pushing up her sleeves. His mask-mouth moves a little, and she reads that as she needs to. More than paralysis, more than his shattered speech, that mouth changes him into another thing. “It’s a new antique grain. From Africa. Good for cell repair.”
He lifts his movable hand an inch, probably to stop her. Dorothy ignores him; she has gotten good at that. Soon antique grains dribble down his chin onto the bib. She wipes him with a soft cloth. His stroke-frozen face feels stiff to her touch. But his eyes—his eyes say, as clear as anything, You’re the last bearable thing left to me, aside from death.
The spoon goes in and out. Some atavistic urge in her wants to make airplane sounds. “Did you hear the owls last night? Calling to one another?” She wipes his mouth and spoons again. She remembers a moment back in week two, when he was still in the hospital. An oxygen mask clung to his face. A drip hung in his arm. He wouldn’t stop flicking at them with his one working hand. She had to call the nurse, who bound his hand with gauze restraints. His eyes peeked over the mask and rebuked her. Let me end it. Don’t you see I’m trying to help you?
For weeks her only thought was, I can’t do this. But practice pares back the impossible. Practice got her past the pragmatism of doctors and the pity of friends. Practice helps her shift his petrified torso without gagging. Practice teaches her how to hear his iceberg words. With a little more practice, she’ll master even being dead.
After breakfast, she checks if he needs cleaning. He does. The disgrace of the first time—suctioned out by a veteran nurse, back in the hospital—left him moaning. Even now, the rubber gloves, the sponge and hose and warm curds she carts away to the bathroom, wet his gargoyle eyes.
She cleans and shifts him in the bed and checks the bedsores. She’s all alone today. Carlos and Reba, the mobile care people, come only four times a week, twice as often as Ray would like and half as often as Dorothy needs. She puts her hand on his stone shoulder. Gentleness is the deputy of her fatigue. “TV? Or should I read?”
She thinks he says read. She starts in on the Times. But the headlines agitate him.
“Me, too, Ray.” She sets the paper aside. “Ignorance can’t hurt you, huh?”
He says something. She leans in. “Crss.”
“Cross? Not cross, Ray. A stupid joke.” He says it again. “You’re cross? Why?” Aside from the million perfect reasons, she means.
Another syllable squeezes from his rigid lips: “Wrd.”
It chills her. His morning ritual, for all the years they’ve lived together. Impossible now. Worst of all, it’s Saturday, demon puzzle day. The only day she has ever heard him curse.
They work the puzzle all morning. She gives the clues, and Ray stares off into the arctic. Took a hit, maybe. Like Brown’s Blue. Held at arms’ length. At geologic intervals, he groans out things that might be words. To her surprise, it’s easier on her than parking him in front of the TV. She even catches herself fantasizing that a daily crossword—just going through the motions—might help rebuild his brain.
“Early sign of spring. Five letters. Starts with an A.”
He stabs out two syllables she can’t make out. She asks him to repeat. A growl this time, still nothing but melted slag.
“Could be. I’ll pencil it in, and we’ll come back to it.” Like waltzing with a rag doll. “How about: Bud’s comforting comeback? Six letters, first one R, fourth one E, fifth one A.”
He stares at her, hemmed inside himself. Impossible to say what’s left, inside that locked room. His head hangs and his movable hand scrapes the covers, like some grazing beast pawing at the winter snow.
The morning overstays its welcome long before noon. She sets aside the grid, a mess of revisions and appeals. It’s time to think about lunch. Something he won’t choke on, that she hasn’t already served him several times this week.
Lunch is like crossing the Atlantic in a rowboat. In the afternoon, she reads to him. War and Peace. The campaign has been long and arduous, stretching out over weeks, but he seems to want it. She has spent so many years trying to convert him to fiction. Now she has a captive audience.
The story runs away, even from her. Too many people having too many feelings to keep track of. The Prince-hero