“Well,” he said, “I guess I’d better leave you alone. Sorry I talked your ear off.”
Grace smiled at him, but her eyes looked tired. “It was nice,” she said, “but you don’t have to keep coming here, you know. It was kind of you to help with the apartment and everything, but you’ve done enough.”
Mitch snorted — the idea that he’d ever done enough seemed ridiculous, given the recent truths of his life — but then nodded. “I don’t mean to intrude.”
“You’re not intruding,” she said. “You’ve been great. But you’ve done so much already.”
This was as direct a request to leave as Grace would ever utter. Yet something bound him there in the room — her wan eyes, or his need to be of help. “Where are your parents?” he said.
She sighed. “My father died a few years ago. My mother isn’t well enough to travel.”
“I’m sorry.”
Her head moved slightly in a gesture that was meant to be a shrug. She was exhausted now, her eyes fluttering open and closed, her hands splayed out beside her, palms up. He moved closer, wanting to touch her arm, to somehow lend her some of his physical strength, because she needed it.
“Look,” he said. “I don’t have a lot going on, so let me help you out. For old times’ sake.”
“That’s not a good reason,” she said, and the dryness of her voice was a reminder that all was not simple between them.
But she must have changed her mind, because a week or so later the phone rang one evening, and it was her, sounding quiet but determined.
“It’s me, Grace. I’m out of the hospital.”
“Congratulations! How are you doing?”
“I’ll live,” she said. “Listen, I decided I’d like to take you up on your offer.”
“I’m glad,” he said, and he was.
“Azra’s overextended, and a couple of my other friends have flaked out on me. Do you think you could help me with some errands and getting Sarah to and from school?”
“Of course I can.”
There was a pause. “That’s, well, it’s good of you,” she said awkwardly.
“It’s not a big deal, Grace. I’m happy to do it.”
The next day he went over. He found her on the couch wearing a gray sweater, the bottom half of her body swaddled in a thick wool blanket, her cast a raised lump beneath it. She looked better than she had in the hospital, but not by much. A small end table was set up with essentials: a glass of water, a box of tissues, a cluster of yellow pill vials.
“Thanks again for doing this,” she said.
“Stop thanking me,” Mitch said. “Please.”
She grimaced a little, as if her pride hurt as much as her injuries. Looking at the place more closely than he had the first time, he noticed that the furniture was slipcovered in her favorite colors, blues and pale greens, and he recognized several of the watercolors hanging on the walls. At a cruel moment late in their marriage, he had told her that her taste was bland; now it struck him as soothing, and he felt peculiarly at home. It was a quiet place, still as a pond.
“Sarah’s over at a friend’s,” Grace said. “Here, I have a list.”
On a yellow legal pad — and Mitch remembered now that she had always used one as a student — she had written down a succession of chores. Laundry. Groceries, with each item detailed down to the brand. Sarah’s schedule, when to drop her off and when to bring her back. The things Sarah liked for lunch. A manual of parenting, with everything explained, in Grace’s round, neat handwriting.
Her voice was all business. “I’ll tell you where the laundry baskets and the machines are,” she said. “Are you sure you don’t mind doing this?”
“Please,” he said. “I’m glad to have something to do.”
It sounded more pathetic than he intended, as if he didn’t have anything else to do, which wasn’t exactly true. Or possibly it was a little bit true. But he busied himself around the place for an hour or so, then went out to Loblaws and came back to unload the groceries into the fridge and cupboards. All the while Grace lay on the couch, drifting in and out of consciousness. At first she seemed to make an effort to raise her head when he came into the living room, but when he told her to rest she closed her eyes gratefully.
He did laundry in the basement, nodding at a neighbor who glanced at him curiously, and ran a few errands off Grace’s list during the washing and drying cycles. When the clothes were dry, he brought them back up to the apartment and put her things away in her dresser, trying not to look too closely at the underwear. Sarah’s impossibly small clothes went into the white dresser in her room. When he came back into the living room, Grace’s eyes were open, but her expression was even more strained.
“Are you okay?” he blurted. “Is the pain worse?”
“I have to ask you to do something,” she said. “I am so, so sorry about this.”
Right away he knew what it was, and oddly enough felt no hesitation. It was a relief to have another specific, physical task that needed to be accomplished. “It’s all right. Remember when you got food poisoning in India? I’ve already been through the worst.”
“Thanks for bringing that up,” she said, but then she smiled.
He crouched near her. She smelled both gamy and chemical, like a specimen left unattended too long in some dusty lab. An unwashed scent mixed with the must of bandages and ointment. She pointed at the bedpan under the end table, and when he arranged it beneath her, tears glistened in her eyes from the pain of the jostling. “I’m sorry,” he whispered.
“It’s not your fault.”
He left her alone for a few minutes, then collected and emptied the bedpan. When he came back again, Grace had cleaned herself and he disposed of the trash she’d left in a container by the couch. Her eyes had a burning, febrile expression, part humiliation, part pain.
“Worse than India?” he said.
“Much worse,” she said.
He squeezed her hand and put his arm around her as gently as he could, and her head collapsed against his chest, her body buckling with a sob. For a few minutes they sat like that, then she shook her head and wiped her eyes. The most awful moment, he understood, had passed.
At five o’clock Sarah’s friend’s mother brought her home, and Sarah approached the couch with the same fearful care that Mitch had noted in the hospital. He microwaved some pizza, poured juice, and set up a video for her to watch on the TV. She was very quiet and sat beside her mother on the couch with her knees curled up to her chin, leaning timidly into the corner cushions.
An hour later, when a friend of Grace’s stopped by to help them get ready for bed, Mitch said it was time he left.
“Thank you,” Grace said, her eyes again filling with tears.
“Please,” he said. “It’s all right.”
So he slipped into her life through the side door. He didn’t think that much about it, or wonder if it was right or wrong. What he’d told her was the truth: he was grateful to have something to do.
Over the next two weeks, he stopped by Grace’s every few days. He stocked the apartment with food. He drove Sarah to school and back home. He did laundry.
When he mentioned to his brother on the phone what was happening, Malcolm laughed. “I never pictured you as Mr. Mom,” he said.
Mitch was annoyed. “That’s not it,” he said, and explained that other friends of Grace’s were also taking turns in the rotation. But it was true that he never much bothered with these domestic tasks in his own life, where he had only himself to look after.
“Okay,” Malcolm said good-naturedly. “Isn’t it weird, though, hanging out with Grace and her kid?”