“We’re so lucky to live here,” Molly said as they walked back to the parking lot. She was radiant in the blinking light from a bar, her cheeks glowing red, then green, and Freddie had to agree.
4
They had been sorority sisters, and they were still friends — Daphne, Eileen, Natalie, and Joy. Daphne got on Natalie’s nerves; Eileen got on Daphne’s nerves; Natalie, who was bossy, particularly about her politics, which were of the radical right, got on everyone’s nerves; but all three were extremely close to Joy, which had kept the group intact through all the decades and divorces. Every few months they would get together for a girls’ lunch.
“I’m not happy about this old-age business,” Joy said.
“I refuse to feel old,” Daphne said. She slapped the table. “Je refuse.”
The silverware and coffee cups rattled, and Joy marveled at Daphne, not a bit different from the day they met, sleek, beautiful, noisy, every auburn hair in place. Natalie was, as she had been since college, wearing chic, expensive bohemian clothes, her hair cut in the same bohemian bob with bangs. Eileen had been less glamorous than the others, but she had grown into her looks as she got older, looking somber but dignified these days. They all still had their marbles, though only two still had their husbands. But pretty good for a bunch of old bags, Joy thought.
“We’ve been friends for sixty-five years.”
“Our friendship could get Medicare,” Eileen said.
Natalie began to explain how Obamacare was ruining America.
“How’s the new great-grandchild?” Joy interjected, offspring being a successful diversion for any of the girls. Though she was asking Natalie, Daphne immediately began digging around in her bag, probably for her iThing with her own great-grandchild baby pictures on it.
“They want to name her ‘Quiet,’” said Natalie.
“Convenient,” Eileen said. “They can call her and discipline her at the same time.”
“Mine is two years old next week,” Daphne added, holding up a screen with a picture of a little girl with an ice-cream-smeared mouth.
“‘Quiet’?” Joy was saying. “Why don’t they just name her ‘No’?”
They started laughing and couldn’t stop. They laughed until tears rolled down their faces.
“Oh, that felt good,” Joy said.
All around them well-turned-out young women picked at their salads, preserving their waistlines, as women of Joy’s generation used to call that mealtime behavior. Joy looked at them fondly, then slathered butter on a piece of bread, damn the torpedoes. She had no gallbladder, the surgeon had taken it out when he took out the colon cancer, “the blue-plate special,” he’d called it, and never mind her waistline, she was not supposed to eat fat with no gallbladder. She sipped her espresso. That was verboten, too, atrial fibrillation. Delicious, though. It did not do to ignore the delicious.
“I love food,” she said.
The tablecloths were pink and pressed. The napkins were large.
“I love napery,” she said.
“Now, Joy,” Daphne said, suddenly serious, “what are we going to do about Aaron?”
“I think he’s dying,” Joy said, and she began to cry softly.
Daphne put her hand on Joy’s, which was an enormous gesture of support, Joy knew. Daphne did not like touching people.
“Nonsense,” Natalie said.
“What do the doctors say?” Eileen asked.
Joy shrugged, and they waited for her to pull herself together and blow her nose.
“You have to take care of yourself, too, you know,” Natalie said. “Even nurses have shifts.”
“That’s what my children say. They say I’m grandiose, taking care of Aaron myself.”
“Children. What do they know?” said Daphne. “They think they know everything. But just wait.”
Joy smiled. “They are so bossy, aren’t they? I do miss Molly ordering me around, though.” The smile disappeared. “Now that she’s in California.”
“What about Daniel?”
“Daniel is wonderful, but…”
They all nodded. Daniel was not a daughter.
“Anyway, I’m fine.”
“Isn’t there some sort of adult day care Aaron could go to?” Daphne was saying.
“No, god, no, he would hate that. He gets so disoriented. Then he gets frightened. Then he gets angry. He would hate it. What’s he going to do? Sit in a drum circle? Make paper flowers?”
“What does he do at home?”
“Watch NY1. And eat. It’s a wonder he doesn’t weigh five hundred pounds. And a lot of time is taken up with, you know, showers and getting dressed and creams and applications of … things. I won’t go into it. But trust me, a day goes by. And on the days I’m at work, who knows what could happen? I come home at lunch to check on him and I never know what I’ll find, don’t ask, and then, when I come back again at the end of the day…”
She went to the ladies’ room. She put her bags down on a pretty little lavender table, shed a few more tears, washed her face, and sat gripping the arms of the lavender chintz chair, feeling faint. The doctor said these dizzy spells were nothing to worry about as long as she didn’t fall. But what if she did fall? What was to stop her from falling? She could very easily have fallen just now …
“I know you all probably think he should go to a place,” she said to the girls when she got back to the table, “but he would be miserable. He needs landmarks, needs familiar things, needs his schedule.”
“But what about what you need?” they said.
“I’d be miserable, too. Visiting a nursing home? Every day? I’m exhausted just thinking about it. And they’re not very clean, you know. Full of infection.” There was something else, too, something no one seemed to realize: if Aaron went into a nursing home, he would be gone. “What about what you need”—Molly and Daniel asked her the same thing. But what she needed was so obvious. She needed Aaron.
“You’re a saint,” Daphne said.
It was not a compliment.
“One of those insane, self-destructive saints,” Natalie added.
The kind who wander around in masochistic determination until they contract an incurable disease or are roasted on a fire or skinned alive, they all agreed.
“Joy, sweetie, at the very least you need to hire someone. Hire a saint,” Natalie added.
When she got home, she noticed how gray Aaron looked, his hair, his beard, his face, and his hooded sweatshirt. He was not a man who was meant to be gray. Some men are, but Aaron ought to have been ruddy. He never had been, but he ought to have been. That’s what Joy thought.
“You have to get some fresh air,” she said.
He waved an enormous hand at her, as if he were swatting a fly.
“You’ll get too stiff, sitting around all day.”
He waved her words away again.
“Do you hear me? Where are your hearing aids?”
“WHAT?”
“Where are your hearing aids?” Joy repeated loudly.
“What are you talking about?” Aaron said. “Hearing aids!” He shook his head at her folly.
“I’m going to kill you, Aaron,” she said.
“WHAT?”
“I’m going to kill you, I said!”
Aaron smiled. “So you say.” He took her hand and kissed it.
“‘Joyful, Joyful, we adore thee,’” he sang as she helped him up and over to the walker. He often called her Joyful.
“Well,” she said.
“‘Hearts unfold like flowers before thee.’”
Sometimes the songs were hymns, sometimes bits of British vaudeville from the last century, but mostly Baroque, mostly Purcell. The lyrics still came warbling out, even when he could not remember what the conversation was about, perhaps more so when he couldn’t remember, couldn’t keep up. Aaron had wanted to be a singer, a classical singer, but he’d gone directly into the family business instead. The Depression did that to people, made them think straight. Or warped them into shape, that was more the case with Aaron. It had taken Joy many years to understand that.