Vladimir(74)

“I certainly can’t,” I say, and we both exhale a huff of something like laughter—a sound of shared resignation. I call the front desk and a teenaged boy arrives with a luggage rack. By the time he comes, I have taken John’s other arm, the one not gripping the cane, and, not wanting to move for fear of faltering, we stand still, as though posing for a painting, and watch him work. “You guys are so cute together,” the boy says, before pushing the cart out the door. John and I glance at each other in mock horror and follow him through the dim, blue-carpeted hallway.

The discharge process takes nearly two hours, so by the time we settle into the car, laden with pills and creams and printouts, we are both very hungry, and head directly to the nearest diner I find, which turns out to be a chrome-wrapped homage to some idea of the 1950s, with large spiral-bound plastic-coated menus.

Once we are seated, John reaches across the table and feels the silk scarf I have wrapped around my throat to cover my scarring.

I grew up with a picture of my mother’s grandmother in my home. She was seated, wearing an elegant dress with a large bow on one side of her face. “See that bow,” I remember my mother said once when she caught me looking at the photograph. “They didn’t iodize salt when she was growing up. That bow is covering an enormous goiter.” When I asked her how big, she said, “The size of an Idaho potato. At least.”

Thanks to videos on the internet, I have, in the past two months since my discharge, become quite skilled at tying various fabrics in loopy configurations to conceal my damaged skin. I have never liked my neck, anyway.

“Can I see?” John asks, and I untie the loops to reveal the evidence of my burn that creeps up as high as the side of my chin. He reaches over and feels the bottom edge of my face.

“You don’t need to cover it,” he says. “It’s rather pretty.”

Later I’ll remember what he said and become more emboldened to leave the scarf at home occasionally. Sometimes it will feel empowering, to lay myself bare to the furtive stares and averted eyes. Sometimes it will feel like old times, like when I put on a few pounds and would force myself to wear my tightest pants, no matter how they chafed or dug, as a form of punishment.

But that day in the diner I reply, “No thank you,” and quickly redo my wrap before the waiter arrives to take our order.

We share a club sandwich and a garden salad and a plate of sweet potato fries, and then, because I want some ceremony to my announcement, I convince him to split a slice of coconut cake with me. When it arrives at our table, taller and larger than any piece of cake should ever be, I tell him about the settlement. He pauses, hearing the figure, blinks, and peers into his coffee, somber. I am anxious for him to respond. “What are you thinking?” I ask, an edge to my voice.

“I’m thinking…” He pauses. “I’m thinking…” He pauses again and I snap at him to please talk. “I’m thinking I should have ordered the lobster,” he says, mournfully staring at his cup.

I choke on something between a groan and a laugh, making a far louder sound than I intend—so loud that the girl at the register starts toward me and I have to wave her off.

“Sorry,” he says, smiling at his success, his eyes still cast down. He taps his fork against the cake plate in the “shave and a haircut” rhythm. “So you’re not stuck with me after all. You could get your own place, I could get my own place, we could hire people to take care of us, the whole thing,” he says.

Yes. I’d had the same thought—the money made separating simple. All the logistics that seemed so daunting could be handed off to someone else, someone who could be paid, whether it be selling the house or handling the medical bills or even buying us new homes in distinct and distant locations. “We could.”

“I have some news to tell you, actually,” he says. “The college is letting me keep my pension. Honorable discharge. They feel bad, I guess.”

I congratulate him. Neither of us speaks for several minutes. I draw lines in the heaps of excess frosting we scraped from the cake.

“Dramatic irony, isn’t it? We burned and we were burned. Very French, like Balzac,” I say.

He smirks. “Heavy-handed, if you ask me.”

I feel an old sardonic irritation tug at my chest. “Well, we were never so mighty, so our fall wasn’t much to see. Besides, we got away with it,” I say. “Mostly.”

“You can’t think about it like that,” he says, his eyes dark and dismissive. “Getting away with something, not getting away with something, moral retribution. I don’t matter, you don’t matter. To think we do is just marketing. It’s this cult of personality. You know that.”

“I don’t think that’s a very popular argument right now.”

“I’m not a very popular guy right now.” He tilts his head and spreads his hands in the style of an old vaudeville performer.

“No, that’s true, you’re not,” I say. And I imagine myself in an apartment, each space filled with the definitive and deliberate quiet of my own choices. A velvet sofa and bookshelves with a ladder. A cat, maybe, or maybe no cat, I had never craved pets. Then I picture John in his apartment, the leather club chairs from his office and faded red rugs bought by Sid (or me). A woman. There for the money, one way or another. Or as I look at him, his face framed by his new cap that Sid had surely procured from one of her fancy menswear stores, there for him. Does the woman bother me? Not really. It does all seem like a bit of a waste though, I think, to divide that energy, money, money, energy, when something simpler could be arranged.