“FRAN’S FRIEND HAS CANCER,” says Sheila.
“Who?”
“Fran’s friend. Has cancer.”
“I don’t know who you’re talking about.”
“I’m telling you. Fran’s friend.”
Max looks up from his menu. “I’m hearing the words, Sheila. I don’t know who that is?”
“You don’t know who Fran is?”
“No, I don’t know who Fran is.”
“You don’t know your cousin Fran?”
“Frannie? Since when does Frannie go by Fran?”
“Are you asking me since when your cousin, who has always gone by the name Fran, started going by the name Fran?”
“Hmm.” Max blinks. “What are you gonna have?” Now that he thinks about it, he has heard Frannie go by Fran.
Sheila squints through her bifocals at the large menu. “I always wonder who would order a poached egg.”
“Millions of people eat poached eggs.”
“I’m not saying I wouldn’t eat a poached egg. I’m saying I don’t know who would order one.”
“Presumably, the people who eat them.”
Max hates going to plays in the afternoon, and more than that, he hates going to lunch before afternoon plays. He doesn’t like being around so many old people, so many people—he hates to admit it—like them. The average age at a Wednesday Broadway matinee is dead.
Max slams the menu shut. “There are too many choices!”
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“I don’t trust places that make too many things.”
He looks around the restaurant: shin-to-ceiling windows, small round tables packed too close together on cold subway tile. Outside, tourists and theatergoers float ghost-like down 46th Street. The whole day has felt off—the wrong turn on the West Side Highway, trouble finding parking, a hazy walk through midtown—all of it surreal and familiar, like a recurring nightmare, as if young, healthy Max were in bed somewhere, tossing and turning in the midst of an unsettling dream of old age, this bitter drift toward obsolescence.
Sheila hums as she reads the menu, her dusty blue eyes set like sapphires in that creased face. Max wonders for a moment if she is pondering aging as well. But no, after so many years, he knows exactly what she’s thinking.
He says: “So you’re going then.”
She looks up from the menu. “I told you I was going. You know I’m going.”
“Right. I’m just saying, you’ve definitely gone past the planning stage and you’re going.”
“What does that even mean? Yes, Max. I am going.”
“No. Of course. You should go. All I’m saying is that when I was getting radiation, did Brad come to visit once?”
“God, Max. He’d just started a new job. And the girls were little. It’s not easy traveling with children.”
“So he just sits at home and pouts until his mommy comes to see him?”
“Max—”
“He’s a child, Sheila!”
“He’s my child, Max.”
“He’s forty-eight years old!”
“So you’re saying you don’t want me to go.”
“I’m saying . . . when I was sick last year, did Brad come to visit one time?”
“So your position is that I should not go.”
“My position is that when your mother’s husband is getting treatment for cancer, what a decent person would do is go and visit—for his mother’s sake at least. I don’t care if he doesn’t like me—”
“Of course he likes you, Max.”
“He always resented me.”
“He resented you when he was nine! What nine-year-old wants his mother to remarry?”
“Well, he’s not nine anymore.”
The waiter ducks in. “Have you decided?”
“Please, we just opened our menus! Can you give us a minute?”
“Of course, I’ll be right back.”
He shakes his head at the retreating waiter. “They should put a turnstile on the door if it’s going to be like that.” Max opens the menu again. “Breakfast, lunch, dinner—it’s too much. What kind of cancer?”
“Breast, I think. This is the woman who lives on the first floor of her building, the one Fran went to Greece with three years ago, remember?”
“For God’s sake, Sheila, why would I remember who went to Greece with my cousin?” He flips to the lunch page. “Everybody’s always so proud of their Reuben. Like there’s some trick to piling meat on kraut.”
“Fran is helping during her treatments. Bringing her food. Taking her to appointments. The woman lives alone.”
“Frances was the only one of those kids ever worth a damn.”
“She’s hardly a kid, Max. She’s our age.”
