8

I have been reflecting on the changes of life—its mutability and uncertainty.

James Lorin Chapin
Private Journal, Lincoln, 1849

Joe Bold sat in the waiting room of Emerson Hospital with Ed Bell and Homer and Mary Kelly, waiting for word from the doctor who had taken his wife in hand. Beyond the big windows of the waiting room, the white pines tossed their branches sorrowfully, as if they knew Joe’s trouble. Claire’s tragedy lay on the table with the magazines. It seeped out of the water fountain on the wall.

Down the corridor, the door to the examining room had stopped shuddering under the blows of Howie Sawyer’s fists. Howie must have been given a sedative. The reverberation of his shouting died away.

“What was he saying?” said Mary, puzzled. “Something about brass beds?”

“It sounded like brass beds,” said Homer, bewildered too.

“Howie buys furniture for a big chain of stores,” explained Ed Bell. “Brass beds, upholstered chairs, dining-room tables—that kind of thing.” Ed looked solemnly at the floor, suspecting that Howie Sawyer would no longer be ordering beds and chairs and tables, not ever again in his life.

Upstairs in Dr. Arthur Spinney’s office, Joan Sawyer answered questions about her husband. “Have you noticed anything different about him lately?” asked Dr. Spinney, looking at her mournfully. “Lapses of memory, anything like that?”

Joan’s eyes were dry. So was her throat. Her face felt dirty with haste and confusion. “Yes. Several times he’s seemed disoriented. And one morning he fell asleep in the middle of breakfast.”

“I expect it was a small stroke. He must have had another one, much more severe, this morning in church.”

“Do you think—” Joan clenched her fingers and tried again. It was a tremendous question, the only question, the only one that mattered. “Do you think he’ll come back to his senses?”

“I don’t know,” said Dr. Spinney gloomily. “At this point it looks an awful lot like multi-infarct dementia. I’m afraid—” Then Dr. Spinney shook his head and prevaricated. “It’s too soon to tell.” And he dismissed her with a sympathetic squeeze of the hand, too kind a squeeze, Joan knew, to accompany anything but the bitterest news.

Downstairs in the waiting room, Ed Bell, too, took Joan’s hand. Mary and Homer Kelly asked her about Howie, and Ed introduced her to Joseph Bold. Joan looked curiously at the new minister, feeling an unhappy sense of connection between them, as though they were rats caught in the same trap. But they were not the same kind of rat. It was apparent that Joseph Bold was stricken with fear about his wife’s illness. He wanted her well, he wanted her back—while Joan wanted her husband to die. Let Howie die, she had prayed to herself upstairs when Dr. Spinney had squeezed her hand. Let him die, let him die.

Appalled at herself, Joan shook hands with the minister and listened to his polite wishes for her husband’s recovery. Then she said goodbye and walked out of the hospital, reflecting that the Reverend Bold’s courteous words were merely professional good manners. Even so, they affected her powerfully. For a moment Joan Sawyer was swept far out to sea.