Heroic Measures (8 page)

“You should get the hell out of here while you can,” Rudolph says.

“Maybe the stairs are a blessing, at least they’re forcing you to make a decision,” May says. “We talk about leaving all the time. Move the gallery to Santa Fe. But our son despises Santa Fe, so we do nothing about it. You know
what a weekend like this does to us? Nothing. Rudolph checks to make sure the kayak’s inflated and all I feel is lassitude. I’m like a gazelle caught in a lion’s jaw—limp, numb, resigned to my fate. Our son thinks the only reason Osama hasn’t struck again is because he has the Hollywood syndrome. Now that he’s had an extravaganza, he’s not going to settle for a small, artful, independent feature.”

“Before we all run off to the South Seas, remember, this is the dreck we’ll be eating,” Rudolph says, spearing the last of his chicken, and then pushing away his empty plate.

“It is awful, isn’t it,” May says, setting down her cutlery. She’s barely touched her food.

Alex’s perch is long gone and Ruth’s dinner is just crumbs now, though she has no memory of what anything tasted like.

Rudolph reaches for his fork and begins picking at May’s untouched chicken. “Didn’t you say that the
Times
gave it a good review?”

The waiter appears. “Would you like to hear about our desserts? Tonight we have fried mango sorbet with guava syrup and cheesecake.”

“They make cheesecake on the equator?” Rudolph asks.

“I believe our cheesecake comes from Passaic, New Jersey.”

“The check, please,” May says, quietly handing the waiter her credit card as he leaves.

“We’ll pay the tip,” Alex announces.

“I wouldn’t tip this guy,” Rudolph says.

“Is Dorothy allowed visitors?” May turns to Ruth.

“We forgot to ask.”

On the street, the two couples hug good-bye.

“You’ll call us about Dorothy?” May says.

“Thank you for everything,” Ruth whispers.

“Next time dinner’s on us,” Alex announces.

“Let me know when you want the paintings moved,” Rudolph says.

“Good luck tomorrow,” May adds.

Ruth, a head shorter than May, and Alex, almost two heads shorter than Rudolph, watch their friends start west toward Fifth Avenue, the waist-length braid swinging behind them.

“I know she was only trying to be kind,” Ruth says. “But how could anyone imagine that facing five flights of stairs at our age is a blessing?”

“I’m not sure the warehouse is such a good idea,” Alex says.

They turn and head east toward the projects.

The temperature has risen: the air feels almost balmy. Ruth unknots her scarf, undoes the top button on her overcoat: she’s always the hotter of the two. Alex puts on his red baseball cap. It’s a little after eight, early by East Village standards. The Saturday-night crowd isn’t even awake yet. The dominatrix haute-couture shop, the trance music store, the drug paraphernalia stand are all empty. Tompkins Square, lit by old-fashioned arc lamps, looks especially inviting. Ruth takes Alex’s arm and they enter the park. The snow on the path has already melted, but
above them, in the latticework of elm branches, whiteness abounds. It’s a white Alex would mix with Chremnitz white and a touch of hansa yellow.

When Ruth looks up, it’s not the snow she notices; it’s the black pieces of night between the white branches. At this time of year, the sky usually looks as low and gray as a tin ceiling, but tonight, it looks exactly like what it is— infinite.

On warm winter Saturday evenings, the park’s normally overrun with suburban teenagers, blasting music and skateboarding, but tonight, the only other souls are the elderly Italian couple who run the cheese and ravioli shop and the homeless chess player who frequents the library on cold days. He and Ruth have discussed books. He, too, is fond of the dead Russians.

“It’s so quiet,” he says to no one in particular.

“Maybe they should close the tunnel permanently,” the Italian husband says.

“Maybe they should close all the bridges and tunnels and leave us our island,” his wife says.

Alex and Ruth exit the park and cross the street to the newsstand. They barely glance at the evening headlines,
No Bomb in Baltimore
. It’s the classifieds they want. Ruth pays, while Alex hoists up the voluminous
Sunday Times
, clamps it under his arm, and, like a schoolboy carrying a schoolgirl’s heavy books, walks her home, all the way up the mountain of steps.

The phone machine has no new messages. Ruth isn’t sure if she’s relieved (the hospital didn’t call, Dorothy must
be holding her own) or disappointed (no one has made another offer). Alex turns on the news, while she sits at the kitchen table to scout the real estate pages, a section thicker than the international news, for a two-bedroom elevator co-op below Fourteenth Street. She takes a pen from her purse to circle any possibilities. Out of the thirty-three two-bedroom open houses taking place downtown tomorrow only one is listed for under a million dollars.

What is there to do but circle it? She searches the next tier of prices.

She not only circles this one, but draws a big star beside it. It’s higher than they wanted to go, but …

“Any news?” she shouts over the television.

“The mayor just gave another press conference. He wants New Yorkers to call the hotlines
only
if they have a credible sighting. The FBI has received over ten thousand calls. Did you find anything?” he shouts back.

“Someplace that sounds too good to be true. Do you
think all the sightings will affect prices? Don’t prices go up if everywhere is dangerous? Or does the market stay flat if sightings happen in all the neighborhoods? Do you remember what Lily said?”

