The Last First Day (15 page)

You know he was wearing this big wing contraption? the nurse said. She circled her finger in the air by her ear, rolled her eyes. Cuckoo, she said. Then she eyed Ruth.

He doesn’t seem to like women, she said, warning Dr. Wenning. He’s been
very
rude.

Ruth stood there, holding their coats and Dr. Wenning’s bag. She had offered to help Dr. Wenning into her white doctor’s jacket, but Dr. Wenning had shaken her head. She wore an old tweed blazer, her familiar cowl-neck sweater.

Ruth’s fingers found the soft black velvet collar of Dr. Wenning’s winter coat in her arms.

Wings?
she thought.

Dr. Wenning rubbed her hands together, cracked her knuckles, a sound that made Ruth cringe. Dr. Wenning usually did that when she was angry.

He likes women fine, Dr. Wenning said. Just not certain women.

The nurse shrugged—bored rather than offended, Ruth thought—and raised the top sheet of paper on the chart. Bad lacerations, the nurse reported. From the bushes. They sewed up the worst spot, on his back. And he’s probably going to lose the eye.

Which? Dr. Wenning stared down the hallway, her hands folded across her belly.

The nurse consulted the chart. The right one, she said.

Dr. Wenning’s chin dropped slightly. She made a sound of disapproval. Too bad, she said. He has a severe astigmatism in the left. The right eye was perfect.

The conversation that followed—Dr. Wenning’s questions, the nurse’s answers—was mostly unintelligible to Ruth. She understood that they were talking about medications, dosages.
She understood that Mr. Mitzotakis had been severely depressed.

The nurse snapped shut the chart.

He’s pretty doped up, she said, but he won’t stop talking. You want to knock him out altogether?

She cocked her head toward the curtain, behind which Mr. Mitzotakis lay.

Listen to him, she said. He’s still at it.

There was a pen in the lapel pocket of Dr. Wenning’s blazer. Ruth watched Dr. Wenning take the pen out of her lapel and slip it, where it could not be seen, into a lower coat pocket.

Please wait here, Ruth, Dr. Wenning said. You brought the oranges?

Ruth handed her the bag. Dr. Wenning gave Ruth her crutches.

From where she stood outside the curtain, Ruth could hear the sound of Mr. Mitzotakis moaning and, between the moans, a kind of hectic chanting. Ruth looked away quickly when Dr. Wenning parted the curtain. She did not want to see Mr. Mitzotakis. Once or twice when she had been working at Dr. Wenning’s office on a Saturday, he had come in for an appointment. A stout, middle-aged man, he was swarthy, with unattractively pockmarked skin. But he was also intelligent-looking, proud; his chest had seemed to Ruth somehow oddly inflated. He wore thick glasses, and his hair was slick and wavy—dyed, Ruth had guessed. He had bowed to her in an old-fashioned way.

Ruth heard the sound of chair legs scraping the floor.

Petros, she heard Dr. Wenning say. Petros, can you look at me?

There was a silence. Then Dr. Wenning said, You are in a bad way here, my friend.

Ruth stood still outside the curtain.

Mr. Mitzotakis began to whisper, a sound somehow more terrible than the frantic chanting that had preceded it. He had been praying, Ruth understood then, in Greek. Doctors and nurses passed Ruth in the hall, but they made no sign that they noticed her standing there, wide-eyed, holding the coats. Curtains were swept aside and then whisked closed. Orderlies pushed rattling metal carts loaded with bottles and jars and boxes down the tumultuous corridor, the floor shining as if sluiced with water. The double doors at the end of the long hallway swung open, and she turned toward them, toward the rush of cold air. Outside was the December night, the red light of an ambulance parked at the curb, headlights illuminating a filthy gray snowbank, the smell of exhaust.

She did not want to be there, in that hospital, with Mr. Mitzotakis.

She thought she understood why a man would jump off his garage roof, wearing a pair of wings. She did not want to understand it, but she did.

She wanted to call Peter, but it was the middle of the night.

Overhead, the lights in the hallway seemed to flare and then dim. She looked around for a chair. She needed to put her head between her knees or she would pass out, she thought.

From somewhere she smelled cigarette smoke. She turned, her eye drawn against her will to the gap in the curtains.

Dr. Wenning was lighting a cigarette. Ruth had never before seen her smoke. Dr. Wenning exhaled a cloud, and then she passed the cigarette to Mr. Mitzotakis, leaning over the bed to hold it to his lips.

