David had avoided taking the Valium prescribed by his primary physician. He toted the pills with him wherever he went because Annette insisted, but he had yet to break the seal on the bottle. Sometimes, when he failed to mask his anxiety, Annette would urge him to take a pill and he’d lie and say he’d done so. He’d heard too many stories of patients getting hooked on narcotics over the years. What would often start as a valid prescription for back pain written for the most responsible patient could turn into a life-threatening heroin addiction. When he reluctantly gave new mothers Percocet after a cesarean, he would urge them to take it only if absolutely necessary and to flush any remaining pills down the toilet or dispose of them safely. For regular deliveries, he would prescribe narcotics only if the patient had a level-three laceration or higher. That was how strongly David felt about avoiding opioids, painkillers, narcotics, and the like. But after tonight’s fiasco, he went straight to his cabin, secreted himself in the bathroom, and went for a single ten-milligram Valium.
He tightened his grip around the white cap and prepared his strength to break the initial seal. His hands weren’t what they used to be, when he could wield scalpels and needles like Edward Scissorhands, and he hated thinking about the amount of concentration and effort it took to do a simple task. But when he went to loosen the top, it slid off easily. He wondered if one of the crew had pilfered his stash. These pills, relatively cheap in America, often went for more than five dollars a pop in impoverished countries.
“You okay in there?” Annette called out. “Stomach feeling all right?” She was so nervous around him it was making David crazy. Her intentions were pure, but her hovering made his skin feel like a layer he was desperate to shed.
For decades they’d been equals, true partners. Annette respected the work he did and he knew she was an indispensable part of running the practice. But now . . . he was like a child in her eyes. She managed his diet, his vitals, his emotions, and even his damn bowel movements. Some of the medications in his regimen were known to constipate; others could make his stool loose. As such, he had to give a report to Annette every time he went to the bathroom, calling out, “hard one” . . . “watery” . . . “sizable.” They were light-years from that hormonal newlywed stage, and they were well past that chunk of middle age where they were reliably intimate once a week, but this was truly a new low. He was one step above Annette coming in to change his diaper.
“David, did you hear me? I just want to know how you’re feeling.”
Annette. He looked back down at the Valium bottle in his hand with the broken seal. That was who must have helped herself to a few pills. He counted out the little white tablets, neatly arranging them in rows of five. Two were missing from a thirty-day supply. That wasn’t terrible. For the first time, instead of focusing on how much Annette’s angst was bugging him, he took a one-hundred-eighty-degree turn and considered his wife’s emotional state in a vacuum—without the attendant reverberations back to him. He softened considerably, regretting all the times he’d all but barked, “I’m fine,” after she’d inquired. He was the one who was sick, so it had somewhat irritated him the extent to which Annette was looking and acting like she was in more pain than he was. It occurred to him, in a sudden epiphany manifested in rows of white pills, that she could be more afraid to be left alone than he was of dying.
“I feel good,” he said now, gently. “Just getting ready for bed.”
He held a pill in his hand and thought briefly before putting it under his tongue. There was no shame in seeking a little relaxation. If nothing else, it would help him get to sleep. There was so much to discuss after the night’s fiasco that it was daunting to find a place to begin. How to prioritize the drama, the shocks, the revelations. He imagined Annette felt the same way.
Should they tackle Elise’s bankruptcy first and her baloney story about starting an app? Or should they address their granddaughter’s criminal record and secret boyfriend? Or, perhaps most painfully, should they start with how their estranged son had managed to build a vast business and hadn’t told them a thing about it? Last, but not least, there was the fact that for the first time in history, their family had resorted to physical violence. He lifted his tongue and placed the pill underneath, feeling the graininess as it dissolved with his saliva. It was so much smoother and less effortful than the grass he’d smoked in college a few times. With that came a lingering smell, a burning in the lungs, so much paraphernalia needed. He knew enough, from watching a multipart series on CNN, that dope wasn’t just rolled into paper or smoked from a pen cap anymore. There were candies, vapes, pot balls that looked like breakfast cereal. He remembered watching in fear, thinking how easily a kid could go off to school high from ingesting Cocoa Puffs look-alikes. He was, in reality, rather curious to ask Freddy about his affairs.
David stepped out of the bathroom and found Annette in her dressing robe, an unopened novel on her lap. So they were going to improvise the motions of a regular evening.
