Cheapskate in Love (33 page)

Madder than ever, because of all the money he had wasted, he
railed against Donna and all the other women he had ever dated, including the
one he had been married to decades ago. Flowers, candy, clothing, dinners,
shows, vacations, all of those he had lavished upon them—within a budget,
of course—and where had that brought him?
To a hospital
bed.
He denounced their greed and selfishness, their self-interest and
pickiness, their inconsideration. They had only wanted to use him and then toss
him aside. Again, he seemed to be venturing down a path of self-indictment,
because his past behavior fell short of an exemplary generosity. Now that he
thought about it, they might have treated him that way, because they saw that’s
how he was treating them.

He switched his reflections to those women who had been
grateful, as far as he could tell, who had accepted his gifts with the goodwill
that was his intention, before they had turned against him. It was a short
list, a very short list. There was only one woman he could recall, who had
truly seemed to appreciate a gift from him. There was only one, who had come to
his help before. And he couldn’t say he had actually had goodwill toward her.
He remembered how he had treated her on different occasions, since her husband
died. He couldn’t repress the flood of accusing thoughts that poured forth now,
and tears began to well within his eyes.

His injury and helplessness gave him a different
perspective. He remembered how she had called him a fool. Stan and his sister
had called him one, too. And for the first time, he felt that they were right:
He had been a fool. He deserved to be left at church without a ride. He
deserved to lie practically immobile in a hospital bed, at the mercy of others.
He had been chasing illusions, youthful follies, while the best opportunity he
had ever stumbled upon had been in front of him, his for the taking. It was an
error as great, he thought, as running by a twenty-dollar bill lying on the
ground, in his haste to get to a final-reduction clothing sale, where nothing
remained in his size. Yes, he had been a big fool!

The next action that Bill took may appear unsurprising. It
would seem he was compelled to it by his circumstances. Dire need can force us
to take a different course of action than we would have considered before, and
to Bill, the risk of going to a nursing home was a dreadful danger indeed. The
extremity of his dislike for spending six months in such a place would easily
seem to alter his mind, so that he now greeted willingly an option that not
long ago he would have held in the fiercest detestation.

But a deeper, surprising change had begun in Bill, spurred
by Stan’s advice and his own reflections, which is as rare as it is wonderful.
Although events may force us to take actions, which we would have previously
avoided, our customary feelings are not so easily altered and seldom reversed.
A change of heart, an opening of our feelings for others, who were not close
before, may be the most difficult accomplishment for any person of any age,
because it must come from within. It can’t be wrung or coaxed from us by powers
outside, even when there is a mortal threat. As difficult as it was, Bill
underwent the beginning of such a change now. His fears, his shame, his regret,
and sadness so softened his heart, scarred with greed and stinginess and hurt,
that a little seed of real affection sprouted.

A couple of tears glided down his cheeks, as he hoped there
was still a chance that the twenty-dollar bill he had run past before was still
lying on the ground for him to pick up.

He pressed the button to call for a nurse. After a few
minutes of waiting, since there was a nursing station near his room, he called
out rather quietly, “Nurse.”

A minute later, he called more loudly, “Nurse.”

After another minute, he howled, “Nurse!”

“I’m not deaf,” said the nurse, whose name was Gwen,
bustling into his room. “No need to holler. It just so happens there
are
other patients here. You all seem to think this is some
kind of fancy, five-star hotel, where I should come running every time you
blink. But I
ain’t
ever seen one of you tip for room
service. When that happens, it will be a blessing from the Lord! Now, how may I
help you?” Despite the constant pressures of her job, Gwen, who was in her
forties, tried to perform more than her duties demanded and was something of a
busybody, although she always had her patients’ best interests in mind.

“I want to make another call.”

Gwen picked his Blackberry up off the nightstand and
scrolled through the new messages. “There’s a message from Linda,” she said.
That was the only new message that she thought worth mentioning. “‘Let’s go
vacation in China. Hike Great Wall.’”

“Tell her I’m in a coma,” he grumbled. “No, don’t,” he said
upon a second thought. “She might come to try and cure me. Delete it. Now dial
the number for Helen in the contact list, with George in parentheses behind
it.”

“I hope George doesn’t mind,” she said, with a whiff of
suspicion.

“He’s dead.”

“Then he shouldn’t,” was her crisp reply. She felt much
better about proceeding and held the phone next to Bill’s head, after dialing
the number.

“Helen,” his voice wavered, caught with emotion, when she
answered. “This is Bill.”

Helen briskly asked him what he wanted. Her feelings were
not fluttering like his, and she wanted to end the call quickly. She thought he
had little to say and nothing she wanted to hear.

“Helen, I...I,” he stuttered. “Can
..
.Can
you...” The chaos of his conflicting emotions and thoughts, as he struggled to
act differently than he had in the past—his desire still caught in the
vice of former habits and held back by his timidity—caused new tears to
trickle from his eyes and snot to drip from his nose.

Gwen grabbed a tissue and clamped it down on his nose.
“Blow,” she blared, and Bill complied.

Both of them heard Helen’s voice, wondering in alarm. “Bill,
what’s wrong? Where are you?”

The situation required a professional’s expertise, Gwen thought,
and she lifted the Blackberry to answer Helen herself. “Ma’am,” she said, in
her most authoritative tone, “I hope you can come see this poor wretch. He’s in
the hospital, helpless as a baby, and nowhere near as cute. Someone needs to
care for him for a while. It’ll be a thankless task, I reckon. I should know.
I’m a nurse and tend to the likes of him everyday. The headaches I have could
kill an elephant. But somebody has to do it. He shouldn’t be too much trouble.
Although he’s stiff as a log, I daresay he’s gentler than before.”