Now we will both be in trouble here, Dr. Wenning said. Don’t forget I did this for you, Petros.

Mr. Mitzotakis was wrapped in gauze like a mummy, both legs suspended in plaster casts. His face was the color of sand, his thick hair disarranged. He moved his head from side to side, stopping only to drag on the cigarette Dr. Wenning held for him. One side of his face was badly mangled.

Then he groped in the air with his unbandaged hand. Ruth saw Dr. Wenning reach out and catch it.

She held it between her own.

So, they did not work, your marvelous wings, Dr. Wenning said, her tone quiet. She was looking not at Mr. Mitzotakis’s face but down at the bedclothes, her head bowed. Still, it is a beautiful and sad story, she said, the story of the daring and loving and clever Daedalus. Nothing wrong with Daedalus, Petros.

Mr. Mitzotakis turned his face aside. Ruth saw his chest heave with suppressed emotion.

Well, we had agreed already that the wings would not work, Dr. Wenning went on, as if she had not noticed that he was crying. Of course they would not. Remember that, Petros. This is not the issue. It is not that the wings do not work, that you are a man, and a man cannot
fly
. But you thought perhaps you could die this way, and now not only are you
not
dead, but you are very, very badly injured. That must feel … I am trying to imagine it, she said.

Mr. Mitzotakis turned his face to her. The eye that was not swollen shut was at half-mast, like a drunk’s.

Ruth felt her legs tremble.

Dr. Wenning brought her lips down to his hand, kissed his knuckles.

You are one of the most brilliant men I know, Petros, she said. I would like to see these wings of yours sometime. They are wonderful, I am sure. You didn’t ruin them, I hope, subjecting them to such an endeavor?

Then she sat up. I have brought you something, she said. Along with these evil smokes. She dropped the cigarette into a cup of water by the bedside.

My god, they must be busy tonight, she said. No one has come in here to shout at us.

She reached down to the bag at her feet and withdrew one of the oranges. She began to peel it, leaning on the bed with her elbows, like a girl resting on a windowsill. The scent was bright and clean; an orchard entered the little enclosure behind the curtain. Ruth could not take her eyes from the gap.

Dr. Wenning offered a section to Mr. Mitzotakis; he opened his mouth.

He swallowed, said something in a low tone. Dr. Wenning continued to peel the orange. He said something else. Dr. Wenning nodded. She brushed the peel into a little pile on the bedclothes, fed him another section, then another. She peeled a second orange.

More words passed between them, but Ruth could not hear them all clearly. Finally she looked away.

She felt very, very tired.

• • •

So many years later, as she and Peter patiently did his stroke recovery exercises together—blowing dish soap bubbles from a child’s bubble wand to strengthen the muscles in his face, walking slowly up and down and up and down the stairs, riding the stationary bicycles side by side at the local YMCA—Ruth thought often of this night with Dr. Wenning and Mr. Mitzotakis.

She remembered the scent of the cigarette smoke, the feel of the thin predawn air, the light snow flying past horizontally when the doors at the end of the hallway had opened to the cold darkness outside. She remembered the sound of Dr. Wenning’s voice, how she had sat so calmly with the fact of Mr. Mitzotakis’s wish to die.

She remembered the oranges, their color and scent.

In the car on the way back to Dr. Wenning’s house later that night, Ruth had said, He’s a plumber, Mr. Mitzotakis?

A plumber … and a sculptor, Dr. Wenning had answered. I think it is useful to him as an artist, knowing how to build things with pipe.

She had looked up through the windshield, squinting at the falling snow.

Ruth had thought about the story of Daedalus and Icarus, the son who had flown too near the sun.

He has a son? Ruth said.

Dr. Wenning agreed.
Had
a son, she said.

The son … died, Ruth said.

Dr. Wenning nodded again. That is correct, she said. Killed himself. Petros’s wife left him afterward. This is not uncommon.
It takes great strength to keep a marriage together after something like that.

Ruth was quiet. She tried to concentrate on driving. She could feel the snow beneath their tires, the inches of it packed below, the ice beneath that. A car passed them, its snow chains dragging and clanking.

Petros is a dramatic person, Dr. Wenning said. Those wings … who could understand that? But the man’s sadness? That is very real.

Ruth realized that her chest hurt, as if she were the one who had fallen through the snowy air to the frozen ground below.

