Eating Heaven (23 page)

“I should have been here,” I say, staring at the sparkling asphalt of the street, illuminated by the lone streetlight at the end of the block. The night is still; there is no sound except the steady swish of water from the hose, and then even that stops as Henry twists off the spigot.

Soon I hear him tapping numbers into his phone as he walks across the lawn. He hands me the phone. “Thought you might want to check your messages.”

“Oh,” I say, taking the phone. “Right.” Why am I so thickheaded? I didn’t even think to do this. I have a message.

“Eleanor, it’s Alice. We did try to call you, but we couldn’t get through. Benny had a pretty bad day today, and we couldn’t get control of his diarrhea, so I took him to the ER for some meds, and now we’re over at River—”

I hear Benny in the background.

“Your uncle wants to talk to you.” Then, “There you go, just sit up a little.”

“Ellie?”

Then Alice’s voice from afar: “No, it’s her machine. Go ahead and leave a message.”

“Oh, uh, Ellie, I’ve decided to come stay awhile at the hospice. I had a little problem today that they say is probably not going to go away anytime soon, and I didn’t want to, you know. It’s better for now, I think, if I stay here. It’s really a pretty good place. Got my own room, and a TV, and I can bring anything I want down here—”

“What’s wrong?” Anne’s saying, and it’s only then I realize I’m crying.

“Ellie, honey, don’t go back to the house. Stay at your apartment. Alice is going to get the place cleaned up, so don’t worry about anything. It’s all being taken care of.”

And then it’s Alice on the phone again, giving me the address, details that I don’t hear, and Anne’s phone is ringing, and she’s introducing herself to Ruthann, who is apparently telling her the same news because she’s nodding and saying, “Mm hmm, mm hmm,” and Henry is looking helplessly at us both, but trying, I can tell, not to intrude.

I was right to love him. I know that in this moment, but I also know that it will be some time before we will be able to even think about wild reckless abandon, or long, sensual meals together, or just going out to a movie or for a drink or anything that resembles normal life. What I don’t know is if he’ll want to wait.

“My uncle’s gone to the hospice,” I tell him, “because he didn’t want me to have to deal with anything like that.” I nod toward the house, and Henry sighs, folds his big hands together, and I could swear he prays for a moment before he looks back up at me.

“Will you help me find my cat?” I ask.

“You have a cat?” Anne says, in much the same way she reacted to my having a date earlier, and the three of us set off into the dark, calling Buddy’s name over and over, until finally we return to Benny’s house to find her curled up on his front step.

BY ELEANOR SAMUELS

It is three a.m., and in spite of tonight’s events, anxiety over this stupid article pushes everything else from my mind. Stefan assigned it two weeks ago, and I have only one week left to complete it. How will I do that now? I worry that I’ve yet to even think about ideas for this piece, let alone try to make them. I worry about my bakeware, my KitchenAid, trapped inside Benny’s house. God, my computer. I worry that the last thing I’ll have time for now is baking, never my strong suit, anyway.

And I worry that these are the things I’m worrying about.

I make myself think about Benny lying in a strange bed. Is he sleeping? Is he frightened? Does he let himself think about dying?

Why haven’t I ever talked to him about dying? Maybe he needed someone to talk to and I ignored the whole topic, fixating on getting as many pills and as much food as possible down his throat every day. We haven’t talked again about Rosemary, about my mother. Maybe he needs to deal with the loose ends of his life.

I decide to go back to thinking about healthy holiday desserts. Just until dawn.

B
y the next morning, Christine is on her way home to Portland.

“I knew I should have come earlier,” she says. “Besides, if Anne can be there, so can I.” I don’t argue with her kindergarten logic. Reid the Frugal must have convinced her to drive rather than fly, so she won’t be here until tomorrow. I try not to let myself think about what could happen to a six-months-pregnant woman on the road alone in a 1972 Honda.

Anne and I are still drinking coffee in our pajamas. Neither one of us seems to want to officially begin the day. I’ve hardly slept, and Anne’s been awake for hours, having slept on my couch, which is almost certainly worse than Benny’s. We should be getting dressed, making phone calls, making plans, driving to the hospice. I should contact Alice about helping to clean up Benny’s house. I don’t want to do any of these things, so I pour each of us another cup of coffee.

“So,” Anne says. “Henry.”

“Yeah.” I sigh. Henry. “Cute name, isn’t it?”

She nods. “Kind of Old World.”

“Or New World. All those movie stars name their kids things like that: Jack, Henry, Aloysius. It’s like they’re trying to convince everyone they’re really not vapid and superficial.”

“Methinks you’re changing the subject,” she says, raising her eyebrows and giving me a wry smile. She turned forty last year, yet she has
no lines on her face. She’s always been the plainest sister, her features angular while Christine’s and mine were rounded, but with age she is becoming striking-looking while I’m just sagging into a puddle of skin.

