“Charlotte?”
“She came out when she saw me on Jerry’s stoop and said that at five in the morning Sugar was wandering in their yard with no leash. They also didn’t get an answer when they knocked on Jerry’s door, and she said she was about to call the police when she saw me pull up in Richard’s car.”
“Where’s Sugar now?”
“I told her Jerry’s not well, and she said they’ll keep her.”
Even more alarming than the idea of Jerry having Covid was the idea of Jerry letting Sugar wander the neighborhood unattended; he never did that.
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll come back. If I get in the car now”—I meant, of course, in Donna’s car—“I can be there tomorrow morning, but I’ll check flights, too.”
I wondered if she’d try to dissuade me. Instead, she said “Sally, he told me not to call you, but I thought you should know.”
* * *
—
“Hey,” Noah said when he answered his phone, and his voice contained the scratchiness of sleep.
“I think Jerry has Covid,” I said. “I just tried to reach him, but he didn’t pick up. Sorry for waking you.”
“No, it’s fine. Are you considering going back there?” The absence of any irritation on his part—the presence of sympathy, the immediate willingness to suspend the unresolved tension between us—felt like a significant data point, one I could have guessed at but not have been sure of.
“I’m definitely going back, but I’m trying to figure out if I should drive or fly.”
“How sick is he?”
“I don’t know. His sister, my aunt Donna, called, and she has her own health issues so she hasn’t seen him, but she said he’s disoriented and the neighbors found Sugar in their yard this morning. Jerry’s pretty healthy as eighty-one-year-olds go, but—well, he’s eighty-one.”
“You should fly. Let me make a few calls.”
I could have pretended that I didn’t understand what he meant, or I could have protested that it was too extravagant, because I already knew I wouldn’t be paying for it. Instead, I said, “Thank you, Noah.”
* * *
—
It was a Gulfstream, with eight white leather seats in the cabin. In addition to the two pilots, there were two flight attendants, all of them in navy-and-gold uniforms, all of them wearing masks, as Noah and I also were. Noah’s presence on the plane was the surprise. He’d called me back forty minutes after I called him and said, “Okay, Leah and I are going to come to you, she’ll take us to the airport, you’ll give her your car keys, and she’ll go later today to your hotel to get your car and drive it back to my house. The flight’s out of Van Nuys, not LAX.” Leah, whom I hadn’t previously met, was his personal assistant.
I had flown on private planes a few times, including when the 2015 Emmy Awards ceremony was the same week that the real Hillary Clinton—and not just the cast member Lynette, who played her—was appearing on TNO and I was writing the sketch. Those times on private planes, always at TNO’s expense, I’d felt like a cross between an imposter and a tourist, discreetly taking pictures of the interior to send my mother. This time was decidedly less festive.
On the tarmac, after we’d climbed from the car and walked to the boarding stairs, Noah held out an arm to indicate that I should go first. In the front of the cabin, four of the white leather seats were arranged facing each other in pairs, with a table between them on which were water bottles and a dish of mints. I glanced over my shoulder, unsure where I should sit, and Noah said, “Why don’t you go there?” and nodded toward the window seat in the pair facing forward. After I had, he slid in next to me, pushed up the white leather armrest between our chairs, and wordlessly set his right arm around my shoulder. I wordlessly turned my face into his chest and closed my eyes. Through my mask, his neck smelled the way he smelled on waking, some combination of being outside in the woods and bread, and I thought how in the last few weeks, the idea of him had sometimes made me nervous but the reality of him always comforted me.
One of the flight attendants offered us coffee, which we both accepted, and blueberry muffins, which he declined and I accepted, pulling down my mask to take bites. Over the sound system, the pilot apologized for our bumpy ascent, then the ride smoothed out, and the flight attendant refilled our mugs. I’d been scrolling on my phone, and Noah had been scrolling on his iPad, and he said, “Do you want to watch a movie?” He told me to choose, and I picked a historical drama that, while not as well written as it seemed to think, was at least somewhat distracting. By the time the credits rolled, we were twenty minutes from landing.
“Unless he’s really in horrible shape, he shouldn’t go to the hospital,” I said. “Right? Because couldn’t that be even worse in terms of overcrowding and lack of ventilators?”
“Leah tracked down a doctor who’s supposed to meet us at the house at three. I think we let him assess.” Noah squeezed my hand. “And she ordered a car to take us from the airport.”
I looked at him in confusion. “Like a concierge doctor?”
“Yes,” he said. “Like a concierge doctor.”
* * *
—
I’d removed the key to Jerry’s house before I’d given my car keys to Leah, and I pulled it from my jeans pocket as we walked up the path leading to the front door. The house my mother and I had moved into in 1983 was a modest colonial with maroon shutters. Noah and I kept our masks on as we entered.
I had since the plane took off been gripped by mutually exclusive anxieties. The first was that we’d find Jerry doing chair yoga or eating Raisin Bran, wondering what the fuss was, and it would turn out I’d used Donna’s call as an excuse to summon Noah, or to test him. The other anxiety was that we’d find Jerry dead.
I called his name several times, but there was no response. With Noah close behind me, I hurried up the steps, which were covered in a beige carpet from my youth. The door to Jerry’s bedroom was open, and when I confirmed the slight rise and fall of his body beneath the sheet, I, too, exhaled. “Jerry, it’s Sally,” I said. “I came back from L.A.”
He was lying on his side, facing the door. His eyes blinked open in his long, thin face. He looked confused, and something in his expression was strangely childlike, an impression exacerbated by the fact that clear mucus was dripping from one nostril.
“It’s Sally,” I said again. “I’m wearing a mask because of Covid.”
“Hi, honey,” he said in a subdued voice.
I knelt beside the bed. “How are you feeling? Do you think you should go to the hospital?” I set my palm against his forehead, and it was burning.
“It’s my throat.” He touched his neck and in his subdued voice said, “It’s not good.”
“Have you had anything to eat or drink lately?”