One time it was that new green that they say you can see for two miles on a clear day. It stayed that way, they told me later, for four days. Something about those pinched nerves.
And one day I searched and searched and could find no green at all, even the dark, almost pleasant kind. I missed it. Believe me, I missed it.
I didn’t want them coming, and they sensed it and didn’t come any more. But I liked to have Connie come. I liked it when there was traction on the two arms and the leg and both legs felt dead and the bandages on my head covered all but my mouth and my right eye.
She came every day. She wept a little every time she came.
“Don’t cry, Connie.”
“I–I can’t help it, George.”
“I’m getting better, they keep telling me. So why are you crying?”
“It’s so awful to see you there like this.”
“Just think, Connie. I might be dead. Wouldn’t that be worse, Connie? Wouldn’t it? Or maybe you’d like that better.”
“What do you mean? What do you mean?”
“Then there wouldn’t be all this pain and suffering.”
“Oh.”
“What did you think I meant, Connie? What on earth could I have meant except that, dearest? I know that you love me very much. You’ve told me so often.”
“It’s hard to understand you, George, not seeing your face and all. Just your... eye. What you say just comes out... and it’s hard to know what you mean sometimes.” She always worked hard on that explanation. It meant a lot to her to get it right. Her knuckles always had a bone-white look while she talked to her loving husband.
Every time it was a lovely game. And I had all the time in between to plan the next visit.
“Connie, I hope you’re taking good care of the car.”
“But, George! It was a total loss.”
“Sorry, dearest. I keep forgetting. We’ll have to get a new one. But when we do you’ll help me see that it’s well taken care of.”
“Of course, George.”
There was a continuity about it. If I kept after her too hard she’d get suspicious. Then the fear would show in her eyes. I’d let her carry the fear around for a few visits and then I would drive it away.
“I’m so lucky to have a wife like you, Connie.”
“Thank you, George.”
“I know I’ve been acting strangely. But I haven’t the courage to do what I planned. I wanted to estrange you, to drive you away, so that you could find a new life with a whole man, not some smashed item like me.”
“Is that what you were doing?”
“Of course!”
“Oh, George! Darling, I thought—” A very abrupt stop.
“What did you think?”
“Well, that maybe the accident had... well, hurt your head in some way so that you were beginning to think I was to blame for the accident.” Then she laughed to show how silly that idea was. She flushed, too. I imagine she was considering her boldness to be the best defense, in addition to being rather fun because of the risk.
“You? Hey, I was alone in the car, remember?”
“You’ve always driven too fast.”
“Never again.”
At the end of the visiting period she would kiss me and go. Before the bandages came off my face she would press her lips to mine very sweetly. Loving little silver-blond Connie with those enormous gray eyes and that dainty figure.
After the bandages came off and there was just the patch on the eye she kissed hard, but not in passion. As though it was something she had to do hard and quick in order to do it at all.
After her fears had gone away and after, I guessed, she had told Louie that she had been wrong about thinking that I might have guessed, I would slowly bring her suspicions back to a boil.
I was giving Connie and Louie some exciting dates. Giving them something to talk about.
A good thing about carrying too much life insurance is that you sometimes have too much accident insurance along with it. And I had a lot. Complete coverage of all medical expenses plus thirty-five hundred consolation prize for the loss of the eye plus six hundred a month for complete disability until I could get back to my job. They said a full year from the time of discharge from the hospital.
To go home would give me more time for the game I was playing with them. But it was good in the hospital, too. I could lie there at night, and it was as if I had them fastened to a string, two puppets. When I yanked the string they jumped.
The books talk about having to live with guilt and how it can subtly change the relationship of lovers. But I was no body, firmly and safely planted away. I was between them. I wondered if she could taste my lips when she kissed Louie, and if he looked deep into her eyes and saw a hospital bed...
The nurse was something else. A tall, gawky girl, almost grotesquely angular and yet full of a strange grace. Miranda. She charged at the bed looking capable of tripping and falling over it, yet always her hands were light as moths. Her eyes were deep-set, smallish, a brilliant and Technicolor blue. She knew.
I saw it in the strange, wry amusement in her eyes.
Once she told me she knew. She cranked the bed up a little to rest tired muscles. She stood and folded her arms. I heard the starched rustle of the material. Her hair was a soft dusty black under the cap. Her mouth was wide and quite heavy.
“Delirium,” she said in her abrupt voice, “is usually dull.” She had a trick of starting a sentence boldly and then letting it fall away.
“I was delirious, I expect.”
“But not dull, George.” That was the tip. Up until that point it had been a most discreet and proper Mr. Corliss.
“Like living out a soap opera, Miranda?”
She shrugged. It was typical of her to shrug too hard, hiking her wide, thin shoulders almost up to her ears. “But no part in it for me, I would think.”
I watched her. There was nothing awkward in our silence.
“Delirium isn’t much to go on, Miranda. Not when there’s been a brain injury.”
“Perhaps the delirium is partly due to her. So sweet. She’s all tinkle and ice and teensy little gestures. Oh, she’s a one, that one. What mothers want their daughters to grow up to be — on the outside.”
“And the inside. Will you hazard a guess on the inside, Dr. Miranda?”
No more banter. She looked hard at me, and up through the little blue eyes welled the fanatic light. “Rotten,” she whispered. “Dead, soft rotten.” She turned and walked out with her lunging stride, a whisper of starch.
It made the game better. A new piece on the board, allowing more permutations and combinations.
Later that day I had my arm around her as I walked. She looked as though her back and shoulders would feel hard, slatted. She was a softness and a warmth. I took five steps away from the bed and four back to the wheelchair. Her lip was caught under her teeth and her breath came hard as though it were she who was making the effort.
The next day, dozing on the sun porch, I felt someone staring at me. I looked over and saw Miranda in the doorway. We looked at each other for an impossible time, the white antiseptic walls and the neat floral arrangements tilting and spinning away until we looked across a bottomless void at each other and there was nothing alive in creation except the wild blue of her eyes. When she turned and left, without speaking, the time weave was ripped across with a sound I could almost hear.
The young doctor and the absentminded old one came in one morning and told me that this was the day I would go home, that an ambulance was being provided, that Connie had been informed, that arrangements had been made for Nurse Wysner to live in for a time until Connie became accustomed to the necessary work.