And then one night I realized, after Dennis grunted his thanks when I handed him a pair of pajamas from the dresser, that he hadn’t said a word to me in a week. His voice had trickled away like a stream in winter. This is actually what I thought of—the stream behind the home in Decatur where I’d grown up, which flowed modestly but steadily in summer and then in the fall slowed to a trickle, then stopped entirely after the first freeze.
Since inventing her image in the backyard on my birthday almost a year earlier, I’d thought of Bette every day and called her every week. We had long conversations, but they weren’t the same as being together. When the doctor gave us some bit of bad news, as he seemed to do at almost every one of our monthly visits, I thought about what she would have said if she’d been around, what irreverent quip she might have added. When she flew in at Christmas, we spent an evening on the back deck together drinking wine, and in a weak moment I told her that I didn’t think I could keep it together anymore without her. I said, “I feel like you chose her over us.”
She wore turquoise earrings and a large silver ring on one index finger. “I wish you didn’t think of it that way,” she said.
“We could really use you around here.”
She stared out at the waterway. “I used to sleep out here when I was a kid, did you know that?”
“Dennis mentioned it once.”
“My father would try to make me come inside, and my mother would say to him, ‘Dear, it’s Florida—what’s the worst that could happen?’ It was different then.” Her hair in the moonlight looked like the feathers of a white bird. Her sharp face was free of lines, free of worry. She said, “Once I thought I saw a ghost in those bushes over there, but it was just my eyes playing tricks on me. And once Dennis spent the night out here with me, and that night I found that with him there I was more afraid, not less. I lost all my gumption.”
“I don’t understand.”
She shrugged. “What about when it’s my turn? Dennis has you. If I left Suzanne, who would take care of me?”
“We all would.”
She shook her head and changed the subject. Santa Fe, she said, had excellent museums.
Time passed in great swaths, and very little other than Dennis’s condition seemed to change. I still posted a schedule every week, and everyone still signed up for days, using a pen that dangled from the fridge. Margo was promoted in her department to a coordinator position, which meant she taught a little less but worked more, and Stuart lost a big contracting job suddenly, but then found a new one building more or less the same thing, as far as I could tell. Lola went to Ecuador to visit her parents, and while she was gone a curt but capable male therapist named Mitch came to the house. Nothing monumental happened—except the one monumental thing that was happening, slowly and swiftly at the same time, all the time.
And yet I was surprised when, one afternoon when we were alone in the backyard, sitting in lounge chairs I’d dragged from the deck to the edge of the canal, Dennis handed me his writing board. It read: BEEN THINKING ABOUT MY FUNERAL.
It was the afternoon of the yacht club’s annual chowder party, an event we hadn’t skipped in more than fifteen years, since we’d first become members. I imagined that Grady and Gloria were there at this moment, drinking beer from colorful plastic cups, eating Gloria’s deviled eggs with caviar, being served chowder by the senior members of the club. I didn’t miss it. I didn’t ask Dennis if he did—I knew the answer. Dennis had always enjoyed that particular event.
“OK,” I said.
Dennis wrote carefully, with difficulty, I WANT TO BE CREMATED.
I closed my eyes. “I know, baby.”
WE HAVE TO TALK, he wrote.
“OK,” I said again.
SCATTER MY ASHES IN THE BAY, he wrote.
I nodded.
MY FATHER TOLD ME TO TELL YOU—he made sure I’d read, then erased with a cloth he kept in his lap, and started again. THEY DON’T WANT THE HOUSE. SELL IT. I shook my head. He erased again, nodding fervently. GIVE 1/2 TO MARGO. SHE WILL NEED IT.
“Is she having money problems? Do you know something?”
He hesitated, then shook his head and wrote, MONEY ALWAYS A PROBLEM.
I laughed a little, and laughing made me cry a little.
He wrote, THE BOAT—DON’T GIVE TO STUART. GIVE TO PAUL.
I hadn’t given a thought to what would happen to the boat. It was worth eight thousand, maybe ten thousand at the most, but I knew boats didn’t hold their value, and I supposed giving it to someone who would appreciate it was worth more than trying to make a little money. “Why?”
