The First Time (47 page)

And she loved him, she realized with no small degree of amazement. After all these years of refusing even to consider allowing a dog into the house, she was totally smitten, completely head-over-heels in love. Sweet baby, she thought, aching to pet him.

“Oh no, off you go,” Aurora said, shooing George from Mattie’s lap before Mattie could protest. Aurora lifted the glass of water to Mattie’s lips. Mattie took a slight sip, felt it trickle uneasily down her throat. “Have some more,” Aurora instructed.

Mattie shook her head, although she was still thirsty. But the more she drank, the more she peed, and Mattie had learned to dread the prospect of nature’s call. Of the many things she hated about this
disease, the thing Mattie hated most was the way it gradually robbed you of everything you once took for granted—your mobility, your freedom, your privacy, and ultimately, most cruelly, your dignity. She could no longer even go to the bathroom by herself. She needed someone to take her there, to lift her out of her wheelchair and adjust her clothing, to sit her down on the toilet, to wipe her when she was through. Aurora was a godsend. She did all these things without complaint. As did Kim, and Jake, after Aurora left for the day. But Mattie didn’t want her daughter playing nurse or her husband wiping her backside. “You have to eat and drink,” everyone kept telling her. “You have to keep up your strength.” But Mattie was tired of being strong. What was the point in being strong when you still had to be fed and carried and have your bottom wiped? She was weary of this forced infantilization. It could drag on for years, and it was not the way she wanted to be remembered. She’d had enough. She wanted to die with at least a semblance of dignity.

It was time.

“Brrr,” Kim squealed, stepping out of the pool and wrapping herself in several layers of large magenta towels. “It’s so cold once you get out.” George was instantly at her feet, eagerly licking the water from between Kim’s toes. “So, what do you think?” Kim asked, running up the steps, George at her heels. “Fifty lengths. Pretty good, huh?”

“Don’t overdo,” Mattie said slowly, quietly.

“I won’t. If I start getting obsessive again, I’ll stop. I promise.”

Mattie smiled. The days of punishing two hour
workouts and monitoring everything she ate were mercifully over. Kim was in a new school and off to a promising start. She continued to see Rosemary Colicos once a week, as did Jake. Sometimes they went together. Kim and her father were getting closer every day.

It was time.

“What time’s the ball game?” Mattie asked as Kim strained forward to hear her.

“I think Dad said seven o’clock.” She checked her watch. “I guess I should start getting ready. It’s almost five o’clock now. I want to wash my hair before we leave.”

Mattie nodded. “You go. Get ready.”

Kim leaned over, kissed her mother’s bony cheek. Mattie felt the softness of her daughter’s cold cheek against her own.

“You know how much I love you, don’t you?” Mattie asked.

“I love you too,” Kim said, scooping up George and running inside before Mattie could say anything more.

“We go inside too,” Aurora said, spinning Mattie’s wheelchair around and pushing it into the kitchen.

What if I don’t want to go inside? Mattie wondered, understanding it was useless to protest. Her decision-making powers had been usurped, the latest in a gradual eroding of her basic rights. What good were choices when one had no power to act on them? Mattie didn’t blame Aurora. She didn’t blame anyone. She was no longer surprised by the well-meaning insensitivity of others. She was no longer angry. What good did it do to be angry?

What was happening to her was nobody’s fault, not her mother’s, not her own, not God’s. If there was a God, Mattie decided, He hadn’t wished this condition on her. Nor could He do anything to alleviate it. After months of watching helplessly as her body steadily dropped pounds and collapsed in on itself, of feeling her flesh grow slack and her features stretch and distort as if she were trapped inside a funhouse mirror, she had finally surrendered to what Thomas Hardy once described as “the benign indifference of the universe.” Was it Hardy or Camus? Mattie wondered now, too tired to remember.

She was so tired.

It was time.

It was the best of times. It was the worst of times
, Mattie recited silently. Charles Dickens. No doubt about that.

The worst year of her life.

The best year of her life.

The last year of her life.

It was time.

“Hi, sweetheart, how’re you doing?” Jake entered the kitchen from the hall as Aurora was locking the sliding glass door.

