Extract from Dying Young

On the way up the stairs I anticipate Victor's questions.  He probably shot at rats all morning, ran out of ammunition, and then tried pelting them with stones.  Maybe he even went into the yard after them.  He might have tried smoking them out.  I wish we had neighbors so that they would complain. I've thought of lodging an anonymous complaint with the state authorities myself.  Anything.  Mrs. Birkle was my only hope and she says she admires Victor's pursuit of rats, that it is a fine thing he is doing for the community.  I think he better stop before he blows up someone's garage. 

After rat homicide, my guess is that Victor slept all afternoon, ate a sandwich, felt nauseated, read an article, and watched the clock.  He may have wanted to go somewhere today - to the market or just a drive along the coastal road to watch the ocean.  He might have been feeling tender toward me, even passionate.  Now he is probably angry. I'll slice potatoes over the sink and he'll sit at the kitchen table, glaring at my back with a mixture of hatred and envy.  He'll wish eh could just go somewhere for an afternoon like I can without exhausting himself, without requiring a long recovery period.  He'll eat silently, calculating his effect on me.  When we go to bed I'll wrap my leg over his and my may freeze and move away. Or he may give in, fold up toward me like a kitten to its mother. We might make love silently or we might just lie like that, drifting in and out of sleep, reorganizing our limbs over each other, whispering, shelving our disagreements and accepting the simple things another body can offer.  And in the morning, as if by magic, the anger will have sunk somewhere deep within us, almost gone.

As I reach the last flight of steps I hear sounds from our apartment:  Victor's laughter, chair legs across the floor, the shrill exclamation of a woman. I'm startled by it - by a visitor in our apartment at all.  My mind flips through the possibilities of who this person can be.  Victor despises just about everyone.  He growls at librarians who try to help him find a book.  He is rude to postal clerks. He almost got us arrested once by screaming at the traffic officer who had stopped me for having an outdated inspection sticker. 

Still, Victor is much finer than I am, much brighter, more graceful, more remote.  Victor has a presence that few can rival.  His great appeal is that he makes time count; he somehow reminds you that history is making itself there in front of you, that hours are weaving into your life and that you are designing them.  This is a tremendous and powerful gift.

I stand outside our door breathing the musty smell found only in the oldest of houses and only when they are near the sea.  I listen to Victor say something in ancient Greek and that is a dead giveaway because the only other person I know besides Victor who understands his references to the ancients is Estelle Whittier.  She lives in Hingham, one of the more highly regarded areas south of Boston, where her glorious Tudor home is a wonder of prosperity and good fortune.  And Estelle herself is a rare and startling person.  She has crazy pink sunglasses she wears when, for some reason, she is forced to go out in daylight.  She lapses into German or Italian in the middle of speaking. She has a penchant for sculptured gardens and antique birdcages, in which she keeps feather-perfect professionally stuffed birds.  I know all the stories about her, the various lives she led with three different, now dead, husbands; the child she had who died in a most absurd and grotesque fashion - by putting his three year old finger into an electrical socket.

Victor adores this woman and, though I have no particular problem with her, I am baffled by his reverence.  It may be because she reminds him of his family - very well to do old Bostonians from who he is permanently estranged.  Victor claims that he misses neither his father nor his money.  That he hates the money. And that he hates his father.

Estelle has made a career out of marrying rich men. She coddles Victor in a maternal way.  She stirs sugar into his coffee at restaurants, picks up his tab at bars.  There is a bond b between them that I don't understand but it is easy to imagine a baby Victor, with soft cheeks and fat, creased limbs, waddling through Estelle's enormous house. I can see him standing in front of a wall socket with his finger outstretched.

''Speak of the devil!'' Victor says as I make my way through the door.  He is wearing a tweed jacket with jeans, has his hair combed straight back, and is holding a wineglass. The alcohol shows in his cheeks and he is flushed a deep crimson, making his angular face somewhat demonic and excruciatingly appealing.  I see he has dressed the glass wound.  Taped across the inside of his hand is a white bandage.

''Hilary, where have you been?'' Victor says.  ''You know it is Veteran's Day.  I'm not sure how you thought I could celebrate the Armistice without you.''

Estelle beams at Victor and says, ''Ha ha ha,'' in her weird brand of laughter. Then she waves a hand at me, blowing a kiss. ''Oh my stars and glory, Hilary, you're blushing like a bride.''

Estelle must have recently dyed her hair; the lamp shines off it and shows a pale pink color.  She has lipstick to match and is draped in a get-up I imagine she bought years ago on a vacation excursion to a top of a mountain somewhere in Latin America.  The skirt, a brightly pattered wool wraparound, runs all the way to her ankles and she wears a matching poncho.  She is such a tiny woman, as frail as old lace and similar in her sad attractiveness.

''I hope you don't mind that I've barged in and absolutely stolen your man away,'' she continues.  She has come with all her rocks - three fingers of each hand weighted with stones that are neither precisely cut nor set.  When she waves a hand in my direction I wonder, not for the first time, how it is she does anything with those tiny, curled fingers that pack twice their weight in jewelry.  ''He is so delightful, Hilary, and so devoted to you.  We were just discussing you, weren't we, Victor?''

