“You like classical music?” she asked desperately. He arched his brows and then merely nodded, deflating the little hope that she might spark an exchange with this question. She had the feeling he wasn’t much of a talker in any language. “My husband and I go—went—to Carnegie Hall, for the symphony. We had a subscription.”
She was just at the point of asking him, idiotically, if he knew Carnegie Hall, when he cleared his throat with an authoritative growl and said that his daughter had played there. She was glad she had put the mug to her lips, because she was able to hide her astonishment.
“Student at Juilliard,” he said.
It occurred to her that she had never really spoken to him about his family. She knew he had two kids and that the older one, his son, whose name she could not remember, worked on the West Coast; she wondered now if it were for one of the software developers in Silicon Valley. She had pictured him as a security guard.
“Carnegie Hall,” she said. “That’s quite an accomplishment.”
“She plays violin.”
“It seems like the hardest instrument to play,” she said. “Then again, they all seem hard to me.”
“Is, and is not,” he said sagely. She was curious to hear more, but she didn’t want to ask. She wondered about the life he led when he left her house on Friday evenings. She pictured his daughter coming home for weekends, the three of them sitting around a table at some massive hall in Brighton Beach, drinking flavored vodka and listening to music. She considered the reality that the time he spent at home was his real life and the time he spent at her house was only a job.
“I appreciate your staying,” she said. “I want to say that again. I can’t say for how long it will be, exactly. I’m just not sure Ed is going to stay at that home. I’m going to pay you your regular wage, of course, for the trouble of being here.”
He gave her another wave of the hand, to dispense with so pedestrian a topic. She might have been offended if she didn’t find it so reassuring. He settled back into his seat and seemed to appraise her. The warmth that settled into his features would have made more sense had he been drinking vodka rather than tea, and for a moment she wondered if he hadn’t been taking swigs from a flask or a bottle upstairs.
“I need job,” he said, chuckling. “I stay even if you don’t pay me. I don’t mind getting away from my wife. You know?”
She took a quick sip of her tea.
“She is not like you,” he said. “She not work hard. She not work at all. Russian woman, not American. I was driving cab. I should be retired.”
“Life would be easier without money to worry about.”
“Life is easy when you have good wife who don’t need to be taken care of. Who take care of you.”
She cut another slice of cake, which she began eating nervously.
“But,” he said, “when I bring home money, she is happy.”
“I have some jobs for you while you’re here,” she said. “Home improvements. There are things my husband didn’t get to do that we had talked about doing. Are you handy?”
“I was engineer in Russia,” he said proudly. “I once built violin from scratch for hobby. I can do your jobs.”
“You won’t need to do anything quite that complicated,” she said, trying to hide her amazement. She said the first thing that came to mind: “You can just help me get this place in shape to sell it.” As she said it, she realized that she was never going to sell the house, that deep down she suspected she would die in it.
“Is beautiful house,” he said. “Sell for a lot of money.”
“You’d be surprised. The market around here isn’t great right now. They put in some low-income housing not far from here. People turn up their noses.”
“You get a lot for this house,” he said dismissively.
“We took out a home equity loan to pay for Connell’s education.” She hesitated. “You know what that is?”
“Home equity, yes,” he said, looking annoyed. She was once again mortified, but it was such an odd negotiation, trying to figure out what he understood. She was getting the feeling that he understood more than she suspected. She poured them both another cup of tea, even though she’d had too much already. She could feel a buzzing pressure in her temples.
“So I still have a lot to pay on it,” she said. “If I move into a smaller place, I’d probably break even.” She didn’t know why she was telling him all this.
“You’ll be fine,” he said. “You have good brain.”
She could feel a slight shift in the mood, a softening of his edges, if not of hers.
“I don’t know when Ed might be allowed to return, if his condition stabilizes.” She was riffing now. “I’d like you to be here if something happens to change his status. For a little while, at least. Please tell your wife that I appreciate her patience as I adjust to this new reality. I’m sure she’s wondering why you’re still here if Ed is no longer in the house.”
“My wife, she does not know that your husband is in nursing home.”
“She doesn’t?”
“Nyet. No.” He was laughing. “What difference it makes? As long as I bring home money.”
Eileen was silent.
“How long you want wait for your husband to come home?” Sergei asked.
Eileen felt herself redden and began piling up the dishes.
“Only as long as necessary,” she said. “Only until I know he’s not coming back.”
She switched into a recitation of the things she wanted him to do the next day while she was at work—clean out the garage, dig the leaves out of the drain gutters, change the burnt-out floodlights on the side of the house. She wondered if he could tell she was making them up on the fly. It wasn’t a long list, but it would last a few days at least. She went upstairs and got ready for bed. A couple of her girlfriends called and she stayed on the phone until after ten. She didn’t mention Sergei.
She lay in bed after the calls wondering what she would find when she went to the nursing home the next day. She feared spending the night there might cause Ed to lose whatever grip he had on his old life. She couldn’t shake the thought of him staring at her in that reduced state with a crystalline, hateful gaze, as though she had betrayed him by putting him there, as though every day she left him there would be another betrayal.
When Sergei came up she heard him settle in. She listened to the shifts and squeaks he made in the bed, until she heard the muted whistle of a snore. In the glow and muffled insistence of late-night television she drifted off, though the loud commercials hectored her to intermittent wakefulness, and then the sun recalled her to life.
? ? ?
She encountered the social director on the way to the main desk. The woman had a big tropical bird on her arm that she tried to present to Eileen.
“This is Calypsa,” the woman said, extending her arm. “Say hello, Calypsa.”
“Hello, Calypso,” Eileen said, with forced brightness.
“Calypsa. With an a. Say hello, Calypsa.” The woman’s name tag read Kacey, but she hadn’t introduced herself, even though she was the social director. The bird just sat on her wrist, giving Eileen an eerie stare.
“I’m Eileen.”
“She’ll go up your arm if you hold it there for a minute.” Eileen could think of nothing else to reduce the awkwardness of the moment, so she stuck her hand out reluctantly. “Straight,” the woman said sharply. “Put your arm out straight. She’ll walk right up.”
Eileen straightened her arm. After a few moments the bird hopped decisively onto her wrist. Eileen had to restrain herself from crying out as the bird made its way to the soft skin inside her elbow, where it stopped and dug its claws in.
“It pinches a bit,” the woman said.
“It certainly does.”
“You’ll get used to it.”
“I suppose so,” Eileen said tersely.
“I take her around to the patients. She loves to crawl on them.”
Eileen was incredulous. “Crawl on them?”
“All over.”
It was hard to see how this was going to be something Ed would enjoy. The bird was making its way up her arm to the shoulder, where it settled in with a certain finality, as though it had planted a flag. Eileen was able to relax slightly, though it was kneading her shoulder through the fabric.
“It—she—doesn’t hurt them?”
“She wouldn’t hurt anyone,” the woman said with a hint of indignation. “They can scream at her and flail around and she just acts like a lady.” The bird pecked at Eileen’s collar and seemed about to engage her ear when the woman whisked her away, clucking, ostensibly at the bird, but Eileen felt it directed at herself.
Ed wasn’t in the dense crowd in the television room.
“Where is my husband?” she asked the attending nurse at the main desk.
“Who are we talking about, ma’am?”
“Edmund Leary,” she said. “He was admitted yesterday.”