“I’ll call you,” she said, her voice a little thick, “when I know the visiting hours.”
“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “They haven’t got enough bodies to keep me out when I want to come in. Visiting hours or not.”
He gave her a batch of magazines he’d bought her. And then there was nothing to do. He wanted to get out of there. He wanted to run. She felt herself coil and tighten in. She wanted him to go. They were ill at ease. In twenty years he had never been ill at ease with her. In twenty years he’d never wanted to run away from her. They hugged each other.
“Some nice sabbatical I’m having,” he said.
“Too bad this didn’t happen last year,” she said. “You could have skipped a bunch of classes.”
“David has to get the bus at seven-thirty,” she said. “And Dan at quarter of eight. Dan always has his breakfast while he’s watching ‘Beaver.’”
“Yeah,” he said. “I know all about that.”
“And you take my tapes tomorrow to Endicott. Class starts at nine.”
“I know that.”
“And you know where to go.”
“Yeah.”
“Okay.”
They stepped away from each other. He went to the door. “I love you,” he said.
“Love,” she said.
“If an intern makes a move on you, tell him your husband’s going to kill him.”
“Maybe I will and maybe I won’t,” she said.
He went out the door and left the hospital.
Joan closed the door and looked out the window. The room was bright and pleasant. The hospital was very quiet. Sunday afternoon quiet. She sat in the chair and read a little bit in the magazines that he’d brought her, but it was hard to concentrate. She looked at her watch. Actually it was David’s watch and much too big for her wrist, but she couldn’t stand not knowing the time and she’d borrowed it for the occasion. Four-thirty. A little early to put on the jammies and hop into bed. She got up and looked at her face in the mirror. She redid her eye makeup. She looked at her breasts; even. One on each side. She sat in the chair by the window and read People magazine and listened to the sounds of trays clattering and nurse’s aides talking and supper being served. She was hungry. Every once in a while she opened her door and looked out. No one paid her any attention, so she closed it again and read on. You know how nurses are. They don’t like it if you re naggy or demanding. You’ve got to be Harriet Humble while you’re in here, kiddo, you gotta be real nice to everybody.
Chapter 14
He drove home balanced between relief and desolation. His responsibilities for her were shared now. She was in the hands of professionals. There’s more to it than that, though, he thought. It’s the paternalism, too. A duly constituted authority has appeared on the scene. The beds are made square and the floors are clean and supper comes in balanced variety, planned by a dietician, properly nourishing, with the calories all counted. A clean well-lighted place. He felt no guilt over his relief. He knew he needed it. He knew his reactions were human, all of them. Objectively he was fascinated to watch what happened to him in extremity. If there’s such a thing as the essential self, he thought, as he pulled out onto Lynnfield Street, I am now in touch with it. This is real.
It was the implacable reality of it all that startled him regularly. She couldn’t die and yet she might. He could not lose her and yet he might. Death isn’t the mother of beauty. It’s just death. The realist bastard there is. It was a reality he faced with a desolation too profound to speak, even to himself. And he felt himself press against it with a soundless inarticulate certainty that he could stand the desolation. I have two sons. He said to himself. I have two sons.
He pulled into his driveway under the thirty-year-old sugar maple that was starting to green. In March they had tapped it, and taken out enough sap for three quarts of maple syrup. He’d closed the hole with a plug made from a maple branch and already the tree was beginning to heal around it.
Inside the boys seemed easy and unsuspicious. Both had been in the hospital at one time or another and it held no mysteries for them. But he didn’t want to be home. It was too bright, too pleasant, and he knew the bright pleasantness might be illusory. He was hard pressed to be easy and unconcerned.
“I gotta go tell Jude that Mom’s all settled in, and where she is and stuff,” he said.
Dave nodded. Dan said, “Okay.”
He walked across the street and into Judy’s house. Her kids were in the den watching TV. Judy was in the kitchen.
“John’s got hockey,” she said. “How is she?”
“Good,” he said. “She’s in West Wing Two. Private room, which is good.”
“Is she okay?”
“Yeah. She’s scared. She’s scared most that they’ll keep cutting away at her.”
Judy started to cry. She said, “Oh, Ace.”
“I won’t let them cut away a piece at a time. I promised her that.” He felt the old feeling. The achiness in the throat, the voice becoming hoarse, and he started to cry too. It was the only time.
“Jesus Christ, Ace, I’m supposed to be consoling you.”
He turned from her, embarrassed that he’d cried and that his nose was runny.
“You’re doing swell, Jude,” he said. He got a paper towel from her towel rack and blew his nose.
From the front door a voice said, “Hello” and Bill Ganem came in with two of his children.
Judy, red-eyed and weeping, said, “Hi, Bill.” Ace blew his nose again.
“Is Eileen with you?” Ace said.
“She’s in New Jersey with Barbara and Billy. I was up at my mothers and thought I’d stop off on my way home.”
He knew something was wrong. “Where’s John and J?” he said. Bill had known them since they were all eighteen, and he’d always called Joan by her first initial, no one could remember why now, if there had even been a reason.
“John’s got hockey,” Judy said. She looked at Ace. “Why don’t Cindy and Sally go watch TV with my kids,” Jude said.
Bill shooed his daughters into the den. When they were gone Ace said, “This is going to be tough to hear and you don’t have to have any reactions to it. I wouldn’t know what to say if I were you and it’s okay. Joan’s in the hospital, she found a lump in her left breast and it’s probably cancerous and they will probably have to take the breast.”
Bill’s round Arabic face darkened and the lines deepened and pain showed. It was one of his charms, a capacity for empathy that one rarely encountered. Sometimes people are only startled, Ace thought, but he hurts too. Like Jude.
“Jesus Christ,” Bill said. “Are they sure?”
“No. But they’re pretty sure. They’ll do some tests Monday and Tuesday, and biopsy her Wednesday. If it’s malignant they’ll take the breast before she wakes up.”