How It Ended: New and Collected Stories - By Jay McInerney Page 0,62

of that week, and each time Sybil was inconsolable. Faye finally decided just to say that Hunt was on a business trip. In fact, she herself had started tearing up whenever she broached the subject of her father's death.

Dr. Harrington came by, as promised, dressed for tennis. If his legs were any indication, Faye imagined he was very fast on the court. He appeared to be in his mid-thirties, roughly her own age. He spent a good fifteen minutes with Sybil and then sat down with Faye in the library.

“Great room,” he said, admiring the leather-bound volumes and the hunting prints. Faye had always found it oppressively masculine and studiously old-world.

“How does she seem to you?”

“She seems to be improving.”

“She forgets things,” Faye said.

“That's understandable.”

“For example, that her husband is dead.”

“It could be vascular dementia from the stroke, which may reverse itself. I think we also have to consider the possibility of Alzheimer's. I gave her a Mini-Cog—that's a little test where you ask the patient to remember a list of common household objects and draw the face of a clock. She drew the clock, but she couldn't remember the objects. There's a chance she may improve, but it's more likely we're dealing with progressive dementia. I wish I could be more optimistic. On the other hand, I can say with certainty that she's better off here at home, as long as she's properly cared for. Forgive me for prying, but I gather you live in New York.”

She was reminded that there were no secrets here, and for a fleeting moment she was tempted to revise her plan and book the first flight back to New York. “I'll be here for as long as she needs me.”

“That could be a long time,” he said.

“I know.”

“Well, I'm sure your mother is very happy to have you back,” he said. “Although I imagine there may be some weeping and gnashing of teeth up in New York.”

“I think they're thoroughly sick of me. I stayed too long at the party.”

“I doubt that very much.”

“There're a few boys up there in New York who wish I'd never left Nashville.”

“Way I hear it, there're a few boys down here who wish the same thing.”

Now she knew he was flirting, but she wasn't really in the mood. Just now she felt like she'd dated enough men for the next five or six lifetimes.

Over the course of the following week, Sybil inquired repeatedly as to the whereabouts of her husband, and the business trip story was wearing thin. Faye's next idea was to tape Hunt's obituary to her mother's bathroom mirror, hoping that the shock of seeing it there every morning might be partly alleviated by seeing her husband's accomplishments enumerated and praised. But the first morning, Martha came down from Sybil's bedroom to report that she was sobbing uncontrollably in her bed.

“I don't know what I'm going to do without him,” she wailed when Faye went up to comfort her.

“Momma, you've been doing without him for three years.”

“He was the only man I ever loved.”

“There wasn't another like him,” Faye said.

“You know, it was your father who fixed things when the colored people demonstrated at the lunch counters. He was president of the chamber of commerce and he convinced everyone that the time had come to integrate. The only reason so many went along with it was the respect they bore for your father's opinion. He said it was just good business.”

The memory of her husband's civic heroism seemed to revive her spirits, and with Faye's help she dressed, then spent the afternoon tending her roses. That night they watched several episodes of Upstairs, Downstairs on video. But the next morning, Faye found her crouched on the bathroom floor, weeping. During the night she'd forgotten again, and the sight of the obituary had come as a shock. She spent the rest of the day in bed. Two days later, Faye removed the newspaper clipping from the mirror, and when Sybil asked about Hunt, Faye or Martha would reply that he was away on business, an answer that now seemed to satisfy her.

When Dr. Harrington came by a week after his first visit, Faye declined his invitation to dinner, suggesting instead that he join her for whatever Martha, an excellent cook, was rustling up. The dinner, chicken and egg bread with white gravy and collards, was a guilty pleasure, but the conversation seemed to flag whenever they veered off medical topics, and Dr. Harrington tended to chew