III.

We’ve Come to This

AT THE AGE OF SEVENTY-NINE, ALBERT IS DYING.

A month ago he was diagnosed with cancer, and after much consultation with his doctors, he has chosen to refuse treatment. This is, he thinks, the right thing to do, the only choice. What he has is extensive cancer of the bowel, and treatment would require chemotherapy, and surgery, and a colostomy bag. As a result of these efforts his life might be extended, but—everyone takes pains to be clear about this—it will most assuredly not be saved.

His oncologist talks to him slowly, with a lot of eye contact, using phrases like quality of life, and tough decisions. But, to Albert, the decisions aren’t tough at all. A man his age, he knows, is going to get caught by something. No one can guarantee he’ll even survive the surgery, and chemo, they say, is hard on the heart and liver; the treatments are as likely to do him in as the cancer. He’d suffer horribly for what—a year? A year and a half? His wife, Elise, would be forced to watch. Albert knows that if he were a younger man, more forces might be marshaling in his defense, but he is not young. They can call it cancer, but this is what they mean by dying of old age.

So Albert—a man so healthy and hale it’s been joked about all his life—can see his own end. He’s a goner, and soon—a month, they say, maybe two. He’ll be given medication for pain, and, if the pain is severe enough, he’ll be given an epidural, like pregnant women have.

I won’t lie to you, the oncologist says to him, when Albert tells him of his decision. There’s no easy way to talk about these things, but I feel you should know what’s ahead of you.

And here the oncologist looks at both Albert and Elise—Elise who sits straight and grips Albert’s arthritic knee with enough strength to make him grimace.

The oncologist says, This is a bad way to go, Albert. It gets, progressively, worse and worse. We might be able to keep ahead of the pain, if you work with us, but the methods we use will affect your ability to think and reason, and to act on your own behalf. These are serious narcotics we’re talking about. If you take anything out of this meeting today, make it this: See the people you want to see, and soon. Say your goodbyes now, while you can. Don’t put off signing documents that need to be signed. The decline is faster than you’ll think it can be. I’m sorry—but that needs to be said, and you need to accept it as quickly as you can.

Albert’s already on codeine—there’s a live animal in his belly, most days—but the oncologist, before Albert and Elise leave, hands him a prescription for oral morphine. This will get you started, he says. The oncologist looks at Albert, his eyebrows raised, and says, in a low voice, Follow the instructions on the bottle. You don’t want to mess around with this stuff. Understand?

At first Albert thinks the man is being condescending, but as he drives home—Elise can’t; she’s weeping, almost wailing—he understands what the doctor has really told him.

During the next two days, when he sits in the study with his papers and his records, doing as the doctor instructed, he keeps the bottle of morphine pills nearby. Sometimes he reclines in his easy chair and turns the bottle around in his hands. There’s not much to go over, not much to weigh, but all the same he gives the possibilities a knock or two in his head, and then decides.

He has never kept a secret from Elise in his life, and cannot do it now.

I have had a choice to make, he says, standing in the doorway to the kitchen. And I have to tell you what I’ve chosen. I need you to be strong about it.

Elise, making him potato soup, stops stirring. The phone rings, and they say nothing until the machine picks up. The damn thing rings off the hook these days, since they put the word out. While it rings they stare at each other, and by the time they’re done Albert can see that she knows what he’s going to tell her. Her eyes widen, and her mouth opens a little, and then she covers it with her hand.

He says, I want to have a few people over. A dinner party. This weekend, I guess. The old boys, and Mark and Danielle.

Al, she says, please don’t.

After the party, if I can, I’d like to make love to you. We may not have much longer to try.

She’s shaking her head, and the wooden spoon rattles slightly against the rim of the pot.

He says, After that, I’m going to do it. In the meantime, we’ll get the will in order.

She says, whispering, I can’t let you.

I have to be able to say my goodbyes, he says. I want you to think about what it means, if I just let this goddamn thing take me. Think about what you’ll have to do. The way you’ll have to see me, and to take care of me—

I will do anything, she says. You know I will.

I know it, he tells her. Oh yes I do. But, Elise. There’s no way—he licks his lips, which are dry now, almost always—I know there’s no way to keep you from seeing me dead. But I love you, and I don’t want you to see me dying. I want to say the things to you that ought to be said. I don’t want to go like your father did. Do you want me to have to do that?

She winces, and this hurts Albert to see, but he had to say it. He knows she’s been thinking of her father all along, just as he has.

And Elise has been thinking of her father. She thought of him as Albert complained of his stomachaches, and one day, when he came home from his daily walk around the park, clutching at his gut, she saw for the first time how pale he was, his skin nearly translucent. She urged him, calmly, to go to the doctor, but she knew full well what the doctor would find. She’d only seen that color once before.

