We took the bus. We no longer take the subway because of the stairs, and its general rottenness. I’m stingy on taxis, except in emergencies. The bus is an old favorite. Even at eleven in the morning, the widows’ hour, it’s not as full of the old as the crosstowns are, and it gets us out, along a route we know so well. Rupert always enumerates as we pass. ‘The flower market,’ he says. ‘Those buildings quiver with humidity. People don’t realize. Whole caverns of green storage, in the rear.’ At Thirty-fourth Street he said: ‘Macy’s is like a large, square fact. Of course it would be. Herald Square.’
Then, when we are stuck in traffic for a while: ‘That British voice that called. I suppose it was the nurse?’
A matter-of-fact woman, the day after the one with Sherm and Kit. Mrs Acker would be going into hospital for a three-day treatment, then wished to see both of us, the third day after that.
‘Please hold on until I get my husband,’ I said.
When Rupert came on the line the voice repeated its message. I was to be sure to come as well.
When Rupert hung up he said: ‘Mrs Acker. That’s new. She never took a man’s name before, married to him or not. Wonder could that be the theater man? Owned a lot of them. Not in London. Palladiums. Brighton, Blackpool, places like that. Must be. Sounds like her. To have floated along there.’
I’d waited a couple of hours. Then I’d said: ‘You didn’t say for sure you would go. Or we would?’
‘No.’
May one ignore the shrewd narcissism of the dying? Or must one skip to it?
In the bus, when we reached Forty-seventh Street, the jewelers’ center, Rupert said: ‘Whatever she was, she’s on Mount Neboh now.’
We both know our Bible. That’s the one where Moses went up to get the commandments from God. I was glad Rupert hadn’t said Gethsemane.
‘I’ll do whatever you do,’ I said.
Then we were a block from the Plaza. Then we were there.
On those opulent steps I said: ‘A peculiar place to choose to die. When you can choose. As apparently she can.’
He took my arm. ‘Always could.’
After we got the number of Mrs Acker’s suite from the desk clerk I said: ‘What disease has she—that she can specify what day she’ll see us? After so-and-so many days’ treatment.’
‘Maybe they can’t really. But she can. She always specified.’
This was more than he had said of her in all the week just past. I know my role. I have to get it out of him, help him to answer her. Help us to.
At the line of phones where you ring up on your own, all are busy. As we wait I say: ‘That day Sherm told us. And Quinn came knocking. I thought it was her knock. I thought she would be asking for us to take her in.’
Just then a phone became free. After Rupert had sent up our name and hung up he stayed there for a minute gazing at the receiver, then bowed to the next applicant and led me away.
‘If that were all she’ll ask,’ he said.
In the elevator we were alone by the time we reached her floor.
‘Who the hell does she think she’s commanding?’ he said.
I know the answer to that one. So does he. If he can ask me that, nothing else much matters. I am his real wife. He wants me to say it for us.
I say—as lightly as I can—‘Death.’
THERE ARE TWO SISTERS in charge. Sister McClellan, the one who called us, speaks in that balanced voice we first heard. The voice of reality, constantly presenting the facts of the case—to the patient above all—and meanwhile making the most tender gestures in her direction, but a laying-on of hands that stop just short of touch. Sister Bond as steadily enunciates their theory and practice in a voice like a dove’s—all the while extending the patient the most intimate physical care.
There was no hush-hush anteroom stuff. Gemma and I were led straight in. To the wheelchair. The patient is the thing, at all times. And it is the patient whose task it is to orient us. Our task—the ‘family’s’—is to assist and attend—and learn—in preparation for our turn. Even though the Sisters bloom with a health pink with optimism, there’s a distinct sense of ‘you next, we next’ in all they do. The ‘family’ need not be blood-related. Some patients specify not.
‘It boosts them,’ Sister McClellan said later, while the patient smiled. Sister Bond: ‘All available medical treatment is explained to them. They, they decree.’ Often sending away the crew dispatched from Intensive Care.
