“Did you forget what I told you? That you won’t have to lift a finger? That we wouldn’t permit it even if you could? Listen,” she said, “this isn’t even a committee thing. I mean no one’s been assigned to wash, no one’s been assigned to dry. No one’s been named to empty the ashtrays or run the vacuum over the rug in the living room. This is an area where everyone pitches in. Should someone see anything out of place, he or she straightens it up. This party will be a strictly straighten-up-as-you-go party. Will that be all right? Is that good enough for you?”
“Well,” Schiff said.
“Will it?” she asked. “Is it?” she teased.
“Well,” said Schiff. “Do I have your word? That no one leaves the house until it’s neat and clean as when they came in?”
“Neater and cleaner,” Ms. Kohm said.
“All right,” Schiff said. “Look, I’m sorry I’m such a tightass, but really,” he said, “unless everything’s just the way you found it … I’m going to let you in on something. I try to live by the cripple’s code.”
“Yes?”
“One must never do anything twice.”
“Oh, what a good rule! That’s a good rule even for persons who aren’t physically challenged.”
“Actually it is,” Schiff said.
“No, I mean it,” Ms. Kohm said.
“Okay, all right. We’ll try having the party.”
“Do you know what time it is?”
“No. Is it late?”
“Twelve thirty-seven.”
“Thirteen,” Schiff said.
“What?”
“Nothing,” Schiff said.
“Well,” said Ms. Kohm, “it’s been a long day. Tomorrow’s the party. Tonight, actually. Better turn in.”
“I will,” said Schiff.
“Me, too,” said Ms. Kohm. “Well,” she said, “see you tomorrow night.”
“Tonight, actually,” he said, and both laughed and hung up, and Schiff, too tired to try to make it into the bathroom, took up the pisser and peed within a cc of his life.
He slept like a baby. He didn’t dream. He didn’t once wake up. And, in the morning, it was like being roused from a trance, awakened, like someone from the audience, on stage, in the middle of a hypnotist’s act, come to life after a surgery in a room one can’t remember. Even, in those first several blank-slate seconds, experiencing what was not joy, not hope, not peace or patience, curiosity or wonder or even pleasure, so much as a sort of passivity, even obedience, something almost theological, some deep trust, almost— and here’s Schiff’s brain kicking in, and here’s Schiff — he supposes, like faith, like a perfect numb composure, Schiff detached and poised as an angel, like one of those rare dreams — and here’s Schiff with the slow, ever-so-gradual beginnings of self-consciousness — where he dreams himself moving, walking, running, pleased with the smooth point- to-point of his compliant synapses. And here’s Schiff. Tumbled from grace like a man overboard. Alert, alive, aware of the facts, passed sudden and roughly from one condition to the next like a clumsily transferred baton. Here’s Schiff. All at once the phone is ringing, his bladder is bursting, virtually screaming, “Do something, do something, will you, before I wet your pants all over you, your blankets, sheets, and pillowcases, your carpets and furniture and upholstery, before I take matters into my own hands and leave what used to be your dick jumping around every which way, loose and as out of control as a live wire spraying indiscriminate voltage like a hose in the street,” and his bones and body are stiff, filling up with pain in every cavity like air stretching a balloon, and — here’s Schiff, here’s Schiff now— he pulls himself up in bed to sit on its side and he reaches for his pisser but the son of a bitch is filled to the top — the job he did on it before retiring last night — and somehow he has to get into the toilet without — there’s no time to put them on — his shoes with their footdrop braces standing up in them like long shoehorns, and which permit him to put his feet out in front of him without kicking a foot into the carpet, smashing his practically hammertoes, tripping and stumbling the length of his body headfirst into the floor. So, here’s Schiff landed back in Farce, his homeland practically, and he pictures himself falling arse over tip down the stairs shoved tight against the aircraft and diving, face down, nose to the tarmac, which he kisses as if he’s finally come home after a long exile.
He’s up on his walker now, skedaddling to the John before he bursts, Schiff’s version anyway, his modified skedaddle, distracting himself, thinking, Push, Step, Pull (on “Push” pushing his walker out in front of him; on “Step” stepping out with his right foot; on “Pull” pulling his left foot up almost even with it), though even as he thinks Push, Step, Pull, he’s wondering if it wouldn’t be better to change his mantra to Push, Step, Drag, because times change and a chap owes it to himself to keep up with his disease. (And because the effort is so great. He should, he thinks again, have been an event in the Olympics.) What, it occurs, are these tears in these eyes? Because suddenly he can’t remember the last time he walked without having to resort to these diversionary tactics and gambits, when he didn’t have to think of his walker as a plow, or his floors as fields, when he didn’t have to break down his progress — progress, hah! — into tiny, divisible bits like so much sovereign acreage or, just to keep himself from going nuts — walking was so difficult now, required such concentration; this was how he concentrated on it — providing a running — running, hah! — commentary on it, like some kid muttering the play-by-play in his head as he throws a rubber ball against a stoop. The pressure on his bladder is driven by its own terrible, gathering momentum. Schiff, still pushing the walker, concentrating, but switching over to alternative modes even as he begins to feel a little, a little, not much, leakage— I think I can, I think I can! Or “Schiff not out of the woods, yet, ladies and gentlemen, though even if he pees now, at least it won’t be on the Berber. Because once that stuff gets on wool, it’s yech, and watch out, it’s time for the Home! Over to you in the crapper, Jim.” “Thanks, Dave Wilson, but you’ve just about told the whole story. Schiff, as you say, had begun to feel a little moisture, but, fortunately, this was just about the time he was swinging his walker around, dropping his drawers, and already lowering himself onto the toilet seat. Maybe I can get him to give us a comment. Jack, Jack, it’s Jim Johnson, You do much damage?” “No, Jim, I don’t think so. There’s a phrase in Ward Howe’s ‘Battle Hymn of the Republic’ that best sums it up, I think. Something about the ‘evening dews and damps.’ I don’t think anything actually got on the tile though there may be some small humidity in my pants, however. In any event, I’m chucking them into the laundry basket on my way out.”
Which made him think about laundry. Which, Jesus, gave him a jolt. Because, really, with Claire gone, how was he ever going to handle that one? He didn’t know if they even still did laundry service, couldn’t recall the last time he’d seen a laundry truck. Claire, Schiff thought, you’re the rat and I’m the sinking ship! And where, he wondered, had his mild hope for the day gone? Those few seconds or so of respite he felt when he’d first waked up? That perfect, numb composure?