“You’re not widowed. Yet.”
“I wanted to try something new.”
“Being a divorcée?”
“I think I’d call it being my own person.”
“Okay. So is the study right? Did you get to be happy?”
“Well, I got to be the talk of the synagogue for a good few years until the rabbi’s son came out of the closet. That was something.”
“Fuck those people,” I say.
“Watch it,” says my mother. “Those are your people.”
“You’re my people.”
She squeezes my hand.
“Hang the dish towels out to dry, or they’ll smell,” she says.
*
I switch to reading my father poetry. I read from the books I found on his old bookshelf—Rudyard Kipling, W. H. Auden, Wallace Stevens. And, because those are all dead white men, I slip him some from my bookshelf—Anne Sexton, Terrance Hayes, Tracy K. Smith. It’s never too late to expand your horizons, I figure.
*
My father is being washed, so I take a break from reading to sit in the hallway. A white-haired woman shuffles past me, trundling her IV along beside her. She looks me up and down.
“I’m trying to pass gas,” she says. “Do you mind?”
*
Nobody’s in the hospital rec room, so I grab the remote from behind the TV and flick through channels. There’s a lot of life still happening out there, I see. A twenty-one-year-old got a million-dollar book advance and spent the money without writing the book. Health insurance rates have reached an all-time high. People’s Most Beautiful Person of the Year is a dog. A Hollywood couple’s divorce has turned ugly. There’s a new reason not to eat cheese.
*
I need to make money. I need to write today. I need to clean the bathroom. I need to eat something. I need to quit sugar. I need to cut my hair. I need to call Verizon. I need to savor the moment. I need to find the library card. I need to learn to meditate. I need to try harder. I need to get that stain out. I need to find better health insurance. I need to discover my signature scent. I need to strengthen and tone. I need to be present in the moment. I need to learn French. I need to be easier on myself. I need to buy organizational storage units. I need to call back. I need to develop a relationship with a God of my understanding. I need to buy eye cream. I need to live up to my potential. I need to lie back down.
*
“Right,” says my mother. “You’re going out.”
I’m dozing on one of the hospital hallway chairs, a pack of Fritos open on my chest. She gives my legs an indelicate kick.
“It’s not good for you, moping around in here all day and night,” she says.
“Ma, I’m not moping,” I say. “My father’s dying.”
“Yes, and he’ll still be dying tomorrow. Here—” She crunches a wad of cash into my palm. “Go into the city. Meet a friend. See a Broadway show. Just be anywhere but here, please.”
“But Ma—”
“Good night and good luck!”
My mother turns on her heel and walks away.
“I don’t even like Broadway shows!” I yell after her.
“Good! Night! And! Good! Luck!” she shouts over her shoulder.
*
I take the PATH train into the city. Somebody has thrown up at the far end of the carriage. Vomit on the train is an event usually confined to major holidays like Saint Patrick’s Day, or at least a long weekend. I already miss the clinical asepsis of the hospital, where all rebellions of the body are accounted for and hidden.
*
I get off the train at Sixth Avenue and stand on the corner. In the past year, the bookstore has closed down and the burger joint’s been turned into a juice bar. There’s a strung-out couple with a pit bull begging for change outside the health food store, but even they felt the need to specify that they’re vegan on their cardboard sign. I don’t mind. I have no nostalgia for old New York, with its hookers, heroin addicts, and constant threat of robbery or rape. I’m happy to sacrifice fast food and hardcover books for general personal safety, which I guess makes me about as uncool as they come.
*
I wander south toward the basketball courts near West Fourth. I have, I realize, nowhere to go and no one to see. I pass the underground karaoke bar on Cornelia I went to with a gang from the office a few months back. Myke revealed himself to have a beautiful baritone and performed a rendition of Tom Jones’s “It’s Not Unusual” that made Jacky and I just kill ourselves laughing. I half expect to find them there when I step inside, but the bar is quiet. What the hell, I think, and book myself a private room.