The woman in the wheelchair might have had a blanket over those wasted legs but must have preferred not. That’s the way I see her as we approach. A woman in a wheelchair. The theory is—they told us later—not to conceal.
‘Is it you?’ she said, and then I knew her. There’s not much else left to guide.
Then she got up and walked. She’s dying of half a dozen things, we learn, among these too many white cells, a lack of red. This is why they can more or less predict where she will be when. The chair is for her bones, which break. But for the heart she must walk some each day. She has saved that for us.
She told us what she wanted of us over tea, ordered up. ‘In the hospice there would be other pretties about—like me.’
Acker had been willing to sponsor a few other patients over here, but it hadn’t worked out, with the immigration authorities for one. And yes, he was the man I’d thought he was. ‘He’s backing a play about our group, in London. In the West End.’ Though she was no longer married to him. ‘He was quite willing to send over a few—companions—to see me through.’ But the management here had also balked.
She’s asked me to come ‘because you were the most honest. And knew me best.’
She hasn’t yet greeted Gemma, only glancing at her without other acknowledgment, as if the state of dying—or dying in such state as she was doing—was introduction enough.
As often these days when I tense, I feel the wordplay coming over me in adrenaline profusion. What dreadful bit will I emit?
‘And I asked Gemma because from what I heard of her she would come.’
Gemma ignores her. She’s seen my trouble. She puts her hand on my shaky wrist, saying one word to me. ‘Triolet.’
To my surprise, Gertrude laughs, ‘never heard that one. But I get what you’re saying, sweetie. He’s yours.’
The Sisters were openmouthed. Their voices blend in a whisper: She laughed.
Nudging together, they inch a step nearer Gemma and me. We might be statues being scrutinized.
Just then a waiter brings in the tea.
I feel for the first time that I am in a room with four women. And that Gemma will handle it. The waiter has brought two tables which he sets up at a distance from one another, one in the center of the room, at which Gertrude immediately sits. The Sisters watch her get to it and into her chair, drawn up by the waiter, who clearly knows this routine. I recall that Gertrude could always impose one. The Sisters watch her until she is safe in the chair, their eyes discreetly averted. They are very good at this covert surveillance. But still I recognize the stance—the way we all look at the sick when we think we are well. I resolve to stare at Gertrude straight on.
Her table has three other chairs. She motions me to sit on her right, Gemma on her left, but I ignore this. I remember that empress motion—and how when Gertrude and I were breaking up I used to wait for that command and then do the opposite. Having learned that Gertrude led you by many insignificant steps to the fait accompli—the path you didn’t see until it was behind you.
‘What a fine spread,’ I say. ‘Though we don’t eat many sweets.’ I reach for a cup, though. I so need that hot liquid repair. The waiter quickly pours me one. He’s ruddy-cheeked, observant. I don’t wish to clock my bodily processes but these days I can almost identify each—chest, bowel, veins—each an old pensioner holding out its cup. Only the brain will not speak to me direct.
The two Sisters have seated themselves at the second table.
Gemma says, ‘Why don’t they sit with us?’ Though
she too has not yet sat down.
The two sit silent, like domestic help discussed.
‘They like to sit at the window,’ Gertrude says. ‘They need to see the world.’
‘Don’t you?’
‘I am seeing it, Gemma, aren’t I?’
Yes—she has got us to come.
Again Gemma ignores her. ‘Sister—’
They look up, in tandem.
‘You teach—dying as a vocation?’
Sister McClellan says: ‘Theirs, yes. Not ours. Or not yet.’
Sister Bond says more softly: ‘We sponsor them. Toward it.’
Their charge says: ‘They say dying is a state of being. Just as living is, they say.’
I see how they would need to sit to one side, and repair. I want to sit with them. I take an armchair nearby. Gemma takes another, nearest me.
Gertrude says: ‘Kit and Sherm are late.’
Not a quiver from the Sisters, though they may know why.
‘I spoke to Kit yesterday morning,’ Gemma says. ‘They planned on leaving. For New Hampshire.’
