George closed his eyes and nodded slowly. He must’ve known this moment was coming.
“What am I supposed to do? I can’t watch him all day. My wife’s getting chemo. She’s in bad shape.”
“I’m sorry.” Eve had heard about the recurrence of Lorraine Rafferty’s cancer. That was the kind of news that spread quickly at the Senior Center. “I don’t know what to say.”
“She’s a fighter,” he said, but there wasn’t a lot of conviction in his voice. “It’s in her lungs and liver.”
“Oh, God. It must be really hard on you.”
“Our daughter’s taking the semester off. To watch her mother die.” He laughed at the sheer awfulness of it all. “And now I gotta deal with this shit?”
He glanced at his father, who was sitting patiently on the couch, humming to himself, as if he were waiting for his number to be called at the DMV.
“There are resources available for people like your dad,” Eve explained. “We have a social worker on staff who can talk you through your options.”
No one spoke for a while. George reached out and took his father’s hand. The old man didn’t seem to notice.
“It just sucks,” George said. “I hate to see him like this.”
“He’s a good man.” Even as she said this, Eve realized how rude it was to refer to Roy Rafferty in the third person, so she addressed him directly. “You’re a good man, Roy. We’re going to miss you.”
Roy Rafferty looked at Eve and nodded, as if he understood what she was saying and appreciated the kindness.
“Okey dokey,” he said. “How about we get some lunch?”
*
This happened on a sleepy Friday afternoon at the tail end of summer, no meetings or activities scheduled for the rest of the day. After the Raffertys left, Eve shut her office door and turned off the light. Then she sat down at her desk and wept.
It was hard sometimes, dealing with old people, having to cast out the unfortunate souls who could no longer control their bladders or bowels, trying to reassure the ones who couldn’t locate their cars in the parking lot, or remember their home address. It was hard to hear about their scary diagnoses and chronic ailments, to attend the funerals of so many people she’d grown fond of, or at least gotten used to. And it was hard to think about her own life, rushing by so quickly, speeding down the same road.
It didn’t help that she was staring into the abyss of Labor Day weekend, three blank, desolate squares on her calendar. She’d been so preoccupied by the logistics of getting Brendan off to school that she hadn’t even thought about trying to make plans until yesterday. First she’d called Jane Rosen—her most reliable dinner and movie and walk-around-the-reservoir companion—only to learn that Jane and Dave had made a spur-of-the-moment decision to get out of town. They were coping with empty nest issues of their own—they’d just dropped off their twin daughters at Duke and Vanderbilt—and thought that a couple of days at an inn on Lake Champlain might rekindle the romance in their marriage.
I’m terrified, Jane had confided. What if there’s no spark? What if we have nothing to talk about? What are we supposed to do then?
Eve did her best to be a good listener and a supportive friend—she owed Jane at least that much, having subjected her to countless heartbroken soliloquies during the darkest days of her own separation and divorce—but it hadn’t been easy. Jane was having second thoughts about a nightgown she’d bought, pale pink and diaphanous, very pretty, but maybe not the most flattering shade for her skin tone, especially with the hot flashes coming so frequently. And sex made her so sweaty these days, though Dave insisted that he didn’t mind. I guess I’m not feeling very attractive, she confessed. Eve murmured encouragement, reminding Jane that she was still beautiful and that Dave adored her, but it took all the restraint she possessed not to burst into laughter and say, Are you kidding me? That’s your problem? You sweat when your husband fucks you?
After Jane, she tried the rest of her usual suspects—Peggy, the mother of Brendan’s friend Wade; Liza, who’d been divorced and single even longer than Eve; and Jeanine Foley, her old college roommate—but no one was available on such short notice. Her only real alternative was to drive down to New Jersey and spend a couple of days with her widowed mother and never-married sister, who were living together in the house where Eve had spent her childhood. She was overdue for a visit, but it was always so exhausting to see them—they bickered constantly, like an old married couple—and she just didn’t have the patience right now.
Eve didn’t cry for long. She’d never liked feeling sorry for herself, and knew there were worse fates to endure than three sunny days with nothing in particular to do. She thought of George Rafferty, with his dying wife and brain-addled father, and knew that he would have traded places with her in a heartbeat.
Enough of this bullshit, she told herself. You have nothing to cry about.
Unfortunately, she hadn’t quite pulled herself together when Amanda Olney, the Center’s newest employee, opened the door and poked her head into the office.
“Quick question,” she began, and then froze, taking a moment to register the dimness of the room and her boss’s forlorn posture. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.” Eve sniffled, dabbing at her nose with a crumpled tissue. “Allergy season.”
Amanda opened the door a little wider. She was short and buxom, with Cleopatra bangs and multiple lurid tattoos that she made no effort to conceal, despite the disparaging comments and disgusted head shakes they never failed to elicit from the old folks. They were particularly horrified by the cobra winding its way around her left calf and shin, its forked tongue flicking across her kneecap.
“Can I help you with something?” Eve inquired.
Amanda hesitated, overcome by a sudden shyness.
“It’s not about work,” she explained. “I was just wondering if you were doing anything tonight. I thought maybe, if you were free, we could get a glass of wine or something?”
Eve was touched, despite her irritation. She liked Amanda and could see that it had taken some courage for her to reach out like this, however awkwardly. She was fresh out of grad school, recently broken up with a longtime boyfriend, and probably a little lonely, looking for mentorship and reassurance. But the first lesson Eve needed to teach her was that she was an employee, not a friend. There was a boundary between them that needed to be respected.
“I have other plans,” she said. “But thank you.”
“No problem.” Amanda shrugged, as if she’d suspected as much. “Sorry to bother you.”
“Not at all,” Eve told her. “Have a nice weekend.”