7
FOR WEEKS THEY DIDN’T know if Edith would live. There was so much internal damage, besides the external. I went home after she came out of the OR unconscious, and sat down with the kids and tried to explain. It was stiff, it was difficult. I realized I barely knew my children. Oh, I knew their names and ages and even what foods they liked, but I didn’t know anything about their emotional contexts, about what they felt like—how they responded to things, how they processed things. I knew Mark had been a crybaby, and that Jonathan was given to playing quietly in corners alone. I knew that Vickie, who was eighteen then, gave me flak whenever she could, and that Leslie always covered me with kisses. Well, it was difficult.
At first I wouldn’t let them go see her. I didn’t want, if she died, that they should remember her that way, wrapped in all those bandages. The way I remembered my father, weak and weeping about my mother’s death the last time I’d seen him. Six months later he’d had a coronary and died too, but I remembered a feeble crying old man, and I didn’t like that.
Of course, later on, Edith said I was selfish and a bastard as usual. Because of course the one thing she wanted, if she could have asked, was to see the children. And it is true that after she saw them, she began to improve more rapidly. And kids are funny, you know? No manners. They walked into her room, after she’d somehow managed to communicate to the nurse, who told the doctor who told me she wanted to see them, and stared at her as if she were a foreign species. She was out of the oxygen now, but she was still hooked up like a computer. They walked all around her, staring at the equipment, and Jonathan had a disgusted look on his face, he walked around pointing to things asking “What’s that! and that!” about every appurtenance she was hooked up to. I’d explain, and she watched, and her eyes were laughing. She still couldn’t talk, her jaw was broken, and she couldn’t move her arms very well because they were stuck full of needles from the intravenous feeder, and strapped down to boards. But the children could read her eyes, and Jonathan plopped down on the bed next to her and said, “Mommy, do you like all those machines?” and I was about to stop him, to get him off the bed, and her eyes swung round to me and they warned me off, oh, did they warn me, and so I learned to read eyes too. And then the kids all flopped on her bed, the hell with the machines, and talked to her and she answered them with her eyes.
It was too tiring for her to have them all there for very long, but after that, one or two of them would go with me most nights on my regular visits to the hospital. She was glad when they came so she didn’t have to look at me. Because what her eyes told me was: I hate you. I went every evening, for an hour. I don’t know why, it was clear she didn’t want me, but I had to go. And when I wasn’t at the hospital, I was with the children. Because I was the only parent now. Mrs. Ross was wonderful, she kept things going, and she loved the kids and they felt and returned that. But she wasn’t their parent. I felt terrible for them—orphaned, really, because I was hardly a parent. So I put a stop to most late-night meetings, and came home and helped Jon with his homework, and helped Mark with special projects, and tried to talk to the girls and to keep Leslie from continually sitting on my lap—she was sixteen and too old for that, I felt.
I had to break off with Alison, of course: there was no time for her now. I had lunch with her as soon as I went back to work and told her what had happened.
“Boyoboy, she was willing to do anything at all to get you back, wasn’t she?” Alison said with a nasty ironic smile.
I wanted to strike her, whether for her nastiness or her accuracy, I don’t know. Maybe both.
Things mended slowly, and when Edith had pulled some strength together, they always shot her back into the OR for one more operation. So it wasn’t steady progress—it was three steps forward, one back. For a long time she wouldn’t look at me. Then she’d give me a brief glare when I entered, and look away. But sometimes, as I sat there thinking, feeling rather dejected, I’d glance up and she’d be watching me. But then she’d look away.
When her jaw was mended, and she could speak, she was still very weak and could not talk much. She would ask the children some questions, smile at them, and by now, she could even lift her hands and caress them, although Edith was never given to demonstrative affection. But when I went alone, she never spoke to me.