I don’t like seeing those two faces that near—Gertrude’s and Gemma’s. One lifting her sharpened chin as if to say, ‘I’m dying. I can take it,’ the other rounding her shoulders, ‘I’m living. So can I.’
‘The rats—’ Gertrude says. ‘But their ship is sinking too.’ When I knew her she didn’t used to shrug. She didn’t have to. ‘So they’ve left, have they, those two mercenaries. With not even a good-bye.’
The Sisters rise, to sit in her table’s two empty chairs.
‘No other takers,’ she says, looking up at them. ‘So shall we get this show on the road? Go back home, I mean.’
‘We would have to ask—’
‘—Mr Acker.’
In posture too they are in perfect balance, a Yes and a—Perhaps. Gertrude peers at the table in front of her; she must not see too well. ‘I don’t relish sweets anymore either, even if allowed.’ She glances up at us. ‘The stuff they do allow me—you wouldn’t believe. Last night—caviar. Malossol. Acker can afford it. All right, girls—cable him.’
‘To come over?’ Gemma says.
‘Him? Rupert—you tell her.’
‘I have.’ But a woman like my wife doesn’t quite hear that kind of thing. ‘Gertrude probably hasn’t seen Acker in years.’
‘Three. The house at Wandsworth’s been going for just over two … Well, Rupert? Go on.’
‘Gertrude’s always lived by projects, for which people pay.’
The father started that, the brothers kept on with it. Maybe they’re dead now but I wouldn’t bank on it. More likely—they’ve left too. I was only one of her long train of nonfamily. Acker would be the last.
‘Rupert. You’re not as honest as you once were. Men paid, Gemma.’
To give Gertrude her rightful due, she always thought up projects that interested them. Often quite charitable ones, as now. Or, as in my case, the project was the man himself.
‘Generally, they paid to leave,’ she said. ‘But Rupert wouldn’t—pay. He tell you that, Gemma?’
No, I never had. How I did what I had to do, on my own.
I can scarcely see him, that young man whom the animal farm so helped. Wrestling of a night with a calf getting born, one of my own stock, and with the page I was trying to make my own too. Which I could do only if I paid no one for my getaway.
Sister McClellan cleared her throat. Sister Bond coughed.
‘Okay, ladies.’ Gertrude’s voice was fainter. I had to admire it for still staying so American. ‘They want me to remember I’m dying. In the hospice they like us to say that, at least once a day. Even though—they can tell.’ Her skin did seem grayer than when we entered. Her hair, surely coiffed that morning, hung like rope. Sister Bond leaned forward to wipe her mouth for her.
‘I was a baby philanthropist without money,’ Gertrude said then. ‘Or just a smart baby—at least in New York. Where they call you “on the make”—if you make them pay for it. The British welfare state and I took to each other right away. Hobbies can be indulged without guilt. If they’re for the common good. And I got quite bright at thinking those up. You only have to look around you.’ She put out a hand, blindly.
Nurse Bond gave her a kind of inhaler on which she breathed twice.
Nurse McClellan said, ‘There.’
When Gertrude was again able she said to my wife, ‘How honest are you two? With each other.’
‘About—living—do you mean?’ Gemma said.
‘Pretty damn good, I’d say,’ I said.
‘Hush, Rupert,’ Gertrude said faintly. She used to say ‘Shut up.’ Then she reached out again—‘Bond’—and Nurse Bond gave her the apparatus again, while Nurse McClellan breathed: ‘I’m here.’ In unison they chanted to four, then took the inhaler away.
‘Mar-vel-lous—’ Gertrude whispered to them. ‘Marvelous. Stand by.’ She sat up straighter, taking it slow. I saw the beat in her breast. To see that in a breast one remembers—is a payment. ‘No, friends,’ she said. ‘Honest about dying.’
Gemma waited for me to answer, maybe too long. Was she also—hesitant? ‘It’s not as easy for two—as it is for one.’
