LeVon was leaving us.
I knew the day would come, but I cried just the same. He was going to Rose Hill Rehabilitation and Care Center a half an hour north, the place Genevieve London had endowed before her death. LeVon would be director of patient services, and of course I couldn’t begrudge him the change. He said it was his dream job.
“We’ll stay friends,” he said over tea, kindly covering my hand with his. “And I can recommend some great caregivers and therapists.”
I nodded. “You’re irreplaceable, LeVon.” I had to wipe my eyes on a napkin.
“I think you’re pretty amazing yourself, Barb. A lot of people fall apart when something like this happens.”
“They must not be from Minnesota.” He laughed, those kind eyes and ready smile. I squeezed his hand. “If I’d ever had a son, I hope he would’ve been like you, LeVon.”
It was his turn to get teary. “That means a lot to me. I’ll be here till the end of the month, so don’t you worry. I’m not abandoning this ship.”
“Will he get better, LeVon? I know you’re not supposed to guess, but what do you think?”
He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Technically, you’re right. I can’t guess, and patients surprise us all the time. But I don’t think he’ll ever recover completely, no. Most of the patients I’ve seen with hemorrhagic stroke and traumatic brain injuries . . . at his age, no, I don’t think he’ll ever go back to being the guy you used to know.”
I nodded, my heart sinking even though I’d kinda known that already. “Well. Thank you.”
Sadie wasn’t coming today; she had to do something with that little pile of sticks she called a house, so I’d left work early. I had to e-mail Gillian about the town’s birthday (and apologize for that wretched dinner party) and call Juliet (who had been a bit tipsy, which wasn’t like her). I had a speech to write for the Small Town Coalition and a few e-mails to return. A phone call to Lucille Dworkin, who had been pestering Lindsey to see if we would arrest her neighbor for using his leaf blower before eight a.m. on a Saturday.
I looked in on John, who was asleep in his chair, and took the soft cashmere throw I’d splurged on last year, tucking it around him in case he was cold. Regulating his body temperature was one of his medical issues these days. His hair was sticking up on one side, and I smoothed it down. He didn’t stir. I hadn’t shaved him today, because it made him agitated, and he had a fuzz of white stubble on his face.
He looked so old.
A knock came on the door, and it was a relief to answer it.
Janet Hubb, who had crashed our dinner party and inspired John to say his first intelligible, post-stroke word, stood there, smiling.
“Hey, Barb,” she said. “On my way to see my brother, thought I’d pop by.”
“Hello, Janet. Come on in.”
I wasn’t sure why I liked Janet, but I did. She was the type of woman who didn’t care about postmenopausal facial hair—I had to force my eyes not to study her lip—and she only seemed to wear overalls and those awful gardening clogs. I liked her hair, her granny glasses, her bulky, hand-knit sweaters (although perhaps I’d knit her something with a little less hay in it, fewer dropped stitches).
“How you doing today, friend?” she asked, taking a seat at the kitchen table. “How’s our John?”
Our John. “He’s resting.”
“Yeah. So it’s none of my business, but I picked up some weird vibes last weekend, and I just wanted to check on you.”
“Ah. Yes.”
“How are you feeling? I mean, you’ve been through the wringer. Your kids, too. The drunk one? I thought she might stab me with her fork.”
“Oh, Juliet is lovely. She would never stab anyone with a fork. Or any instrument.” I sat down, too. “Tell me, Janet. You obviously like John for some reason.”
“Yeah. He’s cool.”
“Why would you say that?”
“I don’t know. He listens really well.”
“He has no choice, does he?”
She smiled. “Good point. I feel like he hears me, though.”
“I feel like he hears you, too. He always brightened up when you came into his room at Gaylord, and the fact that he spoke when he saw you . . . that was a real breakthrough.”
“Has he started talking more?”
“No.” Just those three yous when he saw Janet. Apparently, the women who inspired John were not in his family. I wondered what he’d do or say if Karen visited, but she wouldn’t, would she? Theirs was a love that was more than a love only when she thought he was wealthy. She wasn’t the type who would wipe drool from a man’s face.
