Every Note Played(30)
“You need a lot more help that that.”
“I know. I don’t work anymore. I can’t afford it.”
She thinks about the stairs and that wheelchair. This situation is untenable.
“You’re selling this place.”
“My realtor says I have it priced too high, but I don’t want to come down or I’ll lose money on it. Suppose it doesn’t matter. I have a huge mortgage. It won’t free up enough cash.”
She doesn’t point out that leaving here might be more about living somewhere without stairs than the potential for liquidity. She knows his father and his brothers. His father won’t help, and his brothers can’t. It’s too bad his mother isn’t still alive. She would be here for him. His agent is in New York City.
“Is there a girlfriend?”
“No.”
“You can’t go on like this.”
Isn’t that exactly what she said to him when she finally asked for a divorce, but with an I instead of a you? She pinches her mouth shut, trying to withhold what she’s about to say next, thinking that maybe if she makes it past this moment, if Melanie walks through the door and takes over the conversation, then she won’t say what she’s about to say.
She looks at Richard, and he nods, and she can’t tell if he’s agreeing with what she said or what she’s thinking, believing suddenly that he can read her mind. This is nuts. She can’t do this. She can’t say what she’s about to say. She’d have to be a masochist, an idiot, insane. Elise will call her crazy for sure. She can’t undo all that has happened by saying what she feels compelled to say.
Just as she’s sliding down a slick hill to panic, a sense of calm settles over her instead, leveling her tilted inner landscape, and she realizes that it doesn’t matter whether she says it now or not. She sighs. She looks at Richard and his lifeless arms and the wheelchair and his piano, and it’s already true and done, as if this moment, this whole day, her entire life, were fated, and she agreed to say what’s next before she was even born.
“You need to come back home.”
“I know.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
There aren’t any Hallmark cards illustrated with doe-eyed characters or inspirational quotes that celebrate the life moment when a man moves back in with his ex-wife. For eight days now, Richard has been living at 450 Walnut Street, the house he lived in with Karina and Grace for thirteen years, the house he left when he and Karina separated a little over three years ago, the house conveyed to Karina free and clear in the divorce settlement. More specifically, he’s been living in the old den, now his new bedroom, on the first floor.
Practically speaking, the move was a summer breeze. Aside from his clothes and toiletries, he needed only to move his computer, his TV, his Vitamix, and his wheelchair. He left everything else behind for his real estate agent to use in staging his condo. She says the piano in particular shows well, helps potential buyers to imagine a cultured life there, especially once they learn whom it belonged to and that it comes with the unit if they want it. She was ecstatic to see the wheelchair go. In her thirty-two years in the real estate business, she says that nothing ruined the feng shui of a home more than a power wheelchair.
He even left his king bed, as his occupational therapist convinced him that now was the perfect opportunity to order the hospital bed he needs. Weakening abdominal muscles plus no arms equals one hell of a time getting up from a flat mattress. He hated agreeing to it, but he has to admit that he sleeps much better in the twin hospital bed with the back raised to about sixty degrees than he did propped up on two or three pillows on his horizontal Posturepedic, and getting up without assistance is infinitely easier.
Emotionally speaking, the move was a Category 5 hurricane. Getting out of this house, away from Karina and the unsettled turmoil between them, and starting over in his own place in Boston had felt like a glorious victory, as if he’d won some grand prize or been released from prison or been allowed to graduate despite failing a required class for years. He remembers those first few mornings alone, the delicious moment upon wakening when he realized that she wasn’t next to him or anywhere under the same roof, and he felt relieved, revitalized, ten years younger. And now, here he is, back under the same roof, demoralized, pathetic, emasculated, dying.
His new bed sits where his piano used to be. Where his passion, his love, his life, used to be. Now, in all likelihood, unless Karina panics and calls 911, this is where his death will be. He tries to ignore his deathbed, but there’s no avoiding it. Even when he’s not sleeping or sitting on it, when he’s at his desk or watching TV from the easy chair, he feels it near him, waiting for him.
He is grateful to be living on ground level, to no longer have to negotiate three flights of stairs or a locked front door if he wants to go for a walk. He can open and close the garage door though voice activation of an app on his phone, and Karina keeps the door from the garage to the foyer propped open. So he can come and go without the need for keys or contingency plans.
But there’s a rub. In Boston, he could go anywhere anonymous, unseen. Here, he knows all the neighbors. Despite their well-meaning smiles and hugs and conversation, he wishes he could step outside and be alone, unnoticed. He doesn’t want to be seen like this.
His wheelchair is currently stored in the back corner of the garage, blessedly out of everyday sight. When he needs it, a construction project will be necessary. Karina assumes that it’ll fit through the doorway, but she hasn’t checked. He’s spent countless hours alone in his living room sitting opposite that chair, as if they were staring each other down, and he’s memorized the size and shape of his enemy. A quick eyeball of the entryway and he’s already surmised that the geometry doesn’t work. Twelve steps lead up to the front door. They’ll either need to widen the doorway from the garage to the foyer or build a ramp over the front steps. The ramp will likely be cheaper. That or a bottle of pills.