Fiction by Christine Dykstra
My children will not understand; they will see this as the gesture of an old man, bent by grief. They will frown when they see me, dressed in a suit and what they’d call cowboy boots, or perhaps smile if they realize how little these things matter in the end. But they will not understand, and my wife, the one who does, will not know. Her dark eyes will probably be closed when I arrive, shutting off the little of her that is left to me.
When Isabel was first diagnosed with breast cancer three years ago, I was hopeful. Cancer seemed to carry less of the certainty of death than it had decades ago. She had surgery first and then radiation and chemo, and after several months, these seemed to be working, enough to pretend, foolishly, that this day might never come. And indeed, that chemo that nearly broke her at first may have been what gave her over two more years, I don’t know. But it wasn’t enough to stop the cancer from returning and spreading, from eventually eating away at her, month by month. When she collapsed last Saturday and I brought her to the hospital, they pumped her full of who knows what and ran some tests, and I heard the doctor talk about “active dying.” To me, she seems as inactive as I’ve ever seen her.
Now, when the doctors speak, they lose my attention quickly. I know the end will come and that it will come soon, so most of it doesn’t matter. Addie always remembers to ask about pain, about how we can reduce or eliminate it. I guess that’s all that matters now. So what do I care about medicine and research that still can’t save her? That’s all just talk now, words for the curious.
Last night was the first I’ve spent at home since Isabel was admitted. I hadn’t planned to go; leaving her at this point seemed ludicrous. But after it grew dark, Addie and Tom convinced me to go home for a few hours, to sleep in an actual bed.
“No, I can’t leave her,” I told them at first.
Addie tried soft words. “Dad, you’ve been here for how many days? You need real sleep. We don’t know how long she’ll continue like this. But I promise to call you if there’s any change, any change at all. Just let me stay with her overnight, and you can come back first thing in the morning.”
I balked at her suggestion, which set Tom off, I guess. “Dad, you’re old. Eighty-five-year-olds aren’t meant to sleep on a lousy rollaway. We don’t need you sick, too. Let us handle it,” he said, along with other nonsense that irritated me. He’s always been blunt with his words and a little awkward socially. During his teenage years, his interactions with friends and girls especially were hard to watch. It wasn’t until he began work as a chemist, met his wife, and started a family that Isabel stopped spending hours worrying over him.
Since as far back as I can remember, Tom’s never liked reprimands, but that didn’t stop me. “She’s my wife, Tom. Quit being an idiot.”
We started arguing, and Addie tried to quiet us. Tom, sputtering and red-faced, continued telling me everything I didn’t need to know. Addie shushed him and told him to step out in the hall.
Instead, I did, while Tom kept mumbling more foolishness from his chair in the corner. Addie followed me out, put her arm around mine, and squeezed it.
“Dad, it’s your choice, of course,” she said. “We’re just worried about you, that’s all. This takes a toll on everyone.”
I looked at her and noticed dark circles under her eyes and wrinkles around her mouth. I wondered how long she’d had them, and I thought about how tired she must be, watching over all the things she couldn’t fix. So I went home, making her promise to call if there was any change.
This morning, I shower and dress, and then I move downstairs for breakfast. I crack two eggs in a pan and hit a button on the Keurig, wanting neither but knowing I should. Then, I head to the hospital and hit the beginning of rush hour traffic on the Kennedy. This irritates me, but I guess I should know better after all these years. I think about the sympathetic nods I’ll get from hospital staff when I arrive, one more sign of what’s coming, I know, just like her impending move to hospice. Tom is handling that part with the powers that be, spending hours on the phone mapping out the details. Despite his awkward ways, he is protective of family, and even as a child he was good at running interference. Once, when a couple of no-good neighborhood boys began picking on Addie at the park, Tom, barely in kindergarten and years younger than Addie and the bullies, climbed a nearby tree and began pelting the boys with crab apples. His arm and his aim were good enough to make them turn tail and run, and the story became family legend.
