Read Online A Widow's Story by Joyce Carol Oates - Free Book Online
Authors: Joyce Carol Oates
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of Detroit, a Jesuit-run institution at Six Mile Road, about a mile from our Sherbourne Road house. I loved my classes at U.D. and I was very friendly with most of my (mostly male) colleagues but within a year I would leave to teach, with Ray, at the University of Windsor where we remained from 1968 to 1978 in a single-storey brick house on the Detroit River across from Belle Isle . . .
Hospital vigils inspire us to such nostalgia. Hospital vigils take place in slow-time during which the mind floats free, a frail balloon drifting into the sky as into infinity.
In the late afternoon of Sunday, February 17, 2008—as dusk comes on, and deepens to night—it’s decided between us that I will go home early today, and return early in the morning. How exhausted I am suddenly!—though this has been Ray’s best day in the hospital so far, and we are feeling—almost—exhilarated.
Discharged to the rehab clinic on Tuesday?—a few days in rehab and then—home. By next Friday? Next weekend?
I kiss my husband good night. My very nice husband with his smooth-shaven jaws. It is not an extraordinary leave-taking for it feels so very temporary—I will be returning to this room so soon.
“Good night! I love you.”
Chapter 14
The Call
February 18 , 2008. The call comes at 12:38 A.M.
Waking me from sleep—a phone ringing at the wrong time.
There had long been the dread, when my parents were alive, and elderly, and their health crises escalating, of the phone ringing late— at the wrong time.
We all know this dread. There is no escape from this dread.
For finally I’d been able to sleep—in our bed, and with the light out—we’d been feeling so hopeful when I left the hospital in the early evening—the first time since Monday, I was able to shut my eyes, to sleep— and now this feels like punishment—my punishment for being complacent, unguarded—for leaving the hospital early—stunned and dry-mouthed I stumble from bed, into the next room—which is Ray’s darkened study—where the phone is ringing. And when I lift the receiver—“Hello? Hello?”—the caller has hung up.
A wrong number? Desperately I want to think so.
Almost immediately the phone rings again. When I pick it up it’s to hear the words, if not the voice—the voice is a stranger’s voice, male, urgent-sounding—that I have been dreading since the nightmare-vigil began—informing me that “your husband”—“Raymond Smith”—is in “critical condition”—his blood pressure has “plummeted”—his heartbeat has “accelerated”—the voice is asking if I want “extraordinary measures” in the event that my husband’s heart stops—I am crying, “Yes! I’ve told you! I’ve said yes! Save him! Do anything you can!”
The voice instructs me to come quickly to the hospital.
I ask, “Is he still alive? Is my husband still alive?”
“Yes. Your husband is still alive.”
And now I am driving into Princeton in the dark of night—along Elm Ridge Road—onto Carter Road, and left onto Rosedale—Rosedale, which will lead straight into the Borough of Princeton several miles away—these country roads so well traveled by day are deserted by night—there are no streetlights—no oncoming headlights—the roads are dark, snow-edged—I am thinking This can’t be happening. This is not real— this, the very summons I’d been dreading, I’d wished to think with a child’s faith in magical thinking that if I’d dreaded the call, if I’d imagined the very words of the call, surely then the call could not come—that would not be impossible!—though I am desperate to get into Princeton and to the hospital, I force myself to drive at no more than the speed limit—as I’d been careful to drive slowly and with as much concentration as I could summon, during this past week—for it would be ironic, it would be disastrous if I have an accident at such a time—when Ray is waiting for me—through a roaring in my ears the
Hospital vigils inspire us to such nostalgia. Hospital vigils take place in slow-time during which the mind floats free, a frail balloon drifting into the sky as into infinity.
In the late afternoon of Sunday, February 17, 2008—as dusk comes on, and deepens to night—it’s decided between us that I will go home early today, and return early in the morning. How exhausted I am suddenly!—though this has been Ray’s best day in the hospital so far, and we are feeling—almost—exhilarated.
Discharged to the rehab clinic on Tuesday?—a few days in rehab and then—home. By next Friday? Next weekend?
I kiss my husband good night. My very nice husband with his smooth-shaven jaws. It is not an extraordinary leave-taking for it feels so very temporary—I will be returning to this room so soon.
“Good night! I love you.”
Chapter 14
The Call
February 18 , 2008. The call comes at 12:38 A.M.
Waking me from sleep—a phone ringing at the wrong time.
There had long been the dread, when my parents were alive, and elderly, and their health crises escalating, of the phone ringing late— at the wrong time.
We all know this dread. There is no escape from this dread.
For finally I’d been able to sleep—in our bed, and with the light out—we’d been feeling so hopeful when I left the hospital in the early evening—the first time since Monday, I was able to shut my eyes, to sleep— and now this feels like punishment—my punishment for being complacent, unguarded—for leaving the hospital early—stunned and dry-mouthed I stumble from bed, into the next room—which is Ray’s darkened study—where the phone is ringing. And when I lift the receiver—“Hello? Hello?”—the caller has hung up.
A wrong number? Desperately I want to think so.
Almost immediately the phone rings again. When I pick it up it’s to hear the words, if not the voice—the voice is a stranger’s voice, male, urgent-sounding—that I have been dreading since the nightmare-vigil began—informing me that “your husband”—“Raymond Smith”—is in “critical condition”—his blood pressure has “plummeted”—his heartbeat has “accelerated”—the voice is asking if I want “extraordinary measures” in the event that my husband’s heart stops—I am crying, “Yes! I’ve told you! I’ve said yes! Save him! Do anything you can!”
The voice instructs me to come quickly to the hospital.
I ask, “Is he still alive? Is my husband still alive?”
“Yes. Your husband is still alive.”
And now I am driving into Princeton in the dark of night—along Elm Ridge Road—onto Carter Road, and left onto Rosedale—Rosedale, which will lead straight into the Borough of Princeton several miles away—these country roads so well traveled by day are deserted by night—there are no streetlights—no oncoming headlights—the roads are dark, snow-edged—I am thinking This can’t be happening. This is not real— this, the very summons I’d been dreading, I’d wished to think with a child’s faith in magical thinking that if I’d dreaded the call, if I’d imagined the very words of the call, surely then the call could not come—that would not be impossible!—though I am desperate to get into Princeton and to the hospital, I force myself to drive at no more than the speed limit—as I’d been careful to drive slowly and with as much concentration as I could summon, during this past week—for it would be ironic, it would be disastrous if I have an accident at such a time—when Ray is waiting for me—through a roaring in my ears the
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