Love Invents Us - Amy Bloom [60]
“If I go now, I’ll come back in the morning. We can have breakfast together.”
“Fine.”
“I’ll bring you the Times. Love you, Mr. Stone.”
“I know you do. Love you, Miss Taube.”
It was terrible to be sent home by Max, although Elizabeth had no wish to spend more time in the hospital. Max looked sick but not frighteningly so. But he’d rather be alone than be with her, and although she didn’t like to think about it, she’d rather be with Max than be alone, and that was why she was back in Great Neck in the first place.
The charge nurse called at four a.m., and Elizabeth went back to the hospital. A young nurse stopped her in the hall before she got to Max. They wanted her to sign a dozen forms, including permission to perform an autopsy and to make use of his organs. She began to sign, and another nurse, the one who called the apartment—her Queens accent identified her—said, “You’re the daughter, right?”
“Not legally, no.”
“Awright. Is there a legal daughter? A legal anybody?”
“He has a wife, I mean, I don’t know if they’re divorced. And he has three—two sons. They’re grown. One of them lives here. One of them’s in France.”
“So then, really, Miss Taube”—the nurse had been skimming the notes while Elizabeth stumbled over who she was not—“really, we need to call the wife. If they’re divorced, we can call the son, or whoever. It’s nothing against you, it’s a next-of-kin thing.”
And so it was. Greta came down with Danny, and in the early morning, in the tiny green waiting room, where they’d been sent like squabbling children to sort out their differences, Greta hugged her silently. Danny, for whose weekly father-son dinner Elizabeth vacated the apartment every Wednesday night, said, “Call me Dan,” and stared at the floor. Elizabeth assumed he was thinking, He ruined his life for you? She smoothed down her bangs.
“I’m glad he didn’t die alone. Oh, dearie, we both thank you,” Greta said. Dan grunted.
“What do you want me to do?” Elizabeth asked. She preferred not to have to move her stuff to a motel at five a.m., but the request would not surprise her, would not even strike her as unfair.
“Perhaps you can put his things in order, in the apartment. Marc is flying in tomorrow. He’s doing very well in Lyons now. Max must have told you. Well, Danny or I will call you about the, about the …” Greta waved her hands.
“All right. I’m so sorry. If I had realized you were still married, I would have told them to call you first.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, dearie.”
The nurse came for Greta, who made the smallest wave, a tilt of one open hand, as if they had never embraced, as if they’d barely traded names and hospital facts in front of the coffee machine and had not much cared for each other’s tone or outfit. Elizabeth put her hand over her mouth and walked slowly to the parking lot. The big list in her head was who she cannot call. She cannot call her mother, who will not be sorry anyway, she cannot call Huddie, she can call Rachel in London, but it hardly seems worth it to track her down through the maze of the London Hospital for Children, reaching out for Rachel over the bald heads of little cancer patients to tell her that someone she felt littered the planet was now dead. The easy list was clothing, books, records, kitchen stuff, furniture, plants, stereo system. She was determined to do a spectacular clean-up job.
Elizabeth parked in front of Nassau Produce, waiting for Huddie. He saw her sleeping in the front seat and was glad to see her, because this particular face, this being, with the long boy legs and the mole on her right shoulder blade, is his lifeblood. It’s not a source of pleasure right at this moment, that is just how it is. He’s fed up with her bad judgment, first the meeting in the apartment, causing him six kinds of grief since yesterday afternoon, and now, lying here in front of his store, not giving a damn that June might have dropped him off or that he might have brought Larry in for a croissant or that his early morning people, the walkers who came in for coffee and the widows who began