Alex comes into the kitchen and peers over her shoulder. She’s drawn a big black star next to one of the listings. He knows that to draw a star that black on paper as absorbent as newsprint, she must have pressed very hard on her pen. He reads the fine print:
One million and one hundred thousand
.

“We can’t afford it,” he says.

“We can if we learn from Harold’s Ladies. If we like the apartment, let’s offer a hundred and fifty thousand less than the asking price, two hundred less if the news is still bad tomorrow morning. If we don’t take advantage of the panic, someone else will. What’s the worst that can happen? The sellers will laugh in our faces? We laughed at Harold’s Ladies, and look at us now.” She puts down her pen. “My God, I almost wished for bad news. Do you know what the worst that can happen is?”

“We’ll have to put off moving for a few months?”

“That my wish will come true.”

In bed, after she sets the alarm for seven, Ruth reaches for her
Portable Chekhov
and opens to the page that she’d been reading last night when she fell asleep. The lady with the pet dog is crying once again, though in a different hotel, many years later. This time rather than eat a slice of water-melon,
Gurov takes her in his arms and experiences such compassion “for this life, still so warm and lovely, but probably already about to begin to fade and wither like his own. Why did she love him so much?” The lovers take council and try to figure out a way to spend more time together without secrecy and deception, despite living in two different cities, and his having a wife and a daughter and a job at the bank, and her having a husband and a Pomeranian, if the little dog is still alive.

Ruth already knows the lovers’ fate—she taught the story almost every year—yet every time she nears the story’s end, Chekhov creates anew the hope that this time things will turn out differently, this time “the solution would be found, and then a new and glorious life would begin: and it was clear to both of them that the end was still far off, and that what was to be most complicated and difficult for them was only just beginning.”

DOROTHY NOW SHARES A SEMIPRIVATE ROOM
with a bulldog recuperating from having eaten a penny, a poodle passing kidney stones, a Mexican hairless with a sinus infection, and a pug in a leg cast. Cages line the green walls. Dorothy’s is stacked atop the bulldog’s—she can smell him trying to pass the penny. Unlike intensive care with only the Chihuahua’s faint breath for company, this ward is alive with barking. Whenever the nurse walks by, all the dogs vie for her attention, but Dorothy knows a trick the others don’t. As the nurse passes her cage, Dorothy wags her tail to beat the band. “Look at you,” the nurse invariably stops and says, “twenty-four hours out of back surgery and doing the shimmy. You go, girl, shake that booty.”

This morning though, a medical student with clammy hands accompanies the nurse. He takes Dorothy from her cage and sits her on a cold steel examining table.

When she wags her tail for him, he’s not impressed. She looks up at the nurse.

“I’m sorry, sweetie, you have to try to walk today.”

The nurse helps her up, supporting Dorothy’s hind-quarters,
while the medical student walks to the head of the table and calls, “Dorothy!”

Once again, she wags her tail for him—faster, harder— but wagging her tail doesn’t even elicit a smile.

The nurse gently sets her down. “I’ll be right back.” She shouts into the corridor, “Mauricio, give me a little sausage from your McMuffin.” When she returns she’s holding what to Dorothy’s nose smells like life itself. Dorothy hasn’t eaten in thirty-six hours. Her entire world narrows to that smoky meaty scent. The sausage is passed from the nurse’s long black fingers to the student’s pale ones.

“Try calling her now,” the nurse says.

The pale fingers hold out the crumble of sausage. “Dorothy!”

With the nurse’s help, she’s able to get traction on the table surface: she takes a step, sways.

“One more, baby, one more,” the nurse whispers encouragingly.

Dorothy lurches toward the enticing morsel. She doesn’t quite reach it, but she manages two more steps.

“I’m going to get Dr. Rush,” says the medical student.

He leaves with the sausage. Where is he taking it?

“Aren’t you something,” the nurse says, “I bet you’ll be ready to go dancing by tonight.”

The doctor with the kind blue eyes comes in. Dorothy can smell he now has the sausage. “A hot dog eating a sausage? Sounds a little like cannibalism to me.” He tilts up her snout and shines a pinprick of sun into her eyes. He cups a cold steel bell to her heart and listens. Dorothy follows the traces of meat in the air: the sausage is in his left
hand. Finally, he offers her the morsel, but he holds it just out of reach. She rises to her feet again, this time without the nurse’s help, takes a step, sways, takes another, totters, but keeps going until she reaches the meat.

“You are a miracle wiener,” the doctor says, feeding her the last of the crumbles. She swallows them before she remembers to chew. All that’s left to savor is the juice on the doctor’s fingers. She licks up every last drop, and when the taste is gone, she washes his fingers in gratitude.

“GOOD MORNING, EVERYBODY,” SAYS THE
basset-eyed newscaster—freshly shaved, powdered, and clad in a new shirt and tie. To unshaven Alex and barely awake Ruth drinking their morning tea in front of the television, he looks as if he’d slept like a baby. “Before I bring on my first guest, a forensic psychologist and consultant for Homeland Security, to help answer the question—
Is Pamir a suicide bomber or not?—
let’s see what the American people think. Here’s how our viewers responded to this morning’s polling question. Seventy-seven percent say yes, Pamir is a suicide bomber, twelve percent say no, and eleven percent isn’t sure. We’ll be right back to see if the experts agree.”

