The Senator's Wife (20 page)

The shower wakened her. Wearing her robe, she went to the kitchen doorway. Madeleine's face opened again when she saw her, and she offered Delia wine. There was a bottle, uncorked, on the kitchen counter next to the sink, a glass set next to it. Madeleine's glass, half empty, was on the island by the salad bowl where she was tearing lettuce.

“I'll take a glass, and then retire for a minute,” Delia said. “I'm going to call the kids. They haven't heard yet.”

“Ah!” Madeleine was pouring. “Well, you'll need the wine then.” She lifted the glass to Delia.

“I'll be quick,” Delia said. “Since there's not much to report to them. Just the event itself, I guess.”

Madeleine sighed. “It's so hard to imagine the dashing Tom, brought so low.” She shook her head. “I would have thought he was exempt from the universal fate, somehow.”

“I think he thought so, too.” She remembered what the woman's voice had said on the phone—that the arrangement was immortality. It occurred to her that Madeleine might know Alison Miller, or know who she was. “I'll be right back,” she said.

Brad was out. She left a message with Ellie, his oldest child, just saying Tom had had a stroke, but was going to live, that she was with him, staying at the Dexters’.

Evan was solicitous, quick with questions, questions she couldn't answer. She told him she'd call him back as soon as she really knew anything. Yes, she said, maybe he
could
come, but for the moment she didn't think there was much point.

Nancy was still at work. Maybe because of that, her tone was businesslike and efficient. Once she had the basic information about her father's condition, there was a pause. Then she said, “You're
not
managing this.” It wasn't quite a question.

This is why I called her last,
Delia thought. She had a sip of wine. “I'm afraid I am.”

“That's completely inappropriate, Mother,” she said flatly.

This was so Nancy-like, so predictable, that Delia laughed. “That's the least of my concerns at the moment, dear.”

“It is not
possible
that you should become his . . . caregiver. Whatever.”

“Nan.” Delia set her glass down on the bedside table. “I don't know what's possible or impossible right now. Let's not get ahead of ourselves.”

“It's not ‘getting ahead of ourselves’ to start thinking of ways to manage this without your direct involvement.”

“I am involved, I'm afraid. I'm the one empowered to make decisions.”

“But surely you can pass that power to one of us.”

Delia didn't answer her. Even though she'd thought of this herself, thought of it instantly on the phone with Alison Miller, now, with Nancy, she was aware of the notion as encroachment, as threat. A
no
rose in her.

“Have you explained your situation with Dad to anyone?”

“I haven't had time to do anything, Nan. I just got here. I'm exhausted.”

“Well, that's part of it. You're seventy-five years old, you haven't been Dad's wife in decades except legally, and you should
not
be doing this.”

“Well, I am.” Delia's voice sounded childishly defiant to her own ears.

Nancy didn't answer for a moment. Then she said, “Have you talked to Evan about this?”

“I have.”

“And what does he say?”

“He says, he'll wait for me to call him when I know more.”

Nancy must have heard in Delia's voice the suggestion that Evan was behaving better than she was, that he was being the good child, and she the difficult one. She didn't say anything for a few seconds. Then: “And this will be tomorrow, you think?”

“Yes. In the morning, they said. They do rounds or something.”

“And you'll call me then also?”

“Of course, dear. As soon as I know what the prognosis is. Or the general picture anyway.”

“Then I'll wait too.” This sounded reluctant, a concession.

They said their good-byes. Delia said at least once more that she'd call as soon as she knew anything, and then Nancy said, “You know, Mother, I'm only thinking of you.”

Her voice had changed, and Delia felt guilty about her own anger, her resistance to her daughter.

“I know,” she said.

Madeleine had set the table in the kitchen. She had lit two candles, and when Delia came in, she turned out the overhead light.

They talked as they always did, easily, intimately. After Delia had explained what she could of how Tom was, after they'd speculated and commiserated, Madeleine spoke for a while of Dan's death, spoke at greater length than she had before about how hard the adjustment to widowhood had been for her.

