WHILE THEY WERE IN
the study I straightened up the living room. I could hear the low rumble of Evan’s voice, and the occasional answer from Kate. What if they did get back together? I tried to imagine everything changing around all over again: Evan moving into this house, my schedule scaled back to part-time. Maybe I ought to have wanted that for Kate—I knew I should want them to work things out, for Evan to do as she asked for whatever amount of time was left, but the idea of accommodating him all over, just when things seemed resettled, infuriated me. And it was terrible that I wasn’t even angry on her behalf. I liked what I had here.
Besides, even if he did decide to ask to move back in, to get back together, how could he do it? It shouldn’t be a businesslike transaction, but that was what he would have been reduced to. What were you supposed to do, close your eyes and dive in for a conciliatory kiss? She couldn’t give a lot of clues about how receptive she was, and I couldn’t imagine Evan feeling secure enough to risk it. What signal could she give him to kiss her?
It made me think of how I used to punish Liam, turning away because I knew he’d follow, if we had had an argument and I felt I was in the right. There must have been something in my posture that told him I would be receptive if he tried to touch me, even if I was ignoring him. Maybe it was my head turned slightly toward him to hear his movements, my hand curled on the bedspread, my open palm facing him—but he could always see it. He would turn me back to him, his hand a hard cradle at the back of my skull, and sometimes it made me moan in surprise before he even got to kissing me. You could not use that kind of motion with someone who couldn’t signal you back with a hand on the neck, a leg slung open. You couldn’t even let that force well up behind your actions, because nothing pushed back to keep the balance equal. So you’d stifle it. You could be gentle, definitely, you
had
to be gentle, but even then the options were limited. I just thought a person would get tired of a tender love scene every time.
One of the last times Liam and I were together, I tried being still and letting him make love to me as though, physically, I could not return it. I did it for a moment. I did it just to see. I left my legs still draped around the backs of his knees, my arms where I’d wrapped
them around his neck. My head slid up and down and shoved the pillow to one side. My hair rubbed roughly against the headboard. One arm fell to the bed as he moved, and I had let a sound escape me, because sounds were allowed. Sex changed without the resistance on my part, that push upward. It felt like—it was, of course—being fucked, the receiver of the action, and for a moment it was exciting to see what he did when he was, in a way, alone. My arm flopped out over the edge of the bed, rolling back and forth as he moved, and he’d glanced at it before pushing his mouth back against my hair.
What the hell are you doing
? he’d said. His breath was ragged and harsh in my ear.
Move. Move
.
W
E WERE IN THE
living room after dinner, early in March, watching the snow come down. I’d made a fire. On the coffee table was a list on which I had checked everything off, but it was satisfying to look at so I hadn’t thrown it away. We had mailed packages, ordered two more cases of nutrition shakes, written letters to two state congressmen and five or six university researchers about abortion rights and funding ALS research, and placed holds on three books from the library.
Next to the list was a compact orange bong that looked like a gumball machine, with a cover that slid across the opening to hold the smoke inside it. It was packed with sticky, sage-green weed Kate kept in a little Chinese lacquer box in her bureau drawer.
I pressed the lighter button on the bong and we watched the smoke cloud up the orange globe. I held it up to Kate’s mouth. She leaned her head forward while I slid the cover aside, letting the smoke out and into her mouth. She could hold it for a few seconds. We did this a few more times and then she shook her head when I offered it and gestured for me to have some if I wanted to. I took a few hits and settled back into the couch, my head buzzing softly.
The bong was my little innovation. She’d been having someone roll joints. Downtown there was a dank little head shop I’d always wanted to go to anyway. When we asked the clerk for a bong for someone with very little lung power, he actually rubbed his hands together. He might have been waiting all his life for a new pot-related conundrum to solve. He didn’t seem to notice that Kate and I, in my jaunty red bucket hat and Kate’s gold hoops, looked as if we had gotten lost on the
way to Ann Taylor. He’d directed us to the little orange bong, fondness blazing in his eyes. It was squat and oddly cute in a benign-robot kind of way. We were in and out in ten minutes.
I was a half-hearted pot smoker, but this weed was really something. Older people must have better connections, or spend more money.
