Every Day (28 page)

My response to bad manners has never been graceful, but in light of my behavior toward Pam this noon, I keep quiet, except to say, “All right.”

They move in close, to witness the results of the laborious typing.

“
Ama
zing,” a large, wrestler-type says.

“Totally,” says the one who asked about turning in manuscripts.

We discuss, verbally and by laptop, two unpromising dream sequences chosen by Fowler because of their coincidental use of dream, not their lack of promise. We go over ways in which they might be rooted to some context and thus improved, ways in which the dreamer and the dreamed could communicate more credibly. Then, of course, the matter of credibility as crucial comes into question, and references to Fellini and Bunuel abound. I like the informality of it, of Fowler typing in direction here and there, but not
overwhelming the talk. I begin to see what is fun about this, which is the surprise in it, the fact that you don’t know what you’ll get when eight people sit down in a circle to talk. I see why he’s done it, the teaching, all his life, in addition to the films. It’s anything but safe.

On the way home I vainly ask how I did.

“They—loved—you,” he manages.

“They loved me because they love you. Already!”

He expels air, not letting himself laugh, for fear, I know, of losing head control.

“I don’t know how you’ve done it,” I say.

“Mm?”

“I don’t know how you’ve kept doing it while all this happens to you. It’s totally amazing.”

Again, a semi-laugh. “How—you—talk.”

Then I laugh. I haven’t laughed, it seems, in months.

•   •   •

“I was about to call you,” Eliot says when I call him at work. “I’m going to do it. I want the number.”

“What number?”

“Travis’s number. I shouldn’t, I know. But that guy with the hair isn’t going to last with him, trust me. So I’m just going to call. I’ll need the work number.”

I tell him I only have the home number.

“Then I’ll call there and tell the stiff I’m an artist. Et cetera.”

I get the number.

“Now tell me what’s wrong.”

“I just called the airline,” I say softly. I’m upstairs, away from Fowler, having a bad morning about it, not wanting him to know.

“Oh, God. It starts.”

“Eliot,” I say. “How does a person do this?”

“Do what, dear?” he says, although he knows very well what I’m asking.

“This. This death thing. It feels like it’s taking so long, and
then you call an airline and it feels like there hasn’t been any time. I’m way out there, Eliot. I’m looking down at my house, at this big mess I made, as if I’ve just decided to get out and leave it to get better on its own. This is horrible.”

“Do you need me? Can I come out there, take him for a walk? I can tell them there’s an emergency, like the day with your tooth.”

“No. No. I’m just having a bad moment or two. You don’t have to come.”

“You call me after he leaves. You do that.”

“All right.”

I go back downstairs and sit across from Fowler at the table. He’s tired of his reading, and we’ve already eaten and walked and started in on the packing. He’s leaving. I’m staying. This is not so unfamiliar for us. It should be easier than it is.

•   •   •

It’s after two when I hear the “Marseillaise,” at casual volume, through the screen door. Eliot blows in shortly, encumbered with a shopping bag and a bouquet of apricot roses.

“Knock, knock, who’s here!”

I’m halfway through the second soup feeding of the day. I made tomato soup from our final tomatoes, even the green ones, and put Daisy to sleep with a bowl of it first. Eliot takes a brief look at Fowler and turns to me, probably done in by the bib I draped over Fowler’s chest.

“I don’t know who looks worse!” he cried. “For God’s sake, friend o’ mine, fix thyself!”

It’s true that I cry out for attention, my jeans and crewneck sweater in their third wearing, my hair flat and greasy. “I will shower,” I promise Eliot. “Soon.”

Fowler backs his wheelchair off from lunch, upset by the intrusion even though he’s admitted to liking Eliot.

“I’d hug you, but I might put you off your tea. You’ll want tea, won’t you?”

“Need you ask. It was frigid walking from the cab to the back door. I’m a popsicle. Lots of milk and sugar, and don’t feel pressured to open the madeleines.”

He sets the tin that once delighted Daisy and Jane in the Lenox Hill waiting room on our table.

“You made madeleines?”

“Well, you can’t buy them anywhere near the library! I figured it was the perfect dessert for a Francophile such as
vous-même.”

