Ending

by Hilma Wolitzer

  “He didn’t suffer,” I said, as if I were commenting on fresh news.

  “No, but I did. My innocence did.”

  His innocence. Pulling into the parking lot at the hospital, I thought about that and about what I had to do now, without a doctorate or a flag or any other symbol of strength or authority.

  It was old home week in the hospital room. Martin and his parents were there, a man from the television studio was visiting Jay, and in the corner of the room two strangers in coveralls wrestled with the vent of the heating unit. “Be out of here in a minute, folks,” one of them said, and he knocked on metal with a hammer, as if for emphasis.

  Into that chaos I smiled at Jay, who winked back. Does a dying man who knows wink at his wife, smile at his friends, endure hammering and visitors, the whole selfish business of the surviving world? It didn’t seem possible. Jay wasn’t such a good actor. It was hard for us to hide anything from each other. Without thinking about it, we always sent out signals and clues of what we were feeling. Yet there we were. The man from the studio relinquished his seat to me, still laughing about something Jay had said to him. Potted plants languished on the windowsills, Martin’s father filed away at my brain with his voice.

  “How do you feel?” I said idiotically to Jay, and then I kissed him, forestalling an answer.

  “Not so hot,” he admitted, as we separated.

  The man from the studio found his coat on a low shelf and said that he was leaving. I envied him his freedom to go and at the same time I wished that he would stay. I couldn’t speak to Jay in front of anyone else and now that it had to be done, now that I had decided to just do it, I wanted more time, delays, distractions. But I couldn’t remember the man’s name, even as I thought of seductive words to keep him in the room. I noticed with sharp attention a shiny place on the lapel of his suit jacket and I said, “Please don’t go yet. It’s early.” But it sounded only courteous, the perfunctory remark of a hostess who really wants to do the dishes and go to bed.

  “We’ll walk you to the elevator,” I said, and Jay lifted himself from the bed and put his robe and slippers on. Doing those simple things seemed to require a real and deliberate effort on his part that made me want to hurry him along, to push his arms through the sleeves, the way you do to a small child with whom you’ve lost patience. The other man watched too, with a certain fascination, but none of us said anything.

  We walked down the hall at Jay’s new slow pace and when we came to the elevator I had changed my mind again. I wanted the man to go quickly, to make his escape taking with him his small, inconsequential talk, his shiny lapels that made me feel so sad.

  When he was gone and Jay turned again in the direction of his room, I put my hand on his arm. “Wait,” I said. “Let’s not go back there yet.”

  His look was questioning and I tried to explain. “I want to be alone with you.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Jay said, out of the corner of his mouth, but it was a small weak joke that didn’t seem to help either of us.

  “Let’s try the other end of the hall, the solarium,” I said. All the way there I was terribly aware of the people everywhere: patients, visitors, aides, nurses. It was a goddam circus. Maybe I should put it off, I thought, and try to get permission to come up during the day when no one else was around. How could I say something like that without privacy? How could I say it anyway?

  There was a cramp in my chest as if I had been running instead of trying to walk very slowly and not get there ahead of Jay. “Well, here we are,” I said, when we were indeed there, in the large room at the end of the hall. It wasn’t very busy that night, and there were two empty couches at the farthest corner of the room. Here? I thought. Now? Us? What if he screamed, or made a terrible scene? What if he cried, fainted, bellowed? What if I did? Oh God, what if?

  We sat down, sharing one cushion of the smaller couch. The other people seemed far away and out of focus, like people in the background of a photograph. He knows, I told myself, with one last desperate surge of hope, and then I looked up and saw his eyes. They seemed strange, like the eyes of someone I had never met. There was no meaning, no message in their expression. He looked merely quizzical, expectant.

  Maybe it’s the drugs, I thought. Personality changes happen. Everybody knows that. Maybe the drugs had dulled his senses a little, and it wouldn’t have the same horrendous meaning. Maybe I was crazy.

