Those We Love Most (30 page)

“Hey,” said Pete, soothing her. “Hey now. I don’t … I don’t have any of the reasons why. Or the answers. I don’t think there are any. Bad stuff just happens. It happens all around us every day. I know you’re punishing yourself, Maura, but, whatever you were doing, looking away or not paying attention, you have to forgive yourself.” Maura hiccupped a sob and then nodded.

They both stayed on the bed, rocking, as if afraid to break the spell. Something had dislodged and shifted between them this afternoon, a nestling together. Perhaps this was James’s gift, she thought, guiding them back toward each other here in his room.

“I want us to work, Pete,” Maura said softly, and it took a moment before she realized she was holding her breath.

“We’re working,” he said simply. “We’re getting there.”

They sat, each navigating their own thoughts, remembering James, transfixed by the pictures of him on the little bulletin board, the proof that he had been theirs. James standing next to Pluto in Disney World, James pitching, his fourth grade school portrait with the unnatural forced smile and fake blue cloud backdrop.

There was a bitter sweetness in sitting here together. Up to this point, their grief had manifested itself in such completely different ways. Today was one of the first times since the funeral they had sat together, comingling their respective sorrow. She was touched that Pete had taken her in here. It was a form of healing to lie on the bed together, the two people who had created James, shouldering their loss as a couple, in this sacred space.

“When Maura and Erin had sat with her in the hospital last month, they had repeatedly tried to get Margaret to go back to the hotel and nap, to read by the pool, to step away from the bedside. She wasn’t ready yet, she’d told her daughters. She occupied the hotel just to shower and sleep. The rest of the time was spent by Roger’s bedside, as if keeping constant vigil could improve his chances of recovery.

Although Roger had been awake for a month now and was participating in some basic therapies, there was no giant leap forward in his condition. It was hard to see him so incapacitated, and Margaret could intuit, beneath his intermittent thumbs-up and false bravado, the reek of anger and defeat. Where was the fight in him?

Margaret had to admit there was a kind of peace in being next to him like this, an abundance of unencumbered time together. It brought to mind the butterflies that she had trapped in a jar, as a girl, with a cotton ball of alcohol and then pinned to a bright felt background. Here was her husband, a perfect specimen, captured, but not present, not vitally alive.

Margaret reached out to touch his cheek while he slept. After four weeks in the hospital on a mostly liquid diet he had shed pounds, and his skin was sallow, hanging a bit from his face, muscles slack. The nurses had told him they were not allowed to shave him or cut his nails, hospital rules, and so Margaret had done it herself. She had been surprised by the emotions evinced during the act of grooming him. There was a gentle dignity in the simple tasks of physical caretaking that was hard to articulate. Lathering her husband’s face and drawing the razor carefully along his jawline was such an intimate experience it almost made her blush. The way his eyes followed her studied gaze during these moments felt like a found purpose.

Occasionally Margaret had allowed herself to imagine what life might be like if Roger never fully recovered. There was only one incidence she could remember when they’d discussed end-of-life issues and it was at a dinner party, not many years ago. Someone had introduced the idea of a DNR, a do-not-resuscitate order, and they had all been bantering about what they would do or what their wishes would be in this situation, each person boisterously offering their opinion over multiple cocktails.

“I would never want to be a vegetable,” she remembered Roger saying glibly. “If I couldn’t live fully and move and talk, I’d never want to stick around.” She could recall at that moment how confident he had looked, almost as if he couldn’t fathom that age and infirmity would ever catch up with him.

“I want to go out like that governor, was it Rockefeller?” Roger had continued, raising his highball glass at the table in a jesting toast. “He died of a heart attack, didn’t he, while having sex with a hooker? He sure went out with a bang!” That had elicited raucous laughter from the men at the table and some of the women. But to Margaret the joke was a razor nick too close to home, and she had masked the humiliation she felt with a polite smile.

