Scary Old Sex

by Arlene Heyman

  She stands before the famous fish market, a sign overhead reading CAUTION: LOW-FLYING FISH. There are crates of slimy white tubular squid. Packed on ice are banks of fish, shoals of king salmon next to rows of black cod and bluefish and spotted trout, species after species; there are overlapping layers of golden crabs, their eyes open at the viewer, behind them the sign OUR DUNGENESS CRABS ARE SO FRESH YOU NEED A VIDEO CAMERA TO FILM THEM.

  She watches a woman in her early fifties with a camera round her neck cry out, “Three pounds of salmon!” Beside the woman stand her husband and prepubertal son, who has a look of disgust on his face. A fishmonger in a whitish apron selects a salmon; the eyes are black flattened discs bordered by golden rings, which are cracked now, no longer perfectly round. The man waves the salmon at the buyer, who nods and snaps photos, her flash lighting again and again. He flings the chosen fish at the next fellow down the line, who catches and lays the fish down and guts it, then throws the open fish at the next man in a wet, pale-pink-splashed apron (all the men on the line wear spattered chef’s aprons) who hacks off the head—Ann winces—and, dropping the dripping cleaver neatly, weighs the salmon and cries out its price. After the woman has set down the money, he throws the remains of the fish to the last fellow on the line who wraps it in brown paper and ties it with string and hands it to the startled son while his mother is snapping and flashing away.

  The sweat on Ann’s body has cooled off and she is uncomfortably chilly, actually shivering.

  Five

  In the Seattle apartment Ann is on her hands and knees cleaning the kitchen floor with a mixture of bleach and disinfectant when the phone rings. She has already wiped down the sink and counters and cleaned the bathroom. Every other day for the past three weeks, ever since Matt was released from the hospital at the beginning of August, she has washed the floor and the counters. Also she has been scrubbing all fruits and vegetables before cooking them, boiling drinking glasses, fumigating for pests … Beneath the purple rubber gloves, her fingertips are white and wrinkled. Maybe she needs a new pair of gloves. Or maybe the rubber irritates her skin.

  Although it is eleven in the morning and the phone is ringing, Solly is still asleep in the second bedroom. He arrived late last night from New York and they ate grilled-cheese sandwiches and watched some television and went to bed. But Ann thinks she heard him in the living room during the night and she knows he was on the phone at six in the morning because when she began to dial in to check messages, she heard him talking to a girl. Is it a girlfriend, Ann wonders, and hopes.

  The phone continues ringing and she knows she will not be able to get to it before the automated service picks up. She is in the final corner and it takes her only a few minutes before she removes her gloves and punches in the number and password. The new message is from Elaine (Ann thinks of her as “their” nurse), and it is a request that Matt call as soon as he can.

  This is odd. Generally on the days Matt is not at the hospital, Elaine phones in his blood results from the previous day and closes with a cheery “Say Hi to Ann. See you tomorrow.” Occasionally she will add that she needs to talk to him about something in particular—once, his catheter, and another time, his medications—but she always says what it is. Maybe today she is rushed. Ann washes her hands, rubs down the phone with a medicinal wipe, and walks to the balcony and hands the phone to Matt.

  In the bright sunlight he punches in the nurse’s number, which he knows by heart, punches in the special code, which gets him onto her private line, and says, “Hi there, Elaine. It’s Matt here. What’s the good word?” Ann watches as he listens, watches as his forehead scrunches up. “You want to see us both?” he asks. “What’s up?” She watches as he closes his eyes. Then he says quietly, “Okay. Yes. We’ll be there.” He stands for a moment with the phone at his ear. The sunlight is so bright behind him she thinks that is the reason he has closed his eyes. But it is she who is looking into the sunlight and his image is going black.

  Matt walks into the living room, closes the balcony door, pulls the Venetian blind.

  Her eyes have not yet adjusted, so she cannot see his face as he says, “There’s something wrong with the test results. They’re running them again through some special machine at University Hospital. Elaine wants us to meet the whole team at the clinic at four o’clock.”

  In the dark Ann reaches for the phone.

