His Wife Leaves Him

a group plan. You must know that. You’ve been paying for it for years. It allowed the three of us, when Mommy was alive, to call each other anytime of the day for free. The phone’s being recharged now in Roz’s room. But we have to warn you. It has Mommy’s voice on it. Just her saying her name when the automated voice says she’s not available and your message has been forwarded to an automated voice message machine. If you do want her phone, and we hope so because that would mean Roz and I would be able to talk to you more, we’d like to keep Mommy’s voice on it. Do you mind? We think it would be nice to hear Mommy every time we call you and the message system picks up. Love from Roz and me. Maureen.” He writes under her note “Dear Maureen. I would like to take over Mommy’s phone. I wasn’t aware of the cell phone message — I suppose I should’ve assumed so — but if you both want to keep it on, fine with me. I’d get upset hearing her speak myself. But there’s no reason that should happen unless I call the cell phone just to hear her voice, which I don’t see myself ever doing. Love, Dad.” Then thinks But what’s with this note business? He’ll tell them all this when he sees them, and tears up the note and sticks the pieces into the recycle bag next to the trash can. It’s almost full. Later he’ll stuff all the paper down in it so they won’t blow around when he brings it outside to the carport, and open up another bag by the can. Looks through the kitchen door. Could have just looked at the inside light switch by the door. Outside lights have been turned off. Now he remembers. Her mother kept giving her tablecloths, ones she brought with her from Russia and others she bought here for Gwen, and she said she didn’t have the heart to tell her she already had more than she could use. “The kids will take them,” and he said “Don’t count on it. Most are a little dowdy.” Her cameras. Two very good ones. She liked taking pictures of birds, especially hummingbirds at the various feeders if she could get her camera quick enough, and flowers and the star magnolia in bloom and their cats. Those he thinks the kids will want to take when they leave. They’re not as personal as most of the other things he mentioned, and a number of times they needed a good camera to take pictures a photo lab would turn into slides of their work. Doubts he’ll be taking pictures anymore. Took a lot of them of the kids and her, in Maine, mostly with cheap throwaway cameras. Plenty of her alone too, even though she never wanted him to, when she was still healthy. How could he not? She always looked so great in them. And those Polaroid nude shots of her — how’d he ever get her to let him? — when she was seven months pregnant with Rosalind, ones he ended up with only one good one of and she said she tore up. Maybe she didn’t and only threatened to and then forgot about it. One day he’ll look for it and the two or three others he took that time and which were too dark and blurry to see anything and would probably, if they survived, be worse now. Go through all the boxes and file drawers in her study she kept most of their photos in. They’re certainly not in any of the albums. Didn’t he think this last night? Yes, but not that they might still be around. Wishes he’d taken a few of her nude when she wasn’t pregnant. Standing facing him. Sitting in a chair like an artist model — that’s how he could have worded it to her. Lying on the bed or couch with her back or front to him. But he knows she wouldn’t have let him if he’d asked. But he should have asked. What a dope that he didn’t. “They’re Polaroids,” he would have said. “Nobody will see them but me.” “What do you want them for?” she might have said. “You have me,” and he would have said “For when I’m away.” Well, he didn’t know things would turn out like this. Her feeling, he thinks, was that her body in the pregnant photos no way resembled hers, which is why she went along with the two or three she let him take. He thinks she even said something like that. “I’m unrecognizable. Look at my breasts and stomach and from what I can see of my buttocks. Even my face is a bit bloated and my thighs seem fatter too, though I suppose everything but my breasts will go back to the way they were before.” Anyway, he doesn’t know how to use either of her cameras, or even load them. She showed him once, but he’s long forgot. I’ll never remember,” he said. “I like simple cameras.” So he’ll insist the kids take them. “They’re wasted here,” he’ll say. “And you each can use one, and it won’t take you anything to learn how. I’m sure you have friends who’ll show you. If there’s film still in the cameras, just develop them and send me the ones you think I might find interesting. I’m sure there’s none of Mom. And while we’re at it,” he’ll say, “maybe you can take back with you a lot of the photographs too. Help me to start getting rid of things.” Opens the dishwasher. Nothing in it. All the dishes and such from yesterday have been washed and put away. Good. They did everything right. Countertops even look cleaned. Not a crumb. Opens the refrigerator. Plenty of food in it in plastic containers and bowls covered by saucers and plates. He never had plastic wrap — the environment — and Gwen agreed they didn’t need it. And then the stuff that’s always in there. So, plenty for them, and if there isn’t there what they want for breakfast and lunch they can take his car and get it. He’ll give them money or say “Use the credit card you have of mine.” They’ll probably want to go for coffee at the nearby Starbucks on North Charles as they do almost every morning when they’re here together, and ask him if he wants to join them, and he’ll say “Not today and maybe not tomorrow. I don’t know when. But enjoy yourselves and use the credit card I gave you for anything you want there,” and they might say they have their own credit cards. The one they have of his is only for plane and train fares and taxis late at night and emergencies, and he’ll say “While you’re here, everything should be on me. That’s what Mommy would want for you too.” Or maybe not the last. Sleek seems to have been taken care of before they went to bed. Still plenty of kibble in his food bowl and water bowl’s full almost to the top. All the cat food on the saucer’s been eaten. They may have even given him some sliced turkey and other deli meat that was out there. He gets the saucer off the floor and washes it with the scrub side of the sponge and puts it in the dish rack by the sink. Only thing in the dish rack; not even a spoon. That’s how thorough they were, and dish rack mat’s been cleaned too. He’ll open a can of cat food — didn’t see an opened one in the refrigerator, but he might have missed it it was so crowded in there — and spoon half a can of it onto the saucer next time he sees Sleek. If the wet food’s been out there too long — a half-hour, an hour — he won’t eat it. Thinks he hasn’t seen him since yesterday, and then not much. Could he be outside? The girls wouldn’t have let him out at night intentionally. But he has a way of scooting out the door when you open it without you seeing him. And some days he lets him in and out so much he doesn’t know if he’s out or in. Gwen used to ask him “You see Sleek?” and he’d say “Cat makes me dizzy. I don’t know if the last time I saw him was when I let him in the house or let him out, I have to do both for him so much.” Maybe he’s sleeping somewhere or just keeping to himself. Sleek loved Gwen — he could say that about a cat? He swears it sometimes seemed he was looking adoringly at her — and it’s possible he knows she’s dead and misses her deeply. Sleek came into the room when she was being lifted onto the gurney by the Emergency people that last time — the door was closed till then — and sniffed at all their shoes and the wheels of the gurney and then ran out of the room and hid somewhere in the house till that evening. When she was sick in bed with the flu or a bad cold or worse or was just reading or resting, he’d lie beside her and raise a front paw with the claws out and hiss at anyone who came near her but the kids. Even him. Scratched him a few times when he got too close. “Sleek,