If there were any, I was too fuzzy to participate. “Failure.” That was the word that accompanied me back to sleep.
But I had done one thing right: I had married Charlie Fish. Lizzie, the Morrises, they stopped in each day. They chatted with my mother, which felt odd, two different parts of my life connecting, my elbow meeting my knee. She was there most of the time. But Charlie? Always. I measured my healing progress by the expression on his face. The less worry he showed, the less worry I felt.
One morning they made me stand. The pain made me think of magicians, and their trick of sawing a woman in half. They made me prove I could get on and off the john. That afternoon, I walked all the way to the nurses’ station, gripping my mother’s arm for balance.
“You’re doing great,” she encouraged me. “I know how you feel, too, because the incision is like a C-section. Which I had when I was delivering you.”
I stopped in the hallway. “I never knew that.”
She shrugged. “It never merited discussion before.”
“I suppose not.”
“Every time I look down, in the shower or changing clothes or whatever, I see a reminder of the birth of my baby girl.”
We started shuffling along again. “Mother, are you going sweet in your old age?”
“You had me worried, kiddo. And with all of you gone, Chicago has been quiet.”
“Are you all right?”
She swatted at the air. “Let’s just say your mother appreciates her family.”
“You are going sweet—”
“For the love of Pete.” She stepped sideways. “Charlie, you guide her for a while.”
He’d been right behind us all along.
“I’m going to the waiting room for a smoke,” my mother said, leaving the two of us alone in the corridor.
“Shall we turn back now?” Charlie asked.
It was like someone uncorked a bathtub, my energy drained so fast. “Good idea. What have you told her, anyhow?”
“She knows we’re married, if that’s what you mean. And since you got pregnant, I imagine she knows that we—”
“Enough,” I said, but the exertion of saying it made me pause for breath. “How come you don’t have to get back to The Hill?”
“I’ll need to, soon. Though I’d sure rather stay here.”
We passed rooms with the doors half-closed. Inside one, someone was coughing hard. Then I shuffled on, with pathetic, tiny steps. “He said we might still have kids.”
“I had no idea we were so close.”
“Neither did I.”
We smiled at each other in that hallway, a sad smile, but underneath it was something new between us. Like we were growing roots. I felt happy and sad and deepened all at the same time.
We’d reached my room and Charlie helped me back into bed. I held on to him a second more, which made him lean down, so he bent all the way and kissed me.
“Don’t,” I said. “I haven’t washed or brushed my teeth or anything.”
“But you’re alive,” he said, and kissed me again. Like he meant it.
Which of course was the moment my mother barged back into the room. Seeing her daughter on a bed, holding a man who is kissing her, I imagine required some mental adjustment. It did for me.
“Excuse me,” she said, backpedaling. “I should have knocked.”
“Not at all,” Charlie said, strangely at ease in that awkward moment. “I needed to check on the patient’s condition, that’s all.”
She laughed. “What’s your diagnosis?”
“As sassy as ever.”
“Some conditions just can’t be cured, kiddo.”
“You two,” I said. “Don’t you go ganging up on me.”
Finally the nurses told me I’d be going home the next day. Well, back to the boardinghouse anyhow. My mother went to make sure my room was ready.
“I need to go back tomorrow too,” Charlie said. “But your mom’s going to stay another few days, and I’ll be down on Saturday like usual.”
I patted the bed, and he sat on the edge of the mattress. “You know what I want?”
“To be fully recovered?”
I rested the side of my fist on his thigh. “For this war to be over, so we can start our lives together right.”
Charlie’s face went blank. He didn’t answer me.
“Hello?” I said. “You don’t agree?”
He sat there, staring off, and only gradually returned to me. “Sure. Of course, yes. But ending the war . . . that’s more complicated.”
“The hell it is. We pound them until they surrender. Then everyone—Lizzie, my mother, my brother, my dad, you and me—we can bring things back to normal again.”
“Okay,” he said. “Then let me say that ending it is more complicated for me.”
“What in the world does that mean?”
“I don’t even know.” He stood, backing away from the bed. “I’m going to get a little air, okay? Be right back.”
He rushed out of the room, the first time he’d left my side in nine days. What had I said?
That night the ward was strangely quiet. No nurses disturbed my sleep with a thermometer or stethoscope or blood pressure sleeve. Usually in the small hours I could hear the radio down at the nurses’ station, big band jazz turned down low, but not that night. I didn’t hear the ping of call buttons, either, which was unusual. Even in bed, I could tell something was going on, something was different.
Then I slept, and by morning I’d forgotten about it, and was busy getting ready to go home. After breakfast they brought a wheelchair for me. Which Charlie pushed so slowly I wanted to smack him. Once again the Morrises lent us the old Hudson. I told everyone not to make a fuss, but to be honest it took some doing to land me in the big backseat. Charlie drove, slow as a snail while my mother had a cigarette, blowing her smoke out the open window.
Lizzie was at work, but the Morrises were home—and behaved odd as a pair of harlequin ducks. They hovered and fluttered, and created a traffic jam at the door. I didn’t understand why till I reached the foot of the stairs and glanced to the left. Their living room was packed. Funeral, wedding, nothing had brought that big a crowd to the house before. My first thought was that I would have to play for a service of some kind.
“What’s going on?” I asked. “Somebody die?”
“Don’t you worry about any of that,” Mrs. Morris said. “Not your business.”
“They’re all basses, wanting to audition for the choir,” Reverend Morris joked.
“Yes, and today is Christmas Day,” I said. But then I was concentrating on climbing the stairs, and lifting a leg that high required more stomach muscles than I realized, which meant a serious flare of pain with each step, and the exertion of two flights required all of my attention.
Soon they had me situated in bed, with extra pillows, a jug of water, and a little metal commode to spare me trips to the john. Charlie was going to be late for his bus. My mother tried to shoo him along, saying I’d be fine, but he stuck around till I was set and secure. I admit it, I was exhausted.
“I hate to go,” he said. “But I think you’ll be okay.”