One night, about three months after the accident, I went alone. I said hello, and kissed her forehead, as I always did, and she glared at me, as she always did, and I went and sat down facing her across the foot of the bed. And I began to tell her the little news there was, as I always did. I used to feel like a woman at a kaffeeklatsch, reporting the tiny events that made that day different from the one before. Vick wanted to buy a long dress for a dance. She had her eye on one that was low cut, with skinny straps, and bright red. What did Edith think of that? She shook her head no. The dog had gotten sick all over her beige Persian rug, but Mrs. Ross had cleaned it up fairly well. Jimmy Mehdvi, my old Iranian friend from grad school, was in town, did she remember him? Her eyes closed briefly, assenting. I’d invited him to the house for Sunday dinner, Mrs. Ross had agreed to cook it. Thought he might like a break from hotel food.
And suddenly she opened her mouth. “You mean you’re not taking him out to dinner? You could get three nights of mileage out of him, Victor. But I guess you don’t need cover stories anymore, do you.”
I didn’t answer. There was nothing to say. But her outburst had opened her up, and she continued, she went on with the long list of her grievances, a list kept for twenty years inside her mind, so deeply engraved on that mind that she didn’t need a written record. She poured them out in a long stream, she dwelt on them with the pleasure of a victim who finally has a chance to hurl back the stones that have weighed her down all those years. I listened. I did not defend myself at all, even when I felt there might be a few words to be said in my defense. Most of what she said concerned things I did not remember, and that she could have been making up, as far as I knew—except, of course, she was not. She went on until she was exhausted, then looked at me, with her scarred pale face, expectantly, waiting for my refutation. I said nothing. I was sitting with my forehead resting in my palm, listening, thinking, trying to feel. Trying. But I couldn’t I knew that however true or false her specific charges were, the overall charge was true: I knew I was guilty. But I felt nothing—not guilt nor shame, and now, not even pity for her. It was as if we’d passed beyond such feelings, that now her survival was at stake, and maybe, mine too. I could feel only: All right, that’s that, you said it all. What are you going to do now?
But she wasn’t satisfied, she wanted more. She wanted me to suffer as she had, she wanted to rub my nose in every turd I’d ever laid. That’s how it felt, and I questioned myself about it—maybe I was again turning something that wasn’t, into a power struggle. I wanted to give her what she wanted. I struggled with words, I tried to find some that would suggest I was suffering as she wished, and that I had learned through that suffering, and that I was now changed. But she knew better, of course: she scoffed at me. She stopped speaking, and I left. But I went back the next night, and the next, and the next. For days she continued this litany of my sins; for days I listened. It was the best I could do, it was all I had to offer—my presence, my silence. And in time, she accepted that—at least, she stopped.
I came in one evening and she said, “Don’t kiss me!” so I didn’t I sat down, but before I could launch into the evening news, she said, sharply: “Why did you prevent the children from coming to see me!” I explained, and she sneered at me: “Oh, thoughtful Victor! Who were you thinking of then? Certainly not me!”
Then: “Why do you prevent my sister from coming to see me?”
“I don’t.”
“She’s been here once. Once in all these months! Why?”
I sighed. Whatever I did, I was damned. If I didn’t tell her, it must be because I was keeping Kitty away. If I did … “Edith, you seem not to realize that Kitty is an alcoh
olic. She’s not often fit to go out.”
She glared at me and I prepared myself for an outburst like the one about her father. But none came. She fell silent. After a time, I began to tell her what was happening with the children. She listened in silence. Her face looked very thoughtful.
I don’t know when the change occurred. She needed some special work done, and they shipped her to a hospital in the West where they specialize in that, and I didn’t see her for six weeks. I went on as before while she was gone, spending most of my evenings and all weekends at home, spending time with the kids. I took Vick and Les and Mark out to the course and taught them to play golf. I took my vacation while Edith was gone, and the kids and I went camping. Which would have been a disaster if it weren’t for them—I knew nothing about camping, but years of summer camp had given them a little knowledge. At least, Vick knew how to put up the tent, and Mark knew how to keep a fire going, and Les figured out how to make coffee for her fussy father. We got on fine, the five of us. We were very close during that year….
Vickie went back to college, and Edith returned, not to Westchester, but to a hospital in Manhattan, where the remaining work would be done. So now the children had difficulty seeing her. I went every working day, and sometimes drove the kids down on a weekend. And she was different now. She was much like the old Edith, always sweet and smiling, but there was something frightened in her now, something … corroded. So it felt. There was panic under the old manner. She never called me out again, never maligned me again. She was quiet when I went, she smiled, she’d say, often: “Whatever you want, Victor.”
