by Heather Rose
He wasn’t sure Jane would be good in bed. She had very plain hands. He wondered what Jane would have said if he had told her his wife was Lydia Fiorentino, the architect. Perhaps Jane had stood in one of Lydia’s buildings. Perhaps she had read about Lydia in a magazine.
My wife is in a nursing home, he imagined saying. She’s been in a coma but now she’s not. She’ll never walk again. Or talk again. She was the most energetic person when she was well. We knew it was coming. It’s genetic. No, I don’t see her regularly. I don’t see her at all. She wants it that way. She took out a court order. We were happily married. I think so. Our daughter, Alice, is twenty-two. I never got to know her when it was the right time. When was the right time? When she was little? When she was a teenager? It always seemed difficult to know what to talk about with her. She talked to Lydia and then Lydia talked to me. That’s how it worked. I didn’t like the music she liked. She went through a whole heavy metal phase I didn’t understand. I was busy. I worked. Wasn’t that the right thing to do? Didn’t that count for something as a father? No, I don’t think about challenging the court order. Do I want to see Lydia? Yes and no. Do I miss Alice? I think of her.
He knew if he was a potential client calling Lydia’s practice, the receptionist would tell him Ms Fiorentino was on extended leave. She would not tell him that Ms Fiorentino was currently residing at an address in the Hamptons. She would tell him that Lydia’s business partner, Selma Hernandez, was taking care of everything. Was he able to make an appointment for when Ms Fiorentino returned? No, the receptionist would reply, not at this time. Because—although she would not say this—Ms Fiorentino’s absence would be permanent.
ALICE HAD CALLED TWO DAYS before Christmas. ‘Dad, I think you’d better come to the hospital. Mom’s not so good.’
He’d been watching snow falling over Washington Square and feeling as if life was suddenly new and full of possibility with the new year almost upon them, a new album taking shape in his head, a new apartment. He needed Lydia to reassure him this was really theirs, all three thousand square feet of it. The removalists had finally left. He’d been trying to get the television sorted so he could watch the game at 8.30. It was a critical match if the Giants were to get into the playoffs.
Lydia had called from the airport when her London flight arrived. She had told him she was going to the hospital. These sudden plunges into ill health were becoming more frequent.
He checked his watch. He weighed up how long it would take him to finish programming the channels and whether he could steal another fifteen minutes to get the game to record. The Christmas traffic would be worse with the snow. He gave it up and went to wash his hands, and find his scarf and hat. He’d just have to be back by 8.10 to finish the set-up. It wasn’t enough time.
At the hospital Lydia was wired to monitors and drips. Alice pulled back the sheet to show him a bruise on Lydia’s hip that went all the way to her ankle. Levin hated the bruises.
‘When did that happen?’
Lydia shrugged wanly. ‘Yesterday, I think.’
He tried to remember the last time they had made love. Perhaps the morning before her trip. He wanted to remember. He wanted to make love to her in their new home. To have her back with him, not here where she didn’t belong.
‘So you’re in overnight?’
‘Yes,’ Lydia said. ‘For a few days probably. They think the creatinine percentage is too low. Elisabetta will be back soon with the results.’
She had always had a medical power of attorney in place. For years, he’d been the one she named in case anything happened. But when Alice turned twenty-one, Lydia had changed the paperwork. He’d been hurt by that. They’d had a fight. In the end he’d let it go. It was what Lydia wanted.
‘The apartment looks great,’ he said. ‘You’ll be home for Christmas, won’t you?’
‘I’m planning on it. Did the unpackers get it all done today?’
He nodded. ‘I’m wrecked. You were lucky to miss it.’
‘I’m sorry. I know it was bad timing. But it went well in London.’ She took his hand and squeezed it. ‘I hate not being there for our first night together.’
He traced the veins that ran across the top of her hand with his thumb. ‘I bought a bottle of Veuve. But we can have it another night.’
‘Don’t you have a big game?’ she asked.
‘Eight-thirty,’ he said.
‘You go. It’s going to be awful getting back downtown in this. And I know it’s depressing being in here with me.’
‘Mom . . .’ said Alice.
‘Are you sure?’ Levin said.
‘Of course.’
‘Did you bring Mom pyjamas or anything?’ Alice asked.
‘Do you need them?’ Levin said, irked by Alice’s tone. ‘Don’t you have your suitcase?’
‘Yes, yes, I have it.’
‘Fresh pyjamas would have been nice,’ Alice said, pulling a face and not meeting his gaze.
‘Give me a break, Alice,’ he said. ‘I spent the day moving house. I’m not perfect.’ Looking at the hospital clock he saw the numbers click over to 7.31.
‘Well,’ said Lydia.
He had bent to kiss her, then kissed Alice on the top of the head. ‘Goodbye, my girls. I love you both.’ And to Lydia, from the doorway, he said, ‘Get well.’
She’d needed plasma exchange and then dialysis. Christmas Day came and he spent lunchtime at the hospital. She was still in the critical care unit so the dozen red roses were put in a vase on the reception desk. She looked grey and feverish beneath the covers and wasn’t up to the movie he’d downloaded for them to watch.
She said, ‘There’s so much I love about you.’