That’s right. Max shakes his head. He kissed her one time, when they were, what . . . nine, ten? Maybe that’s why she’s still Little Frannie in his mind. A family vacation on Block Island, aunts and uncles dealing pinochle inside the beach house while the cousins played wedding outside, none of the boy cousins willing to be the groom until Max said, I’ll do it. And the kiss, his first, although when he told the story back at school, he left out the fact that she was his cousin. “Frannie was always nice. Her siblings I wouldn’t throw a rope if they were drowning.”
Sheila sets the menu down. “Maybe the Cobb salad.”
Of course she’s having the Cobb salad. Sheila always has the Cobb salad. All that meat and cheese on a salad—it’s perverse. He flips to the front of the menu again. “I just pray I don’t relapse while you’re gone.”
“You’re not going to relapse because I go to Oregon for a couple of weeks.”
“A couple of weeks? I thought it was ten days.”
“It’s all the way across the country, Max! Should I go for an hour? Take a cab and leave the meter running?”
“I’m just saying, ten days is not two weeks.”
“Or maybe the Caesar.”
“Doesn’t matter. I don’t think the waiter is coming back. It’s rush-rush-rush then disappear.”
“I wonder if it’s her lover.”
“The waiter?”
“Fran’s friend. I wonder if the sick friend is her lover.” Sheila leans forward and whispers. “She’s a lesbian, you know.”
“My cousin is not a lesbian.”
“Of course she is.”
“You watch too much television.”
“No, we talked about it years ago, during the whole gay marriage business. She said she was secretly glad she hadn’t been able to marry any of her girlfriends.”
“Really? Frannie?” Max didn’t know that he knew any lesbians. And it turns out he’s kissed one? “I always thought she was just plain.”
“Oh God, Max!” Sheila sits back. “That is the worst thing I’ve ever heard.”
“That’s the worst thing you’ve heard? What a life you’ve led.”
Sheila shakes her head and sighs into the menu. “Maybe the pasta special.”
“I’ll bet he doesn’t even ask about me.”
“Brad?” She looks up again. “Of course he’ll ask about you.”
“Yes, but he’ll do it like he’s asking about a chronic condition you have. ‘And how . . . is Max?’”
“He’ll say, ‘How is Max?’ and I’ll say, ‘Well, Brad, thanks for asking. Max is fine. The cancer’s in remission and Max is once again able to say the most horrible things about lesbians.’”
“I did not say all lesbians are plain. I said my cousin is plain. And I thought my cousin was plain long before I knew she was a lesbian!”
“It’s definitely breast. I remember now.” Sheila starts over with the menu, like a book she’s decided to reread. “She’s had a double mastectomy. Fran’s friend.”
“Well, I imagine lesbians don’t care as much about breasts anyway.”
“Good God, Max. The things you say!”
“Is Brad even taking time off work while you’re there?”
“We haven’t talked about it.”
“It would be just like him to coax you all the way across the country for a month and then be too busy to actually see you.”
“We’re going to the coast one day. I do know that. And I’m going to see the girls’ school.”
“Well, great. It sounds like you have the whole thing planned. So you’re definitely going.”
“Yes, Max. I am definitely going.”
“That’s good. You should go.” He looks down into the menu again. “Maybe Fran can come take care of me while you’re gone. Sounds like she isn’t above helping someone in need.”
“You’re going to be fine, Max.”
“Who knows, maybe I’ll turn her back.”
“Turn her? Oh dear God, Max! What’s the matter with you? Honestly.” She flips another page of the menu, sighs deeply. “Do you think the Cobb salad is named after anyone in particular?”
The waiter flashes behind them, and drops drinks off at another table, Max turning in his chair. “Excuse me. We’ve been ready for some time.”
But the waiter is practically on skates, and he blows past them, no time for their order.
No wait—it’s the opposite of that, the waiter has all the time. He is young and this is what the young do with time, they hoard it, waste it, slop it over the sides of their cups, the young so cavalier with time—a bit for this table, none for that one, careless and slapdash with Max’s wrenchingly precious time—who knows how many lunches he and Sheila have left, how many trips to the city, how many walks and matinees and looks and breaths and—
and—
Max notices something odd. The young man at the table next to them. He’s acting strangely.
