When Ruth finally emerged from her medicated stupor that third day at Swedish, Abe was seated at her bedside in the ICU, nearly five hours after he’d assumed his post there that morning. When she opened her eyes with a groan, Abe set his outdated issue of Forbes aside and rose to his feet to greet her awakening. She smiled weakly up at him, moaning in lieu of a salutation.
“Thank God,” said Abe. “I was beginning to think you’d never come out of it.”
Ruth uttered two syllables, unintelligible, which seemed to originate deep in her throat. Her body refused to cooperate, but her eyes were alert, though Abe could only guess at the thoughts and sensations animating them. Once again, Ruth tried to articulate something, but the result was a string of vowels running together into gibberish. Rolling her eyes slowly back in her head, she lifted her wrist, IV tube and all, and repeated the utterance, motioning toward the side table.
“What is it?” said Abe. “You want me to call someone?”
She shook her head and pantomimed a writing motion.
“Ah, right,” said Abe.
Locating the little pad of paper and pen on the side table, he presented them to Ruth, who piloted her bed upright thirty degrees before she began scratching out a note. Her handwriting was that of a six-year-old, oversized and unsteady, but legible.
They’re not coming to see me, are they?
“Who?” he said.
The kids, she scrawled.
“I’m not sure,” said Abe.
Ruth flipped to a fresh page and began writing once more, her handwriting a little more steady.
Tell them no. I don’t want to see anyone.
“Why?”
She scribbled her reply impatiently. Look at me!
The effort seemed to sap her energy, and she closed her eyes once more.
Abe set his hand upon hers and gently stroked it.
When she opened her eyes, Ruth endeavored to smile again, but it registered only as a twitch at the corners of her mouth.
“Don’t be scared,” said Abe. “You’re in excellent hands here.”
Ruth took up the pen once more and began to write.
Thing I’m scared of is looking in the mirror.
Here she was, practically back from the dead, hours removed from a near-fatal drop in blood pressure, hooked to all manner of machines, tubes in her veins and crammed up her orifices, and yet she could still pretend for his sake that vanity was her biggest concern. God, what a magnificent woman. For all these years, Abe had been determined to outlive her, as though his absence would break her. But she was so much stronger than him. He now understood that her absence would be the end of him.
“Nonsense,” he said. “You look perfectly normal.”
The truth, of course, was that he had no idea what lay below the gauze and the swelling. She might have looked like Quasimodo. But truer still was the fact that Abe didn’t care, that nobody who had ever loved Ruth would care, or even bat an eye at whatever cosmetic revisions may have resulted from the surgery, because Ruth was so much more than a strong jaw or an unblemished face; her presence in their lives outweighed any and all physical considerations.
“We lost our dog sitter,” said Abe. “The Callahans are off to Sarasota for the holidays. I’m gonna try to lure Maddie to drive up tonight if she’s able. Or I could ask Jen Duncan.”
Ruth shook her head firmly, and for the first time, Abe could decipher her words more from their intent than from their enunciation.
“No,” she said. “Go home.”
A pragmatism hard and shiny as quartz gleamed in her eyes, keenly familiar to Abe after seven decades, beseeching him: Who will get the mail? What about the chickens? The newspapers will start stacking up. The recycling needs to go out on Wednesday. If you pay the electric after the fifteenth, they’ll add a surcharge.
Again, Abe was humbled by his wife’s indomitability. Intubated and unable to speak, yet still likely alert to every detail that populated their daily lives, down to the day of the month.
Not that he regretted a moment of it, but Abe had had many occasions to wonder over the past twenty-five years: How had their lives become so small? It seemed like only three weeks ago that their lives were so hectic with kids and jobs and aspirations, so overrun by obligations and unpredictable variables that they could hardly stop to catch their breath. Cancer wasn’t even a possibility. Death was some distant horizon, a fate reserved for the elderly and the unfortunate, a realm far removed from their lives on the farm, where life and abundance prevailed.
“I should stay,” he said.
Ruth didn’t even bother with grunts and syllables this time; the message was clear in her glower.
“But what if…?” Abe offered.
She shook her head decisively.
“Look, Jen Duncan can look after Megs,” Abe said. “I’ll just keep the room across the street.”
This prompted a deeper furrowing of Ruth’s brow. She’d already done the math on the hotel costs. How she managed to juggle such considerations in the face of extinction was barely conceivable. But she was resolute, Abe recognized that much, and had learned long ago to trust such resolve on Ruth’s part, or at least not fight it.
