He was quiet, and then he said, “No, you’re right, you’re right. I’ll get Ella now, and if you wouldn’t mind calling Jadey, I can cancel with Stuey. How’re your mom and Lars?”
“They’re fine.”
“How are you?”
“I’m fine, too,” I said, though at this moment, being asked, I felt a sadness overtake me.
Then Charlie said, “I know you think I hate spending the night apart because of not wanting to be in the house alone, but it’s also because I miss you, Lindy.”
“Do you and Ella want to come out here?” I realized this was unlikely. On his first visit to my family’s house in Riley, Charlie had managed to conceal what I believe in retrospect was astonishment at how small the place was. In the years since, he’d become significantly less diplomatic. He’d say, “Sharing a bathroom with Lars is cruel and unusual punishment.” Even on the holidays we spent there, we almost never stayed the night, and Charlie regularly lobbied for my mother, grandmother, and Lars to come to his parents’ house for Easter or Christmas; they’d done so a few times early in our marriage, and I don’t think any of them had felt particularly comfortable. I was pretty sure that neither Priscilla nor Harold Blackwell knew Lars had been a postal employee—he had retired in 1980—and while I wouldn’t have denied it, I’d never made a point of telling them. The irony was that marrying Lars had no doubt made my mother far more financially secure. Since the episode with Pete Imhof, she had never mentioned money to me, and she and Lars had even gone on trips together to Myrtle Beach and Albuquerque.
“Honestly, it’d probably be better if we go to Jadey and Arthur’s,” Charlie was saying. “Ella and I would be underfoot at your mom’s. Call me if you need anything, and call either way before you go to bed.”
“Ella is supposed to go to Christine’s house tomorrow, so make sure she’s ready to be picked up by ten. Also, have her take her vitamin after breakfast.”
“You’ll be back in time for dinner at Maj and Dad’s, won’t you?”
I hesitated. “Let’s cross that bridge when we come to it.”
I could tell that Charlie was restraining himself from saying how important my attendance was, which it really wasn’t except for the fact that the Blackwells took particular pride in their all-hands-on-deck dinners.
I said, “Charlie, I’m sure your family will understand.”
AT SIX THAT
evening, the ICU’s last visiting hour, my mother and I were finally buzzed through the double doors to see my grandmother. Because only two people at a time were permitted, Lars remained in the waiting room.She still was not conscious. She lay beneath a sheet in a white hospital gown with a pattern of small teal and navy snowflakes, and she was hooked up to several monitors, one of them beeping. A tube was taped to the crook of her arm, and two more emerged from her nostrils. “She’s so little,” my mother murmured. I had been thinking exactly the same thing. Against the backdrop of the oversize bed, my grandmother looked heartbreakingly old and heartbreakingly tiny.
I walked toward her, saying in a cheerful voice, “Hi, Granny. It’s Alice and Mom—”
“It’s Dorothy,” my mother cut in. “Granny, boy, are we happy to see you. You gave us quite a scare today.”
“You probably want to rest, so we won’t stay long,” I said. “But the doctor said you’re stable now, which is wonderful news.” It was impossible to know if she could hear us; the overwhelming likelihood was that she couldn’t. “I don’t know if you remember, but you fell this morning, so you’re in the hospital. Now you’re recovering”—this was my own wishful diagnosis, not the doctor’s; he had used no word more encouraging than
stable—
“and the doctors and nurses are taking very good care of you.” This also was optimistic inference; I didn’t have much idea of what had transpired behind the closed double doors. Dr. Furnish, who was the attending physician, had explained a few minutes before to Lars, my mother, and me that my grandmother had had what was called a lobar intracerebral hemorrhage and they’d given her several blood transfusions so far but were hesitant to perform surgery, given her age and general frailness; he also warned that she might have brain damage. Dr. Furnish was not particularly warm, but he did seem competent. As he spoke, I took notes on the back of a receipt I’d found in my purse.“Granny, I don’t think the waiting room here would be much to your liking,” my mother said. “The chairs are covered in an orange fabric you’d find very tacky.”
“And Lars bought stale-looking cookies, which Mom and I were smart enough not to eat, but everyone else gobbled them up.” I tried to sound jaunty and humorous.
“Emilie, you have to get better and come home in time for the season finale of
Murder, She Wrote,
” my mother said.I added, “But if you get me out of dinner at Priscilla and Harold Blackwell’s tomorrow night, I’ll be in your debt.”
