The Last Chance (14 page)

“What would he do without me?” Ellen said. She couldn’t understand why Margot didn’t see the inescapable logic of it. “I’m the one bringing in the money in this family.”

“Then you wouldn’t have to feel guilty leaving him,” Margot said with her own brand of logic. “He won’t have to support you.”

“I can’t kick him when he’s down, Margot. Hank loves me.”

“He certainly must. You’ve always been very sloppy about covering your tracks.”

“I know,” Ellen said. “Hank isn’t a curious person. Strange, but not curious.” She laughed. “Let’s not be bitchy about my poor husband. He’s the only one I’ve got.”

It was so nice to be here with Margot, just like the old days at school, dishing the boys. It was almost as if Hank were just one of her faithful puppy-dog dates, someone she could laugh at and get rid of when he bored her. Ellen wished it were true. If she could just disappear into the past like Alice down the rabbit hole. If she had it all to do over again she would pick an intellectual, like Reuben, someone who loved books and talked books and had power, who knew interesting people, who was creative, and who made love so gloriously, as if he had just discovered sex for the first time and couldn’t get enough of it. The poet of the bedroom, she had told him one day.

“Would you like to live your life over again?” she asked Margot.

“Yes,” Margot said. “Provided it was different.”

“Well, that would be the only point, wouldn’t it?”

After lunch Ellen went directly to Reuben’s apartment, which happened to be on the West Side, not too far from her own. He had taken the afternoon off too, in honor of her birthday, and was waiting for her there. The doorman knew her by now and didn’t stop her to ask where she was going, and Ellen wondered how many doormen all over the city were nodding courteously to women who were going to visit men whose wives were away for the summer.

Reuben opened the door the moment Ellen rang his bell, and they kissed and hugged as if they hadn’t seen each other for a month. One of the things she most loved about him was that he was so affectionate. She had asked him once if he was an affectionate father as well as lover (she didn’t say “husband”) and he had said yes, he always hugged and kissed his two little boys, because his own father had been cold. He had then added, with a gleam in his eye, that perhaps he wasn’t as affectionate a husband as he ought to be. He was so perceptive, and so kind. He knew when she wanted to ask something and hadn’t, and he always answered.

“Wait till you see what we have!” he said happily and pulled her into the living room. It was the first time Ellen had ever seen the living room without all the furniture covered with sheets. Reuben’s apartment always amused her because his wife had covered everything, even the lampshades, just like an old woman, so it wouldn’t get dusty during the summer while she was away. Never mind that poor Reuben had to live there during the week. The only place she’d left for him was the bedroom and the kitchen.

He had put out a cooler with ice in it, and in the ice was a bottle of Dom Pérignon. Beside it were two tulip glasses chilling. On a silver plate was an open jar of Beluga Malossol caviar, Ellen’s favorite, and a plate of toast he’d obviously made himself. He had even cut it into little squares and trimmed off the crusts. And the final touch was a small box from Cartier.

“Happy birthday, darling,” he said.

“Oh, Reuben, this is the best birthday I ever had!”

He produced a wrench and opened the champagne with a satisfactory pop and sizzle of frosty steam but no overflow. Ellen applauded. “I learned that trick from a bartender,” he said. “My hands aren’t very strong.”

He poured the champagne, they toasted each other and drank, and then he made her eat caviar although she wasn’t hungry. Then he gave her the present. She opened the box and saw a small, delicate gold chain that would just fit around the base of her throat.

“Oh, put it on me,” Ellen said. He did, and kissed her neck above the chain. “I’ll never take it off,” she said.

“I thought perhaps I shouldn’t,” he said. “But I do love you. And you can make up something in case he asks, can’t you?”

“Of course. I’ll say I got it from Margot.” She thought of the Gucci bag. Reuben hadn’t even noticed the box, or if he had he had already forgotten it. So she could just put the bag in her closet, and when she started using it Hank would never give it a thought.

“Two presents?” Reuben asked. “Your Margot is a big spender.”

“You never lose your capacity to surprise me,” Ellen said.

“I hope I never do.”

