Cathleen Schine - They May Not Mean To, But They Do

When they got outside, Aaron leaned heavily on his walker. It had wheels, which was a help. A shiny red walker with wheels. He called it his little red wagon.

“Lift up the front wheels,” she said.

“Get away. I know what I’m doing.”

“Tilt it.”

“I’m tilting, I’m tilting. It’s not moving. It’s broken.”

Joy took his arm. “Lean on me.” She tilted the walker and got the wheels on the curb. “It’s like a shopping cart.”

They continued down the street toward Central Park. She could see the trees, still leafy and colorful. It had been a warm autumn. “Aren’t they beautiful?” she said.

Aaron was breathing heavily. He was not singing. He was not calling her Joyful. He was not even answering her.

“This is ridiculous” was all he said, muttering it to himself.

She slowed her gait to match his, an excruciating shuffle. “Come on, come on,” she said.

But he had stopped completely now and looked around him helplessly. “Where are we going, anyway?”

“To the park. You love the park.”

“I hate the park. I’m going home.”

“You love the park. I brought your camera.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Where are we going, anyway?”

They ended up stopping at the little park in the middle of Park Avenue at Ninety-sixth Street.

“You can sit here and rest,” Joy said.

Aaron’s chin immediately dropped to his chest.

“Are you asleep?” she said. “Or dead?”

“Which would you prefer?” he asked, his eyes still closed.

“I really wanted to go to Central Park.”

Aaron opened his eyes and lifted his head. “Why?”

“Why? Because it’s a beautiful day.”

They sat for a few minutes silently.

“Pretty flowers,” Aaron said, pointing a shaky hand at some late roses. “Beautiful, beautiful. Right here in the city.”

Joy choked up a little. Because that was Aaron, her Aaron, the real Aaron. “Beautiful,” she said.

“I should take a picture.”

She handed him the little camera, and he fumbled with it for a minute, then said, “It’s broken,” and almost threw it back at her.

Joy put it in her tote bag. She had three tote bags, different sizes and different patterns. They hung on the handles of Aaron’s red walker, two on the left, one on the right. She unhooked one of the bags on the left and stuffed it into the one on the right. “That’s better.”

“What have you got in there, Joyful?” Aaron said.

“I don’t even know. But if I leave one bag home, it’s always the one that has something I need.”

He took her hand and held it. He stared off in the soft, blank way he sometimes had these days. His body sagged. The hand that held hers loosened and came to rest, like a large pale leaf, on his lap.

While he slept, Joy, too, closed her eyes. The afternoon sun was warm and comforting on her face. Sunlight was full of vitamin D. And cancer — that, too. Vitamin D, cancer … how to choose? She should have worn a hat. But how could a person walk around New York City in October in a sun hat? She refused to become an eccentric old lady padding around in bedroom slippers and a floppy hat. She pulled a thermos out of one of her bags, then another thermos. She shook Aaron awake. “Would you like a little Cream of Wheat?” she asked him. “I have an extra.”

Daniel emerged from the subway and smelled the overripe fruit from the fruit stand. It would be just a quick visit to his parents, he had to go to a school assembly, he could not remember what sort, a concert, a play, a reading of the “books” the children had written. That was the most surprising thing about the school Cora and Ruby went to, the number of artistic events held there despite the absence of a budget for the arts. All those underemployed artistic mothers and fathers filling in the gaps. He bought some strawberries from the vendor for his parents and a banana for himself, which he ate as he walked to their building.

“For me?” his mother said at the door, taking the banana peel. “You shouldn’t have.”

He waited for the story of the time he had absentmindedly put a banana peel in the medicine cabinet. He’d been daydreaming about girls, probably. Sex. One did in those days. One still did.

“Oh, it was so funny, Danny,” his mother was saying. “Do you remember that, Aaron? He was twelve or thirteen, just a little older than Ruby.”

He wondered if Ruby daydreamed about sex. Terrible stray thought.

“I brought you strawberries,” he said.

His father looked gaunt. He’d always been thin, a lanky cowboy sort of thin, and tall, too tall to reach sometimes. But he had never looked eaten away like this.

“You get a haircut?” Daniel asked him. “Tony still cutting your hair?”

When they moved to the East Side, his father had searched the neighborhood for a barber who could cut his beard the way he liked it. Daniel used to tag along when he was very small, and Tony would put a hot towel on his face.

“Tony?” his mother said. “Tony died years ago.”

Joy began talking about all the people in the neighborhood who had died. If they hadn’t died, they had gone out of business. She held the green plastic basket of strawberries and Daniel noticed her fingers were already stained pink with the juice.

“But we’re still here,” she concluded.

Daniel’s father took his hand and held it. “You making a good living these days?” he asked.

“Pay no attention to him,” said Joy. “I’d better wash the berries. Where’d you get them? On the street?” She licked a pink finger. “Now I’ll get mad cow disease and Ebola.” She went into the kitchen.

“I’m making a living,” Daniel said. “Let’s just leave it at that.”

“I don’t know why you work for that organization.” He said the word “organization” with distaste. “Go where the action is.”

“Where’s that, Dad?”

“Just ignore him, Danny,” his mother called from the kitchen.

“Wall Street.”

Daniel rolled his eyes.

“Well, you can lead a horse to water,” said Aaron.

Daniel left them sitting in the dining room eating the strawberries. As he closed the front door, he heard his father say, “Nice boy. Good work, Joyful.”

“Wall Street?” she answered. “You want your son to be a crook?”

Aaron was lying on his side, turned away from her, when Joy got into bed. She put her arms around him and they talked about the past. He remembered unexpected things, digging clams in Cape Cod right after they were married, the poem he’d memorized for freshman English (“ how do you like your blueeyed boy / Mister Death ”). She talked about the children, about the grandchildren. A little bit about work, though he was no longer interested in her work, could not really follow what she was telling him. He was very romantic these days, more romantic than he had been in what she sometimes thought of as their real life, before he began to drift away. He called her darling, asked what the hell the colostomy pouch was, apologized for it, thanked her for putting up with it and him. Then they fell asleep. That was how it went most nights. Sometimes when she lay down on the bed with Aaron, her face pressed against the back of his head, she would cry. When he asked her what was wrong, she would say she missed her parents.

But one night, just as Joy climbed into bed, when Aaron pulled up his pajama shirt and poked at the pouch and said, “What the hell is this?” he yanked it out before she could stop him.

She cleaned him up. She changed the sheets. She settled him back in bed. He told her he loved her. She held him and cried, said again that it was because she missed her parents.