now only seemed to come when he forced himself to stay awake to type some more. Was the photographer of that photo at the memorial? A good friend of Gwen’s from college, or good friend then, who came down from Princeton to take a few hundred photos for one she’d include in a photography book she was putting together of just literary mothers with their daughters, but he doesn’t think it was ever published. Gwen would have bought a copy, even if she was given one by the publisher or photographer — she bought almost all the books by writers and scholars she knew, even the prolific ones and even when he told her not to because she knew neither of them would ever read it and the scholarly ones didn’t come cheap — and shown it to him. Or maybe she did get it and showed it to him and he forgot. Maybe he’ll give all the photos he has with Gwen in them to the kids and they can do with them what they want. Only one he’ll keep is a small one in a plastic sleeve, or whatever it’s called, in the wallet compartment with his credit and health insurance cards and driver’s license and so on and which he only sees when he takes the bunch of them out when he’s looking for one. Gwen once said, after he laid all the cards and IDs out on a table to go through them for the one he wanted, “You have a stacked deck. I’ll raise you mine.” He laughed but wasn’t then and isn’t now sure what she meant, unless — just thought of this — he heard “mine” when she said “nine.” In other words…in other words, what? Nothing. She was simply commenting that they looked like a deck of playing cards, and because they did, she used card game and betting terms—“stacked,” “raise you,” and, for no special reason he can see, the number nine. Or maybe he’s missing something and the number is significant and he should think about it more. Some other time. Photograph of her in his wallet was taken by another photographer friend of hers at an art gallery opening they were at a few weeks after they started seriously going together. In other words, not long after they first made love. Here’s something odd. She claimed he didn’t tell her he loved her till about a year after they met, although, she said, she knew he did by the way he looked at and acted toward her and made love. He said once “You’ve said that before and it can’t be true — it’s absolutely not like me to hold back like that,” and she said “Believe me, my dearie, it’s not something I’d make up, and it always stuck with me.” And she? Said she loved him about a month after they met. A weekend morning, bright out, she just woke up, it seemed, he’d been reading awhile in bed beside her — her apartment was on the seventh floor, faced the Hudson, and didn’t have curtains or shades. When she was sick — the flu, a virus — and wanted the bedroom dark so she could rest or sleep, she had him stretch a blanket across both windows and fasten the ends to the old curtain-rod brackets up there. But that time, she just looked at him, head still on the pillow, smiled, said it, and started crying a little. Must have seemed a bit strange to her that he didn’t, instead of saying “What’re you crying for? It’s all right. I’m glad about it,” say flat out he loved her too, since by then, she later told him, she knew he did. She said that what he used to say that first year — in bed, on the phone, at a restaurant once, etcetera — whenever she told him she loved him, and she didn’t say it more than a few times, were things like “Same here” or “Me too” or “I feel the same about you,” but never “I love you” or “And I love you” or “I love you too.” Her eyes, in the wallet photograph, are looking off to the right, as if someone or a particular art work had caught her attention. She has on a white turtleneck, an opened suede jacket or coat (to fit the photo into the plastic sleeve he cut off the lower part just above her breasts), a shoulder bag strap’s over her left shoulder, and her long hair’s rolled up and knotted or tied or whatever it is in back but where it stays above her neck, and is still very blond. “A beautiful Jewish natural blond,” he said to her around this time; “what more could I ever want? And, oh boy, would my father have been happy. ‘Finally,’ he would have said — and not because you’re a real blond; in fact, that might’ve made him suspicious—‘finally, one of my boys does the right thing.’” Photograph’s been in the same plastic sleeve in a series of wallets for the past twenty-five years. Before that it was in a billfold she gave him as a Christmas gift the year after they met and which he never used — wanted to; because she gave it to him, but had no pocket to put it in his clothes except a sport jacket he wore once or twice a year — and kept in a dresser drawer for about two years before