She wore the necklace while they made love on the bed, and she thought that now it really was his gift to her because it had the touch of his skin on it, and, she imagined, even the scent of his skin. Even though she would wear the necklace in the shower and in the world outside it would still be a part of the two of them making love. She liked the idea. She also liked that he had taken the sheets off the living room furniture and had entertained her there, so she would not feel like a summer interloper. He really was a very thoughtful man. She supposed that when fall came he would find another place to take her where they could both feel safe and comfortable. She didn’t picture Reuben in a motel somehow. He was much too naive, too idealistic. He would probably have a close friend with a bachelor apartment.

“I love you,” he was saying over and over. “I love you, I love you.”

That was so nice. She could listen to that forever. “I love you too,” Ellen said.

Stacey had spent the entire afternoon baking a birthday cake. She had also bought her mother a bottle of perfume. Jill had bought her mother a book she herself wanted to read anyway, and spent the day reading it, very neatly, and then wrapped it up again in its gift paper. Of course she could have waited until her mother was finished with it and then borrowed it, but it gave her a special, secret pleasure to have it first. Jill was a fast reader. Now that the book was all hers, safe in her mind, it was nothing but a shell, like an old squeezed orange, a perfect birthday present for her shell of a mother.

Stacey finished the last laborious icing decoration. “There! Just like the store.”

“It’s too good for her,” Jill said.

“Like Mom says, no point in doing something if it isn’t perfect,” Stacey said cheerfully. “It’s time to put the chicken in. Did you wash the salad?”

“Not yet.”

“Jill! I can’t do everything.”

“It was all your idea.”

“But you said you’d help me,” Stacey said.

“Don’t whine.”

“You don’t understand, I’m doing all this because I like doing it. The party is just an excuse.”

“Then why didn’t you have a party for your friends?”

“She would have said it was too expensive. This is one of our big Family Charades. You’ll see, she and Dad will be thrilled.”

Jill sat down on the kitchen chair. She had been feeling faint lately, spots in front of her eyes, periods of nausea and lassitude. She didn’t like the way she felt, not at all.

“You look kind of green,” Stacey said. “Are you all right?”

Jill bit her lip. “It’ll pass. Get me a glass of bottled water from the fridge, please.”

Stacey brought it at a run. Jill drank a little and felt like throwing up. She felt cold sweat breaking out on her face and running down her sides. “I’d say it was something you ate,” Stacey said, “but seeing as it’s you, it’s probably something you didn’t eat.”

“I wonder if I have cancer,” Jill said.

“Cancer! It’s either the twenty-four-hour virus or starvation. Or both.”

“The family doctor.”

“If you can just make it to Halloween, kid, we can send you out trick-or-treating as a skeleton.”

“Har-de-har-har,” Jill said. She was feeling a little better. She wiped her forehead with the back of her hand and was surprised to find her hair was wet. Her forehead felt cold, no fever, far from it. Her hand was cold too. Her fingernails looked bluish under the fluorescent kitchen light. She hoped she could make it through dinner. The kitchen clock said a quarter past six. Her mother wasn’t home yet, and her father was taking a shower, planning to get all dressed up. Stacey had started washing the salad greens, casting Jill anxious looks.

“You look lousy,” Stacey said. “I wonder what your blood pressure is.”

“Don’t you have a little set in your room?”

“I bet your blood sugar’s low too.”

“Well, I’ll tell you what, Stace. When I die you can do the autopsy.”

“I’ll use this,” Stacey said, waving the kitchen knife and grinning. “But wait till after dinner, I need it.”

Their father came into the kitchen dressed in clean slacks and a clean sports shirt and smelling of pine. He beamed at the two girls. What a domestic scene, Jill thought in disgust. Stacey’s ass-kissing, I’m dying, Dad’s putting on his act, and Mom’s out with her lay. I wonder if she’ll even remember to come home for dinner.

Ellen came home at half past six. She went directly to her bedroom, then to the bathroom, took a shower, and came into the kitchen in her bathrobe. “What are we wearing tonight?” she asked cheerily. “Well, Hank, don’t you look nice. I guess I’ll wear pants, then,” and she went into her bedroom without waiting for anyone to answer her.

Hank mixed some Bloody Marys and took one to the bedroom for Ellen and one for himself. Jill was still sitting on the kitchen chair like a lump. She didn’t think she could work up the strength to stand.

“I’m going to change my clothes,” Stacey said. “Jill, will you watch the chicken? Take it out when the timer rings. Jill?”

“I heard you.”

“If it burns, it’s your fault. If the timer doesn’t work—and it sometimes doesn’t—take it out at seven fifteen. Jill?”

