Riverside Park (19 page)

THERE WERE NO
words that could fully express the loathing Amanda felt for herself.

Silently she got into the truck. Miklov walked over to pick up her hat from the ground and brought it into the truck with him.

She stared straight ahead. The snow was really coming down now.

Miklov started the truck, turned on the lights and the wipers, carefully backed around and started slowly down the mountain. When he stopped to open the gate she climbed down out of the truck and told him she wished to walk home. He hurried over, saying something about it being too dark.

“What I have done is unforgivable,” she said to him.

“But you did not—”

“If I did not have my children, Miklov, I swear I would go home and slit my wrists.” Then she looked down, shaking her head, thinking,
That is why I want to slit my wrists, because I don't deserve to be their mother
.

“Leesten—” Miklov had firmly taken hold of her arm and given it a shake. “I luff you.”

“I do not love you, Miklov,” she said. “I did a bad thing. I hope someday you will forgive me.” She pried his fingers loose. “Please don't hurt my children because of me.” And then she started down the road.

Emily's mother.Teddy's mother. Grace's mother. Madame Moliere's employer. Howard Stewart's wife, for better or for worse, Mrs. Stewart
.

If what transpired on the mountain did not so sharply remind Amanda of what she had once been like she might have found some small space left on which she could stand to forgive herself.

The sickness she felt inside reminded her of how much she did love Howard. She remembered now what it felt like to fall in love with him. Miklov had even reminded her of what their passion had been like. So her body wasn't dead, it was just their relationship.

She climbed the driveway and stripped off her gear in the mudroom. She went upstairs to tell Madame Moliere she was back and then went into their bathroom to take a long hot shower, crying while she did so. She was slightly better afterward; at least she could carry on a conversation with Madame Moliere. The children came home and while Amanda listened to how their day went she knew she had to do something because her marriage was falling apart, she was falling apart. And if she fell apart, the way Howard was lately, the whole family would fall apart.

IT WAS A
heavy burden that Emma had given Cassy to carry over the holidays, particularly when, between Christmas and New Year's, Emma's health failed so quickly Cassy needed to stay in Manhattan, scrambling to find hospice care.

“They said I could try chemotherapy,” Emma explained, “but I told my doctor that was nonsense at my age, I would do no such thing.”

“But why, Emma?” Cassy said, feeling so deeply saddened. Why was it that wonderfully loving and giving people like Emma had to go when people like her own mother, who was going to be bitter and angry and venomous to the very end of her life, seemed to stay on forever? She didn't wish her mother dead, certainly, but there was no sign whatsoever of the mellowness Cassy had been told to expect her mother to achieve at a certain age. Soon even Cassy's hefty “donations” to the resident's board wouldn't keep her mother where she was. (“If your mother would just stay away from the clubhouse,” they
would tell Cassy, “it might be all right, but she plants herself in the middle of everything and says the most unkind things to people.”)

“Because my turn on this earth is coming to an end,” the old woman said with a smile. “And I am ready to go. Daniel is in a better place,” she explained, referring to her son, “so I don't worry about him as I once did. My affairs are now in order and Mr. Thatcher gave me his word my final wishes shall be carried out to the letter.”

Cassy smiled encouragingly, feeling her throat tighten.

“It is Rosanne I worry about.” Mrs. Goldblum sighed. Her eyes got a little teary and she withdrew a hankie from her sleeve, removed her glasses and patted her eyes, blew her nose, and then replaced everything where it had been. “I had hoped by now she and Randy would be married but that does not seem to be in the cards. Young Jason will be going off to college and I—I fear for her happiness,” she continued. “After all that schooling and expense, golly oh, my, Cassy, to find that she loathes it! She has a degree and experience—”

“She can get a job anywhere.”

“The poor dear is miserable and I—Well, I've simply run out of time.”

Cassy blinked back tears. “You know I will help her, Emma. You don't have to ask.”

“But I must ask. Because she is so proud—Oh, dear Cassy, there is no need to cry.”

She had been trying so hard not to.

“No, no,” Mrs. Goldblum murmured, reaching for her hand. “I long to be with my husband.” She looked out her living room window at the river. “I dream about him almost every night.” After a long moment, she turned back to Cassy. “I am
so tired, dear, so very, very tired.” She smiled then. “So many people I love are waiting for me.”

