Mamma, why don’t you retire?
Don’t start.
Why don’t you?
Hush.
The pieces floated into place. Her heavy eyes anchored them.
Mrs. Shipco?
No reply.
Most mornings Sheila and Mrs. Shipco would share a cup of coffee here at the kitchen table. Mrs. Shipco would trace endless circles in the brown liquid with a spoon before she took her first sip. Return the cup to the saucer, then lift her head and the cup with it. She always wore her blond hair straight back behind her ears, draping her cheeks and nape. She had never changed the style or length in all these years. She would finish the cup in one gulp, rhythm in her throat. She would begin talking, tense, wrinkles moving like currents over her brow. Close her eyes to help her words along. That done, she could talk with ease. Sheila would swim in the current of words in the morning kitchen. Let it carry her. Add words of her own. She wished to talk today. Needed to talk, tear truth from the tracks. Mrs. Shipco?
Hi, Sheila.
Hi.
You didn’t have any trouble with the train today?
No.
That’s good.
Well, I sorta did.
What happened?
Oh, nothing worth telling.
I’m all ears.
Mrs. Shipco rarely left the house. The past few years, arthritis twisted her like a vine around her bed. Uprooted her daily routine: swimming, yoga, crafts, and classes at the university — noncredit courses; she already had a Ph.D. in sociology — the same university where she had met Dr. Shipco some forty years ago when they were both students. He came from poverty. (Sheila remembers the day Dr. Shipco and his sister — older, also a doctor — sat in the living room, barefoot, shared a bottle of dark wine and celebrated their first million.) She paid her tuition from insurance money obtained after her parents’ death. A boating accident. He was a Jew. She wasn’t. He was ten or twelve years older — Sheila always forgot which — but a handsome man, when he removed his glasses, brown eyes heavy with learning, and a neat mustache.
Dr. Shipco?
No reply.
Dr. Shipco had been forced to close his practice after his heart attack. He had never heeded Mrs. Shipco’s and Sheila’s warnings to slow down. Rushed out the house every morning carrying a briefcase weighted with patient files and the latest professional journals.
Aren’t you going to have some breakfast, Dr. Shipco?
No, thank you, Sheila. I have to squeeze in a new patient. And when he wasn’t seeing patients at his office or at the hospital, he would see them here, upstairs, in his study. You could never see yourself going to a psychiatrist. Only a fool discusses his business.
The day it happened, Sheila was stuffing clothes into the laundry chute when she heard him call her from his study. Sheila?
The moment she stuffed the last shirt into the chute, he called her a second time. Sheila?
Sheila hurried down the carpeted hall. Yes, Dr. Shipco.
Please open the door.
Sheila pushed the door open. Dr. Shipco was leaning far back in his leather chair, as if his upper body was trying to flee from hot steam rising up from the desk in front of him. The phone receiver was stiff in his raised left hand. A ballpoint pen remained where he had dropped it on the pad beside his right hand.
Sheila, Dr. Shipco said. My heart feels like a baseball in a catcher’s mitt.
Mrs. Shipco! Sheila tried not to scream. Heard Mrs. Shipco approach from the master bedroom down the hall, the balls in her arthritic knees squeaking like rusty faucets.
Don’t upset her, Dr. Shipco said.
Philip! Mrs. Shipco placed her hand flat in Dr. Shipco’s chest.
Sheila pried the phone out of his hand, one finger at a time. Dialed 911.
Martha, I’ll be okay. If we all talk quietly.
Dr. Shipco remained conscious and quiet and gave Mrs. Shipco and Sheila specific instructions for his comfort and care until the paramedics arrived.
Now, three mornings a week, Mrs. Shipco drove him to the gym for mandatory exercise. And the hours they once spent at the university or the practice, they now spent reading together in bed.
Dr. Shipco? Mrs. Shipco?
Still no answer.
I’ll check the Shipcos’ bedroom. In a few minutes. After I rest. Can’t deal with any more stairs just now.
How horrible. You saw that and you still came to work today?
I didn’t want to miss a day.
Sheila, you should go right home.
No need to miss a day.
A cuff of water froze her ankle. Lord, I peed on myself. Sheila looked down. Nelly’s wet nose was sniffing at her feet. Nelly, get on away from here. Sheila gave the black fox terrier a light kick to push it away. Nelly inched back to her feet. Nelly was one black ball of short wild hair, like somebody’s napply ole head. Nelly sniffed, wet. Then she started to howl. Shit! Mrs. Shipco ain’t home. Sheila hated when Mrs. Shipco left the house, because Nelly would howl and howl and howl until she returned. Wishful, Sheila checked Nelly’s bowl. It needed no food. Habitually, Sheila would have to slide the bowl directly under the dog’s nose. Nelly could no longer actually see the food. Sheila had been after Mrs. Shipco to have the dog put to sleep. But Nelly was one of the family. Just like Laddie, that old collie, had been. Shipcos musta owned Laddie fifteen years.
Fifteen of our years for one of his years, Sheila said.
No, Sheila, Mrs. Shipco said. He’s twelve.
That makes him — Sheila calculated — one hundred and five.
Not fifteen. Seven years.
So he’s — Sheila calculated — eighty-four.
He’s making it.
Mrs. Shipco had waited until Laddie could no longer walk before she loaded him onto the front seat of the family station wagon and caressed his fur and snout all the way to the veterinarian’s office. Brought Nelly home the same day.
Nelly howled. Sheila’s nerves had tolerated enough. Sheila picked up the dog and tucked it under her arm like a football. Carried it outside and lowered it into the fenced-in pen — oak rails and post — that ran parallel to the two-car garage. Nelly howled once or twice, blinked her unseeing eyes, then curled up on the gravel.
Now I can get some peace. Sheila went back inside.
She retrieved the laundry basket. Dumped the clothes onto the kitchen table. Readied her iron and board. Her hands burrowed into the pile of clothes. Starchy heat massaged her fingers and palms, a warm after-dinner cloth. Her warm hands worked. Backwash flooded her throat, a flake of something dry and nasty. She had a city inside her. An entire kingdom. She had been an hour late today. Eyes had held her back. Eyes that see everything they care to see. Her vision helpless as the image formed itself, upside down, backward, salmon-driving up into the streams of her tears. But your witnessing morning is now a part of somebody else’s memory. You don’t want it. Give it away. You were conscious of shoes, so many different clicking colors, walking by you while you stood and waited, wading in ocean, so much surrounding you. Voices drawing from you, moment to moment. You were conscious of boarding the train, the train moving, jerking to a stop, then moving again. Besides, everything that happens makes sense. So Father Tower used to say. And what happened this witnessing morning — Well, it ain’t anything to miss work over. She has worked for the Shipcos for over thirty years and can count the numbers of days she has missed on all twenty of her fingers and toes.