When she raised her head our eyes met. Gemma, I wanted to whisper, I didn’t know it was the same for you.
That we should have had to come here to admit this, I thought. Even if neither of us said it aloud. Turning, I saw that the Sisters were nodding to Gertrude. Who nodded back.
‘My first hospice death—’ she said. She stopped and took breath. ‘My friend Ivan. I visited him there. An older man. Quite alone … actually. Gay. Kept the ward in a giggle. “Get drunk on death,” he’d tell them, “in the company of friends.” I asked what I could bring them all … It was he who advised the caviar.’
‘Some prefer black pudding,’ said one of the two at the window.
‘Takes all kinds,’ the other said.
I could no longer distinguish which Sister spoke.
Gertrude’s voice was clear. ‘“The classless society, old dear … quite restful at the end” … Ivan said.’
‘Of course, some are beyond asking—’ came from the window.
‘—But not you, Mrs Acker.’
Gertrude sat up. Or tried to. The Sisters came to her on the instant, pedaling there softly, in the way good nurses fly. They lifted her up, one on either side.
‘I held his hand at the end,’ Gertrude said. ‘I was … his family.’
Both Sisters were now wiping the pink foam from Gertrude’s lips. They had an easy-handed system. While McClellan held her, Bond wiped. Then they shifted. One felt how often they must have practiced it.
When her eyes rolled up in her head they held her higher.
‘She’s fainted,’ I heard myself breathe.
‘Champagne now,’ one Sister said softly.
The other, reaching to a low shelf on a table behind her, brought out a bottle the waiter must have left with us, drew its cork, poured, and brought the glass to Gertrude’s lips.
‘Champagne, dear. You asked for it.’
‘And there’s enough, dear, for the family.’
Then—with the slightest headshake between them, Gertrude’s glass was put down. Then Gertrude herself was lowered flat.
‘Why, she’s dying—’ I must have said aloud.
Beside me, Gemma said: ‘She’s dead.’
There was a rattling sound from the wheelchair.
Once more the Sisters lifted Gertrude’s body up, this time putting pillows behind it. The mouth was open but no longer producing foam. The chest seemed to be breathing by itself.
‘… Gertrude dear …’
‘… We are here, Gertrude …’
The Sisters were speaking in unison now, in the way one enunciates a creed many times said. The words came in such a rush and in so dual a rhythm that I couldn’t catch them, and perhaps not even Gertrude was meant to hear anything except that the Sisters were at hand.
Then one bent over the body to say, We made a very good tea, Gertrude; the one on the body’s other side said as clearly, Thank you, dear, and both smiled at us, their hands free.
I am left holding Gertrude’s right hand, Gemma the left.
Next to me, a soft voice says in my ear: Say something to her now. The other Sister is at Gemma’s ear.
Gemma did say something, bless her. I couldn’t hear what.
I bend to Gertrude. I see no resemblance, even to the woman who an hour ago had said to me—Is it you? Down at the core of this semblance, though, there must be a consciousness that resembles everything the body was in life. And the hand holds on.
I say what I know she wanted me to. ‘Yes—it’s you.’
AFTERWARD, SISTERS MCCLELLAN AND Bond were most sweet to Rupert and me. No, we two must rest a moment before we went; it was always a shock, no matter who. And talking a bit afterward always helped, no matter to whom.
I saw that Rupert really was somewhat in shock; we had better stay on a bit. Besides, I was interested, though fearful of being drawn in—the way one is when one accepts a ‘free consultation.’
‘And no matter how the patient dies?’ I said.
In the most modest way, they declined to accept my hostility. They had met such before.
‘We think we make a difference.’
McClellan was not as hard as she looked, I decided.
‘There are many like us.’
And Sister Bond was not that soft.
In the next room, the morticians were already present. The hotel would have a routine, of course.
‘I don’t know how it is with your nurses over here.’ Bond’s expression suggested she thought she did know. ‘I rather suspect they’re trained to do a job. A very good job, I’m sure. But with us—nursing is a vocation!
Age Page 6