Four squares, p.25
Four Squares, page 25
“Hello,” she said once the receiver was to her ear. The breathing on the other end was loud and annoying, so she adjusted her tone accordingly and repeated her greeting. “I’m going to hang up if you don’t say something in two seconds. One…”
“Is this Vanessa?” a quivering voice on the other end said.
“Yes. And who is this?”
“This is Artie, Abe’s—”
“I know who you are. What do you want?”
“The paramedics are here. I think he had, I don’t know, I think he had a heart attack. A stroke. He’s unconscious. The paramedics are here.”
“You said that already. Can I talk to him?”
“He’s unconscious.”
“Of course. Where are they taking him?”
As she listened to him ask the EMTs, she scoffed into the phone, unable to imagine not asking the question immediately.
“They’re taking him to Lenox Hill.”
“Good,” she said. “I’ll be there soon.”
After hanging up, she reopened the newspaper and let her eyes pan over a story about the war in Iraq, only no words made their way in. She tossed the newspaper on the floor and turned off her stereo, allowing the piercing screams of precocious children to flow into her office. She would have to tell Halle, but first she’d have to decide what to tell her.
Her anger—with Abe, with herself, with Danny, with the world—prevented her from being even remotely optimistic with regards to her husband’s health. She knew he would be dead before she arrived at the hospital, so there was no need to rush and scare the poor girl. She recalled the plan she and Danny had made some weeks earlier. Halle would be told the truth about her father in blunt terms, with the hopes that the lack of a biological connection would render her uninterested in continuing a relationship after the divorce was finalized. Abe was never more than her mother’s dear friend, and marrying him had been a mistake because she really loved Danny, Halle’s real father. She worried about those kinds of nuanced adult emotions and scenarios confusing her daughter, but the thought of ripping Abe out of both their lives like a rainbow Band-Aid would make it easier to move forward, and for Halle to forge a relationship with the man who actually helped create her. But now what? It was one thing to explain an unhappy marriage and sexual affairs to a child, but to throw death in at the same time? She couldn’t, not right then.
“Halle,” she said, after flipping off the TV. “Can I talk to you for a second?” Halle was lying on her stomach on the floor, her head propped in the palms of her hands—the precise TV-watching position that made her mother furious. Despite the black screen, Halle didn’t flinch. “And can you sit up straight and look at your mother, please?”
She did as she was told with the aggrieved pace of a teenager, despite being only six years old.
“Halle, I have to tell you something very important. Your father was just taken to the hospital.”
Halle’s eyes narrowed, and the muscles in her tiny face twitched as she tried to figure out what that could possibly mean. “Is Daddy sick?”
“I think so,” Vanessa said, sitting down on the floor in front of Halle and placing her hands on her knees. “But we need to go to the hospital to find out. We need to talk to the doctor and see what they say.”
“Is he going to die?”
Vanessa sucked in her lips and took a breath. “I don’t know, sweetheart. That’s why we need to go and see him.”
“Is this because of the divorce?” Halle said.
“What? Of course not. People don’t get sick because of divorce. Divorce can be a good thing, just like I told you.”
“You said I’d get to see him again.”
“You will, sweetheart, we’re going to go see him now.”
“OK,” Halle said, standing up slowly and walking toward her bedroom.
“Now, go put on your shoes. Do you need me to help?”
Halle shook her head and disappeared on the other side of the door, leaving Vanessa alone on the floor. While she waited for Halle, she dialed Danny, who answered after a single ring.
“I think Abe had a heart attack,” she said.
Danny sighed directly into the phone. “Jesus Christ. Is he going to be OK?”
“I have no idea, but Halle and I are going to the hospital now.”
“Do you need me to come? Do you want me to?”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea now, I think it would just…complicate things. But I want you to know.”
“OK. OK. How are you feeling?”
Vanessa didn’t respond because she didn’t know the answer. “I’ll call you when I know more,” she eventually said, hanging up the phone to see Halle waiting patiently in the doorway.
“I’m ready,” she said.
“That’s good,” Vanessa said, hoping she could hide the fact that she wasn’t ready at all.
* * *
Though she’d never seen his photo, Vanessa recognized him immediately. Her jaw was tight, and she thumbed her wedding ring in a manner Artie couldn’t decide was aggressive or nervous or both. “So you’re him,” she said. “You’re the one he always wanted.”
“I’m Artie,” he said. “And you’re Vanessa.” He pretended not to notice Halle hiding behind her mother, a courtesy both she and her mother silently respected.
“So what did he say?”
“What do you mean?”
“Before the ambulance came. What did he say?”
“He wasn’t conscious. When I found him, I mean. He didn’t say anything.”
“How long had he been out when you found him?”
“I’m not sure. Could have been minutes, could have been more. He wasn’t cold, there was still a warmth to him.”
“That’s good. That’s something. Maybe he’ll be fine.”
“He will be. They said they’re doing everything they can.”
