I wake up to the door slapping shut behind our grandson. Why do we let him shoot up here?
I let Charlotte sleep; we both deserve it. Her sleep, and my loneliness. I crack my feet and go to take a piss again. My body is warm and my genitals are loose. What's this? A clean bathroom again. The boy does this out of kindness, or a deep obsessive compulsion he's had since he was a toddler. Toothpaste on the sink has been wiped away, the cabinet is even speckless. I open it again and look behind the pipe. The boy took his needle, the spot is bare except for a mouse trap.
The knob is tighter. Oh, he really must've had a manic spell of servitude in the middle of the night or early this morning. I appreciate the sprucing up. I test the lock and indeed it does work now.
The kitchen smells like eggs, but these are the prices we endure for others. I open the window on the kitchen's far wall. The boy has taken a rag and placed it flat on the counter like a towel, his clean plate face down on it.
In the hallway, fat cylinders of Sunday Editions are propped against our neighbors' doors. The one down by the garbage chute is the easiest to take, as I can pretend I am adding trash to the piling heap in the basement's metal duct. I hear children screaming on the other side of this paper's door. I lug it back to our kitchen table and slap it across like fresh game.
I throw away all the advertising fold outs and the fashion magazine. The Metro Section and Arts I put aside for Charlotte, and the real news I save for myself. I skim the International headlines. Charlotte must be exhausted, of my arguments, my incidents.
Iran Calls for Cease Fire. Mexico Refuses Deportees from Texas.
This nursing home idea, perhaps I should give up. The function of the home is to induce a slow, stasis to suck the assets of its patients, leaving nothing for the adult children in its wake. Sounds fine to me, our daughter would be doing it to herself. If she really wants nothing left over. Well. A nursing home certainly would not let Charlotte keep sleeping this long. At least, I don't think so. I will tell her as another point in my favor. Oh, she'll hate that.
Our grandson does exhaust her. He's just as beautiful as he was at nine, visiting us from Riverdale. Thin, intelligent. The faint speck of his tooth over biting his lip.
No, I can't let her sleep this late. —Charlotte! It's ten thirty, damn it.
I can hear one of our neighbors opening his door. Still, nothing stirs here.
—Charlotte.
I go to our room. I'll wake her and if she asks me why, I'll tell her this is the kind of treatment you would get, if you left me and went to a nursing home by yourself.
In the bed, her eyes and mouth are open. —Oh you're awake, are you?
She never left her eyes open like this... wide. Never let her mouth agape. The teeth between her canines look jagged. It is not her. It does not look like her. I feel its lips to see if it is breathing. It has her wrinkle on its forehead, she worked so hard to develop it through constant discernment. The wrinkle that made her look serious and let me know it's her.
I shriek. It is not an it. It is her. I curl into her. I lift her arm and it resists. I squeeze into its rigor and it holds me tighter than she ever has. She does, I mean. She clenches me. Tears drip to my mouth and it has all the taste of the ocean, the smell of dead seagulls and rotting weeds washed ashore, but still. No beat at all. No music. No questions. No insight.
I want to help her now. Call the nursing home. Call our daughter, tell her how wrong I was. If only we could go now. Take us. Make the arrangements. Let us live in a pampered heaven or a sweltering can. I don't care! I don't lie and wait for death to take me, and there is no epiphany. I don't want to die! Do not give up on me!
Selfish. Selfish! I scream it into her —SELFISH. No. Not you. Not you. I tuck her loose strands of hair behind her ear, and kiss her. I'm so sorry I haven't kissed you on the lips in years. I kiss her forehead. That I have done, but it is so cold and I am not used to it being so cold. I kiss her lips again and I feel some sort of heat. Maybe if I keep heating her up she will grow supple again and reanimate.
The snow, I remember big flakes, shards, of snow, catching on her tweed coat. We were on a promenade somewhere, it could have been Cornell, it could have been the Red Square when we visited, all I remember was the court lined with alternating street lamps and trees, and how it illuminated the white ice melting into her clothes. I remember telling her I never felt so close to a happy woman like her in my entire life. All sexual encounters before her were so earnest, or serious, or a kind of bad play. And she was so happy when we were naked. And laughed. And joked. —That's because you're funny, she said. She brought my arm closer to her to warm her —Lovely radiation, she said. Her wit was so sick and light, I loved it.
—911. I dial it from our land line. I say it into the automated voice —911.
The machine asks me to state the type of service needed.
—911!
A woman picks up. It's not a recording, I can tell by her imperfect tone —What's the nature of your emergency?
But there is no time to wonder about the nature of emergencies. —Death, I sob.
—Fire, medical, or police.
—No fire. No medical here nor police. She's dead. She's gone. She was sleeping and now-
—OK sir, breathe for me. OK?