Please, she scratched out on the pad. I’m fine.
Abe pursed his lips, still not convinced.
An aberration, she wrote, as if she could read his mind. Won’t happen again.
She looked him straight in the eye and nodded solemnly before turning to a fresh page and setting pen to paper.
I promise, she wrote.
Abe left the hospital late that afternoon and checked out of the Silver Cloud, still uneasy about the decision. The parking came to almost seventy dollars, not to mention the hotel at one fifty-nine a night, expenses he wouldn’t dare divulge to Ruth, though she’d probably make inquiries at some point. Not that they were hurting financially, but thrift had become habitual for both Ruth and Abe in the later stages of their lives. It was important to both of them that they leave as much as they could to the kids, and especially the grandkids. Imagine supporting a family in this day and age, or buying a house, or sending your kids to college, or paying for weddings. It used to be that a family could own a home and live comfortably on a single middle-class income. Now it seemed young families were up to their eyeballs in debt, and Abe and Ruth wanted to relieve some of that pressure for their grandchildren. Their liquid assets still amounted to over three hundred thousand dollars, and the farm could probably fetch two million, old house and all. But with three remaining children and five grandchildren, there really wasn’t that much money to go around, not as much as they’d hoped. For ever-practical Abe, this had been yet another reason not to linger past his ninetieth year, and yet Ruth’s condition now seemed to require that he endure.
Downtown was gridlock at rush hour, and once again the traffic revisions were not helping. Abe missed the four forty-five boat, and the five forty-five was already sold out by the time he got in line. He dozed briefly in the driver’s seat before finally loading for the six thirty, which was running twenty minutes late. It was nearly eight o’clock by the time he arrived home, where poor Megs had peed in the foyer. He found a note from Deb Callahan on the dining room table, along with a casserole she’d left in the fridge with heating instructions. The Callahans had been model neighbors for over thirty years, though Deb had never been much of a cook, not like Ruthie. Still, Abe might be forced to heat the casserole at some point.
Abe let Megs out the kitchen door and returned to the foyer with a roll of paper towels to clean up the mess. Flashlight in hand, he took the soiled remains straight outside to the garbage can, then proceeded to the henhouse to shut the chickens in. The night was cool but mercifully dry, a few stars splashed between the parting clouds. Forty years of development all but surrounded their little farm now, cookie-cutter McMansions in varying shades of gray, with hulking three-car garages. So much for the “common good.” Despite the sprawl, all was peaceful and still within the Winters’ little buffer, the distant traffic on 305 the lone sound penetrating the silence, the beam of Abe’s flashlight the only thing illuminating the yard as he moved deliberately across the pasture, wary of ruts and holes. One of these nights, he or Ruth was liable to break a hip.
To Abe’s annoyance, the old Orpington with the missing eye, the one Ruthie called Ginger, was still roosting atop the coop. Abe conducted the hen off her perch with the business end of a rake, then spent the next five minutes trying to corral her before he finally finagled her through the door with his foot. He was far too old for such shenanigans. Like most of them, she was an aged, spent hen who never laid anymore, and hardly worth the effort. But eggs or no, Ruthie still loved them as pets.
Sure enough, Abe retrieved but a half dozen eggs from the nesting boxes, a meager haul, particularly after a two-day absence. It was clear from the pungent odor emanating from the boxes that he’d need to clean them out tomorrow. They may not have laid much anymore, but that didn’t stop them from pooping everywhere. One of the heating lamps was burned out, and Abe knew the temperature was bound to fall below freezing before the night was over. He had half a mind to leave the bulb for morning, but his sense of duty—to Ruthie more than the hens—kicked in just in time, and with a sigh, he plodded across the pasture to the shed in the darkness. There were no heat lamp bulbs to be found among the musty clutter of the shelves, but Abe found a thirty-watt incandescent, which would do the job. As he trudged back to the henhouse, it occurred to him how many of these little tasks fell on Ruth: the care of the animals, the orchard, the garden. Most of Abe’s contributions to the farm and the family had come from behind a desk, and such utility as that was decades removed, whereas Ruth had kept up with the same chores she’d been doing for sixty years, while Abe futzed around with crosswords and fell asleep in chairs.
