Love Invents Us - Amy Bloom [49]
Max’s hands lay folded on his chest. “Je ne regrette, je ne regrette, non, je ne regrette rien,” he sang out hoarsely in cartoon French.
“Peter, this is Elizabeth. I need some sick leave or vacation, whatever. Time off.”
“All right. Why?”
“My father’s very sick. I think he’s dying.”
“Jesus. Your father? I’m sorry. Are you going to stay with him until … I mean, for a few weeks?”
“I don’t know. I have to take care of him. I have to nurse him.”
“Of course. You know, my mother died of cancer five years ago. Do what you have to do. I can hold the job for at least three months.”
“Fine. Okay. I’ll call you soon. Thanks.” I should have gone out with you. I should be buying animal-shaped mugs and a butcher-block kitchen table, and I should be going in some other direction. I am not old enough for rubber sheets and bedsores and that smell which is as recognizable as reveille.
The backseat was layered with jeans and cotton underpants and all of Spivey’s healthy-heart cookbooks and a shopping bag spilling new shampoo, new soap, two kinds of mouthwash and a sponge still in its natural loofah shape. Elizabeth had shopped like she was sending herself to camp. Camp Max, the special endless summer for wayward girls. She would be with him, in some small airless place, until he died or recovered or she killed him. She had a full tank of gas, she had her coffee, her candy, and enough cash. The radio was on and the windows were cracked open.
“Play ‘Woolly Bully,’ ” said the tired Jersey voice. A housewife/mother voice, a three glasses of canned juice, three bowls of leftover Cheerios floating in thin, sweet milk by 7:25 a.m. voice. Screaming at the kids to remember their books, remember their notes, remember not to let the cat out. Kisses to remind them that she screams only because she loves them, wants them to succeed, wants them to be somebody. And then there is nobody home until three. A no-power, no-money voice.
“Okay,” said the flat smirky deejay. “And do you have a woolly bully, ma’am?” Like he’s behind her in the supermarket, laughing at her fat ass and curlers and the bent-in backs of her loafers.
“Oh yeah, honey. I did used to have one … but I divorced him.”
She’d fooled them both, and the deejay laughed with Elizabeth, in the pleasure of acknowledging grace and steel where they hadn’t seen it. Maybe he, like Elizabeth, imagined the caller as a mother, imagined the watery orange juice coming with the kind of mothering you never stop trying to get, or get away from.
“Lady, you can call me anytime.”
“Likewise,” the woman said. “So, put on my man, Sam the Sham,” she said.
Elizabeth sang along. She began a list with her right hand.
In his hospital room, newspapers beginning to pile up by the bed, roses wilting on rubbery stems, Max made his offer.
“If you come stay with me for a little, you might get to watch me die. Or kill me at your leisure. Could you stick around?”
Elizabeth wheeled him to the car, sliding him into the backseat. Two orderlies stood by as if to help, but Elizabeth managed to bang Max’s head against the car door and they didn’t move.
“I want you to live, Max.” She buckled his seat belt.
“Oh, sweetheart,” he said, “I always try to give you what you want.”
“No. You gave me what you wanted me to have. I’m not arguing with you. I want you to live.”
“I don’t think so, baby.”
Elizabeth put her face an inch from Max’s ear and spoke very softly and clearly.
“You better fucking live. If you don’t make up your mind to live, I’m going to camp in your goddamned room and make sure you get intravenous nourishment and no painkiller. Okay? You better fucking live.”
Oh, Do Not Let the World Depart
“Elizabeth, if you could get Max out of the place for a few hours, I could fix it up a bit.”
“Mother, he hates to go out. Why can’t you do what you’re going to do while he’s here?”
“I’m sorry, old thing. I simply can’t.”
Elizabeth understood that it wasn’t a problem of logistics. Margaret could not make beauty