Free Ordinary Life by Elizabeth Berg Page B

think he’s losing it.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “I think he’s getting … I don’t know, confused. He talks about food all the time. He says that’s the worst thing, that he can’t eat. He never cared about eating before. But now he stares at food commercials on television like he’s seeing a ghost. He’s just … mesmerized by them. And then he wants me to eat
for
him. Like he’ll see something on TV and I’ll have to go and get it. Then I have to sit down and eat it in front of him, and he keeps saying, “What’s it feel like? How does it taste?” She laughed a little, embarrassed.
    “Well,” I said, “are you … uncomfortable doing that for him?”
    She stared at me for a long moment. Then she said, “I do anything Richard asks me to. It’s not eating in front of him that bothers me. It’s just … I’m worried about his mind. I mean, is he going to go crazy before he dies?”
    “I don’t think so,” I said. “I don’t know. But I don’t think so. There’s no reason for him to.”
    She looked at me.
    “I mean physiologically.”
    “Right,” she said.
    I put Richard’s new dressing on, checked on his equipment, and prepared to leave. “Wait,” he said when I picked up my bag.
    “Yes?”
    “Have you got a minute?”
    I hesitated, then put down my bag. “Sure.”
    He sighed, looked away from me, out the window. “I wanted to tell you that I’m sorry about the way I was to you. I’m not like that, really.”
    “I know, Richard.”
    He nodded, looked down, and when he looked up again, I saw tears in his eyes. “I was thinking today about what’s going to happen to me after I.… You know. I was thinking about being in the ground.”
    “Uh-huh.” I felt something like fear come into me, sit down in my stomach.
    “It’s just so
weird
, you know. That you won’t
be
.”
    “Yes.”
    He wiped his eyes. “Well, I just wanted to tell you that it’s not you I’m mad at.”
    “I know that.”
    “You’ll be here tomorrow, right?”
    “Eleven o’clock.”
    “Okay.” He nodded. “Okay.”
    He walked me to the door, shut it softly behind me. I heard the stereo come on as I walked down the steps. Billie Holiday. “Rocky Mountain Blues.”
    He began wanting me to stay for at least an hour a day. I told my agency that I wanted to have just him as a patient, and they gave Ida to another nurse and took me off the available list for the moment. I didn’t tell my husband—he would complain about the income we’d lose. I’d deal with that later if I had to. Perhaps I’d never have to tell him at all.
    I sat with Richard in the kitchen, or on the sofa beside him, or most often, because of his weakness, at the foot of his bed. Once,he asked me if I was happy in my marriage. I hesitated, then said, “Well, it’s not always easy.”
    “You know what they say about women who look down when they talk about their marriage, don’t you?”
    I looked up.
    “You know what’s funny, Abby? I think you’re the one who needs refuge. Do you have a lover?”
    “No.”
    “You’ve never cheated on your husband?”
    “
No!
”
    “Ah. So you’ve thought about it.”
    I said nothing.
    He shook his head. “Too bad.”
    “What about you, Richard? Do you think you had a perfect relationship?”
    “You mean,
have
?”
    I flushed, looked down again.
    One day, talking about Laura, he said, “We do have a good thing. But I never tell her, ‘I love you.’ She always wants me to say it, but I don’t. He picked up her hairbrush, stroked the back of it. “I’ve never told that to any woman.”
    “It’s not too late, you know,” I said.
    He snorted.
    “No,” I said. “It’s not.”
    He picked up his guitar, strummed it, then handed it to me. “You know how to play one of these?”
    I nodded. “I used to love folk songs, I played all the time in college.”
    “Do one for me.”
    “Oh, God. I don’t know if I remember.”
    “You will.”
    He was right. The music came back