He decided to give Kathy the check on the day of her last chemo session. This was a Wednesday in late February. On this particular afternoon, he didn’t drive her but met her at the outpatient center, where she had gone by taxi after a consultation with her lawyer. To his surprise, Susie was there, as was Michael. It was the first time Bruce had met him. His green hair aside, he seemed a well-mannered boy, slim and neatly dressed, unlike his sister, with her tattoos and leggings and leather jacket. To mark the occasion, Bruce had ordered a bouquet to be delivered from Ode à la Rose, Eva’s preferred florist, but it was late arriving. Half an hour before the session was due to wrap up, it still hadn’t arrived.
He was about to step into the hall to call the shop and ask what was holding them up when the nurses and nurses’ aides gathered round Kathy in a circle. “We got this for you,” one of the nurses said, and handed Kathy a card that depicted a smiling stick figure in a pink robe throwing a pink mortarboard into the sky. CONGRATS, CHEMO GRAD! the card read.
“We all signed it,” the nurse added.
“Oh, how lovely,” Kathy said, tears coming into her eyes.
She was just opening the card and beginning to read the little messages written on it when the flowers were brought in—a Brobdingnagian arrangement of pink and peach roses and white lisianthus. At the mere sight of it, a hush descended. The expression in Kathy’s eyes, as she put down the card and looked at the flowers, was that of someone dazzled by a bright light.
“Oh, my God,” she said.
Bruce winced. I should have known better, he thought. I should have guessed that a moment this delicate could not withstand such a hammer blow of opulence.
“Never mind those, keep on reading your card,” he said, but it was too late; already the nurses were dispersing, already Kathy was drying her eyes. Only Michael seemed to take any real pleasure in the bouquet. “I knew it,” he said as he read the note pinned to it. “I knew it was Ode à la Rose. Gorgeous.” Cautiously he touched his fingertips to one of the stems, as if he feared damaging it. “The thing you need to understand, Mom, is that this isn’t just your typical floral arrangement. This is the haute couture of flower arrangement.”
“Is it?”
“I’m sorry,” Bruce said.
“Why?” Michael said.
“I couldn’t tell from the photo on the website that it was going to be this big.”
“Oh, but it’s fantastic,” Kathy said. “Picture me doing that thing that the Coyote does in the cartoon, where his jaw drops and lands on the ground and he has to pick it up and put it back on.”
“I got you something, too,” Susie said, rifling through her elephantine handbag. “Hold on, I know it’s in here somewhere.”
“She’ll never find it,” Michael said. “That bag is the black hole of Calcutta.”
“Shut up.”
“It’s the Roach Motel. Roaches check in, but they don’t check out.”
“Fuck off. I know it’s here. It’s a card I made. A decoupage.”
“You must have left it at home. You’re always forgetting things.”
“No, I know I brought it.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Kathy said. “You can give it to me later.”
“But I’m sure I brought it. Well, there’s only one way to find out.”
With that, Susie dumped the contents of the bag onto the floor.
“I’m not sure you should do that,” Bruce said. “I mean, I’m not sure it’s hygienic.”
“I don’t think it’s there, sweetheart,” Kathy said.
“Will you please be quiet and just let me look?” Susie said.
“God, you are so OCD,” Michael said.
“Michael, please,” Kathy said.
“You can’t stand it when anyone else is the center of attention, can you? Even Mom. Especially Mom. Everything has to be about you.”
“Will you please just shut the fuck up?” Susie said. “I’m trying to concentrate here.”
“Why are you bothering? I mean, it’s a card. It’s not like a button or a vape cartridge. Things that big you don’t have to hunt for, they’re either there or they’re not.”
“Don’t worry, Susie, you can give it to me when we get home.”
“But I want to give it to you now,” Susie said, “the way the nurses gave you their card, and Bruce gave you the flowers.”
“As if anything you made could hold a candle to those flowers,” Michael said.
“You’re one to talk. You didn’t bring anything.”
“But I don’t even want any presents,” Kathy said. “I never asked for presents.”
“I think you should put all that stuff back in your bag, Susie,” Bruce said. “Your mother’s right, this isn’t the time or the place—”
“What business is it of yours?”
“Susie!”
“OK, fine,” Susie said, sweeping the piles of coins and toys and chewing gum into the bag. “I’m going out for a cigarette.”
