50.
“Just us two,” Dory notes, more to herself.
“Another glass of wine? We’ll finish up the kitchen later,” Stu says.
“Why not?” She follows him into the den with fresh glasses, the couch there worn to comfort. He carries in a newly opened bottle of French white. He’s been doing that lately, buying expensive wine whose names she can’t pronounce. Does he fear the cheaper stuff might somehow worsen her state?
“What’s all this fancy wine about?”
“The best for the best.” Barefoot in sweats and T-shirt, he looks ready for bed.
“Don’t butter me, Stu. It makes me feel something’s wrong with me.”
“Something is wrong,” he says quietly.
“Well … yes … but treating me with kid gloves is insulting.”
“How?” He sounds almost curious.
“If you’d been diagnosed with something serious and suddenly I open doors for you, lay blankets across your lap, prop pillows behind you, how would that make you feel?”
“Like a prince.”
“Oh for shit’s sake, you know what I’m saying. It’s infantilizing. At work, visitors treat all old people like they’re demented.”
“I want to make things easy for you.”
She takes in his earnest expression. And for a moment looks past him into the darkness outside the window. “What does that even mean? You can’t alter the situation.”
He slips an arm around her shoulders. “You don’t know how to accept help, do you?”
It’s true. Self-sufficiency was her father’s credo. He would cite the grocery store sign: God helps those who help themselves. All others pay cash. Is it that her father didn’t trust anyone, or that he believed help wasn’t available? “If I could I would.”
He squeezes her shoulder, then tops off his wine glass. “Yes, you would, I know it,” he says somberly.
“The night you said ‘Dory, help me?’ I was awake. I heard you. I understood you meant you didn’t know what to do for me. I get that you love me. At times I get that better than you do.”
“Baby, you astonish me … you’re right, I love you. I can’t imagine life without you, that’s exactly what I wanted to tell you. Thing is, I can’t communicate that way. It’s too soapy and … I don’t know … it’s weird but when I do say stuff like that it leaves me feeling empty, like I’ve given something away.” He gazes at her. “So what happens now? Am I supposed to ignore the situation?”
“Just be yourself, the guy I love, inconsiderate soul that you are.” She takes him in the way she used to long ago, the eyes that tell no tales except she can read them; the face, a little thicker now but still handsome; the lines sharp, the generous lips. Her man.
“Yup, that makes it easy. Drink up,” he says.
“Your answer to everything.”
“It does help.”
“I hope Casey’s all right. I’ve been concerned about him. He’s too quiet for his age. Of course, still waters …”
“I’m quiet. What about my still waters?”
“You don’t have them.”
“Is that bad? What does it mean anyway?”
“Everything deep kept below the surface.”
“Oh, definitely, that’s me, Dory. What’s the matter with you?”
His words hit them both.
“Good, Stu, it’s what I want, just be your inconsiderate self. It really is helpful, I swear.”
He says nothing, but offers her his loopy smile.
“Stu, would you be happier now if we had had a child?”
“A strange question.”
“I know.”
“Would you?”
“Not at the moment. But during our first ten years together, the thought arrived quite often.”
“You didn’t talk much about it.”
“Neither did you,” she says.
“It just didn’t happen, so I accepted the fact.”
“We could’ve adopted.”
“Where are you going with this, Dory? I mean, talk about water under …”
“I have no idea. Lately, thoughts arrive in my head and insist on being spoken. I’m beginning to feel like a puppet through which someone other than me is talking. Okay, that sounds crazy and I’m not. Please remember that.”
“Dory, you are the least crazy person in the universe.”
She decides not to share her recent unbidden conversations with relative strangers, in which she reveals her illness without being asked and without caring about their responses. It seems to be a way to hear the diagnosis out loud, maybe to own it.
“Has this been happening at work, too?” he asks, unusually concerned. Another surprise. For months, he’s been indifferent. Now his fear is changing him, but he won’t say so and neither will she.
“Yes, there, too. Work …” she begins, sounding so wistful she finds it unnerving. “I’m not going to be able to be a caretaker much longer. Losing my balance, hearing, whatever, it puts my charges in jeopardy.” She makes a mental note. Must alert Mr. Todd about leaving. His mind is as sharp as a steak knife. He needs to be given details. “Maybe something good can come of it, though. I’m asking the board if Lena can take my place. I’ll teach her everything. I hope they’ll agree. You realize leaving the job will be the end of two salaries.”
“Dory, you are not to worry about money.”
“I’m not.” Some earthly things she’s already letting go of. “I’ll clean up the dinner stuff.”
“No, you go to bed. I’ll do it.”
“See you’re at it again.”
“So fuck me,” he says jovially.
“Maybe I will. I’ll be in bed,” she gives him her glass and passes her hand seductively across his lap.
Dory leaving work, that’s big. He wasn’t expecting it so soon. But he can sense her downward spiral. How carefully she steps out of her clothing, the new pill bottles in the bathroom. Her twists and turns in bed. Her fitfulness reaches into his sleep and wakes him. If Lena gets the job, she’ll be out of here shortly. That will be for the best. How could he have considered for even a second telling Dory about Lena and him? What was he thinking? He wasn’t. It was the wine and the guilt, plain and simple. Thank the gods, who have rarely been good to him, that he sobered up. Most nights, though, sober is the last thing he wants to be, because, sober, his thoughts are all about losing Dory. Whatever in him has shifted, and something has, it’s left him with a growing need for closeness, weird considering how recently that felt like suffocation. Even after they make love now he wants to stay inside her, suck her life into his. It’s ghoulish and scary.
He pours the rest of the wine into the glass. Well, he’s done something nice for her. He called a travel agency, and Jane or someone was eager to be of help. What the hell was her name, can’t remember now. What did he do with the brochures? Doesn’t matter. Jane or someone was ever so happy to plan ten days in Italy, starting with Rome. Only the dates remain open. At the plant the human resource assholes are making him wait for approval. They act like they’re doing him a favor, when he hasn’t taken vacation in more than two years. Not that anyone ever notified him of that.
He can hear the TV in the bedroom, the volume louder now than in the past, which he doesn’t believe Dory realizes. Whatever she’s watching, he’ll watch, too. Then again, he’s pretty sure they’re not going to be interested in what’s on.