Mattie smiled, as she always did when she looked at her husband. He’d lost a few pounds these last months, and his hair had acquired a few streaks of gray, the byproducts of her insidious disease, but he still managed to look as handsome as ever, if possible even more distinguished. He claimed the weight loss and gray hairs were the price he paid for going back to work. Not that he’d returned to Richardson,
Buckley and Lang, but over the summer he’d been asked to consult on a number of difficult cases, and he’d been contacted by several other renegade young lawyers who were thinking of opening their own firm sometime after the first of the year. Not interested, Jake told them, claiming he was satisfied working out of his office at home. But Mattie couldn’t help but notice the fire in his eyes whenever he spoke to them, and she knew he missed the excitement of daily hand-to-hand combat. How long could she continue to hold him back? What more could he do for her than he’d already done? She couldn’t even touch him anymore, she thought, as Jake lowered his lips to hers.

It was time.

Everything was falling into place. The private detective Jake had hired to find his brother had turned up several promising leads. Apparently there were three Nicholas Harts who were the right age and fit Nick’s general description—one in Florida, one in Wisconsin, one in Hawaii. It was possible one of these men could be Jake’s brother, and even if they weren’t, at least the first steps had been taken. It wasn’t necessary for Mattie to stay and watch Jake cross the finish line. He’d already won, she thought, relishing the feel of his lips as they lingered gently on hers.

“There’s a new photography exhibit starting at Pende Fine Arts next week,” Jake told her, lowering himself into the kitchen chair so that he could be at Mattie’s eye level. “I thought maybe we could go next Saturday, take Kim with us.”

Mattie nodded. Jake had replaced the Raphael
Goldchain photograph that had been destroyed, and Kim was paying him back ten dollars a week out of her allowance. As a result, she’d begun to take an almost proprietary air toward the picture, and had started to develop a genuine interest in photography.

“I was thinking we might buy Kim a new camera,” Jake was saying, as if reading Mattie’s thoughts. “The one she’s got now is pretty basic.”

Again Mattie nodded.

“Oh, dear, we’re almost out of milk,” Aurora announced, removing the container from the refrigerator and shaking it.

“I’ll pick some up later,” Jake offered.

“And some apple juice,” Aurora added.

“I’ll pick them up after the ball game.”

He did so much, Mattie thought. He’d given up so much. Honey. His career. The last year of his life. All for her. She couldn’t ask him to give up any more.

It was time.

“Do you have any idea how much I love you?” Mattie asked. “Do you have any idea how much joy you’ve brought to my life?”

“Do you have any idea how much you’ve brought to mine?” he asked in return.

The doorbell rang.

“It’s Lisa,” Mattie said, as Aurora headed for the door, the dog bounding down the steps from upstairs and barking at her feet.

“How’s Mattie doing today?” Mattie heard Lisa ask as Jake walked into the hall to greet her.

“Seems a little down,” she heard Jake say. “Maybe I shouldn’t be going out.”

“Nonsense,” Mattie spat out, the effort resulting in a terrible series of spasms that only abated after Jake promised not to alter his plans. “You look great,” Mattie said to Lisa, admiring her friend’s short new hairdo, wondering how she’d look with that kind of severe geometrical cut, trying to remember the last time she’d been to a hairdresser’s salon.

“Thank you,” Lisa said, reaching into her black doctor’s bag and removing the apparatus for measuring Mattie’s blood pressure, strapping it around Mattie’s arm, as if this were as normal as shaking hands. “You’re looking pretty good yourself.”

“Thank you,” Mattie said. No point in arguing. She weighed less than a hundred pounds, her skin was so fine it was almost transparent, and her body was twisted in on itself like a pretzel. Still, everyone insisted on telling her she was beautiful, as if her condition had robbed her of her ability to judge for herself, to discriminate between what was and what one wished it to be. “Thank you,” Mattie said again. Why not believe she was still beautiful? What harm was there in pretending?

“I was talking to Stephanie and Pam, and we were thinking we’d like to have a little party next month. How’s October twelfth sound to you?”

“Sounds great,” Jake answered for her.

“Great,” Lisa said, listening to the sound of Mattie’s blood as it pulsed through her veins. “I’ll tell the others. Let you know the time and place.” She dropped the stethoscope into her lap, loosened the tight wrap from Mattie’s arm. “Everything sounds okay here,” she said, although her eyes said otherwise.
“So, have you heard the latest about Stephanie’s ex?” Mattie shook her head. “You know he started making custody noises when he found out about Enoch.”

