement, of course, but not for emergencies. We’d figured we had the house for collateral if we needed it—but this eventuality, Dennis’s early demise, made our retirement funds seem insignificant. Selling the house or even taking a loan seemed suddenly impossible. Looking back, I think that I should have started drawing against our retirement accounts. There would have been penalties, of course, and the money would have needed to last much longer than we’d planned; but after all, it would have had to be only enough for one.
Looking back, too, I realized that this money from Grady and Gloria was probably not difficult for them to give—not only because, unlike my mother, they had it to give, but also because they were advancing in age and thinking about what they would leave behind, and realizing there would be one less person to whom to leave it. This had not been in their plans, either. Dennis’s illness was sabotage, for all of us.
It was not until September that I saw again what I’d seen at the start of the summer, between Lola and Stuart. I was in the backyard watering the gardenias, and Lola and Dennis and Stuart were in the pool, not really exercising but just goofing around. Then Dennis pulled himself out and I helped him inside to take a bath, and when I came out again to roll up the hose, I saw Stuart dive under to pull Lola down by her legs. When they came up again, she had her arm around his shoulders and they were laughing, and though they pulled apart immediately, without even having seen me, I knew something more than harmless flirtation was under way. Whether the relationship had advanced behind closed doors, I didn’t know, but I had the feeling it had not yet. If it had, I thought, wouldn’t they avoid being together at the house? Wouldn’t they look even more guilty?
“Stuart,” I called. “Lola’s going home.” Stuart didn’t look surprised. I dare you, I thought, to ask me why. He shrugged and swam to the steps. Lola followed, but didn’t meet my eye.
That evening, Gloria and Grady came for dinner, and afterward, Gloria and I cleaned up while Dennis and Grady went into the living room to set up a game of poker. Gloria washed and dried the dishes while I clear
ed the table. “The boy rushed out of here earlier,” she said.
“Hmm,” I said.
“He was red as a beet. Problems?”
“No problems.”
She turned off the water and faced me. “Is it the girl?”
“What girl?”
“You know what girl.”
I hesitated. “How did you know?”
“Just a hunch,” she said.
“Have you seen anything? I mean, anything—substantial?”
“Of course not. I would have told you.”
“What do I do? Do I fire her? Do I confront him?”
She dried the last dish and wiped her hands on a dish towel. “You do nothing. I doubt anything has even happened yet, knowing that boy. These things work themselves out.”
I nodded. “We could be wrong.”
“We’re not,” she said. “We are lucky, you and me,” she said, and though I hadn’t been feeling particularly lucky, I knew she was right.
The following Saturday, at water aerobics, I struggled through the cycles until we reached the ending ritual, in which I’d learned to close my eyes and lose myself in the shorthand meditation. I always wished that this part lasted longer, but this time, instead of letting Cynthia’s calming voice lull me into that feeling of peace I’d come to cherish, I opened my eyes partway through and looked over at my daughter. She did not look peaceful. Her eyes were closed, but they were closed as if she were shutting them against something she didn’t want to see, and her face was tight. I nudged her, and she looked over at me. “What?” she whispered, and I said, “Are you OK?” I felt Cynthia giving us a look. Margo started to cry. I held her in the water while the ladies dispersed, and before she left, Cynthia patted Margo on the back and said, “It’s cathartic, exercise. It will heal what ails you.”
Not this, I thought.
It was around this time that we had a lift installed on the downstairs toilet, along with grab bars on the wall and in the shower. I asked Dennis if we might want to ask Paul to build a railing on the pier—I lived in fear that Dennis might lost control of his wheelchair and plummet into the water—but he just smiled and said, sloppily, “Silly goose.”
The summer had ended, but I hadn’t really noticed. In November, Dr. Auerbach told us that Dennis’s progression was faster than he’d hoped it would be. This came as a surprise—I’d had nothing to compare it with. Then one afternoon in December I came home from work to find Stuart sitting on the raised toilet in the guest room bath. Dennis was in the tub. The water had drained.
“We’re waiting,” said Stuart when he saw me in the doorway.
“For what? Are you OK?” I said to Dennis.
“We tried to get out, but it didn’t quite work,” said Stuart. “We’re resting.”
“I’m fine,” said Dennis. The word fine was one elongated vowel, with hardly a hint of a consonant.
“I brought this,” said Stuart, holding up a dry-erase board the size of a placemat. There was a blue marker affixed to its side with Velcro. This was something I’d asked him to pick up after Lola and Dr. Auerbach had recommended it. Dennis’s speech had been getting worse. Within a month, he would be writing more often than speaking.
“Hate . . . writing,” said Dennis. Long hard a, long hard i, short soft i.
“I know, baby. But I like reading.” To Stuart, I said, “You can go. I’ll help him out.”
“No,” said Dennis.
“It’s difficult,” said Stuart. “I think I should stay.”
“I have to be able to do it,” I said, looking back and forth between them. I’d been helping Dennis into and out of the tub when Lola and Stuart were not around; the last time I’d done it, however, had been weeks before, and I admit it had hurt my back. I figured there was a trick I was missing, a stronger posture. Lola was such a little thing—surely she wasn’t more capable of lifting my husband than I was?
“Trust me,” said Stuart. To Dennis, he said, “Try again?”
Dennis nodded and Stuart braced himself against the tub, then reached down and put both arms under Dennis’s armpits and stepped into the tub between Dennis’s legs. He was confident and sturdy, and I knew that even if this attempt failed, he would be able to put Dennis down gracefully. I trusted him. This was, I suppose, as good a reason as any for not somehow forcing his flirtation with the therapist to end: what would I do without him? It was shameful.
