soul, I couldn’t help drifting, occasionally, going back to Hyde Park, dancing, swirling around and around with my Aunt Kate. Every Friday night the oddest assortment of people gathered in Ida Noyes Hall and executed dances from the world over. The leader pulled out meticulously catalogued records from pink metal boxes and carefully guided the needle to the chosen band. That was our church, our communion. My Aunt Kate tried in vain to teach me to forgive the men in their thirties still fighting acne, who stepped on my feet and were always popping up to ask for the next dance. Most of them had spent far too long in a lab, feeding, I thought, out of their Petri dishes instead of eating a decent meal now andagain. Aunt Kate used to answer my complaints about so and so’s bad breath by saying, “Yes, my dear, it’s dreadful, like an old goat—but be kind, be merciful.”
“Have you been praying?” I asked Howard, as we were adjusting the pillows on the hospital sofa. We were preparing to rest in the lounge again, for the second night. I wouldn’t go home, couldn’t bear the thought of Nellie’s inquisition, couldn’t stand the idea of waiting in the midst of everyday life. It was one thing to wait stubbornly, to hold out in the rarefied atmosphere of the hospital lounge, a place where, like purgatory, we accounted for our sins and hoped for mercy. I needed to devote myself to the waiting; I had no interest in trying to pass the time with mindless chores and food and people. Howard had only just returned from the farm. It was past ten o’clock and everyone else had pulled up stakes and gone to sleep in their own beds.
“Have I been saying what?” he said, trying a position flat on his back, finding it unsatisfactory, and turning over. He twisted his mouth to one side and felt his bristly cheek. “What if Lizzy doesn’t get better?”
“What?” I said.
“What I mean,” he whispered, “is what if nothing happens?”
I had told Emma and Claire over the telephone that I was staying at the hospital to help Lizzy get well. Howard was looking at me without flinching and I could see plainly in his eyes, Dan and Theresa moving the tubes and machines home, Lizzy forever suspended between life and death. She would lie in the living room; the girls would think of her as someone on the order of Snow White when they visited. She would grow and they would roll her from side to side every day, so that she would wear evenly. She would be ugly and ungainly as a preteen and beautiful again at sixteen. She would menstruate and never be bothered. Years would pass and the family might gather in the living room without even thinking about Lizzy’s presence, taking the sleeping child for granted. Every now and then they might think she had heard; on Christmas Day Dan would say grace in the dining room and he would mention how much they loved Lizzy, and out of the corner of her eye Theresa would see the girl move her head and look at them, and then turn back to sleep.
I clutched Howard’s forearm as if he too had seen. “I’ll visit her every day,” I brayed. “I’ll stay with her while Theresa goes to the grocery store, the library, the therapist, I swear I’ll—” Theresa and I, at seventy-five, our husbands long dead, would sit and wait by the side of the gray-haired woman who had never woken.
Time went on, unbroken by usual mealtimes and sunsets and ablutions. It was Howard who finally wondered if all the novenas and Hail Marys weren’t serving to usher Lizzy into the next world. I shook my head and told him, No. It could not be true that there was nothing behind her eyelids. The doctor had put her through a series of tests to evaluate brain activity in relation to eye responses. At the first, apparently, she did not have even the most primitive reflexes. Lizzy’s pupils did not react to light. She didn’t sneeze when her nostrils were tickled, up inside, with a Kleenex. It could not be true that she was like
“Have you been praying?” I asked Howard, as we were adjusting the pillows on the hospital sofa. We were preparing to rest in the lounge again, for the second night. I wouldn’t go home, couldn’t bear the thought of Nellie’s inquisition, couldn’t stand the idea of waiting in the midst of everyday life. It was one thing to wait stubbornly, to hold out in the rarefied atmosphere of the hospital lounge, a place where, like purgatory, we accounted for our sins and hoped for mercy. I needed to devote myself to the waiting; I had no interest in trying to pass the time with mindless chores and food and people. Howard had only just returned from the farm. It was past ten o’clock and everyone else had pulled up stakes and gone to sleep in their own beds.
“Have I been saying what?” he said, trying a position flat on his back, finding it unsatisfactory, and turning over. He twisted his mouth to one side and felt his bristly cheek. “What if Lizzy doesn’t get better?”
“What?” I said.
“What I mean,” he whispered, “is what if nothing happens?”
I had told Emma and Claire over the telephone that I was staying at the hospital to help Lizzy get well. Howard was looking at me without flinching and I could see plainly in his eyes, Dan and Theresa moving the tubes and machines home, Lizzy forever suspended between life and death. She would lie in the living room; the girls would think of her as someone on the order of Snow White when they visited. She would grow and they would roll her from side to side every day, so that she would wear evenly. She would be ugly and ungainly as a preteen and beautiful again at sixteen. She would menstruate and never be bothered. Years would pass and the family might gather in the living room without even thinking about Lizzy’s presence, taking the sleeping child for granted. Every now and then they might think she had heard; on Christmas Day Dan would say grace in the dining room and he would mention how much they loved Lizzy, and out of the corner of her eye Theresa would see the girl move her head and look at them, and then turn back to sleep.
I clutched Howard’s forearm as if he too had seen. “I’ll visit her every day,” I brayed. “I’ll stay with her while Theresa goes to the grocery store, the library, the therapist, I swear I’ll—” Theresa and I, at seventy-five, our husbands long dead, would sit and wait by the side of the gray-haired woman who had never woken.
Time went on, unbroken by usual mealtimes and sunsets and ablutions. It was Howard who finally wondered if all the novenas and Hail Marys weren’t serving to usher Lizzy into the next world. I shook my head and told him, No. It could not be true that there was nothing behind her eyelids. The doctor had put her through a series of tests to evaluate brain activity in relation to eye responses. At the first, apparently, she did not have even the most primitive reflexes. Lizzy’s pupils did not react to light. She didn’t sneeze when her nostrils were tickled, up inside, with a Kleenex. It could not be true that she was like
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