He’s on the bench side, next to Sheila, but at his own table. He has on black, round glasses. Arrogantly thick brown hair. Hipster messenger bag on the booth next to him. He’s been there the whole time, not far from Sheila, but seeming to ignore her, drinking his expensive foamy coffee. Writing in a black journal. But now he’s paused, as if waiting for inspiration, or—
The young man shoots a quick sideways glance at Sheila, at his Sheila, and Max feels suddenly protective of his wife, of them both. Max tries something: “I think it’s named after Ty Cobb. That meat salad of yours.”
The young man with the pen writes in his journal.
Max stands.
“Max?” Sheila asks. “What is it?”
Max leans over the young man and snatches the black journal from his hands. He looks up, startled. “Hey—”
Max reads the open page: messy but legible, a half-print, half-cursive script. He reads: I think it’s named after Ty Cobb. That horrible meat salad of yours.
“Are you eavesdropping on our conversation?”
The young man looks too stunned to say anything. Max flips back several pages. He reads: Fran’s friend has cancer. Who? Fran’s friend. Has cancer.
Then: Couple in late 70s, woman in bifocals, once pretty, man balding, voice whistling through false teeth. Having lunch before a matinee.
Max tries to keep his voice from whistling. “What the hell is this?”
“It’s nothing.” The young man holds out his hand for his journal. “I’m a writer, that’s all.”
“And you’re writing about us?”
“Well, no, not really. It was a prompt.”
“A what?”
“A writing prompt? My professor gave it to us. A prompt is, like, you know, an idea, or an assignment to get you going. Like, um, it might be a first line, or a name, or a suggestion about how to get started.”
“And what was this particular prompt?”
“That we go somewhere and observe people and write down a conversation we hear. Then create a story around it.”
Max flips through the pages. Sounds like you’re going. I told you I was going . . . All I’m saying is when I was getting radation did he come to visit even once.
“You misspelled radiation, you dipshit.”
“Oh, yeah, it’s—” The writer adjusts his glasses. “It’s just notes. It’s rough.” He looks at Sheila, as if for help. “I’ll work on it later.”
“You’re scavenging our lives for your entertainment?”
“Max!” Sheila says. “Give the man back his book.”
“It’s a journal, Sheila. And he’s writing about us in here. This vampire is sucking the life from us.” He hands Sheila the journal so she can see.
The writer looks from Max to Sheila. “No, it’s just an exercise. To create . . . you know . . . characters.”
Max feels himself flush. “We’re not characters. We’re people!”
“I mean, for, like, a short story or something.”
“A short story?” Max doesn’t know what to say. “What’s the matter, you can’t write a whole novel?”
The young writer rubs his jaw. “Can I just have my journal back?”
Sheila is squinting into the pages. “I can’t read this. Whatever happened to penmanship?”
“We are not characters in some story.” Max points at the journal in Sheila’s hands. “I said that—about radiation. I had radiation! We are real people.”
Sheila says, “Does this say, once pretty?”
“You’re not a writer at all,” Max says. “You’re a goddamn pickpocket.”
The writer winces. “Look, I’m sorry if—”
“Why us?”
“What?” The writer seems unprepared for this most basic of questions.
“Why not that couple over there? Or the goddamn waiter?”
“What you were talking about, I guess.”
“What we are talking about is private. Between us. This is not some play you bought tickets to see. Everything in the world to write about: terrorists and bank robbers and you choose us?”
“It was just interesting,” the writer says, “her wanting to go visit her son and you not wanting her to go—”
“Not wanting her to go!” This is too much for Max. “I said she should go! I told her to go! If you’re going to eavesdrop at least get it right!”
The writer rubs his temple. “And the stuff about cancer, and the lesbian stuff.”
“Dear God, Max. Did he put those awful things you said about Fran in here?”