  “No,” he says. “They won’t know for sure until four.”

  He puts his arms around her. They hold each other tight.

  “Keep busy,” he says. “It may be nothing.”

  She nods. Slowly she collects all the different wastebaskets and empties them into the kitchen garbage can and knots the full plastic bag and takes it out to the garbage room. She starts vacuuming. Then she remembers Solly is sleeping. She makes their bed. She gets the stack of bills and sits at the living-room computer entering them. Matt walks in, picks up this article, that manila envelope, touches her neck, goes back out onto the balcony. She nearly cries out. She prints the checks, signs them, places them in envelopes. After she seals the envelopes, she opens them to make sure she has put each check in the right envelope. Matt walks in again, touches her shoulder, kisses the tip of her ear. She worries for a moment but then remembers she showered last night, she washed her hair in the shower this morning. She gets into the shower and washes her hair again. Rubs off some of the dead, wrinkled skin from the tips of her fingers. Stops herself from rubbing off more. After she has dried off and is in the bedroom putting on fresh clothes, she can hear Solly is up. It is two o’clock.

  When she goes into the living room, Matt is on the balcony telling Solly about the meeting. Their son is squinting, not only his eyes but also his nose and mouth. “Of course, I’m coming,” he grunts. He picks up a basketball from somewhere, from thin air, and dribbles it through the living room and out of the apartment.

  At three thirty Solly is back and they set out in the still-bright sunlight, Ann with a yellow pad and pencil. She holds Matt’s cold hand. Solly is dribbling the ball a little in front of them, wearing a sweaty black T-shirt that says on the back in small white letters, IF YOU CAN READ THIS, YOU’RE TOO CLOSE. Even hunched over the ball he is still a little taller than Matt, and he has bulked up. Nowadays when Solly is with them, she often sees him doing push-ups and squats. Maybe that was what he was doing in the living room in the middle of the night.

  At the clinic Matt and Ann usually schmooze with other families in the large waiting area until the technician is ready to take blood or the doctor is ready to examine Matt. Today, the receptionist immediately ushers them out of the waiting area and leaves them in an empty conference room. It is a few minutes before four. The large wooden table is the largest they’ve seen and there are too many chairs. Ann and Matt sit next to each other. The basketball in his lap, Solly sits near the door, leaving two empty chairs between him and them. Ann makes aimless marks on the yellow pad. Matt rises and paces by the window. The chairs are on rollers, and Solly rolls back and forth noisily along the wall adjacent to the door. Matt asks Solly to recite for him, to recite anything at all. After a while, Solly stops moving and begins:

  On the ground

  Sleep sound:

  I’ll apply

  To your eye …

  But his voice is lumpy, and he falters and breaks off. He returns to rolling. Ann knows the rest of the passage—it is a favorite of Matt’s, from A Midsummer Night’s Dream—but no one has the heart to recite it.

  Finally, at four thirty the team enters, walking close together. Dr. Kris Doney, who is wearing a white sweater over her pink summery dress (a few flowers peep out through the loose mesh of the sweater), shakes their hands as do Dr. Alex Reubs and Alice Cort, the social worker. The nurse, Elaine, holds Matt’s thick folder in her large hands. She puts the folder down on the table and shakes both Matt’s hands and then both of Ann’s and nods vigorously at Solly.

  The members of the team seat themselves beside each other at
the head of the table. They are a long distance away. Kris Doney speaks. “You are undoubtedly wondering why we called this meeting. Well, I am sorry to have to tell you that there were quite a few misshapen cells in yesterday’s blood sample, a run of them, really, and we were hoping that they would turn out to be immature cells, that the graft was putting out new cells too soon. We did the usual tests on them and then, to be absolutely sure, we sent the sample out to University Hospital, where they have a very sensitive state-of-the-art spectro—” Kris Doney pauses and Ann almost jumps in to ask what kind of machine she is talking about. Why doesn’t Dr. Doney say the whole word, tell the name of it? Maybe Ann has run across the machine during her medical school training. No, that wouldn’t be likely if it’s state of the art … Ann shakes her head at herself and keeps quiet. Kris Doney shakes her head, too, several times. “I’m sorry to have to tell you,” she says. “but it’s—unfortunately, very unfortunately, the leukemia—well, it’s back.”

