Housebroken (32 page)

Birds were chirping outside in the tops of trees planted many years ago on the grounds of our hospital, with little bronze plaques bearing the names of the donors who had made the trees possible and the lawns, the benches, the entrance lobbies, the cafeteria, the elevators, the state-of-the-art operating rooms, the wards, the beds, the tables and chairs and the pajamas and the diagnoses and the windows, and the pen with which we tapped on the chart of Mr. Rosen, who wasn't interested in the view and whose eyes were fixed on the carpet.

We looked at the woman who now appeared ten years older than she had the first time, we watched her develop a new kind of loneliness that spread through her body with the lightning speed of a malignant tumor. A loneliness we can easily diagnose, for instance in the way she absentmindedly plays with the paper clip that fell from one of the patients' files on our desk: she picks it up and opens it and winds it around her finger and turns it back into a paper clip and puts it back where she found it, and suddenly she's embarrassed because she realizes that it's no longer usable, that she's twisted it out of shape, and all the time she's listening to us with that silent nodding of hers that we were no longer sure if we found touching or irritating.

And it seems to us that our patient wants to say something as well, and maybe behind our back he steals a glance outside and thinks: What a beautiful view, what a beautiful day, and wonders how many more days like this he will see. But Mr. and Mrs. Rosen were silent and all that could be heard in the room was the unnecessary chirping of the birds and a printer spitting out the results of other patients' tests.

“No one ever prepared me for such a thing,” the woman told us on a humid day in June, sobbing into a handful of tissues, when we told them that the tumor was malignant and inoperable. The patient stood up and looked straight at us—this was the first time we noticed the color of his eyes, a bitter green full of life—and said: “That's impossible,” and to her he said, “I'll meet you in the cafeteria,” and walked out of the room. And though it was unprofessional of us, we couldn't help thinking, when we heard his footsteps receding on the linoleum floor, that like the argument over the details, the anger, in Mr. Rosen's case, was a luxury, too.

Mrs. Rosen apologized for her husband and burst into tears again. Nobody had prepared her for such a thing, she said, to see him like this. Ill. Dying. Dead and leaving behind two small children. Ill yes, we said, but not dying yet, and certainly not dead, and as for the small children—we put out a hand to touch her fingers but withdrew it at the last minute—yes, this is very sad.

She already knows what's going to happen: she'll fuss around him when he vomits and moans and deteriorates faster than anyone can imagine but also slow enough to drive her out of her mind, and she doesn't deserve this. Her enemies don't deserve this. Nobody does. But who are her enemies? And will he be in pain? Yes, we say, but he's already in pain, she says, real pain. Yes, we say sympathetically, but it won't be the same kind.

And his pillow will be covered with hair that fell out, the black, frizzy, problematic hair he always hated and fought with every morning in front of the mirror. Stupid battles, they'll think, armed with the proportions imposed on them by the disease, which will only make things worse, because they will make them feel sad not only because of what's ahead but also for what's past, and who has the strength to deal with the past now, on top of everything else?

And their bed already smells of medicine, and the few days he has left, and the endless days in which she'll try to inspire him with false hope, when all she'll want to do is get out of the house for a while and sit alone in a café. And we want to say something encouraging to this woman, something that will save her from the terror of guessing and the loneliness, something along the lines of: Sometimes death is the easy part, but we keep silent and plan how to bring this ritual, which we need to cut short because we have no time to spare, to a dignified conclusion, how we'll get up from our swivel chair and walk over to our patient and lay our hand on his shoulder, which always tends to droop a little after receiving such news, and raise him to his feet and walk him to the door, behind which wait, anxious and submissive, patients who are paying us fees they cannot afford in hopes that we won't tell them what we've just told this nice couple, who are already disappearing into the elevator and who have eight floors in which to digest the news before they land in the parking lot.

