“Good for you, Doctor,” Gregor said.
She often wondered if he thought she was a real doctor. He held the door and smiled and nodded encouragement.
The shock of the cold almost stopped her. The snow, banked up on the sidewalk, looked ponderous and old. But the sunlight and the sky, that blaze of blue sky, were miraculous after so many weeks of looking out the window at sky the color of an old nickel.
They turned into the park where Aaron had spent so many afternoons.
“Isn’t this nice?” Joy said. “Oh dear god, we’re free!”
Aaron, inside his heap of warm clothing, said nothing.
“Okay, Aaron.” She sighed, disappointed in spite of herself. “Have it your way.”
She sat on a bench blinking in the sunlight like a night creature.
“Koffee?” Wanda said.
Whenever Wanda said coffee, it seemed to Joy that the word began with a k.
“No,” she said. “Thank you, but I dare not.” Dare not. Where had that come from? A book she’d read? Her grandmother? Did all grandmothers use the same phrases no matter what era they lived in? “My digestion,” she added primly, as if Wanda did not know their digestive behavior, hers and Aaron’s, intimately.
“You go,” she said to Wanda. “Go get your koffee. I’ll watch Aaron.”
And that is what she did, gazing at him with the love of decades past and the angry exhaustion of a sleepless night and the terror of the days and nights to come.
I dare not think that way, she said to herself. I dare not.
The air smelled cold, but the sun gave the illusion of warmth. Snow that had piled on the bushes dripped, just a bit. It was almost like spring, which is just what the man approaching, pushing a familiar-looking red walker, said.
“It’s almost like spring!”
He was accompanied by a pink-cheeked woman who immediately began to speak in Polish to Wanda. This must be Aaron’s friend, Joy thought. She watched as the man settled himself on the neighboring bench. He adjusted his gloves and his hat and his scarf, then turned to her, obviously about to speak. Instead, he stared.
“Joy?” he said. “Joy?”
“Karl? Oh my god. Karl!”
They clambered to their feet and embraced.
“Sixty years? I think that’s how long it’s been, Karl. I can’t believe it. I can’t believe you recognized me.”
“Sixty-six years,” he said. “I would know you anywhere.”
They sat down again, on the same bench this time. So this was Aaron’s park friend Karl. This was Karl, her Karl.
“Karl,” she said. “You really are Karl.”
He was better-looking, in a way, than he had been as a young man. Old age suited his angular face. His face had been awkward for a young man’s face. Now it was distinguished. He wore a beautiful overcoat, and his scarf was elegantly tied. He exuded prosperity and confidence. Even the red walker looked natty. It matched his luxurious silk scarf.
“I wondered if I’d ever see you again,” he said.
She had wondered, too. “The world is strange,” she said.
“Wondrous strange.”
“You have met my husband,” Joy said, putting a hand on Aaron’s sleeve. “Aaron, your friend Karl is a very old and dear friend of mine.”
Aaron nodded affably.
“I’ve heard about you from Aaron. But I had no idea you were you.”
Karl lived right down the block. He was a lawyer, or had been until he retired.
“I’m still working,” Joy said.
“It’s something you love,” Karl said with such assurance that Joy felt buoyed.
“Yes, I do.” Must remember that.
They talked until the clouds washed over the sun and the cold could no longer be ignored.
“Very much money,” Wanda said to Joy, when they were out of earshot, rolling her eyes toward Karl and his caretaker.
“He was poor as a church mouse when I knew him.”
But Wanda’s English did not include church mouse or the past tense. She said “Yes” emphatically, and they made their way home.
20
Danny arrived at the apartment for dinner an hour late, but Joy had expected as much. He worked hard, such long hours. But since Aaron had become so sick, Danny made sure to have dinner with her at least once a week, no matter how busy he was. He did it to be nice, she knew. Which both touched and saddened her. We all prefer to have someone visit for our company rather than be kept company, but she must not be greedy, she reminded herself. He was here, and as always when she saw him in the doorway, she was happy, deliriously happy. Sometimes she thought she would swoon with love for him. He put his arm beneath hers to walk her to the dining room, and she felt safe for the first time in days, since he had last been to see her, to be exact. He comforted her, just by being in the same room.
On the other hand, there he sat, expecting to be fed. Thank god for Wanda, because Joy had forgotten to arrange anything for dinner. She tried to remember what exactly she had done all day that kept her from taking care of dinner for Danny, sweet exhausted Danny coming from work in the cold.
Aaron was in bed. He’d had his dinner already, leftover turkey meat loaf from Joy’s ordered-in dinner the night before. He used to laugh when Joy fed him from the various dinners they had ordered in, saying she was a genius at assembling and rearranging garbage. Wanda had made stuffed cabbage and a cucumber salad for Danny, which she made him every time he was there, despite the fact that neither Aaron nor Joy could possibly digest that particular meal. Danny never seemed to notice he was the only one eating it. Joy was having the meat loaf left over from the leftover meat loaf she’d given Aaron. She watched Danny wolf down the stuffed cabbage in huge, animal mouthfuls. She really ought to have taught him better table manners. It had somehow not held him back in life: he did have a wonderful wife and wonderful children and a successful career. But his table manners … disgusting.
“Mom?” he said, and gently wiped the corner of her mouth with his napkin. “Catsup.”
“Dribbling?” she said. “Time to put me out to pasture.”
She was excited tonight, Daniel noticed. She folded and refolded her napkin. She absentmindedly picked up a lipstick from the cabinet behind her and applied it at the table using the back of her spoon to make sure it was not on her teeth.
“Going somewhere?” he asked.
“What? No!” She put the lipstick back. “No. Where would I go?”
“Well, it’s great you were able to get out to the park yesterday, anyway. Was Dad’s friend there?”
“Oh yes. Mmm-hmm. He was there.”
“Nice, isn’t he?” he said.
“Oh yes.”
Joy wondered why she didn’t tell Danny who Karl was. She certainly had nothing to hide. “Daddy just lit up when he saw him.”
Karl had been so gentlemanly, waiting at the gate to the park to let her and her entourage out first. She thought wistfully of Aaron, what a gentleman he had always been. He still was sometimes, an instinct that had outlived his memory. Joy noticed it when she stood up from the table, the way he tried to stand up, his hand reaching out to help her pull her chair back.
“Good,” Danny was saying. “Maybe it will warm up for real sometime soon. This weather is ridiculous. And people don’t understand it’s a symptom of climate change, just like global warming. They think it counters global warming…”
She listened contentedly as he talked about energy, how we squandered it, how there would be no energy left.
“I have no energy. Can you people help me?”
“Mom.”
Danny had devoted his professional life to combatting climate change. If he occasionally lost his sense of humor when it came to the environment, you couldn’t blame him. She just forgot now and then, forgot not to tease him.