“David, I know we have a lot to talk about, but I don’t think tonight is the night. I would rather you get a good night’s sleep. I’m wired, but I’ll just read.” She lifted the book in the air. He noticed it was upside down.
“I’m fine, Annette. And I don’t want you stewing over everything alone either. I have cancer, not dementia. I can process these things and discuss them with you. I want to.” He pictured the broken seal of the Valium bottle. “I care about how you’re feeling.”
Annette put her book to the side and said, “Did you know that I once heard Freddy call me a fucking bitch and after that I just could never look at him the same?”
David nodded. “You said something about him calling you a name when you were helping him pack up his dorm.”
“It hurt so much because here was this kid—this problem kid—for whom we did everything. You slaved at work, on call at night, on weekends. I drove Freddy to school every day because he could never make the bus on time. Then all those textbooks and homework assignments he’d forget and I’d be driving all over town while he tried to remember if he left it at the diner, the mall, or a friend’s house. The Spanish tutoring and the math flash cards and all that effort. And then how I begged the dean to let him stay, embarrassing myself, groveling. And then what did I hear? That my son, who I did everything for, thinks I’m a fucking bitch. I’d say it was a knife to my heart, but it really felt more like a sword to my brain. Because more than feeling hurt in the emotional sense, I was so utterly confused that he couldn’t see how much I loved him and all that I did for him. And looking back on that day, I’m still sad, but I’ve come to see that the parent-child give-and-take isn’t like the Secret Santa we used to do at your office, where everyone gets a present and a certain dollar amount is agreed upon. It’s more a straight-up Santa Claus situation, where this one guy works his tail off to deliver bags of presents in the snow and, if he’s lucky, he gets a plate of cookies. And that, as bad as it sounds, is just the natural order of things. Freddy never had children so he hasn’t gotten to see it firsthand, which is a shame because I think he would have more empathy for us, but Elise sure does now. She has her chance to know what it’s like to do so much for people and get so little in return. But it’s only so little in a transactional sense. Because what we get from our children and grandchildren—the tingly feeling when they hug us, the symphony of their high-pitched squeals, the gratification of their successes—it’s worth a thousand times what we give. And besides, we put them on this earth to make us happy. They didn’t choose it.”
David sat down next to Annette and put an arm around her shoulders. They’d spoken often of their children, especially when the kids were younger and living at home, but rarely on such a meta level. He and Annette had agonized over Freddy’s future and whether Elise was happy with the path she’d chosen. They had talked about the groups of friends their children surrounded themselves with and whether Mitch was the right guy for Elise. They had largely followed Spock and hoped for the best. But they’d never done the airplane view before, discussing why they had become parents or what kind of parents they wanted to be. It wasn’t done in their generation, these navel-gazing, soul-searching types of talks, the kind he was sure Mitch and Elise had, maybe in front of some nonsense feelings doctor.
It was David’s natural instinct to play devil’s advocate, but he honestly agreed with everything Annette said and he told her so.
“What should we do about Elise? I was thinking we could take out a mortgage on the house,” he said. It had been such a point of pride the day he and Annette finally paid off their mortgage. Never did it occur to him that he might take a step backward. But it went without saying, he thought, that they would help see her through this. They were parents of parents, which only multiplied their responsibility.
“Yes. That’s an option,” Annette said. “I will call Jeff Simpson at the bank when we get back home and see what he says.”
“Where are we tomorrow again? St. Croix?” David asked. “Maybe you can do it from there.”
“St. Kitts, I think. Or maybe St. Thomas. All these islands look the same, don’t they? Beach, conch fritters, a place to get hair braided. Oh, and some water sport we’re too old for.”
“Sightseeing wasn’t the point of the trip,” David said. “I was actually thinking of trying the kayaking tomorrow. Would you want to do it with me?”
“You sure you’re up to it?” Annette asked.
“Totally. And I think it’s good tomorrow’s not a day at sea. We could all use some time in the fresh air to clear our heads. Hard to believe the trip is almost over.”
“I know. It went fast. Or maybe slow. I’m not even sure. Needless to say it was not our typical week. I can’t believe how much time had passed since we were all together. And clearly the intermittent phone calls weren’t cutting it. I think on my last call with Elise we discussed gel manicures versus regular manicures. Oh, gosh, I think I told her definitely to do the gel even though it costs three times as much. Little did I know she was headed to debtor’s prison.”
