“Okay,” she granted. She looked once more at the monitor. At the digital proof of hard facts that even a rising star could not refute. “How long?” she asked.
He twisted the letter opener over and over. He studied it so hard it could have been an exam question on the medical boards. “What I tell my patients in your …” He paused. “… in your situation—in any situation—is to get their affairs in order.” He reached over and took her hands. “Dear Annie,” he said. “One thing I know is that your mother and Sam will be a great support to you.”
* * *
Now she pulls the afghan up over her head. If only she could shut out the world as easily as she hides under this blanket. The afghan smells slightly ripe from the remains of buttered popcorn and pizza during Downton Abbey marathons, in addition to—why not fess up—that bit of in-honor-of-Maggie-Smith sex. She ought to take it to the cleaners. Or ask Sam—a rare request, since she’ll have to explain that it can’t be put in the industrial machines, that it can’t be commercially dried. It’s always easier to do things herself.
Though how much longer will she be able to keep doing things?
“Make another appointment for next week,” Dr. Buckley advised. “We should have the thoracic surgeon’s report as well as a referral to a specialist. And I want to check you out. Also … we must talk about what to expect.”
What to expect when you’re expecting … what? She didn’t want to know. She fled the waiting room before the receptionist could even grab the scheduling chart.
She’ll need to explain everything to Sam. How to work the washing machine, how to care for the silver, what polish to use on the furniture, how to fit the slipcovers over the sofa’s arms, how to bolster the desk leg with two and a half matchbooks, how to clean the oven, how to RSVP to a formal invitation, how to repot the philodendron, how to fix the running toilet. He’ll have to learn to remember doctor and dentist appointments, to renew subscriptions, to fertilize the lawn, to buy mop refills, to pair socks—an endless list of instructions. Theirs is not an equal division of labor. Sam pays the bills and takes the cars to Gus’s Gas for tune-ups. On his way home, he’ll fetch clothes already laundered, appliances already repaired. She does everything else. The domestic. The social. The practical. The pain-in-the-neck stuff.
It’s what she prefers. She’s good at the day-to-day. Sam is nicer, smarter, more loving, but he hammers his nails in crooked, and he never notices if his shoes need new soles. When he was sixteen, his mother still sewed name tags into all his clothes and ironed his jeans while everyone else was courting grunge. During his college years, Sam sent his laundry home and days later it would reappear, pressed, folded, buttons reattached, holes expertly darned, with foil-wrapped Hershey’s Kisses tucked between his undershirts. His mother kept both the infirmary and the school dispensary on speed-dial. He’d had a rheumatic fever scare as a child, and though it turned out to be a simple, treatable strep, his mother had declared her strapping son “frail.”
To their credit, Sam’s parents never complained that he’d married a Unitarian instead of the nice Jewish girl they might have hoped for him. Whoever he picked was just fine. They trusted his choices. They wanted only his happiness. The day Sam’s parents moved south, his mother bestowed the afghan on the two of them, then took Annie aside. “Marty and I can leave without worry,” she confided, “now that I know my boy is in such good hands.”
“That husband of yours is incompetent,” Ursula has grumbled on several occasions where Sam has failed to rise to the level of her requests. One involved a complicated dress and a baffling configuration of hooks and eyes. “Though don’t get me wrong, I love him to death.”
“Just let me,” Annie said, clasping a ribbon of black silk at Ursula’s shoulder.
“His mother spoiled him rotten. And now you’re doing the same.”
Sam wasn’t spoiled, she knew. He was just the sort of person people wanted to take care of. He was kind and sweet and unselfish, the opposite of Ursula. It was hardly his fault that he had grown used to having so many things done for him, his way magically smoothed by devoted parents who tucked him into bed with prophylactic chicken soup and ginger tea during flu season, who doted on his earnestness, his intelligence, his humor, his good nature.
And a wife who did the same, who felt lucky to do the same, despite a few never-voiced grumbles about a lack of personal space and a husband’s occasional neediness. On a balance sheet of debit and credit, Annie had clearly hit the jackpot; she basked in the unconditional love that was Sam’s huge return for her small services rendered.
Now she pulls the afghan off her head. She folds it over the arm of the sofa. She thinks back to Dr. Buckley’s words: “One thing I know is that your mother and Sam will be a great support to you.”
Forget Ursula.
But Sam …
Telling him will make it real, put a name on it. And every time he looks at her … But how can she not?
She sits still. On the landing, the grandfather clock ticks. The radiators steam. Out in the street, a snowplow scrapes patches of ice. From somewhere—the backyard next door?—a child laughs with delight. She thinks of the joy that day when she and Sam discovered the formula for the Paul Bunyan. Her next step will bring no joy.
Chapter Three
She hears Sam’s car in the driveway. Just her luck that he’s earlier than usual. She could invent an errand, driving round the block to give herself extra minutes to prepare. Would a few whirls through the intersections of Elm and Main make her revelation easier—or just delay the inevitable? If she were Ursula, she’d be great at picking the right words without any need to rehearse this particular soliloquy. Why couldn’t she have inherited both Ursula’s talent and her confidence? Has there ever been a daughter so unlike her mother? But then, consolation (or not), Ursula’s never had a Sam.
Annie peeks out the window at Sam’s Volvo, its bumper sticker flaunting the familiar logo and sketch of the Bunyan. One of its corners is curled and stripped, the A in Annie’s nearly torn off. She’s feeling stripped and torn herself. Stripped bare, defenseless, scared.
Which makes what she’s about to do even more urgent. At least she’s got the starting point. Her sundae gluttony has paid off, not just the predictable sugar high (if only), expanded hips, and oral gratification, but also unexpected dividends: the gift of Mr. Miller’s revelations about Mrs. Bouchard’s lack of a will has supplied her introductory paragraph, egged on by Dr. Buckley’s “get your affairs in order.” She’ll move from the general to the specific, starting with the will and segueing to her illness. How can she not tell Sam? How can she even contemplate hiding such momentous information from the closest person on earth to her? They’ve never kept secrets from each other. He would want to know the truth, wouldn’t he? Even though she’ll be destroying him. Her. Them.
She finds him in the kitchen, reading the paper. And just like that—divine intervention?—he offers her the cue. “I see old Mrs. Bouchard died,” he reports, turning the paper inside out to exhibit a dated photo of the deceased, who even in her youth scared local kids enough that hardly any trick-or treater, Annie included, would venture up those rickety stairs on Halloween.