“I use it every day,” the man said. “I can’t leave Mommy. I can’t. Mommy is very sick.” He began to cry a little. He covered his face with his hands. “I can’t.”
Molly patted his back. The smell was less upsetting now that she knew what it was, but it was just as strong. It burned her nostrils. It stung her eyes. She said, as mildly as she could, “You don’t want your mother to catch something from my mother, do you?”
He shook his head.
“And if my mother catches something from his mother,” Molly said to the nurse, “you should know that my brother is a lawyer.”
But it was as if Molly were not there. The nurse, a small, even dainty woman, emanated authority, and she wanted this man, the source of disturbance on her floor, to go away. “Sir?” she said, her hands on her hips. “I really don’t want to have to call security.”
“I don’t think you understand,” Molly said. “This man will not be bullied and neither will we. We are in this together.” She stood in solidarity beside the unhappy, redolent man. “Aren’t we?”
He stopped crying and took his hands away from his face. He seemed afraid to look at the wee, mighty nurse, but he made eye contact with Molly, brief, furtive eye contact. Then he looked down at his mother. She didn’t move. The only sound in the room was her rasping breath. He gazed at her for what seemed a long time, then he squared his shoulders.
“Mommy,” he said, “we are calling your doctor.”
And he led the way to the nurses’ station.
When Molly got back to the room, the Bengay man was headed home and arrangements had been made to separate the two potentially infectious patients.
“Strength in numbers and the desire to get that poor guy off the floor.”
Daniel was holding their mother’s hand. She was awake again. “Good job!” he said to Molly.
Molly laughed. “That’s the voice people use for their kids. And dogs.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Joy said weakly, reminding herself of Aaron, which made her worry suddenly and viscerally how he was. “Daddy! How is Daddy?”
“Dad’s doing fine,” Daniel said. “He’s out of the hospital, how about that? He’s home.”
“But who’s looking after him? What is he eating? How is he—”
“It’s all taken care of, Mom,” Molly said. “You’ll see.”
13
The apartment was full of voices, all timbres, tones, and accents. It was like an orchestra. The cushions of the sofa cradled her aching body. She listened to the voices: a deep, male, harsh African musicality; the free-for-all vowels of Portuguese English; the loops of female Polish. And Aaron, his intermittent wailing reaching back to Middle Eastern chanting in its cadences, as if all his ancestors were crying out at once.
Joy opened her eyes. A man the color of ebony smiled at her as he walked past the door toward the kitchen. He stopped to confer with a boxy woman in wide capri pants. And there was Elvira, too, the Bergmans’ housekeeper, tall and thin as a daddy long-legs, behind the boxy lady, nodding. It was such a lively group, the three of them speaking together, one more incomprehensible than the next, incomprehensible to Joy, presumably to one another as well.
Joy closed her eyes again and listened to the languages she could not comprehend. It was as though she could comprehend nothing at all, drifting comfortably on the soft outskirts of comprehension. Eventually Danny introduced the compact, quiet black man. His name was Walter. Danny said that Walter came at night. Joy smiled at Walter. How kind of him to come at night to care for Aaron. To care for her. Lovely, she said when Danny introduced her to Wanda, the woman shaped like a UPS package. Wanda emitted a gurgling laugh. Thank you, Joy said. Wanda emitted the gurgling laugh again. She spoke only Polish. Joy said, How kind of you.
“Wanda and Walter are trained in changing the colostomy bag,” Danny said. “And they taught Elvira.”
“Lovely.”
“You absolutely cannot do it anymore. The doctor said you can’t even touch it. That might be how you got C. diff.”
“C. diff is very, very dangerous.” She remembered now, she had heard about C. diff on The Joan Hamburg Show on the radio. “Treacherous.”
“So you really have to take it easy, Mom. Will you be able to do that? Just rest and let your strength come back?”
“Danny, you’re so good to me. You and your sister are so good to me.”
“Molly will be back in a few weeks.”
“She’s a good daughter. I am so lucky.”
Daniel smiled. She reminded him of his daughters when they had a low-grade fever. How sweet they became.
“You’re okay with not touching the pouch? Molly and I were a little worried. We know you like to take care of everything, especially about Dad, which is admirable, completely understandable. But this is really important. No pouch.”
“Lovely,” Joy said, closing her eyes. “Lovely.”
She could remember, in a soft, foggy way, the motions of taking care of Aaron, gathering his pills, counting them, explaining what each one was, then explaining again, helping him out of his wet pajamas, squatting down to get each of his enormous feet into his pant legs … And then the pouch, removing it, emptying it, washing Aaron, drying the hole, affixing the new pouch …
* * *
Each night Walter helped her to the bathroom. He brought her things to eat and helped her move the spoon from the bowl to her mouth. What a kind, kind man. When he appeared in the room carrying a tray or a basin of water, she was always pleasantly surprised. There was that kind man again.
When it was not night, there were the other kind people. Elvira, wiry and fast as a greyhound, whisking into the room and whisking out again. She had worked for Aaron and Joy for many years, coming every other week for a few hours. But now, Danny explained, she was coming in three mornings a week. She had insisted, he said. She didn’t trust the others. Joy smiled when he said this. She smiled when he said anything. She really did not care what he said or what anyone else said as long as she did not have to move, as long as she could lie on the couch and rest. Never had fatigue been this heavy, never had it been this welcome. Lovely, she said when someone spoke to her. Thank you, she said. How kind of you.
“So kind,” she said. “Everyone is so kind.”
14
Could Molly have ever convinced Freddie to move to New York? Of course she could have. Even though Freddie had a tenured position teaching English at UCLA while Molly had been an adjunct at a community college in New York. Even though Molly had a better position here and was paid more, too. Even though her new Catalina Island investigations, unlike the work she’d been doing in Syria, were not likely to get her kidnapped or beheaded. But she did not want to convince Freddie to move to New York.
She thought guiltily of her mother and father trapped in their apartment. Freddie’s father, Duncan, was old, too, as Freddie sometimes had to remind her, but that had not entered into Molly’s decision. He did not weigh on Molly’s mind as he should have, meaning she often forgot he existed.
But he did exist, he was old, and now he had fallen.
Freddie spoke to the paramedics, who said they’d thought at first that Duncan’s hip was broken, but he was standing on it, so it couldn’t possibly be broken. “The pain would be unbearable,” they said. “Take him to the doctor, though, just to make sure there are no sprains.”
The assisted-living facility where Duncan lived was called Green Garden, so Freddie and Molly naturally called it Grey Gardens. When they arrived, Molly waited in the car while Freddie went upstairs and got her father into a wheelchair.