She left. With the help of two of the nurses, Kathy got up out of the recliner.
“I’ll bring the car around,” Michael said.
“You have a car?” Bruce said.
“Why wouldn’t we have a car?”
“It’s my car,” Kathy said. “Michael doesn’t have his own car.”
“Of course, I didn’t mean to suggest … I just assumed you’d be staying at the hotel tonight.”
“Well, I would normally, only since the kids brought the car …”
“Of course.”
“Back in a few,” Michael said.
“I’m sorry about all this,” Kathy said to Bruce.
“About all what?” Bruce said.
“This,” Kathy said. “The kids, the drama about the flowers.”
“You don’t need to apologize for anything,” Bruce said.
Susie returned, carrying a smell of char that made Bruce long for a cigarette, followed shortly by Michael.
“Your carriage awaits,” he said, bowing to his mother.
“You know what, honey, would you mind terribly if I stayed in town after all?” Kathy said. “I thought I’d be up for the ride, but now that I’m on my feet, I think I might get carsick.”
“We can always stop if you need us to,” Susie said.
“What, so she can throw up on the side of the LIE?” Michael said. He touched his mother’s shoulder. “Whatever works for you, Mom.”
“Do you want me to stay with you?” Susie said.
“What, and leave me to babysit for you?” Michael said.
“That’s kind of you, Susie, but there’s no need,” Kathy said. “I’ll be fine after a good night’s rest.”
Susie looked at her mother, who turned away. Then she looked at Bruce, who didn’t turn away.
“Whatever,” Michael said.
“When will you be back?” Susie asked.
“Tomorrow, after work. When else?”
“I have no idea. That’s why I’m asking.”
“I’m sorry to interrupt, but I’m parked in a fifteen-minute spot,” Michael said.
He had already kissed his mother goodbye and was about to head out the door when Kathy said, “Wait, honey. Would you mind taking the flowers?”
“I’ll take them,” Susie said, reaching for the bouquet.
“No!” Michael said. “Not like that! You’re crushing them.”
“Fuck off.”
“Kids—”
“How about if I carry them?” Bruce said.
“I’m not sure they’re going to fit in Mom’s car,” Susie said.
“What kind of car is it?”
“An Outback,” Kathy said. “White, like yours.”
This took Bruce aback, but only for a moment. “Well, then, there’s nothing to worry about,” he said. “If they don’t fit in the back seat, they will in the wayback.”
He was right. “Thank God that’s over,” Kathy said to him as Michael pulled away from the curb. “I don’t want to see those flowers ever again.”
“I’m sorry, I should have known better—”
“Oh, it’s not the flowers themselves,” Kathy said. “The flowers themselves are gorgeous. What I’m saying is that I never want to see anything that reminds me of this place ever again.”
But the hotel, when they got there, was full. Bruce was dumbfounded. It had never been full before.
“It seems there’s some big thing on at the UN,” he told Kathy after a brief argument with the receptionist led nowhere. “Only tonight. They’ll have rooms again tomorrow.”
“It’s no biggie,” Kathy said. “When I told Susie and Michael I was feeling sick, I was … well, not lying exactly. Let’s say exaggerating. The truth is, I didn’t want to be stuck in the car for an hour with the two of them bickering. Is that terrible of me? Am I a terrible mother?”
“Of course not. I completely understand.”
“In that case, if you don’t mind getting me a taxi, I should be able to catch the six o’clock train.”
“No need for that. I’ll drive you.”
“That’s kind of you, Bruce, but it doesn’t make sense. Penn Station is completely out of your—”
“No, I mean to Syosset. I mean home. What’s the matter?”
“I don’t know. I think I’m about to faint.”
He caught her by the arm before she crumpled. “Careful,” he said, easing her onto a sofa.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry about that.”
“Nothing to apologize for.”
“I’m really perfectly OK. I don’t need to go to the ER.”
“So you weren’t lying to your kids. Or rather you were lying to me when you said—”
“I didn’t want you to worry. Look, it’s nothing out of the ordinary, nothing that requires a visit to the ER or anything like that. My oncologist told me from the start this would happen. ‘The sickness that’s the price you pay for cure,’ she calls it.”
“In that case we’ll just have to find you another hotel.”
This time she didn’t argue, but stayed where she was while Bruce strode about the lobby, talking into his phone.