“Oh my God.” They’re piled, six per row, and they’re so spongy and sweet I feel I shouldn’t even have the one I’m eating. I hold one in front of Fowler, but he shakes his head, slowly, from side to side, then motors to the other end of the table where the remaining pages of the last student manuscript are propped up on two cookbook stands that Jean gave me when Simon and I got married.

“The train was dreamy, since you asked,” Eliot continues. “So nice and smooth, and above ground! And then an enormous creature drove me over here for a small fee, so
voilà
, feast your eyes. I’m on holiday.”

Because he’s so nervous, I start to wish he hadn’t come, even though the pastries are to die for.

“How about a walk?” he asks generally, unable to question Fowler directly.

Fowler types something out with the wand. “You two go,” it reads. “Daisy will sleep.”

Eliot and I step outside. “He’s self-conscious,” I explain.

Eliot puts his arm around me. “No, he isn’t. I am. And it’s making him angry.”

“It is?”

He stops and leans against the house, covers his face for a second. “I should go.”

“You just got here! Let me at least get your tea.”

“Can you drive me? To the station? I’ll have the tea in the car.”

I get the tea and join him in the cracked front seat of the Mustard Bomb. “It’s bad, isn’t it?”

He wastes no time in saying, “It’s over. When it gets so that you’re worse off than the sick one, it’s over. You are so lucky he’s leaving, you have no idea.”

“Of course I don’t!” I shout. “How could I?”

Eliot sniffs, sips. “You couldn’t,” he says.

•   •   •

On Isaac’s birthday Simon drives up in a rented minivan and honks shamelessly until we’re assembled in front. I’ve got a picnic I know no one will want to eat, blankets, and cameras. I convinced Isaac, when he complained of our family’s lack of flair in terms of birthdays, that apple picking was an original party idea, that we’d go to the orchards and get messy, then come home and make stuff with the apples for the rest of the weekend, caramel apples, pies, chutney, what-have-you. We could even think about selling it, I told him.

“You’re trying to make up for Halloween, aren’t you, Mom?” he said.

“Maybe.” I don’t see how a trip to Salinger’s Orchard could compensate for my inattention on Halloween, Jane explaining to the trick-or-treaters that her idiot mother hadn’t had the decency to buy so much as an M&M.

I must say I have never ridden in so smooth and roomy a vehicle, and that the fact of our all fitting in without issue, with the wheelchair, is cause enough for a party. Simon and Fowler take the front thrones, Jane and Isaac the middle, then Daisy and I in back. I open the Cheetos and we roll.

“Brady Bunch on the road,” Isaac scoffs. I flinch at the Brady reference, thinking of the Brady Bill, but Isaac doesn’t bother with the news, thank God. It’s hard enough with Jane and her bandwagons.

“Mama sad?” Daisy asks, because I’m making some sort of face about it.

“No, sweetie pie. Mama happy.”

“Happy bewfday?”

“Happy birthday. Isaac’s birthday.”

Daisy laughs crazily. I want to take her out of that motley and squeeze her.

We’re impossibly cheerful as a crew, and I think it’s because Fowler leaves tomorrow, and we have to be. Mother keeps calling, worried. She’s sure I can’t handle what’s about to hit me. But I’ve told her, over and over, it’s been hitting me since June. “Still,” she says ominously.

We’re driving him to LaGuardia tomorrow. Evelyn has been notified. He’ll be flying alone.

From where I sit I can’t see him. His minivan throne hides him entirely. I do catch Simon looking over now and then, asking Fowler if he’s all right, if he needs anything. Simon should have been the doctor, not Carly.

“Mom, I want those maple sugar men and ladies that come in the little white boxes,” Jane says.

“Fine.”

“They’ll get stuck in your rig,” Isaac says, taking more aim at Jane’s braces.

“Drop dead,” Jane says, which sends me into a complete frenzy until I detect laughter in the front, he’s letting himself laugh, and Simon’s got an arm out for support.

“Nice one, brainless. Any other choice phrases you’d like to spit through all that metal?”

“Enough, you two,” I warn. “Enough about teeth.”

“Yeah, Mom. Are you ever going to get that tooth fixed? You have one white tooth and the rest are brown.”

“Thank you, Jane.”

Simon glances over at Fowler. “Jim, I’d like you to meet your new family.”

•   •   •

At home, Mother and Daddy greet us at the door and help with the bags of apples. They give Isaac his presents right away, a hand-knit sweater and a check. “Put it toward your
Porsche,” Mother says. At which point, Alex steps out of the front hall closet, all in black, having somehow avoided gaining the Freshman Ten.

