A Widow's Story Read Free Page B

(This, our final meal together in our house, the final meal Ray would prepare for us, was Ray’s specialty: fried eggs, whole grain bread, Campbell’s soup—chicken with wild rice. I would call him from the airport—Philadelphia or Newark—when my plane arrived and he would prepare our meal for my arrival home an hour later. If the season was right he would also place on my desk a vase with a single flower from his garden . . . ) At dinner he’d been in good spirits but shortly afterward with disconcerting swiftness at about 10:30 P.M. he began coughing fitfully; he’d become very tired, and went to bed early.
    Forever afterward I would think: I was away for two days. I was a “visiting writer” at U-C Riverside at the invitation of the distinguished American studies critic and scholar Emory Elliot, formerly a Princeton colleague. In these two days my husband had gotten sick. Ray would acknowledge, yes, probably he’d been outside without a jacket or a cap and possibly he’d gotten a cold in this way though we are told that this isn’t so— scientific tests have proved —that cold air, even wet, doesn’t cause colds; colds are caused by viruses; bad colds, by virulent viruses; you don’t “catch” a cold by running out to the mailbox without a jacket, or hauling recycling cans to the curb; unless of course you are exhausted, or your immune system has been weakened. In these ways you may “catch” a cold but it is not likely to be a fatal cold, possibly just a “bad cold” which is what my husband seems suddenly to have, that has spiraled out of control.
    Yet another wrong thing—I will recall this, later—as I reason with my husband now in the kitchen where our two cats are staring at us wide-tawny-eyed, for how incongruous our behavior, at this twilit hour before dawn when we are usually in another part of the house—suddenly he gives in and says yes, all right—“If you think so. If you want to drive me.”
    “Of course I want to drive you! Let’s go.”
    So long as the ER is the wife’s suggestion, and the wife’s decision, maybe it’s all right. The husband will consent, as a way of humoring her. Is this it? Also, as Ray says, with a shrug to indicate how time-wasting all this is, our Pennington doctor will probably want him to have tests and he will have to go to the Princeton Medical Center anyway.
    Without my help—though I’ve offered to help—Ray prepares for the trip to the ER. He doesn’t want me to fuss over him, even to touch him, as if his skin hurts. (This is a flu symptom—isn’t it? Our Pennington physician makes me uneasy at times, so readily does he prescribe antibiotics for Ray when a “bad cold” is interfering with Ray’s work; I worry that an excess of antibiotics will affect Ray’s immune system.)
    The cats stare after us as we leave the house. Still so early in the morning, scarcely dawn! Something in our manner has made them wary, suspicious. And then how strange it seems, to be driving our car with my husband beside me. Rarely do I drive our car—we have just the single car, the Honda—with Ray beside me, not driving; unless we are on a trip, then we share the driving; still, Ray does most of it, and always difficult driving in urban areas and on congested roads. I am less anxious now, for we’ve made a good decision, obviously; I am in control, I think. Though our Princeton friends without exception insist that only in Manhattan and (possibly) in Philadelphia can one find competent medical treatment, this ER is the closest by many miles, and the most convenient; there Ray will be given immediate treatment, and he will be all right, I’m sure.
    He isn’t taking anything with him to suggest that he expects even to stay overnight.
    On the drive into Princeton Ray gives me instructions about work he needs to have me do: calls to make, book orders to process, his typesetter in Michigan to contact. Though he’s ill he is also—he is primarily—concerned