Chapter 35

That night at the French restaurant they favored, Helen met
Sandra and Joan for dinner and an emergency consultation. While they sipped
wine before their first course, Helen explained everything about what had happened
to Bill and what he had asked her to do that afternoon when she went to the
hospital.

“He wants you to do
what
?”
Joan exploded. The people at every table around them turned to look, wanting to
know what he wanted, thinking it must be something extremely unusual, perhaps
quite indecent.

“You’re kidding, aren’t you?” Sandra said more quietly than
Joan, trying to avoid attracting more attention, but she was no less amazed.

“Tell us you’re kidding, so we can laugh about it,” Joan
demanded. “And next time you want to be funny, talk about politics or something
else, where the humor is obvious.”

The noisy surprise of Joan and Sandra didn’t upset Helen,
because she expected it. She remained calm and a bit withdrawn. She was
thinking about what she had seen and heard that afternoon, and she was trying
to probe the future. During her hospital visit, Bill had apologized for his
past behavior toward her. But she was unsure whether his feelings had really
changed, or if he merely wanted a caregiver for six months, and she was the
only possible choice outside of a nursing home. He hadn’t said anything about
what he felt, but he had seemed uncertain about what he did say. Maybe he
wasn’t ready to tell her more.

“She’s not kidding,” Sandra commented, eyeing Helen’s quiet
detachment.

Helen shook her head no, so they knew she was serious.
“That’s what he asked,” she said, in a tone that implied she hardly believed
it, too.

“After what he did to you, does he expect that...
”
Sandra began to say.

“You tell him no. No way, no how, no nothing, no NEVER.”
Joan’s voice rose again, this time in a crescendo with a ringing climax. The
surrounding tables all looked in their direction, longing to know more than
before what he wanted.

“You’re not really considering what he said?” Sandra asked.

Helen raised her eyebrows and slightly shrugged. She wasn’t
sure.

“So Tom didn’t work out,” Joan fired
off,
exasperated that Helen could even hesitate over what Bill had asked. “Big deal.
The phone book is full of men. Finding something better than Bill shouldn’t be
that hard.”

“She does have a point,” Sandra said to Helen.

All through dinner, Joan and Sandra criticized Bill and his
repugnant request—Joan much more strongly than Sandra—pressing upon
Helen other better options. But the longer they talked, the more her opinion
moved in the opposite direction: To forgive Bill’s past treatment of her and
hazard another try. Before her arrival home, she had determined what to do and
what she would tell him in the morning.

Late the next morning, which was a Monday, Katie was again
conversing with Bill on speakerphone, unbeknownst to him, so that everyone in
the office could hear why he wouldn’t be in. Bill explained, that due to an
accident, he would be confined to bed for six months. Katie elicited enough
details from him about the accident, despite his reluctance to elaborate, that
Claire, Debbie, and Matt were howling with laughter at his misfortunes. They
tried to contain themselves by covering their mouths with their hands. But
Katie had to vigorously gesture to them to quiet down even more, so that Bill
wouldn’t suspect that others were listening.

“Bill, I’m so sorry to hear that,” Katie said to him, trying
hard not to giggle herself. The laughter of the others was so hysterical it was
contagious. “How long will you be in the hospital?”

“I’m going home today,” he said, with a bright sound in his
voice.

The staff was puzzled, and their laughing diminished. “How
can you be there in a body cast?” Katie asked.

“A neighbor will take care of me.” The brightness in his
voice had the unmistakable quality of happiness, and the office was completely
silent with surprise. They could sense that Bill’s life had undergone some kind
of change, and they were unsure how to relate to this new person, this
different person whom they were listening to. To them, it was unthinkable that
someone would volunteer to help the previous Bill, who was the only Bill they
knew, for any period of time. Old Bill was ridiculous, an adult aspiring to be
a teenager, but this new Bill was an enigma. Suddenly they had respect for him,
and there was a pause of several moments in the conversation.

“Katie, are you there?” Bill asked.

“Yes, yes, we’re—I’m here,” Katie rushed to say. More artfully,
she continued, “Could you repeat what you just said?”

Everyone in the office leaned toward her phone to better
hear any revelation he might make of the mystery.

The next day toward evening, a hospital worker brought Bill
to his studio apartment in a wheelchair, while another hospital worker rolled
in a hospital bed behind them. The adjustable bed was to be left in the
apartment, so that he could more easily eat in bed and transfer to the
wheelchair, when he needed to use the bathroom or move around for another
reason.

The journey to his apartment was a source of great stress to
Bill, because he thought other residents and the building staff would snicker,
when they saw his disabled condition. For someone who had always acted younger
than the young, chasing the youngest women who would talk with him, he thought
he would appear to them as having suffered a sudden, catastrophic decline. He
thought he would look like a sad case, a cripple barely clinging on to life.
His face was as rigid and stiff as his back brace, as he was rolled toward the
entrance of the building, through the lobby, and down the corridor to his
studio. Whenever he passed anyone, his facial features were totally impassive,
and they grew grimmer and more stone-like, when he saw Jonathan at the front
desk. He feared to hear what they thought. He didn’t say anything to anyone or
even nod when someone greeted him.

His mood changed, when he was wheeled into his apartment,
where the door was propped wide open. Helen was inside, moving furniture around
to make room for the new bed.

“Welcome home, Bill,” she said.

He smiled and relaxed.

Later that evening, when he was settled into his new bed,
and Helen had fed him the last spoonfuls of a soup she had made, she placed the
dirty dishes in the sink and returned to his bedside with an emergency call
device.

“I’ll try to come before the home care attendant arrives in
the morning,” she told him, “but if I don’t, the front desk will let her in. If
you need anything before she gets here, or there’s a problem, call me. Just
press this button, and I’ll come.” She showed him the device and placed it near
his hand, wrapping the cord around his wrist.