She takes the chair beside him rather than her usual one across the table. He leans over and kisses her. She smells coffee mixed with onions and pickles.
“Even the obit writer,” he continues, “seems to be having a hard time conveying anything good about her, except that she was devoted to her cat.” He chuckles. “Well, I hope Agnes inherits a bundle. She deserves every cent, tending to that miserable women all those years.”
“I stopped in the drugstore, and Mr. Miller told me. He also told me she died intestate and that heirs are coming out of the woodwork.”
“Poor Agnes.” Sam sighs.
“Speaking of which …” Annie begins.
Sam sneezes. “I think I may be getting a cold,” he says. “My throat’s a little raw. Maybe I caught your cough.”
“At this point, I doubt it’s contagious.”
“Let’s hope. You know how I hate being sick.” He puts down the paper. “How was your day?”
“Okay,” she says. She pinches her wrist. Why is she such a wimp? Such a coward? Why can’t she answer, as intended, very much not okay and explain why?
“Did you pick up my stuff from the cleaners?” he asks. “The jacket and pants I spilled hot chocolate all over? Not my fault. Megan bumped into me,” he adds.
“They’ll be ready tomorrow.” How long must they string out these banalities, this preamble, until she can detonate the bomb that will explode their world? She studies Mrs. Bouchard’s photo now sneering up at her from the Passamaquoddy Daily Telegram. “As I was about to say,” she begins.
“Do we have any lozenges left in the medicine cabinet?”
“Sam!” she exclaims. “I’m trying to talk to you.”
“Sorry,” he says. “Go on.”
She goes on. “I think we should make up our wills.”
Sam frowns. “Whatever for?” he asks.
She points to the photo of old Mrs. Bouchard. “Because …”
He interrupts. “Don’t be ridiculous. We’re not going to die tomorrow.”
“We need to do this.”
“Look, even without a will, everything will go to you or me. After we’re both dead, who cares? Why bring up such an unsettling topic now?”
“Because …” she repeats.
He cuts in again. “We have no children. No one’s going to fight over our—ha!—fortune. Besides, we’ll outlive my mother and father. And I can’t imagine anything felling Ursula.”
“We can’t be sure.”
“It’s in the natural order of things for children to survive their parents. We’ve already disrupted that order once, we’ve already had a loss …”
“Which doesn’t mean there couldn’t be more losses.”
“Statistically”—he considers, his voice pedagogical—“not probable. If you look at insurance tables for life expectancy …”
“Statistics are irrelevant when … Sam, I could be sick, very sick—”
“As could I. This cold might turn into pneumonia. Or even worse. I’d end up bedridden. Tied to an oxygen canister. Sent to a TB sanatorium. Do they still exist? Crack all my ribs from coughing. Have to move to Arizona for the air, give up Bunyans to subsist solely on applesauce and Cream of Wheat, then be forced to take medicines with all those terrible side effects they warn you about on TV ads.” He laughs.
“Not funny.”
“It is, sort of,” he counters.
“I hate to break into your litany of disasters, imagined disasters, Sam, especially when you’re on such a roll, but I’ve got something I’m trying to tell you,” she persists.
“Okay. I know it’s prudent to make a will. I acknowledge you’re the practical one in the family, and that, as usual, you’re right. We could be hit by the proverbial bus or choke on a chunk of cheese. Still, what’s the rush? We’ll get to that in due course. At the moment, however”—he sneezes, blows his nose on a napkin—“the very thought of making a will, of imagining one of us dying …”
“I understand your reluctance. Nevertheless,” she ventures, “what if … one of us … me …?”
He shakes his head. He puts his hands over his ears.
She leans closer. She notes the stubborn set of his jaw, his toddler’s hear-no-evil posture. She assumes he can read her as well as she can read him. Does he already sense the train heading toward them, the impossibility of derailing it, the hopelessness of rescuing the damsel in distress now tied to the tracks?
“I refuse to listen any more to these silly suppositions. Annie, I could never live without you. You know that. If something happened to you, well, I’d just …” He stabs his thumb against his heart. “There’s no way I could go on without you.” He rubs his chest. “I plan to grow old with you.”
“There’s no guarantee, Sam.”
“For me, there is. It’s what I count on. Otherwise …” He lowers his chin to his hands.
She studies him. Tears have started to form in the corners of his eyes. He squeezes her shoulder, pulls his chair back from the table. He points at the newspaper. “Even dead, Mrs. Bouchard still casts her evil spell, provoking this totally unpleasant conversation. Right now, all I want is to swallow two aspirins, get in bed, and take a nap. End of discussion. I love you, Annie. That’s all we need to say to each other.”
He heads upstairs. As soon as she hears the medicine cabinet squeak open, she walks to the front hall. She picks her pocketbook off the table. She digs underneath the tangle of receipts, Chap Stick, comb, rubber bands, pens, and the matchbook from Gus’s Gas for the number to Dr. Buckley’s office.
Is there a wobble in the receptionist’s voice when Annie identifies herself? “I’ll put you right through,” says Carolyn Connelly, sparing her the usual Wassup and How’s your mom?
“So glad you called,” says Dr. Buckley. “I’ve got a patient here. Hang on while I step into the other room.”
Annie registers the clank of a metal file drawer, the thud of footsteps, the closing of a door. “How can I help you?” Dr. Buckley asks.
“It’s about Sam.”
“Would you like to make an appointment for me to talk to him?”
“Absolutely not,” Annie says, more harshly than she intended. “I don’t want him to know.”
“Know …?”
“I mean my lungs …”
The clock ticks on. The radiator still hisses. Dr. Buckley is silent for so long that Annie wonders if they’ve been cut off. But then he says, in a measured tone, “He will have to be told.”
“I tried. Unsuccessfully. He shut me down.”
“Then try again. And tell your mother, too.”
“Eventually,” says Annie. “But not now.”
“This is folly, young lady.”
“This is what I want.”
More forcefully, he urges, “Something I strongly advise against. For your family’s sake. For your own sake.” Then his voice turns softer, gentler. “You’ll need help in processing all of this. I can refer you to a counselor. And by the end of the day, I should receive the name of a top-notch oncologist.”