His Wife Leaves Him

gegen weg. Or whatever it is in German. But why am I speaking German to you? Just stop hounding me. ‘Hounding me.’ What a joke. Just go; vamoose. ‘Moose.’ Another unattended joke. That one also. Oh, God, I give up. Scratch all the hell you want.” Cat stops scratching and slumps to the floor against the door, where he’ll wait awhile for him to open it and then go somewhere else in the house and come back sometime later and probably scratch or tap at the door again. Maybe he’s hungry and wants him to feed him. But he doesn’t get his dinner till five or six, and last time he looked there was plenty in both food bowls, as if the cat had barely touched what he’d laid out for him this morning. Or it might be he’s thirsty. But if his water dish was empty or turned over — one of the guests, getting something in the kitchen, might have stepped on or kicked it — he’d go to the other bathroom and spread himself out on the toilet seat, or if the seat was up, balance himself on the rim of the toilet bowl, and drink from that, if the last person to use the toilet had flushed it. And if it’s that he wants to go out, he’d go to the kitchen or porch and scratch either of those doors or make the mewling sound he only makes when he wants to relieve himself outside and which his daughters are familiar with, and one of them would open the door for him. But he’s quiet now, so maybe he’s already left the hallway or is sleeping by the door. He shuts his eyes. He tried a couple of times since Gwen died to rest or nap in the middle of the bed, place he thought would be the most comfortable. But he felt — it’s a large bed, queen-size — too far from the edge. He likes to be in reach of his night table, where there’s always a pen and pad and where his watch and glasses and handkerchief, or sheet of paper towel, usually are. Also the night table light. He doesn’t like to have to roll over or stretch for it to turn it on or off. He takes off his glasses, folds them up and puts them on the night table. He used to slip them into their case when he lay down for a nap or sleep, but lost it long ago. He’s been meaning to buy one next time he’s in a drugstore, but whenever he gets to one, he always forgets. He even stuck a note up on the refrigerator door: “Martin, you numskulclass="underline" get eyeglasses case before you break your glasses again,” but the note fell off, or whatever happened to it, and disappeared a few months ago and he never replaced it. “Why are you so down on yourself?” Gwen said after she’d read the note. “You’re not a numskull.” Maybe she was the one who took it off, but she couldn’t have reached it from her wheelchair. She could have asked one of her caregivers to do it for her and not told him. Gwen’s glasses in their case are on a bookshelf in her study; he moved them there from her night table soon after she died so they’d be out of the bedroom and he wouldn’t have to see them every day, but he doesn’t want to take the glasses out just for the case. He thinks he’ll give the glasses away with most of her things the kids won’t want, like what’s left of her medical equipment and supplies and he doesn’t know what else — some of her books, especially the scholarly ones and all those, except the dictionaries, in Italian and French; hair dryer, package of razors never opened and another of emery boards, things like that; costume jewelry, clothes, unsealed bottle of perfume, and her computer and portable phone — to some organization like Purple Heart. Sure, Purple Heart, that’s the one they always called for a donation pickup if it didn’t call them first to say its truck would be in their area on such and such a date. His watch he never put on today, which is unusual for him, he thinks, and is still where he left it on the night table last night, and he has a handkerchief in his pants pocket. He takes it out, blows his nose into it, folds over the wet part, and drops it on top of the watch. And he once, maybe a week after Gwen died, tried sleeping on her side of the bed. He thought that because she was much lighter than he — about fifty pounds, and after her first stroke, sixty to sixty-five — the mattress might not have as much of a depression on her side as it does on his, but he found it uncomfortable, or some other word, lying there. Like the eyeglasses case: just because it had been her side and all that’s attached to that. He’ll probably never even take the glasses out of their case. Doesn’t want to see them again and picture them on her face. As for her side of the bed: making love with her there (they never seemed to do it on his side or in the middle of the bed or not after her first stroke); turning her over and changing or straightening her pad; massaging her shoulders when he got her on her stomach; exercising her legs and feet every morning and night when she was on her back, and catheterizing her periodically or whenever she couldn’t pee on her own and was risking getting a urinary tract infection. Leaning over her, after he got her set for sleep, and kissing her, if she wasn’t angry at him or hurt by something he said that day, and saying “Sleep well” or “Sweet dreams” and “Goodnight.” Then he’d kiss her and shut off her night table light. But all on her side of the bed, he’s saying. Though some of those — turning her over away from him to massage her shoulders or change the towel underneath her or straighten her pad — a little to the middle of the bed. Anyway, tried resting every which way that one time on her side of the bed, but nothing worked. They have the kind of mattress — but how does he say it now? He has the kind of mattress that isn’t supposed to be turned over. Though they were advised by the