230
"Worse than the spring?" Susan asks.
"Yes. "
DON ZACHAR IA
"Will she be all right? Will she live?" Pete asks.
I look at him, caught off guard. "What do you mean? Yes.
She'll be all right. Most of her trouble has to do with balance. It is
very hard for her to walk about without being helped."
"For breakfast," Pete says, "can we have bacon? We didn't
have bacon once all summer."
4. In medicine, a malignant new growth in the body of a
person or animal; a malignant tumor.
Cancers tend to spread and
ulcerate. Oh, brother. "It is good that she saw the children."
Someone, I don't know who, but someone said that to me. What
that person meant, it's right on the tip of my tongue, who the hell
was it, what that person meant was that J died the next day and it
was good because the day before she died the two older children
came home from camp and they saw J and J saw them. I think
that's what she meant. Who knows? Maybe she meant something
else. It felt like it always felt, pleasant, soft, casual. "I'm sorry,"
J's doctor is talking to me. I had brought her into the hospital that
morning semiconscious. "It's a matter of time. We will try to keep
her comfortable."
"How much time?"
"Not very much time."
I went for a walk and had a sandwich and when I came back
to J's room two nurses were rummaging through J's pocketbook.
"What are you doing?"
They looked startled. The shorter one spoke: "We have to
make an inventory of your wife's possessions--"
"Please--" I looked at J; her mou th propped open by some
kind of surgical instrument, eyes closed, face twisted in the agony
of dying. Her hands had been folded in front of her with her fists
still clenched. Nude from the waist up, her breasts seemed very
alive to me. I looked away, never wanting to remember that scene
that I could never forget. What do I do now? Do I leave the room?
Do I call a rabbi? Do I call
The New York Times?
I sat down on
the side of her bed. I touched one of her breasts, fondling it for a
frozen moment.
It
felt like it had always felt; pleasant, soft,
casual.