When Dennis was standing, he could help a bit by getting his legs under himself, and Stuart reached down to bend Dennis’s leg from behind and help him step over the side of the tub. He wrapped a towel around Dennis’s shoulders and supported his weight while they walked to the guest bedroom. Dennis’s spine had never looked more prominent, his knees never so knobby. But once he was dressed—Stuart helped, but as long as he was sitting down in a chair with arms, Dennis was still able to pull on his own clothes—that malnourished figure disappeared, and he was himself again. Skinny and weakened, yes, but himself.
I took Dennis and Margo—Stuart had a meeting—out on the boat that night, and we anchored in the spot where the stilt house had stood and ate stone crabs at the stern. I’d cracked all the claws into bite-size pieces before we’d left, and Dennis was able to dip each morsel in the mayonnaise sauce and eat it without too much trouble. Margo and I ate the same way. When we finished, I cut a piece of key lime pie into little squares and put the plate on Dennis’s lap. We all ate from it. The downtown skyline, which had doubled in height in the thirty years since I’d come to Miami, resembled a foggy lineup of many-sized blue bottles. The buildings gave off faint stars of light. “From here,” Dennis said very slowly into his voice box, taking a deep breath, “it looks like nothing changes.”
The first time I’d been on Biscayne Bay, the only tall downtown building was Freedom Tower, where immigrants were processed when they first reached the country. It had changed slowly, yes, but it had changed.
“I miss Stiltsville,” said Margo.
“Me too,” I said, though I had the thought that with Dennis so sick, we wouldn’t have used the stilt house much even if it still existed. It had collapsed before becoming a sad, abandoned treasure.
“Me too,” Dennis said. The antidepressants were working: he didn’t cry, and neither did I.
That second year after the diagnosis went by in a bright, blinding flash, blanketing us in doctor’s appointments, symptoms, and steady decline. Dennis woke almost every night coughing violently to rid his throat of phlegm, which he was no longer able to do naturally. We finally got around to having the house tented in January, during which time Dennis and I stayed at Marse’s condo, as she’d offered. We spent evenings drinking wine in the chaise lounges on her balcony, watching the lights of the cruise ships making their way up Government Cut. “We could go on a cruise,” I said one night to Dennis, thinking that surely cruise ships had handicap access.
“Why?” he said softly.
“Because it would be relaxing and fun. People would cook for us.”
“People—already—cook—for us,” he said.
It was a cool night and I’d spread a blanket over our legs and moved our lounges next to each other so I could hold his hand. Being at Marse’s was a little like a vacation in itself. She had good crystal wineglasses and a big-screen television with more cable channels than I knew existed, and her bed was as high and wide as a boat, with a view of the bay. We used an ottoman to help Dennis climb into it. Lola had the week off, and every morning Dennis and I used the pool at Marse’s condo for his exercises, but more often than not we ended up floating around with foam noodles laced under our arms, talking idly. “That’s true,” I said. “I guess we don’t really need to get away.”
“I—don’t,” he said. “My life is—vacation.”
I looked over at him. His hair was disheveled from the breeze. I’d taken to cutting it myself, on the back deck with a sheet tied around his neck like an apron. In the moonlight, I could see the lines around his eyes and his sweet,
soft half smile. He was happy. He was deteriorating and wheelchair-bound, and with anyone besides me he was more comfortable writing than speaking, and we were short on cash (a cruise was out of the question financially, anyway)—but still, in these and other moments, I saw his happiness. The illness takes the body, not the mind or the spirit.
In February, Dr. Auerbach offered us a twig of hope: a clinical trial. He mentioned it offhandedly, as an afterthought at the end of a checkup, saying that it was unlikely to work but he didn’t think it would hurt. Dennis shrugged and wrote on his board, LET’S GO FOR IT. Later that week, we went to a clinic at the University of Miami and picked up a box full of needles and vials, a chart to mark each time the shots were given, and a list of dates when we had to check in at the clinic for tests. A nurse at the clinic showed me how to administer the shots on a grapefruit, then drew a bull’s-eye on Dennis’s hip with a permanent marker. The drug was called brain-derived neurotrophic factor, or BDNF, though in the weeks of the trial, after mixing up the letters a dozen times, Dennis and I would come to refer to it as BFD—Big Fucking Deal. There were almost two thousand patients enrolled at forty sites. We started the injections the night we received the drugs, and for a month the scheduling and checkups were like another job in our lives, but then the study was halted. No patients had reported progress. It was a bust.
In March, at his appointment with Dr. Auerbach, we learned that Dennis had lost a total of forty-five pounds. He hadn’t been eating very much—this I had noticed. At first I’d thought he just wasn’t hungry, but then I’d watched as he fought to swallow a piece of lasagna, and I realized that the struggle simply wasn’t worth it. The doctor suggested a feeding tube—this was something we’d anticipated distantly, and now the time had rolled up on us in a tidal wave—and at the end of that week Dennis spent the night in the hospital to have the tube inserted into his stomach. I was taught how to attach the feeding bag to the tube, how to add a can of Ensure to the bag, how to clean it before and after each use. Dennis could still eat—thank God, he could still taste food—but he could not get enough to sustain him, and from then on I, or Margo or Lola or Stuart, gave him a bag of Ensure three times a day.
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