No, it hasn’t been like that, although I’ve certainly loved a lot of them.
Actually, don’t tell me. It’s not that I’m not curious. I’d just rather not know.
You’d respect me more if I were a ladykiller.
I do prefer strong men. If you’ve let them all do to you what I did to you, that would disgust me, to tell the truth.
Do you remember the high school dance, when you invited me and then picked that boy who was—
Smarter and better put together? That wasn’t me. That was Zoë Conway, who became a state prosecutor. Of course my news is out of date, but I think that if she had died I would have heard about it. You invited me to the dance, but I turned you down. We all gossiped about it.
And Zoë disinvited me at the last minute, so I never—
What changed you? Because, now that I think about it, you actually are a ladykiller, a very successful one. You know how to keep my interest. You don’t need me the way you used to—
Because I’m dying.
No, that’s not all of it.
Well, I’ve had a lot of pussy in my time. That gave me confidence. And I’ve been good at pleasuring women, which is the most important thing.
What would you like to do with me right now? Not that I’d let you.
First I’d strip off that winding-sheet of yours—
Why do you keep calling it that? It’s my favorite leopard print dress—
And I’d very carefully brush the ants and dirt off your bones. I’d get in between your ribs and clean with a child’s toothbrush. And while I did that, I’d be singing to you, songs from when we were seventeen. I’d clean out your eyesockets with cotton swabs, very very gently, in case there’s anything left, and I’d comb your hair — you still have some. I’d comb it straight down your backbone. I’d brush your teeth for you, and I’d kiss you where you used to have a mouth. I’d scour out your pelvis with sweetgrass and lavender oil. Then I’d start kissing you there. I’d lick your bones right there. And afterward I’d go to a jeweler and buy a ring that would fit your pretty skeleton-hand, Victoria…
At least you can make me laugh. Honestly, I don’t find much to laugh about when you’re gone.
Do you wish I stayed longer?
Actually, your visits make me guilty. You don’t have much time left, and I’m not giving you anything.
Yes you are.
Do you love me?
I’ll take a leaf out of your book, and say: I’m not going to tell you.
I don’t love you at all. But I’m undeniably attracted to you.
Because I’m alive, I guess.
That’s much of it.
Would you ever choose to live with me? I mean, if you couldn’t go home—
You do love to make up stories, don’t you?
So do you, darling! This morning I was rereading one of your old letters—
I told you to destroy them!
Well, I didn’t, because I was in love with you—
But I told you!
I never promised.
Yes you did.
Anyhow, you wrote it exactly a week before my seventeenth birthday (you were always conscientious about dating them, Victoria). You had dreamed you had sleepwalked to the shower, and later you wondered if you had really dreamed it or—
Did you ever show my letters to anybody?
No.
Swear it.
I swear. But what does it matter to you?
Well, it does. It may seem stupid to you—
What’s the longest you’ve cried?
Here? Sometimes I’ve cried for a year or two straight. But I’m enjoying your visits now, even if I occasionally get irritated.
Thank you.
By the way, do you have a best friend?
He’s dead.
Then I might have met him.
No, he’s not at the cemetery.
What’s his name?
Luke.
Of course I don’t know him. Why is he your best friend?
For years he was almost like my older brother. He taught me how to organize weight in my backpack. Whenever anything went wrong in my house, he could usually fix it or tell me how to. There were certain things he didn’t deal with, like leaky roofs or doors out of true. He did a lot for me. When my father was alive, he and my father used to do things for me…
It’s good to be sad, said Victoria. That makes you more like me.
Gazing up at the constellated sky, he felt as if he were about to sink into black water which was snowed with cattail-down. It was getting dark earlier nowadays. Carefully he inquired: Can I love you except by being sad about you?
I’ll consider that.
Luke was very wise. He said so many things that I always remember. For instance: Don’t keep making the same mistake. Make a different mistake. And I could talk to him about my love life. When I was younger I used to ask him for advice, and then when he was suffering with Stephanie I wanted to give him advice, just because I loved him and that was something I could give, and sometimes it helped him, or her, but he was more his own man than I was. Now I think I’m becoming more my own man; I don’t know why—
Because you’re dying.
Into his mind came Luke’s assertion that dying could become freedom. Even while he felt relatively well, Luke had begun giving up ever more experiences and aspirations as well as things, in order to die better. But he and Stephanie never had children. That must have made it easier. Victoria had fought death, for her children’s sake.
Luke, to whom trust came hard, had gentled toward him over the years, but until the end, so it seemed, could not help but suspect even this close friend of selfish motives. If he made a date with Luke for lunch, Luke would pick him up at the station — then let fall some grim remark which implied that Luke knew very well that his friend was using him to get a ride. Or he might give Luke a book he had read and liked, in which case Luke might say that it must not have been a good book, or the moon-dreamer would have kept it. As for him to whom Luke had given so many rides over the years, he himself had surely been negligent or ungrateful on occasion; he and Luke had hurt each other every now and then, mostly by saying no. Of the two of them, Luke was more generous with his capabilities, having more; while the moon-dreamer more easily gave away money and possessions to others. What Luke did for his wife — the repaired washing machine and balanced checkbook — often went unnoticed by her; what he blamed her for were her temper and her flightiness. It must have been his cancer which inspired or compelled him into trusting Stephanie. About the cancer Luke once said: What I hate more than anything is throwing up. That must be the reason I got this disease, so that I have to throw up over and over again. — And so it might be argued that the illness refined or at least steeled him, or at least that he could have made a virtue out of his suffering. Not Victoria!
Why are you quiet? Do you need to go?
Victoria, tell me how long I have to live.
I already said I wouldn’t.
But you know?
Of course I do.
If I had a month, I’d live differently than if I had three, or—
And then you’d want to know whether I love you, and what I will and won’t do, and which sort of future we’d have, when I’ve already told you how I feel about futures. That was another reason I left you. You demanded certainty from me. What seventeen-year-old girl can give that?
But you married at twenty-one. Are you glad that you did?
I’m so grateful that I had children.
When we were seventeen, you told me that you might marry for money. You were laughing when you said it—
If I’d lived to be forty I might have had an affair. Maybe with you. But I never would have married you.
Why not?
Because nobody changes very much, so what I disliked in you would have remained. Besides, you wouldn’t have loved me as much as you did before. It’s refreshing to be adored. You’d stop doing that if you knew me—