“You just can’t stand it when you lose.”
“Not true, and look who’s talking.”
How could she tell him that it would be her last Thanksgiving there, at least living there? She realized that the moment had come, a week early. She told him there was something she needed to tell him.
Instantly, Morty looked scared. “No bad news,” he said. “Please.”
Tommy laughed nervously. “Well, I can’t say for sure if you’ll see it as bad or good—not all good—but…so I’ve decided it’s time to”—the problem was, she hadn’t yet planned her announcement—“time to spread my wings.”
“Wings?” he said, frowning. “What?”
“Morty, I don’t even want to say out loud how many years I’ve worked for you. I mean, it’s a testament to how much I’ve loved it. It’s been my life. You—your work—”
“What are you saying? Do you need a sabbatical? God knows I’ve never thought to give you real, decent time off. Paid, of course!”
“No, no, it’s not that. I’m the one who’s hardly taken time off. Because we went on amazing trips that felt like vacations—and there were weeks I probably put in ten hours tops.”
“Stop talking in the past tense, Tommy.” Morty was now sitting up quite straight, and he looked far unhappier than she had expected.
“Morty, don’t you think a change would be good for both of us?”
“No!” he exclaimed. “I am not a believer in change for its own sake. And now, Tommy, now is not a good time.”
She leaned forward, uncertain what might happen if she reached across the table to touch him. But she did. “What if it’s a good time for me?”
Tommy had seen Morty in physical pain, and she had seen him tearful, and she had seen him angry, even petulant and spiteful, but his reaction to her touch was nearly volcanic. He stood up, knocking his chair to the floor, and shouted, “You cannot desert me now! You can’t! I can’t tell you why, but you can’t. Not now.”
Tommy was speechless. “Morty,” she finally said. “Morty, do you need to think about this? Or can you sit down and—”
“No.” He shook his head vehemently.
“No, you don’t need to think, or—”
“No.” He took a deep, jagged breath, righted the chair, and sat down.
“Morty, I’ve never felt as if you thought you owned me, and I know you have good reason to assume I’m here forever, but the thing is—”
“The thing is,” he interrupted. He stood up abruptly again and went through the swinging door into the rest of the house.
Before she could decide what to do, he came back and sat down again.
“The thing is,” he said, “Soren is very ill.”
Tommy absorbed this. Soren did not seem “very ill.” She tried to capture Morty’s eyes, but he wouldn’t meet her stare. She could only hope she was wrong when she said, “Are you telling me Soren has AIDS?”
Morty focused on his hands, clasped tightly on the table.
“When, Morty?”
Still he said nothing.
“How long have you known?” Her mind careened down all the predictable alleys at once, but first, all she cared about was whether Morty, too, was sick. This she couldn’t bear to ask. “How long?”
“Two weeks,” said Morty. “I think he’s known, or suspected, for months. I made him get tested. And I am not, not supposed to tell anybody. Least of all you.”
“Least of all?” said Tommy. She heard herself make a sound that was angry. She was angry. “Morty, I’ve put up with Soren’s attitude, his freeloading, his…shit for years now, so forgive me if—”
“Are you leaving because of Soren?”
“No,” she said. “But what if I said yes?”
“I don’t know. All I know, Tommy, is that I will absolutely collapse if you leave now. I can’t be alone with this. I’m a coward, okay, but if you go…”
I’ll have blood on my hands, she might have said. She wanted to hear what he would say instead. She stared at him, at his pleading expression, and she was shocked at how unmoved she felt.
“You are irreplaceable,” he said. “I love you in a way that is totally selfish and totally unfair to you, Tommy, but if you have to leave me, please give me more time. Please just…”
“Morty, I love you, too, but I am not irreplaceable.”
“Time, money, a house of your own, whatever you need—”
“Morty!” she cried. “Stop it! I have to think. Please let me think.”
What she needed, she realized, was someone to talk to. But other than Dani, there was no one she could call on outside the comfortable circle of Morty’s life—now, in part, her own.
“You won’t be a nurse,” he said, “I promise.”
“Is he that sick? He seems all right.”
“His counts are terrible. He’s lost a lot of weight.”
Had she failed to notice this? She paid as little attention to Soren as she had to.
“He’s been in denial, and obviously I have, too.”
“Morty? I don’t want to talk about Soren.”
“I know.”
“I’m so sorry. I really am. I don’t want to sound glib, but I’ve been reading that there’s a new class of drugs and that—”
“We can’t talk about this.”
She should have had a plan in place; that was her mistake. And yet even if she had, would she have turned her back on Morty? A craven thought occurred to her.
If Soren died, there would be no more Soren.
“If I stay,” she said, “Soren has to know I know. He has to understand that I should know. He’s never thought of me as more than your servant, has he?”
“That’s not true! Soren is insecure. He’s jealous of you.”
“Jesus, I said I wouldn’t talk about Soren.” She stood. “So I have to go think. I have to get away from you and I have to think.”
“Go wherever you have to go. Just please—”
“Morty.”
“Come back.”
“Stop. Please.”
—
It took Tommy nearly a month to confront Morty—to corner him, almost literally, when she took his mail to the studio one afternoon.
He was hunched at the computer, typing. He swiveled around on the stool to take the packet of envelopes. He laid it on the counter, then stood up to stretch. “My idiot back,” he muttered, arching to rub the base of his spine.
“You’re getting too old to be sitting on a stool all day,” said Tommy.
“Old habits keep me superstitious. And disciplined.”
“They do not keep you young.”
“I’m honing in on sixty, and I’m not going to pretend it’s the new forty. Let nobody tell you otherwise; even forty’s an age of decay.” He sighed.
There followed one of the long pauses that Tommy, until a few weeks earlier, had seen as natural between them. But since learning about Soren’s diagnosis, she dreaded some new unhappy bulletin each time their exchanges faltered toward silence.
“Can I ask about you, your health, your…status? Morty?”
His hand dropped from his back; he faced her. “Status? My…social status? Or are you referring to the fact that I am physically shrinking?”
“Morty, don’t fool with me.”
“I’m not fooling with you, Tommy.”
“You are belittling me. Talk about the elephant in the room. This is the brontosaurus.”
“Apatosaurus,” Morty said gently.
“Morty, am I going to lose you? Forgive me if I care less about Soren.”