“You couldn’t have known, Annette. The blame isn’t ours. Should we have maybe tried to keep more tabs on the kids? Perhaps. But they are grown-ups and it’s a fine line. They knew, even Freddy, that our door was always open.”
“I hope so,” Annette said, but she didn’t look convinced. David wanted to continue to reassure his wife, but his eyes were getting so incredibly heavy, like little paperweights had been attached to his lids. He stood up to get into his pajamas and felt a soreness in his back that was getting difficult to ignore. He tried to move smoothly, but Annette was on to him.
“You’re in pain,” she said and for once he didn’t argue, just nodded.
“I’ll feel better in the morning,” he said, which was more of an aspiration than a statement. Within minutes of his head hitting the pillow, David fell into a dreamless sleep and was utterly confused when the sound of the ship’s bugle roused him some hours later.
“What time is it?” he asked Annette, who was punching numbers into the calculator on her iPad, which was glowing in the dark. He didn’t even know she knew how to use that machine. It had been a gift from the women she played mah-jongg with for her seventieth and she’d complained about it the minute she came home with it. Steve Jobs became a billionaire because of this thing?
“Shush, there’s an important announcement,” Annette said, waving him off.
David heard the cruise director’s voice through the intercom.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I repeat, this is your cruise director speaking. I regret that I have some bad news about our planned visit to St. Lucia today.”
“I thought it was St. Croix,” David whispered to Annette.
“We need to hear this, David,” Annette said, putting a finger to her lips.
“Unfortunately, we received word overnight from the CDC that there has been an outbreak of a mosquito-borne virus on the island of St. Lucia. Common symptoms of Fermentalisminutia include extreme diarrhea, rash, and fever. More extreme cases can lead to lack of sexual function, infertility, and, I am not making this up, excessive body hair growth, particularly in the nasal area. So, as I’m sure you can understand, our boat will not be making its scheduled stop in St. Lucia. If you all wanted extreme diarrhea, you would have booked yourselves on one of our competitors’ cruise lines. Kidding, of course. Don’t tell them I said that! I’m sure you’re disappointed with this development, but rest assured my staff has worked through the night to create an itinerary of special and never-before-done activities that will leave you happy about the outbreak of Fermenta-whatever-it’s-called. New schedules were slipped under your doors early this morning. Any questions, feel free to reach out to my staff or you can find me at the Festive pool participating in the belly flop contest at eleven hundred hours. Signing off for now. Thank you for your understanding.”
“This boat is a circus,” David said. He had no tolerance for things like belly flop competitions. For decades, he delivered two or three babies a day. A year ago he was guest lecturing at Stony Brook Medical School. Now he was an out-of-work doctor, constantly surrounded by other doctors telling him what to do, and the highlight of his day was going to be watching a belly flop competition.
“Let me grab the schedule from the door,” Annette said. She had her hair already set in rollers and the overnight mask she applied once a week had dried to a flaky crust. Incredible that with all the hullabaloo the previous night, Annette hadn’t deviated from her routine. His wife was committed to growing old gracefully, that was for certain. He knew Elise found her mother silly with all the self-care and antiaging strategies, treating her body like a laboratory. Annette and Elise could no more relate over their varying commitment to beautification and preservation than he could relate to Mitch, leaving a perfectly respectable and decently paying job to follow his dream of creating a humor magazine that wouldn’t even exist in print.
“What were you doing on your iPad, by the way?” David asked.
“I was just running some numbers. We need to figure out how we’re going to lend Elise and Mitch the money and still be able to cover all of your medications.”
“Annette, it’s your birthday. I understand you’re anxious, but trust me, our problems will still be there when we get home. Try to enjoy today. It’s the last full day.” He took the schedule from her hands. “Look. There’s something called ‘How Well Do You Know Your Family?’ this afternoon. Let’s round up everyone and do it.”
“You’re serious?” Annette asked him as she started the laborious task of unfastening her rollers.
“Maybe,” he said. “First let’s eat breakfast. We’ll see who we run into at the buffet. You’ll be ready to go soon, birthday girl?”
“I’m hardly a girl,” Annette said.
“To me you are,” he said and reached out his hand.