  Solly rises from his chair, lifts the basketball up over his head with both hands, and sends it crashing through the wall-size window.

  Everyone recoils and the social worker’s small hands jerk up protectively in front of her face. One big jagged piece of glass lands intact in the middle of the conference table, many slivers shower down on the floor, and three small, lacy-edged bits of glass, all that is left of the window, remain stuck, almost decorously, in one side of the still-shuddering frame. Most of the glass has crashed down outside, although no horns honk, no one cries out for help. The sky is very large and blue.

  Suddenly Matt, who is hugging himself, laughs. He stops for a moment, takes a deep breath, and then really bursts out. He is guffawing. Sitting next to him, watching him at first in astonishment, Ann begins to chuckle haltingly and then gives way to a high-pitched cackle. Elaine smiles at the two of them, then giggles, then laughs heartily from her belly. Soon her big body is bouncing in her seat, her braid has come half loose and is swinging back and forth with her heaving bosom. The others join in, chortling and tinkling, the little social worker is doubled over. It is like the breaking of a summer storm in hideously humid weather and no one much minds getting soaked to the skin just so long as the weather changes.

  Ann says between hoots, “What do we do now?”

  Everyone calms down except for Solly, who has never joined the laughter, and Matt. No one wants to interrupt Matt laughing. Matt is actually roaring. It is difficult to tell if he is beside himself with mirth or rage. After a while, he wipes his face with a handkerchief and grins. “My kid’s got quite an arm there, don’t you think? A real David with a slingshot.”

  Solly, still standing, although his arms are down at his sides, shoots his father a dark look.

  “Of course, we’ll pay for the window.” Matt is still smiling although he has grown quiet.

  “Butt out,” Solly growls. “It’s my fucking window.”

  Alex Reubs says hastily, “The window belongs to the Hutch. Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. Insurance. Sports accident. Act of God.”

  The room is quite warm now despite the overworking air conditioner. Alex Reubs is loosening his tie and there are sweat stains at the armpits of Elaine’s green shirt. The nurse goes out and returns with a pitcher of ice water and paper cups. She fills the cups and passes them around without looking at anyone. Everyone drinks greedily.

  When they have finished—Matt drinks three glasses of water as though what is wrong with him is dehydration—Kris Doney says gently, “You folks can return to New York whenever you want.”

  Six

  In New York, Ann has the feeling the apartment has been rearranged. Maybe it is just that there is a lot of stuff around, the stuff of their lives, there has always been a lot of stuff around, she is not good at throwing things out, the place is heavy, thick, she can’t find things. She can’t breathe. Ann misses the bareness, the newness, of the small Seattle apartment—the hopefulness.

  Twice a week Matt goes to Dr. Mears’s office for a blood transfusion, and a hospice nurse comes round to the apartment every few days. She leaves a big DO NOT RESUSCITATE sign, which they tape up on the wall over their bed.

  Finally Matt is bedridden. Ann does not understand how he will get his blood transfusions if he is too weak to take a cab to Dr. Mears’s office. She calls to find out will they send over a technician. She is put on hold. Dr. Mears gets on the phone. “Ann, are you alone? Take the phone into another room.”

  “Why? I’m in the bedroom with Matt.”

  “Please.”

  She walks down the hall, which is lined with their wedding photographs, to Matt’s small office.

  “Is the door closed?” Dr. Mears asks.

  “I don’t see why there’s anything you can’t tell me in Matt’s presence.” There is a photo of her on Matt’s desk in a white nightgown holding two-day-old naked Solly. He is reddish and pudgy with large testicles. On the wall hangs a sculpture of Chekhov’s delicate bearded face.

  “Ann, sit down. Try to pay attention.”

  “Of course I’m paying attention.”

  “If you bring Matt here to get a transfusion, I’ll have to keep him in the hospital—he’s that sick. He wants to die at home. Ann, he’s going to die. In the next few days.”

