“He’s in so much pain,” Joy said. “And we can’t get him to the doctor’s anymore. He’s too weak. So now the doctor comes here. Nurses come, too. It’s a very good service. Your father is thrilled.”
Daniel went to grocery stores all over the city to no avail. He finally tracked down some chipped beef, online. It was frozen, not in a jar, but he ordered a package anyway. Aaron had first eaten creamed chipped beef on toast in the army. They called it Shit on a Shingle. It was one of his favorite dishes. But when the frozen chipped beef arrived from Wisconsin, next day mail, no one prepared it, and no one ever would. His father was dying. He had been dying for a long time, but now he was actively, earnestly dying. Daniel could see it. Aaron’s skin was the skin of the dying. His eyes had clouded like the eyes of a fishmonger’s fish. He was cold to the touch. He never moved except to raise a hand a few inches from the white blanket, then let it fall back.
“I know what palliative care means,” Molly said to Freddie.
“I hope it means he’ll be more comfortable.”
“It’s a euphemism for hospice care.”
“Hospice care is its own euphemism.”
“It means they can’t do anything else for him.”
“But you’ve been saying that for a month.”
“But they never said it. Now it means they won’t even try to help him.”
Freddie put her arms around her and said nothing, another thing Molly loved about her: she said nothing when there was nothing to say.
But within a week, Aaron had gone from palliative care to hospice care. It was snowing in New York when she and Freddie arrived on a red-eye and the dawn didn’t really happen; the horizon was too leaden. The ride into town was excruciatingly slow. The sight of the skyline, so grand after the long drab strip of funeral homes in Queens, shocked Molly as it always did, though the buildings were faint, veiled, soft in the storm. Freddie paid the driver and Molly hauled their suitcases across the sidewalk, the wheels leaving tracks in the snow like sleds. She thought back to the snow of childhood, the white hillside Upstate, the wooden sled with red metal runners they waxed with soap, her father seating himself on the sled, then arranging her and all her winter bulk in front of him, the rush of air on her face, the snow whispering beneath the runners, her father’s arms around her, his snowy beard against her cheek as he lifted her off the sled, his enormous glove closing around her mitten as he led her and the sled back up the hill. Oh, she was crying now, yes she was, sobbing as the snow landed on her cheeks and her nose, the tears hot, each one identical in the way snowflakes could never be. She was sobbing as she hauled the suitcases through the front door past the doorman, who offered to help and whom she shook off with a quick head motion. The elevator shuddered with her sobs, the melted snow pooled at her feet, her suitcase fell on its side and lay forlornly on the wet floor. Molly kicked it. Freddie kicked it, too, in solidarity, then righted it.
Daniel was sitting in the chair beside the hospital bed. “The hospice nurse said he’ll last a day, maybe two.”
“Don’t say that in front of him, Danny,” their mother said. She had appeared in the bathroom doorway.
Daniel was looking at Molly the way he did when he wanted her to tell him what he should do.
“Aaron,” Joy said, “look who’s here. It’s Molly.”
Molly stood up straight. She kissed her mother. She kissed her brother. She took her wet coat off and hung it on the doorknob.
“Oh, Molly, really,” her mother said, grabbing the coat and taking it out of the room. “You of all people.”
“Hi, Daddy,” Molly said.
His eyes flickered. Maybe. She took his hand and kissed it.
“It’s me, Molly,” she said softly. She bent over and kissed his forehead. It was rough and fragile, like cheap paper.
“Speak up, honey,” Joy said, back in the room. “He doesn’t have his hearing aids in.” She began rummaging through drawers. “I’m sure they’re here somewhere. You hate them, Aaron, I know, but they do help.”
Hearing aids? Don’t forget your orthotics while you’re at it, both essential components of hospice care. “I don’t think he can hear me anyway, Mom. He’s kind of out of it, isn’t he? All that morphine…”
“What do you mean? Of course he can hear you. Of course you can, Aaron.”
“It’s me!” Molly said loudly.
The eyes flickered again.
“See?” said Joy. “Don’t go borrowing trouble, Molly.”
That night, Molly straightened the medicine bottles. The hospice nurses had lined them up neatly already. Molly reorganized the reorganization. Molly Mixinovitch, Aaron used to call her when she got like this.
“It’s a pick-me-up, isn’t it, Aaron? That Molly energy. And her friend Freddie, what a lovely person.”
Should she have said wife? “Well, wife, then.” She put on her reading glasses and found the ointment for Aaron’s lips. “Wife,” she said softly. “I am your wife, Aaron. Mrs. Aaron Bergman.” She began to say, Till death do us part, but stopped. “Nothing can part us.” Even death could not do that after so many years.
They had been Aaron and Joy for a lifetime. Joy contemplated the word “lifetime.” How sad that a word meaning a full span of experience, meaning a whole life, should carry within it the end of a life.
Marrying Aaron had been a triumph, the goal of her existence, of any girl’s existence in those days. A handsome, well-heeled man, that was part of it. A handsome, well-heeled man who didn’t care about money, that had been another part of it — he was an artist, a singer, contemptuous of the grubby world of commerce. On their first date he had lifted her up and carried her through the park singing. It was like a movie. She was swept away. She did not know the difference between carefree and careless in those days. She learned. There were trials and tribulations along the road. “We’ve had some sickness and health, haven’t we, Aaron? Some richer and poorer.” She dabbed the ointment on his lips. “Never a dull moment.” It didn’t seem possible that Aaron’s lips were so dry and cracked, lips she had kissed when they were practically a boy’s lips, nice well-formed lips, when she and Aaron were both young. Aaron’s young lips had been replaced, magically, by these chapped and papery ones. How proud she had been, proud of being in love, of finding love, as if love were a prize on a treasure hunt. Aaron smiled at her as they stood at the altar fumbling with their rings, a crooked smile he never turned on anyone else, until the grandchildren were born. It was a dangerous smile, full of promise and play. “That’s you, playful and full of promises.” He did not keep his promises, perhaps, but he never stopped making them, and that had been a different kind of honesty and keeping of the faith.
* * *
Molly threw the package of chipped beef away. Joy retrieved the package when Molly wasn’t looking. She put it back in the freezer.
* * *
Freddie and Molly took the girls to the Museum of Natural History to get them out of the apartment for a little while.
“They look so real,” Cora said. The enormous Alaskan bear loomed over her, a wounded seal at its feet.
“They are real,” said Ruby.
“They’re dead.”
“They’re still real.”
Freddie stepped away from the existential discussion to answer her phone. She backed against the case of the skunks. “Laurel, is anything wrong?”
“Not that we know of,” both sisters said at once. “But we thought we’d come see Dad in June. It’s a slow month for us. It might be the last time we see him. We have to be realistic.”
“He’ll be thrilled.”
“We have a very good package at the Disneyland Hotel for three nights, and then the Beverly Hills Hilton. Doesn’t it sound like fun? A night in Palm Springs, a quick trip to Vegas — we’ve got it all planned out. You let him know we’re coming. We’ll send you our itinerary. And, Freddie, we’re gluten-free. Just so you know.”