“I want to talk to a doctor. Where’s a doctor?”
“He said he would check in when there’s an update,” Artie said, and they both sat down, an empty chair between them, as Halle slinked over to a vending machine down the hall.
“I knew we’d have to meet eventually,” she said when the sounds of the hospital, other emergencies, other traumas, became too much to bear.
“I know it’s complicated for everyone.”
“Some of us more than others.”
“How is Halle?”
Vanessa shut her eyes and pretended not to hear the question, and they sat beside each other—one of them looking forward, the other inward—for half an hour, when a voice interrupted both their despondent trances.
“Mr. Anderson, hi,” a handsome man in a white coat said, ignoring Vanessa. Artie flinched and looked up at the doctor as Vanessa stood, towering over them both.
“Well, I don’t know what you’ve been told,” the doctor said. “And if you’d rather do this without your daughter, maybe—”
“I’ve been told nothing, and I won’t be hiding anything from her,” Vanessa said, grabbing Halle’s hand.
The doctor gave Halle a painful smile, which said everything Vanessa and Artie needed to know. “Well, ma’am, after resuscitating your husband in the emergency room, I’m sorry to say his heart gave up. He had a massive cardiac arrest, and once we were able to get inside, there was nothing we could do.” He grabbed her hand and apologized once more.
“So that’s it,” Vanessa said. “No surgery? No transplant? No nothing? He’s just gone?”
“We tried all the options available to us, but with an attack that massive, it wasn’t possible. I don’t think we would have been able to do more even if he’d made it here sooner.”
“Can we see him?”
“Yes, follow me please if you’d like. And Mr. Anderson, if you—”
Vanessa snapped, “Not him. Just Abraham’s family.”
* * *
Artie sat down. Alone again.
When the lawyer told Vanessa Abe had changed his will two months before and left the apartment to Artie, she asked him to repeat himself. An hour later, she offered to buy the apartment from Artie, and when he rejected her generous offer, she hung up the phone without a goodbye and flew into a rage. Not because she was in love with the space—they’d always lived in her apartment uptown—but because she didn’t want her life to intersect with that of this peculiar man who had infatuated Abe in a way that she never wanted, or perhaps would never be able, to understand.
As time went on, though, Vanessa began to reconsider. Perhaps it was because she felt guilty for not inviting him to the funeral. Perhaps it was because she felt sorry for his loneliness. Perhaps it was because she wanted Halle to have a little piece of Abe in her life, even if he wasn’t her father. But five months after Abe’s death, she gave Artie a call.
“I’d like you to meet Halle,” she said, as if there had only ever been warmth between them. “Properly.”
“I appreciate that,” Artie said.
“245 West 74th. 8A. Come Sunday for dinner. Six.”
So he did. And he did the following Sunday. And every Sunday he was asked to return.
14
2022
The first and only person Artie sent a photo of his newly bare foot to was Halle. For the better part of two months he had tried not to think about what lay underneath his cast, imagining something mangled and horrific that would repulse him. Even when it stopped hurting, when the healing stage was at full steam, he didn’t want to consider what his foot had become. Living without knowing what this piece of him looked like anymore seemed entirely feasible, if not reasonable. Examining it then, as the doctor was off doing lord knew what in another part of the office, he was surprised by its normalcy. His left foot looked the same as it did when he’d last seen it: pale and old and covered in wisps of hair. What a relief.
LOOK WHO’S FINALLY FREE. (My foot.)
He added the image and tapped send, only slightly worried that she was around people who might be confused by the sight of an old man’s foot suddenly appearing on her phone. Surely she would know how to explain it, he thought, although what she would call him by was uncertain, now that their relationship was newly undefined. But by sending a photo of his foot, ready to walk down the road to recovery’s home stretch, he was asserting his place in her life. Yes, he decided while listening to the hum of fluorescent lights above him, sending the photo was the right thing to do.
When the doctor walked in, he was still beaming at his foot.
“Sorry about that,” she said, shutting the door behind her softly with that casually formal doctorly manner. Dr. Sanchez was tall, well over six feet, which Artie now decided was reassuring because tall people, with their bigger limbs and feet, would somehow take matters of the feet more seriously. The theory didn’t make sense, but that didn’t stop him from deciding it was true just then. “X-rays look great. The bone healed just like we wanted it to.”
“I think I wanted it a little more than you did,” Artie said with a sigh to match. “So I can ditch the scooter and the crutches? Just walk on this boot you have for me?”
“Don’t get ahead of yourself. Walk on the boot while your body gets used to the pressure, but don’t toss anything out just yet. If you’re in pain when you walk, get back to rolling. But try and walk as much as you can without them—I mean it. You won’t heal properly unless you start putting those muscle systems to work again with assistance-free walking. Be sure to listen to your body, but don’t baby it. It’s capable of more than you think.”
“Sounds good.”
“No running, though. Not for a few more months at least.”