Then she remembered something.

Why did you move your pen? she said. You moved your pen, to your other pocket.

Dr. Wenning looked at her sharply. Then she smiled.

Ha, she said.

She reached over and cuffed Ruth lightly on the shoulder. You have such the sharp eyes, Ruth, she said, pleased. Truly? I did not think about it, really. I just wanted to go in there … as his friend. No business. I already give him drugs. I wanted to bring only the oranges. And the cigarettes. I knew he would want a cigarette. A man who tries to kill himself and fails should have a smoke, if he wants one.

Later, after Ruth and Peter had moved to Derry, on one of her trips back to New Haven, Ruth had asked Dr. Wenning again about Mr. Mitzotakis.

Ah, the wings, Dr. Wenning said. Yes, I saw them once. Enormous things, black like a bat’s wings. Terrifying, hideous,
even, but quite beautiful in their way. They were in a museum, in an exhibition. Didn’t I tell you?

She’d shaken her head. A passionate man, Petros, she said. He was quite attached to those things.

No pun intended, she said. Of course.

Then, one Christmas, Dr. Wenning sent Ruth Mr. Mitzotakis’s obituary notice from the newspaper.

Dr. Wenning had underlined the words
died peacefully in his sleep
.

Ruth had recognized the triumph there. Mr. Mitzotakis had survived.

Ruth liked tidying up the A-frame. She bought a Swiffer—what a marvelous gadget that was—and enjoyed pushing it around the smooth floors, dust collecting neatly on the little cloths. The house was so small it took hardly any time at all to make it spick-and-span, and Ruth felt pleasure—though she recognized it as shallow—at owning material things for the first time in her life: Table. Bureau. Bed. She bought colorful throw pillows for the sofa, enjoyed arranging them this way or that.

They had two plastic Adirondack chairs, side by side, on the deck.

They went grocery shopping together, Peter holding on to the cart. They went to the movies and out for supper. Peter continued to cultivate his old sources for the school, families who dedicated their contributions specifically for scholarships. Charlie Finney called often to speak with Peter, asking for advice, and one day Ruth was surprised to hear Kitty’s voice on the telephone.

She called under what Ruth understood finally was a pretense—some silly question about the house. What she really wanted, Ruth realized, was just to talk, to ask about various personalities at the school, about how to deal with the prickly secretary in the admissions office, about what should be done to recognize the years of service of a fellow retiring from the grounds crew, about whether Ruth thought a book club for parents would be a good idea. After that first conversation, Kitty called Ruth nearly as often as Charlie called Peter, and Ruth found herself reporting news of the Finney children to Peter over dinner at night—one of the boys had trouble with his hearing and was being tested—or a bit of gossip Kitty had passed on, or some detail about Kitty’s experience with a trustee or a teacher.

Do you know that her favorite book is
Middlemarch
? Ruth told Peter. Just like me. And that she plays the piano?

I wish you were here, Ruth, Kitty said one day. It would be so nice to have your company.

Tears came into Ruth’s eyes.

I’ll come and visit, Ruth said, when Peter is better.

Ruth had learned a great deal from Dr. Wenning, she thought, folding the laundry on the table, glancing up from time to time to watch Peter, sitting on the deck in the sun, reading. Pain and beauty were so often tangled up together. Joy and sorrow came and went from a life, the balance sometimes shifting one way, sometimes the other, like a car sliding on an icy road. The trick was just to hold on somehow through the difficult stretches.

Haven’t you found, Ruth, Dr. Wenning had said once, that sometimes in our lives we are lost in the hinterland, neither here nor there?

Ruth and Dr. Wenning had been sitting at the time in a concert hall at Yale, waiting for the performance to begin. The musicians in the orchestra had been tuning their instruments.

Sometimes we are lost in the wilderness, Dr. Wenning went on. We are far away from the shoreline, the cheerful port where the ships go and come, but also from the busy city, with its lights—Dr. Wenning had waved at the brilliantly lit room around them—and its apples for sale on the sidewalk, and the sound of typewriters going everywhere—clackety, clackety, clackety—everybody talking away.

Ruth had turned in her seat to look at Dr. Wenning. Such a long speech was unusual for her.

The hinterland … it is like a desert, Ruth, Dr. Wenning had continued, gazing up at the concert hall’s elaborate ceiling, its gilt cornices, its painted stars.