Ending (17 page)

“Blond hair and fair skin, you should use something in the coral family.” She pulled a huge leather fringed pouch from her shoulder, opened it, and leaned her head inside. “Here, wait a minute, I’ll show you.” She pulled things out impatiently, scattering them on top of the dryers. Out came a thick pink wallet, a pair of blue satin slippers with furry pompons on the toes, keys, scented crumpled tissues, a round, framed mirror, and makeup: tubes, compacts, boxes rolling this way and that, powder spilling in a fine pale snow. “It’s in here. God, I’ll be late. They’ll kill me.”

“Then don’t,” I said. “It’s all right.”

“No no no, it’s right here. It’s perfect. Ah,” she said finally and she withdrew a tube of lipstick, pulled off its cover with a flourish, and rolled it open. “Here,” forcing it under my eyes. “Coral Dreams,” she said, and I could feel her breath and smell it, a stale lavender scent. Or was it the lipstick? Only a stub of a lipstick, actually. “You can have it,” she said. “Here, here,” pushing it into my hand.

The book had fallen to the floor. “Thank you,” I whispered.

“It can change your outlook,” she said. She winked, and pushed the goggles down, hiding her eyes. “Use Lemon Ice underneath for a base. You could be good-looking yourself.”

“Thank you,” I said again.

She began to spill the makeup and slippers and keys back into the pouch. I picked things up that had rolled onto the floor and handed them to her. She hummed, with her lips pursed, and examined herself in the mirror.

The dryer turned more slowly now and then came to a stop, the last garment floating weightlessly to the bottom of the basket. “Done!” I said brightly, but she had turned her back and I could hear her shoes clicking on the tiled floor as she made her way back to the elevator.

I looked down at the lipstick in the palm of my hand. I thought I might write something on the wall near the dryer with it. Something in keeping with what was already scribbled there: names, dates, curses, threats. What? Fuck the world? Jay and Sandy forever? In this catacomb, poor Christians died … I dropped the lipstick into the lint-filled darkness behind the dryer and then I began to empty it of my laundry.

I went upstairs and found Harry sobbing into the sofa cushion and Paul sucking his thumb on the opposite end of the sofa. Joseph was on his hands and knees with his head under the skirt of the upholstered chair. His voice came out muffled and strained. “I’m looking for it, Harry. We’ll
find
it, Harry.” But this only seemed to be a cue for Harry to howl with more passion.

“What’s the matter?” I asked, and Joseph backed up from under the chair, banging his head. “Oh, I didn’t even hear you come in. It’s that stupid turtle.”

I sat down and Harry rushed me, pushing his wet face into my lap. “My t-turtle,” he sobbed, gasping and spilling a new flood of tears and saliva.

“What happened?”

“It’s g-gone.”

“It can’t be gone. Turtles can’t open doors.”

“That’s what I told him,” Joseph said. “Turtles can’t open doors.”

“Where’s the bowl?”

Joseph brought me the bowl with the plastic palm tree on its center island. Only one turtle, and that one withdrawing from the environment, was there.

“Which one is missing?” I asked. Harry had never even named them, although Paul made up new and endearing terms for them all the time. Honey, Lulu, Bingo, Poppy, Moony.

“The one with the soft shell,” Joseph said.

“The best one,” Harry wailed.

“We’ll find it, baby,” I told him. “Turtles walk so slowly.” I moved my arms, turtle fashion, swimming through a dense atmosphere.

Joseph cupped the side of his mouth. “I looked everywhere,” he whispered.

“Now, stop it, Harry,” I insisted. “We have to think. Did you take it downstairs with you when you went to the park?”

He shook his head.

“Did you take it out of the bowl today at all? Did you, Paul?”

Paul withdrew his thumb with a popping sound, looked at its wet puckered flesh, and shook his head.

“Okay, so it climbed out of the bowl and it jumped off the table. It’s somewhere in the house and we’ll find it.”

Joseph whispered in another aside. “If it doesn’t starve to death, if it doesn’t get stepped on first.”

Harry resumed his weeping.

“We’ll put food out for it,” I said, inspired. “Like they did for the elves in the story. Go get the turtle food.”

“I don’t want to step on it,” Harry said, without moving.

