He heard his mother explain her condition to him. Once or twice she described the minor accident that had occurred when Beth had lost consciousness. He could not stand to listen.
She sat on the bed and felt concerned—he knew this, though he closed his eyes and could not bring himself to say anything—and twice a day she made him food and brought it in to him on a tray. It rested on the nightstand beside the Mass cards that piled up there, which she also brought to him: apparently Masses were being said for Beth. Then the food was cold and limp and she took it away again. He drank water from time to time, finding a glass in his hand with ice cubes that clicked against it thinly, but nothing else entered him. He had the suspicion that cogs were spinning, the universe beyond his walls was functioning and he was not, but he had no choice. His dog lay on the bed alongside, jumping down periodically to eat from her bowl or when his mother offered to walk her.
His mother filled and refilled the dog’s bowl; it had been moved from the kitchen to the bedroom and sat dirtily in the corner, brown pebbles of food scattered on newspaper on the floor around it. He stared at the grimy bowl as he stared at all of it.
Presently the cleaning woman came and his mother talked to her softly in a faraway room. Was she even using words? It was as though the women were speaking in hums, tonal variations with no alphabet.
When he broke from the weight that held him down, rarely, he was conscious of resentment. Anger rose through him and was trapped at his throat, unable to exit. Once he thought: It should have been her! and pulsed irritation in his mother’s direction, silently. She was older. She had lived more and anyway now she was mostly a shadow; in a bathtub she had forfeited all her rights, all her rights with that stupid gesture. He did not tell her this only because his tongue would not move in his mouth. But sometimes he wished to lash out. She had forgotten the crucifix, she had brought it on them. She might as well have killed her.
Then the coldness of this and its meanness struck him and pressed him even further down, now in a well of shame as well as self-pity.
Sorry sorry sorry
, he thought pathetically to his mother in a cracked-open beg of a thought. He forgave her for everything and wished that she would forgive him.
He sank and he struggled, felt his body lighten when the tear ducts were empty. Then he grew heavy again and collapsed into the mattress, a sinking gray heft. He slept and slept on and learned to despise the surfaces of his room, the walls and the ceiling and the curtains: and his room was only a substitute for the rest of it, which he loathed even more.
Finally his mother brought in a doctor and the doctor forced him to eat. The doctor gave him a shot, a pill. He
shook his head when the doctor first sat with him but gave in when his stomach began to ache with a new ferocity. At first he could not get the food down his throat but with repetition he was able to swallow it. He had to sit up against the pillows to eat, and sitting up he saw his legs and feet extending below his torso and his underwear and barely recognized them. They had lost muscle, he thought, they were pale.
When the doctor had left, and his mother after, he scanned his room languidly and noticed his wallet on the nightstand. He opened it with a dull lassitude, removed a single and traced his fingers over its minuscule ridges. The lines on Washington’s brow impressed him particularly, the curved precision of their alignment. Washington was well presented— better, surely, than he had been in life, with greater authority.
T. felt a wash of nostalgia.
He did not possess a lithograph of Beth, of course. But this was what he needed, a dollar bill that preserved a particular aspect, that enshrined a moment of bearing . . . photographs would present a problem. He could not control them, her expressions in them—how casual they had been, flippant almost, his quick shots, few and far between. All he had was these thoughtless snapshots now, when what he needed was a definitive image, an image that spoke to posterity. An image that embodied acceptance, contentment. If he looked through the photographs for such a representation he would be at the gravest risk. What if the expression was unsure, frightened? This could not be allowed. He could not stand to see that. He had to see her one way and one way only: smiling ruefully and shaking her head.
Because this attitude, her smiling and shaking her head— almost shrugging—was a powerful reassurance. In a lithograph, of course, the motion of the headshake could not be conveyed, and he would have to settle for a knowing smile, a
smile at once wise and playful. It would serve to project her contentment over time, her self-containment, not unlike, for example, the Mona Lisa’s.