He wrote, FOR FISHING. He erased, then wrote again. HE’S BEEN HUNTING ONE JUST LIKE IT.
“Fine,” I said.
UNLESS YOU WANT IT.
For a moment I thought about this. Maybe I would keep the house, and maybe I would take the boat out on my own and—what? “No,” I said.
GIVE MY FATHER’S WATCH TO STUART.
“Fine,” I said.
AND KEEP MY CUFF LINKS AND ROD— He made sure I’d read, then erased and started again. FOR HER NEXT HUSBAND.
I laughed and he laughed, and out of habit I glanced around to make sure no one had seen, and gestured for him to erase. This was not something we’d allowed ourselves to mention before, but in that moment it seemed as though this possibility—a divorce for Margo, a second husband—was not all that awful, not any kind of tragedy. When we were quiet again, he wrote, WILL YOU— but then he stopped and erased.
“What?”
He shook his head.
“Will I what? Ask me.”
He studied my face in the way he did sometimes. He paused with the marker in his fist, deciding what to write.
“Are you asking if I’ll stay in Miami?” I said.
He put the marker down and nodded, swallowing.
I thought for a moment, and then said, “Of course I’ll stay. This is my home.”
And I justify saying it, because Dennis was alive and sitting beside me, and as long as he existed in this world I would have stayed. How could I answer him except this way? As long as he was flesh and blood and had the ability to ask the question, that was my answer, and in this moment I even partly believed it myself. And I think my answer gave him peace.
We’d graduated from so many gadgets by this time: the cane, the walker, the voice box, one electric wheelchair, and then a better one. By April, when the mangoes started to ripen on the trees and the frangipani trees started to drop their pinwheel blossoms, he wasn’t speaking or walking at all, and could barely make it down the swimming pool steps to exercise with Lola. Instead, they lay on the back deck and she pushed his muscles around for him, bending his knees to his chest or stretching his arms above his head. By May, by the time of my fifty-first birthday, he had no more use for the dry-erase board; it was too difficult for him to write. By June he was eating almost exclusively from the tube, and staying almost exclusively in the living room, because it was too difficult to move him back and forth. Marse bought him some expensive ergonomic footrest pillows, and I bought soft flannel sheets for the living room sofa. People still came by all day, every day, flowing into and out of the house, but instead of congregating on the back deck or in the kitchen, we hung around in the living room, mostly, and once or twice a day someone helped Dennis into his wheelchair, fitted a blanket over his legs, and took him for a walk around the block. We played a lot of board games—Dennis was still good at them, though they tired him out. For Scrabble, I sat next to him and he pushed the tiles he wanted to use toward me, then gestured to the spot on the board where he wanted the word to go. I kept the windows open all the time, and changed the sofa sheets every time Lola or Stuart took Dennis for a bath. I bought him several pairs of pajamas—he was usually chilly, even in the heat of the day.
In July, Paul and Marse picked us up and we went in Paul’s truck to a drive-in movie in Fort Lauderdale. We sat in camp chairs and ate marshmallows—a treat that had become one of De
nnis’s favorites—and drank very cold beers. Paul had become a deacon at his church. He explained what this entailed, but I wasn’t listening. I was watching a foursome about our age at the site next to ours, sitting in camp chairs and eating sandwiches out of plastic baggies. They laughed a lot, loudly, and I felt that I truly hated them. I was relieved when the movie was over and we could get back into the cool car and drive silently back down the crowded expressway. Paul and Dennis continued to go fishing almost every weekend, but they returned early, usually without fish, and Dennis slept for hours afterward.
In August, Paul and Marse sold their condos and bought a house on the Biltmore golf course, a mile north of ours. After they moved in, I dressed Dennis in a sport coat and put on a dress and invited Margo and Stuart to come with us to the new house for dinner. He wore a tie and she wore a black dress and red heels. Stuart helped Dennis into the passenger seat of our car, then folded the wheelchair and lifted it into the trunk—this was something I could not do on my own—then put out his hand. “Do you mind if I drive?” he said.