“Take off your shoes. Then you can’t hurt it. You won’t step on it anyway. It’s hiding someplace.”

“When we lived in the Bronx, in the old place,” Joseph said, “I had a hamster? Well, it got loose from the cage and we couldn’t find it. Boy, we searched for that hamster for two weeks. Well, P.S. we found it all right. It climbed into this hole in the hall closet and it starved to death. Did that stink! Even the people next door could smell it in their closet. They went yelling to the super. It was all stiff, with its eyes open …”

“Ixnay, ixnay,” I said.

“Huh? Oh yeah. Well, a hamster isn’t like a turtle. Hamsters are known for getting into walls like that.”

Harry came back with the little box of turtle food. He began to shake it out in the corner of the room.

“No, wait a minute,” I said. “We have to put the food in water. Remember what it says on the box?” I went into the kitchen and gathered four jar lids and filled them with water. We sprinkled a fine shower of turtle food into each of them, and then set them out in the dark places under furniture.

“Well, that’s that,” I said.

“He’ll be back tomorrow, you’ll see, Harry,” Joseph said, as he was leaving.

Then I bathed the children together, letting them play roughly and splash, secretly watching their bodies, the small dangling bells of their sex.

Later, when I lay sleepless in the very center of the bed, Paul cried out.

I went into their room and bent over him. “What’s the matter, honey?”

“I’m afraid of the turtle,” he said.

“What? Afraid of that little turtle? He can’t hurt you.”

“I don’t want him to come into my bed.”

“Paulie,” I said. “Turtles can’t climb up on a big high bed. They don’t even know how to climb.”

He was still whimpering and I said, “Do you want me to come into bed with you for a while?” I lay down beside him and he locked himself against my side as if he had been pulled there by suction. A small fire at which to warm myself. In the middle of the night, I awoke from a dream, instantly forgotten, and tiptoed back to my own bed, looking for the turtle in my path.

We didn’t find it the next day or the next, and Harry continued to grieve for it.

“Harry,” I said. “You didn’t even really like that turtle.”

“I did.”

“Sometimes you wouldn’t look at it for days. Sometimes the bowl was dry. You forgot to give them food and water.”

“I did,” he said, growing sullen. “I loved it.”

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll buy you another turtle.”

“I want that one,” he said. “I don’t want another one.”

“Harry.” I touched his face, making him look at me. “Do you think about Daddy?”

“
I want that turtle!”
he said, almost without moving his lips.

“Listen, sweetheart. Daddy wants to be here. But he can’t help it. He’s so sick. It’s not his fault. He still loves us. Do you remember he sent you that nice kangaroo from the hospital?” My God.

“
I want my turtle!”
he shrieked, shutting his eyes and forcing blood into his head until his face was a violent red.

I wanted to shake him then, to rattle his teeth and bones the way I had when he wouldn’t eat. Enough anger and despair grew in me to smash furniture, to fell trees. But then he looked directly at me and I saw his rage and his sorrow and he saw mine. My arms fluttered open like wings. He moved into them and I embraced him, holding on for dear life.

M
ARTIN WAS BEING TRANSFERRED
from Jay’s room to another part of the hospital. I believed that his mother had made the request. She would not meet my eyes as she busied herself at his nightstand. “Do you want these?” she asked, holding up letters and cards. “Are you going to save everything?”

Martin sat in a blue robe at the side of the bed, which had already been stripped of its bedding. He nodded in answer to his mother’s questions. His father waited in the hallway, sticking his head in from time to time to say things like “How goes it?” and “How are you doing?” in his grating whisper. Martin said nothing.

His mother held up an African violet plant that had been sent by a class in Martin’s school: “Why don’t you take this?” she asked her husband, as his face appeared in the doorway again.

“Well excuse me,” he said, going past Jay’s bed. He winked, smiled, took the plant from his wife and backed out of the room. In a few minutes, he looked in again. “How goes it?” he asked.

A nurse came with a wheelchair for Martin.

“Well,” his mother said.
“That
looks like
that. You’ll
get a little peace and quiet,” she said to Jay. She walked to his bed, extending her hand. “Very nice to meet you.”

“Thank you,” Jay said.

