The kind who wander around in masochistic determination until they contract an incurable disease or are roasted on a fire or skinned alive, they all agreed.
“Joy, sweetie, at the very least you need to hire someone. Hire a saint,” Natalie added.
When she got home, she noticed how gray Aaron looked, his hair, his beard, his face, and his hooded sweatshirt. He was not a man who was meant to be gray. Some men are, but Aaron ought to have been ruddy. He never had been, but he ought to have been. That’s what Joy thought.
“You have to get some fresh air,” she said.
He waved an enormous hand at her, as if he were swatting a fly.
“You’ll get too stiff, sitting around all day.”
He waved her words away again.
“Do you hear me? Where are your hearing aids?”
“WHAT?”
“Where are your hearing aids?” Joy repeated loudly.
“What are you talking about?” Aaron said. “Hearing aids!” He shook his head at her folly.
“I’m going to kill you, Aaron,” she said.
“WHAT?”
“I’m going to kill you, I said!”
Aaron smiled. “So you say.” He took her hand and kissed it.
“‘Joyful, Joyful, we adore thee,’” he sang as she helped him up and over to the walker. He often called her Joyful.
“Well,” she said.
“‘Hearts unfold like flowers before thee.’”
Sometimes the songs were hymns, sometimes bits of British vaudeville from the last century, but mostly Baroque, mostly Purcell. The lyrics still came warbling out, even when he could not remember what the conversation was about, perhaps more so when he couldn’t remember, couldn’t keep up. Aaron had wanted to be a singer, a classical singer, but he’d gone directly into the family business instead. The Depression did that to people, made them think straight. Or warped them into shape, that was more the case with Aaron. It had taken Joy many years to understand that.
When they got outside, Aaron leaned heavily on his walker. It had wheels, which was a help. A shiny red walker with wheels. He called it his little red wagon.
“Lift up the front wheels,” she said.
“Get away. I know what I’m doing.”
“Tilt it.”
“I’m tilting, I’m tilting. It’s not moving. It’s broken.”
Joy took his arm. “Lean on me.” She tilted the walker and got the wheels on the curb. “It’s like a shopping cart.”
They continued down the street toward Central Park. She could see the trees, still leafy and colorful. It had been a warm autumn. “Aren’t they beautiful?” she said.
Aaron was breathing heavily. He was not singing. He was not calling her Joyful. He was not even answering her.
“This is ridiculous” was all he said, muttering it to himself.
She slowed her gait to match his, an excruciating shuffle. “Come on, come on,” she said.
But he had stopped completely now and looked around him helplessly. “Where are we going, anyway?”
“To the park. You love the park.”
“I hate the park. I’m going home.”
“You love the park. I brought your camera.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Where are we going, anyway?”
They ended up stopping at the little park in the middle of Park Avenue at Ninety-sixth Street.
“You can sit here and rest,” Joy said.
Aaron’s chin immediately dropped to his chest.
“Are you asleep?” she said. “Or dead?”
“Which would you prefer?” he asked, his eyes still closed.
“I really wanted to go to Central Park.”
Aaron opened his eyes and lifted his head. “Why?”
“Why? Because it’s a beautiful day.”
They sat for a few minutes silently.
“Pretty flowers,” Aaron said, pointing a shaky hand at some late roses. “Beautiful, beautiful. Right here in the city.”
Joy choked up a little. Because that was Aaron, her Aaron, the real Aaron. “Beautiful,” she said.
“I should take a picture.”
She handed him the little camera, and he fumbled with it for a minute, then said, “It’s broken,” and almost threw it back at her.
Joy put it in her tote bag. She had three tote bags, different sizes and different patterns. They hung on the handles of Aaron’s red walker, two on the left, one on the right. She unhooked one of the bags on the left and stuffed it into the one on the right. “That’s better.”
“What have you got in there, Joyful?” Aaron said.
“I don’t even know. But if I leave one bag home, it’s always the one that has something I need.”
He took her hand and held it. He stared off in the soft, blank way he sometimes had these days. His body sagged. The hand that held hers loosened and came to rest, like a large pale leaf, on his lap.
While he slept, Joy, too, closed her eyes. The afternoon sun was warm and comforting on her face. Sunlight was full of vitamin D. And cancer—that, too. Vitamin D, cancer … how to choose? She should have worn a hat. But how could a person walk around New York City in October in a sun hat? She refused to become an eccentric old lady padding around in bedroom slippers and a floppy hat. She pulled a thermos out of one of her bags, then another thermos. She shook Aaron awake. “Would you like a little Cream of Wheat?” she asked him. “I have an extra.”
5
Daniel emerged from the subway and smelled the overripe fruit from the fruit stand. It would be just a quick visit to his parents, he had to go to a school assembly, he could not remember what sort, a concert, a play, a reading of the “books” the children had written. That was the most surprising thing about the school Cora and Ruby went to, the number of artistic events held there despite the absence of a budget for the arts. All those underemployed artistic mothers and fathers filling in the gaps. He bought some strawberries from the vendor for his parents and a banana for himself, which he ate as he walked to their building.
“For me?” his mother said at the door, taking the banana peel. “You shouldn’t have.”
He waited for the story of the time he had absentmindedly put a banana peel in the medicine cabinet. He’d been daydreaming about girls, probably. Sex. One did in those days. One still did.
“Oh, it was so funny, Danny,” his mother was saying. “Do you remember that, Aaron? He was twelve or thirteen, just a little older than Ruby.”
He wondered if Ruby daydreamed about sex. Terrible stray thought.
“I brought you strawberries,” he said.
His father looked gaunt. He’d always been thin, a lanky cowboy sort of thin, and tall, too tall to reach sometimes. But he had never looked eaten away like this.
“You get a haircut?” Daniel asked him. “Tony still cutting your hair?”
When they moved to the East Side, his father had searched the neighborhood for a barber who could cut his beard the way he liked it. Daniel used to tag along when he was very small, and Tony would put a hot towel on his face.
“Tony?” his mother said. “Tony died years ago.”
Joy began talking about all the people in the neighborhood who had died. If they hadn’t died, they had gone out of business. She held the green plastic basket of strawberries and Daniel noticed her fingers were already stained pink with the juice.