by Amy Bloom
“That is good. Did you eat something spicy? You know, heartburn?”
“Chinese food.” Max was embarrassed to talk about eating with his belly resting on his thighs, in front of this well-built boy.
“Golden Chopsticks?” It was the place nearest Max’s apartment, the place Huddie would go for Empress Chicken, given his choice.
“Yeah. Ahh. It’s not better.”
“Let me call your doctor.”
“If it’s an infarction, he’ll want me to go to the ER.”
“I’ll take you.”
“You?”
“Horace Lester. Let’s go.”
Huddie left Elizabeth a note and put an overcoat on Max, who insisted on slowly buttoning his shirt and zipping his pants to hide his nearly tearful longing for his blue sweatpants and his soft, mothering sweatshirt.
Everything in the emergency room happened quickly and efficiently. Huddie decided to say he was Stone’s son-in-law, which could be, and that way they’d let him take care of him, or sit with him, until they did whatever they did. He apologized mentally to June and her father.
There wasn’t five minutes of sitting, and the triage nurse didn’t give a fuck who Huddie was. Max slapped down an insurance card, put his fist to his chest again, and in ten minutes Huddie was cooling his heels in the waiting room, Max had an IV dripping into his veins, and they’d hooked two monitors to his chest. Two white doctors bumped into each other behind a pale green curtain, and after the EKG one of them stuck his head out and nodded to Huddie.
Finally, the fat doctor said, “Let’s play it safe. It’s not an emergency, you’re okay.” He raised his voice to reach the nurse back at the desk. “Let’s just say a soft romey and follow up tomorrow.”
The nurse nodded, typing slowly onto pink paper.
A tear ran from Max’s eye into his ear.
“What’s a soft romey?” Huddie asked, as any good son-in-law would.
“Sorry. It’s just ‘Rule out myocardial infarction.’ I notified his doctor. We’ll get him to his room in a little bit, as soon as we get things calmed down again.”
A white, limp girl was carried in, blood streaming down her forearms, and Max and Huddie watched, slightly ashamed of their relieved curiosity, like people with a flat observing the eighteen-wheeler flipping over in front of them.
They leafed through magazines until the nurse, whose white uniform was now lightly red-speckled, came over with a pair of orderlies.
Huddie rose as they put Max on the stretcher.
“Subacute c.c.u. Room 146,” the nurse said.
In the elevator, the black orderly and the white orderly checked out Huddie and Max. Their relationship is not obvious. They might be old white employer, young black employee. Possibly, the black man’s the boss and the old white guy’s been working for him for years, but the old man doesn’t look like he’s been able to work for years. They don’t look like friends, like poker buddies. It does not occur to the orderlies that the men might be lovers, or family. Neither of them would like those possibilities.
Max saw the grey elevator walls, the distorted reflections in the dented steel ceiling, the green sheet, Horace’s hand, his fingernails smooth honey-colored ovals, longer than Max’s, and Max wondered if all black men wore their nails long; he’d never looked at any man’s nails before. He put his hand on Huddie’s wrist and squeezed it. The orderlies took this in too, looking at each other sideways and then straight ahead.
The nurse hung a long grey rectangle around Max’s neck on a cheap cloth band and stuck two new wires into the tabs on his chest. She smiled at the doctor walking in, and he gave back a small smile beneath his big moustache, showing that it was a serious business—don’t even hope otherwise—but they were in good, even excellent, hands. He was visibly intelligent, arrogant, not unkind, taller than average. Max and Huddie thought only one thing: black. Max thought, Good. It will make Horace Lester feel good, and furthermore, he’s not a young man, he probably had to be smarter than everyone else to go to medical school and become a cardiologist back then.