I was somewhat aware that the television was on. I gave Kate the remote, placing it on her leg beneath her forefinger, and we watched a flashing parade of bad primetime for what may have been a very long time. I was sprawled out on the couch with my feet flopped over the arm. Kate had moved her chair up next to me.
“Where does Lisa get this stuff?” I asked her. There was a long pause, in which I debated whether I had spoken.
“Oh, just some guy,” Kate said vaguely. “I should grow my own, anyway. I doubt they’ll raid me, or arrest me even if they did.”
“The wheelchair gives and gives,” I said. “You could say it was medicinal. Is it medicinal?”
“Hell, yes,” Kate said. Her head was tilted back against her headrest. She gazed beneath lowered eyelids at the television, looking slightly bleary-eyed but also very tranquil. “After this video I’m going jogging.”
I was still laughing when she said, slowly and seriously, “It does help. It’s kind of what swimming does too. You don’t feel the inside of your body so much.” She looked confused, then grinned. “No. You don’t feel like you’re inside of your body so much. Or you don’t care, anyway.”
I nodded. We sat quietly for a few more minutes.
“I really want some bread and butter,” I informed her. It had just occurred to me.
“Me too,” said Kate.
I propped myself on one elbow and turned to look at her. Kate raised her eyebrows at the bong on the coffee table and I hit the lighter button and held it up to her lips.
“What would you eat right now?” I asked.
“Tamales,” Kate added after a moment. “Tamales with pork and red chiles.”
“I can’t make tamales,” I sighed. “You’re totally out of masa and
lard.” I looked at her over my shoulder. “Can you believe I knew that?”
She gave me a long, careful nod. Down, up, down, up, grinning. “Well,” she said, “then it’s all been worth it.”
“Oh my god,” I said, embarrassed. “You think I’m like those TV movies where the person with the disease teaches everyone how to live.”
Kate laughed soundlessly. “It’s always so
nice
of us.”
We sat quietly. The fire snapped in its grate. Outside the lights glowed hazily, snow falling past. The air smelled peppery. “This is nice,” I said after a while.
“Yeah,” she said. “Pot’s still fun.”
“What else?” I asked recklessly.
She cocked an eyebrow at me. “How do you mean?”
“What else is fun for you? Do we have enough fun?”
She nodded. “Yeah. Movies are fun. Watching you cook is fun, you’ve gotten so good at it. Hanging out with my friends. Redoing the house.” She met my eye and smiled gently. “Sometimes I can still make it an okay life, Bec,” she said. She swallowed. “I’m not in a hospital bed. I still make my decisions.”
“You don’t think you would if you were in a hospital?”
She shook her head. “I know I wouldn’t. You hear stories . . . you go into the hospital, go on a respirator, and they can’t just disconnect you, you know. You’re stuck. You lay there and hope someone comes to see you. You have no control anymore, and you’re there till the end, pretty much. And the end never comes because of the respirator.”
I almost protested out of sheer politeness, but what she was saying made a grim sense. “That’s awful,” I said instead.
She nodded, looking into the fire.
After a time she spoke again, but I was staring out the window. I turned back to her, faintly surprised to find her right there. “Sorry?”
“Maybe it won’t happen like that,” she repeated.
“Definitely not,” I agreed. I was about to go on—
Nothing like that will
ever
happen; don’t worry
—but I stopped myself. Why be patronizing? She knew what she was talking about.
“Listen,” I said. “Can you eat bread and butter?” I’d always assumed
she couldn’t eat anything at all. In nine months I’d never seen solid food touch her mouth, only drops of meltable things placed on her tongue—frosting, a miniscule smear of soft cheese.
Kate nodded. “Just takes too long,” she explained. She made a face. “Embarrassing.”
I set the bong back on the coffee table. “You can’t be embarrassed in front of me,” I said. “You want some bread and butter?” Kate gave one of her tiny shrugs, nodded. “Great,” I said. I gave a long sigh, pretending to be annoyed. I felt like being silly all of a sudden. “I suppose you expect
me
to get it?”
I peeked over my shoulder and saw her laughing silently.
“I keep meaning to tell you,” Kate began.
I watched her intently. She was very far away from me.
“There’s a chance I may be slightly paralyzed,” she finished. “Do you still want to take the job?”