After about ten minutes he hung up. “OK, it’s all set,” he said. “A hotel I know, a small one, on the Upper East Side. Eva and I stayed there when we were having our plumbing redone. Oh, and I got you a room with a soaking tub.”
At the mention of the tub, tears once again breached Kathy’s eyes. “I’m sorry I’m so weepy,” she said.
“How are you feeling? Can you get up?”
“I think I can. Yes, I can.”
Nonetheless, she stayed on the sofa until he brought the car around. The concierge helped him help her out.
Despite whatever was on at the UN, it took them only half an hour to reach the new hotel. The place was so near to Bruce’s building that he half expected to see Alec and Sparky or even Eva crossing the street.
“Good evening, Mr. and Mrs. Lindquist, and welcome to the Arbuthnot,” the bellman said.
“Thank you, but I won’t be staying here,” Bruce said. “It’s this lady who’ll be staying here. And she’s not Mrs. Lindquist.”
“Good evening, madam, and welcome to the Arbuthnot,” the bellman said. “May I take your luggage?”
“I don’t have any,” Kathy said.
The swiftness with which the bellman calculated and digested the possible implications of this statement was a testament to his training in the art of circumspection. “In any case, your room’s ready,” he said, leading them into the lobby, where the desk clerk asked Bruce if he’d had a good journey, processed his credit card, and gave him two key cards. Curious—the last time he’d stayed at this hotel, he’d paid no attention to its decor. Now he wondered how the lobby looked to Kathy, with its long sofas upholstered in striped green silk, its mahogany bar, its restaurant, before which a reservation book rested on a brass perch. In the lobby, a roast beef smell lingered. Bad oil paintings, each with its own picture lamp, hung on the paneled walls. And yet here and there touches of the contemporary obtruded. The elevators were swift and required the key card to operate. The room they were taken to, recently renovated, was spare and light, almost Japanese in its minimalism.
“Do you mind that it’s on the fourteenth floor?” Bruce asked.
“Why should I?” Kathy said, taking in the king-size bed, the view of the park, the bowl of fruit that sat next to the immense television. “This custom of pretending that buildings don’t have a thirteenth floor—I’ve never seen the point of it. I mean, it’s still the thirteenth floor, isn’t it, no matter what they call it? And they don’t do it with 666—have you noticed that? Plenty of buildings have 666 as their street number and nobody says anything about it.” She took off her coat and sat down on a pale lilac armchair positioned to take advantage of the view. “Bruce,” she said, “our coming here together, with no luggage—you don’t think it raised eyebrows, did it?”
“So what if it did? That’s the thing about hotels like this. Their reputation depends on their discretion.”
“Are you saying there’s a need for discretion?”
“No, I’m just saying that if they …” But he couldn’t finish the sentence.
Kathy laughed. “You’re blushing.”
“The point is, they know it’s only you who’s staying the night. I explained that when I called. What’s so funny?”
“Seeing you blush like that. It’s that Nordic complexion. Your face will always give you away.” She slipped off her shoes and lay down on the bed. “Oh, what a glorious mattress. I’m feeling better, by the way.”
“Your color’s better.”
“It’s funny—being here with nothing, nothing at all, is actually kind of liberating. I mean, I don’t even have a toothbrush.”
“The hotel can give you a toothbrush.”
“Or dental floss, or deodorant, or … anything.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll get you some dental floss. I’ll get you some deodorant.”
“No, it’s OK, I can get by for one night.” But already Bruce had taken his phone from his pocket and was checking Google Maps for nearby drugstores, of which, it turned out, there were no fewer than six within a two-block radius. At some point when he hadn’t been looking, Manhattan had turned into an island of drugstores. Like an invasive species of plant, they had killed off everything native. The last time he’d passed it, for instance, the Duane Reade he chose, he could have sworn, had been a musical instruments shop. Nor, in its current incarnation, was it a drugstore in the sense he was used to. Rather, it was a cross between a supermarket and a department store, with miniature grocery carts and the actual pharmacy in the basement. For Bruce, who rarely shopped, the sheer variety of goods on display was a marvel. There were a dozen types of dental floss alone, waxed and unwaxed, satin-textured and extra-wide, mint-flavored and Listerine-flavored and no-flavored. It took him ten minutes to settle on the right one (mint-flavored, in an attractive steel-gray dispenser), after which he bought deodorant, a toothbrush (in case the one the hotel provided wasn’t any good), toothpaste, nail clippers, Q-Tips, hand lotion, and body lotion. He bought raisin buns, cinnamon buns, barbecue-flavored potato chips, jelly beans, Evian water, and Diet Coke. He bought Advil, Aleve, Tylenol, a pair of slippers, and an oversize pink T-shirt that he figured could serve in a pinch as a nightgown. He almost bought a three-pack of white panties but at the last minute took them out of the cart and left them in the potato chip aisle.