saleswoman when they bought it to turn it a hundred-eighty degrees around every three to four months so no one side of it gets unevenly depressed. He never did it because he either didn’t want to mess up the bed and have to remake it or he didn’t feel like doing it on the days he thought of it or Gwen asked him to do it or he felt he didn’t have the strength at that moment to move a big heavy mattress around by himself, and after they had the new mattress set for a year or so — which would be about nine months after her first stroke — because he didn’t want her lying in the depression his body had made. So he did do some nice unasked-for things for her now and then. Of course he did, several a day. Just, they were heavily outweighed by the many instances of his rage and other awful behavior to her since a little after she got sick, and which made her look at him sometimes as if she hated him. “What I do this time?” he’d say. “Whatever it is, I’m sorry.” She usually just kept looking at him. “All right, I know what I did,” he’d say. “You don’t have to look at me as if I’m the worst shit on earth, and I’ll try not to let it happen again.” “That’s what you always say,” she said a number of times. “Your words aren’t to be trusted anymore. It’d be absurd (ridiculous, idiotic) of me to believe you can change.” “Believe, believe, because the last thing I want is to hurt you,” and he tried to hug her a few of those times and she pushed him away or she let him but never hugged him back. He sometimes thought right after: She’ll get over it and he will try not to act like that again. He just has to work on it: see it coming and stop it fast. Do that a couple of times straight and he should have the problem licked. That time they bought the mattress set. A good day for them. They went together — she drove — tested several mattresses in the store: he did it quickly: on and off in about ten seconds and without lying back on the beds: he thought he’d look silly. She lay back on each mattress she tested, turned over on her side, then on her other side, then on her back with her arms out, shut her eyes, looked like she was sleeping, even made snoring sounds once as a joke, causing the saleswoman and him to laugh, and finally, with one mattress, said while lying on her back with her hands behind her head: “I like this one; firm but not hard, and within our price range. What about you?” And he said “You choose, because they all seemed the same to me.” “No, they’re each a little different: soft, firm, rock hard, so I want you to feel as good with the one we buy as I do. Try this one again, but this time lie on it,” and he said “I don’t have to; I know it’s good on your say-so. And I never have trouble sleeping on anything, soft, hard or lumpy, so if this is the mattress you want, let’s get the woman to write up a ticket and we’ll get out of here.” “You’re so easy to please,” and he said “Thank you. But you know me: I hate shopping for anything but food,” when he should have said “No, I can be a horror.” But he was much less of one then, right? It was her illness that did something to him and he got worse and worse. He became so goddamn…ah, it’s old news. He has to stop thinking about it. He has to stop thinking about it. After, they had lunch at a Mexican fast-food restaurant next door and then lattes and a biscotti between them — little bits of chocolate and walnut in it, his latte with skim milk, hers with soy — at a coffee place in the same shopping center. Only drinks sold in the restaurant were sweetened iced tea and soda. “We ought to do this more often,” she said when they were back in the car, she at the wheel again, he reading a book in his lap, “Go out for lunch or just coffee, take a break from work at home.” “Deal,” he said, and went back to his book. Someone knocks on the door. “Yes?” he says, and one of his daughters says “It’s me, Daddy. Just seeing how you’re doing.” And he says “I’m fine, I’m fine, everything’s fine. I’m going to take a nap.” “I didn’t wake you from one, did I?” and he says — it’s Maureen, he’s almost sure—“No, I’ve just been resting. We’ll go out for dinner tonight after the house is cleaned up, okay?” and she says “Good, we have no plans. Would it be all right if we invite three of our friends along? I don’t know if you noticed, but they came to the memorial — drove down together from New York this morning — and I don’t think it’d be right to just leave them like that.” “Sure,” he says, “invite anyone you want, and our treat. Very nice of them to come so far for it. They can even sleep over if you two don’t mind doubling up and you bring out the futon. Are they all girls? You’ll work it out. But we’ll eat Chinese, to keep the cost down, when before I thought we’d go to Petit Louis — okay?” and she says “Of course. I’ll tell them of your sleepover offer, but I think they want to get back tonight so they can be at work tomorrow.” “Maybe, then, you want to drive back with them — I’ll be okay alone,” and she says “We planned on staying two more days — that is, if you don’t mind us to,” and he says “What are you, kidding? I’m thrilled that you’re staying.” “And if you’re still napping by six, can I wake you so they can start off around eight?” “Sure, wake me, but I’ll be up. And forget the Chinese. What do I care about the expense? We’ll all go to Petit Louis. Make a reservation for six-thirty,” and she says “Let’s stick with Chinese. It’ll be quicker and Petit Louis is where we went most to celebrate our birthdays and New Year’s Eve once and your wedding anniversary a few times, even the twentieth, I remember. It’s too loaded. Have a good nap, Daddy.” “Yeah.” Did he turn off the phone ringer? Thinks he did. Doesn’t