  “I’m not talking about bringing Matt over to you. That’s out of the question. Why can’t you send someone here to give him a transfusion, that’s what I’m asking. It’ll buy him more time—”

  “Ann, listen to me. With or without a transfusion he’s going to die in the next few days. His blood is full of leukemic cells. I can’t clear them anymore.”

  “You’re going to just leave him like that?”

  “Ann, you’re in denial.”

  “What? What are you talking about?”

  “He’s going to die, Ann. Any day now.”

  She hangs up on him. She feels stunned and queasy, as if Dr. Mears has stopped being Matt’s doctor, as if he has just whispered some drunken obscene suggestion in her ear. She considers calling another oncologist. She phones the hospice nurse, but leaves no message. In Matt’s office Ann sits at his desk running her fingers over his computer keyboard without hitting any of the keys.

  When she walks into their bedroom, Solly is reciting some Shakespeare for Matt.

  Sitting up in bed, Matt applauds. “More,” he says. And Solly recites more.

  Ann takes off her shoes and sits down on the bed and listens to their son run his Shakespearean marathon. At eleven o’clock Matt applauds for the last time.

  Ann is kicked awake at three in the morning, kicked almost out of bed. But she manages to hold on to the bedpost and so finds herself sitting in the upper corner of the bed, nearly on top of her pillow. She turns the light on and sees that Matt has moved into a diagonal position. His head is at the far upper corner of the bed, but his legs must have swept across and pushed her, his torso is in the middle of the bed, his feet are now on her side of the bed. “What is it, dear?” she asks, from her sitting position. He doesn’t answer. “Are you uncomfortable?” Again he doesn’t answer. She massages her right hip for a moment, for that is where he kicked her—probably he kneed her. When she tries to push him back to his side of the bed, he doesn’t budge. “Matt!”

  He answers something unintelligible about sharks.

  She turns the light toward him.

  His eyes are open but he seems not to recognize her.

  She holds him. He tries to speak, but moans. And keeps moaning.

  “Are you in pain, dear?”

  He can only moan. It is hard for him to catch his breath. She sees the way the spaces between his ribs suck in mightily each time he breathes. She thinks to call Dr. Mears. But she remembers his “you’re in denial” and anyway it is the middle of the night. She could call 911, but what will the police do? If they come, they will take Matt away. Should she wake Solly? She feels for Matt’s pulse and has trouble finding it. It is slight and slow, she counts forty beats one minute, thirty
the next. After listening to Matt moaning and fighting to breathe for five minutes and watching his position in bed—he remains unmoving, rigid—she goes slowly (her hip still smarts) into the kitchen and takes from the refrigerator one of the morphine suppositories the hospice nurse has left her. She dons a rubber glove, applies ointment, and then with her free hand presses against Matt’s shoulder as hard as she can and so manages to tilt him a little onto his side. With difficulty, she inserts the suppository into his rectum.

  She kisses his dry lips. She brings a damp washcloth and soothes his lips. She holds a few ice chips between her fingers to his tongue. He moans less, and so she feels she has done something for him, and every few hours she brings him another suppository. She kisses him from his forehead to his diaper to his bony toes.

  By the next evening he is dead.

  Seven

  Matt is running through the corridors of the hospital in Seattle wielding a white plastic knife, threatening to kill everyone. It is the kind of disposable knife people use at picnics. Three policemen restrain him with great difficulty. So all this time he has been diagnosed incorrectly! They have been treating him for cancer when clearly he is suffering from paranoid schizophrenia, a terrible illness. They must call a psychiatric consult immediately and start prescribing the proper medications. Ann wakes unutterably—oh so briefly—happy.

  At the packed funeral, many people speak, some at length: his publisher, his agent, the chair of his department, his brother … It is hard for her to pay attention—she keeps waiting for Matt to get up and speak for himself. He will be brief and humorous. She does hear the rabbi say that while Matt was not a believer, he, the rabbi, is a believer, and he calls upon God to account for the crime of Matt’s early death.