The father came into the room again and, transferring the plant to his other hand, he held the empty one out to Jay and then to me. “Nice to meet you folks,” he said. His hand was moist. He wiped it on the side of his jacket. “Good luck, now,” he added.

Martin was wheeled to Jay’s bedside. “Jay,” he said, tremulous.

Jay smiled at him. “Sandy will bring the proofs of last week’s takes. I’ll get them to you. Remember what I said about the skylight filter.”

“I will, Jay.” Martin’s eyes were brilliant with tears. I thought that it had done his mother no good to protect him, after all. Simply by loving, he knew the fragile thread of human relationships.

“Fair-weather friends,” I said to Jay. From the hallway we could hear voices, diminishing footsteps. I shut the door and came back and sat next to him on the bed. He put his hand on my cheek and his touch was cool and light. “Sweetie,” he said. “Would you do something for me?”

“You know,” I said.

“Will you go in there with me for a little while?” He gestured toward the small bathroom. “I haven’t seen you in such a long time. I haven’t touched you.” He stroked my hair. “Will you?”

The passage from the bed to the bathroom was done in the slow process of dreamwalking. Would we get there?

I locked the door behind us and while Jay leaned against the tiled wall, I pulled off my sweater and let my skirt fall in a gray puddle at my feet. He reached his hands behind me to unhook my brassiere and I wondered whose trembling had aroused the other’s. “Oh,” he said, as if in first discovery and I echoed, “Oh,” as my breasts pressed into his hands.

“Lovely, lovely, lovely,” Jay said.

I reached forward to help him with his pajamas, shutting my eyes for a moment against revelation of what had happened to him. I knew that when I opened them again I would see what was to be my real and lasting memory of Jay. No matter what happened to him from that moment. No matter how I remembered him from what seemed to be only a brief summer of moments: Jay, running with the swift power of a sketch that denotes movement and grace, Jay, wearing an erection like a banner, Jay, seen from a window, from our bed, from my place across the table.

But I looked at him, at his poor wasted flesh, with a fierce attention, committing him to remembrance in waxen colors, in that warning of the skeletal frame, in the odors that arose like sweet poisons to my nostrils.

My poor Jay, his mouth groping and his hands too light, too fragile to leave burning indelible marks. And the trembling more like a shudder that began in the earth beneath us.

I kneeled and made a carpet of our clothing on the floor, and I led him down beside me. Whose breath was that, like a rush of wind? No erection now, only a soft nervous mass that seemed to withdraw from my hand. “It will be good,” I promised, and I rubbed him gently between my hands, thinking, it will be good, it will be good, letting motion fall into the rhythm of those words. I willed it with savage concentration, with ideas of flowering things—open, newborn—soaring, and then I moved down, finding him with my mouth, my eyes still shut to enclose the fantasy.

Jay’s voice came from a great distance at the first quivers and I thought it was possible to give life this way, to recreate with my life-giving mouth, to invade him with love the way that disease had invaded him. Behind my eyes comets flashed by and I
believed
in my mouth, in my magic tongue, in my power to restore and rekindle. God—it was so easy! Now he stirred and cried my name in feral triumph and let his final warmth rush out.

February 1
^st

Dear children

It is raining in Paradise. When it rains we sleep a lot. Sam is snoozing now in the other room and my head is falling over. I look out the window and I can see the ocean from here with all that water and the rain coming down heavy like drumbeats. Sometimes nature seems crazy to me. It should be raining on a desert instead.

Ho hum I am dropping off so this will be only a little shortie. Tell my boys that Grandma is thinking of them and sends them many kisses.

Nuiloha

Mona

P.S. Sam says do you want natives pulling in the fishnets or a beach scene at sunrise?

T
HEY CAME IN AT
first with the awe and curiosity of tourists entering a church in a foreign country. They looked around them at the narrow white beds, at the dangling ropes of tubing, at the cabinets and sinks, as if they were politely acknowledging yet
another
painting of the Holy Mother and Child, yet another frayed tapestry of angels, lambs, and unicorns, eyes raised even higher than heaven.

I stood near the door as they entered and I greeted them. The women pecked at my cheeks and the men combined clumsy hugs with handshakes. I collected their words like tickets of admission. “Sandy, how are you doing? I hope we’re not too late. Don’t forget to call us if there’s
anything
we can do.”