What Remains (28 page)

Anthony knows I have given up. He hates me, I think. It’s a temporary state, of frustration and despair, but it needs more time than we have. We have been staying at Joan and Pete’s house in Bridgehampton since we left the Vineyard, and I spend the afternoons drifting on my back in the pool, staring up at the sky, tears running into the chlorine water.

Joan arranges to have a car pick Anthony up and drive him to dialysis three times a week; he spends his afternoons in Bridgehampton at Caroline’s. I go there to pick him up one day, and her daughter is looking at pictures, some of Carolyn and John. I lose my composure for a moment and fall into tears.

“We’ve got to go on. You have to snap out of this,” Anthony says that night, standing over me, angry. I am curled into a ball. “We still have each other, and we have to go on,” Anthony says.

He is angry with me for deserting our routine, for not wanting to pretend any longer that things will be fine, for letting on that I know he too will die.

He cried the night the plane went down. He sat at the kitchen table and folded his arms to support his head, and then dropped it down and cried. It was the first time I’d seen him like that, and I knew we were beyond doing anything for each other. We were beyond going on. He was in a place only John had access to, all those years of
I got you.
A place of vacations and holidays and summer camps. Of letters, of dinners, of endless competition. Of rolling their eyes, of weddings, of hope, of toasts, of brilliantly wicked and funny tricks that only the two of them understand, of all the things they whispered to each other with their heads down.
I got you, you got me. I got you.

As for me, I could not yet believe that she would let something like this happen to her when she knew how much I needed her. Suddenly there was nowhere to go.

Anthony’s birthday dinner is not what Carolyn and I had planned. It is a scaled-down, untimely celebration in the wake of untimely deaths. There are cake and candles and a toast from the birthday man. I give him a gold locket with a picture of us on one side and of John and Carolyn on the other. “I’m so proud of you. I love you,” I write on the card. We have suspended reality for the evening.

He looks forty years older, hollowed out, sitting in his chair. There is a small group of us at Pete and Joan’s. Anthony stands up and addresses the room. He struggles through his words.

“Thank you for sharing my birthday with Carole and me. For being so supportive after everything that has happened. It’s been important to both of us. I know we’ll be able to get through what has happened, to go on, with all the support in this room, with all your friendship.”

I barely recognize his voice. Whose creaky, shaky voice is this? Whose thin arms, one holding on to a cane, the other gesturing half-heartedly behind his words? The room echoes with the absence of John. Anthony’s frail state and his staggered breath notwithstanding, John would have heckled him, would have waved away every awkward trace in this thick air. John would not have left Anthony standing and alone, to search for words. He would have made a joke in his own toast about Anthony’s tireless work on behalf of old people and children.
I got you, Tonypro, he’d say. You got me. I got you.

John was lecturing me on the five stages of death the week before he died. Insisting we tell Anthony that he was going to die. For all that, I like to think he would have humored Anthony. With Carolyn and John both gone, I am unable to. I stare at my plate. I know how much it has taken for Anthony to do this, to get up and speak, to thank everyone, his frailty in full view.

Anthony goes swimming in the ocean the next day at his mother’s, and I watch from the beach. Herbert holds him by the arm on one side, his friend Mark on the other. He swims a while and then they help him back out.

On Monday morning we drive back to the city, then to Staten Island for Anthony’s appointment. He’s been undergoing radiation here, at Staten Island University Hospital, and we are scheduled to have a CT scan. This hospital has always reeked of despair, even more so today in the gloomy rain. They take the scan and it is good news. The tumor hasn’t grown since our last appointment. We drive back to our apartment and I make an excuse to leave.

“I’m going for a walk,” I say. “I’ll be back in an hour, okay?” And then I call Holly from a pay phone on the corner. “I can’t do this,” I tell her, my voice raised. “I can’t do this anymore. I have to find a way to get out because I just can’t do it.” The tumor hasn’t grown, and the future, this stuttered death, stretches out in front of me. Anthony and I, dying like this forever.

We have an appointment at New York Hospital in the afternoon to talk about an experimental therapy Anthony wants to start, and when we arrive Dr. Ruggierio looks concerned.

“Maybe you should check into the hospital tonight,” he says to Anthony, then looks at me. “No,” Anthony says. “I’m not checking in. I have dialysis tonight. I’ll do my dialysis, and then maybe. I’ll think about it.” I stare back at the doctor.
What?
I think.
The tumor hasn’t grown. He was swimming this weekend.

“It would be best, just to be safe. I’d just feel better if you were in the hospital tonight.” He is looking at me, trying to get me to go along and I just stare back at him.
Are you okay?
he seems to be asking.
Do you hear me?
“We’re going home,” I tell him. “We’ll check in with you tomorrow.”

