“When I would take Candy for treatment—” Jonathan said.
I stopped him. “It’s not the same thing.”
“Why is it not the same thing?”
“Because she was young and she was dying and you had two children and she was the center of your life.”
He ignored me. “I’d make sure they’d schedule her first thing in the morning because then it was easier for me. We’d take the girls to school and I’d bring her to the hospital. I’d go with her to chemo and they’d get her started, and then I’d tell her I needed to run upstairs for a minute. I’d tell her someone was coming in for a meeting or that I had a call to return. I’d tell her I’d be right back. Are you walking?”
“Jonathan, don’t do this.”
“Are you walking?”
“I am.”
“And Candy would always say, fine, go. I’d tell her I’d be right back and then I would talk to anyone who came in my office. I’d go looking for people to talk to so I didn’t have to go back down there and sit with her.”
“You did the best you could.”
“No, I didn’t,” he said. “Not even close. And the worst of it was her sisters could have been there with her, or her mother, or her friends. They all wanted to go, and I said no because I wasthe one who took her to chemo. Everybody knew that. I took her there and then I left her by herself.”
“If the goal is to make me feel better, you’re not succeeding.”
“It’s hard to show up for someone you love when they’re suffering,” Jonathan said. “I think I could do it now. I think I could do it for you, but when Candy was dying, I was too afraid.”
“I know.”
“You do know,” Jonathan said. “That’s what I’m saying. Eddie is sick and you’re there. Same way you were there for Buddy.”
“Wait, there’s a taxi.”
“Okay,” he said. “Go get the taxi. Let me know when you’re on the train.”
I told him I loved him in my most rushed voice and then ended the call. I did love Jonathan, but I didn’t want to think about the ways he had failed Candy any more than I wanted to think about the ways Skip had failed Eddie. All I wanted was to be one more person on this hot and anonymous sidewalk thinking about nothing at all. Except maybe Whistler. Whistler, who had exceeded everyone’s expectations.
(FRIDAY AND SATURDAY, JANUARY 18 AND 19, 1980. WINCHESTER, MASSACHUSETTS.)
The hands on Eddie’s watch glowed in the dark, two green sticks of illumination against the all-encompassing darkness. Timex. Takes a licking and keeps on ticking. Abigail had bought it for him for his birthday and he liked it. The casing was rugged and had an exterior ring of numbers to track Greenwich Mean Time in case he decided to fly a plane. “She bought you a Timex?” Skip had said to Eddie the last time they were together, the Timex in his hand. They’d split the difference on travel, each taking the train to New London in order to be home for dinner. Eddie had put the watch on the nightstand. Was that the last time? He did not mean if he made it out of this situation alive, he would break it off with Skip. He meant there was a possibility that things might not work out. That the outcome of driving up to a raspberry farm in the middle of winter, in the middle of the night to see the stars, could be hisown death. He never thought that Daphne could die. His imagination was not big enough to encompass that. She would find a way out, but he was shattered and pinned and possibly freezing. The thought made his eyes sting, which was ridiculous. The last thing he needed to do was start crying over his own death. His missed potential. His unlived dreams. If they did get out of there, and he still put the odds in their favor, he should break it off with Skip once and for all, devote himself to Abigail and Leda and this one, this dream child curled against his chest beneath the silver space blanket. He would knock off the occasional pickups, too. No good would come of that. And he would write a novel. A great novel. Who gets such a chance at thirty-two? He thought of Robert Frost, “Wild Grapes,”And the life I live now’s an extra life / I can waste as I please on whom I please.
But if he could waste his life on whom he pleased, wouldn’t it please him more to waste it on men? Survival could finally allow him to be gay because he’dalwaysbeen gay. Why was he married to Abigail? Why had he waited around for Skip? Couldn’t a second chance mean finally, fully, living the life he’d been given, instead of contorting himself into someone else’s expectations? Abigail deserved more than the half-life he had to offer. And Skip deserved Polly. That’s right, Eddie thought. You heard me.
He needed to make a choice, go one way or the other instead of spending his life trying to cover all the bases. That was the problem.
No, that wasn’t the problem. The problem was the temperatureinside the car. He wished the watch—which was both water-resistant (not helpful) and shockproof (still running)—could tell him the temperature inside the car, or maybe he didn’t want to know. One thing was certain: if they made it out alive, they’d have Buddy Zabriskie to thank for it. The space blanket was their salvation.
Buddy Zabriskie, my god, now there was a man. He pictured Buddy out on his boat, pulling up nets full of fish. Eddie told himself to knock it off. Daphne had her mittened hands beneath his arms. He had his hands (no gloves or hat, because he was an idiot) balled up in the plush fur of her coat. She was a scrap of a thing, but she still generated heat.
“Eddie?” Her voice came soft from underneath the silver blanket, like she was afraid of waking him.
“Awake,” he said.
“I have to pee.”
Coincidentally, this was the other thing Eddie had been thinking about, after thinking about Skip and Buddy and freezing to death in the station wagon. “Me, too.”
“Really?”
What he didn’t say, what he’d been thinking, was that if they gave in to nature and peed on themselves, their genitals would be frozen solid in twenty minutes. “Find the empty Coke cup.”
