Russell Banks - A Permanent Member of the Family

“Tell me your name,” Harold said. “I know it, but I forgot.”

The crushed gravel footpath wound uphill from the parking lot through a grove of poplar trees. From the passenger’s seat of the van, Howard spotted the monument at the top of the hill — a head-high granite pylon that marked the site of a Puritan massacre of a band of Narragansett Indians. He made out the slender figure of a woman standing next to the pylon. She wore jeans and a bright yellow nylon poncho with the hood up. He turned to the woman in the driver’s seat and said, “I don’t know, Betty. It’s farther than I usually walk, you know.”

“Can’t turn back now,” she said. She reached across him and opened his door and handed his cane to him. “It’s not so far. She’s waiting for you.”

“Maybe you could go up and bring her down here instead.”

“Maybe you could pretend she doesn’t exist and go sit on the porch at the house like an invalid and watch the sun set over the harbor. You need the exercise, Howard. Besides, you set this up. This is your deal.”

“No, it’s Dr. Horowitz’s deal,” he said. He grabbed his cane and eased himself from the van. The whole thing is crazy, he thought. I am an invalid. I need to be left alone. This woman shouldn’t bring her troubles to me, I’ve got enough of my own. He stood unsteadily for a few seconds, then squared his shoulders and slowly made his way up the path toward the woman in the yellow poncho.

THIS WAS NOT HOW he had expected the day to play out. Around ten that morning Betty had entered his bedroom without knocking, as usual, and had drawn back the curtains and let sunlight flood the room. From his bed Howard saw the sloping meadow below and then the harbor and the long, low peninsula on the far side, the white steeple of the church and the colonial-era waterside houses and docks of the fishing village, and his irritation, as usual, passed.

“Let’s check the vitals,” Betty said. “See if you’re ready for a walk in the park today. Doctor’s orders.” She pushed up his pajama sleeve and began taking his blood pressure. She was an abrupt, pink, square-faced woman with graying, straw-colored hair cut in a pageboy with Prince Valiant bangs. Her hair looked ridiculous to Howard. She was in her mid-forties, a few years younger than he. After some initial difficulty, they had become friends. Her short, athletic body was attractive, but in a masculine way that was not sexy to him, and he was glad of that. Relieved, is more like it.

Betty treated him as if he were an adolescent boy, but he felt like a very old man locked in an even older man’s body. He liked her crisp, no-nonsense personality and her bark of a laugh when he resisted her attempts to get him up and moving or make him follow his strict diet, drink eight glasses of water a day, walk in the house without a cane. A certain degree of irritation gave him pleasure. Her refusal to treat him the way he felt, along with the daily sight of the harbor and the marina and town on the other side of it, cheered him. Very little else cheered him, however.

“You got a phone call to make,” she said and stuck the thermometer under his tongue. “Dr. Anthea Horowitz wants to talk to you. What kind of name is that anyhow, Anthea? She’s Jewish, right?” She pulled out the thermometer, checked it and shook it down. “Ninety-seven point nine. BP is one thirty over seventy-eight. You’re still functional, Howard.”

“I don’t know, Scandinavian, maybe. Could be Jewish, I guess. How many times have you asked me about her name, anyhow? You got a problem with Jewish women doctors? Give me the damned phone,” he said.

She passed him the telephone. “Don’t forget your morning meds,” she said and pointed to the glass of water and plastic cup of pills on the bedside table. “Breakfast in fifteen, mister. More like brunch, actually,” she noted and headed for the kitchen.

SINCE HE’D LEFT THE HOSPITAL, every morning had been the same. He knew at once where he was and why, but couldn’t remember exactly how he had got there. It wasn’t the painkillers — he’d been off them for five weeks almost. It had to be the residue of the anesthesia. They say it takes a month for every hour you’re anesthetized before you’re normal, and he’d been knocked out for eight and a half hours. He did the math again: it was mid-May; the operation had been January sixth; he wouldn’t be clear of the effects of the anesthesia until September.

There were still large blank patches in his memory that shifted locale daily, unpredictably. Every morning when he woke, he remembered suddenly something that the day before he’d been unable to recall — his cell phone number or the name of his daily newspaper. Then an hour or two later he’d notice a batch of new blanks — he couldn’t remember the brand of car he owned, his social security number, the name of the mysterious, leafy green vegetable in the refrigerator. The patch over his move in March from the hospital to his ex-mother-in-law’s summer house had stayed, however, week after week, month after month. He had no memory of the actual event. That worried him.

Howard knew the facts. He had been told them by his ex-wife, Janice, and her mother, and by his surgeon, Dr. Horowitz, and his nurse, Betty O’Hara, and could pass that information on to anyone who wanted to know why he was living alone in a seaside summer cottage on Cohasset Harbor. The explanation was simple. He couldn’t return to his own house in Troy, New York, because he had undergone the transplant in Boston and had to stay nearby, monitored by Dr. Horowitz and her staff, while recovering from the surgery. Betty tested his blood daily and drove him to Boston weekly to be examined for telltale signs of rejection or infection. His insurance, although it covered Betty’s salary, wouldn’t pay for an apartment or house in the area. And he was currently unemployed — he had been a publisher’s representative, basically a traveling salesman for the northeast region, a job he was no longer capable of holding. He had fallen on hard times, as he liked to say. Luckily, drawing from some half-filled well of residual affection, his ex-wife had talked her mother into giving him the use of her summer house. He knew all that, although he couldn’t remember actually moving in, taking up residence.

He had no problem remembering Dr. Horowitz’s office number, however. In the last year, while waiting for an available heart, he had called her office hundreds of times, and dozens of times since the surgery. He sat up in bed and dialed and told the receptionist that he was returning a call from Dr. Horowitz. A few seconds later, she came on the line.

“Howard?”

“Yes. Hello.”

“How are you feeling this week, Howard?” She sounded tentative to him, less assured than usual. Not a good sign.

“Okay, I guess. No complaints. Why, anything wrong with my tests?”

“No, no, no. Everything’s hunky-dory. I’m sorry to bother you. I’m not bothering you, am I? Can you talk?”

“Yeah, sure. What’s up, Doc?” If she could say everything was hunky-dory, he could call her Doc.

“Howard, I’m passing on a request. Not a usual request, but one I have to honor. You understand.”

“Yeah. Sort of.”

“The wife… the widow of the man who donated your heart…?”

“My heart.”

“Yes. She wants to meet you.”

They were both silent for a moment. “Christ. She wants to meet me?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I haven’t given her your contact information. I can’t do that without your permission. I only agreed to convey her request. That’s all.”

“Why, though? Why does she want to meet me? I don’t think… I’m not sure I can handle that.”