Huddie knew it was stupid to be pleased, but he was, and inside he’s six and the Alabama kitchenware Aunt Les brought with her flies past him as she calls out, after each pot, lid, and saucepan hits the back door, “Lift up the race, child! Lift up the race.” She lived with them for only three years, his Great-aunt Lessie, and moved back home, saying Gus was doing fine, Huddie was doing fine, and the cold was killing her. She prayed conversationally and constantly: instructing, cajoling, informing, and flirting with the Lord. She prayed for Huddie to learn to wipe his feet, she prayed for justice for her people, she prayed for Gus’s loan to come through, she prayed for Gus to find a wife to mother the boy, she prayed that God would see fit to change Gus’s ways so that the woman’s life would not be Hell on earth. She smoked a corncob pipe at night and made Huddie hold up her big silver-backed mirror on Sundays so she could pluck two grey hairs from her chin, dress her long hair, and take him to church. On the occasional Sunday, he’s found himself sitting behind an old woman smelling of woodsmoke and Dixie Peach and felt time collapse like a paper tunnel.
The doctor finished examining Max and making notes. He nodded to Huddie, patted Max on the shoulder. He walked out with a small, stiff-wristed wave, like the Queen of England.
The nurse stayed behind for cleanup. “Any pain, any complaints, call. Otherwise, sweet dreams, Mr. Stone. And—”
“Jack Robinson. Son-in-law.”
Max smiled. “We’re just waiting for my daughter to get here. Are two visitors okay?”
“Until eight o’clock, two is fine. Take it easy.”
* * *
“The lights on the mirror,” Max said, “it’s like one of Liberace’s capes.”
“I never saw him.”
“He’s on TV all the time. Campy crap. You never saw him? The rhinestones? The candelabra?” Why was he talking about this? “Like Little Richard without the falsetto. And Polish.”
“What’s the goddamned point of that?”
“All right. You don’t have to stay. Is Elizabeth here?”
“Max, if she were here, you’d be seeing her. She’ll be here soon.”
“All right.”
Huddie took Max’s hand and Max let him, then pushed his hand further into Huddie’s. If he’s dying, he will die holding a hand that loves.
When Elizabeth came, Max was asleep, still holding Huddie’s hand.
“My Christ, Huddie. I’m so sorry. You had to bring him here? Oh my fucking Christ, that must have been something. Go back to the store, go home.” She was practically pushing him out the door, knowing what this could cost him. If he’s late at the store, his assistant, a well-meaning girl who thinks Huddie walks on water, will begin calling around. Eventually, someone will call June and Huddie will have to say something credible that in no way contradicts anything that anyone might have already said. He kissed her. “Take care of him, baby.”
“Don’t worry. Get out of here.”
Huddie waved to her and was gone. Elizabeth didn’t want Huddie showing concern and affection for Max. They weren’t even supposed to exist in the same universe. She looked at Max, drawing slow, bubbling breaths through his various tubes. He didn’t look that much worse than usual. All right, God, whatever you want. I don’t give a shit if Max lives, actually. You want him, take him. I am not trying to keep him here. It’s enough. He’s not getting better, he’s a self-absorbed pain in the ass. That smell, old socks, and lesions. He takes his meds whenever, he lies to me about it. Whatever this is, it’s enough. He was a good father, God, he taught me to drive a stick-shift, he taught me whole chunks of Auden, he made me listen to every kind of music. If you could give us a little more time, we could get all this straightened out. What’s it to you? You didn’t take him then, when it might have seemed like a good idea, for my sake, you certainly don’t need to take him now. Ignore us.
Max coughed in his sleep and Elizabeth leaned over him, h
olding the plastic cup and the bending straw.
“You’re here,” Max said.
“Don’t worry, I’m here.”
“I met the guy you’re fucking. Very nice guy.”
“Yeah.”
“Too bad he’s married.”
“Yeah.”
“Well, you could break up his marriage, too.”
“Get some rest, Max.” She smoothed the sheet around his shoulders.
“Okay, Elizabeth.” It is funny, the way he says it. They rarely call each other by name. Sweetheart, honey, darling, baby girl, milacku is what he calls her. She calls him Pops or Grumpy or Buster.
She sat by his bed, flipping through a magazine left behind by the previous occupant.
“Baby girl. Go home.”
“I’ll stay, it’s okay.”
“Go home. I’d rather be alone. Go, go.”
“If I go now, I’ll come back in the morning. We can have breakfast together.”
“Fine.”
“I’ll bring you the Times. Love you, Mr. Stone.”
“I know you do. Love you, Miss Taube.”
