Part 3 (1/2)

She talks to Cath occasionally, and Cath says, from the safe distance of Denver: ”It's time for her to live closer to one of us.”

(Rebecca is tempted sometimes to say: Okay, Cath, I've arranged to have Mom med-flighted out to you.) Harriet gets a urinary tract infection, another leg infection, bronchitis.

She has been sick now for so long, this has all been going on forever. Rebecca wishes it would all just stop-but the only thing that will stop it is Harriet's death, and she doesn't want that.

She asks Harriet one afternoon-it's when Harriet is in the hospital with bronchitis, and Rebecca has driven down to Connecticut to spend the afternoon with her (just the afternoon: she wants to be back in Cambridge again by bedtime)-”Aren't you tired of all this?”

”Yes,” Harriet says. ”But I don't want it to be over, because I want to know the end of the story.”

”What story?” Rebecca asks.

”All the stories,” Harriet says.

”You're so sad,” Ben says, rubbing the backs of his fingers against her cheek when she gets home from the bookstore one evening.

”My mother's in the hospital again. Septic shock. Another urinary tract infection, which I guess they didn't catch fast enough. I'm going to drive down there tomorrow.”

”I'll make you a drink,” he says, and then he calls her one of the incredibly silly pet names, which for the first time fails to delight her. It seems irritating and ill timed. ”And then I'll run you a bath,” he says.

”A bath sounds good.”

”And I'll come watch you take it.”

”Come talk to me, you mean?”

”No. Watch you.”

That's an aberration, not a revelation, she thinks. Being objectified, when she just wants to be accompanied.

”You're so sad,” he keeps saying. It starts as sympathy. A week or two later it's cool, a diagnosis. Then it becomes a criticism.

He starts wanting the underwear to be kinkier. And he wants her to wear it every time.

He used to talk a lot about divorcing Dorinda. But it's been months now since he's mentioned it.

Rebecca asks him about it one night, as they are lying in bed, happy, she thinks, naked, with sc.r.a.ps of underwear scattered all around them.

”I would love to marry you,” she says, with a boldness that is new and luxurious for her. She's echoing something he has said to her many times by now. ”I hate it that you're still married to someone else.”

He is silent. Then he says: ”You knew I was married when we started this.”

She tries to get out of it without too much self-abas.e.m.e.nt. She knows the uselessness of asking questions. She manages to sound less desperate than she is-but still, it's more desperate than she would like to sound.

Women ask for explanations, over and over, when love goes. There is no explanation. The explanation is: It's gone.

The whole thing, from the time they met at the little movie to the end, took sixteen months.

Back in her apartment, she's cold. It's a cold spring, wet, dark. She doesn't cook, she doesn't sleep well, she doesn't read, she doesn't see many friends. She gets her hair cut to just below her jawline, knowing it's an angry, m.a.s.o.c.h.i.s.tic thing to do, but hoping that it will somehow make her feel better. (And also because she can't bear now to attend to it: shampooing, brus.h.i.+ng.) She talks to two people, her a.s.sistant from the bookstore, who has had something of a front-row seat for all this-she used to raise her eyebrows at Rebecca all those months ago when Ben would come in, buy books, and leave without saying anything-and an old, kind friend from the school where she used to teach. Both of them are kind, in fact, but both of them seem to be saying without saying, ”What did you expect?” (In fact, they're not saying this. They've been watching Rebecca all this time with some concern, because she has seemed so engulfed in Ben and remote from everything else, but they have also been rooting for her, wanting it to work. The ”What did you expect?” is coming straight from Rebecca herself, spoken in a voice not unlike Harriet's.) Summer comes, then fall. Rebecca still can't walk by the store that sells the chocolate eggs.

”What's wrong?” Harriet asks over the phone. Her voice is feebler these days, hoa.r.s.e.

”Nothing,” Rebecca says. ”I'm just tired.”

”You want to hear something s.h.i.+tty?” Harriet asks.

”What?”

”They've stopped giving me physical therapy. They say I'm not making any progress. I said, 'Well how the h.e.l.l am I supposed to make progress if you stop giving me physical therapy?' But you want to hear something wonderful?”

”What?”

”When Ralph comes over, he moves my legs for me. And he makes me do arm exercises. So I don't atrophy.”

The nursing home calls.

”We're calling to let you know your mother is in the hospital again-she had a fever, and so we sent her over to the ER.”

The hospital calls. Harriet has another urinary tract infection that has gone undiagnosed-she can't feel any pain, because of the paralysis-and once again she's in severe septic shock. They're putting her on antibiotics.

Harriet calls. Her voice is weak and s.h.i.+very but animated, excited. ”Oh, my G.o.d-did you hear about the tunnel?”

”What tunnel?”

”It collapsed. Turn on the TV. It just happened, at the height of the morning commute, they said.”

”Where was this? What city?”

”I don't know. It was my roommate's TV, so I couldn't hear very well, and then the nurse or someone came in and shut it off. But it sounded awful. People were killed, they think some people may still be trapped in their cars. You need to turn it on.”

”Mom, we don't even know where it's happening.”

”It's in a commuter tunnel. The main one that leads to the city, they said. Or maybe it was the bridge that collapsed, the bridge that leads to the tunnel. But everybody goes through the tunnel.”

That night the hospital calls. Harriet's fever isn't coming down. They're going to try a different antibiotic.

Early the next morning, Rebecca is trying to decide what to do-call in the a.s.sistant, or close the store for the day, so she can go to Connecticut? Stay here and keep in touch with the hospital and Harriet by phone?-when the hospital calls again and someone tells her in a clear, soft voice that Harriet is dead.

She sits there.

She needs to call Cath. (Who will say, ”Do you think we need to do a funeral?”) She needs to call Ralph. (Who will cry. Who will be heartbroken. Who will now begin to decline very fast.) She wants to call Harriet.

It has all gone on for so long without Harriet dying that Rebecca lost track of the fact that Harriet was going to die.

Guilt: if she hadn't gotten tired and distracted-if she hadn't let herself be so easily dazzled-if she had not relaxed her vigilance, this would not have happened.

Even in the moment, she recognizes this guilt as irrational, bogus; but it pierces anyway.