Read Online After the Stroke by May Sarton - Free Book Online Page B

without a word here. The word would have been simply nausea, day after day, seven or eight hours of it, lying around waiting for the operation to be scheduled at Massachusetts General. They promise this will be done today. I can hardly wait as the possibility of feeling well again hovers in the air. Meanwhile it was a tremendous fillip to see Royce Roth and Frances Whitney, settled in at Dockside for their yearly holiday—my second dinner “out” in seven months. It was great fun and the good talk as always. I have been starved for that.
    Now at last Lucy called and the Massachusetts General operation is scheduled for August third (my mother’s birthday)—the seventeen days to wait feeling so ill really did come as a shock two hours ago. Now I have thought it over, I see that I must take it as a challenge, to use these days for some really life-enhancing things. It is a great help that Frances and Royce will be here the whole time. Maggie Vaughan will come Friday and bring our supper.

Thursday, July 17
    Now all these days I am close to rage instead of tears, the two sides of depression, but rage may be healthier.
    I feel sad that Pierrot is such a selfish, greedy cat—beautiful, of course, but a little affection would go a long way. Last night when I was pretty desperate and also exhausted by all the calls I had had to make, he never even came upstairs. He is heavy for me to carry up and sometimes he does come.
    I am reading Peter Taylor’s stories. He is compared to Chekhov on the jacket; in a way it is the same meager and comfortless, in a spiritual sense, life that is depicted, but C. is shot through with compassion. I think also about a lot of things that never get into this journal. Why? Because of the letters, a vast chaotic heap. Why? Because I do not have the psychic energy to write with any pith. And that is why I feel I have lost control of my life, look forward to nothing , live the days through like a zombi, and long for sleep, oblivion.

Saturday, July 19
    Friends, true friends, are life savers. Maggie Vaughan came yesterday, looking lovely and summery in a dress with a lily of the valley pattern—and as always laden with dear homemade things: a dozen fresh eggs, three small veal meat loaves, spinach from the garden, heavy cream from her Jersey cow, eggs in aspic for my lunches, raspberries for dessert and a whole set of plastic envelopes full of thin delicious cookies. I had felt rather sick all day, but just seeing Maggie’s bright eyes and all those loving provisions revived me.
    For once it was a gentle July evening with a little breeze to keep the mosquitoes away, and we sat out on the terrace and had ginger ale and cookies with Tamas, of course, eager for all the cookies he could wheedle, and Pierrot emerging from and disappearing into the bushes like a genie.
    It is such a soothing open-ended way to talk, to be outdoors, yet sheltered, with the great ocean out there and an occasional yawl floating by. So Maggie and I caught up with ourselves. She is working with Hospice in Augusta and has been taking a course to that end.
    After a while we went in to have a Scotch and look at the news—and have our wonderful supper. What Maggie had in mind was to recreate the pain de veau I mention in a chapter of I Knew A Phoenix , the pain de veau my father remembered—and Maggie’s creation was absolutely delicious and must have been an exact replica, in my view perhaps even better.
    Today it is foggy and rainy and I felt so tired I got up late, but Maggie sat on the end of my bed with her coffee and we talked in a homey way.

Sunday, July 20
    I guess the fast heartbeat inevitably makes me feel tired all the time—so everything is an effort in the morning—again cold and gray—there seemed little motivation to get up at all. What pulled me up finally at nearly seven—I had let Tamas out at five-thirty—was knowing that Pierrot must be waiting outside,