‘Meaning there’s a lot you don’t?’
‘Please, that wasn’t –’
‘No, really. What did I do wrong this time?’
‘It’s Christmas Day and I’m eating hospital food. I’m imagining those turkey pies from the deli.’
‘I didn’t think you’d be hungry.’
‘It’s more the idea of it. I know bringing me food means another thing for you to do. Stop at the deli. Make decisions. But it’s Christmas Day.’
‘I bought you roses.’
‘I know. Thank you. But I’m not allowed flowers in here. You know that. I know you can’t understand how sad it makes me feel when you’re so . . . I keep thinking that if this is the last time, it doesn’t matter that you don’t understand. We’ve been happy. We’ve done our best. Both of us. But if I get well again . . . there’s so much I still want to do. . .’
He held her hand and she looked sadder than he’d ever seen her look.
‘With me? Do you still want to do them with me?’
She said, ‘Arky, sweetheart, it isn’t going well. I can feel it. I’ve come back from this thing so many times. I’m not sure I’m going to pull it off this time.’
‘You’re tired. It’s depressing when it’s Christmas and you’re in here. You’ll be fine.’ He kissed her forehead and smelled the flat odour of drugs leaching from her skin.
‘You need to listen to me, Arky. Please. There’s a centre, a facility.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I need to get well. I need some time out to do that. Somewhere that means absolute rest.’
‘Why can’t we just get nurses again? I thought this was what you wanted, the apartment . . .’
‘I do.’
‘What am I meant to do there without you?’
‘I want to be there. I do. I know this is terrible timing. I know it’s been a huge move and you’ve done it all without me and I’m sorry.’
‘Where is this . . . place you want to go?’
‘East Hampton.’
‘East Hampton? But it’s going to take me hours to come and see you . . .’
‘I don’t want you to visit. Not at first.’
He was stung. ‘Why not?’
‘If I’m lucky I’ll be home in a few weeks. If things get
worse they have everything I’ll need.’
‘But why can’t I visit? And what if you do get worse?’
‘Alice knows what to do. You won’t need to do anything.’
‘But I want to.’
‘No you don’t. You hate every minute of me being sick.’
‘Darling, that’s not true.’
‘Isn’t it?’
‘You could give me a chance. I mean, East Hampton?’
‘Arky, sweetheart . . . I love you. But I can’t look after you while I’m trying to look after me. Not any more. It’s taken me a while to understand that. This way will be easier for both of us.’
‘Wow. Do you ever get how tough you are?’
‘I don’t feel very tough.’
‘So I’m meant to wait around in an apartment that you wanted to buy, that you’ve never even spent a night in, and one day I’ll get a call to come pick you up in East Hampton?’
‘Arky, I’m frightened. Please don’t make me fight with you over this. Please understand. This is what will work for me. And I know it will work for you. Can you trust me?’
He had loved to watch her walk. It was as if there were extra muscles in her feet and legs that lifted her. When he heard her voice, he felt it was an instrument he would never tire of. When she smiled it was as if he had finally found the one safe place in the world.
If he had been a scientist, the things on his Petri dish would have been Lydia and Alice. On the periphery were Hal, his agent. Healayas. The traitor Tom Washington. When he looked at it like that, all the acquaintances, the film producers, the musicians and editors, ultimately none of them meant anything. Not when it all came down to it.
When he visited her on New Year’s Eve, Lydia said to him, ‘Sometimes I just want to die so I don’t have to go through getting better again and again. I’m always trying to pick up where I left off. But every episode it’s harder. I can’t get back to where I was, Arky. I’m being washed downstream . . .’
‘Why have you loved me all this time?’ he asked.
‘You’re funny. You’re very sweet. You’re a musical genius. You love me. No one will ever love me the way you do.’
‘But not the right way.’
‘Is there a right way? You might have been better without me. Without your noisy, busy, bossy, crazy wife.’
‘I never want to live without you.’
‘You can.’
‘I don’t want to.’
‘But you must. For a little while.’
‘But why are you doing this? Why do you have to go away?’
‘I never want to be in a wheelchair . . . we need to talk about that.’
He’d offered her his handkerchief and she blew her nose.
‘It’s okay,’ he said. ‘We don’t have to talk about anything now. Nothing like that’s going to happen.’
‘On your birthday,’ Lydia said, as the hospital staff were preparing her for the trip to East Hampton, ‘you want to open the door when they ring at eight o’clock. I know it’s early, but it will be worth it. Short of a blizzard, they’ll be there.’
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘But I’ll see you before that, won’t I? I’ll catch the train. Let me know when I can come and see you.’
‘We’ll talk about it. Just let me get well. Write. Make music. Please be happy. I love you.’
He had stood on the pavement and stared after her as the ambulance drove her away. He’d been so busy trying to succeed that he hadn’t noticed that he’d failed, probably long ago. He just hadn’t noticed.
Three days after she arrived at the Oaks, Lydia had a stroke and slipped into a coma. When she came out of it, nothing was the same.
