“But you love your job.”
“I do,” he said carefully. “I did. But everything comes to an end. I’ll keep editing the books I’ve been working on, maybe do some freelancing after that. No authors left behind. Why are you looking at me like that?”
Because I’m afraid you won’t be happy. Because I’m afraid this means you’ll die. “I’m surprised, that’s all. Give me a minute tocatch up. Is there going to be a party?”
“Will Polly rent out the Century Club but this time decorate in a book theme? Will Skip give a speech about my wasted potential? Will there be a sheet cake in the shape of a book that all my former assistants will come to eat a square of?”
I told him all sheet cakes were in the shape of books.
“The answer is no, no party, and the going-away lunch is right now and you are the only person I’ve invited. In fact, I’m going to order a glass of Chardonnay to celebrate.”
“Does this have to do with your health?”
Eddie rolled his eyes. “Things were so much nicer back when you were in the dark.”
“The dark is no longer available.”
“Well, I shouldn’t complain. If Polly hadn’t spilled the beans, I never would have met Dr. Ocean, and I love Dr. Ocean.”
Eddie’s oncologist, whom he had seen so irregularly since his first diagnosis, had retired some months after his last treatment, and Jonathan got him in to see a woman named Dr. Ocean who practiced on the Upper East Side. Her office was in a building beside a hospital. Jonathan thought it was the hospital Eddie should go to should a hospital become necessary in the future.
“In fact, I’m going to chemo on Thursday,” he said. “Are you free?”
“Of course I’m free,” I said, which technically wasn’t true but would be true by Thursday. I had not retired, but I knew how to take a personal day from school.
Other things had changed in those ten interim months. Jonathan and his sister finally finished emptying the house in Fond du Lac. Near the end, Bea found a heavy lockbox in the wall behind the hot water heater. “What even made you look there?”Jonathan asked when she led him to the basement.
She crouched down. “Look. There’s no mortar between the bricks,” she said. “I was going to put it on the repair list.”
They drove the box to a locksmith, who had to make a key, a production more costly and time-consuming than they had imagined. Inside were six pocket watches from the 1800s, two of them solid gold, seventeen gold coins, and a diamond solitaire that neither brother nor sister had ever seen before—a small treasure chest. “Which is why you don’t hire a company to get rid of the past for you,” he told me over the phone. After the house had sold, they used part of the money to take the trip to Norway they had talked about. They went to Tromsö to see the northern lights, swaths of bright green illumination arching through the night sky. They both agreed it changed their understanding of what the world was capable of.
When all of that was over—the sorting and cleaning and sale and trip—Jonathan was left with only our relatively tidy house to manage, and he paced around it looking for things to do. He cleaned out the garage and built a new set of raised beds in the backyard. He went through all the files in his home office, and the files on his computer, getting rid of everything that could safely be gotten rid of, but it wasn’t enough to occupy him. There was only so much winnowing a person can do. Then he got a call from someone he knew at the hospital in Bronxville, not two miles from where we lived. Their chief administrator had been tapped for a better job in Chicago, giving three weeks’ notice. The hospital’s second-in-command was not sufficiently commanding. What they needed was an interim head who could steer the ship until a hiring committee could be assembled.
Did he run to the hospital? Did he dance his way there?
“Don’t make fun,” Jonathan said, confiding to me alone that his plan was to make himself indispensable.
I told Eddie I’d pick him up at his apartment on Thursday.
“That’s silly,” he said. “I’ll meet you there.”
I told him that’s not how chemo worked.
“How do you know?” he asked.
“Trust me,” I said. “I’m picking you up.”
And I did. We took a taxi to the Upper East Side. I brought a thermal bag of drinks and snacks. I signed him in.
“Oh, this is nice,” I said as the nurse led us down the hall. Every patient had their own pod with frosted-glass dividers and floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the city. The space was small but private, luminous.
“Even on a gray day like this, we don’t get complaints about the view,” the nurse said.
Eddie got into what looked like a dentist’s chair, and she brought him a blanket. “Watch me. I’m going to fall asleep.”
“You can’t fall asleep,” I said. “You have to keep me company.”
“You should get a hygienist,” Eddie said to the nurse. “People could get their teeth cleaned while they’re having chemo. Maybe a pedicure.” He wagged his feet back and forth.
