“I caught myself. That’s the important part.” He held her eyes for a second. “Goodnight, Margo.”
“Goodnight, Bernard.”
She listened—the floorboard by his kitchen creaked, and the recliner took his weight. Then she turned around and walked home.
She let herself in, shrugging off her coat and dropping her purse on the hook. The kitchen was dark. She stood in it for a minute with her hand on the counter, the tile cold under her palm, not quite sure why she was standing there instead of going to bed.
The studio was through the doorway. She crossed into it and turned on the desk lamp. The family portrait came off the easel and leaned against the wall, and a fresh canvas went up in its place. Thirty inches by forty. Unprimed cotton duck. The kind she only used for things she was serious about.
The color she mixed was gray with something else in it. She loaded the brush and stood in front of the canvas for a long time, but she didn’t paint.
After a while she set the brush down next to the palette, careful not to let the bristles touch anything, turned off the lamp, and went to bed.
CHAPTER EIGHT
It was still dark when Margo got to Bernie’s, five-fifteen, the porch light on—the small one with the moth-yellow bulb he’d never replaced.
He answered before she knocked, leaning against the doorframe with his coat over one arm.
“You’re early,” he said.
“I’m on time.”
“Which is early.” He stepped back to let her in.
He was dressed. A small bag by the door—the one with the intake instructions and the list of things to pack.
“I made you oatmeal,” she said.
“I can’t eat oatmeal right now, Margo.”
She opened the refrigerator and slid the Tupperware inside. “It’s for later, when you can.” She stood up and looked at him, then at the bag by the door. “You ready?”
Bernie picked up the bag and headed for the door. “Let’s go.”
The hospital was the one south of town with the new wing, where the orthopedic surgeons did the knees. The waiting area was beige and full of fluorescent light at five forty-five in the morning. The chairs were hard plastic, the kind that made you aware of your own spine. The intake nurse was a woman in her thirties with a clipboard and a voice trained for early hours.
Margo handed over Bernie’s insurance card and filled in the lines that needed filling. Relationship to patient: friend.
The nurse called Bernie back. Margo stood up with him. The nurse, gently, “You can wait here. We’ll come get you when he’s in recovery.”
Bernie stopped at the door. “Margo?”
“Yes?”
“Don’t leave.”
“Bernard. I’m here.”
The book she’d brought was a mystery she’d been trying to read for two months. She opened it and tried again. She looked at the page, closed it and put it back in her bag.
The waiting area had nine chairs and three other people in it—a woman about her age, knitting, a man in his fifties on his phone, scrolling and a teenager with headphones and a textbook open in her lap. Nobody looked at anybody.
Margo got coffee from the urn in the corner and drank it. It was terrible, but she drank it anyway.
She watched the clock. The clock was an institutional one, white with black hands, hung over the door to the back. Bernie had been in surgery for forty minutes when Margo stopped watching and started looking at the floor instead.
Her phone buzzed. Eleanor.