Max reaches down to take the journal back from Sheila, but when he stands again, he feels the blood in his face, like he has risen too quickly. His breath is short and tastes chalky. “This is ours! You can’t just . . . just—”
Max opens the journal to another page. He reads about his cancer, about Block Island, about kissing Frannie, about the waiter hoarding time.
A shiver runs through his chest.
He did not say those things out loud.
He looks at the writer again, who suddenly seems inscrutable behind those big glasses. Did the writer just guess, or—no. No, that’s impossible. Maybe Max didn’t think those things after all, maybe reading them now is suggesting thoughts he didn’t actually have or—
He flips back a few pages and sees his idea of this day being like a recurring dream and then he reads this about aging: a bitter drift toward obsolescence.
The writer’s face seems to shift slightly, to the beginning of a smirk, like Brad used to have when he was a kid, those moments when he was caught misbehaving but knew there was nothing that Max, as the stepdad, could do.
“Max?” Sheila asks.
The waiter has arrived. “Sorry for the delay. Are you ready?”
But Max can’t catch his breath. “We are not eating here. Come on, Sheila.”
“But I’m starved.”
“Come on. We’re going.”
“We won’t have time to eat.”
“I’m sorry,” the waiter says. “It got busy and—”
Is this it, Max wonders. The end? His hand quakes as he reaches into his wallet and crumples a twenty-dollar bill on the table. “Sheila. Please.”
She begins gathering her things. Coat. Purse. Umbrella. Max’s shallow breath stinging as it whistles in and out.
The writer holds out his hand again. His expression is cold now, unreadable. Max looks down at the journal in his hands. He flips forward a few pages, past the last line he read, the bit about Ty Cobb. He prays for empty pages but there is more writing. He closes the journal before he can read it, before he can see what happens to them now, how many pages they might have left.
No. This is insane. A delusion. Is he having a stroke? Max steadies himself against the table. Sheila has gathered her things and risen onto shaky legs, her knee still sore from the day she twisted it at their friend’s cabin on the North Fork. He wills himself to stop thinking such things, as the journal no doubt reads now: her knee still sore from that day at the North Fork. Sheila looks up at him. She must see the fear on his face because she touches his arm. “Max?”
It is her touch that brings him back. Connects him to life, rights him. And the absurd banality of it all brings back his anger. You finally get to meet your Maker and He turns out to be a twenty-five-year-old Dipshit in a creative writing class?
“Hey,” Max says. “There’s something you should know. It’s not like this.”
He waves the journal in the face of the writer, who has profoundly failed to capture the feeling of it all, the ache in Max’s sternum that long-ago summer day, Frannie’s hand on his chest as she kissed him on the beach, the other cousins in two applauding lines, playing groomsmen and bridesmaids—then, twenty-five years later, a finger snap, Max at a real wedding, his own, and another ache as another hand presses on his chest, beautiful Sheila on the day they kissed at her family’s church, and in the front row, surly, quiet, nine-year-old Brad in a rumpled suit, watching his mommy get remarried—and another finger snap and almost forty more years passes and Sheila’s hand on Max’s chest as he finishes his last radiation treatment—and Christ, the shame he feels for trying to guilt her into staying with him now, the fear that he might get sick while she’s gone, that he will lose her forever, the dread of dying alone—what words exist for that?
Of course she should go to Oregon to see Brad, of course she should see her son and her granddaughters, of course, of course, of course. It’s just—
Sheila is standing next to him now. “Max, is everything okay?”
No. Everything is not okay. There is cancer and there is death, and there is this idiot with his prompt, his notes, his dream within a dream. Max gathers his strength and bends until he is at eye level with the writer. “Listen. It’s not like this. Getting old. You need to know. It’s so much worse. You won’t find it eavesdropping on people in a restaurant. It is not a drift or a dream or a story. It is an unimaginable loneliness. The loss . . . of everything.” He slams the notebook into his creator’s thin, empty chest. “And it’s coming for you too, bub.”