By the time Abe returned to the house for good, he was faint with exhaustion and fell back heavily in his La-Z-Boy without reaching for the TV remote. He could have called it a night right then and there, but he knew he had to update the kids.
And so, one by one, he called them.
“We’re coming out for Christmas,” insisted Anne.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea,” said Abe.
“Of course it’s a good idea,” she said. “Don’t worry, Dad, we’ll stay in a hotel and spend the days with you and Mom and help out. It’ll give you a break.”
“A break from what? I haven’t done anything yet,” he said.
“Believe me, that will change once Mom gets home,” said Anne. “You’ll be helping her in the shower, back and forth to the bathroom, you’ll be preparing her meals, you might even be feeding her from what I understand. You’re gonna need a hand, Dad. And it will be good for Mom to see everybody.”
“So, everybody’s coming?”
“Maddie is still looking for somebody to cover for her at work, but that’s the plan.”
Despite Anne’s assurances, Abe could summon no enthusiasm for the holidays. The mere prospect of celebrating Christmas under the circumstances sounded dreary and exhausting. But how could he turn his children away? He thought of all those times when the kids were in their twenties and thirties, when Abe and Ruth had begged them to come out for the holidays and bring the grandchildren, but more often than not, everybody was too busy. Now Abe didn’t want all the fuss, and he was sure Ruth wouldn’t want it, either, but they’d gone and invited themselves. There’d be a lineup for the bathroom. Who was gonna cook a goose? Abe would have to make a trip to the Christmas tree farm. How would he carry the damn thing in the house by himself? He’d have to stock the refrigerator.
“No presents,” said Abe.
“Fine by me,” said Anne. “This is about being together.”
Abe was tempted to add “one last time,” but now his impending exit had been deferred, for who knew how long? He couldn’t leave Ruthie in this condition. Four or five weeks ago, she hadn’t really needed him, he served no real function in her life beyond predictable company, but now she was depending on him, and Abe wasn’t at all sure he was up to the task, let alone hosting a family Christmas.
Abe called Kyle next and gave him the update on his mother.
“I’m gonna go see her after work tomorrow,” said Kyle.
“No,” said Abe. “She doesn’t want to see anybody.”
“What do you mean, she doesn’t want to see anybody?”
“More accurately: She doesn’t want to be seen by anybody.”
“That’s ridiculous,” said Kyle. “How bad could it be?”
“You can call her, though,” Abe said. “Once she’s in a regular room. She won’t be able to talk back, but she’ll hear your voice if the nurse holds the phone for her.”
“It’s that bad, huh?”
“I don’t think Christmas is such a good idea,” said Abe. “But Annie is really pushing for it.”
“We’ll take care of everything, Dad, the food, all of it. Don’t freak out. All you have to do is watch football.”
Where Anne always seemed to work Abe up during the course of their exchanges, Kyle had a way of settling him down. And Maddie, well, she was Maddie.
“Good news,” she said. “I’ve got somebody to fill in on the twenty-sixth.”
“You’re bringing your dog, aren’t you?” said Abe.
“That’s okay, isn’t it? Megs and Perry get along great,” she said.
“He just humps her the whole time,” lamented Abe.
“They’re dogs, Dad. They do dog stuff.”
No, Maddie would never grow up, it was hopeless to think so at this point. After all, she had never married, never had children, never maintained a serious romantic relationship for more than two years, she was already AARP material, so what would compel her toward adulthood now?
“Can we not do gifts this year?” she said. “I’m a little thin financially.”
“No gifts,” said Abe. “It’s already been decided.”
Abe never could see the use in gifts once everybody was out of the house; Christmas had always been for the kids. But some people couldn’t help themselves, specifically, Anne. Abe preferred Thanksgiving to Christmas, but this year, under the shadow of Ruth’s impending surgery, they hadn’t cooked a turkey for the first time in over sixty years.
By the time Abe finished his call with Maddie, he’d already decided to gift her a few thousand bucks to help ease her pressure. Of course, Ruth would insist they offer the other kids the same in the name of fairness. That they were still calling them kids and giving them money seemed a little absurd.
Abe settled back into his easy chair, while sad-eyed Megs sprawled on the braided rug at his feet, looking up at him. Even as his eyelids grew heavy, Abe thought of poor Ruthie, all alone in that cold hospital. Life was a relentless war of attrition, to love was torturous, for love ravaged you and brought you to your knees; it broke your will, over and over, until death seemed like a merciful conclusion.