“So?” she presses. “Would he have spent the night if I hadn’t arrived on your doorstep?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “That was pretty much our first date.”

She winces. “Really? Shit.”

“Yeah, well, you were the least of the interruptions.”

She nods, looks down at the table. I watch the leafy tree branches outside the window wave lazily against the blue sky.

“God, I love Portland in the summer,” I say. “Is it great living where it doesn’t rain nine months a year?” I can’t even imagine it.

“It rains in Boston,” she says, then sighs. “I need to tell you something.”

For some reason I think she’s about to tell me she’s gay—I’ve suspected it at times—so I do my best to put on my sisterly, I’m-here-for-you face and say, “Go ahead.”

“I’ve wondered for a long time if Benny might be your father.” Her gray eyes burn into mine. “Yours or Christine’s. Maybe both.”

“What?” It hits me in the solar plexus, pushes the air from my lungs so quickly I think I might not catch my breath. What does she know that I don’t?

She twiddles her thumbs on the table. “I’ve been trying to talk to you about this for years. You either shut me down or I chicken out.”

“You’ve never—”

“Eleanor,” she interrupts. “Why do you think Mom and Benny had such a connection? It’s not just a stupid photography class.”

“I know, but—”

“I overheard them one night when we were kids, out on the patio when they thought no one was listening. You and Christine and I were playing cards on the picnic table, and Dad was someplace else. It was so serious, the way they were talking—not like they usually were. Benny said something like, ‘We did what was best for her, Bebe,’ and Mom was crying, kind of, and saying, ‘I don’t deserve to be a mother.’ ”

She stops, looks down, then back up, eyes damp. “I know it isn’t me.
Look at me. I’m all Dad. Besides, Benny never paid half as much attention to me as he did to you two.”

“Benny loved you as much as he loved us.”

She shakes her head and turns away. “I don’t think so,” she says into the palm of her hand. Her voice is shaky.

“They did have a daughter together,” I tell her, reaching to grab her wrist, to pull her back toward me. “Two years before you were born. She had a birth defect or something, and she lived in a home. They named her Rosemary, and she died when she was eleven.”

Her face screws up in hurt or anger, I can’t tell, and she says, “How long have you known this? Why didn’t you tell me?” She begins to cry and pulls away, embarrassed.

“I just found out,” I say. “I was going to tell you, I was going to call, I swear.”

“Did you tell Christine?”

I nod, say quietly, “Yes. But not that it was Benny’s. You can’t tell her that. It would break her heart.”

“Damn you, Eleanor,” Anne says. She pushes out of her chair and stalks into the bathroom, slamming the door behind her. There is the shudder of the shower faucet, and then the white noise of water hitting tile.

Last night, when Henry dropped us off at my place, Anne said her good-byes quickly and walked to the door, leaving us alone in the Jeep.

I thought about asking him to come in, but I couldn’t. I smiled at him and said, “Well.”

“Yes,” he said, smiling back. “Well.”

“Thank you for being so wonderful about all this. What a weird day.” I shook my head and opened the door.

“Eleanor,” he said. “Come here.”

I moved toward his outstretched hand and he brought it to my face, cupped my cheek.

“You take care,” he said, and kissed me on the opposite cheek. His hair and skin smelled of cooking oil and onions. “Call me if you want to.”

“I don’t know what’s going to happen, or when, or—”

“Don’t worry,” he said. “Just do what you need to do. I have the patience of Buddha.”

I smiled and climbed out of the Jeep, then walked toward the building. At the door I turned to wave, and saw him watching me. In spite of everything that had happened, what I wanted most was to sleep with him, to sink into that heavy fog where I was safe and small and protected. It seemed like the most selfish and indulgent thing I’d ever desired, though, so I smiled and waved, then stepped inside and closed the door.

With Anne safe in the shower, I dial Alice’s number.

“Hellooo,” she says. “Caring Home Care.”

“Alice,” I say. “It’s Eleanor.”

“Good. You’re up. I’ve been waiting to call you.”

“I just wanted you to know I’m going to clean up the house. You don’t have to do it.”
I’m his real caretaker,
I want to say.

“Absolutely not,” she says. “I get paid to do it, and I have a crackerjack team of cleaners. You don’t want that to be one of your last memories of your uncle.”

“What?” I say, and it sounds shrill, frightened. “Is he dying?”

“Ellie.”

“No, I mean, now. Is he dying right now?”

She sighs. “His blood pressure is low, and last night wasn’t good. These could be signs that he’s entering what we call the active phase—”

“I know what it’s called,” I interrupt. The words from Ruthann’s pamphlets. “But he was getting better. You saw him. He was more energetic than he’d been in weeks.”