“I think I’ll leave you two alone while I finish up a couple of things in my office,” Jake said, kissing Mattie on the forehead before he left the room.

Lisa continued without blinking an eye. “Well, Stephanie had the shithead followed. Turned out the turd has been leading something of a double life.”

Mattie listened for the next forty-five minutes as Lisa filled her in on all the salient and salacious details, catching her up on all the latest gossip involving both people Mattie knew and those she didn’t. She learned who was dating whom in the celebrity world, which new movies lived up to their hype and which disappointed terribly, what actresses had implants, and who of Hollywood’s aging elite had recently undergone cosmetic surgery.

“Trust me,” Lisa intoned knowingly. “Any woman over forty who doesn’t have wrinkles has had a facelift.”

Mattie smiled, knowing she wouldn’t live to have the luxury of such petty concerns. What she wouldn’t give to have a few wrinkles! What she wouldn’t give to turn into a wizened old prune.

“ Apparently, there’s a great new book out on tape. I forget the name,” Lisa was saying, “but I wrote it down somewhere, and I’m going to bring it over on my next visit. Is there anything else you need?” she asked, checking her watch as Mattie glanced toward the clocks on the far wall. 6:05 or 6:07. Take your pick.

Either way, it was time, Mattie thought.

“I need you to call my mother,” she said, the words emerging slowly but clearly. “I need you to ask her to come over. Tonight.”

Lisa immediately located Mattie’s address book in the drawer by the phone and called Mattie’s mother. “She’ll be here in an hour,” Lisa said, hanging up the phone.

“Who’ll be here in an hour?” Kim asked, coming into the kitchen, showered and changed, her long hair hanging loose under her Chicago Cubs cap.

“Off to Wrigley Field?” Lisa asked.

“This is definitely our year,” Kim said with a laugh. “Who’ll be here in an hour?” she repeated.

“Your grandmother.”

“Grandma Viv? Why?” A look of concern flashed through Kim’s blue eyes.

“Ready to go?” Jake asked, joining the women in the kitchen.

“Maybe we shouldn’t go,” Kim said.

“Something wrong?” Jake asked.

“Mattie’s mother’s coming over,” Lisa said.

“That’s great. What’s the problem, Kimmy?”

“Mom?” Kim asked. “Is there a problem?”

Mattie lifted her face to her husband and child, her eyes a greedy camera lens, snapping picture after picture, her mind racing back through time, uncovering memory after memory—the first time she’d seen Jake, the first time they’d made love, the first time she’d held her beautiful baby girl in her arms. “I love you both so much,” she said clearly. “Please always remember how much I love you.”

“We love you too,” Jake said softly, kissing Mattie gently on the lips. “We won’t be late.”

“You’re a wonderful man, Jake Hart,” Mattie whispered in his ear, savoring his taste, his smell, his touch.

Kim approached, bent forward, folding her mother in her arms, as if she were the mother, Mattie the child.

“Be patient with your father,” Mattie said before her child had a chance to speak. “Please try to accept whatever makes him happy.”

Kim stared directly into her mother’s eyes. As if she understood. As if she knew. “You’re the best mother anybody could ever have,” she said so softly only Mattie could hear.

“My beautiful baby.” Mattie pressed her face into her daughter’s hair, memorizing its texture, its feel against her skin. “Go now, sweetie,” she urged gently. “It’s time.”

“I love you,” Kim said.

“I love you,” Jake repeated.

I love you, Mattie called silently after them, watching them disappear, their images imprinted forever on her soul. Take care of each other.

“You say something, Mrs. Hart?” Aurora asked.

Mattie shook her head as Aurora approached with a bowl of freshly made soup.

“Chicken noodle. Very good for you.” Aurora advanced a spoonful toward Mattie.

“I’ll do that, Aurora,” Lisa said, lifting the bowl from Aurora’s hands. “Why don’t you go home? I’ll stay with Mattie until her mother gets here.”

“You sure?” Aurora hesitated, looked toward Mattie.

“You go,” Mattie told her. “And thanks, Aurora. Thanks for everything.”

“I see you tomorrow.”

“Good-bye,” Mattie said, watching her leave. Another picture for her soul’s scrapbook.

“Soup’s on,” Lisa said when they were alone, lifting the spoon to Mattie’s lips. “Smells very good.”