“I don’t want to linger,” added their friend Richard. “If I end up like my dad, in a hospital and riddled with cancer, just take me out back and shoot me.” The guests around the table had nodded knowingly, with the hypothetical mind-set that healthy, complacent people adopt at dinner parties to parse serious subjects.

They had moved on to the debate about which would be worse, to lose your mobility or your presence of mind. Although they were sixty-five, it was honestly the only time she ever remembered them both speaking about it. Margaret was keenly aware of Roger’s aversion to frailty and aging. He’d been somewhat disgusted at his own mother’s progressive senility and confusion, as if it were a communicable disease. Toward the end of her life, when she no longer recognized any of them, Roger had rarely visited her nursing home. He had been on a business trip to the West Coast when she had passed away, and it had been Margaret who had made the trek to Arizona to begin the arrangements.

Roger’s mouth twitched slightly in his medicated sleep, his face uninhabited. The nurses had told her to keep talking to him, even now that he was awake, despite the fact that his words were muddled and he was hard to understand. He was processing all of this, they said, taking it in as his brain healed incrementally.

And so she had talked and read the paper to him, although she had felt foolish after the first few days as she babbled along in a one-sided conversation. Margaret was reminded numerous times of that precarious week in the hospital with James, when they had read to him from some of his favorite books. She recalled one time, coming upon Maura by the bedside, reading get-well cards from her grandson’s class, the tone and messages innocently optimistic, as if he had merely had his tonsils out or his appendix removed. The juxtaposition between her grandson and her husband, hospitalized less than a year apart, was too much to wrap her mind around. It was an overload that threatened to short-circuit her, and she sealed those memories off in a separate mental compartment.

Margaret’s talking and chattering had tapered off once Roger awoke. There was so much now that he was supposed to be doing to start the rehabilitation process, but overall he seemed to lack motivation. Sometimes, she thought, he feigned sleep to avoid her and the basic physical therapy exercises that had been prescribed.

By the end of the first week in Tampa, Margaret had settled into the rhythm of the hospital, the regular checks of the nurses as they bustled in the room. She had grown accustomed to their individual greetings as they checked Roger’s vitals, changed his fluid bags, and emptied his waste. Once while he was in the coma, the trach tube had whooshed loose when the nurse was sponge bathing him. Margaret had been terrified by the sound of the air escaping, had yelped and jumped up as the nurse continued, calmly reattaching the breathing tube. In those moments she had realized how on edge she was, how close to unraveling from the yawning uncertainty.

Margaret had created a routine of going downstairs to the cafeteria and getting a cup of black coffee before lunch. She’d purchased a pack of cigarettes at the gift shop and allowed herself three each day, on breaks from the bedside. There was always a smattering of family members and the occasional nurse in scrubs clustered around the circular cement ashtrays in the designated outdoor smoking section. They made small talk and inquired politely about the progress of a loved one as they all stood flicking ashes in the fresh air and sunshine outside the hospital. Stepping back into the lobby after a cigarette, she always braced herself to feel the cool and over-air-conditioned interior.

Margaret became aware of a rustling behind her, presumably one of the nurses. But then it was too quiet. She felt the silent presence of someone and turned to look back. A woman stood rigid in Roger’s doorframe. She was tall, tanned, full figured in navy pants and a ruffled hot pink blouse; she was younger than Margaret, but not by many years. She seemed nervous and out of place in the ICU. Perhaps she had entered the wrong room, but Margaret sensed that there was something more. It was the way the woman was clutching her purse to her chest, as if it contained all of her valued possessions.

“Mrs. Munson?” The woman asked tentatively, and Margaret rose quickly from the chair.

“Yes.”

“I’m Julia Rolon.”

