“Okay,” I say, privately thinking otherwise. The good ones often do, because they remember how it feels to be happy. It’s not a replacement; it’s more like an echo.
Then I hear Win’s voice behind me. “You can get remarried, Felix,” she says. “Just wait till I’m gone.”
There is a smile threaded through her words, and she looks better than she has all week. She has a bright scarf wrapped around her head and is wearing a sundress. Her eyes are dancing, illuminated. With the exception of bruises in her arms from where blood has been drawn, she doesn’t even look sick.
Felix stands and wraps an arm around her. He kisses her temple. “Don’t joke about that.”
“So,” she says, “I’d love to get some fresh air.”
Felix rises from the table, ready to do her bidding.
“Oh, baby,” she says, touching his arm. “You were up all night with me. I thought you could get some rest while Dawn and I take a walk.”
She looks good, but she doesn’t lookthatgood. I hesitate, but Win interrupts. “I meantyoucould walk, and I could be pushed.” Then she crosses to the refrigerator and lowers herself into the portable wheelchair. “It’s beautiful out.”
Honestly, it isn’t. It’s so humid that my skin feels rubbery; it’s stagnant and hot, and the sky is threatening rain. But Win hasn’t wanted to leave the house for some time. If she feels like getting some fresh air today, we’re going, even if a freak blizzard hits.
I grab my purse and an umbrella. Then I push Win outside and ease her chair backward off the porch. “Where to?” I ask.
She points. “That way,” she says, tilting her chin toward the sun.
I push her several blocks, until we are sitting outside a small dog park. There is an insane Chihuahua barking orders at a mastiff, and a mutt humping its owner’s leg. “He should get a dog,” Win announces.
“Felix? Does he like dogs?”
“I don’t know. I’m allergic, so it never came up.” She nods more definitively. “Yeah. A dog.”
“I’ll make a suggestion,” I tell her.
“What about a wife?” Win asks.
“Instead of a dog? Or in addition to?”
She smirks. “Do you think he’ll get married again?”
“How would that make you feel?”
Win considers this for a moment. “Fair,” she says softly.
I wonder what she means by that. Does she feel like he deserves a partner, because she is leaving him? Does she feel that, if Felix were the one dying, it is what she’d want for herself?
“I want to be remembered,” Win announces.
“Felix and I were kind of talking about that today,” I tell her. “I don’t think that’s going to be a problem for him.”
“I wasn’t talking about Felix,” she says.
“Is there a charity you support?” I ask. “Maybe there’s a way to have an art scholarship in your name—”
“No art,” Win interrupts flatly, cutting me off.
I let the heat fan off the sidewalk, rippling toward me. “We could do a legacy project,” I suggest. “Something you can leave behind that’s a reflection of who you are.”
“No art,” Win says again.
“Okay, okay!” I hold up my hands in surrender. “It doesn’t have to be art. I’ve stuffed Build-A-Bears with the T-shirts of a client so her grandkids would have them. I’ve made recipe books and written down oral histories. One woman was a master quilter with rheumatoid arthritis who couldn’t finish a project, so she dictated instructions for her daughter to finish. I even had a client with dementia who was a master gardener, but he started forgetting the names of plants, so we made a picture book and he’d flip through and try to remember. He got frustrated sometimes, but man, the joy on his face when he got it right—” I break off, realizing that Win is somewhere deep inside herself.
“There was an artist in Seattle, Briar Bates, who was dying of cancer,” I say carefully. “She wanted her art to outlive her. So she choreographed a water ballet for her friends to perform as a flash mob after she was gone. She sewed the costumes and organized the synchronized swimming and they all came together to do it in a fountain after she died. She wanted her friends to grieve together and for it not to be sad, but joyful.”