His blue eyes flashed with something I couldn’t quite define—anger, possibly, or frustration. We hadn’t exchanged two words since they’d arrived at the house, fifteen minutes late, so I surmised that whatever it was, it had nothing to do with me. “I’d rather drive,” I said.
“Suit yourself.” He stepped into the backseat, forcing Margo to shift over.
In the rearview mirror, I tried to catch my daughter’s eye. It had been months since I’d stopped hunting for clues about Stuart and Margo’s relationship—were they happy?—or, for that matter, about Stuart’s relationship to Lola, who was still an almost daily presence in my home. Nothing had been revealed to me since the day when I’d seen them in the pool, and Margo and Stuart were the same as ever: affectionate in bursts, independent of each other. But as I drove, I found myself wishing they would fight. A fight, in my presence, would at least shed some light on what transpired in the private space between them.
Margo kept her hands in her lap as we drove. We came to the bridge where she’d crashed Dennis’s car when she was sixteen, and as we passed, Dennis raised one hand and made a grunting sound. “My bridge,” said Margo in response, and she reached into the front seat and put an arm on her father’s shoulder. “I think I see the Buick’s fender in that bush over there,” she said. “There’s one of the headlights in the gutter.”
Marse and Paul came outside while Stuart was still helping Dennis into his chair. Paul’s aftershave hit me before he reached the driveway. Marse was stunning in a pink halter dress. It was a crisp, warm early summer evening, and the light streaming through the oak trees was the color of watery tea. The house, which I had seen the day they’d moved in, was a hacienda-style ranch with a gated driveway and long, wide carport. We went inside, Paul driving Dennis even though he was still capable of maneuvering the electric steering. There was a board leading from the brick walk up two steps to the front door; Paul had secured it with sandbags at each corner, and though it buckled a bit when Dennis’s chair rolled onto it, it didn’t shift or drop.
We entered a wide, open kitchen with new appliances and marble countertops, then continued through a family room onto a sunporch, then outside onto a back patio that overlooked a swimming pool. Beyond the fence was the Biltmore golf course, where Paul boasted he’d shot two under par in a round that very morning. Dennis touched Paul’s arm and gestured around the yard, then forced his right hand into a thumbs-up. “Nice, eh?” said Paul, putting his hand on Dennis’s shoulder. “OK if we eat outside?”
Dennis nodded.
“Can I get you a beverage?” said Paul.
Dennis nodded again.
Marse and Margo and I went to the kitchen. Marse handed me a bottle of red wine to open while Margo admired the house. “I’d like a big kitchen,” she said. “Next house, I want a really big kitchen. It doesn’t even matter that I don’t cook very much. I just love a big kitchen.”
“I don’t cook much,” said Marse.
“I don’t remember the last time I cooked,” I said.
“The benefit of having a spouse with a feeding tube,” said Marse. She was the only one who could say things like that to me. “Paul expects dinner at the table every night. He’s had my chicken carbonara a dozen times.”
“And the rest of the time?” I said.
“Takeout.”
Marse collected beers from the fridge and poured one into a plastic cup for Dennis—it would fit perfectly in an attachment that swiveled up from the side of his wheelchair—and in the cup she placed a long, aqua-blue straw. It touched me, the efforts they’d gone to. She left the kitchen to deliver Dennis’s beer, then returned and started arranging a plate of cheese with strawberries. Margo said to Marse, “Are you going to marry Paul?” and we both looked at Marse expectantly.
She looked mischievous. “Do you think I should?”
“Oh, my Lord,” I said. I put my hand to my throat. “Are you engaged?”
Marse held out her hand—I was ashamed that I hadn’t noticed—and on it was a beautiful (and elegant, and not at all showy) diamond ring. I grabbed her and shrieked. Margo came around the counter and hugged Marse, saying, “Congratulations!” and for a moment I just stood there, my hand over my mouth, watching my friend. She was as happy as I’d ever seen her.
Paul and Stuart and Dennis came into the kitchen. “I guess you heard,” said Paul.
Margo hugged Paul, and said to her father, “Did you know?”