They sat silent for a moment, and Delia reached over to touch Madeleine's hand. Two old hands, she thought. Hers looked gnarled on top of Madeleine's. Even Maddy's fingers were plump.

Madeleine looked up at her. “At least you won't have that adjustment if Tom dies—you've lived apart from each other for so long.”

Delia moved her hand. “Don't say that, Maddy. He's not going to die.”

“Well, but it's the beginning, isn't it? Even if he recovers completely, there's a process that's begun. It's like the dreaded hip fracture for women.”

Delia shifted in her chair. Her back hurt—the long plane ride, and then of course lugging her suitcase all over creation. “I suppose you're right,” she said, making a face. “The famous slippery slope.”

Madeleine smiled. “Which we're all sliding down, aren't we? from birth on.” She lifted the bottle. “A splash?” she asked.

“Oh, why not?” Delia said. Madeleine poured, and Delia drank. It was a good French pinot noir. Maddy must have gone out and gotten it especially for her. She set the glass down and sighed. “Who knows?” she said. “Maybe, if he should die, maybe I'd miss him more deeply for
not
having had him all this time.”

“Now that would be foolish, dear, which is something I don't think you are.”

“Well, but when I am foolish—when I have been—it's always been in connection with Tom, hasn't it?”

Their old faces mirrored each other across the table, in rue, in affection. A little while later, they got up and Madeleine turned the light on. They cleared the table and loaded the dishwasher. As she was standing with her back to Madeleine, wiping the table, Delia asked, “Do you know someone here in Washington named Alison Miller?”

“I don't think so,” Madeleine said. “Why?”

“She's the person who called to tell me about Tom. She was with him when he had the stroke.”

“Ah!” Madeleine said.

Delia turned around. Madeleine had turned too, and was facing her. She was wearing yellow rubber gloves so big they reached nearly to her elbows. She still had her apron on. She looked like a charwoman, Delia thought. Not that Delia had ever seen one.

“Yes, ‘ah,’” Delia said.

“She could be anyone, Dee. A friend, someone he knows from work or politics. Tom has a thousand friends, and at least half of them are women.”

“I know. I just thought you might . . . know.”

Madeleine shook her head. “I can't help you with that one, sweetie.”

Later they said good night and went to their bedrooms at opposite ends of the apartment. When Delia shut the guest room door, there was only silence. She could have been alone in the world.

She lay in bed, looking at the unfamiliar greenish shapes in the room, dimly lighted by the glow from the electric clock. She was remembering what she'd said about Tom, feeling ashamed of herself for having been glib about the possibility of his dying while he was lying so confused and lost in the hospital.

But the problem, she thought now, was that she'd been as blinkered about the possibility of Tom's falling ill or dying as he had. She'd thought he was immortal, that he'd always be there. Or at least as long as she was. She'd always thought that there was time, ample time ahead, to work things out, to find a way to be together again at some point.

She would have said she'd made her peace with their situation years earlier. She would have said—indeed, she had said—that their solution worked for them, that they both liked it just as it was. But it seemed she'd been waiting all along. Waiting for something to change, to bring them together. Because, after all this, it must still be that she thought of them as
belonging together
. That he was her
destiny
.

Foolishness. Her head swung back and forth on the pillow, she made a little noise.

E
VERYTHING ABOUT
Dr. Ballantyne was large, most of all his head, which was completely bald, though he couldn't have been more than fifty or so. His teeth were large too, with wide gaps between them—the kind of teeth, Delia thought, which, if he were a child now, would be fixed, at great expense to his parents.

They talked in the hallway, with nurses and patients passing around them. He towered over her. His voice was big too, loud, and Delia kept having the impulse to shush him. It felt wrong to her to broadcast Tom's fate this way to anyone who'd care to listen. She had to force herself to attend to what he was saying, rather than how he was saying it.

