hoot myself," she says.
"That could also happen."
"But does it?"
"I don't know, Ingrid. You get to decide."
"Bullshit, Henry. Tell me," Ingrid commands.
"All right. No. It doesn't happen that way." I try to sound confident.
Ingrid smirks. "But what if I want it to happen that way?"
"Ingrid, give me the gun."
"Come over here and get it."
"Are you going to shoot me?" Ingrid shakes her head, smiling. I climb off the
couch, onto the floor, crawl toward Ingrid, trailing the afghan, slowed by the
painkiller. She backs away, holding the gun trained on me. I stop.
"Come on, Henry. Nice doggie. Trusting doggie." Ingrid flicks off the safety
catch and takes two steps toward me. I tense. She is aiming point blank at my
head. But then Ingrid laughs, and places the muzzle of the gun against her
temple. "How about this, Henry? Does it happen like this?"
"No." No!
She frowns. "Are you sure, Henry?" Ingrid moves the gun to her chest. "Is this
better? Head or heart, Henry?" Ingrid steps forward. I could touch her. I could
grab her-Ingrid kicks me in the chest and I fall backward, I am sprawled on the
floor looking up at her and Ingrid leans over and spits in my face.
"Did you love me?" Ingrid asks, looking down at me.
"Yes," I tell her.
"Liar," Ingrid says, and she pulls the trigger.
Monday, December 18, 2006 (Clare is 35, Henry is 43)
Clare: I wake up in the middle of the night and Henry is gone. I panic. I sit up in
bed. The possibilities crowd into my mind. He could be run over by cars, stuck
in abandoned buildings, out in the cold-I hear a sound, someone is crying. I
think it is Alba, maybe Henry went to see what was wrong with Alba, so I get up
and go into Albas room, but Alba is asleep, curled around Teddy, her blankets
thrown off the bed. I follow the sound down the hall and there, sitting on the
living room floor, there is Henry, with his head in his hands.
I kneel beside him. "What's wrong?" I ask him.
Henry raises his face and I can see the shine of tears on his cheeks in the
streetlight that comes in the windows. "Ingrid's dead," Henry says.
I put my arms around him. "Ingrid's been dead for a long time," I say softly.
Henry shakes his head. "Years, minutes...same thing," he says. We sit on the
floor in silence. Finally Henry says, "Do you think it's morning yet?"
"Sure." The sky is still dark. No birds are singing.
"Let's get up," he says. I bring the wheelchair, help him into it, and wheel him
into the kitchen. I bring his bathrobe and Henry struggles into it. He sits at the
kitchen table staring out the window into the snow-covered backyard.
Somewhere in the distance a snowplow scrapes along a street. I turn on the light.
I measure coffee into a filter, measure water into the coffee maker, turn it on. I get
out cups. I open the fridge, but when I ask Henry what he wants to eat he just
shakes his head. I sit down at the kitchen table opposite Henry and he looks at
me. His eyes are red and his hair is sticking out in many directions. His hands are
thin and his face is bleak.
"It was my fault," Henry says. "If I hadn't been there..."
"Could you have stopped her?" I ask.
"No. I tried."
"Well, then."
The coffee maker makes little exploding noises. Henry runs his hands over his
face. He says, "I always wondered why she didn't leave a note." I am about to ask
him what he means when I realize that Alba is standing in the kitchen doorway.
She's wearing a pink nightgown and green mouse slippers. Alba squints and
yawns in the harsh light of the kitchen.
"Hi, kiddo," Henry says. Alba comes over to him and drapes herself over the
side of his wheelchair. "Mmmmorning," Alba says.
"It's not really morning," I tell her. "It's really still nighttime."
"How come you guys are up if it's nighttime?" Alba sniffs. "You're making
coffee, so it's morning."
"Oh, it's the old coffee-equals-morning fallacy," Henry says. "There's a hole in
your logic, buddy."
"What?" Alba asks. She hates to be wrong about anything.
"You are basing your conclusion on faulty data; that is, you are forgetting that
your parents are coffee fiends of the first order, and that we just might have
gotten out of bed in the middle of the night in order to drink MORE COFFEE."
He's roaring like a monster, maybe a Coffee Fiend.
"I want coffee," says Alba. "I am a Coffee Fiend." She roars back at Henry. But
he scoops her off of him and plops her down on her feet. Alba runs around the
table to me and throws her arms around my shoulders. "Roar!" she yells in my
ear.
I get up and pick Alba up. She's so heavy now. "Roar, yourself." I carry her
down the hall and throw her onto her bed, and she shrieks with laughter. The
clock on her nightstand says 4:16 a.m. "See?" I show her. "It's too early for you to
get up." After the obligatory amount of fuss Alba settles back into bed, and I
walk back to the kitchen. Henry has managed to pour us both coffee. I sit down
again. It's cold in here.
"Clare."
"Mmm?"