  “Jay,” I said. Our hands joined, automatically finding one another in my lap. I took a deep difficult breath, sending out signals wildly like a sailor on a doomed ship.

  But Jay just sat there, not willing to cooperate at all.

  “Jay,” I said again. “I saw Doctor Block.”

  Still he waited, silent.

  “He asked me to come in. Jay?”

  His hand was passive in mine, but his eyes were beginning to change, the pupils contracting to black points. It was a retreat. Run for it, sweetheart. You still have a chance.

  His head tilted slightly now as if he found it difficult to hear me.

  “We talked about the tests,” I said. Oh help me.

  But he seemed to draw slightly away from me, from this unsolicited news.

  “It’s not so good, darling.” Please.

  He started, like someone jolted from a dream. “What in hell are you saying, Sandy?”

  “It’s not good,” I said again.

  He looked quickly around the room, his eyes darting like those of a schoolboy ready to cheat on an exam.

  I followed his glance. No one was looking at us. People were leaving the solarium. We were going to be alone.

  Jay looked back at me again, his face full of terrible belief. “He told you that? Block told you that?”

  I nodded, gripping his hand against the trembling that had begun. “Jay, listen, darling. He said there’s research going on this very minute. There are remissions, you know …”

  “Oh God. Oh shit,” he said. “Where is it? Is it everywhere?” He was terrified, terrifying.

  I put my other hand against the pain in my chest “Marrow,” I whispered.

  His eyes widened, shut for a moment and then fastened me down again. “So this is the whole thing,” he said, and he dropped my hand, as if that was what had betrayed him.

  “Please darling. Don’t,” I said, not even knowing what I meant. Don’t what? Don’t mourn for yourself? Don’t rage or grieve? How did I dare tell him what to do? Give yourself up, sweetheart. They’ll get you in the end.

  I thought that the other questions would come then: how long do I have? Have you told anyone? What about pain? Will it be very bad? I braced myself, but he didn’t say anything at all. And he didn’t touch me again then, not even absently.

  I felt even worse than I had before. It was as if I had killed him myself, or tried to, only inflicting a terrible wound. Bang bang, you’re almost dead. My love, my dearest.

  I didn’t know what to do now in this reversal of roles. It was always Jay who had wrung whatever goodness there was out of me at the same time that he protected me from the worst of myself with the fierce concentration of his love. Now I had to protect him, save him at least from the monster of his fear, if I couldn’t save him from death itself.

  “Jay,” I said. “I love you, darling.” As if that mattered. As if anything mattered.

  But it did. We turned at the same moment, colliding painfully in the desperate need to hold and to be held. We made sounds against one another, small anguished sounds that I would always remember.

  When it was possible to be quiet again we stood together, and now it seemed natural for me to move slowly, as if I had become a part of Jay, of his cancer, his knowledge, his very being.

  “Don’t come back now,” he whispered, at the elevator. “Go home.”

  “All right,” I said, feeling all the unsaid words crowding around us. I had to do it. Forgive me. Love me. Don’t give up the ship. Remember faith and fucking hope and charity. Remember.

  The elevator came.
Someone in a wheelchair waited inside it, looked up at us with saintly patience. So we kissed briefly, a peck really, and I took the last of his innocence and went home.

  27

  THAT NIGHT I HAD an erotic dream. I should have known that something disturbing was in store because I fell asleep so easily. It was as if I had been taken by force, without effort or will on my part. When I woke again it was almost five o’clock in the morning. I was still dazed with sleep, and the process of remembering began slowly. I felt strangely happy and expectant. The dream. I remembered it first with my body, an urgent memory between my legs and across my breasts. Then I remembered everything else all at once. Jay. My God, it was true. But the erotic feeling was still there, a restless demanding heat that transcended grief and love.