giving it to Goodwill in New York when he took his teaching job in Baltimore. “I don’t know why,” she said, “but I thought you’d like to move up to a billfold. I promise, that’s the last time I’ll try to change you.” He’s feeling even tireder now, so maybe a good time for a nap. Also feels cold. One of his daughters turns on the central air conditioning or fan because of all the people in the house? Doesn’t hear any air blowing through the room’s register, but that goes on and off, depending on what temperature was set. Tries to just lie there without a blanket, but now he’s feeling chilled. Doesn’t want to get under the covers. That’d be too much like sleep, and he’d never wake up. Gets up, turns the frame around on the window ledge — now she’ll be looking at what she wants to, he thinks, but oh, so hard on himself, so hard, but he deserves it — and gets a cotton blanket off a chair — same one he used to put over her when she napped in bed or in the wheelchair — and gets back on the bed and covers himself with it. Puts the satin border or hem or edge — he always had trouble with the right words for certain things and would go to her for them — to his nose. Doesn’t smell of her and he didn’t think it would. But she was practically odorless, even when she hadn’t had a shower, which means he hadn’t given her one, in days, and also her hair, without a shampoo for a week, never seemed to smell, and her mouth, if she didn’t brush her teeth that day, and if she ate a food that usually gave one bad breath, then he did too, so he didn’t smell it. Cunt, too — he doesn’t remember ever detecting an odor there, but that she probably took care of before they made love. But she couldn’t have all the time. They’d be waking up, or he’d nudge her in her sleep or fondle her till she awoke, or he’d interrupt her working in her study and say “I don’t mean to bother you, but like to take a break?” or “like a change of scenery?” and often they’d go straight to the bed without stopping in the bathroom. Gets a hard-on. Well, what’s he expect? Their sex was always good before she had her first stroke, and after that he just took it when he could. Only time she had some aroma about her was when she had him spray her one perfume on her left wrist, she’d always stick out the left wrist, which she’d then rub on her neck or somewhere. Then she’d ask him, or she’d ask him before the perfume, for one of her necklaces and for him to put it on her, and they’d go. Last times for that were about a year ago, when they went to a concert or play or opening party for his department or dinner at some couple’s house. It was always a couple’s. But maybe he’s wrong about the blanket. Smells it. This time, takes a deep whiff. Smells like a cotton blanket that hasn’t been washed in a while. Tomorrow, if he remembers — anyway, one of these days soon — he’ll stick it in the washer, and after he dries it, put it away for Purple Heart. And the perfume. Spray bottle’s not even half finished and she’s been using it for about ten years. Cost a lot — she had him buy it for her birthday — and he knows it’s still good. That will also go in one of the boxes for Purple Heart along with her socks and bras and scarves that are in the same drawer with the necklaces and perfume. First he’ll ask the kids if they want any of it — the necklaces he’ll just give them — and if they don’t, out all the rest of it goes. He won’t offer them the bras. She was a lot larger there than them, though they have her round rear end and long torso and sort of short strong legs, although hers, the last year or so, became atrophied. But he likes the feel of only this thin cotton blanket over him for a nap. So he might have to keep it, for where would he buy a new one, and when? Hates malls. He’ll deal with it all later. So many things to. Of course, he could always ask the kids, as long as they’re here, to go to the mall to buy him the same kind of blanket, though different design. But bank stuff, investments, safe deposit box, titles to the house and van and just about everything else — income taxes, home and car insurance — all in both their names and which he hasn’t done anything about yet. Feels himself drifting. Did he turn the phone off? Thinks so. Yes, definitely remembers — sees his finger switching the on-and-off button to the left. And his wallet. When he’s home he always keeps it on the right side of the top drawer of the table linen chest in the dining room so he always knows where it is. All right. Nobody’s going into that drawer, and if someone did, for some reason — can’t think of one now. Looking for a napkin? — he wouldn’t go through the wallet or take it. Was his brother here today? No, my goodness, what’s he talking about? — he really must be out of it. Died