I’d wanted to pay for the abortion myself, but I never told her that the money I had was stolen. I’d paid in cash, without looking the doctor’s assistant—a black lady with other things to think about—in the eye.
Now Lisa’s insurance is paying her medical expenses; otherwise, we wouldn’t have any idea what to do. Nevertheless, I know her well, and I know she would never accept anything from me. “One has to earn death for herself,” she told me a few evenings ago.
But she lets me have my way when it comes to our Sunday dinners; they’ve become a ritual she likes a lot. These days we don’t go out anymore—she doesn’t feel up to it—and so we have food delivered, usually Chinese, which she can’t resist. I can. It’s a cuisine I’ve never appreciated, and now, as far as I’m concerned, that sweet-and-sour stuff has become the food of disease.
We eat in bed and watch reruns of The Honeymooners on television. Lisa laughs like a little girl and lets herself be transported to that black-and-white world where everything always ends well. Then she hugs me and looks out the window at the lights of New York. “It’s a fearless city,” she told me one night, “because it has welcomed people who were alone.”
I’ve always wondered if there’s any living person who isn’t, deep down inside, alone, starting with Lisa herself. But she’s not afraid, and in that too she’s different from me: For her, every problem represents a starting point, not a conclusion to worry yourself to death about. I’ve seen solitude in the largest, closest families. I’ve seen it in schools and working groups. I’ve seen it in protest marches, with everyone shouting together for a cause, and also in churches, in the eyes of the faithful who come to look for hope. I’ve seen it among people both rich and homeless, among artists and office workers, and I see it every morning when I look in the mirror and ask Almighty God not to abandon me, my God, I implore you not to abandon me, because you alone have saved me and continue to save me.
And maybe Lisa doesn’t represent a moment of sin but of salvation: There are things we can’t understand, and yet you’ve given us the freedom to choose, to determine who we are. And I made a promise, I prostrated myself before you, my Father.
I don’t touch her anymore, I can’t, and I don’t know if she’d want me to anyway. And I don’t know how much she misses our lovemaking. Her face is swollen, and her eyes have become small. But the light hasn’t left them, and her voice is as bright as ever, rejecting pain and fatigue. Every time I show up, she puts on her Maureen O’Hara wig; she doesn’t like to be seen bald. And she doesn’t want me to notice what an effort it costs her to do the most normal things, like getting out of bed and going to the bathroom. She tries to move in a natural way, but she suffers terribly: The doctor explained to me that the disease was grinding her bones into talcum powder, to use his expression.
One Sunday I got a substitute to say the evening mass and went to Lisa’s early. Let them think what they want, back there in the church. She was vomiting when I came in, and she looked at me angrily; that moment of pain and revulsion was one of her privileges.
She didn’t say anything; she didn’t have the strength. She got back in bed and started reading a book of Emily Dickinson’s poems. She leaned her head on my shoulder, and before long she was asleep.
That I did always love,
I bring thee proof:
That till I loved
I did not love enough.
That I shall love alway,
I offer thee
That love is life,
And life hath immortality.
This, dost thou doubt, sweet?
Then have I
Nothing to show
But Calvary.
She was sure I’d read it too, I know her well.