“Alice!” my mother said.
“I’m teasing,” I said. “Granny knows that.”
We continued in this fashion, half talking to my grandmother and half talking to each other for the allotted thirty minutes, and the only response we got was the beeping of the monitor. As soon as we walked out the double doors leading back to the waiting room, my mother pulled a tissue from her pocket and dabbed at her eyes. “I know Granny’s had a long life, and it’s not for me to question God’s plan,” she said. “But, Alice, I’m not ready.”
AND THEN, MIRACULOUSLY
, my grandmother was awake. I called the hospital around seven the next morning, as soon as I’d gotten out of the shower, and they said she’d regained consciousness during the night. She was dozing again, a nurse said, and although she’d be woozy from the sedatives, she’d almost definitely be able to talk to us when we went in at nine o’clock.My mother stopped in the gift shop on the lobby level to buy a balloon—flowers weren’t allowed in the ICU—and so I entered my grandmother’s room alone. Her eyes were closed, but when I said, “Knock, knock,” she opened them immediately. “Granny, welcome back!” I said. “We missed you!” When I was beside her bed, I leaned in and kissed her cheek.
She blinked a few times, then said, “They’ve been feeding me very spicy chicken, and it’s made my throat dry.”
Did she even realize who I was? I said, “Can I give you some water?” A white plastic pitcher sat on the table beside her bed, and next to it was an avocado-colored plastic cup with a straw in it. I brought the straw to my grandmother’s lips, and when she sucked on it, a tiny clear trickle dribbled out of the corner of her mouth. Though she was receiving fluids through an IV, I was certain my grandmother had eaten nothing, spicy chicken or otherwise, since her arrival at the hospital.
When she’d finished drinking and leaned her head back on the pillow, she said, “They’re gambling on the roof, you know.”
I hesitated. “Who?”
She nodded sagely. “
They
are.”I held my hand over my heart. “It’s Alice, Granny. You’re in the hospital, but you’re getting better, and I’ve come to visit you.”
She made an appalled expression. “Do you think I don’t know who you are? I’m not
senile.
” She pointed at me. “Why are you wearing Dorothy’s blouse? It makes you look frumpy.”I smiled. “I unexpectedly spent the night in Riley, so Mom let me borrow this.”
“You should wear clothes more suited to your age.”
“Granny, how do you feel? Be sure to let me know if you need to rest.”
She didn’t respond right away but looked around the room and then said, “I’ve been thinking of your father.”
I felt a flare of anxiety. Although I wasn’t at all sure I believed in heaven, it was hard not to imagine that by
thinking of,
she may have meant
communing with
or even
being beckoned by.
All I said, though, was “Oh?”“He was very devoted to Dorothy,” my grandmother said. “I had the opportunity to observe your parents’ marriage closely over a number of years, and I saw how fond of each other they were.” She peered at me. “What’s your husband’s name?”
I swallowed. “Charlie. Charlie Blackwell.”
“That’s right, the governor’s son. You two are very devoted to each other as well.”
I tried to smile. “Well, I hope so.”
She regarded me shrewdly. “That sounded tepid.”
“No, I didn’t mean—I just—Lately, he’s been drinking more than I think he should,” I finally managed to say.
She made a pooh-poohing gesture, or tried to, though because of the IV inside her elbow, she didn’t have full mobility. “Don’t keep a tight leash on him, my dear. That always backfires.”
“Oh, I don’t—if anything, the opposite.”
“You’re not strict with him?”
I shook my head.
“Maybe that’s the problem, then, that he’d like you to be stricter.”
I hesitated—was this really the time or place to unburden myself?—but my grandmother had always enjoyed talking about people, and she did seem genuinely engaged. “This will sound ridiculous to you, but I think he’s having some kind of midlife crisis. His twentieth college reunion is in a couple weeks, and he’s obviously worried about not measuring up to his classmates.”
“He went to Harvard University,” my grandmother said, and her tone was strange—it was as if she were boasting to me about someone other than my own husband.
“You’re right that he went to school on the East Coast, but it was Princeton. Anyway, I guess he had the idea that he’d have accomplished more by now. He comes from a line of successful men, his grandfather and father, and I’m sure you remember his brother Ed is a congressman.” I wasn’t at all sure she remembered, though she did nod as I spoke. “But I just don’t think Charlie is meant to be a business titan or a politician. Not that I mind—I didn’t marry him assuming he would be. He’s so funny and lively, he has loads of friends, he’s a terrific father, and I just—I don’t understand why that’s not enough, why our life isn’t enough. It’s enough for me, and I don’t understand why it isn’t enough for him.”