In the hospital hallway, an attendant gives me a smile of recognition as I pass. Someone has opened the blinds, and the room is bright with light. Isabel is alone, but Addie’s left her phone behind so Isabel can listen to music. I recognize the song immediately. It’s Bocelli, singing “Por Ti Volare.” Isabel had stumbled on it last month during a PBS special and had promptly ordered a CD version of it. In the days that followed, I’d play it on our stereo and leave the doors open while we sat on the deck, watching the sun drop between the cluster of oaks at the edge of our yard. I’m surprised Addie even knew about the song, let alone put it on her phone. I never heard Isabel listen to it with anyone else.
Isabel’s bed is adjusted a little higher than it was yesterday, I think. Her eyes are closed, and a towel is rolled behind her neck to hold her head in place. Her hair, its post-chemo regrowth white, spreads veil-like around her shoulders. Her skin seems to have paled some overnight, and her cheekbones are more pronounced. Tubes trail from various parts of her to the machines behind her. I bend down to kiss her, and her mouth is open the tiniest bit. I listen for the sound of her breathing, and if I concentrate, I can still see her chest rise and fall under those thick, white sheets.
When Addie was a baby, I’d come home from work and hear Isabel in the kitchen making dinner, with Addie strapped to her back. She’d be talking to her, going on and on about any number of things, and I wondered if she missed her job, or at least communing with adults during the day, and if that was why she spoke to a child for whom words had little meaning yet. She always acted like this was normal, however, so one day I asked her about it. I still remember what she said and how she turned away from the pot she’d been stirring to answer me.
“How do you know, with absolute certainty, what babies understand and don’t understand if they can’t verbalize it yet?” she asked.
I thought for a second. “I don’t know, I guess.”
“And for that matter, do you really trust yourself enough to believe you can perceive, always, all that’s there?” she continued.
I looked at her, a bit surprised, and told her I didn’t believe I could.
“Well, then,” she answered, and went back to stirring the pot on the stove.
After I brought Isabel here, I decided that I would talk to her as if she could understand me, just as she once had with Addie. Today, before I start, I glance around the room and notice the signs of my children. On the window ledge, they’ve left magazines and a paperback, a bag of pita bread with some hummus, a huge jar of trail mix, and individual juice containers. Two Styrofoam cups, the ones the hospital gives out to patients and their guests, are wedged behind an old tape player Addie’s husband dug up from somewhere so we could play old recordings of the kids’ music recitals. I don’t see Addie’s purse or anything of hers, actually, so I figure she’s gone down to the cafeteria for coffee or breakfast. I hope she has. Addie was the first to arrive after I brought Isabel here, and she’s been here almost constantly since, caring for Isabel, handling the doctors, managing her brother, and hovering always over me.
I begin telling Isabel about the drive here, about how just when it seems like Chicago traffic can’t get any worse, it does. I tell her about breakfast and about how over the last few days I’ve decided single-serve coffee makers were developed by marketing geniuses, designed to make customers willingly pay several times more for an “individualized” cup of coffee. I tell her I think I’ll keep using ours anyway because old age is making me soft.
I talk about the weather, how the cold front the last few days is finally starting to change the color of the leaves, something I’d probably never notice myself if I hadn’t been married to her for sixty years. I think she’d want to know, and I note to myself that maybe I should bring her a leaf from the backyard. She’d probably like that.
I tell her about this morning’s news, doing it the way I have for sixty years, using my best Cronkite impression that always makes her smile. Amy, my favorite of the nurses, the one who always calls Isabel by name, comes in midway through to change Isabel’s IV bag, and I decide I don’t care and keep going. Amy laughs as I continue, though I’m not sure if it’s because I’m genuinely funny or because it’s just amusing to see an animated eighty-five-year-old. I stop though, when Amy begins mouth care, and watch her lightly brush Isabel’s teeth, and then rub something that looks like Vaseline on her lips. Amy starts talking to Isabel while she works, telling her what she is doing and what she’ll do next. She pulls a small tube of lotion from her pocket and works some of the lotion into Isabel’s hands and then adjusts her arms so they’re now in different positions.
