We Are Not Ourselves(168)

That morning, a Saturday, she wanted to pay a visit to Cindy, who’d had her gall bladder out, but she didn’t want to bring Ed. She left him with Connell and drove to Nassau University Medical Center.

When she walked in that night, she found all the lights out except for a cabinet lamp in the kitchen, and Ed lying on the cold bricks of the vestibule. She cursed herself as much as she did Connell, because she’d had a strange intimation of disaster when she’d left. She knew she couldn’t trust him, and she’d left Ed with him anyway. She called his name and got no answer.

She couldn’t lift Ed, couldn’t even get him to sit up. It was as if rigor mortis had set in while he was still alive. She rushed to the cordless phone and saw a note that said that Connell had gone to the city to meet some friends. Rage coursed through her. She brought the phone back with her to Ed and set it down. She didn’t want to call anyone until she absolutely had to. She tried to get under him and wedge him up under her thighs, but she couldn’t get a purchase on him. She tried to roll him onto the rug, but he was raving, and she gave up and tried to soothe him, to no avail. He was making his clicking noise. His body was seizing up. He had never felt heavier. She wondered whether she could manage the situation until Connell got home, but most likely he would take the last train out of Grand Central.

The ambulance arrived in minutes. Two guys strapped him to a gurney and she rode with them to Lawrence, where he was admitted. The trip in the ambulance must have revived him, because he walked in with assistance, but in the ER he went wild, screaming, flailing his arms and striking one of the orderlies. They used restraints to tie him down.

“Why?” he kept asking. “Why? Why?”

He looked less healthy than he had even a few days before. It amazed her how quickly catabolic processes could take over a body once they’d begun. She hadn’t noticed how skinny he’d gotten, how bad his teeth were, how much he needed a haircut.

She stayed as late as she was allowed. At home she couldn’t bring herself to go up to the bedroom, so she just sat at the kitchen table. She hadn’t consciously intended to wait up for Connell, but after a while she realized that was what she was doing. She tried to watch television in the den, but she couldn’t concentrate on any of the shows. The only thing that made any sense to her was to sit in the silence of the kitchen. She chewed her rage, grinding her teeth.

He walked in at two fifteen. She sat silently looking at him.

“What are you doing up?” he said, throwing a canvas bag down on the island.

“I asked you to stay with your father. Why did you leave him alone?”

“It was only for a little while.”

“What made you think it was okay to leave him alone?”

She had shouted. She saw the boy flinch, his eyes widen with fear. He picked the bag off the counter and put it across his chest as if he might make a run for it.

“He was asleep in bed when I left. He wasn’t going anywhere, and you were coming home in an hour.”

“Well,” she said. “He went somewhere.”

? ? ?

She went upstairs to put her head down for a moment. The next thing she knew, the room was bright and Sergei’s throaty greeting was booming up at her from the bottom of the staircase. It was one o’clock in the afternoon. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d slept so late. She remembered that Ed was in the hospital.

She went to the banister and looked down the landing. “I should have called you,” she said. “With everything that was going on, I forgot. I didn’t need you to come.”

He stood in the vestibule holding his hat against his chest. “You not go to church today?”

Lately he had taken to coming earlier on Sundays, to be there when they returned from twelve o’clock Mass.

“Something’s happened with Ed,” she said. “He had some kind of collapse. He’s in the hospital.”

“I stay here with you,” he said.

“I’m leaving soon.”

“I stay anyway.”

“That won’t be necessary.”

“I stay with you,” he said again, this time more decisively.

Connell wasn’t in his room. She called downstairs to him, but he didn’t answer there either. She dressed without showering, not because of the late hour but because with Ed’s absence it felt like Sergei was a guest in the house, and even though Sergei had passed many hours there sitting and doing nothing, she had a strange feeling of having to attend to him.

When she got downstairs she found him sitting at the kitchen table in a state of contained agitation. She could see his deep breathing, the tautness in his fists, one of which still clutched his hat. He asked what had happened. When she told him, his hand on the hat squeezed tighter.

“I stay here,” he said.



The nurse was trying to get him to eat when Eileen walked in, but Ed was resisting mightily. He flung his arms around as she approached with the fork, and then shut his lips tight. When she managed to get the food in, he calmed down and chewed it thoughtfully for a few seconds, then reconsidered and spat it out on the tray.

“He did this with breakfast too.”

“I’ll take over,” Eileen said. She spoke sharply to him, told him to cooperate or else—what? What could she hold over his head?

“If you don’t eat,” she said, “you’re not going to be allowed to come home.”