''We were discussing you,'' Victor says, ''as well as food poisonings, airplane disasters, and ozone depletion.''

''He's kidding!'' Estelle says. ''Victor stop being such a poop.''

To me she says, ''He's been glowing about what a wonderful woman he has in his life.''

Victor says, ''Hilary, I would kiss you but, if you don't mind, I think I will remain seated - you see, I've been sick all day.  Wretched sick, and it would be quite awful if, within the momentary delight of your welcoming kiss, I collapsed - suddenly, like a canary shot mid-song.''

Estelle sits upright, her hands folded in her lap like ea parent in a PTA meeting. ''I'm so sorry, Hilary,'' she says, mocking herself through shy, downcast eyes. ''I seem to have gotten your Victor drunk.  I don't know what else it could be.''

I stand behind Victor, lean down, and put my arms around his stomach. ''Hi, honey,'' I say into his neck.

''I'm not drunk. I'm trying to get some sound advice on how not to offend people with my charmless disease.  People don't like to be reminded of their mortality - or mine, do they?  They get rather taken aback when they ask you what you are planning to do for your summer vacation and you answer 'Get buried'''

''Oh come now, Victor, you surely aren't going to be buried!'' Estelle says, waving her wineglass.  The lamp illuminates the pencilling beneath her eyebrows and her forehead gleams.  ''How dreadful,'' she says, and coughs. ''What perfectly awful taste!  Cremation is a far superior choice.  I had all my husbands cremated!  Then I buried them.  I wouldn't hear of anything else.''

''When they cremate, do they do it with or without the clothing?'' Victor asks.

I cringe and try to think of something else to listen to. I consider dialling the weather report and listening to the tape, that too loud recording that repeats itself.  I dump my coat in a chair and go into the kitchen to make tea.  Victor will want something hot and loaded with caffeine within the hour. If he is drunk too long it scares him. He can only stand the oblivion of drunkenness for a short while and then he gets terribly afraid of it, as if he were likely to drown in the woozy, muddled feeling.

I have my own theory on Victor's reasons for drinking.  I suspect Victor is testing ht waters of death.  He figures he'll blot out his conscious mind and render his motor control utterly unavailable.  Then he can stew in the blankness of it all and imagine that death feels something like being drunk.  Obviously, it's a rather compromised death state.  After all, you wouldn't think that any amount of time in a bath would prepare you for a weekend surfing in Honolulu.

But Victor must get some results.  Sometimes he gets very drunk and is silent in his armchair and I can almost feel his thoughts.  I will be ready to call him on it and say, ''Stop it, Victor. Stop torturing yourself.  Death wont' be like this anyway. ''  But then Victor will turn to me, wearing an expression you might see in patients on emergency room stretchers.  He'll be me to make him a pot of coffee or strong tea.  Then we will sit together with our kettle, staring at the black panes of the window, not even trying to make out figures in the night, the outlines of clouds, the moon.  We are together, looking at nothing, holding our mugs of tea.  Sip by sip, Victor comes back to me and after a while I point to the reflection off the ocean and Victor is able to nod and say, ''Yes, it's beautiful.''  And then he is back to himself and ready to go on again.

I light the stove and hear Victor saying, ''No, I suppose I shouldn't insist that I'm going to be dead any second.  After all, I was scheduled to die months ago.  Look!  My head is full of hair. I've been off the chemo for ages and I'm anything but dead. Who would have thought I'd be alive?  Hilary wouldn't have, would you, Hils?''

I lean against the kitchen counter waiting for the water to boil.

''Hilary!'' Victor calls, and then he comes into the kitchen, his feet clumsy, the flaps of his jacket uneven.  He gives me an enormous, sloppy hug and pushes his mouth to my ear. In his sweetest tone he says, ''Oh, little darling, my precious angel…''

I kiss his cheek. I turn down the collar of his jacket. ''You want tea, Victor?''

''No, no tea!  Tea? Why tea? Why not wine? Why won't you get drunk with me? Come on!'' he says and pulls me back into the living room. ''Why can't my wife get blitzed with me?''

''Your wife? You two are married?'' Estelle says, her eyebrows lifting. ''What dears.  How conventional and sweet.''

''No, we aren't,'' I say.

''We're as good as married.  What is in the sacred vow - 'till death do us part?  Isn't that it, Hils?''  Together until death do us part? Isn't that how it will be with us?''

I notice two empty bottles of wine on the coffee table, expensive labels that Estelle must have brought, wanting to please Victor. There is no way this woman, with her arthritic hands and manufactured teeth, could possibly have drunk a substantial portion of the wine. So Victor must have - which means Victor must be very drunk.  And yet, when he lets himself be sweet, when he stands like this, with both arms around me, a leg behind my own, his face close, I really can't mind that he's drunk. I take in as much of him as I can. I squeeze his hand, I look into his eyes.

''I guess that's how it is with us,'' I say.