But Mr. Rosen is now roaming the hospital corridors in search of the cafeteria and ruining our plans, and we look at the woman who is crying and flooding our office with something violent and physical that, like her husband's tumor, we don't know how to deal with, and blowing her nose and asking: “How long does he have?” And before we have a chance to remind ourselves that we must never become too involved in one person's sad story, the patient reappears in the doorway, holding a sandwich wrapped in cellophane.

2

He smiled at me. It was August 1979, a hot, disgusting day, I was wearing black jeans and a boring white tank top, I was sitting in the inner courtyard of the Café Milano practicing being a woman. I must have looked ridiculous with my elbows leaning on the table, drinking one espresso after the other, smoking Nelson cigarettes and writing poems with feigned feverishness, 'cause I thought then that inspiration was sexy, absorbed in myself and the paper napkins full of horny, rhymed reflections piled up under the glass I set on top to prevent them from flying away, not that they could have flown anywhere in the dead heat of eleven o'clock in the morning, but not too absorbed in myself and my serious, childish poems to notice that a sad-looking man was sitting next to the wall smiling at me.

Which encouraged me to go on writing and order another double espresso and emphasize to the waiter and for the benefit of the stranger, whom I hoped was listening, the words “without milk”—because the woman I planned to be was a dangerous and mysterious woman, with caffeine and nicotine and promise flowing in her veins—and to light another cigarette with the end of the old one, and to wipe away the perspiration from my upper lip from the heat, or as I believed then, from the heat of creation, because I thought that maybe I was finally being discovered by a talent scout, or at least some other kind of hunter.

I was fifteen, and I was sorry I wasn't wearing something more poetic in honor of the unexpected encounter with the stranger, a long black dress, maybe earrings, or dark glasses hiding adventurous sadness.

The stranger was dressed like someone who had nothing to say in particular: jeans and a belt with a big, shiny buckle, like Superman, and an ordinary white shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. He looked, at first sight, like some kind of clerk.

There was nobody else sitting in the courtyard of the Café Milano that morning, because the umbrellas didn't provide much relief and the regular customers preferred the ceiling fans inside which moved as laboriously as the waiter, and like him were more symbolic than efficient. We were alone, myself and the man with the clerk's appearance, sitting with his back to the stone wall which was covered with dusty ivy and swarming with insects, smoking a cigarette and smiling at me.

I put down my pen and opened two packets of sugar, one of which tore, spilling its contents on the table, immediately inviting two bees to start buzzing aggressively around the mug, the ashtray, and the sticky poems. The man stood up, put his cigarettes and matches into his shirt pocket, and I thought he was going to pay and leave me alone with vague plans that could no longer materialize, but he stopped next to my table, scratched his head, and said: “It's impossible to sit over there. It's full of chiggers.”

“Yes,” I said, “but this place is more dangerous, because of the bees.”

He sat down on the chair opposite me and began sweeping up the spilled sugar with his hand, blowing the grains away and lifting the paper napkins with the poems and waving them gently in the air. “They'll be gone in a minute,” he said and watched the bees hesitating and bumping into the umbrella until they took off, buzzing angrily, and flew over the ivy-covered wall in search of some other sweet location.

He called the waiter and asked him to transfer his things to my table, which was apparently ours now: a glass of water, a cup of café au lait, and a half-eaten cheese sandwich.

Within ten minutes I learned that he despised insects, that he hates the summer, that he dreams of making movies, that he spoke in a bored, lazy tone that matched his apologetic smile, that his car was parked right around the corner and that he didn't know why he had mentioned it at all, he didn't mean anything by it, and that his name was Matti Rosen. What it was possible to learn about me in ten minutes, even though I didn't say anything, not even my name, could be seen in the reproaching eyes of the waiter, who suddenly began hovering around us, like the bees, like some strict father, both intruding and chasing away intruders.

He emptied the ashtray before the stubs went out and brought it back wet. He took Matti's glass of water away and asked him if he was going to eat his sandwich and Matti put his hand over the half-eaten roll and said yes he was, and the disapproving waiter disappeared into the café with a look on his old face that said: I did what I could.