“Nothing’s new,” Alex says.

“At least my wish didn’t come true,” Ruth says, answering the phone before he’s even aware it’s ringing. From his end of the sofa, he studies her expression, trying to decipher who’s calling so early on a Sunday morning. She closes her eyes as if to listen with great concentration. When she opens them, her fishbowls are brimming with joy.

“Dorothy’s walking!”

“Our girl’s going to be okay?”

“She took five steps!”

He reaches for Ruth’s free hand, squeezes. “When can she come home?” he asks.

“Not until tomorrow morning, but we can visit her after eleven today. Thank you, thank you, thank you,” she says to the doctor. Alex watches her gently settle the phone back in its cradle as if she were putting it down for a nap. “Dr. Rush said it took a bribe of sausage to get her to take the five steps.”

“Imagine if he’d have offered her pâté.”

“He said she’ll have to be confined to her crate for two weeks, but after that, we need to encourage her to walk.”

“Two weeks of breakfast in bed; we may never get her up.”

“The doctor called her a miracle wiener.”

While Alex showers, Ruth leaves the television on, though she’s no longer watching. She’s stocking her purse with provisions for the day—cell phone, keys, the folded newspaper sheet with the open house addresses, paper and pen to take notes, and Dorothy’s squeaky hot dog. The doctor said they could bring one of her toys. The plan is for them to look at the two downtown apartments—the junior two-bedroom in need of TLC and the one they can’t afford—before catching the bus to the hospital. When the phone next rings, it’s almost time to leave. She picks up the bedroom extension hoping Lily’s calling with news from the bidding war front.

“So what’s going on with this madman loose in New York?” asks her younger sister, Thelma.

In stereo, Ruth hears Thelma’s television blasting the news in Fort Myers, and her own blasting the news in the living room. She closes the bedroom door. “We know nothing more than you do,” she says.

Three years ago, Thelma retired from the post office in Queens and moved south with her new boyfriend, Teddy, to a senior community, Camelot Gardens. “It has two pools, a clubhouse with a media room, and when the time comes, assisted living, and it’s all pet-friendly,” Thelma had told her. Ruth has yet to visit. She loves her sister, but she can’t bear Teddy, and Dorothy despises Thelma’s two teacup Yorkies, Happy and Muffin. After their parents died, the sisters had little in common, except their love for their dogs. When Ruth and Thelma discuss their dogs, all the intimacy is back.

“We had such a scare with Dorothy, but she’s going to be fine,” Ruth says. “I just got off the phone with her doctor.”

“Oh, thank God,” Thelma says. “What happened?”

“Her back went out. She had to have emergency surgery. We didn’t know if she’d ever walk again, but she’s already taken five steps. Her doctor called her a miracle wiener.”

“There’s a woman in my Scrabble group who has a dog with three legs and she’s says the dog gets around beautifully When can Dorothy come home?”

“Tomorrow.”

“Are you and Alex still going through with the open house?”

“We had it yesterday.”

“You let strangers into your home with a suicide bomber running loose?”

“I doubt if he’s house hunting.”

“So, did you get any offers?”

“We think so, but it’s so far below our asking price, we’re not sure if we should take it.”

“How much?”

“Nine hundred thousand.”

“Oh my God, you’re rich!” Thelma screams.

Muffin and Happy start barking.

“You know it buys nothing here,” Ruth says.

“Move to Camelot Gardens. With your money, you could afford a Lavender Court Villa; it’s top of the line. I haven’t been inside one, but they all have pool views and granite countertops. And there’s an arts and crafts room in the clubhouse where Alex can set up an easel.”

“Alex needs his privacy to work.”

“Hell, with your money, buy two units and let him paint in one. You’d live like a queen.”

After the sisters say good-bye, Ruth can’t help but wonder if she and Alex should reconsider Florida. Not Camelot Gardens of course, but somewhere near—though not too near—her sister. She tries to imagine her and Alex in Fort Myers, clad in their dark New York clothes, and Dorothy with her bad back, crossing six lanes of traffic and then miles of sun-blistering parking lots just to have a bite out or to pick up some milk and bread.

Alex fills his overcoat pockets with his provisions for the day—cash, wallet, antacids, allergy pills, extra hearing aid batteries, a comb, and Stim-U-Dents, while Ruth gathers
up her gloves and scarf. Before walking out the door, they check the television one last time for the very latest news on Pamir, lest their path cross with his this morning.

“It’s a big myth that suicide bombers are raving lunatics,” says a double-chinned woman with badly applied lipstick captioned “Forensic Psychology Professor and Consultant for Homeland Security.” “Anyone can become a suicide bomber. This is normal psychology, normal group dynamics. Normal people, given the right circumstances or the right set of friends can become suicide bombers.”

“Is she telling us it’s peer pressure?” Ruth asks.

“She’s telling us that they haven’t a clue where Pamir is.”