  There had been a man in the dream, nameless and faceless. No, not really faceless, just no one I consciously knew or could identify. But people wear clever disguises in dreams and can be anybody. I had provoked him, urged him on, feeling terribly excited, but then I woke before I was satisfied, even before he entered me. Maybe it was Jay, I thought, wanting to be loyal, but I knew that it wasn’t. There had been an illicit quality, a stealthiness to my urging. Now. Oh, do it. Dreams. If I were going to somebody for help, for therapy, I would bring the dream with me and try to understand it. But what was there to understand? Everyone needs sex. The feeling of deprivation is instinctual, isn’t it?

  Why didn’t I see it through, damn it. It was only a dream. God, I felt so lonely then. Love. Did Jay still have erections now? What did he do with them? I had a picture in my head of all those little cubicles, the high metal beds ringed off by white curtains, and the patients inside working themselves off in tenuous privacy. Did they pull out tubes and needles in their frenzy? Did the nurses and aides leave them in peace? Or did they bring them aid? First aid. Help.

  I lay on my belly and I wedged Jay’s pillow there between my thighs. Love. I let the stranger into the room and he was clever, light-footed and graceful. Come, I urged him again, trying to remember the language of the dream. Why didn’t I imagine Jay now instead? Never mind, I thought, it’s only a game, an escape. It doesn’t matter. I let Mr. X. keep his face in shadow, and I commanded him to kiss me everywhere. It was all right, this work of fantasy. No one gets hurt, right? Between one consenting adult, ha ha. It’s done all the time, in prisons, even with the night-lights blazing, or in hospitals, making bed charts tremble, done to the rhythm of rubbersoled shoes prowling the floors.

  Mr. X. was interested, but lazily reluctant. It was up to me and I was full of invention and direction. Here, do this, that. I guided his hands, his mouth, whispered encouragement. He had no imagination, wasn’t like Jay, wasn’t Jay, wasn’t. He did my bidding, though, until I breathed a great final gasp of relief and wished him away.

  28

  “JOSEPH,” I SAID. “JUST tell me one thing. What do you hear on that radio that’s so much better than the real world?”

  Joseph looked surprised. “This?” he asked, holding up the small black rectangle, from which anguished cries of sound emerged.

  I nodded. “What do you hear?”

  He smiled engagingly. “Oh—music, the games, talk shows.” He held the radio out to me. “Here. Do you want to listen?”

  I held up my arm as if he had threatened to strike me. “No. No thanks. I was just curious. You seem so involved.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Well, just like this one station, people call up all day and give their opinions. Then other people call up and disagree with them. It’s educational.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  “Like today,” he continued. “They’re all talking about clothing, whether it’s natural for women and men to dress the same. Other times they talk about bigger stuff: integration and unions and war. You really learn a lot. Sometimes real crackpots call up and start yelling and screaming.” Joseph laughed. “Yesterday this woman called up that wanted animals to wear, you know, underwear. A real old lady. She said it would set a good example for young people and keep the streets clean at the same time.”

  “That’s an idea,” I said, and Joseph looked at me quizzically, not sure how to take it.

  “I’m only fooling,” I said. “I love naked dogs.”

  “Oh,” he said, relieved. “Then I hear the top tunes and people call up and give their opinions about records they hear.” He put the radio against the side of his head again, closing the conversation.

  On the way to the hospital, I listened to the station that Joseph had told me about.

  “Hello, this is Jeff Lewis. Good afternoon.” Brisk, intimidating.

  A pause. Sound of breathing. Then, “Jeff, is that you, Jeff?”

  “Good afternoon, this is Jeff Lewis speaking. Go ahead, please.”

  “Jeff?” the voice said. “You sound different on the telephone. You sound, I don’t know, younger.”

  “Will you please shut your radio off while you are speaking to me, Madam.”

  “Oh, Jeff, I’m sorry. I forgot. Just a minute.” Pause. “Okay, Jeff. I’m back.”

  “Go ahead please, Madam. There are other calls waiting.”

  “Oh. Well. I almost forgot what I wanted to say. You were talking before to that man from Staten Island? He said that pretty soon nobody will be able to tell men from women and then the human race will die out?”

  “Yes?” said Jeff Lewis.