She sighs again. “It’s not unusual for someone to rally before this phase.”

“Maybe it’s just all the heavy food I’ve been giving him. Maybe if I just—”

“It’s not the food,” she says.

“Well, then, couldn’t it be the medication? It made him sick before. Maybe he should just stop taking it.”
Quality of life,
I remind myself.
It’s about quality, not quantity.

“No, the steroid wouldn’t make him sick like that.”

“I mean the chemo. It made him puke for weeks, and now this.”

“The only medication your uncle’s on is dexamethasone, a steroid to keep the brain tumors reduced enough that he can be coherent and conscious.” She pauses, then adds, “Temporarily,” as if I don’t know anything.

“No,” I argue. “He takes all that other stuff, too. I give it to him, five times a day, every day.”

“He doesn’t take it. I’m sorry, but you should know. He hasn’t in weeks. He was afraid to tell you.”

Goddamn that man and his secrets.

“Fine,” I say, stomach flipping. “If that’s the way he wants it.”

“It is,” she says, her tone gentle now, and I suppose meant to be soothing. “There’s nothing you can do but respect his wishes.”

“Well, then, I guess I won’t clean up his house, since that’s the way he wants it, too,” I say, knowing I sound worse than a kindergartener. “I won’t help him anymore if he doesn’t want my help.”

“I know this is hard—”

“Thank you for your assistance,” I interrupt. “We probably won’t be needing you anymore, either.” I’m trying to hang up before she hears that I’m crying, but I pause too long.

“It’s absolutely normal to be angry,” she says in that too-caring voice.

“Go worry about somebody else,” I say, and click off the phone.

The shower goes silent, and I know I only have a couple of minutes before I have to deal with Anne again. I want to wallow in this feeling, this anger, this righteous indignation, even though I know it’s pissy and mean. I punch the numbers into the phone.

“Hello?” my mother answers, sounding happy and normal and far removed from all that is falling apart around me.

“He’s dying,” I say. “Soon. He’s sick and shitting himself, and your daughters are the only people he can count on.” I click the phone back off and sit hard in my chair, hands trembling, heart hammering, breath almost impossible to catch.

The drive south on the highway is nothing like last night’s emergency mission. Anne and I are silent, and the windows are closed tight
against the heat outside, air-conditioning sputtering and smelling of mildew. I switch on the radio to allay the discomfort between us. Traffic is heavy, coming to a crawl before we even get to the Ross Island Bridge.

“What is it with this traffic?” I say, sounding as irritated as I feel. “What day is it?”

“Sunday,” Anne says, looking out her window at the tree-covered embankment that rises into the West Hills. Hot pink sweet peas climb out of the brush, pushing toward the light.

“There is no way it’s only Sunday,” I say. Could it be? It feels like a week’s passed since yesterday.

Anne shrugs.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about Rosemary. I should have.” I tap my right turn signal and the driver in that lane eases up, lets me slip in front of her. I nod in the rearview, wave.

“You know that wouldn’t happen in any other city,” Anne says.

“What?” I turn to look at her.

“People don’t just let other people cut in front of them in traffic. And it’s not only Boston, or L.A. or New York. It’s Denver, Seattle, for God’s sake. Portland is the only city I’ve ever been where people slow down to let you in. It’s freakish.”

“It’s normal,” I say, relieved to be arguing about this. “It’s human nature. We look out for each other.”

She snorts. “Right. You keep living in Wonderland here and you’ll always be able to think that.”

“Fine by me. Wouldn’t you rather live in Wonderland than where people don’t care about you?”

She turns to me, fervent and animated. “You think these people care about you, Eleanor? You think they’re being kind to you personally?” She clucks in her throat, expelling a hard sigh. “They’re just trained monkeys. This place is so provincial, they don’t even know there’s any other way to do it.”

“Thank God for that,” I say, pull over one more lane, wave at the next driver behind me, and exit onto Highway 43.

From the address Alice gave me, I’d thought the hospice was going to be in some sprawling medical office park south of Lake Oswego, surrounded by pricey neighborhoods and rolling green hills. I pictured it looking like one of those newly ubiquitous retirement centers that I always mistake for chain hotels. Instead, we find ourselves in a run-down enclave of poorly built split-level ranches from one of Portland’s building booms in the 1970s, tucked off Highway 43, but not far enough that you can’t hear every car that zooms by.

“This can’t be right,” I say, turning at the correct address into the driveway of what appears to be just another house, although better kept than the others. Farther down the long drive, though, and a long addition at the back becomes apparent, and a small parking lot with a sign: R
IVERVIEW
C
ARE
F
ACILITY
, V
ISITOR
P
ARKING
.