Amy finishes, smiles at me, brushes her hand over Isabel’s forehead, and says she’ll be back later to check on her. I look at my watch, and realize I’ve been talking to Isabel for an hour. It’s always like that with her; you can talk and talk and talk and hardly realize that time has passed. The kids will be coming soon, Addie any minute now. After last night’s words, Tom will delay a little.
This is what he always does when we disagree; in college, after an argument I don’t remember now, he left in a huff, not answering our calls for weeks before quietly resurfacing one afternoon at a family reunion. The hardest was a few years ago, after a
business deal of his went sour, one I’d loaned him money for even after warning him against it. For a year, our son was lost to us, until the morning he walked back through the garage and into our kitchen, silent but with full cash in hand, a fixed smile for Isabel and a head nod for me. I watched my wife remake her heart in that instant, her forgiveness absolute, her gaze and one hand on him while reaching for the iced tea she knew he loved with the other. And though it took me longer to forgive him for leaving us, he became our Tom again. This time, he will not have that kind of time to leave us again.
I want to show Isabel, to call her attention to my suit and my boots before I leave to stretch my legs for a while. I decide to do it now, before Addie returns, so I don’t have to contend with her reaction to a conversation she won’t understand. I don’t know if she knows how Isabel feels about my boots, and she’ll raise her eyebrows at my wearing them with a suit. Maybe Isabel will sense what I’m wearing, or maybe she’ll sense nothing, I don’t know. But I want to try to make her understand.
So I stand up and tell her I’m wearing her favorite suit, the gray one we picked out a few years ago during our trip to Boston, with the vest she decided she loved whether it was in style or not. She’s always loved a man in a suit. I lift her arm, the one nearest to me, and I run her hand against the fabric of my sleeve, so she can feel it. Her hand is limp, and though I stare at her closed eyes and keep talking to her, her face is expressionless.
She was always good at that, able to stay straight-faced in most any situation, if she wanted to. It drove me crazy sometimes, when we argued and I wanted her to react, to do something with her face that would be readable. Once, in an attempt to get a rise out of her, I slammed a door so hard it knocked our wedding picture off the wall. The glass broke, leaving a scratch on the top of the picture after we cleaned out the pieces. That made her cry, giving me the rise I wanted but not at that price or for that reason. It took a long time to learn her rhythm, to learn there were other ways to read her thoughts, to learn that even that expressionless look of hers was still expressing something.
I set her arm down and, leaning on her bed, I lift one foot. But I realize I’ll never get my leg that high, so I sit back down and take off one boot. This takes a minute because the boots are stiff and hard to slide out of. But I do it, and I stand up and hold the boot in front of her still-closed eyes.
For a time before the cancer, she’d gotten into photography, but it didn’t seem like it was in the same way most women did, filling their phones with pictures of kids and grandkids. She did take pictures of them and had several hanging in our house. But her photography seemed to be about smaller, everyday things, things I never noticed: a basket of apples on the back deck, a half-eaten piece of chocolate cake on our wedding china, skyward shots of the trees late in the day. A couple of her friends were into landscape and travel photography, but she never seemed especially interested in those either. Her pictures were more like one part of something much larger. One of her favorite subjects was my boots, the dark brown, western-style ones I’d worn for decades. She took pictures of them sitting muddy by the back door or on me when we’d head out to ride horses at our family’s farm. Her favorite picture was one she’d once taken during a walk in a forest preserve. She’d hung behind me for a while, her camera capturing the fallen leaves and my boots as they crunched through them during the prime of fall. She’d caught up to me after a time, and told me she’d always loved my boots. I’d asked her why, and she’d said they reminded her of the farm boy I’d been all those years ago, the boy now hidden beneath dress shirts and ties.
“I wore them for you,” I tell her now, “just like the suit.”