Thinking of her as she shook her head, smiling ruefully, he saw that she accepted and even embraced the great levelness of all things.
One morning his mother told him the burial had already taken place. Beth’s mother had flown in and flown out again; she had taken her daughter’s body back to the desert, where the family came from, and had a funeral there. He would never attend the funeral. He had missed it.
“It was just a few people,” she said. “Very simple, very brief. The mother was heavily sedated.”
He thought he would snap. He had the sense of a white snap above his head, the air cracking. He tilted, then was steady again. She was gone. He would have to get up.
He asked his mother to leave so that he could get dressed. She smiled brightly, her face infused with relief. He was surprised that he noticed it. When she closed the bedroom door behind her he could not move at first, but then he remembered the shoulders and the arms and the hands and saw Beth put her hand on her hip and shake her head ruefully, resigned but temperate. She let all of it pass, the wide well of grief was subsumed in her rueful acceptance.
She even laughed!—.
He stood unsteadily, dizzy, beside the bed. He tottered to the bathroom on wavering knees. The dog stood at the bathroom door, head cocked quizzically. He was sorry the dog had been so neglected. He put out a hand to pet her but she did not move quite near enough for him to reach without stretching. Later, he thought. He dropped his shirt and bent to peel off his pants. Hot water fell on his head.
Even the clean clothing was heavy when he dressed—he could not choose the elements, only put on what was nearest. He opened a drawer and found the topmost shirt where it lay, and the first pair of pants beside it. Walking too was a slog through thickness. Still he persisted, down the stairs to face his mother in the living room, who smiled uncertainly.
“Well,” she said. “Be safe and come right home. I’ll make you a sandwich.”
All sandwiches everywhere were absurd; the very idea of a sandwich was ludicrous. How was it that people did not laugh at them?
But he did not mention this.
“It’s OK,” he said with difficulty, pushing the words forward. “I’m OK. You don’t need to wait here. You can go home and rest. I will eat.”
“You promise?” “I promise.”
He waited till she left to go out of the apartment himself. He closed the door on the dog’s expectant face.
“And I’ll walk you later,” he said, when the door was already closed.
He was overcome by inertia. He turned away from the door without locking it; let anyone steal anything they wanted. If he walked in on the thieves he would only stare at them.
In the elevator he gazed at the floor buttons, SB B L 2 3 4. Where his car was he did not know. Was his car even here? Tentatively he reached a finger out and touched B.
A small nudge with the pad of his finger, that was all, but Beth could not do it.
He sobbed once and then caught it. Someone was getting on, an alert little girl with a backpack slung over one shoulder.
“Hi,” she said, and he nodded. “Lobby, please.”
He raised his hand to hit L but the arm, crooked and immobile, would not move fast enough. It was almost frozen.
The elevator began to descend, down through 2, and the girl, impatient, reached out beneath his hand and tapped the button herself.
“Are you physically handicapped?” she asked. He shook his head.
“Oh,” said the girl, and nodded wisely. “Retarded.”
He almost smiled but his face would not obey. The girl looked at him with sympathy, then quickly reached out and took his hand. She had a light, sweaty touch.
“It’s OK,” she said. “My cousin’s a retard too.” Then the doors opened and she let go and got off.
He was giddy for a second as the doors closed after her. He could almost take the sensation for happiness. He kept his eyes on the fine horizontal score marks along the stainless steel surface. Out of his sight behind the elevator doors the little girl walked across the lobby; she went out the front door.
She would have loved you, he thought. Would she have loved you?
First she was here, then it could never be known.
At the office a well-dressed young man with wavy hair stood in front of him. He considered turning away again, but even that was too hard. Susan was out of sight. He walked past the young man at the front desk without speaking.
“Excuse me,” said the man. “Excuse me. You can’t go in there!”
“My office.”
“What? Sir, you can’t just go
in
there.”
The young man got up and hovered beside him. He wore a strong aftershave.
