The Life Room (22 page)

She went into the kitchen to pour herself a glass of wine. She flicked on the evening news. The newscaster referred to an incident that had happened on the Number 5 train. The camera zoomed in on a photo of the woman. It was the woman on the platform. Her name was Monica Wilson. She was thirty-eight years old. She had been released from Paine Whitney, a psychiatric hospital where she had been admitted for suicidal depression. Her husband was a prominent media mogul who had started divorce proceedings months before the accident; they had two small children. There was strong reason to think it was a suicide. Eleanor tried to piece together what had happened on the subway platform. She had sensed the woman’s unease, but she had no reason to believe she was suicidal. When she went to her wallet to pay the pizza deliveryman, her hands were shaking. She thought of Anna Karenina as if she had become a real person, a friend she had known and lost. She thought of how her passion for Vronsky had made her abandon her husband, her son, the society that kept her grounded. How she had, without will or reason, dug herself into a hole. She thought of her on that snowy St. Petersberg night with no alternative other than to throw herself before the train. What did it feel like for the world to be narrowed down to one throbbing pain inside you? What did it feel like when your only recourse was to end the pain?

She needed to get the boys their dinner. She needed to sit next to them while they ate their slice of pizza with carrot sticks and drank their glasses of lemonade. She would let them play for another half hour. Then she would read them a story and get them securely tucked in their beds. She had allowed disorder, a sense of panic to overtake her all day, and she told herself that she must temper it for the sake of the boys. Noah was only seven. She had to weigh whether to tell him the truth—because he’d eventually hear about what had happened on the subway platform—against her instinct to lie to him, or at least only tell him the partial truth. In his mind everything was simple. The world was still ordered in two ways, right and wrong, good and evil.

After she had gotten him into bed, after he brushed his teeth and she had read him a chapter from
Treasure Island
, he said, “Mommy, it was that lady at the end of the platform, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, darling.”

“She didn’t listen. Didn’t she know she wasn’t allowed to step over the yellow line?”

“She must have forgotten. It must have frightened you. I’m sorry.”

“It wasn’t your fault, Mommy.”

The key turned in the lock. From the crack of light in the hallway she saw Michael walking toward the bedroom and smelled the familiar antiseptic soap from the hospital on his skin as he approached. He undid the buttons on his shirt, sat at the foot of the bed, and untied his shoes.

“Hard day?”

“You’re still up? I thought you were sleeping. Why are you lying in the dark?” He flicked on the little light on the bureau. She was fully dressed on top of the made-up bed.

“You look tired.”

“Martin Fisher passed. We were doing a cardiac catheterization to identify the blockage. When we began the angioplasty the arteries were stiff and brittle. There was more than one blockage.”

“I’m sorry.”

“We didn’t know how bad it was until we opened him up.”

“I know how much you liked him.” His back was to her. She touched his arm tenderly. “How do you keep on course?”

“You do everything you can. But sometimes the heart’s already too damaged. It’s humbling to realize not everything is in your power.”

She had come to know the signals when Michael wanted to talk or be distracted. She had learned that whenever a patient died he did not necessarily need to talk about it. She watched him take off his clothes, hang them on hangers, so that his jacket and pants seemed like the shape of his former self, and wondered what was inside him when he left the pressures of the hospital behind, when he wasn’t taking care of her or the boys. Why she couldn’t access him; why he felt to her like a stranger.

“It’s late. How come you’re still awake?”

She told him about what had happened on the subway.

“That sounds horrible.” He yawned. “Aren’t you going to get undressed? Let me help.” He helped her take off her jeans and unbuttoned her sweater. He slipped his legs between hers. “I’m sorry you and Noah had to see it.” He ran his hand under the back of her camisole. Sex for him was an elixir. It helped to release the tension stored in his body. It was the way he got close. He needed Eleanor’s body, though sometimes she wished he had other ways to connect.

“I can’t get that woman’s face out of my head.”