As Janet had last weekend, after the hand kissing.
“This is a really pretty house, by the way,” Janet said.
“John cheated on me,” I said. “I only found out after his stroke.”
“Well . . . fuck.”
“Yes. My daughters don’t know.”
“So you’re all alone with this?”
“My best friend knows. Would you like some coffee? I baked cookies with my granddaughters yesterday, too.”
“I love cookies. Sure, I’ll take a coffee. Thanks, Barb.”
For the next hour, we talked. Janet told me about her brother and his progress. They only had each other, she said; their parents died when they were teenagers, and Janet had become Frank’s legal guardian at the age of eighteen to his twelve. They’d had no other relatives for most of their lives, and they were so close they lived on the same street before his accident.
I thought about my six siblings. Nancy had sent a card when I told her about John via e-mail, but otherwise, I hadn’t heard from anyone.
“Have you thought about putting John in Rose Hill?” Janet asked. “It’s fab. They have a saltwater pool, and the food is great.”
For a second, I imagined the freedom of having John in a facility. Those weeks when he was at Gaylord and I was alone in the house, and how . . . peaceful they had been. I was so tired these days.
Then I pictured myself in his situation, away from home, surrounded by strangers.
“I don’t know that he meets the criteria,” I said. Rose Hill was for the profoundly disabled, so far as I knew, and John could walk and do some of the tasks of daily living. “My girls and I can take care of him, anyway.”
“You’re good people, Barb.”
“Thank you. You too.”
“Okay if I visit with the old man?”
“Absolutely. He’s in the living room, sleeping in the recliner.”
She popped the last cookie in her mouth, waggled her impressive eyebrows and left the room.
It was strange, how many people had come to visit John. Caro’s Ted came fairly often, even though the men had never been particularly close outside of our couple nights. Noah brought his baby over at least once a week, and seeing John hold sweet little Marcus made me happy and brokenhearted and angry. If Sadie ever had a baby, would John know it was hers? Would it break Sadie’s heart, knowing her father could never be the type of grandfather who’d give piggyback rides and read stories? Not that he’d done that with Sloane or Brianna, mind you. Always with one foot out of the room, John.
Juliet and Oliver came, too, often bringing the girls. And Sadie was here every day. She was so devoted. Had it been me in that recliner, I wondered if she would’ve moved back.
Well. Apparently John had a way with people. Just not with me. Our window had closed long before his stroke, and maybe long before I decided to divorce him.
It takes two to make a good marriage, and only one to ruin it. But in the past several weeks, I’d been spending a lot of time awake at night, thinking about my role as a wife. I had stopped making John a priority a long time ago. When Juliet came into this world, she had outshone everything, and I resented his half attention to her, the way he didn’t seem to adore her as much as I did. He became superfluous to our life. If I hadn’t had Sadie, I wondered if we might have divorced years ago.
I had tried, yes. Those dance classes (ugh), the forced conversations, the date nights, all that. But maybe it had been too little, too late. Maybe John had been waiting for me all those years when I gave him my half attention, my irritation, the unpleasant but honest feeling that he was in the way. I wanted to love him, and I’d thought I might again . . . but the truth was, I’d cast him in the role of inept and irritating husband long ago.
Not that it excused his affair, not at all. I’d been ready to divorce him; he’d gone the cheap and easy way of cheating.
Sometimes, though, I’d remember the way his eyes lit up when I came into the room in our little red house in Cranston. I’d had that, and yet somewhere during the in-between spaces of our lives, I let it slip away. Infertility had eaten away at me, and I’d tried to drown my sorrow by becoming part of Stoningham, and then, when motherhood did come, we stopped being a real couple. Maybe we would’ve faded away no matter what, but I didn’t try real hard, either.
So maybe I owed John more than I wanted to admit. To love, honor and cherish . . . maybe I’d broken my vows, too.