I submit and breathe for her.
—How did she die?
—In her sleep. She just did not wake up. She was sleeping in. I think she must have- No.
I hang up the phone. That boy was so apologetic last night and now he's gone. Could he have killed her and cleaned up in guilt? The smell of his eggs and a spotless sink... Did he know I took the care to wipe the spittle away from his cheek the night before? It's possible he felt the heat of my fingers by his mouth. He could have thought- No.
He could not think I was being... romantic? Not the word. Intrusive. Slinking and creeping, and taking his precious saliva for what reason? To smear it across his cheek so he feels the cold fresh stripe drying.
I shut our bedroom door behind me slowly and face what was once our living room, our kitchen, our bathroom, I sit on the sofa where the boy slept. I have to figure this out before I have police coming here, or any social agent for that matter. I stick my hands in the couch pillows where he slept, hoping to feel a stray knife or syringe. Adrift thimbles of poison. No. Only croissant crumbs and loose change.
No. This is all a distraction from Charlotte, the husk of her. The idea that she is not here, that she may be caught in an oblivion. Trapped in eternal boredom, she would hate not having stimulus.
Stimulus... The nature of emergency is the flight or fight response. Our fear is for good reason, I will not leave you, Charlotte. I open the door of our room and look at you. Touch your feet from under the covers. On the bedside, you finished your friend's book, you left your bookmark on top of its cover as a sign of its defeat. You must have loved it. Did your friend write us in it? Did you find a pseudonym or a scene that let you know she was thinking of you? Or did you find none of us, and that was even more interesting. You were wondering what other life she lead. I can still feel your warm hands on the cover. I think I do. The sweat, the slight bends in the cover where you held it. What happened! What happened!
My coat has my wallet in it, my keys. I close the door softly behind me. Press the button for the elevator. Wait. This lift is so slow. I hear its machinery clinking around preparing it, but lazily, when its wire starts pulling it up to our floor, a light hum rumbles in the shaft. It stops for me, opens. No one is in it. I press the Lower Level and I descend. There could be police already in the lobby, maybe firemen, maybe ambulance escorts. It is completely possible that the ambulance really is sent as soon as you call emergency services. Floor 4, floor 3, floor 2. There may be a miracle in bureaucracy and something happens quickly in this city. It has been created, a better solution behind the 911 operators' switchboard. Perhaps a computer that tells emergency services automatically where to go, what to look for, addresses. The inept government could hear anything we say if it had the attention span, if it wasn't completely overloaded with emergencies, to the point emergency itself is ubiquitous. The operator did not even sense the urgency in the situation, not that what I said is of particular interest to anyone as young as her. Sometimes, when you're calling a girlfriend of yours, I think the FBI must be falling asleep on the other end, listening to your friend blab.
The elevator door opens.
I should stay. What am I doing? What if they have questions about you? I am already out of the door. What could I tell them about you? There's nothing that can be done. In fact... they could think I did something. It is always the husband, as they say, and despite what we are I am that. I should stay and tell them it was not me, but my legs have already carried me to the corner. I could say I was looking for them, but...
The tarp. Someone has covered the book table outside. Ha! So there is a monitor somewhere! Somewhere someone is in charge! I see the police and so I walk around our corner to Third Avenue. I love you, Charlotte! What have I done!
I curl your book in my pocket. I don't even know the title, the script is too knotty. What did this slim novel do to you? I pull it out to try to read the title again and can't. The nerve, 12.95 US 14.95 Canadian, for a book you finished in a night. At least, no bookmark, no bent corners. And this volume of arranged lies will be forever embedded in your consciousness as the last image of this lowly earth. The last object that engrossed you. Do you feel an ounce of guilt? You were probably embarrassed to have read the whole thing.
What have I done but not get in your way? Now on Seventh Avenue as if I were getting you your sourdough, as if utterly normal. I should find our grandson and strangle his pretty neck, give him the third degree. I walk until my exhausted knees begin to wobble. I know where I belong now, in a nook, amongst the trees and no people. Perhaps no animals. I never showed you this bench, pale and supple, squeaky when I sit on it. It's tucked behind a hill where... Oh are you even here?
I want to whither between your ankles. Hold your thighs, and bury my face into your thighs. I want to weep on you and you say to me, "Now, now." O great Mother! Have mercy on this sniveling man. I wail. I have to. A little girl walking ahead of me turns around and her eyes are wide, she asks her mother to pick her up. I am not sorry though for disturbing them. I wail again. They need to know that everything can be lost. Everything!
There's the bench. It's never looked so peaceful, little birds are perched on it twittering. When I sit I hear a loud crack and they fly off. I can't tell if it's the wood or me.