An acute longing rushes through her as she misses her husband in a way she hasn’t allowed herself to for months. She hasn’t allowed herself much of anything since that day—not feelings, not comfort, not joy, not... hope. She looks over at Tommy, curled beside his beloved dog.
“What do you want?” she’d asked him when this all began.
What do you want?she asks herself now.
“Why didn’t you tell us?” Blythe asks Sylvie, pulling Hope from her reverie. She looks back to the women.
Sylvie glances nervously in Tommy’s direction and then back at the little ring of them. “I didn’t want him to know,” she says, lowering her voice. “I didn’t want him to use it as some sort of leverage.”
“When we were in the bathroom you could’ve told us,” Blythe says. She sounds hurt, like she has been lied to.
Sylvie rushes to reassure her. “I didn’t know when we were in the bathroom. I didn’t know till he came in carrying the pizzas.”
“That was him?” Nadine says with surprise in her voice. “He’s way taller than you.”
Sylvie smiles back and nods. “That he is. But we’ve made the height difference work out for almost...” Her voice gives out on her as she thinks of their approaching anniversary, of where things could be by then. “Almost fifty-five years,” she manages to finish.
“Fifty-five years,” says Nadine, incredulous. “Tommy and I didn’t even make it three.”
They hear the sound of the dog’s collar jingle and all turn to look, expecting Tommy to be rushing over at the mention of his name, but he is still on the floor with his back to them. The dog’s back and Tommy’s back rise and fall in tandem. Sylvie wonders if Tommy has fallen asleep again. Now it doesn’t matter. They will not need to attempt an escape with the negotiator and an officer in their midst.
So she asks Hope the question that’s been on her mind all day. “Has Robert been... okay? Today?”
“Okay?” asks Hope. “What do you mean? Is he... ill?” She doesn’t want Bo, er, Robert, to be ill.
“He’s been having some problems with... forgetting things. It’s reached a level of concern recently.” She frowns. “I wrote it off as just aging at first, but... I can’t anymore.”
Hope’s heart sinks. “You mean like dementia? Alzheimer’s?”
Sylvie looks down at the envelope under her stool. “Something,” she says. “We’ve not gone so far as to see a doctor about it. Though I know we should, it hasn’t been going on that long and I’ve—” She raises her gaze back to eye level with Hope. “I’ve been pretending it isn’t happening. Going to the doctor feels like admitting that it is, but then this weekend...”
She looks over to Morrow, to Blythe. “You two weren’t the only ones here to mail something that you were uncertain about today.” She slides off her stool, retrieves the envelope, then takes her seat again before holding it up for them to see.
“I’m supposed to be sending this to our son.” She points to the address. “He’s also Robert. Junior. It’s papers to give him power of attorney over our affairs, to take the control away from his dad. He’s insisting we sell our house here. He wants to move us to a memory care facility near where he lives in Virginia, which is where we’re from.” She stops, swallows.
“He and his family came to visit this past weekend for somefamily time. Or I thought that’s what they were coming for. But it was a ruse. He was really here to give me these papers to sign.” She shakes her head. “He made me promise that I’d sign them and mail them back so he could”—she holds up her hands and makes air quotes—“get things moving.”
Sylvie looks down and runs her hands along the envelope, and as she does, Hope sees a single tear hit the manila surface, then sink into the paper, leaving behind a dark circle. Soon more tears join it. No one says a word as Sylvie weeps silently. After a while she speaks, but she doesn’t look up. “We waited our whole lives for this. To be here, in this place, full-time and not just for a vacation. To have time for just the two of us, without work or family or anything to get in our way. And now... our son wants to take it away. And maybe it’s the right thing to do—I know it might be—but that doesn’t mean it feels right. Or good.”
“Why is he making you sell your house?” Morrow, who has been very quiet ever since she shared about her daughter, speaks up.
“He’s afraid I can’t handle Robert by myself. He says I need help, and I don’t really have any here. No family, and the friends we’ve made are nice, but they’re more like acquaintances.” Sylvie presses her mouth in a thin line and lowers her eyebrows. “Keep in mind he’s not volunteering to help. He’s saying there will be people who can help at the place where he’d put us.”
That’s exactly what it feels like, Sylvie thinks.Like he’s shelving us, like a child who has outgrown his toys, so he puts them away.But she does not say that to these women. What she’s said just now is already more than she’s said to anyone. Yet it feels natural to unburden herself, a relief of sorts. After all they’ve been through together, why not admit to why she was here in the first place?
“Anyway,” she says, “I’m glad today is one of his good days.”
Hope makes a face. “Other than one brief moment, I neverwould have suspected there was any sort of problem. He’s been a big help to me, actually.”
“That’s why he came here today,” Sylvie says. “To be a help.”
Hope shakes her head. “I thought that was why when he first showed up. But as I think back, I’m betting once he figured out you were here, he inserted himself any way he could.”
Sylvie smiles at that. She wonders how exactly he’d put it together. He’d been watching—what else?—golf when she left the house. She’d only admitted to going to the grocery store. But maybe she’d thrown out that she needed to go by the post office as she walked out the door? She’d been flustered, her mind focused on her errand, on that infernal envelope. She can’t recall just what she revealed.
She’d been more concerned about what she’d say to him after she returned than about what to say when she left. How would she tell him what she’d gone and done, and without asking him first? This isn’t how their marriage was built. This isn’t who they’ve been in all the years they’ve spent together. But things were changing, she’d told herself. She had to do what’s best. And whether Robert agreed or not, their son was pretty convincing. So she hadn’t consulted her best friend, her “life partner,” as the young people say.
Then it came to her: the police scanner. He kept it running all the time. It sat on top of the TV cabinet turned to a volume so low she assumed he didn’t really hear it. He just liked that it was on. She’d joked with him so many times that old habits die hard.
