Chapter Fifty-two

Rick and I had both sworn to Keller that I could get Rick up, but when I went in to him, he was asleep again. The dog, who had made such a fuss about Keller’s leaving, was sitting there in his usual place beside the bed, and there was something in his posture—his attention—that chilled me. I put a hand on Rick’s forehead. His eyes opened and he smiled at me, then waved me away. “Just let me sleep at little more. I’ll call you when I’m ready to get up.” I knew that getting up was a process for him, and for anyone helping him it was strenuous and a struggle against indignity for both parties. I’d done it alone for so long before Keller’s arrival. Now, having had help for these past few months, I dreaded it, so I was just as happy to let him stay there.

I sat in the kitchen and drank a second cup of coffee. Keller’s breakfast plate was still on the table, a film of egg yolk clashing with the white. He had been so torn about this funeral. I really didn’t know why he told me about it; he could have just kept it to himself and not gone if it was that difficult a thing to do, but he’d told me that he’d received word his uncle—great-uncle—had died and he should do the proper thing and go up to Hawke’s Cove to the funeral. He wanted me to ask him not to. He gave me every opportunity. “I don’t have to go, Francesca. I really wasn’t close to him.”

“Keller, he was your family. It will look odd if you don’t go.”

“To whom?”

I smiled at the grammar. Keller was excelling in his English class. “To the lady who wrote to you. Miss Jacobs? The one who gave you the book, right?”

“So you’re saying I have to take a day off so that I don’t disappoint Miss Jacobs?”

“Or yourself. He might not have been easy, but…” There it was, my tendency to speak before thinking, and I stopped myself.

“He took me in. Ergo, I should be grateful?”

“I suppose.” Standing over him, I poured him a little more coffee. He smelled of his shaving soap, of the castile shampoo that he used. His hair wasn’t slicked back yet and I noticed a little whorl at the crown, like a little kid’s. I resisted the urge to comb down the unruly cowlick with my fingers.

I’d seen the letter. Keller had shown it to me the night before, handing it to me at the top of the landing before we headed into our rooms. It made me a little sad, wistful in an odd way. The schoolmarm and the fisherman. Was there a romantic story of unrequited love in between the lines?

I set the percolator back on the stove. “We’ll be fine. Go pay your respects.” After all, what else could I have said? Don’t leave me alone with my husband?

So he’d gone, and here I was, sitting at my kitchen table, wishing he hadn’t. I had lost a buffer I hadn’t known he’d been providing. A buffer between me and the hard reminders of my husband’s condition. When Rick hadn’t called me before noon, I went in to wake him up, thinking that he simply shouldn’t be sleeping all this time. Pax was still frozen in that alert pose. When I went in, he turned his head and looked at me, and if a dog could ask for help, this one was.

Rick was burning up. I ran water into a bowl and placed the wet, cold cloth on his head. This woke him up, and he stared at me as if he didn’t know me. I stripped off his blanket and examined his catheter, then called the doctor.

We had been so careful, but in those days, we had only those clumsy rubber gloves that required boiling. There was no hope we could simulate sterile conditions in a made-over den. I can’t remember the doctor’s name. Isn’t that odd? He must have visited us forty times, and to this day, I can’t recall anything except the fact that he always smelled like clove. Like maybe he was chewing it to mask the odors his profession subjected him to. At any rate, this doc, whatever his name was, shook his head when he came out of the room. “I’ll call the ambulance.”

It wasn’t the first time this had happened, so the sense of the bottom falling out from under me was only mild. I knew what to do, what to pack, how long it would take, and I projected myself ahead to the happy moment when Rick would suddenly be better, alert and sorry that he’d caused so much trouble. I wanted to get to that part right away. Keller had said to call Sid, but there was nothing Sid could do, and, besides, he was needed at home. Clarissa was a needy mother. Besides, I didn’t want Sid. I wanted Keller. I needed him to tell me it was going to be all right, that things were under control.

Pax seemed to know exactly what was going on. He didn’t get in the way; he didn’t whine. He watched from out of the way, sitting on the staircase as the ambulance crew came in with the stretcher. Maybe he’d seen this before, on the battlefield, the medics transporting the wounded to ambulances. I knew that Keller had been wounded. Had this dog witnessed him being lifted away?

I buttoned my coat and searched for my gloves. All that time, the dog sat still, patient and calm. All of a sudden, I realized that I was, too. That things were under control. I stroked his head from black nose to ears and kissed him. “Such a good boy.”