It undermined me completely. It was so pitiful. So weak she was, having given up her anger, you felt there was nothing at all to her, that you’d have to lift a soft body with no backbone up in your arms and carry it, ever after.
I asked the doctors about it They said she’d been so distraught out West, especially when it was clear she’d never be able to walk again, never be able to use artificial legs, that they had increased her daily dose of tranquilizers. She had no energy to cry and protest, but she also had no energy for anything else.
It felt as if her soul had atrophied.
Eventually, she came home. She was still this new person, but I was hopeful that being home, back with the children and in her own place, she wouldn’t need so many tranquilizers, and would regain some energy, some force. The doctors had given her a present when they repaired her scarred face—they’d lifted it. She looked fifteen years younger than she was. In a dim light, she looked like a little girl. I guess they wanted to console her for the rest—the paralysis from the waist down, the stumps that had been legs.
I’d done what I could. I had my study completely remodeled, took out the bookcases, put in another big window so she’d have two large ones facing the garden. I put a wide sill below them, that she could use as a table or a desk, if she wanted to do something and look outdoors at the same time. I had the room painted in a light color, I bought bright new furniture, and turned it into a bedroom-sitting room for her. It was summer when she finally came home with her little-girl face, smiling, a bit teary, and I wheeled her to the window where the peonies and larkspur grew, and the roses she had planted years ago stood in beautiful formal rows in the next bed, blooming soft pink and salmon and creamy white. The room smelled like the garden—the windows were open—and the sun spilled through the window.
I had the swimming pool enclosed with glass, and a physical therapist came every day to exercise her. I bought a VW van and a ramp, so even if I weren’t there, the girls could roll her into it and drive her wherever she wanted to go.
I told her about all this, sitting opposite her in her new room, holding her hands. She let me hold them. They were soft and cool, her hands, as they’d always been. Nothing had happened to them, but they felt boneless, somehow, as if the accident had caused bone loss throughout her body. They were tender hands, yielding hands. They were, like all of her now, pliable.
I said: “You and the girls have to go shopping. You need some new clothes, you haven’t had a new dress in a year! That’s some kind of record for you!” I laughed. She didn’t. “And Leslie’s graduation is next week, and you have to show up for it looking gorgeous with your wonderful new face.” She smiled. “And you’ll need gowns for holding court in your new salon,” I said, indicating the room. “Beautiful gowns. All colors.” I kissed her cheek. “You’ll get them, won’t you?” She said, “Thank you, Victor.”
Thank you, Victor. She didn’t go shopping. She didn’t go to Leslie’s graduation. She didn’t do anything. She sat in her wheelchair with her hands folded in her lap. She sat there patiently when the nurse came, four times a day, to take care of her … little bags. And drank the tea and ate the toast Mrs. Ross brought her, but not much more. And took as many tranks as ever. She just sat there. She didn’t even spark up for the children as she had. She listened to them, she smiled sweetly, she said, “That’s nice, dear.” You had the sense she hadn’t listened to a word they said. She sat and she smiled.
I spoke to the doctor, and he cut her dosage of tranks back a bit. After he told her, I went in to see her, and there was fear in her eyes, panic. I put my hand on her shoulder, I crouched beside her, I said, “Don’t worry, darling, if you don’t feel well, he’ll increase it again. But try, at least.” The panic remained, it hovered around the edges of her eyes.
But that worked, at least, it helped a little. She began to come out of herself a bit. She would take some interest when Mrs. Ross came in to speak to her about the weekly menus. She ate a few more things. She responded to the children more fully, more often. She’d turn on the TV set during the day, and at least appear to be watching it. And one night, when I came in, as always, with the one drink she was permitted, and one for myself, before dinner, she initiated the conversation.
“Victor, you don’t suppose I could have another heart attack, do you?”
“Heart attack?”
“Yes, of course. It was because I had a heart attack that I ran into that underpass. Just a slight one, of course, but I lost consciousness and that was how …”
She had had no heart attack. But then, if you look at it differently, maybe she had.
“You won’t have another one, darling,” I said, sitting opposite her. “I promise.”