“Mine. My office.”
“Oh. Oh, I—sorry.”
He could not wait; he passed by. He opened his door and closed it in the young man’s face. The young man was doglike. For some reason neither people nor dogs expected you to close doors in their faces.
He did not intend rudeness, but it was crucial to raise the barrier speedily. With utmost speed.
“I’m very sorry for your loss,” said the young man from the other side. The muffled voice trailed off.
Blinds were down on the windows. He walked over and raised one. Ocean in front, desk behind. Sturdy. The last time he had sat in the chair, behind the flat expanse of wood, she was living. He had not known the future; now he did. He was different in the full knowledge. He was different but the desk was the same.
Susan was there. She stood looking at him, her eyes filling.
“T.,” she said, and came and put her arms around him. He stood woodenly.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “It must make it worse when people do this,” and she wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “Are you actually here to work? Or are you just checking in?”
“In,” he said, and nodded.
“OK. Everything’s fine. I needed help, so I hired Robert for Julie’s position.”
“OK,” he said, nodding again. He went toward the door again.
“You already leaving? You want me to walk with you?”
He shrugged but she took his arm anyway and gently led him.
•
He went back to work, faded and listless but with the rudiments of function. His mother’s psychiatrist had prescribed him antidepressants, which he was directed not to combine with alcohol. The pills took effect slowly and as a result the days stayed thick for too long, his limbs hard to move.
But he worked in order to keep up the pace and the focus, worked hard and steadily, and gradually the usual texture of rooms crept back—rooms, buildings, streets and the sky. In the office he watched as elements of the lobby lost their alien particularity. Turning to background again were the file cabinet, the phone, the television with ticker tape running across the bottom. In his own office was a relief map of the Mojave project; he put his hands on the hollow ridges of the mountains and felt the plastic peaks digging into his palms. He closed his eyes and pretended he had a bird’s-eye view. There was no longer excitement in it, it was a dull extension of the already dull routine, but of course he would continue.
A few weeks later her mother left a message. There were still some of his possessions in her daughter’s apartment and the lease would run out at the end of the month. He did not wish to go—whatever remained there of his he would gladly forget—but he had to, because the mother asked.
He went over at nighttime, because though night was more difficult than daytime it was also, if he could fall asleep early, more quickly done. In the dark the hardwood floor shone from a streetlamp outside the window; standing in the doorway he flipped a switch and saw there was nothing there but a pile of white cardboard boxes, neatly stacked.
He was flattened; he did not want to do anything. He stood waiting for the inertia to pass. He waited to be changed but nothing arrived to change him. He felt only restlessness, increasing. Finally he went inside, because time was slow without movement. There was nothing else to be done.
At the back of an empty closet shelf in her bedroom, his fingers scrabbling in the film of dust over the cracked wood, he found something. He pulled it out to look at it: a white tennis sock, half-tucked into itself. It had the shape of being peeled off in haste, tossed aside. He sniffed it—a very slight smell, maybe worn for a single hour, for one run on the beach. She ran beside the water, where the sand was damp. He breathed in the scent. This was what he had left.
He held it close to his chest as he left the bedroom. He placed his key with deliberate care on the kitchen counter; he laid the sock gently atop a box and lifted them up.
His mother liked to walk the narrow residential streets to her new church, the streets with their small overgrown gardens. Sometimes when it was late she asked him to go with her. Once she asked on a mild night; as soon as he stepped out his door he could smell the ocean.
Both of them were silent as they walked. His mother let her hands trail along the trumpet-shaped flowers that grew on vines along so many picket fences, so many gates. She said in a low voice how she loved the flowers here, the flowers and the trees. Los Angeles was a paradise of exotics, wild with succulents and shrubs and flowers, cornucopias. She gazed down into a bed of twisted aloe and it occurred to him that she had been close to Beth too, yet he had never acknowledged this.
“You took care of me,” he said. “But no one took care of you.”