” Just her breathing. She might be asleep. Good sign, if she is, that she wasn’t so disturbed by what he said that it kept her up. “I’d love for you to say, though I know you’re not going to, that you’re so unhappy, and not necessarily because of what you think I said, that you want me to hold you. And it’s not, you understand, that I want you to be unhappy just so I can hold and console you, by…okay. I better drop it. I’m getting myself in deeper, I think. I just have to hope I didn’t make you feel even lousier by what I just said. Put it down to my being dopey.” She hear him? By now he’s almost sure not. He yawns, thinks Good, he thought dozing off would be more difficult, shuts his eyes and is soon asleep. Wakes up about three hours later to turn her over on her other side, then around three hours later to the side she fell asleep on, then around two hours later on her back, which is what he does every night and at around the same time intervals, give or take an hour. From what he could make out in the dark, her eyes stayed shut all three times. It’s now six-thirty and he tries to sleep some more, can’t, dresses, does some stretching exercises in the living room, gets the newspapers from the driveway and reads one while he has coffee. Looks in on her at eight, just in case, although it’s early for her, she’s awake and wants to get up. She’s still sleeping on her back. Usually she snores a lot in that position, but he hasn’t heard any. He goes for a run — a short one, as he doesn’t like leaving her alone, asleep or awake, more than fifteen minutes — showers and shaves in the hallway bathroom, and a little after nine, right after he listens to the news headlines on the radio, he goes in to wake her, or else she might complain he let her sleep too long. What he doesn’t need, he thinks, is for her to get angry at him over something else, especially when she just might wake up feeling much better toward him. She’s surprised him a few times by doing that; mad as hell at him when she went to sleep and pleasant to him in the morning, where he didn’t think he even had to apologize to her for what he’d said the previous night. One of those times she even grabbed his penis in bed and pulled on it awhile without him having to ask her to. Then she got tired and stopped. “That was so nice,” he said. “I wish you had continued and there was more of that, not that I’m not satisfied with what I got,” and kissed her — tongue in mouth, the works, and she kissing him that way also for about a minute. Then he put her hand back on his penis, but she said “I can’t. No feeling left in that hand anymore, and the other one’s useless.” Anyway, best behavior today, okay? From now on, all days. Even to the point of being oversolicitous to her, because he has to take care of her better and wants to convince her that his bad moments and irrational outbursts are behind him. He just has to make a stronger effort, and keep to it, to make sure they are. Now he doesn’t know if he should wake her. Eyes shut, face peaceful, covers the way he arranged them when he turned her onto her back: top of the top sheet folded evenly over the quilt. “Gwen? Gwen, it’s me, the terrible husband. Only kidding. It’s past nine o’clock. Not a lot past, but I thought you might want to get up. You usually do around this time. If you want to sleep or rest in bed another fifteen minutes or so — anything you want — that’s all right with me too. I’ve got about fifteen minutes of things to do in the kitchen and then I’ll come back. Gwen?” One eye flutters for a moment but otherwise she doesn’t move. She normally would by now after that amount of his talking. At least open her eyes to little slits and maybe mutter something or nod or shake her head. “Are you asleep or falling back to sleep? Does that mean you didn’t sleep that well last night, although you seemed to have. I turned you over four times at night, more times than I usually do, and you didn’t seem to have wakened once.” Doesn’t give any sign she heard him. “I’ll let you sleep, then, half-hour at the most, because we both have to get started sometime,” and leaves the room, but a few steps past the door, thinks “No, something’s wrong; she’s too still and unresponsive,” and goes back and says louder “Gwen? Gwen?” and nudges her and then shakes her shoulder, moves her head from side to side on the pillow, puts his ear to her nostrils and throat and chest and then parts her lips and listens there. Knew she was breathing but wanted to see if there were any strange sounds. None; she’s breathing quietly and her heartbeat seems regular. But it might be another stroke, he thinks. This is how it was the second time; came into the room, couldn’t wake her up. Pulls her legs, pinches her cheeks and forearm, pushes back her fingers and toes, says “Gwen. Gwendolyn. Sweetheart. You have to get up.” Calls 911 and says he thinks his wife has had her third stoke. “Anyway, she isn’t responding.” While he waits for them to come, he kneels beside the bed and holds her hand and stares at her, hoping to see some reaction, then stands and puts his cheek to hers and says “I never meant any harm to you last night, I never did. I blew my top, but it was only out of frustration, all the work I do, one thing after the other, so exhaustion too. But I was such a fool. Please wake up, my darling, please,” and kisses her cheeks and then her eyelids and lips. They’re warm. That could be good. Straightens up, holds her hand and looks at her and thinks wouldn’t it be wonderful if her eyes popped open, or just slowly opened, but more to slits, and she smiled at him and said “I don’t hold anything against you. And I’m sorry if I frightened you. I was very tired and couldn’t even find the energy to open my eyes and speak,” and he said “I was so worried. I thought you had another stroke. I called 911. I’m not going to call them off. I want them to check you over, make sure you’re okay. That is, if you don’t mind. Oh, God, how could I have acted the way I did to you last night.” “Don’t again,” he’d hope she’d say. The emergency medical people ring the doorbell and he lets them in. He leads them to the back, tries to stay out of their way, thinks he didn’t hear a siren before they came. Maybe the absence of one’s a good sign too. By what he said on the phone, they didn’t think it that serious. No, there must be another reason for no siren. That there was one but they turned it off when they got to his quiet street because they no longer needed it. They work on her for about ten minutes, say she’s in a coma and they’re taking her to Emergency. He says “I’ll go with you, if it’s all right. If not, I’ll follow.” He thinks, as they wheel her out on a gurney, that if she dies he’ll never tell anyone what he said to her last night. That he took out of her whatever it was that was keeping her going. That he killed her, really. He holds her hand in the ambulance taking them to the hospital and says to the paramedic sitting next to him “If she doesn’t come out of this, then I killed her by telling her last night, when she was awake in bed, that she’d become too much for me and I hoped she’d die.” The woman says “Don’t worry, that wouldn’t do it, and she’s going to be just fine.” “You think so?” and she says “Sure; I’ve been at this a long time.” “She’s suffered another major stroke,” a doctor tells him in the hospital, “and because of her already weakened condition, I have to warn you—” and he says “Her chances of surviving are only so-so,” and the doctor says “Around there.” He calls his daughters, stays the night in the visitor’s lounge. She’s in a shared room in ICU and they won’t let him be with her after eleven o’clock. “Even for a minute?” and the head nurse says “I’m sure she wants you there.
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