“I’ve never been a runner. No time to take anything in. I prefer a walker’s pace.”
“Great. Is there anything else you need at the moment? Any questions about the recovery?”
“No questions. Just relieved you didn’t find a tumor or something in the X-rays.”
Dr. Sanchez smiled and said, drolly, “I don’t see a lot of foot cancer.”
“Perk of the job, I guess. Not a lot of, you know, ‘I’m afraid I have some bad news’ chats when you’re focused on feet,” Artie said, immediately regretting it. “Anyway, thanks for everything.”
Dr. Sanchez wished Artie well and stepped back into the hall. At the front desk he was given a sheet of foot exercises and a list of over-the-counter scar medications and sent on his merry way. Out on the sidewalk, holding both handles in one hand and looking south, he considered walking the thirty or so blocks home, but after a few blocks realized the scooter was considerably more awkward to carry than to use, so he walked carefully down the steps of the 42nd Street stop, hopped onto the just-arrived train, gladly taking a seat offered to him by a man who didn’t appear to be much younger than he. When he reached 23rd Street, he checked his watch and bolted up. “You can have it back,” he said to the young man while fumbling awkwardly for the door before it closed. On the platform, he took a moment to regain composure as the train continued its journey south and then shifted his weight to his still healing foot. There was a tingle, but no pain. Another step, and again, no pain, but a subtle difference to the gait he once knew. Huh, he thought. Another new feeling.
He hadn’t been to lunch at GALS since before Thanksgiving and felt a sudden craving for the comfort of its cafeteria-style food and camaraderie. But when he stepped into the dining hall, he noticed that something was off. There were plenty of people, not a surprise for a Monday, but very little chatter.
“Hello, Artie,” Ali said, startling him while he stared at the morose-looking members at their tables from the doorway.
“Oh, hello,” Artie said. “You scared me. How was your holiday? Still eating turkey sandwiches?”
“Well, I’m a vegan, so we didn’t do a bird. And I hate tofurkey. But yeah, I had plenty of leftover sides.”
“Did I miss something earlier? Why does everyone look so upset in there?”
“So you didn’t hear, then,” Ali said.
“I guess not. Did something happen to one of the members?”
“Annabelle. She died.”
Artie gasped and covered his mouth. “Oh god, when?”
“In her sleep, late Thursday or early Friday. Her staff told us this morning, and you just missed the announcement. We’re sending out an email later, too, with some memorial information.”
GALS included a list of members who had died in their quarterly newsletter and honored all of them at the end of every year, but it didn’t surprise Artie that Annabelle was being given special treatment. She was the most significant donor of all the members, and had been a part of NYC society, not to mention its gay life, since well before the center was founded.
“I just saw her, too. She seemed perfectly healthy.”
“Maybe she was,” Ali said.
Without asking for permission, Artie fell into Ali and gripped them in a tight hug, sobbing into their shoulder with a ferocity and suddenness that made them gasp. They buckled under Artie’s weight at first, then stood firmly, rubbing his back as he cried it all out.
“I’m sorry,” Artie finally said when he rose up from Ali’s shoulders. “I know you hate hugs, it’s just—”
“Don’t apologize,” Ali said. “It’s never easy.”
“Why did I think it would get easier? After all this time, all these people.” Artie wiped his nose with his sleeve, a pathetic, vulnerable gesture he didn’t even try to hide. But before he could politely exit and leave Ali to themself, they put a hand on his shoulder. “Call me crazy, but I thought the vegan comment would do it. I know that’s all she told you about me.”
“Do what?”
“Do you really not remember, or have you just been pretending?”
Artie gave Ali a look that expressed as much confusion as it did mortification.
“So you don’t. Better than the alternative, I guess.”
“I guess I don’t. How would we have met before?”
“I’m only about ten years younger than you, and we never officially met, but—” Ali said right as it hit him.
“Oh my god,” Artie said gravely. “You and Kim.”
Ali nodded.
“How did I not put that together? I’m such an old fool.”
“I don’t think we spoke at the funeral, but I still thought you’d recognize me. For a while I thought you did and that you just didn’t want to acknowledge me. That it made you too, I don’t know, uncomfortable. Guilty.”
“Guilty?”
“God, I’m sorry, I’m not saying you should feel guilty,” Ali said with palpable regret, their stern facade all but disappeared for the first time since he’d been coming to GALS. “I just, I never told you, how could I have, that, and this is absolutely crazy and sad, but…”
“What?”
“I talked to Kimberly on the phone the day before. Or the day of. And the whole conversation was about you.”
“The last conversation you ever had with Kim was about me?”
“She was so goddamned mad at you,” Ali said with a wistful laugh.
“Because we were going to be late?”
“Because she wanted as much time with you as possible before she—we—left.”
Artie narrowed his eyes. “What do you mean, ‘left’? Where was she going?”
“She’d accepted an apprenticeship in California. Just a year, working with some big photographer. We were planning on going out there together.”