I know what I must look like here, standing in a suit, wearing one boot and holding another in front of my dying wife. Anyone walking by would think I was senile or broken by grief.
Isabel remains still, and I continue to stare at her and hold the boot before us. I take her hand again and rub it over the dark leather. With her index finger, I trace the stitching along the side, from top to bottom, letting her feel its texture. I set her hand back down and watch her. I look for movement in her eyelids but see none. I hold my breath so I can hear her soft breathing, that slight sound and the rise of her chest the only signs I can see that she’s still with me, still here on earth. I set the boot down and grab her hand. I lean over her and whisper things as they come to me, and then I fall silent and just watch her.
After a while, I think again about the kids coming, and decide I don’t feel like facing them, not right now. They will give my suit and my boots and each other knowing looks, I’m sure, and I guess I’m just not up to their not knowing. I sit down, work my foot back into my boot, and stand. Isabel is still motionless, her eyes closed, but it looks like her head is tilted slightly to her right now, toward me. The shift is nearly imperceptible, I know, and I tell myself I’m mistaken, an old coot imagining things. But I move closer to her, and sure enough, it is tilted, just slightly, in my direction. Her eyes, her face, her breathing, everything else is the same. But the angle is different.
I start talking again, in case she can hear, and at first, I don’t even know what to say, I’m so distracted by her turn. So I start talking about our honeymoon, going through each day recalling what I can, and then I move forward from there, talking about our first apartment, our first Christmas, our first house, our first child, her christening and her first steps and her laughter and then Tom’s, all of it filling our lives. I ramble on, and I’m amazed at what surfaces in my memories, at how one memory leads to another, ones I haven’t thought of in years. I keep talking and talking and talking, whispering some of the more private ones, not caring who hears the rest. I don’t know how long I talk this way, keeping my words going for the sake of her having something to hear.
Then I hear a voice outside the door. It’s Addie, probably speaking with the doctor, maybe outlining the plans for Isabel’s move. I wonder if Isabel’s tilt would change anything if I tell them. It might mean something. Maybe she’ll need testing, another day before hospice, I think, and then I stop and realize how this will sound and how the extra day here, much as I want it, would be for me, and not for her.
I think about her being poked and prodded, all to appease an old man. Her communion with me should not bring with it this, I decide.
I bend down and kiss her cheek, her soft, weathered skin against mine for a second. I thank her for the tilt, trying not to will her to do it again, knowing I wouldn’t be trustworthy if she did. I fiddle with Addie’s phone until I figure out how to replay the song for Isabel. Then, I step into the bathroom inside her room and turn on the faucet. I reach both hands into the cool water to splash my face and as I do, through the mirror I see sweats and a white undershirt thrown on top of the rollaway bed pushed against the bathroom wall. The sheets are falling out of one side of the bed, as if it has been hastily folded up. I turn and notice a lab coat wrapped over the bedrail, and it’s then that I realize who stayed with Isabel last night, who let Addie get the rest she needed, too. As I leave the room I tell Isabel that I’ll be back in a little while, and I walk away from where I think Addie and the doctor are standing.
“Dad, how is she?” Addie calls to my back, her voice all sympathy. “Any change?”
She asks this to be polite, I know, thinking she already knows the answer. I begin to reply, but decide I don’t want to lie and I don’t want to tell the truth, not just now.
I turn toward Addie but stop when I see she’s alone, holding her phone to her ear. She’s wearing a coat, and her face looks flushed with cold. I stare at her phone and think for a moment about the phone playing “Por Ti Volare” in Isabel’s room, the phone that I know now is not Addie’s. Then I smile.
Addie will think the smile is for her, I know, my answer to her question, so I turn back around and continue down the hall. And a few feet away, in a smaller waiting room to my right, sits Tom, still keeping a quiet vigil over Isabel, and in many ways, over us all.
Christine Dykstra works as a writer and editor with a special interest in writing shaped by a theological lens. Her work has appeared with Anselm Society, Foreshadow, and The Windhover.