“His ambitions exceed his talent.”
I tried not to take offense. “I don’t know if I’d go that far. He’s very smart. And maybe it’s me, it’s that he finds me boring—” It was actually painful to remember the afternoon when Charlie and I had first said we loved each other—it had been the same day he’d met my mother and grandmother and Lars—and to remember how he’d prefaced it by saying he thought he’d always find me interesting. The reason it was painful was that I wondered with increasing frequency if it had remained true. What a wonderful compliment that had been, how unexpected, how
recognized
I had felt. I wasn’t just a cute brunette to Charlie; he understood that I was a person who thought about things, who read and had opinions, even if I held them quietly, and all of these were qualities that made him value me. But did he ever wish, in retrospect, that he’d married someone more exciting, someone whose idea of a pleasant Saturday night wasn’t eating dinner with our nine-year-old daughter and then reading forty pages of Eudora Welty before bed? Even the absence of real acrimony in our marriage, maybe that was disappointing—no opportunities for shouting or slamming doors, none of the delicious ugliness of rage, no fraught sexy reunions.My grandmother said, “Everyone is boring some of the time. The most fascinating person I ever knew was a woman named Gladys Wycomb. Did I ever introduce you to my friend Gladys?”
I nodded.
“She was the eighth woman in the state of Wisconsin to earn her medical degree, truly a brilliant gal. But I’d go to visit her, and sure enough, within a few days, we’d both be reading a book at the dinner table. It didn’t bother me a whit. What greater happiness is there than the privilege of being bored together?”
“I agree, but I’m not sure that Charlie would.”
“Does he know you have doubts about him?”
“It’s not me doubting him, it’s him having doubts about his job and the path he’s taken in life, which—” I broke off. Wasn’t I lying, however inadvertently? It
was
me doubting him. I glanced at the floor, which was covered in white linoleum tiles. When I looked up again, I said, “I know you were impressed with Charlie when you first met, but are you still?” What was I doing asking this of my drugged grandmother, as if she were some sort of medium of marital wisdom? Or was I bold enough only because she was drugged? Even with Jadey, I was not quite this frank.“I was impressed by him because I could tell he adored you, and you deserve to be adored,” my grandmother said. “Frankly, what you’re describing sounds like much ado about nothing. Go home, put on a pretty dress, some heels, and some lipstick, flirt with him, flatter him, and never forget how insecure men are. It’s because they take themselves far too seriously.”
In this moment, her instructions felt like a lifeline—so simple, so easily executed. What an immense relief to have someone tell me what to do! Then she said, “Get me some water, will you? They’ve been feeding me spicy chicken, and I don’t care for the taste of it.”
“Your cup is right here.” I helped her sip again, and when she’d finished, I held up the book I’d brought in my bag. “I have your copy of
Anna Karenina.
Would you like me to read from it?”“That would be lovely.”
“From the section where she and Vronsky meet, or from the beginning?”
“When they meet.”
As I opened the book, I said, “I hope I haven’t made you think badly of Charlie. I’m sure you’re right that I’m blowing things out of proportion.”
She had already closed her eyes, and she shook her head. “Chapter Eighteen,” I began, and I cleared my throat. “ ‘Vronsky followed the guard to the carriage, and had to stop at the entrance of the compartment to let a lady pass . . . ’ ” When my mother arrived a few minutes later with the balloon, my grandmother had fallen back to sleep.
ON MY RETURN
to Milwaukee, I stopped at a gas station. I’d already paid and was replacing the gas nozzle in the pump when a man’s voice said, “Alice, what a coincidence.”I looked up, and just a few feet away, standing by a caron the opposite side of the concrete island, Joe Thayer held up a hand in greeting. He wore a yellow polo shirt tucked into madras shorts, and he looked characteristically handsome, but he also looked like he had recently lost weight he hadn’t needed to lose: His cheekbones were more pronounced, and though he was well over six feet, there was a scrawniness to his shoulders. Not that I looked so hot myself—as my grandmother had observed, I had on my mother’s “frumpy” blouse. Plus, because I hadn’t brought the mousse that I used, my hair was a bit frizzy. I still was a good fifteen minutes from Maronee, and I hadn’t expected to run into anybody I knew.