In Love: A Memoir of Love and Loss(41)

He doesn’t hurry. He drinks the anti-emetic and gets comfortable on the couch. I sit next to him, holding his hand, but I have to let it go because he’s gesturing while storytelling. The stories are all about football at Yale and his coach, Carm Cozza, and I could tell them with him: Brian and a friend winding up in jail because of a young, dumb fight in front of the Anchor Bar, and Carm Cozza, stern and forgiving, bailing them out; Brian talking about quitting football because he didn’t get to play enough his first season and Carm telling him that he, Carm, would let Brian play when Brian was good enough and not before and Brian resolving to be good enough; Brian’s father and Carm Cozza playing handball together one time, his two fathers.

I cannot manage to look interested in these stories, because I’m not (Brian says nothing about his life, about our life, about our love, about the children and grandchildren, nothing about the beautiful public housing he designed and cared about so deeply or the work he did for conservation and open spaces or even, and you know I must be reaching here, about fishing), but I do try not to look like I’m in agony, which I am.

The Ladies wait in the back room (a kitchen, I think), and after about forty-five minutes they come out again. They tell us that the anti-emetic has now worn off and if Brian wishes to continue (I do, he says), he will have to take it again. They say, You can take your time, and I roll my eyes because of course he will, he always does, I think, as if we are in some other room, on some other occasion, and then I remember where I am and I’m ashamed of myself. Brian smiles slightly. “What time’s your plane?” he says, and I have never felt so bad about being me in my entire life.

He takes the anti-emetic again and the Ladies put an airplane pillow around his neck. Brian falls silent and now I long for the football stories. I take both of his hands and he lets me. IloveyouIloveyouIloveyou, I say. I love you so much. I love you, too, he says, and he drinks the sodium pentobarbital. I kiss him, all over his handsome, weary face, and he lets me.

It is impossible to think about the next twenty minutes. I keep my eyes and hands on him, as if I’ll forget what it is like to breathe next to him or feel his presence. (I don’t, not for a minute. I hear his breathing when I go to sleep and I feel his body heat when I wake up.) He falls asleep holding my hand and his head falls back a little on the neck pillow (whose purpose I now understand). His breathing changes and it’s the last time I will hear him sleeping, breathing deeply and steadily, the way he has done lying beside me for almost fifteen years. I hold his hand. I can still feel its weight and warmth. His skin color changes, from ruddy to paler pink. I sit there and sit there, as if some other thing will now happen. He is quite pale and I see that he is gone from this world.

I sit, holding his hand, for a long time. I get up and wrap my arms around him and kiss his forehead, as if he is my baby, at last gone to sleep, as if he is my brave boy going on a long journey, miles and miles of Nought.





The Temple Gatekeepers





The Ladies emerge from the kitchen at some point and they sit by, quiet and prepared, the temple gatekeepers. Although I have tried to think about this before, I have no idea what to do with Brian’s things: his coat, his muffler, his suitcase and the clothes in it, his medications. The Ladies offer that they can take care of all of that and his clothes will be given to people who need them.

There’s not much else to do. The Ladies would like me to go, before the Swiss police come. It is simpler, they say. It doesn’t feel that we have done something illegal, but I can tell that it would be better (perhaps better for me? For Dignitas?) for me to not be around while a Swiss policeman identifies Brian’s body (that’s what his passport and dental records are for, as I understand it). I call an Uber and hug the Ladies. I head to the airport.



* * *



—

In Zurich Airport, I sit in the fancy lounge and I look around for faces, people-watching. It is very pleasant in the Swissair lounge coming home. I’m wearing Brian’s wedding ring on my right hand, on my forefinger, and it’s much too big. I gesture once, while talking to my friend, and the ring flies off, nearly hitting a man in the face. It rolls under a chair and I get it and sit in that chair, staring out the window, avoiding men’s faces. Since the moment of Brian’s death, I find most people, especially men, disgusting. Not just unappealing but disgusting—like yesterday’s oatmeal. Like eels in a bowl. I find heterosexual couples dismaying. In the lounge, I feel like an alien examining pairs of earthlings: What is the meaning of that? How could a creature like that be the choice this other creature makes? How can one recognize choice in these random movements?

The men without women upset me more: There’s a lanky, dark-skinned man across from me, chewing cheese and crackers with his mouth open. The cheddar and the pumpernickel crisps are distinct. The old white man two seats away from me is digging into a bowl of gnocchi with tomato sauce. His tie and his whole face are freckled with sauce. I see a man on my other side, a few armchairs away. Very big, very black. Thanks to Brian, I now divide men into football/not football. This man is very wide and very tall. A running refrigerator, Brian would have said. He has a nice smile and I immediately think that I would be squirming out from under him after a pleasant evening and calling 911. Most men disgust me, and even the mildest feeling of attraction apparently leads directly to imagining them dead and cooling beside me.