Kathy had given him one of the key cards so that he could use the elevator. Even so, he knocked on her door before going in. There was no answer. He knocked again—and still there was no answer. “Kathy?” he called. “Kathy!” And then: “I’m coming in.”
On tiptoe, he stepped into the room. She was lying on the bed, so deeply asleep that when she opened her eyes and saw him she almost screamed. “Sorry,” she said, sitting up. “I’m a little disoriented.”
“I brought you some things,” he said.
“Thank you,” she said, gazing at the array of shopping bags with the same expression of amazement with which, in the chemo suite, she had gazed at the gargantuan arrangement of flowers.
Now it was Bruce who sat in the lilac armchair. “Look, before I lose my nerve, there’s something else I want to give you,” he said. “I mean, something serious. Not like those flowers. Those flowers were just … symbolic. A form. This is different.”
“Oh?”
“Am I blushing again?”
“You’re pink as a baby. Why are you so nervous?”
From his jacket pocket, Bruce extracted his wallet. From his wallet he extracted a folded check, which he handed to Kathy.
“What’s this?” she said.
“Open it,” he said.
She opened it.
“Oh my God,” she said. “But why on earth … Wait … Is this for real?”
“It’s for real. As for why on earth, I should think the answer’s obvious. You have debts to pay.”
“But this goes way beyond what I need to pay off my debts.”
“I know. I didn’t just want to give you enough to get out of the hole, I wanted to give you enough to ensure that you can go on, from now on, without having to worry. Enough so that you can focus on the important thing, which is your health.”
Again tears came into Kathy’s eyes. “I’m sorry,” she said, sitting down on the bed. “I’m just … stunned. Also a little bit embarrassed.”
“Why?”
“Well, you’d think that after working for you for so long, I’d have learned to handle my own finances better, wouldn’t you?”
This gave them both a chance to laugh.
“Bruce, I hope you don’t think I’ve been finagling for this. I haven’t. Honestly, if I’d known you might do something like this, I’d never have told you—”
“I just want you to promise me one thing—that you’ll spend the money on yourself. On things for yourself.”
“What else would I spend it on?”
“Your kids. That’s something else I wanted to talk to you about. First Michael. You told me he thinks you and Lou haven’t done as much for him as you have for Susie. OK, well, as it happens, our interior decorator, or interior designer, or whatever it is they call themselves these days—he’s a friend. Enough of one that I can talk to him and see if he’ll give Michael an internship.”
“Oh my God, could you? That would mean the world to him.”
“Of course, I can’t promise it’ll pay very well. Or at all.”
“It doesn’t matter. It’s a foot in the door.”
“OK, good. I’ll get on to Jake first thing in the morning. Which brings us to Susie.”
Kathy’s smile faded.
“I’m going to be frank with you now, Kathy, even though you might not like what I’m going to say. I don’t think you can afford to have Susie and her girls in your house anymore. It’s costing you too much, and I don’t just mean financially. It’s too much stress. Michael’s fine, you’ve said so yourself. And so the question we’re faced with is what to do with Susie.”
“That’s always been the question.”
The flatness of Kathy’s tone as she said this surprised Bruce. “Well, then, we just have to find the answer.”
“And what if there isn’t an answer?”
“There’s always an answer. For instance, we could find her an apartment.”
“But I told you, no one will rent to her.”
“Or see if she can get public housing.”
“There’s a waiting list.”
“OK then, what if I find her an apartment and put the lease in my name?”
“No. It won’t work. She’ll wreck the place. She’ll be on the phone to you every five minutes. She’ll find killer mold and complain to the landlord and the landlord will complain to you.”
“At least she won’t be under your feet.”
“Of course she will. And under yours too. Don’t you get that?”