It was terrible to be sent home by Max, although Elizabeth had no wish to spend more time in the hospital. Max looked sick but not frighteningly so. But he’d rather be alone than be with her, and although she didn’t like to think about it, she’d rather be with Max than be alone, and that was why she was back in Great Neck in the first place.
The charge nurse called at four a.m., and Elizabeth went back to the hospital. A young nurse stopped her in the hall before she got to Max. They wanted her to sign a dozen forms, including permission to perform an autopsy and to make use of his organs. She began to sign, and another nurse, the one who called the apartment—her Queens accent identified her—said, “You’re the daughter, right?”
“Not legally, no.”
“Awright. Is there a legal daughter? A legal anybody?”
“He has a wife, I mean, I don’t know if they’re divorced. And he has three—two sons. They’re grown. One of them lives here. One of them’s in France.”
“So then, really, Miss Taube”—the nurse had been skimming the notes while Elizabeth stumbled over who she was not—“really, we need to call the wife. If they’re divorced, we can call the son, or whoever. It’s nothing against you, it’s a next-of-kin thing.”
And so it was. Greta came down with Danny, and in the early morning, in the tiny green waiting room, where they’d been sent like squabbling children to sort out their differences, Greta hugged her silently. Danny, for whose weekly father-son dinner Elizabeth vacated the apartment every Wednesday night, said, “Call me Dan,” and stared at the floor. Elizabeth assumed he was thinking, He ruined his life for you? She smoothed down her bangs.
“I’m glad he didn’t die alone. Oh, dearie, we both thank you,” Greta said. Dan grunted.
“What do you want me to do?” Elizabeth asked. She preferred not to have to move her stuff to a motel at five a.m., but the request would not surprise her, would not even strike her as unfair.
“Perhaps you can put his things in order, in the apartment. Marc is flying in tomorrow. He’s doing very well in Lyons now. Max must have told you. Well, Danny or I will call you about the, about the …” Greta waved her hands.
“All right. I’m so sorry. If I had realized you were still married, I would have told them to call you first.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, dearie.”
The nurse came for Greta, who made the smallest wave, a tilt of one open hand, as if they had never embraced, as if they’d barely traded names and hospital facts in front of the coffee machine and had not much cared for each other’s tone or outfit. Elizabeth put her hand over her mouth and walked slowly to the parking lot. The big list in her head was who she cannot call. She cannot call her mother, who will not be sorry anyway, she cannot call Huddie, she can call Rachel in London, but it hardly seems worth it to track her down through the maze of the London Hospital for Children, reaching out for Rachel over the bald heads of little cancer patients to tell her that someone she felt littered the planet was now dead. The easy list was clothing, books, records, kitchen stuff, furniture, plants, stereo system. She was determined to do a spectacular clean-up job.
Elizabeth parked in front of Nassau Produce, waiting for Huddie. He saw her sleeping in the front seat and was glad to see her, because this particular face, this being, with the long boy legs and the mole on her right shoulder blade, is his lifeblood. It’s not a source of pleasure right at this moment, that is just how it is. He’s fed up with her bad judgment, first the meeting in the apartment, causing him six kinds of grief since yesterday afternoon, and now, lying here in front of his store, not giving a damn that June might have dropped him off or that he might have brought Larry in for a croissant or that his early morning people, the walkers who came in for coffee and the widows who began their day buying breakfast fruit and stopped in before closing for a fancy frozen dinner, would see her sprawled across her front seat, obviously not giving a good goddamn that someone from his life, which she didn’t seem even to take into consideration, might see her and wonder.
He banged on the hood of her car, making more noise than he intended.
Elizabeth jumped up, her hair wild, her glasses still on but not quite resting on her nose. Huddie wanted to calm her down and he wanted to slap some sense into her.
“Max died,” she said, holding on to the steering wheel.
“I’m so sorry, sweetheart. Why don’t you get out of the car? Come on in and wash up and I’ll make us coffee.” It was the kind thing to do, it was also the most convenient and the least likely to destroy his life, which seemed highly perishable and sweet and in need of immediate care. Elizabeth wasn’t a weeper; it would probably be okay to set her up at the table near the back, even if other people came in.