As soon as he heard about the stroke, Levin made plans to take Alice and drive to East Hampton, but then he’d had a call from Paul asking him to bring Alice and come in for a meeting. Paul Wharton had been Lydia’s father’s lawyer. The firm had a division for medical law and another for divorce. Paul introduced a younger lawyer who, with thirty-something clarity, talked Levin and Alice through the legal landscape that ensured Lydia’s wishes were met.
‘I’m so sorry, Levin,’ Paul said as they left the room. ‘If there’s anything I can do . . .’
Levin had been too numb to reply.
Out on the street, he said to Alice, ‘I have to see her.’
‘Dad, you can’t. She doesn’t want that. Weren’t you listening?’
‘How can you be sure?’
‘I’m not going to get in the middle of you two. I told you that in there. But you have to listen to what she wants.’
‘What about what I want? You all seem to have decided everything without any concern for me or how I might feel. She’s my wife. We’ve been married almost twenty-four years.’
‘Dad, what’s her condition called?’
‘TTP.’
‘What does it stand for?’
‘Thrombo-something. It’s unpronounceable.’
‘Thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura, Dad. It’s not so hard.’ She said it kindly.
‘I guess that’s why you’re going to be the doctor in the family.’
Levin didn’t want to think about how Lydia looked. Was her head lolling? Did she make those terrible sounds he’d seen stroke victims make as they tried to talk? Did she dribble?
If Lydia came home, Kawa might be his last score. New York was no place for walking sticks or wheelchairs. They’d have to go somewhere suburban. To some place called Sunshine Gardens or The Evergreens. They’d never travel. They’d need to live somewhere with tepid summers and flaccid winters. To live that way would be like being dead, Levin thought. She had saved him from nursing staff coming and going. From a house with railings in the hallways, handholds by the toilet and rubber mats in the bath. She had saved him from a plastic chair in the shower. She had saved him ramps and mushy food and the smell that sickness and decay brought with it.
He had found it difficult enough when she got ill to catch the smell of her. He didn’t like what their bedroom became or how the malaise of her illness seemed to sap him of creative energy. Suddenly he was meant to tiptoe in his own house. Had to share the kitchen with medical staff he didn’t know and would never remember. He couldn’t stay up late playing the piano because she needed to sleep. He had to work on his keyboard under headphones.
There was no Lydia to go out with. Meals became some arrangement on trays like old people. And he would order exactly what she’d wanted, only to have her eat barely a mouthful. Or be too tired to eat at all by the time he got back from buying takeout. And if he went out with friends while Lydia was sick, it put a pall on the whole evening. He quite liked it when she went to hospital for transfusions because at least that way he could imagine she was travelling. He could watch the season reruns and stay up as late as he liked, turn the music up, sleep in their bed instead of in the guest room, which was always depressing to wake up in.
He hated how the whole world seemed to be set up for two things: illness and death. Lydia’s mother had died of the same condition when Lydia was a child. Her father had ensured Lydia had the best of everything—schools, specialists. New York was good for that. And then Lydia became an architect and her work was extraordinary, despite everything. She might have had her mother’s physiology, but in other ways she was her father’s daughter.
Once Alice was in her teens, she did the runs to hospital with things Lydia needed. But Lydia’s absences, knowing she was in hospital, watching the increasing frequency of attacks, the complication of medications, had always been terrible for Levin. It wasn’t how he’d imagined life would go. He had thought of them as they got older taking walks, seeing movies. Spending summers in Europe. He wanted to go back to Vienna with her, to London, to Spain. He wanted to have her beside him when they heard the Berlin Philharmonic again.
Was he really meant to give up his own life to care for her every hour of the day? Had he really signed up for that? She didn’t want him to. That was why she’d done what she’d
done. She’d given him his freedom. Something better for both of them. Wasn’t he doing just what she had prescribed? That’s what she’d said. Go and write. Make wonderful music. Know that I love you. Have no regrets.
She might live another five years in her current state. Or another two. He had no idea. But she wanted to do it without him. She hadn’t asked for a divorce; she’d simply ensured he could not come and visit. Alice could visit. But Levin was freed from the obligation to spoon wet goo into her mouth or help her to the toilet. Maybe now she wore diapers. This was a hideous thought and he put it away again immediately. For better or worse? It was old-fashioned, he decided. Worse could be dealt with in a modern way. Care could be bought. Services could be acquired. Science, technology, it had all created options. If there was money, then why should anyone lose dignity? He did not have to see Lydia when nothing about her now was the woman he loved. And he could continue his life. It was tragic to lose her, but it would have been more tragic for them both to be prisoners to the one fate. Surely.
Unbridled selfishness. The words came back again to haunt him. Was living his life selfish? Was his one quiet life really doing harm to anyone else? Lydia was looked after. She had the best care money could buy. Science might yet save her. Alice visited. Alice was her medical power of attorney. Alice would know if there was anything that wasn’t being done properly.
‘She’ll really never walk again?’ he had asked Alice, during one of the rare meals they’d shared after Lydia’s stroke.
‘They say not. I mean, they have to help her sit up. They strap her into her wheelchair because she likes to . . . Are you okay? You must have imagined that one day it would come to this.’
‘You know, I never did. I really never did. But I’m fine. Really, I’m fine.’
‘Really? I’m not.’