“Get what?” He stood up from the chair and sat next to Kathy on the bed. “The way I see it, Kathy, the real problem is that you’re not used to people wanting to help you. And that’s all I want to do. With Susie, I mean. I want to save you from Susie.”
“Don’t talk about my daughter like that.”
“I’m not saying anything you haven’t said yourself.”
“That’s different. I’m her mother. I’m her mother, and she’s part of me, and I won’t have anyone talking about her like that.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”
“That’s my point. You don’t mean.” Kathy was pressing her fingers to her temples. “OK, look, let’s start again. Let’s reboot. Bruce, much as I appreciate all you’re offering, I can’t accept it. I wish I could, but I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’ll owe you too much. I don’t want to owe anyone that much ever.”
“But you won’t. It’s a gift. I’m not asking you to pay it back. I’m not asking for anything from you.”
“Oh, but you are. You’re asking for the satisfaction of seeing everything that’s wrong made right. Only it won’t be. It’ll still be wrong, Susie will still be wrong. She’ll just be wrong somewhere else—”
“Exactly.”
“—but she’ll still be my daughter. You’re lucky. You’ve got money—enough money to rescue, and to choose who you rescue—and you want the satisfaction of exercising that power. And yet there’s another side to it. There’s my admitting, my having to admit, that if I’d led a better, more orderly life, I wouldn’t be in this position, and very possibly neither would Susie.”
“You need to stop thinking about the past. That’s the point of all this. To give you a fresh start.”
“A fresh start … I hate that expression.”
“Why?”
“Because what good is a fresh start if you’re already this close to the end? And I might be. I mean, I could be dead in six months. Or a year. Or six years. I have no idea how to move forward from this, no idea what to do, how to plan.”
“You don’t have to do anything … OK, look, you’re right about rebooting. Let’s go back to the start. Let’s go back to my giving you the check. That’s all. The check. Forget the rest. Will you accept the check?”
Suddenly she turned and kissed him. He was startled, and she could tell. He could tell she could tell. The tiniest gesture of resistance on his part—that was all it took before she pulled away. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Oh, God—what was I thinking? Excuse me.”
She stood and went into the bathroom. She left the door slightly ajar. From where Bruce sat, he could hear water running, the taps of the tub switched on full blast.
He got up from the bed and stepped closer to the door. “Kathy,” he said.
“Please go,” she said.
“No,” he said. “Not until I know you’re OK.”
“I’m fine. I’ll see you tomorrow. We’ll talk tomorrow.”
“Kathy, please.”
This time she didn’t answer. The water ran fiercely. Steam billowed through the crack in the door.
The noise he heard—it might have been weeping, or it might have been the water running, or the release of steam.
What should he do now? Force his way in? That’s what Alec would have done. Were Alec in his shoes, Bruce felt sure, he’d have considered the half-open door’s implications, done a quick risk-benefit analysis, and then gone in or not. Probably gone in. Yet even if the door was an invitation, he knew he couldn’t bring himself to accept it casually. He could only accept it gravely—or not at all.
It was then that he realized that the obvious next step—the step that everyone, possibly even Kathy herself, seemed to assume he would take—was one he could not bring himself to take.
Was this ungallant of him? Was it ungallant to be willing to console a suffering woman with money but not love? As a boy, whenever he’d had a crush on a girl, he would indulge in a fantasy of coming upon her, weeping, in a wood. Moved by her sorrow, he would take her in his arms and hold her until the embrace verged into a kiss—as if arousal were the inevitable outcome of comfort, or weeping a tactic in a game of seduction. Yet what if weeping was, rather, exactly what it seemed—an expression of brute misery? In that case, to take advantage of the situation would be caddish. Even if Kathy had left the door ajar on purpose, only a cad, someone like Alec, would actually go through it.
He saw now that he had a choice. He could sleep with her or he could give her money. He couldn’t do both, since to do both would be to turn a loss into a gain, and in this case, that would be beneath him.
It was not a difficult choice to make. He would do what would help her most.
With great care, as if handling something fragile, he took the things he’d bought at Duane Reade out of their bags and arranged them on the bed. Atop them he laid the check. Then he left the room, stopping to hang the DO NOT DISTURB sign.
It was only when he got to the elevator that he realized he still had the key card. It was in the side pocket of his jacket. As quietly as he could, he retraced the steps to Kathy’s room and slipped it under her door.