Almost before she said her name, Margaret knew who she was, placed the slightly accented voice on the phone, and her breath quickened, each evolutionary animal instinct on alert. Margaret stood awkwardly as she smoothed her tan slacks, fluffing her hair with her fingers and working it into place at her temples. Her mind was a complete blank. She moved out into the hallway and motioned for the woman to do so as well. She didn’t want to wake Roger, didn’t want this woman to see her husband incapacitated, or for her to see him at all, in fact. Margaret had wondered idly if Julia had come to visit her husband when she was back at the hotel. But she had kept the query to herself. She would not ask the nurses, would not debase herself or Roger by asking such an embarassing question.

“I … I was the one who called the ambulance for … for your husband.” Julia looked extremely ill at case, and she halted, almost snapping her jaw shut. Margaret wanted the woman to feel this discomfort, to experience just a fraction of the displacement she had felt for years now.

“I know exactly who you are,” Margaret said simply. “I suppose I should thank you for your actions.” Margaret wished she had showered, wished she had applied some lipstick. She must look awful. How should one look when meeting one’s husband’s mistress for the first time? she thought ironically.

The woman nodded and bowed her head. “I assumed you did.”

“You were with him,” said Margaret. She tried to keep her gaze even, her voice aloof, but she felt everything inside her tight and coiled. What in God’s name had this Julia person come for? To be alone with him? What had she hoped to achieve? The absolute gall of this woman. She would not avert her eyes.

Julia nodded her assent.

“What is your purpose in coming?” asked Margaret sharply, her eyes narrowed.

“I understand from the nurses that Roger is going home shortly … that he’s being transferred to a hospital near your home,” Julia continued nervously. Margaret blinked, said nothing.

“I just wanted … I guess I wanted to say good-bye. I’m sorry, I hoped to come when you weren’t here.” Julia looked over Margaret’s shoulder and into the room at Roger. For just a moment she took in the scene, his diminishment, the serene way he lay. Her eyes revealed nothing. Margaret crossed her arms over her chest. She was surprised how much a part of her was enjoying this.

“I’m so sorry that this happened.” Julia appeared to be fading, running out of steam. She seemed suddenly smaller, as if her spine had shrunk.

“I’m staying with him,” said Margaret.

“Of course. Of course you are. I just …”

“You just what?”

“I just wanted to see him,” said Julia softly. “Honestly, I thought you might not be here this late. I didn’t want to intrude on you. But if you have any questions, if there is anything you want to know … it must be awful to just get a call. I know … myself that it’s awful to just get a call out of the blue like that …” She seemed to wilt after this last sentence. The nerve of this woman, her assumptions. She was pleased to see that her earlier confidence and determination had abandoned her.

“I know all about you,” Margaret spat out with controlled fury. “And I know that you were just a dalliance to Roger. Some … distraction. A body he could hop into bed with. Nothing more.” Her heart was galloping.

The woman’s face crumpled as she absorbed Margaret’s well-placed barbs and backed away toward the nurses’ station. “I’m so sorry to have bothered you at all. I’m … I’m so sorry for your family.” Julia turned on her heel and strode briskly down the hall toward the elevator bank. Margaret heard the receding clack of her heels on the linoleum. The feeling of quicksilver and adrenaline that had coursed triumphantly through her veins in front of Julia had begun to retreat. She turned and reentered Roger’s room, adjusting his blankets and tucking his sheet under the mattress. Margaret felt compelled to touch his face. Thank God he had not woken up while that woman was there. She would not have known how to endure that or what to do. She could not have witnessed the look on his face as he took in her presence. It would have told her things she didn’t need to know.

“I’m here, Roger,” she whispered to him in a maternal voice that evoked pleasant memories of talking, singing, and cooing to her babies. In those years she could touch them and possess them when they slept in a way you never could when a body was awake and in motion. Then she sat back in the aqua lounger and felt the first of a series of tight sobs hit her. Margaret reached for the small travel pack of Kleenex she kept in her handbag, aware that the nurses could enter at any time. She sat back in the lounger, crying silently, rocking back and forth in the chair to calm herself with the repetitive motion.