Free The Museum of Modern Love by Heather Rose

away?’
    ‘I never want to be in a wheelchair . . . we need to talk about that.’
    He’d offered her his handkerchief and she blew her nose.
    ‘It’s okay,’ he said. ‘We don’t have to talk about anything now. Nothing like that’s going to happen.’
    ‘On your birthday,’ Lydia said, as the hospital staff were preparing her for the trip to East Hampton, ‘you want to open the door when they ring at eight o’clock. I know it’s early, but it will be worth it. Short of a blizzard, they’ll be there.’
    ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘But I’ll see you before that, won’t I? I’ll catch the train. Let me know when I can come and see you.’
    ‘We’ll talk about it. Just let me get well. Write. Make music. Please be happy. I love you.’
    He had stood on the pavement and stared after her as the ambulance drove her away. He’d been so busy trying to succeed that he hadn’t noticed that he’d failed, probably long ago. He just hadn’t noticed.
    Three days after she arrived at the Oaks, Lydia had a stroke and slipped into a coma. When she came out of it, nothing was the same.
    As soon as he heard about the stroke, Levin made plans to take Alice and drive to East Hampton, but then he’d had a call from Paul asking him to bring Alice and come in for a meeting. Paul Wharton had been Lydia’s father’s lawyer. The firm had a division for medical law and another for divorce. Paul introduced a younger lawyer who, with thirty-something clarity, talked Levin and Alice through the legal landscape that ensured Lydia’s wishes were met.
    ‘I’m so sorry, Levin,’ Paul said as they left the room. ‘If there’s anything I can do . . .’
    Levin had been too numb to reply.
    Out on the street, he said to Alice, ‘I have to see her.’
    ‘Dad, you can’t. She doesn’t want that. Weren’t you listening?’
    ‘How can you be sure?’
    ‘I’m not going to get in the middle of you two. I told you that in there. But you have to listen to what she wants.’
    ‘What about what I want? You all seem to have decided everything without any concern for me or how I might feel. She’s my wife. We’ve been married almost twenty-four years.’
    ‘Dad, what’s her condition called?’
    ‘TTP.’
    ‘What does it stand for?’
    ‘Thrombo-something. It’s unpronounceable.’
    ‘Thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura, Dad. It’s not so hard.’ She said it kindly.
    ‘I guess that’s why you’re going to be the doctor in the family.’
    Levin didn’t want to think about how Lydia looked. Was her head lolling? Did she make those terrible sounds he’d seen stroke victims make as they tried to talk? Did she dribble?
    If Lydia came home, Kawa might be his last score. New York was no place for walking sticks or wheelchairs. They’d have to go somewhere suburban. To some place called Sunshine Gardens or The Evergreens. They’d never travel. They’d need to live somewhere with tepid summers and flaccid winters. To live that way would be like being dead, Levin thought. She had saved him from nursing staff coming and going. From a house with railings in the hallways, handholds by the toilet and rubber mats in the bath. She had saved him from a plastic chair in the shower. She had saved him ramps and mushy food and the smell that sickness and decay brought with it.
    He had found it difficult enough when she got ill to catch the smell of her. He didn’t like what their bedroom became or how the malaise of her illness seemed to sap him of creative energy. Suddenly he was meant to tiptoe in his own house. Had to share the kitchen with medical staff he didn’t know and would never remember. He couldn’t stay up late playing the piano because she needed to sleep. He had to work on his keyboard under headphones.
    There was no Lydia to go out with. Meals became some arrangement on trays like old people. And he would order exactly what she’d wanted, only to have her eat barely a mouthful. Or be too tired to eat at all by the time