“Ellsworth.”
He nodded and then sat very still for a moment, so still that once again she thought he was asleep.
“The people she takes care of are dying,” said Mary. “And then she goes home and she’s with her kids, and—I don’t know. I just like watching her with them. It makes everything seem, I don’t know how to say it. It makes everything seem possible, I guess.”
Right after she said it she wished she hadn’t. Dying people! What an idiot she was, to say that to a sick man. She said, “I’m sorry, about that one part.”
“What one part is that?”
“The—” She hesitated. “The dying part.”
He let out a parched little laugh. “?’S okay,” he said. “You’re not talking ’bout anything I’m not thinking about.”
“Still,” she said.
“Sometimes I get so scared about what’s coming, Mary, that I shake in my bed.”
“That’s awful,” she whispered. “I’m sorry.”
“But worse than that is when people pretend nothing’s happening.”
“That makes sense,” she said. “That would be worse.”
“The cancer, it’s in my brain. A tumor.”
“I know. You told me. I’m so sorry.”
“Got some fancy name to it, I can’t ever remember it half the time, glio-something or other. It was the size of a walnut, when they found it. Now—well, who knows. Who knows what size it is.”
She nodded and felt her eyes fill up again. She said, “Does it hurt?”
“Some headaches, that’s about the worst of it. From the pressure, Eliza told me, I don’t know, I guess there’s no pain receptors in the brain. I didn’t know that. Did you know that?”
“No,” said Mary. “I sure didn’t.” Then she said, “I just talked so much about myself. I feel awful about that, when you’re—”
“That’s what I wanted,” Charlie said. “That’s exactly what I asked for.”
“Okay. But…now do you want to talk? And I’ll listen.”
He didn’t answer right away and then he sat in silence for some minutes and she could hear the clock ticking. The television had changed, a news show now. With his eyes closed Charlie said, “Would you mind if I talked to you about Joanie, about Eliza’s mother?”
“No, of course not,” said Mary. “I wish you would. I really wish you would.”
He smiled. “First time I saw her, I was coming in from hauling, and she was sitting there on the wharf, swinging her legs back and forth, and I thought I was looking at a fairy-tale princess.”
“She was beautiful,” said Mary. “I can see in the photograph.”
“Inside too,” Charlie said. “Corny as that may sound. Beautiful inside and out.” He opened one eye and said, “I loved her so much, you know. She was all of it to me, all of it. And then when Eliza was born the two of them were all of it.”
“A love like that,” said Mary. “I bet there’s people who never get to feel that way, lots of people.” What Charlie was describing was so far from the uncertainty she’d felt around Josh, and later the fear, that they didn’t even belong in the same category. They didn’t even belong in the same conversation.
“Eliza, she’s upset with me that I’m not fighting this thing, this tumor. But what I saw Joanie go through, fighting something that was just going to beat her in the end—boy, Mary, I don’t want any part of that. I don’t want to go down like that.”
“I understand,” said Mary. “I don’t blame you.”
“You don’t?” He opened his eyes.
“I don’t.”
He sighed deeply. “Thank you, Mary. Thank you for saying that. I need one person to say that to me.”
“You’re welcome.” She felt the weight of that responsibility settle across her shoulders, but it felt right and satisfying, like the heft of a heavy blanket.
“They say that when you’re dying your world gets real small. They say you shrink it down to the people who are really important to you, that that’s what you’re supposed to do, that that’s what’s natural.”
Mary didn’t know what to say to that. She wished Sam were there; Sam would know what to say. Sam probably had conversations like these all the time. She waited to see if Charlie would keep talking, and he did. “The thing about it is that I know someday soon I’m going to see Joanie again.”
“You will,” said Mary fiercely.
“And we’ll both be whole and neither one of us will be sick. I don’t worry about Eliza without me. Eliza’s tough as nails and she’s got her family. I know she’ll be okay.”
“You talk like you’re dying tomorrow or something,” Mary said. “I’m sure you’re not.”
He laughed that parched little laugh again. “Probably not tomorrow, you’re right.”
“Probably not the next day either.”
“Well,” he said. “Probably not.”
Then Charlie closed his eyes again and he didn’t open them when he said, “You’re going to do just fine, Mary, you and that baby of yours. I know it.”
“You do?”
“I feel it in my bones.”
“And how are your bones, usually? Pretty accurate?”
“Pretty accurate.”
After that it seemed like Charlie was fading in and out of sleep and Mary put her shoes back on and got ready to leave. Was she supposed to do something, though? Bring him water, put him to bed? When was Eliza coming back?
Once he opened his eyes and looked right at her and said again, “I know I’m going to see Joanie again. I just know it.”
“You will,” said Mary. “Of course you will.” She hesitated next to his chair and she said, “Can I do anything for you? Can I bring you something?”
“No,” he said. “I’m good here, I’m peaceful. But if I ever did need something you’d help me, right?”
“Sure,” she said. “I’m around.”
Now he opened both eyes and looked right at her and said, very earnestly, “Can you lean close to me for just a minute, before you go? So I can say something?”
Mary did as he asked, putting her ear close to Charlie’s mouth, and he whispered something, and she listened, and it took her a minute to process it, but after she did, she said, “I have to think about it.”
PART THREE
August
39
BARTON/BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS
Rob
On the first day of August, Rob met Christine Cabot in the Oak Room at the Copley Plaza: his choice, but he knew that Christine Cabot approved. The place conferred a sense of history and class that Christine Cabot would appreciate. The room was quiet and paneled in dark wood and it would be a very difficult place to make a scene, if one were inclined toward scenes.
Mrs. Cabot was already seated when Rob arrived, which put him immediately on uncertain ground. He wanted to choose the table, have the upper hand. He wanted to choose the drinks. Mrs. Cabot had already ordered two Mount Gay and tonics. Before lunch.
They nibbled on a handful of the pretzels, nuts, and spicy sesame sticks that the Oak Room had been serving since Rob was a small child, picking the pretzels out one by one while his mother drank with her friends.