The Forgetting Time(47)

Maybe his equanimity had gotten to her. He had tubes going through his nose to an oxygen tank right by his bed, couldn’t eat much more than ice chips and scrambled eggs, slept fitfully most of the day, and yet his sleepy green eyes, overseeing the disintegration of his own body, seemed amused; content, even.

“So how’m I doing?”

She was checking the oxygen. “Still going strong.”

“Damn. I was hoping to be dead by now.”

“Come, now.”

“You think I’m lying, but I’m not.”

“You’re not scared?” The words had blurted out of her before she even knew what she was saying.

“Naw. I’m the last of the Mohicans, you know. They’ve all gone.” He waved a hand, as if his wife and friends had just now vacated the room.

“That’s good, then,” she’d said, adding, “I mean, that you’re not scared.”

He’d looked at her curiously. He was a smart old man. Had once been something—a chemist? An engineer? “Now why would I be scared?”

She smiled. “I didn’t realize you were a believer, Mr. Costello.”

“Oh, no, no, I’m not.”

“But—you think there’s something else. After this?”

“Not really. I think this is probably it.”

“I see. All right.” She could feel herself sweating. “And that doesn’t—bother you? You don’t find the thought of it unpleasant?”

“You trying to convert me now? Or the other way round?”

She wasn’t sure what “the other way round” meant, exactly, but she didn’t like it. “I’m sorry to intrude,” she’d murmured, focusing again on the oxygen tank. It was half empty.

“You know what’s really unpleasant, Mrs. Crawford? These tubes in my nostrils. They’re goddamn aggravating. You think you can take ’em out for me?”

“You know I can’t do that.”

He smiled up at her stubbornly. “Why not, though? What difference does it make?”

“A little Vaseline might help.”

“No, no. Don’t bother.”

He looked at his hands. His skin was fragile, she thought, like the kind of onionskin paper used in letters from overseas. She wondered if they still used it, if anyone even wrote those kinds of letters anymore. Probably people just e-mailed now. The only letters like that she’d ever gotten were from Henry, long ago. Those slim blue envelopes coming all the way from Luxembourg and Manchester and Munich to her little Millerton, Ohio, mailbox, the way she’d stand in the driveway, feeling them pulsing with heat in her hand. She’d spent long hours poring over the scrawl of his careless blue ink on the delicate surface, trying to make out the words, lingering on the tender throwaway lines—& wishing you were here to hear it. This was in their very early days, before she and Henry were married, when she was assistant teaching and he was playing the Dayton clubs and touring.

Now this is what I mean, she thought to herself. Why think about that now? What was wrong with her?

“My whole life, I thought, you die and you’re kaput,” Mr. Costello was saying. “You’re done and you’re done. Now, to be honest with you, I’m not always sure. I don’t believe in God or anything. Don’t get me wrong. I just don’t have too bad a feeling about it, I guess.”

“Glad to hear it,” she said. She was still fussing with the oxygen cylinder. It didn’t need to be replaced yet, she decided. Maybe it would outlast him.

*

At four, after finishing the bed pans and turning Mr. Randolph and checking on Mrs. Rodriguez just because she liked to see the woman’s zonked-out little half-smile at various points during her day, she called Henry. She stood at the nurses’ station and heard the phone ring and ring and was about to hang up when his voice lurched into her ear.

“H’lo? H’lo?”

She didn’t say anything. She could hear familiar music in the background. Thelonious Monk, Pannonica. It hit her hard, at the knees. She could still hang up— “Denise? Is that you?”

“It’s me.”

He chuckled. “I’d know that silence anywhere.”

“Well, then,” she said. And gave him more of it.

“Charlie okay?”

“Yes, he’s fine.” How many months had it been since they’d talked? She’d lost count.

“Well, and how are you?”

“I’m just fine, Henry. You?”

“Ah, you know. They finally got rid of the principal with his head up his ass and now we got a new one, just as pigheaded. And don’t get me started on the budget. Don’t even have a room or a piano anymore, I go from room to room with a cart, like I’m selling doughnuts. Now how can you do anything with a cart?”

“I don’t know.” She didn’t want to talk about teaching. A vision of the classroom came through to her anyway, the feeling of chalk powder on her fingers, the construction-paper-covered walls. Not that anyone used chalk anymore. At Charlie’s high school it was all smart boards.

“I got them all singing a capella. And let me tell you, a second grade singing a cappella is a sorry thing. This land is your land…” He sang, humorously off-key, the sound lingering in her silence. He’s trying, she thought. He really is.