“Yes.”

“When the little hand is on the seven and the big hand is on the three.”

“Up yours.”

“I’ll hurry, and then you can get dressed. Unless you plan to remain like that.”

“Stacey,” Jill said, “I can just see it now. You’re going to grow up to be somebody’s mother.”

“Up
yours
.”

“I haven’t got one.”

Jill heard Stacey’s radio playing her favorite country music and wondered which of her sister’s collection of T-shirts with things written on them they were going to be honored with tonight. The sound of the music kept going in and out. She felt as if the chair was very gently rocking. Her body felt very heavy, endlessly heavy, so heavy she couldn’t move it, drawn inexorably toward the ground. She weighed a thousand million pounds, a stone body, paralyzed. When she hit the floor she didn’t even feel it.

She came to in what felt like a car, but she fell asleep, and when she came to again she was lying in a bed in a strange room. One of her arms was strapped to a board and there was a needle taped into the big vein in the arm; tubing ran from the needle to a big bottle hanging above her on a steel stand. Her arm vein hurt like hell. There was a buzzer taped to the pillow. She rang it with her free hand. Hospital. Now, which hospital, and where?

A nurse came in and smiled when she saw Jill was awake. “How do you feel?”

“I have a headache.”

“Well, you hit your head when you fell. You had three stitches, but the doctor says there won’t be any scar. You’re a lucky girl.”

Jill felt her head with her free hand. There was a bandage going diagonally across her eyebrow. “Where’s my family?”

“They’re waiting outside. I’ll send them in.”

“What hospital is this?”

“Payne Whitney.”

“The
nut
place?”

The nurse never lost her plastered-on smile. She looked like the girl on the Burger King commercial. “Now, you don’t think you’re a nut, do you?”

“No, I don’t. So why am I here?”

“You’re very lucky to be here,” the nurse said, and strode out of the room, returning quickly with Jill’s parents and Stacey. Ellen looked as if she had been crying, and she rushed over and hugged and kissed Jill, which made Jill cringe. Her father gave her a fake hearty smile and took her hand in his big nice hand. Stacey of course was inspecting the paraphernalia that they’d attached to Jill while she was asleep.

“You have a catheter,” Stacey said triumphantly. Jill followed Stacey’s glance to the floor where a bottle stood, partly filled with urine, with a tube coming out of it which—she discovered with a twinge when she tried to move—was attached to her insides. She felt like a piece of meat. Her eyes filled with tears.

“Now that you’re awake we can take that out,” the nurse said cheerfully. “Would you turn around please, Mr. Rennie?” Her father turned his back and the nurse whisked the tube out of Jill and collected the bottle. “But, Jill, you have to use the tin cup in the bathroom, not the toilet, because we have to measure everything that comes out of you. Ring for the nurse whenever you have to go to the bathroom. Don’t go by yourself. You might fall down.”

Jill looked at the bottle on the stand attached to her arm. “What about that thing?”

“Oh, it goes with you. On wheels.”

“What do you mean, ‘goes with me’? For how long?”

“Until we get you up to eighty-five pounds or you start to eat by yourself, whichever comes first.”

“Oh, my God. It’s the Chinese water torture.”

The nurse directed her endless smile to the other members of the family and left the room. Ellen was stroking Jill’s head. Jill wished her mother would take her paws off her. She wondered how long she had been here. It couldn’t have been long, there weren’t any flowers in the room, also no TV, and her father was wearing the same outfit he’d had on for her mother’s birthday dinner. Oh, God, the birthday dinner!

“Gee, Mom,” Jill said, “I must have spoiled your birthday.”

“What birthday?” her mother said cheerily. “I’m still thirty-nine.”

“I’m sorry I got sick.”

“You just get well,” her father said. “That’s all we want.”

“How long do I have to stay here?”

“A couple of weeks,” her mother said.

“Well, we can’t afford it,” Jill said. “I’ll eat at home.”

“Nobody trusts you any more, Jill,” her mother said.

“Thanks.”

“This time you’re going to get well,” her mother went on. “Your father and I have all kinds of health insurance. In fact, since you have to be in the hospital a couple of weeks, we were lucky enough to get you transferred to the Payne Whitney branch in the country. It’s very pretty there, just like a college campus. They have tennis courts, and trees—”