Michael took his hand away from her waist and rolled over. “How did Noah handle it?”

“He was frightened.”

“She must have been very disturbed.” Unable to relax, he reached for the remote. The television screen came to life.

“Because she wanted to kill herself?”

“Eleanor, anyone who throws herself before a subway train isn’t well.”

“But maybe she hadn’t wanted to die. Didn’t she know that it would pass? That she’d eventually get to the other side? She had two children.”

“If she didn’t want to die, I’d assume she’d have chosen something less violent, less irrevocable.” He roamed through the channels, then, unappeased flicked off the television. “I don’t want to fight. I’m tired.”

“Are we fighting?”

“Thinking about it isn’t going to get you anywhere. We didn’t know her.”

“I witnessed a woman kill herself today. I can’t stop thinking about those poor children.” She looked at him. “I’m sorry.” She remembered he had lost a patient.

“Come over here. Please,” he said. “I have my rights, too, you know.”

She moved closer to him and put her arms around him, longing to be able to connect. “Have you ever lost your bearings?”

“I’m not like that, Eleanor. Are we talking about the woman who died today?”

She thought about the dirty pavement of the subway platform stripped of nearly all natural light. About what must have been the last thing that woman might have seen: men carrying briefcases, a teenager looking at the text messages on his cell phone, the image of her holding Noah’s hand, and what she herself had stepped away from—the gleaming subway tracks—waiting for the train. She thought of the light through the long tunnel signaling the train’s approach. Had she ever wanted to die? There were hours in her past she was anxious, or at a loss, not knowing how to stop her restless mind, but not knowing how to ask for what she wanted. Did she know what she wanted? But usually her despair slowly dissipated once she pushed herself out of bed, out of the house and into the brightness of the day. No, she never wanted to die. She wanted to learn how to live with contradictory emotions and longings, with all the passion inside her. She thought of the train growing louder, how Noah clapped his ears closed against the shrill of it. In her mind she imagined the woman’s feet in her boots moving toward the yellow line, saw her skirt rise up slightly, the wind on her face from the train’s approach.

She clung to Michael as if she had fallen over the edge into the darkness of the rails and he was saving her from the approaching train. She made love to him fiercely, wanting something from him she didn’t quite understand. Afterward she curled into his damp, sleep-filled warmth until she woke up uncomfortable, with a crick in her neck. The feeling of unease and emptiness remained.

Mrs. Woods greeted Eleanor in the reception area of the hospital, and tears filled her eyes when she went to hug her. She had called to tell her that William was in the hospital, and Eleanor had taken the first flight in. Mr. Woods was watching the television in the waiting room. He looked like he’d been up all night. His clothes were slightly crumpled and the back of his hair matted where he had fallen asleep against the back of a chair. He stood up when Eleanor walked in. “He’ll pull himself together,” he said, his voice tensing with emotion. He patted Eleanor a tad too forcefully on the back. “He’s a little mixed up right now.”

William looked pale and tired. He was wearing a hospital gown, robe, and a pair of white sports socks and pulled an IV pole as he came to the waiting room to find her. The last time she saw him she was putting him in a cab on the streets of New York City more than a month ago. “Please be okay,” Eleanor said, pressing her face into his neck, hugging him with all her might. They walked slowly back to William’s hospital room and lay down together on the hospital bed with its perfect corners. His hair had lost its shine. “What happened?” she finally asked.

“I kept thinking about what that man said about Jesus and hell and not being saved and I started feeling funny. It was like being so far down in your head you don’t know how to climb out. I forgot my name. Where I lived. I looked at my hands and my face in the mirror and they were not my own. I couldn’t leave the apartment. I realized that a week had gone by, and I hadn’t eaten or done anything that I could remember. I picked up the phone and called an ambulance.”

“But what happened? I don’t get it,” Eleanor said again.

He looked at her blankly. “I’m worried about the dogs. Will you make sure they get fed?”

“Of course I will. Whatever you want, William.”

