MY COLD WAS GETTING better. On Sunday, the last day of my exile from the hospital, I took the boys to the beauty shop for haircuts. My parents made the usual joyous fuss over them, commenting on their size although they had seen them only three days before, on their beauty, on the bliss they created simply by being. My father actually called Harry “Champ” and sparred with him, and Harry laughed and shut his eyes against the loving blows. I saw that my father was trying to be the masculine presence for my children in the absence of their father, and I was touched. I knew that in the future he would throw footballs and baseballs to them with the changing of the seasons, and ruffle their hair and speak to them in grave, deep tones.
The boys spun on the chairs as I had done as a child and looked solemnly back at the reflection of their faces rising from the pink capes as my father cut their hair.
My mother, not in uniform now, walked around the shop and out of habit rearranged jars and bottles and opened drawers and shut them. “Sweetness!” “Dollface!” she cried alternately to the children and pinched their cheeks and caught them with kisses. When their hair lay in wet, final grooves and their smells were flower sweet, she gave them money. Their fists overflowed with coins.
“They don’t need money,” I said.
But I was overruled. “Let them buy something,” she said.
“What are you going to buy, Champ?” my father asked.
“Let them buy toys. Let them buy candy.” They were spilling out their love in frantic lavish drifts and it made me feel sad.
On the way home we stopped at the playground, even though it was a very cold day with a stinging wind. There were only three or four other children there, neglected children perhaps, or ones with crazy mothers like myself. They moved aimlessly, like bums, from one thing to another, sifted darkened sand in the sandbox, hung listlessly from the swings, and eyed one another as potential enemies. There is something dangerous about days like this, I thought. The wind was bitter and there were tears in my eyes that did not come from the grief hoarded and hidden somewhere below.
Another woman came into the playground, and it was as if I had willed her there for distraction or companionship. She was overweight and cozily sloppy, with wildly windblown hair and what appeared to be house slippers on her feet. She was looking for her dog. A leather leash dangled from one hand and she whistled repeatedly, a rising, questioning sound. Then she walked to the bench where I was sitting and she smiled at me. “That dog’s going to drive me nuts,” she said.
I nodded.
“Ninety bucks on training,” she said. “Forty bucks on shots. Fifteen on grooming.”
“I know.”
“Then he takes off like a bat out of hell. Males. I’ll never get another one, if you know what I mean.”
I nodded again and she was encouraged. She sat down next to me. “Those your kids?”
“Yes,” I said, too weary to explain that just two of them were mine.
She whistled again, softly. “Some gang. God love them. No wonder you keep them out on a day like this. They must drive you up a wall.” She squinted at me, speculating. “You look tired.”
“Well,” I said. “My husband is very sick.”
“Ohhhhh. So you want to keep them out of his hair, huh?”
“No, no, he’s in the hospital.”
“Serious, huh?” She leaned close to me, so that I could feel her coat sleeve against my own.
“Serious,” I repeated. “He’s dying.”
She moved away slightly as if I had startled or offended her. Her head was cocked to one side. “Doctors don’t know everything,” she said. She stood and cupped her hands to her mouth. “Rusty! Rusty!” she bellowed, and then she sat down again. “Maybe I’d be better off if he never came back,” she confided.
“He has cancer,” I said, unrelenting.
“That so?”
“He’s thirty-two years old.” I stared at her, pressuring her for a response. Why shouldn’t she know? I wanted her to know.
But she was crafty, evading my evil eye. “My husband doesn’t believe in doctors,” she said. “He says they’re all crooks. Hocus-pocus. And who do you think pays for all those fancy offices? For those nice leather couches and all? And those vacations they take! Do you think there’s a doctor in New York on a day like this? No, they’re smart. They’re in Florida, in Arizona. They’re out on the golf course, taking life easy. On your money,” she added, pointing an accusing finger.
“He’s dying,” I said again, believing it myself in a terrifying swell of knowledge. I wanted to shake that woman until she said yes, acknowledged the truth about Jay, about me, about herself.
But she moved farther away on the bench, her face closed against me. “Even vets,” she said. “Fifteen bucks every time that lousy dog gets a sniffle. Do I have to pay for his wife’s fur coat?” Her voice was shrill and plaintive with all the unsaid words. Is it my fault? What do I have to do with death?
I had an urge to hit her, to punch her in the face, as if the infliction of pain would be the first step in the right direction. But rage and pity rose up in conflict. Poor stupid woman, plump as a bird in her brown winter coat, the leash coiled in her lap.
I stood. “There’s your dog,” I said, pointing into the distance past the playground.
She jumped up, shading her eyes. “Where? I don’t see him.”
“There,” I said. “He’s just turned the corner.”
She was willing to be convinced. “A big fellow, black?”
“Yes, yes,” I said, wanting her to be gone, feeling the tears frozen in their tracks on my cheeks. She went off finally, whistling again, and I called to the boys, telling them it was time to go home.
In the apartment Paul dropped his coins carelessly on the first surface he encountered, but Harry buried his as proper treasure in the bottom of the toy box.
I lay down on the bed and listened to dance music on the radio. From the apartment next door, I could hear sporadic bumping noises of life. I hummed along with the tune on the radio and then I thought about tomorrow and I wondered if Jay would look different after the few days we had been apart. When would we finally look directly at one another in affirmation of the terrible truth? And what would we say?
Harry came in and watched me from the doorway. I jumped from the bed and swept him into my arms and began to dance around the room with him. He made himself rigid, throwing back his head and howling in what might have been either pleasure or despair.
Hearing the noise, Paul rushed into the room and began to cry, “Me! Do it to me!” He hung on to my legs, dragging his weight.
We danced and whirled and lurched around the room to some innocent bubbling tune of the fifties, until I was exhausted and we fell onto the bed in a warm tangle of the children’s arms and legs. “What’s going to happen?” I said. “What’s going to happen?” Nobody answered.