four years ago — five, in March. He’ll never get over it. Photographer’s a much celebrated writer and just a few years older than him. Photographer’s husband, he means. Makes a bundle off his work and readings and commencement addresses, he’s read, and has been doing so for more than forty years, and he’s a serious writer, though not one he likes. Well, who does he, of living writers? Used to see him — his counter on the main floor faced the Third Avenue entrance — when he worked in the men’s pajama shop at Bloomingdale’s: Burberry raincoat — collar up — floppy hat. He must have used the store to get from Third to Lex, probably when it was snowing or raining, or it was just a more interesting route than the long boring streets on either side of the store. Only time he met him was in front of the Whitney, when the photographer — Hilda — yelled out to Gwen. The women talked. He held Rosalind in a baby sling on his chest. Writer didn’t want to talk to him. Looked every which way but at him. Might have known he was a writer, he thought then, and was afraid he’d hit him for a future blurb. But he wouldn’t have. He’d never do that. Wanted to tell him about Bloomingdale’s. Though he was envious of his early success and all that brought. His mother would have taken the memorial badly, if she was able to come down. Well, if she had wanted to, he would have driven to New York to get her and then, after a few days, if she was strong enough, put her on the train back. If he couldn’t, what would he have done, driven her? She loved Gwen, thought of her as her daughter. Used to tell him on the phone “You always be good to her, or you’ll hear it from me.” “Why,” he once said — oh, God, when they were both alive and Gwen thriving—“she say anything to you?” “No, she’s too good a wife to; just I know you always had a temper.” His dog Joan. What happened to her? Fifty, sixty years ago — sixty-one: just disappeared. She had to have been stolen or hit by a car and dumped in an ashcan, because she never would have run away. She loved him. He never feared she’d get lost or not come home when he let her out on the street to make, which he did that day. People sometimes said they saw her sniffing around blocks away — they recognized her by the limp in her right front leg — but she always found her way back and then would wait in his building’s vestibule till he or his mother came out to get her. What a loss. Woman at the memorial he hasn’t seen in a long time. Forgets if she was originally his friend or Gwen’s, and now can’t even think of her name, Hilda? No, that’s so-and-so. Rhea? Rhoda? Rosetta? Something like that, though not necessarily where it starts with an “R,” but what’s the difference? He’ll never see her again. He’ll come out and everyone but his daughters and their friends will be gone. And he won’t be able to go out for dinner, even something as simple as Chinese. Not tonight. There’s also the car bicycle rack he’s been wanting to get rid of for years. He’s sure Purple Heart will take that that too. Plus her wheelchair and overbed table and things like that, though maybe those he’ll give to the same stroke victims loan closet Gwen gave a number of things to — collapsible cane, walker, four-wheel rollator — when, as she said, she grew out of them. Hears ringing. Doorbell? No, he wouldn’t be able to hear it with his door shut and from way back here. Must be a cell phone with a real phone ring, right outside his room. Listens for someone answering it but doesn’t hear anything but people’s garbled voices from farther inside. Sounds like a cocktail party. Good, let everyone have fun. Gwen wanted to get one of those phones but he said it’d always be falling out of her hands and breaking, so one more complication and expense to deal with, was the way he put it. But he should have, early on, gone to the phone store with her for one that she could operate and then taken her to lunch at a nearby restaurant. He should have said “Hang the expense. And it shouldn’t be that much, It can be on the same plan Rosalind and Maureen share.” Why was he always saying no? Anyway, the kids went to the phone store with her and got her one. Wasn’t there something she bought and wanted him to plant her last few weeks and he didn’t? A rose bush? Two? Probably dead by now, if he did want to do it. He also should have said “Good idea, for both of us, the cell phone, in case an emergency on the road and things like that, and you can talk free to the kids all day if you want.” Blanket’s slipped down below his shoulders, and he pulls it up and then over his ears. Way Gwen liked to sleep after her first stroke, both on her side and back. She’d wake him at night and ask him to pull the covers up over her ears or she couldn’t sleep.