I got up, chuckling, and went into the kitchen, taking out a round loaf of peasant bread and some butter from the refrigerator. I cut the bread carefully, keeping my hand far away from the blade so I wouldn’t have to haul myself, stoned, to an emergency room and leave Kate alone.
The bread took forever to toast. I sat on the edge of the counter while I waited.
“Don’t you worry that pot’s bad for you?”
“Worse than this?” Kate answered.
“Good point,” I said. She wasn’t being maudlin. She was right. Kate didn’t care about health risks. She had had Lou Gehrig’s for close to three years, and a lot of people died within two. In a way she could do anything. She took birth control pills straight through each month with no placebos, so she never had to deal with having a period. What was it going to do to her?
I carried a plate of buttered toast back to the coffee table. I broke off a small piece, held it up for her to approve, and when she nodded I placed it in her mouth. Kate chewed slowly and carefully, her head tipped forward so no crumbs went down her throat and started a coughing fit. I took a piece myself and ate it quickly, happily, enjoying the melted butter.
“I don’t know if I can handle driving,” I said. “I had no idea your pot would be this good.”
Kate swallowed a bite of bread. “So stay here,” she said. “There’s an extra room.”
“Okay.” I held up the toast so she could take another bite. Then I sprinkled some salt over my next piece and took a big bite. I thought I could sit here by the fire and eat buttered toast for the next several days at least. Toast was one of the more available pleasures in life. I felt the way I had when I first started working for Kate, and Saturday afternoons we’d come home from the market, cook, and have drinks with Evan once he arrived. Nostalgia welled up in my chest. Just for summer, I suppose, for cold wine and the porch at the old house. I didn’t like to admit it, but it had been fun when it was the three of us. Why hadn’t they offered me a joint back then? Maybe it had been their little thing, a private thing.
“Do you miss Evan?” I asked. The words were out almost before I realized it, and I wished I could make them disappear. Kate didn’t look angry. She smiled, her eyes swollen and bloodshot, but she looked content.
“Yes,” she said.
“Sometimes I do too,” I admitted. I felt I could admit this, softened by pot and companionship as we were. She watched me carefully, and nodded.
“Sometimes we all had fun,” I said, and I gave Kate another bite. We sat, chewing, in companionable silence.
L
ET’S GO TO THE ZOO
,” Kate said.
“The zoo?” I asked. I was holding up a red sweater with a low square neckline. She looked it over and then shook her head, so I folded it up and put it in a cardboard box for the Salvation Army. I loved that sweater, but I also knew why she was giving it away. The last time she’d worn it I saw her do a double-take in the mirror at her own collarbone, which had grown more prominent in the last couple months, notched deeply at the center like a tiny cup above the shadowed hollows of her sternum. It startled me too. I’d given her an extra nutrition shake that day.
I held up a fuchsia turtleneck. No one else could possibly wear that color.
“Why the zoo? What are we, kids?” I was only teasing. Lately we had been doing things like this: jaunts to museums, the botanical gardens. She’d been talking about another trip, this time to New York. She was bored, I thought, staving off the winter monotony.
“Let’s keep that one,” she said. “And I like the zoo. Everybody lets the chick in the wheelchair go straight to the front.”
I laughed in spite of myself and offered up a sapphire-blue blouse for her consideration. She tilted her head, then nodded toward the “keep” pile.
“You realize it’s March,” I said.
She was unperturbed. “We can go to the indoor exhibits. Besides, no one goes this time of year. The animals probably need validation.”
“Prima donnas.” I turned back to Kate and looked her over. Her eyes were a little watery, her mouth pale. She’d come down with the flu a week before and it had lingered, casting a blurring, pinkish effect around her eyes and her nostrils. It had the opposite effect on her body, paring away any softness until each rib showed even more clearly than before. It had knocked her out so badly that I’d had to sponge bathe her for a few days instead of dragging her into the shower. We usually used so many gadgets and computers that it was soothing, somehow, to be so old-fashioned: squeezing out the big natural sponge into one of those old-fashioned basins, lifting her up from the mattress and wiping it over her neck and her shoulders, down her thin arms and legs, toweling away the traces of water and soap. It wasn’t easy to give someone a sponge bath in bed without getting the sheets all damp. I was good at it now.