Huddie filled two mugs with fresh coffee and put a pile of rugalach on a plate, although his impulse was to hand her a to-go cup and a muffin in a bag. He showed her the bathroom and hugged her before she closed the door. He said he was sorry about Max, and he was sorry about the old man, seemed like a sad end to a sad life, but the real issue was that Elizabeth was now free to leave and might require a reason to stay.
Sunday night, on the way home from the movies, Huddie’s arm began to tremble under Larry’s sleep-heavy head. June had lifted Larry’s head with one hand and folded up her sweater to make a pillow for him. Elizabeth doesn’t know how to do that. He can’t see her lifting Larry’s head so smoothly it seems to grow out of her fingers, can’t see her traveling with a comfortable sweater, extra kleenex, Life Savers, and a Frog and Toad book scrunched into a big vinyl purse.
June has four capacious, indestructible tote bags, in black, brown, navy, and bone. She is embarrassed and proud, too, defiant about her bags, all just like her mamas pocketbooks, and when they window-shop, she looks sideways at tiny evening bags with thin, pointless straps, jewel-studded bouquets, playful minaudières, and she shakes her head. “Not for the mother of Larry.” She doesn’t say anything about what the wife of Horace should wear. He won’t tell her, and she makes herself believe, whistling in the dark of love’s signless neighborhood, that he does like her, must love her, as Larry’s mother, and will then come upon her, and love her, as June.
She fell in love as he spun through Michigan, a hundred times handsomer than the other handsome boys, kinder than the other sports stars. Even girls he slept with only once had nothing bad to say about him. A big hello for everyone, putting his arm around every girl, including the plain and dull, as if it were a privilege and a pleasure, always making it clear that his singleness was not due to any shortcoming on their part, but entirely and only because he hadn’t been ready. And each woman knew that if he’d been ready, it would have happened with her. He attended eighteen weddings in four states the summer after his senior year.
June’s small circle barely overlapped his; her friends were Christian, future nurses and social workers and
mothers, and they held themselves apart from the radical girls with wide Afros and new names and hoop earrings to their shoulders, and apart from the Black Power boys in tight jeans and berets, sexy and scary and wrong, and they held themselves apart from the white girls who were everywhere, Jewish girls with auburn Afros and little blue glasses on their long noses, Protestant girls with Breck-shampoo blonde hair, flat as silk to their skinny behinds, managing to apologize for that hair and still toss it around a room like Stardust. If June had not moved to Boston, by chance and because her mother’s best friend was director of a nursing program, she might have lost Huddie sooner. But she saw him play two games for the Celtics (her mother’s best friend was a fan, had touched the smooth hands of JoJo White and wept during John Havlicek’s last game), jumping to the very rim of the basket, above the heads of bigger men, and she saw him fall to the hardwood floor like wet laundry. She heard the snap before she saw him curl up, grey with pain, and although it broke her heart, she was reasonably sure he wouldn’t play again.
She had a girlfriend hand-deliver a sympathetic and encouraging card to his hospital room. She wrote Huddie about her old boyfriend who broke his knee and went on to play three more seasons (in high school and badly, she did not write) and sent a batch of oatmeal-raisin cookies. After two weeks, she sent another batch of cookies to his apartment with a friendly, dignified note on her own stationery suggesting the name of a good physical therapist. Finally he had to thank her, and as sweetly as she could, she kept him on the phone until a visit seemed in order. She was maid, secretary, cheerleader, and rehab assistant. She did not presume to call herself girlfriend, and when the model types were around she faded, and when they stopped coming, when his contract was not renewed and the Phoenix Suns went back on their offer and the Italians sent only a case of Barbaresco and their condolences, she made spaghetti with Italian sausage and listened while Huddie talked about red wine and the kind of restaurant he’d like to run. She finished nursing school and they were still together. And he had not found his feet in real estate or insurance or franchises and he didn’t sleep well or long. He never blamed anyone. June was happy to be pregnant, happy to be a pediatric nurse, happy to leave the terrible cold and terrible white people of Boston, happy to be handsome, kind Huddie Lester’s wife. She willed him to be happy with her.