Since the accident I’m afraid of everything, and nothing. I float between hysteria and delusion. Nothing can get my attention, not even my husband’s death. I have already seen it.

I order takeout from Sant Ambroeus when we get home, and leave Anthony alone while I walk to Madison to pick it up; a short walk but it feels good. I return and put the food on TV trays. We don’t say a lot, we don’t eat much, and after a while I help him to bed. I stay up late and watch TV.

The next morning Anthony wakes up at six, as he does every morning. His breathing is difficult. He is taking tiny, shallow breaths, but I have seen this before, this breathing. It is his language that startles me. The words aren’t making sense. He is stringing them together haphazardly. He is speaking sometimes in French.

“I have to take a shower,” he manages to say. So I help him into the bathroom.

I wash his hair then, help him lean against the sink to brush his teeth. He does the whole routine—the shower, brushing his teeth—because he has done it every single day of his life. He is mumbling things, but they are disconnected, like someone talking in his sleep. I struggle to understand him. I think it is just another thing.
There are so many things.
I have completely lost my perspective.

I call Hamilton. “Something’s not right,” I say. “I think you should come over.”

When he arrives he goes straight to the bedroom, where Anthony is sitting on the edge of the bed and I am in a chair watching him. Anthony’s eyes are empty. He is still trying to talk. I wait for Hamilton to say something.

We walk into the other room.

“Carole,” he says, “you need to call the hospital. This isn’t something we can manage right here.”

“What?” I don’t understand.

“I think you need to call his doctor, right now.”

Dr. Ruggierio answers the phone as if he’s been waiting right next to it for me to call. “There are two things we can do,” he tells me. “I can arrange for a hospice group to go to your apartment, but it might take a while to put into place. Or we can send an ambulance and I can have it there in five minutes.” And before I can respond: “I recommend the ambulance.”

I pack Anthony’s gym bag—a pair of shorts, an extra T-shirt, his sneakers—and the ambulance arrives minutes later. Our doorman does his best to keep people back, but even late morning on a quiet weekday, we gather a crowd. We are a small parade, flanked by people who don’t know Anthony, making up their own minds about this man getting buckled onto a stretcher chair, a man they have never seen marching across the beach or running in the park or biking thirty miles to Montauk.

“Make sure someone calls Carolyn,” I say to Hamilton before we leave. “Call Carolyn and John so I won’t be at the hospital alone.”

He stares at me, expressionless.

Dr. Ruggierio is waiting in the ER. “We need his living will,” he says. I have forgotten it.
How could I forget it?
I call his lawyer to have one faxed over. There is nothing the doctors can do until they get it. I have forgotten the sound machine, with the ocean waves and waterfall. It is so careless, I think. I am irritated with myself. I’ve had so much time to prepare for this. I start making phone calls at the nurses’ station down the hall, managing the details, and Dr. Ruggierio comes over.

“Carole, you should stop that and come into the room.” I don’t want to go into the room. I am afraid of what is happening there.

Anthony is sitting up on the bed, swatting away an oxygen mask. He is confused and looks at me. I don’t know what to say to him. I can’t move; I just stand there frozen with fear. A nurse gives him a shot of something, a tranquilizer to calm him down, and then we sit there, him on the bed, me in a chair, and I cannot believe that this is how it ends. That this is what it boils down to—a small room in the ER, nurses bringing in chairs as people show up. I excuse myself and walk down the hall to the bathroom to throw up.

They move us upstairs to a private room and the nurses lift him into bed, pull a blanket up to his chest, and give him a shot of morphine. “It will ease his anxiety about not being able to breathe,” they say to me. “You understand what that’s going to do, right?”

I remember his aunt and the IV morphine drip, and I understand what they are saying to me. The morphine will slow his breathing; it will make him sleep. I also know he may not wake up.

I climb into bed with him and we are spooning, me in back with my arm around his chest. He falls asleep and then I fall asleep. When his system shuts down, so does mine.

I drift in and out, humming a tune in my head. It is peaceful, sleeping here like this, Anthony warm and so calm. I hum the tune, not thinking about anything. Hours tick by unexpectedly. It feels as if everything has stopped.

Then he wakes up briefly, remembers he has an appointment. “Call Marty Adelman,” he says. “I’m supposed to meet him at three. Can you reschedule it?” Anthony is the executor of John’s estate and he is meeting with the lawyers this afternoon to go over the will. I leave the room to call and reschedule.

When I return, the nurse is standing over his bed. “Stop, that’s enough,” I say while she is giving him another dose of morphine. She looks at me, surprised. “Okay. I’ll come back later.”