  “Well, I’m a person of years. I won’t say how many. What that man from Staten Island doesn’t understand is that the young people own the world.”

  “Madam, I don’t get your point.”

  “I mean if young people want to dress funny, men with pocketbooks and girls with suits, we have to go along with the tide. A hundred years from now a man with a pocketbook will be old-fashioned.”

  “Yes, well, thank you for calling. The lines are open, folks. That number is 222-1144. One more time. 222-1144. Hello, Jeff Lewis speaking.”

  “Hi Jeff, I’d like to talk to you about shock treatment for patients in state hospitals.”

  “That was a show we did last week, sir. Today we’re talking about unisex, the practice of men and women dressing alike.”

  “But what’s more important? It seems to me that we should concentrate on the more important issues in life.”

  “Thank you for your opinion, sir. But we follow a certain structure here and today we are talking about unisex.”

  “Talk, talk yourself sick, you idiot,” the man said. “Drop dead! I—”

  “I have another call here. Hello, this is Jeff Lewis. Go ahead please.”

  “Jeff, that woman that called up before that man from Staten Island has the wrong idea. The young own the world only and I stress that word only if we give it to them. What’s wrong with the old ways, what’s wrong with the kind of life our parents and our grandparents gave us? I remember a decent world, Jeff, with decent hardworking people in it. Black, white, pink, green. We didn’t always have it so easy, Jeff. But there was a sense of decency. That’s the key word, here. Decency. I remember a family sitting down to dinner with respect and love for each other. My father held the door open for my mother, we never took one bite until she sat down at that table. Look at the Chinese race, Jeff, if you want to see respect for old people, if you want …”

  “Thank you very much for your opinion, Madam. This is the place to sound off, folks. This is your host, Jeff Lewis, and the number to call is …”

  Then I was driving into the parking lot, past the places reserved for doctors only, past the massive air-conditioning unit, past the kitchen, where I could see women in white caps lifting huge pots. I parked and went upstairs to Jay’s room. Martin’s mother and father were just taking Martin, in a wheelchair, for a ride down the corridor.

  It was the first time that Jay and I had been alone since I’d told him. “Sandy,” he said. “We have to talk. Come on, sweetie, we have to talk sometime.”

  I sat on his bed, my legs dangling. He took my hands between hi
s and pressed them lightly. “I’m tired. Don’t make me do all the work.”

  “Jay,” I said.

  “But we have to make plans for the kids, for your future.”

  “You sound like an insurance salesman,” I said.

  But Jay didn’t smile. “You know where the policies are. There’ll be something extra from the union and whatever is in the pension now. God, we were never savers, Sandy.”

  I thought of the things we spent money on, of clothes hanging round-shouldered on hangers at home, of meals, eaten, digested, eliminated. Toys, magazines, cameras, radios, electric blankets. What would I do with Jay’s clothing?

  “Speak to Murray. He’ll want you to invest carefully in some things. Blue chips, mutual funds. The market’s so crazy.” He drew a terribly deep breath and put a hand to his chest.

  “Shhh,” I said.

  “Sandy, I’m sorry.”

  “Oh, shhh. Don’t.” I leaned over and put my head against his chest, lightly, holding back my weight. I could hear the hollow thrumming of his heartbeat and an echo of my own crazy pulse.

  “I don’t believe it. Not really. I say it but I don’t believe it, as if I’m talking about somebody else.” His voice reverberated painfully against my ear.

  “Me too,” I whispered.

  “The thing is I always thought that I would get old. I worried about it. How we would look, how hard it would be.”

  “Oh Jay,” I said. “I only want to be with you.”

  “And the kids …” His voice broke.

  I sat up and looked into his eyes. “Jay, what about Mona?”

  “You never said anything to her? You never wrote?”

  I shook my head.

  He breathed another long shuddering sigh. “Don’t tell her,” he said.

  I thought he meant never, to never tell her. “I can’t …” I began.

  “No, listen. Call her when it’s too late.”

  “Jay, she has a right …”