I understood that I was promising to keep my bargain, forever.
She nodded. “And perhaps,” she went on, “even though I’m …” she looked down at her body, “like this, we can have a happy family?”
“Of course we can.” I know my voice sounded hollow, but Edith did not seem to notice.
“Yes,” she sighed, lightly. Her voice had seemed to change with her face, it was girlish, light, as it had been when she was young. “So much violence, so much unhappiness, drinking, divorce, drugs…. Perhaps we’re lucky, after all.”
I nodded. I couldn’t speak.
Then she raised her head a little. “And if this had to happen to me … if that was the price of us realizing how lucky we are … well, perhaps it is worth something, after all.”
I just stared at her.
“To bring up the children in a peaceful and orderly and loving home, that was always my ambition. And that I have achieved,” she said looking at me with tears in her eyes, “regardless.”
I cried. I burst out crying. I put my head in her lap and bawled like a kid. I couldn’t stop.
Edith patted my head. When I finally stopped and had blown my nose to oblivion and back, she said, “But, Victor, you must speak to Mark about the noise he makes in the yard when they play Indians. It gives me a headache.”
I said I would.
“And, Victor.” She turned her head a little away from me, it was almost a coy gesture, although she didn’t intend it that way. “I know men can’t … I know,” she faced me then, “you need … sex. And I don’t want you to … suffer. So, even though I feel nothing there now, well, if I feel nothing, it can’t hurt me, can it? I want
you to have what you want,” she finished, blushing. I swear she was blushing.
Victor broke off. His face was wet, with tears or sweat it was impossible to tell, and he looked like a man being strangled, his head was poked up, his neck stretched out as if he couldn’t breathe at low altitudes, and his muscles stood out, neck muscles, under-chin muscles, hard and tight. He stood up and strode into the kitchen. He returned with the Scotch bottle, two glasses, and a bowlful of ice. “I figure you might want one of these tonight.”
Indeed, it was night. They were sitting in the last light of dusk, without electricity to warm them, except from the fire. Dolores nodded, and he poured two drinks. She did not move. She was locked in the rocking chair, legless (her legs curled up on the seat), with a blanket over her lap. Victor gave her a drink, then turned on the small lamp beside her, and another beside the couch. He sat down again, sighing. His voice was different now, his usual voice, strong and in control.
That was four years ago. Things are much the same now. Edith never goes out, well, almost never. Mark uses the van, for fun, not for her. When the girls think she needs or could use some new clothes, they buy them and bring them home. She wears a straight size eight, just as she always did. She accepts whatever they—or I—bring her, accepts it with that same sweet smile she always uses. She asks for nothing. Nothing. The only way Mrs. Ross discovered she was tired of lamb chops was that she began to leave them on her plate. She never asked for something else, ordered something else. She did take up painting again, but even there, the kids and I keep an eye on her supplies. We have to be sure to replenish them. Otherwise she’ll paint in only a few colors and when we ask if she’s changing her style, she’ll say oh, no, she’d simply run out of cobalt blue, or whatever. Or she’ll sit there with her hands in her lap until we discover she’s out of watercolor paper.
She sits at the big sill gazing out into the garden, and paints pictures of dumpling-happy babies and little children doing cute little mischievous things, like dumping water on the dog, or spraying water on each other with a garden hose. Or trying on Momma’s or Poppa’s clothes. That sort of thing. She doesn’t mind repeating herself. She does a couple every week, and every week Bob Minelli stops in and visits with her and picks up her latest productions. He has a—well he calls it an art gallery in town. He frames pictures, sells gifts and the work of some local painters. Edith’s pictures sell like hot cakes, people love them. And why not? They have the same dreams. Anyway, all the money she earns goes into a special account, and when there’s enough in it, she gives it to a local art museum. It’s a paltry affair, an old house with some bequests in it, but thanks to Edith, it’s improving. They’re planning, although it’s a secret from her, to rename the museum after her on her next birthday: she’s given them thousands and thousands of dollars. In fact, she does them well, those paintings. She does them well because she believes in them, those dumpling children and their happy harmless mischief….
The Bleeding Heart Page 28