Eleanor went to the hospital every day She sat in the lobby when William went to group, and had his private sessions with the doctor, and then joined him in his room when they brought in his lunch and supper. She picked up the tin lids and said, “Today you’re having turkey and mashed potatoes,” and she moved the tray close to William and watched him try to eat. They watched television together. Eleanor held his hand. She looked at him for signs. The doctor called it depersonalization. What did it mean? That William was not a person anymore? That he had no self? She said nothing. She kept looking for William in his eyes, but the anger and spark had vanished.
Why are we here in the first place? I wish there was an alternative universe we could live in, Eleanor. When I’m building the wall I think about it. About where we could live where no one will harm us
. She thought about those words looking at the grayish hue to his skin.

He stayed in the hospital for a month. When he was released, he went to his mother’s house to recuperate. Eleanor went with him, sleeping in one of his older brothers’ empty bedrooms. She called the chair of her department and explained the situation. She’d have to make up her work when she returned. During the day she sat next to him on the couch in the family room and held his hand. His loyal dogs were at William’s feet. It was like they were in high school again, only they were in their twenties, living together in his mother’s house. “Eleanor, you’re holding my hand too tight,” William said. “Can you let go for a second?” The days passed this way. It was so quiet they could hear the leaves shudder, the dogs whimper, and the cats meow.

“You have to go back to New York,” William said, after another three weeks had passed.

“I’m not going back.”

“You can’t stay here and watch me.”

“I’m not leaving.”

“Stop looking at me that way.”

“Where are you?” She pulled him by the shirt. She was angry. “You’re not in here anymore.” She pointed her finger in his chest.

“I’m right here. This is me now.”

She moved closer to him on the couch.

“I can’t breathe, Eleanor. I have to do this on my own.”

“What about the wall? Who’s going to finish it?”

“I’m not strong enough.” He looked at her, his eyes sad and lifeless. “You’re crushing me.”

“I’ll go back.” She touched his arm. “If you promise it will help you get better.”

“The only thing that will make me feel better is if you go on with your life. You have to do this for me.”

Was the pain in her body William’s or her own?

“William took the dogs out today.” “William went to work.” “William ate beef stroganoff for supper,” Mrs. Woods said, with forced cheeriness when Eleanor would call from New York to get a report on his state of mind.

Eleanor went back to the synagogue to see the rabbi. “My daughter,” the rabbi said, “the mind is fragile. You have to have faith in God and what God has willed.” She didn’t mind being the rabbi’s daughter. She left his chambers and sat in the synagogue, watching the light fight its way through the stained glass. She began to pray. It was what she understood one did when there was nothing else to be done.

Her neck itched. The daybed in Adam’s studio was hard. To avoid scratching her neck she thought about the paper she was writing on
The Inferno
. Virgil takes a journey through darkness. He doesn’t know who he is or what his life means. She thought of William walking through the woods, circling the fields, the dogs trailing after him. She thought of the stone wall. The wall had come to define the life they had together, who they were with each other, the way each stone began to fit, stone by stone, next to each other, securely, without mortar, over time molded to each other, forming a barricade against the world.

“What’s in your head, Eleanor? Where are you?” Adam looked up from the canvas.

“I’m right here.”

“What are you thinking about? You seem distant.”

“I’m thinking about William.” She had told Adam about what had happened. Ever since she’d reconnected with him she insisted that their relationship be platonic. In a way she’d always wanted to know whether she and Adam could be friends—whether their connection was real and not just sexual. He said he understood, he would try and restrain himself, but sometimes he weakened. She found herself torn, too. In her heart she was loyal to William, but she was beginning to feel more her true self with Adam. And yet she didn’t completely trust him. “I don’t know how to reach him anymore.”

“I can’t bear disconnection.”

“Did you always feel disconnected from Mariana?”

“I married her because I never expected connection. This way she could never disappoint me.” He left the canvas and sat next to her on the daybed. “Where were you last night? I tried to call you.”

“I should be asking where you were.”