"When I'm dead-" Henry stops, looks away, takes a breath, begins again. "I've
been getting everything organized, all the documents, you know, my will, and
letters to people, and stuff for Alba, it's all in my desk." I can't say anything.
Henry looks at me.
"When?" I ask. Henry shakes his head. "Months? Weeks? Days?"
"I don't know, Clare." He does know, I know he knows.
"You looked up the obituary, didn't you?" I say. Henry hesitates, and then
nods. I open my mouth to ask again, and then I am afraid.
HOURS, IF NOT DAYS
Friday, December 24, 2006 (Henry is 43, Clare is 35)
Henry: I wake up early, so early that the bedroom is blue in the almost-dawn
light. I lie in bed, listening to Clare's deep breathing, listening to the sporadic
noise of traffic on Lincoln Avenue, crows calling to each other, the furnace
shutting off. My legs ache. I prop myself up on my pillows and find the bottle of
Vicodin on my bedside table. I take two, wash them down with flat Coke.
I slide back into the blankets and turn onto my side. Clare is sleeping face
down, with her arms wrapped protectively around her head. Her hair is hidden
under the covers. Clare seems smaller without her ambiance of hair. She reminds
me of herself as a child, sleeping with the simplicity she had when she was little.
I try to remember if I have ever seen Clare as a child, sleeping. I realize that I
never have. It's Alba that I am thinking of. The light is changing. Clare stirs, turns
toward me, onto her side. I study her face. There are a few faint lines, at the
corners of her eyes and mouth, that are the merest suggestion of the beginnings
of Clare's face in middle age. I will never see that face of hers, and I regret it
bitterly, the face with which Clare will go on without me, which will never be
kissed by me, which will belong to a world that I won't know, except as a
memory of Clare's, relegated finally to a definite past.
Today is the thirty-seventh anniversary of my mother's death. I have thought
of her, longed for her, every day of those thirty-seven years, and my father has, I
think, thought of her almost without stopping. If fervent memory could raise the
dead, she would be our Eurydice, she would rise like Lady Lazarus from her
stubborn death to solace us. But all of our laments could not add a single second
to her life, not one additional beat of the heart, nor a breath. The only thing my
need could do was bring me to her. What will Clare have when I am gone? How
can I leave her?
I hear Alba talking in her bed. "Hey," says Alba. "Hey, Teddy! Shh, go to
sleep now." Silence. "Daddy?" I watch Clare, to see if she will wake up. She is
still, asleep. "Daddy!" I gingerly turn, carefully extricate myself from the
blankets, maneuver myself to the floor. I crawl out of our bedroom, down the hall
and into Alba's room. She giggles when she sees me. I make a growling noise,
and Alba pats my head as though I am a dog. She is sitting up in bed, in the
midst of every stuffed animal she has. "Move over, Red Riding Hood." Alba
scoots aside and I lift myself onto the bed. She fussily arranges some of the toys
around me. I put my arm around her and lean back and she holds out Blue
Teddy to me. "He wants to eat marshmallows."
"It's a little early for marshmallows, Blue Teddy. How about some poached
eggs and toast?"
Alba makes a face. She does it by squinching together her mouth and
eyebrows and nose. "Teddy doesn't like eggs," she announces.
"Shhhh. Mama's sleeping."
"Okay" Alba whispers, loudly. "Teddy wants blue Jell-O." I hear Clare groan
and start to get up in the other room.
"Cream of Wheat?" I cajole. Alba considers. "With brown sugar?" Okay.
"You want to make it?" I slide off the bed.
"Yeah. Can I have a ride?"
I hesitate. My legs really hurt, and Alba has gotten a little too big to do this
painlessly, but I can deny her nothing now. "Sure. Hop on." I am on my hands
and knees. Alba climbs onto my back, and we make our way into the kitchen.
Clare is standing sleepily by the sink, watching coffee drip into the pot. I clamber
up to her and butt my head against her knees and she grabs Alba's arms and
hoists her up, Alba giggling madly all the while. I crawl into my chair. Clare
smiles and says, "What's for breakfast, cooks?"
"Jell-O!" Alba shrieks.
"Mmm. What kind of Jell-O? Cornflake Jell-O?"
"Nooooo!"
"Bacon Jell-O?"
"Ick!" Alba wraps herself around Clare, pulls on her hair.
"Ouch. Don't, sweetie. Well, it must be oatmeal Jell-O, then."
"Cream of Wheat!"
"Cream of Wheat Jell-O, yum." Clare gets out the brown sugar and the milk
and the Cream of Wheat package. She sets them on the counter and looks at me
inquiringly. "How 'bout you? Omelet Jell-O?"
"If you're making it, yeah." I marvel at Clare's efficiency, moving around the
kitchen as though she's Betty Crocker, as though she's been doing this for years.
She'll be okay without me, I think as I watch her, but I know that she will not. 