In a way, after all, she did end up nursing Soren—and, by the end, sharing with Morty the brunt of his terrified abuse. Remarkably, as if his fear fueled his tenacity for life, Soren held on for another year, during which Tommy realized that she and Morty had, effectively, become Soren’s parents themselves. But unlike a parent, she did not entertain hope. She knew that he was dying.
The week before he went into the hospital for the last time, he said to her, “Who are you to just walk in here, to stand there like…Who are you? Huh?” She was changing the sheets while he sat slumped in the armchair Morty had squeezed into a corner of the bedroom as a place of vigil. Morty was in the studio, on a conference call with his editor and agent; Tommy had been downstairs and couldn’t ignore the sound of Soren’s retching.
At first, she thought he was suffering from one of the disoriented riffs that occurred more and more often as he relied on the strongest narcotics. Though Morty had turned the thermostat unnaturally high, Soren was shivering.
“It’s just me. Tommy,” she said as she folded back the quilt.
“Oh, just you,” he scoffed. “Just you, you, poor little you, the chambermaid who stands to inherit the kingdom.”
“Soren, get back into bed.”
“You get the prize. You win,” he said as he followed her orders, still shivering. “Hooray for you! Healthy, fleshy, normal you!”
“Let me take your temperature.”
He did as she asked, glaring at her over the thermometer clamped between his desiccated bluish lips. She turned to look out the window at the studio, hoping to catch sight of Morty returning to the house. He hadn’t done any real work, any solitary creative work, for over a week. (“For the first time in my life,” Morty told her, “bureaucracy is keeping me sane.”)
Behind her, she heard Soren say, “And you get Morty. Don’t you?”
She turned around. She crossed the room and took the thermometer from his hand. “What is it?” she said coldly.
“It?” He looked puzzled, suspicious.
“Your temperature.”
“Does it matter? Does it fucking matter one way or the other? Hot or cold, I’m cooked. Just slice me up and serve me to the guests. Feed the scraps to somebody’s dogs.” He lay back on the freshly slipcased pillow and closed his eyes. “Thank you,” he whispered.
When Morty returned to the house, she told him they had to hire a live-in nurse. They could take the boxes of books out of the nursery.
“Now we know why we named it that,” Morty said drily.
The nurse who came was a man, fortuitously solid as a tree trunk, because his arrival coincided with a new symptom in Soren’s decline: sudden physical collapses. From downstairs, where she remained as often as she possibly could, Tommy would hear and even feel the concussive impact of Soren’s falling out of bed or faltering on the way to the bathroom. The falls increased until they seemed to occur a dozen times a day. She would hear Morty and Stan in gentle concert, trying to calm Soren.
When he fell, the dishes in the kitchen would shudder inside their cupboards, the lights in the chandelier blink.
Skeins of harsh coughing gave way to bitter respites of gasping and weeping. Morty would gallop down the stairs, lunge into the kitchen, cursing and shouting for a bucket, rags, newspapers, sponges; didn’t they have more towels somewhere? Didn’t they have enough fucking money to buy more towels?
Tommy ran endless loads of laundry. She made broth, measured Pedialyte, bought invalid accessories at a medical-supply store in Stamford. She made thick meaty sandwiches for Nurse Stan, poured tall glasses of milk and iced tea and orange juice. She would do anything, so long as she could remain downstairs.
When Soren began to cough up blood, Morty called 911. As the EMTs carried Soren through the kitchen, he swiveled his head crazily, and Tommy knew he was looking for her. He wore an oxygen mask over his mouth and could say nothing, so she came close enough to let him see her. His eyes were bloodshot but wide open.
What could she say to him? She squeezed one of his forearms through the blanket, shocked at how bony it was. She said, “Good luck. Be strong.” Was that cruel? Stan and Morty left with Soren.
It was late afternoon, light fading through the latticework of the surrounding trees. Tommy was in the middle of making squash soup. She finished and cleaned up. She admired the bright yellow satiny surface of the liquid, a false comfort.
She made a salad, a jar of dressing; took a loaf of French bread from the freezer and removed the foil. The ambulance had sped away an hour ago by then. She left everything out on the counter and stovetop, went into her den-bedroom, and turned on the television news. Somewhere the weather was tropically warm, a dog had rescued a toddler who fell off a sailboat. Bill Clinton was still making excuses for his appalling behavior. Snow, mixed with rain, would bedevil the city and several surrounding counties the next day but would likely hold off until after the morning rush.
She vetoed the news and picked up her book. She read two or three pages without absorbing a single syllable. She should call her father, but she told herself she shouldn’t tie up the phone until Morty called. If he called.
Some indefinable amount of time later, she was in the kitchen, idling through a book on Mexican vegetarian cooking, when the phone began ringing. She decided to wait for a voice on the machine; she wouldn’t pick up for anyone but Morty—yet, as it turned out, she didn’t pick up for him, either. He said her name three times, and then nothing. She thought he’d hung up until he said, “Soren won’t be coming home. Ever. Don’t wait up. I’ll get a cab.” His voice was deep and subdued, almost cavernous.
She should wait up, never mind what he said—or go to bed and get as much sleep as she could. Instead, she went upstairs for the first time in nearly a week. She switched on a lamp in Morty’s bedroom, which had become Soren’s alone in the last several weeks. It looked like a crime scene.
She turned off the humidifier, unplugged it, and moved it to the hall. Slowly, she stripped the bed down to the mattress—which, before Stan had suggested the waterproof cover, had already been ruined, its surface a Rorschach of bruiselike stains.
She rolled up the bed linens and pushed them into a black plastic garbage bag. Into another, she swept from the two bedside tables every eyedropper, syringe wrapper, gauze pad, and wrinkled tube of salve, along with dozens of soiled, crumpled tissues. She emptied a plastic carafe of urine into the toilet and put the emptied container in the garbage bag, too. She tied the bags, dragged them downstairs, and took them out the back door. The driveway floodlight flashed on as soon as the door slammed behind her.
She went back to the bedroom and vacuumed the old rug under the bed (it would have to be sent for a cleaning). She mopped the bare wood around it. Next, she attacked the bathroom. Although it was February, she opened every window on the second floor and let the cold night air invade. The furnace cranked up in protest.