He told Delia that Tom's stroke was treated quickly enough that there was a good chance of substantial recovery. It had occurred on the left side of the brain, though, which meant that language skills and speech were likely to be affected to a greater or lesser degree. And for now, he was having trouble moving the right side of his body. Improvement was likely, and radical improvement was possible, he said—though it was harder for older people. The important thing was that therapy begin quickly and continue as long as it was helping. He said the hospital did rehab for only two weeks. They would plan on keeping him here for that long. After that there were excellent facilities nearby, right here in Washington. She should talk about this with Tom's physical therapist and his discharge planner, and, of course, with Tom when he could take it in. In the meantime they were doing a sort of baby-step rehab in his room, and he'd been put on medication to reduce the chances of another stroke.

“So nothing is really clear,” she said.

“That's not true.” His voice, though loud, was kind. And he had an unhurried air, which Delia was grateful for. “A great deal is clear. He's doing well, at this point. And he'll do better. We just don't know how much better.”

After a moment, Delia said, “And is that just luck—how much better he'll do?”

“It's luck, some, and then willpower, the desire to get well. But yes, luck probably controls more than half of it.”

Delia was standing with her back against the wall for support. She shifted her weight a little.

“I'll tell you what else was luck for him: his friend,” the doctor said.

She made a quizzical face.

“I guess whoever was with him got him here more or less instantly.”

“Alison. Miller.”

“Is that her name? I met her so briefly. A nice woman. She was terribly concerned. Anyway, they were only a couple of blocks away, at some restaurant, having lunch. That was luck too.”

Lunch then, Delia thought. It could have been just friendly, or even business. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, well, thanks.” She pushed off from the wall.

He told her anytime, that she was to call with any questions—call him, or the physical therapist. “She may be more in charge of how things go with him from now on than I am, actually.” He showed her his wide array of teeth one last time, and then he lumbered down the hall, around the corner.

Delia went to Tom's room. He was gone, his bed freshly made up. The flowers had begun to arrive, she saw. There were five or six arrangements of funereal size set around the room, and the heady, slightly rotted aroma of hyacinths was in the air. She would be the one writing the thank-you's for these, she supposed. For now she didn't want to think about it. She left without looking at the cards and went down the hall to the nurses’ station.

The woman on duty there told her Tom was having some tests done. Delia asked her where she could find Tom's discharge manager, and the nurse told her that social work was downstairs, on the third floor. As Delia turned to go, the nurse called her back. She'd remembered Tom's things, which they'd kept for him in a locker. “You should take them,” she said. “There's his clothes, and then a bunch of stuff from his pockets—his keys and his wallet, things like that that he can't be in charge of right now. I'll get them.” She disappeared into a room behind the open station.

When she came back, she handed Delia Tom's keys and his wallet. His clothes were in a clear plastic bag.

She was talking again. She said they were going to move Tom to rehab in a day or two. “And it'll be better for him to have some of his own clothes to wear over there. You know, it helps them, psychologically, to be dressed each day.”

Delia said she'd get some things to bring in for him.

She took the elevator downstairs to the department of social work, riding with a group of nurses who were laughing about how good-looking one of the interns was. The receptionist in that area said that the social worker who managed patient after-care was busy just then, but she scheduled Delia for an appointment with her in the afternoon.

After she'd taken the little card, Delia rode the elevator down all the way to the lobby, crossed it, and stepped out into the humid Washington air. Almost instantly she started to perspire. There were no cabs around and no cabstand visible in the flow of people, so she went back inside. The young man at the information desk pointed out to her the taxi telephone on the wall by the glass doors. When the dispatcher asked her “Where to?” she gave him Tom's address—her old address, the apartment they had lived in together in a town house on Capitol Hill.

When she drove up in the cab it looked the same, except that the white paint on the brick had eroded here and there and a faint sandy pink was bleeding through. But the front yard, which had been mostly crabgrass and packed dirt in their day, was different. It was flourishing, full of crowded perennials coming in green and lush, with pastel tulips thrusting up through their foliage. Tom must have hired a gardener.

Delia opened the low iron gate and went up the walk. She had a sense of being conspicuous, as though she could be seen—the ex-wife, arriving where she didn't belong. She had to try three keys on Tom's ring before one fit in the lock on the shiny black door.