Calypso(52)
At home, when I get sick or injured, Hugh will usually insist that it’s all in my mind. Either that or he’ll blame me for it. That was the case when I fell off a ladder. It was Christmas Day, and as I lay on the floor, unable to move or even speak, he stood over me shouting, “Why are you wearing those pants?” As if the legs were sewn together and were the reason I’d fallen. “You look like an idiot! And with that shirt I don’t even know who you are anymore!”
Is now really the moment to get into all this? I wondered, fairly certain that my back was broken.
The time before that, though, he was so kind. This preceded the ladder incident, and also took place in Sussex. It was early December, and I was on my daily walk, perhaps seven miles from home, when I understood that something was wrong. My stomach didn’t ache, exactly. Rather, it let its presence be known. Then I felt a sudden loss of energy, as if someone had reached inside me and yanked out my batteries.
The owner of the house I was in front of had placed large rocks on either side of his driveway and painted them white. The biggest was maybe six inches tall. It was uncomfortable to sit on, but I did, and a few moments later I vomited, grateful that it was almost dark and raining, and that no one could see me. Then I did it again, thinking this might be the only vomit in all of England that had no traces of alcohol in it—a novelty, but nevertheless unsightly. And so I covered it up with leaves before struggling to my feet.
Hugh’s piano teacher lived a few houses away from the rock I’d been sitting on. It wasn’t a great distance, but weak as I was, it took a while to reach her front door, then to form a fist and knock on it. Her husband kindly gave me a ride home, where I found Hugh in his studio, and vomited some more.
“Wow,” he said. “You’re really sick.”
He helped me into the house and upstairs to our bed. Then he brought me a bell that I rang every ten or so minutes for the next sixteen hours. “Can I have some water?” “I think I need a glass of ginger ale. We don’t have any? I bet the store does.” “Bring me my iPad, my laptop, the memoir in my office by a man who had both his feet chewed off by a panda cub. You couldn’t find such a book? Maybe I dreamed it. Where’s that tea I asked for? Can you change my socks for me?”
I thought of Hugh quite often during the period that I had my stomach virus. He doesn’t like to talk on the phone, and it’s a mistake to push him on it. He’ll settle for an email in a pinch, but what Hugh wants when I’m away are letters with stamps on them. If they’re patched-together entries from my diary, he can tell and will stop reading. So I have to sit down with the express intent of addressing him and only him. I sometimes resent the time it takes, but then I picture him at home, taking the letter from Phil, our mailman, and laying it on the kitchen table. He won’t read it right away. Rather, he’ll prepare for it, sitting in the garden if it’s dry, or in his studio if it’s not. He’ll have a cup of coffee or tea, and maybe a biscuit he’s just whipped up: everything just so, the way I am if a New Yorker arrives with a story by Lorrie Moore in it.
Then I’ll think of the way he eats dinner when I’m not there, of how he’ll spoon the juices of whatever he prepared over the meat or fish, and arrange things attractively on his plate. When I’m alone, I’ll sometimes eat directly out of the pans with my fingers to save myself from having to wash a fork or a dish, but not Hugh. He always sets the table before sitting down. If it’s chilly he’ll build a fire in the kitchen fireplace, and the flames will reflect off his wineglass. Then he’ll light candles and eat with the same manners he’d use if invited to Buckingham Palace, a cloth napkin on his lap, not watching a show on his computer or reading anything but just staring forward, at the place where I would be if I were home. Whenever I get tired of having to write him letters, I think of that—him eating alone—and pick up my pen. “Dear Hugh…”
While sick, I wrote that I wasn’t feeling well. I said I worried I might shit in my pants on a plane or while standing at the podium, but even that was testing his limits. Unlike a friend of my brother’s, who’s been known to take pictures of his bowel movements and email them to his wife with the heading A puppy!!!, Hugh and I never discuss what goes on in the bathroom. I have no evidence he’s ever done anything in there but brush his teeth and soak in the tub. He won’t even let me in when he’s peeing.
“I had that in my mouth ten minutes ago and now it’s a private part?” I’ll call from the other side of the door.
“Yes! Go away!”
If I’d had the gastrointestinal virus at home, I might have said, “I was in the bathroom a lot today.” I could have spoken about my nausea and general lack of energy, but that would be the extent of it. I wouldn’t use the word “diarrhea,” as it would be too indelicate. We’re well matched in our prudishness. The difference is that while I might not go into detail about myself, I’m more than happy to talk about someone else, this young man I met, for instance, whose girlfriend put her feet up on the dashboard of his truck and accidentally shit in her cutoff shorts.
“I guess she got a little too relaxed,” the guy told me.
“I don’t want to hear this,” Hugh said when I repeated the story.
We weren’t eating or anything, but even if we were I wouldn’t have understood his objection. “This happened years ago,” I explained. “Thousands of miles away from here.”