Cassy's daughter-in-law, Maria, had been due to give birth at any moment and so the young Cochrans had remained in California for the holidays. Jackson had gone to Georgia for Christmas and then on to Idaho to ski. Cassy had spent Christmas Eve night with Alexandra and had ended up driving her out to Connecticut the next day, where she'd sat down to dinner with Sally Harrington's family and Alexandra's brother, David. After dinner Alexandra, David and Sally had flown out of Hartford to make the trek to Waring Farm in Kansas.

The day after Christmas the task could be put off no longer. Cassy had been forced to sit down with Rosanne and Jason. Rosanne, she knew, was aware that Emma was failing but her first reaction was one of anger, how could Mrs. G not take the treatment that was being offered, but even while Rosanne had been saying this, the anger had left her voice and then she stopped speaking altogether and looked at Jason. “To be honest, Jason, I bet it was optional treatment. I don't think your gran could have taken very much of it before—You know how fragile she's gotten.”

“So she's going to die?” Jason asked.

Rosanne nodded. “Yes. And I think Mrs. C is here because your gran wanted her to help us arrange things.” She looked at Cassy. “She wants to stay here, doesn't she? Her husband died in the bedroom by the window.”

“Here?” Jason said, panicking. “Gran wants to die
here?
”

“That's her wish,” Cassy said quietly.

“But she's got to go to the hospital!” Jason said to his mother. “Everybody goes to the hospital to die.”

“The thing is, Jason,” Cassy said as gently as she could, “she
does not want to go to the hospital anymore. She wants to be here, in the place she loves most.”

“It's not going to happen today, sweetie,” Rosanne sighed, pulling her son's head down to her shoulder to hold him, as though he were still a little boy.

When it comes to death, we all feel little
, Cassy thought.

“I'll petition for family leave next week,” Rosanne said.

“Rosanne.” This was the tricky part. “Emma does not want you nursing her.”

“Well, that's her all over, isn't it?” Rosanne said, kissing the side of Jason's head as he pulled out of her embrace. “For Pete's sake, Mrs. C, who could be a better nurse than me?”

“A stranger.” Cassy let her answer hang there a moment. “She wants hospice to come in. She doesn't want you to remember her, well, less than presentable. She wants you to remember her being—” Cassy smiled against her tears “—neat and tidy, as always. So you can enjoy your time together.”

“What are you talking about?” Jason said, looking at his mother. The panic was still in his voice.

“We'll have nurses' aides come in. One for each twelve hours. If we're lucky, though, and we find the right agency, maybe we could have one aide and have her stay around the clock. So your gran won't get confused.” Rosanne looked at Cassy. “We'd make my room the nurse's station, I guess.”

Despite all the estate planning Attorney Thatcher had done, trying to organize hospice care, or even to find the right agency, wasn't easy. “If the president of the fifth largest TV network in the country can't make head or tail out of these medicare and insurance forms, just who the hell can expect the elderly to deal with them?” Cassy demanded of the poor medicare worker she had on the phone.

“You can't just get a wheelchair,” Rosanne explained to Cassy. “You gotta have the doctor write out a prescription for one or it's not covered.”

“That agency has only been around for a year,” Rosanne explained, “I wouldn't use them.”

“No guy. She'll flip out,” Rosanne explained to Cassy. “It's gotta be a woman. Ask if they have anyone from Jamaica. Those gals are always great readers and it would be great if they could read to her.”

It took Cassy, Rosanne, Attorney Thatcher and Cassy's accountant to sort everything out.

“Darlin', just get whoever you want in there and write a check!” Jackson told her.

“That's exactly what Emma fears and I promised her I wouldn't. It means a great deal to her to be able to see her way on her own resources.”

“Yeah, well, this is costing like eight hundred dollars an hour of your time.”

“It's no different than what you did for your aunt Biscuit, Jack.”

“At least I was related to her.”

“Well, at this point, I
am
related to Emma.”

“What about Amanda Stewart? Why isn't she wrestling with all this paperwork?”

“Because Amanda doesn't know yet. Rosanne and Emma said we should wait until after the holidays. The Stewarts are staying in the country this year.”

By the time Cassy returned to work in January she was exhausted. The hospice care was in place, however, and Rosanne and Emma both liked the RN in charge of Emma's case, the nurses' aides that were brought in, and also the social worker who served as a family therapist overseeing the process.

 

“So who is your designated health care proxy?” Alexandra asked, emerging from the bedroom of the East End apartment, tying the sash of her silk robe. She had come in from the studio not ten minutes before and gone straight into the shower.

Cassy had prepared one of Alexandra's favorites, a platter of Mediterranean roasted chicken and vegetables and was just taking it out of the oven using pot holders.