Her father had died of prostate cancer. Near the end, drowning in morphine, he’d somehow, in his head, gone back to Parris Island, and even though she sat with him every day at his bedside, he didn’t recognize her at all. He called her awful names, spat and hissed, and sullenly said Yessir and Nosir when she asked him if he wanted more juice. Albert was with her. He saw everything.

No—almost everything. She’d shooed Albert from her father’s room when she had to tend to his diaper, and to his bedsore. The bedsore, as wide and deep as her fist, which every day she cleaned and packed and swabbed and dressed—while her father lay on his stomach and howled in pain, cursing her and telling her to hurry, hurry—all the while holding her throat against the slipperiness of the dressings and the heavy soaked packing cotton she pulled from the wound, and the sight that made her clamp her jaws together and pray for strength: the spot at the bottom of the sore, like a blind eye half-closed, that was the white knob of her father’s tailbone.

And Al, her Albert, still handsome, still there—standing with a hand on the door frame—is telling her what must be said. His eyes are very blue, and lately his eyebrows have gone white and tufted, and this makes him look even merrier than he did when he was younger. His shirt is neatly tucked in, and the buttons are lined up with his belt buckle. Why these things? Why does she think of these things? She knows: because they will soon be gone. These things she loves about her husband will vanish, one by one. Without warning. His mind, sharp and funny and chiding, will dull, become childlike. She will transform from wife to mother to nurse. She has never heard her Albert scream, but that is coming. They can talk about pain control all they like, the doctors, but this is cancer, this is an enemy she knows.

I’ve thought of Dad, she tells him. Of course I have.

I have thought about all of this, Albert tells her. And of the things that are precious to me—He breaks off, and pinches his lips together with his hand. But he composes himself.

I have always loved to talk with you, he says. I don’t want to say anything to you I do not mean.

She nods.

I won’t ask you to help me, he says. But I’ll want you to be there. If you can’t I’ll understand, but . . . but Elise, if I have to die—he shakes his head—let me die with your arms around me. If you love me you can do this.

She manages, barely, to turn the heat off beneath the soup. She goes to her husband, and, for the ten thousandth time—the hundred thousandth?—she pledges to him, as fervently as she can, clutching at his shoulders and his arms (they’re thinner now; she can feel it) her love.

 

THEY HOLD the dinner party that weekend. Elise cooks a roast and red potatoes: Albert’s favorite. Their children come (but not the grandchildren), and two of Albert’s old friends, fellow engineers, and their wives. The engineers have brought cigars and a preposterously expensive bottle of scotch, and seem to have agreed amongst themselves to be cheerful. The children sit, tight-mouthed and pale, shocked at their father’s happy mood. He and Elise have agreed that they must not know what he has planned. But his friends don’t have to be told; they are old men as well, and believe, as Albert does, in dignity, and even if they can’t guess exactly what he aims to do, they will have guessed that this party will be the last time they’ll ever see him. Albert stands with them out on the back deck after dinner, all of them holding tumblers of the good scotch, and the lit cigars, and after a lull in their talk, Albert tells them, Gentlemen, it has been my pleasure. I hope you know how I think of you.

The two men, misty-eyed, dutch at his shoulders.

Please look in on Elise, Albert says. I know your wives will—but you, too. Make sure nothing needs fixing; she’s no good with tools. But you must—please don’t let her be alone. She hates to be alone. This will be more difficult for her than she’s letting on.

How could it be easy? one of his friends says, husky-voiced.

That woman’s been a fool for you for fifty years, the other says. Since the very first.

Albert sighs and takes a drink. This will hurt his stomach, but not unbearably; he has loved his friends too much not to drink their scotch now.

The first friend starts to chuckle, and behind it is the same nervous shake with which they’ve all been speaking.

What is it? Albert asks.

I was about to tell you how lucky you are, the man says.

They laugh, and it is as Albert had hoped. Laughter! He’s a dead man, but on this night, with these men, he drinks in eagerly one of the last laughs he’ll ever have, savors it as the rare and fine thing it is, and above it the rareness and fineness of them all.

 

LATER THAT NIGHT, he and Elise lie together in their wide, soft bed. He aches; the ache is everywhere now, not just in his belly, and he can start to feel pain in the bones of his hips and thighs. Even the simple act of sitting has become difficult. Soon, if he lets it happen, he will be unable to sit still, and he will have to call the hospital for stronger meds. It’s not bad now, but in a day, or two, he will surely have to pick up the phone.

Sometimes he tries to convince himself that the hospital and the doctors have made a horrible mistake, that he will, in the end, be well. He was tempted into thinking it again tonight, out on the deck with his friends. But in a moment of quiet and repose, like this one, he can feel the cancer inside of him with a still certainty, can almost trace its outlines under the soft loose skin of his belly. On other nights he has felt fear, but tonight, Elise warm and soft next to him, lovemaking done—they could not finish, but he managed, heart racing, to fit himself inside her, for a while, and thank God, thank God for that—he feels no fear.