He nodded.
“You knew?” I swatted his arm.
He nodded again, smiling.
“We’ll toast,” I said, handing everyone a glass. “To our friends. May your life together be long and happy.”
Dennis grunted and we all looked at him. He gestured to me, then to himself, then back to me.
“As happy as yours,” said Paul quietly. Dennis again gave his awkward thumbs-up.
“Hear, hear,” said Marse, and when I looked over at Margo, I saw that she had started to cry. Seeing this, Stuart threw up his hands and left for the backyard. Marse recovered for all of us. “We’ll eat,” she said, pulling a lasagna out of the oven. I put my arm around Margo and, seeing that the lasagna was in a carry-out container, said to Marse, “So sweet—you slaved!”
“Shush,” she said. “I’m going to be a wife.”
We carried water glasses to the back patio, where a table was set. I looked around for Stuart but didn’t see him. Margo said, “He’ll probably walk home.”
“That young man is temperamental,” said Paul “Am I right?” He looked at Dennis and Dennis nodded.
“I remember another temperamental young man,” I said to Paul.
He looked up to see if I was smiling—I was. “Guilty as charged.”
“Don’t defend him, Mother,” said Margo.
“She’s not defending him,” said Marse. “She’s equivocating.”
“Don’t equivocate,” said Margo.
Dennis laughed and a bit of his beer spilled. Paul wiped it up and said, “Better an interesting marriage than a perfect one, I say. Am I right?”
“Absolutely,” said Marse.
“Just you wait,” I said.
Margo was looking at me. “I know you suspect him.”
“Sweetheart, I’m not sure this is the time—”
“Dad and I talked about it,” she said.
I looked at Dennis. I saw something like contrition in his eyes. If times had been normal, if Dennis had been well, I would have told Margo we’d discuss this in private. But these weren’t normal times, and it was rare that Margo wanted to talk, so I put my napkin in my lap and leaned back in my chair. There was a warm breeze off the golf course. It was almost eight o’clock, and still men drove carts this way and that, their deep voices carrying in the breeze. “OK,” I said. “What is it I suspect him of?”
Dennis made a sound to get Margo’s attention, then shook his head.
“You didn’t tell her?�
� she said to him. She sounded touched. To me, she said, “It was months ago. Dad told me that Stuart and the therapist—well, they’re a little too close for comfort.” She put her fork down on her plate. “That pixie bitch.”
“Oh, my,” said Marse.
Paul said, “Sweetie, he’s a flirt. A lot of men are. It doesn’t mean—”
“He thinks he’s in love,” she said.
Paul looked at Dennis and Dennis shrugged, agreeing. I scooted my chair until I was beside Margo. It made scraping noises on the cement patio. I put my arm around her, but she wasn’t crying anymore. She looked relieved. “People make mistakes,” I said. “They get caught up. They go overboard.” I could scarcely believe I had said it.
“They do, people do,” said Marse. She was on Margo’s other side, holding her hand.
“It’s been a year,” said Margo.
“Has anything happened?” said Marse.
“He says no,” said Margo. “He swears. And now he wants to take this contracting job, and move, and he expects me to go with him, even after this.”
“Move where?” I said.
She wouldn’t meet my eye. “Seattle.”
“You can’t possibly move to Seattle,” said Marse. “It rains every day there.”
Paul nodded. “Seattle is out of the question.”
“Well, he’s going,” Margo said. And—it shames me to remember—my first response was panic. I couldn’t have Margo so far away, and—this was possibly even more imperative to me at the time—Stuart could not leave, not yet. We needed him. He was the only one who could lift Dennis out of the bathtub when Lola wasn’t around. He was the only one who liked to do yard work and play poker past midnight when everyone else but Dennis wanted to sleep. He could drive the boat and load the wheelchair into the car, and, most important, he was distracting. If he’d been with us at the table, I might have told him so. As it was, I said to my daughter, “Then you’ll just have to let him go.” I’m glad I said it. It was the right thing to say, I thought, and when Margo looked at me—my daughter, searching my face for guidance—I was sure of it.
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