“Oh, wow, that looks great,” the anchorwoman said appreciatively, sniffing over Cassy's shoulder and then giving her a quick kiss on the neck. “So who is your proxy?”

“I'm beginning to think,” Cassy said, carrying the platter in to the dining room table, “the rule against talking about work here should extend to issues of health care.” She had taken all the leaves out of the table to make it a small round one, spread a white linen tablecloth over it, and set it with silver, cloth napkins and candles, the real deal because they had not seen one another privately since Christmas and she wanted to make an effort.

“So it's Jackson,” Alexandra surmised, turning the chandelier lights off as she came in to sit down. “Cassy, this is just beautiful. Thank you.”

“You're very welcome.”

Alexandra started to put her napkin in her lap but then got up again and came around the table to kiss her. “I mean it, thank you.” Her eyes were large and luminous in the candlelight.

“You're welcome, darling,” Cassy murmured, reaching for the carving utensils.

“I find that I'm missing you more rather than less as time goes on,” she said, returning to her side of the table with a swish of silk.

Cassy started carving the chicken. “You were expecting to care for me less?”

“You're the one who always says, ‘Familiarity breeds contempt.'”

“That must have been another lover,” Cassy said, laughing, putting white meat on Alexandra's plate. “What I've always said is, ‘Surely there will come a time you won't find me sexually attractive anymore.'”

“How many times in the past have I wished that to be true,” Alexandra sighed, watching her.

Cassy added roasted Bermuda onion, new potatoes, tomatoes and olives to the plate and handed it to Alexandra. Cassy smiled to herself when she recognized Alexandra's expression. She was thinking about sex. As tired as she was, the mere thought of Alexandra thinking about it did something to Cassy. Was this normal? To be aroused so often at her age?

Certainly it was a credit to Alexandra's proficiency in matters so intimately physical. She smiled to herself as she served herself.

“Would you be my health care proxy?” Alexandra asked.

Cassy raised an eyebrow, putting the serving utensils down on the side of the platter. “If you would like me to be.”

“I assume you're Jackson's,” Alexandra said, sipping water from her crystal glass, “because those kids would kill him the first chance they got.”

“Yes, I am Jackson's,” Cassy said, picking up her fork, “but he is not mine.”

“No? Who is?”

“Henry.” She ate some of the food. It was, if she did say so herself, excellent.

“Was Jackson ever it?”

She swallowed, nodding. “When we were first married.”

“And then you changed it?”

Cassy sighed and put her fork down. “Yes. I changed it.”

“Do you think I will ever be it?” Alexandra asked her.

“Must we talk about this now?”

“No, we don't,” Alexandra said.

They continued eating in silence for a while. Then Alexandra started telling her stories about how Sally Harrington got on with her future in-laws in Kansas. Evidently they had all had an interesting time of it. “Do you suppose you'll ever come with me? To Kansas?”

“As what?” Cassy asked, sipping her water.

“Well, how about the love of my life?”

Cassy looked at her. “I think your parents would drop dead of shock.” She cocked her head slightly. “What's going on with you?”

Alexandra shrugged, finishing the last piece of chicken and onion on her plate and put her fork down. “I was just wondering—” she patted her mouth with her napkin “—if I were dying, Cassy, would you leave Jackson then? If I asked you to?”

Cassy's heart jumped into her throat.

“No!” Alexandra said quickly, “I'm fine. I'm healthy as a horse.”

“Thank God,” Cassy said, slumping back against her chair. She threw her napkin on the table. “For a second—”

“Actually,” Alexandra said, putting her elbows down on the table and resting her head in her hands, “if I were dying, I wouldn't ask you to live with me. Because it would be too sad. To finally have you where I've always wanted you, since the night I first met you, but knowing I had to die to get you there.”

It was Emma's situation that was stirring this up. Cassy wasn't immune, either. She had been thinking a lot about the
things she might want to do before the end of her life and at this point she couldn't pretend Alexandra didn't figure heavily into it.

Cassy pushed her chair back to stand up and left her napkin on the chair. She circled the table and knelt by Alexandra's chair. She took her right hand, pressed it to her mouth and then lowered it. “I do want to get there,” she said quietly. Then she dropped her forehead to rest on Alexandra's thigh. It amazed her to think Alexandra did not seem to know all that she meant to her. Which had, very quickly, it seemed, come close to everything. She raised her head. “Darling, if I move in with you, it will be because I intend to spend the rest of my life with you. And nothing less.”