I'd Give Anything(11)
“I can see how you would,” said Daniel.
I remembered Harris from the night before, placing his shaving cream, toothbrush, razor into his leather Dopp kit with a slow care so characteristic that it hurt my heart. Before that, he had slid a suit, dress shirt, and tie into his hang-up bag, even though he had no place in the world to wear them.
“We will figure out what to do,” I’d told him.
“Do?” he’d said, filling that tiny word with an ocean of hopelessness.
“I’ll find a therapist for you.” I’d said it mostly because it was the one thing I could think of to offer. Later, I realized I hadn’t said “for us.”
“Thank you,” he’d told me.
Before he left, his shoulders bent under the weight of his bags, he’d said, “Nothing happened. It really didn’t. You can read our emails, my and Cressida’s. You should. I looked back over them, read every single one. Nothing, nothing wrong. Not a wrong word in the entire batch.”
Now, I looked at my friends and said, “I just want to declare this right now, with you two and these four good dogs as witnesses: I won’t let Avery’s life fall apart.”
“That’s the spirit,” said Mag.
Daniel could have said that if his daughter had survived her mother’s dying at the age of thirty-four, mine could surely survive her father’s dalliance. He could have said that sometimes families and worlds, no matter how careful everyone is, no matter how much love, fall apart and there’s not a thing you—or all of modern medicine—can do to stop it.
Instead, he said, “You? Are you kidding? Of course you won’t.”
That afternoon I went to visit my mother. Before I’d even sidestepped the ramp and walked up the front steps to my mother’s door—the door of the house Trevor and I had grown up in—I heard the opera: incandescent, full-throated sorrow turning the air on the pillared porch deep blue and reverberant. I didn’t recognize the singer. I didn’t know what opera the aria was from, a fact that would have elicited icy scorn from my mother. I didn’t understand a word of Italian. But the grief in the woman’s song was unmistakable, the indigo hopelessness, the unbearable, irretrievable loss.
Although I had possessed a key to that house for thirty years, I knew how my mother hated to be caught off guard. As I always did, I rang the bell, and I heard the single bright chime of it get caught by the music like a tossed marble landing in an open hand. Before the chime had fully faded, Agnes opened the door.
In her dark jeans, immaculate white shirt, and vermillion Tod’s loafers, Agnes looked more like a well-heeled young society matron than a nurse/caretaker for a wheelchair-bound cancer patient. But I knew that inside those perfectly creased sleeves were some mighty biceps, ready to transfer my mother from wheelchair to velvet armchair or mahogany dining chair or backyard Adirondack chair whenever it was required, which was often, since my mother found the wheelchair, with its black, breathable fabric and aluminum tubing, unsightly and insisted on spending as little time in it as possible. I also knew that, after Agnes had arrived at her house on the first day in fuchsia scrubs and white clogs, my mother had purchased her entire outfit. The white shirt was one of three. After two wearings, my mother would send one shirt out to be cleaned and pressed—or rather would send Agnes to have it sent out to be cleaned and pressed—and Agnes would come to work in a fresh one.
Agnes smiled at me, but I could see the frustration in her eyes. She was as efficient and patient as anyone I had ever met, but my mother was not an easy person to care for. In fact, if she had been an easy person ever, in any way, even for a day, I had never witnessed it.
“She’s in the sunroom with her tea and cookies,” said Agnes.
“Lemon snaps from Rolf’s?”
“Well, it is Wednesday,” said Agnes.
Rolf’s Bakery’s lemon snaps on Mondays and Wednesdays. Devonshire Market’s currant scones on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Cesarini’s mini cannolis on Fridays and Saturdays. Each bakery had a small string-tied box marked with my mother’s name ready for Agnes to pick up on the designated days. Sundays were a day of tea-sweets rest, just as God had commanded.
Agnes was too professional to roll her eyes at a patient’s behavior, but the way she said Wednesday suggested that she was thinking of rolling her eyes. She gave me a tiny private smile. I gave her one back.
“You are an angel and a saint and the world’s best sport,” I told Agnes, not for the first time.
“I wouldn’t go that far,” said Agnes. “She gives me the extras to take home for my boyfriend. She may be singlehandedly keeping our relationship afloat.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time Cesarini’s cannolis saved the day. Maybe I should try that.”
“You?” said Agnes, startled. “Does your day need saving?”
With a small pang of annoyance, I recognized that particular brand of startle. It said: “You of the perfect life are worrying about something?” I also recognized that, since I was the one who had carefully cultivated the myth of my family’s perfect life, my pang of annoyance, however small, was pure hypocrisy.
“Hey, you never know,” I said, breezily. “I should probably keep some cannolis in my back pocket, just in case.”
“That sounds messy,” said Agnes, with a shudder and a grin.