3

Twice a week I drive him half alive to the hospital and half dead back, for the radiation treatments, and the awful medication he gets, and lately the car has been giving me trouble but there's nobody to take it to the garage, and I don't understand why they don't give him chemotherapy, and maybe it's better this way, because he throws up all the time anyway, and the doctors say that it's because the tumor's pressing down on something, and I have to restrain myself from not bursting out and screaming: “Yes, on me!”

My mother comes every day to help with the children who walk around him suspiciously, like little animals, sometimes retreating and sometimes jumping on him as if they already miss him. They hug him and climb all over him and insist that he play with them, as if they want to put him to some kind of test, and maybe, from their point of view, the whole thing may seem like a temporary nightmare and they're waiting around impatiently hoping for it to end. And as if in spite, this summer is particularly hot, one heat wave after another, and I have to see to it that he gets enough to drink, because that's what I was told by the doctors whom I hate, whom I couldn't stand from the moment I saw them because of their cruelty and because of their lies.

And the radiation, that's a joke too, they didn't say so but I know very well, it's just to show that they're doing something, “giving it a chance” as they said with the little smile that covers up big lies. “We're doing everything we can, Mrs. Rosen,” they say with the nonchalance of plumbers and with that phony smile of theirs, because they have to say something, you can't diagnose a huge malignant tumor in somebody's brain one fine day and send him home to die without an explanation.

How I cried in their office that day, when they told us, but they must be used to this by now. Matti heard the news and said he was going to the cafeteria, and he left me alone as usual with all the responsibility. And the truth is that I too, at that moment, wanted to go downstairs with him, stand on line with him, take a tray and get something to make me forget everything, to bring us both back to where we were before the pains began, and the dizziness, and the nausea, and the blurred vision—something healthy, a big salad—but someone had to stay and hear what else the doctors had to say, because as much as you despise them, you find yourself believing them all the time.

But what is enough to drink? I ask myself as I stand in front of the fridge—it's kind of pleasant standing like this in the heat, I wish I could go on standing here until it's all over—and I think: So what am I going to make the kids for dinner? And what difference does it make how much he drinks when he throws it all up anyway?

My mother takes them downtown and buys them expensive toys as if they're the ones who are going to die, and I don't have any strength left to tell her that she shouldn't do it. When they come back, beside themselves with excitement, and begin unpacking their gifts, she sees the look on my face and says: “Leave them alone, Mira, they're fatherless children.” “But they're not fatherless yet, Mom!” I say, because who does she think she is, that she buried him already? And she clutches my hand with her nails and says: “Shhhh … Mira … shhhh … don't let them hear.”

From the first moment, I knew that something was wrong. “You have to go and get yourself a checkup,” I said to him, because I thought it was a virus, but Matti looked at me as if to say, What do you want from me? You go get yourself a checkup. Three months, until one night he woke the whole house with his screaming: “Mira, my head hurts! Mira, I'm dying!” He held his head, and kicked savagely, even though I know he didn't mean it, at the children who came running from their beds frightened.

My mother brings Uri and Shahar back from their shopping expedition and I ask them: “So what do you want for dinner?” And maybe because I asked a little too enthusiastically—their little dinners have been my salvation lately—they ignore me. Uri shuts himself in his room with a new computer game and Shahar runs to the kitchen, climbs on a chair, and without asking permission, taking advantage of the fact that all the boundaries in the house have been breached, opens the cupboard, takes a chocolate bar, sits down in front of the television, and asks: “Where's Daddy?”

“Daddy's sleeping,” my mother says with that forced nonchalance of hers that drives me up the wall, and Shahar hears the toilet flushing over and over again and takes the chocolate milk she brings him—he's been eating too many sweets lately but I don't have the energy to say no—and without taking his eyes off the screen he asks: “Grandma, is Daddy sick?” And in the middle of the noise of the cartoons and the computer-game beeps I hear Uri shouting from his room: “Daddy's dying!”