“Your dad called me last month,” she tells Isaac, who is red with embarrassment.

Isaac’s eyes dart between Simon and Fowler, unsure.

“Happy birthday!” my father shouts. “Come on! Let’s have some cake. There’s coffee, Leigh. Your mother made fresh.”

“Now you’re only four years younger than I am,” Alex says adorably. She holds out a present done up in tasteful plaid wrap. “Happy birthday.”

I stay in the hall with Fowler for a minute.

“You called Alex? At college?”

His eyes assent, closing with pleasure, as Isaac’s did, for the short embrace.

“You’re a smart man,” I say. “You gave him exactly what he wanted.”

He points inside, where the cake is being brought, dots of fire in the darkened dining room.

“You’re not a bad father, either,” I add.

•   •   •

After the cake, Daddy asks for a word with me. “Would you like me to drive the young lady home?”

“That’s okay, Dad.”

“I don’t think she should spend the night.”

“Neither do we, Daddy. Give us some credit.”

My father smiles. “I give you much credit,” he says. “I don’t know of anyone doing such a wonderful thing as you have done here.”

I break away from the dishes for a second. “I guess I’m not the fool you took me for.”

“I’m the fool,” Daddy says, “if I ever thought you were.”

Mother pokes her head in. “We’ve got a train in half an hour,” she alerts my father.

“I’ll have just enough time,” Daddy says. “Tell her her chariot awaits.”

“You haven’t driven in years.”

“Oh, let him have his little thing,” Mother says.

We follow him into the living room.

“I’m taking Alex home,” he tells Isaac. “You can come along.”

“Conference time,” Isaac says. We go back in the kitchen. “Why can’t she stay?”

“Because she can’t.”

“But I’ve stayed there.”

Fowler drops something in the next room. We find his wand on the floor. I pick it up, and he starts typing.

“Take her home,” he types.

“Why?” Isaac types back.

“Because your mother told you to.”

•   •   •

The next morning, Simon brings in croissants, butter, and jam. Jane holds Fowler’s coffee for him, which he sips through a straw. I’ve been up packing Fowler’s things and making a list for Evelyn of ways to take care of him. I put Isaac’s baseball photo, in a frame, in Fowler’s carry-on. One unmarked box stays by the bed.

“What is it?” I ask him.

He types: “For you and Isaac.”

I take off the top, which indicates that there’s Xerox paper inside. I find film reels instead, at least thirty canisters, all labeled with the titles of his films. In the presence of my family I say, “I love you. I have always loved you.”

After the food we suit up. Simon packs the car. Then he kneels by the chair before lifting Fowler in. “Godspeed.”

I go to my husband, as he takes up the sidelines again. I know I will cry if I tell him, just now, that he has held all of us up, that he’s the best person I know, that I don’t deserve him. So I reach for his hand, which he gives for me
to press to my cheek. He gives my hand a tight squeeze. “You’ll be late,” he says. “Go.”

“Mom, you forgot his hat!” Jane yells, rushing out to place it carefully on Fowler’s head, to her sister’s immediate chagrin. It is Daisy’s favorite hat. “Don’t let anyone feed you who doesn’t know what you have,” she counsels. “ ’Bye.” She offers her cheek for a kiss, which he gives, then backs away.

I don’t look at them. I have Isaac hold my coffee until we’re on the highway. He hands it back to me without my asking, a good thing, as I don’t dare speak.

•   •   •

Airports are grisly places, generally, too functional, too full of departure. It’s hard to say which task is more onerous, parking, baggage check, the detailing of Fowler’s particular needs to the clerk behind the desk who says we’ll have to repeat this to the flight attendant anyway. The announcement for preboarding is made as soon as we’ve checked Fowler in and gotten his boarding pass.

I sink down and face him, holding onto the chair. Isaac is behind me, both hands on my shoulders. Fowler’s hands cover my own.

“Mom,” Isaac says. “Mom.”

I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do, so I stand up. Isaac is taking up Fowler’s carry-on and assuming the post behind the chair. Fowler smiles—I know he is smiling, eyes narrow, lips pressed into an effort. He pushes the brake lever and pulls a slip of paper from his sleeve on which is typed the words “Every day.”