I have a feeling he will wake up again. I am willing him to wake up, because this can’t be it. This can’t be an ending. And he does, just after three o’clock. He sits straight up and leans on the bed tray, supporting his head with his arms. There is a small group in the room: his mother, Mike and Diane, Hamilton and Caroline. Anthony stares at Diane with a confused look on his face.

“What’s happening to me?” For the first time I see that he is scared.

“You’re fine.” She has a soft smile on her face. “You’re just going to get very much-needed sleep.” He looks slowly around the room, and he winks. Then he lies back down and closes his eyes.

I crawl back into bed with him. My head is resting on his chest, and I am listening to his heart. His breathing is shallow, but I can hear it. His heartbeat is strong. Then, as the hours pass, it beats fainter. Slower, like a song fading out. It beats and then I count and then it beats again. Friends and nurses come and go. An entire day passes. The clock on the wall says 7 p.m. when Dr. Ruggierio taps my shoulder. I have forgotten there are people in the room. “Carole,” he says softly. “I’m sorry.”

But I can still hear his heartbeat, so I wave him off. “Don’t touch me.” He apologizes and sits down. I listen to Anthony’s heartbeat until it is so faint I can barely hear it and then it’s gone. I don’t know who is in the room. I can’t look. I can’t look at Anthony. I don’t move. It is quiet, and I’m lying next to him, tears streaming down my face, and that’s how they know his heart has stopped.

Father Charles arrives and starts the prayers and I become aware, as though it is something I have overheard, that Anthony is dead. I kneel by the bed with Father Charles. I listen to the prayers, then leave without looking back.

I have left the hospital so many times before, and come back, that it feels natural to leave.
He’s sleeping now,
I think,
and I’ll leave but I’ll see him later.
This is how I am able to walk out.

I make phone calls from my apartment. I sound practiced. “We went to the hospital today,” I say. “Only this time Anthony didn’t come back.”

We are in a room at The Mark Hotel on Madison. Lee and Tina, Caroline and Ed, and I. We have been wearing black, it seems, for three solid weeks. We are getting good at this, the funerals. As Father Charles leads us through the same process, there is a sense of déjà vu.
Which readings do we want? What gospel should we choose? Who will say which prayers?
I don’t register the words, only the soothing timbre of his voice.

Anthony is at Frank E. Campbell funeral chapel on Madison. They are waiting for me to send over a suit, to pick out a coffin. They send a salesman to the hotel with paperwork: the death certificate, cremation permit, a catalogue of urns and coffins. I remember the late president’s white dress shirt in Anthony’s closet. He kept it in a box folded neatly, the collar stamped “1300 Pennsylvania” from the dry cleaner. I ask Holly to take it and his perfectly tailored navy suit to the funeral home. The ceremony is a closed casket; the shirt is symbolic, a gesture.
He would have liked that.
We say this after each decision. I pick out an urn and the salesman shows me the “The Presidential” coffin. “This is the model Jackie Onassis was laid to rest in,” he says. It is a beautiful dark mahogany with shiny pewter handles. I can almost hear Anthony gasp:
Twelve thousand dollars for a coffin? Are they out of their minds?!?

We plan a ceremony in East Hampton. Most of the people who come will remember the white clapboard church from our wedding. Lee will have a reception at her house, and before the sun goes down we’ll scatter his ashes. John is not here to eulogize Anthony, so Diane will, and Caroline. I pick out the floral arrangements, assign pallbearers, and choose the hymns.

Holly calls me at Lee’s house the night before the funeral. “You need to come over,” she says. “There’s something here for you.” When I arrive she hands me a small box from Tiffany. My birthday is the next week and Anthony had my present delivered to Holly’s because he didn’t know where we’d be. “To my Peanut,” it says on the gift card. “Happy Birthday.” Inside is a diamond pendant cross on a thin platinum chain.

And then the next morning as Lee, Herbert, and I walk into the church, Carolyn’s mother pulls me aside and hands me something, too. “She would want you to have this,” she says. It is Carolyn’s amethyst ring, inscribed with her initials in front of mine—
secret friends forever
. I put it on and I think of her hands, always fluttering, always moving. I see her getting in and out of cars, walking down the street, leaning her head against John. I see us driving down the Beltway, singing along with the radio. I see a room at the Hyatt, with Pop-tart crumbs in the bed. I see those big bold eyes and smell the faint scent of musk oil she leaves behind. I see her smiling, holding a glass paperweight with the Dogwood bloom, at the small crafts store in Georgetown.

I follow the pallbearers down the aisle and sit silently in the pew at the front of the church.

We scatter Anthony’s ashes in the ocean from the beach in front of his mother’s house. I stay for two days and then go home. The doorman gives me a package of Anthony’s things from the hospital: his sneakers, his Swiss Army watch, his gold wedding band.

He was handsome and serious, bent over scripts in a hotel room, and then he stood and reached for my hand.