He spends a moment alone, in his head, where he makes a brief statement, informing the Lord of his plans. When he says a prayer afterward, it is for Elise.

My love, he says, it’s time.

She takes a breath.

I knew you’d say it now, she says.

She kisses his forehead and sits up, and looks at him. Her face is bleary, her hair a silvery mist.

Please, she says. Wait a day.

He touches her face. No, he says. It should be now. I have everything I wanted. It won’t get any better.

He tries to stand, swinging his knees off the edge of the bed, but when he sits up the pain in his belly catches fire, and he moans.

Settle back, she says. I’ll get you a pill.

They’re here, he says. On the nightstand.

She takes the bottle, quickly, and walks into the bathroom. She fills a glass with water from the tap and shakes out a morphine tablet into her palm. She returns to the bedroom. Albert switches on the bedside lamp.

Here, she says. Take this.

Not yet, he says. I’ll take them all at the same time. I can bear it. Honey? Could I trouble you for milk?

She sucks in a breath. Albert has always loved milk—when he sets down an empty glass at the table his eyes are as satisfied as a sleepy cat’s. She walks down the hallway to the kitchen and pours him a tall glass. She’ll never see his eyes look like that again. Her father’s were glassy—turned up, slightly, to show the whites. In a few minutes Albert’s will look that way, too.

She returns to the bedroom. He takes a sip, and sighs, and says, May I have the pills, love?

The bottle is in the pocket of her robe. She takes it out and holds it.

Albert, please, she says. Another day. Give me one more day.

He stares at her, his mouth tight.

Elise, I can’t. No.

Please.

We both know this is better.

I can’t—I can’t watch you do this.

You’d prefer the alternative?

She shakes her head. She knows there’s nothing she can argue. Of course she doesn’t want to see him lessened, suffering. But this? This? She holds in her hands the instrument of his death. She can’t be expected to . . . to just hand it to him, can she?

She kneels in front of the bed. Albert, she says.

He puts the glass of milk on the bedside table. He takes her hands, with the bottle of morphine enclosed between them.

He says, You can keep the lights off until . . . until it’s over. It won’t take long. Just hold on to me, and when it’s done, call Mark and tell him something’s wrong. He’ll be here in fifteen minutes. I have written a letter. It’s on the desk in the hallway, right now, with your name on it. Pretend you don’t know about it. No one will ever know you helped me.

Al, I can’t.

He tries to pry the bottle of pills from her hands, his broad fingers jimmying open her thin, cold ones. He tries to do this slowly, persuasively, while he talks. When she realizes what he’s doing, she doesn’t even think—she pulls quickly away. Her hands slip from his, and his elbow strikes the bedside table. The glass of milk wobbles and then falls. They both watch it fall. It strikes the dark hardwood floor and shatters. Glass and milk and froth slide coldly past Elise’s knees.

Damn it all! Albert says, sharply.

I’ll clean it, she says, rising.

Elise—the glass—

She steps away from the bed, still holding the bottle of pills, stepping over the milk. She puts on a pair of flat shoes from the closet. In the bathroom she takes a towel from the rack, and picks up the wastebasket. Then she returns and begins to clean up the mess, kneeling carefully again.

I’m sorry, she says thickly.

This is what I didn’t want, he tells her. His voice creaks a little. This is what I mean. See what it does to us?

And as she kneels, swabbing at milk and shards of glass, her knees aching, her throat aching, she thinks, It? It? All he’s done is ask her to help him . . . to help him kill himself. And when she can’t, when all she can do is tell him she cannot bear it, when all she can do is ask for one more day, one span of hours, for mercy, for another hour in the dark without having to worry about his next breath, or the one after it—this is what it does to us? Not once did he ask her what she thought of this. Not once did he give her a say in how things between them are to end. And this—this is all he can think to say?

She scrubs harder at the floor.

Albert’s stomach hurts. He leans back against the headboard and kneads his belly. He’s sorry he shouted. His poor wife sops up the spilled milk. He sees a shard of glass near her hand, and points to it, and he is ready to tell her about it when she sees it herself, and plucks it from the milk. The tenderness of the gesture, the delicacy of her hands, makes him want to pick her up. If only he could! To clutch her to him and explain. Can’t she understand? He knows his love for her. This—this end—is the only gift he has left to give her. He wants to tell her the sentences he’s prepared. He wants to tell her the last things he’ll ever say, for her, only for her. If she’d just look up at him.

He puts a hand on her shoulder.

How dare you, she thinks, biting her lip, scrubbing.

He repeats the words, carefully, in his head, waiting for her to raise her eyes:

Elise, I am a lucky man. I have never loved you more. You are my life.