They May Not Mean To, But They Do(6)

“What do the doctors say?” Eileen asked.

Joy shrugged, and they waited for her to pull herself together and blow her nose.

“You have to take care of yourself, too, you know,” Natalie said. “Even nurses have shifts.”

“That’s what my children say. They say I’m grandiose, taking care of Aaron myself.”

“Children. What do they know?” said Daphne. “They think they know everything. But just wait.”

Joy smiled. “They are so bossy, aren’t they? I do miss Molly ordering me around, though.” The smile disappeared. “Now that she’s in California.”

“What about Daniel?”

“Daniel is wonderful, but…”

They all nodded. Daniel was not a daughter.

“Anyway, I’m fine.”

“Isn’t there some sort of adult day care Aaron could go to?” Daphne was saying.

“No, god, no, he would hate that. He gets so disoriented. Then he gets frightened. Then he gets angry. He would hate it. What’s he going to do? Sit in a drum circle? Make paper flowers?”

“What does he do at home?”

“Watch NY1. And eat. It’s a wonder he doesn’t weigh five hundred pounds. And a lot of time is taken up with, you know, showers and getting dressed and creams and applications of … things. I won’t go into it. But trust me, a day goes by. And on the days I’m at work, who knows what could happen? I come home at lunch to check on him and I never know what I’ll find, don’t ask, and then, when I come back again at the end of the day…”

She went to the ladies’ room. She put her bags down on a pretty little lavender table, shed a few more tears, washed her face, and sat gripping the arms of the lavender chintz chair, feeling faint. The doctor said these dizzy spells were nothing to worry about as long as she didn’t fall. But what if she did fall? What was to stop her from falling? She could very easily have fallen just now …

“I know you all probably think he should go to a place,” she said to the girls when she got back to the table, “but he would be miserable. He needs landmarks, needs familiar things, needs his schedule.”

“But what about what you need?” they said.

“I’d be miserable, too. Visiting a nursing home? Every day? I’m exhausted just thinking about it. And they’re not very clean, you know. Full of infection.” There was something else, too, something no one seemed to realize: if Aaron went into a nursing home, he would be gone. “What about what you need”—Molly and Daniel asked her the same thing. But what she needed was so obvious. She needed Aaron.

“You’re a saint,” Daphne said.

It was not a compliment.

“One of those insane, self-destructive saints,” Natalie added.

The kind who wander around in masochistic determination until they contract an incurable disease or are roasted on a fire or skinned alive, they all agreed.

“Joy, sweetie, at the very least you need to hire someone. Hire a saint,” Natalie added.

When she got home, she noticed how gray Aaron looked, his hair, his beard, his face, and his hooded sweatshirt. He was not a man who was meant to be gray. Some men are, but Aaron ought to have been ruddy. He never had been, but he ought to have been. That’s what Joy thought.

“You have to get some fresh air,” she said.

He waved an enormous hand at her, as if he were swatting a fly.

“You’ll get too stiff, sitting around all day.”

He waved her words away again.

“Do you hear me? Where are your hearing aids?”

“WHAT?”

“Where are your hearing aids?” Joy repeated loudly.

“What are you talking about?” Aaron said. “Hearing aids!” He shook his head at her folly.

“I’m going to kill you, Aaron,” she said.

“WHAT?”

“I’m going to kill you, I said!”

Aaron smiled. “So you say.” He took her hand and kissed it.

“‘Joyful, Joyful, we adore thee,’” he sang as she helped him up and over to the walker. He often called her Joyful.

“Well,” she said.

“‘Hearts unfold like flowers before thee.’”

Sometimes the songs were hymns, sometimes bits of British vaudeville from the last century, but mostly Baroque, mostly Purcell. The lyrics still came warbling out, even when he could not remember what the conversation was about, perhaps more so when he couldn’t remember, couldn’t keep up. Aaron had wanted to be a singer, a classical singer, but he’d gone directly into the family business instead. The Depression did that to people, made them think straight. Or warped them into shape, that was more the case with Aaron. It had taken Joy many years to understand that.

When they got outside, Aaron leaned heavily on his walker. It had wheels, which was a help. A shiny red walker with wheels. He called it his little red wagon.

“Lift up the front wheels,” she said.

“Get away. I know what I’m doing.”

“Tilt it.”

“I’m tilting, I’m tilting. It’s not moving. It’s broken.”

Joy took his arm. “Lean on me.” She tilted the walker and got the wheels on the curb. “It’s like a shopping cart.”