I Live With You (24 page)

I was cold to start with but now I’m colder. The way I’m shaking, I may be in shock. I lie back. I tell myself, have a bit of a rest. Maybe the pain will lessen in a few minutes.

No way to keep any dignity now. Josephine will come to laugh. I am prissy, and a fuddy-duddy, but I’m not a coward. I follow wherever Josephine leads. Once into the river. I had found her but she slipped out of my grip as we crossed the bridge and jumped in. I jumped in too. She knew I would. She can’t swim even the little bit that I can. We were swept downstream half a mile before I managed to get us out. I had my arms around her. Even as I was busy trying to keep our heads above water, I thought: I have my arms around Josephine!

Neither of us told anybody though I suspect the Administrator had to be aware that we came back soaking wet. We left smudges all across the hall and up the back stairs. Did Josephine care that I spent my middle of the night cleaning up the worst of it as best I could? Of course she didn’t, she thinks I’m much too neat and prim about unimportant things like a little bit of water—except there was also mud.

I see her. I
think
I see her. She’s above me, poised on a tree branch as though about to do her slack wire act. It’s shadowy up there, the light from the streetlight doesn’t reach. But perhaps it’s just a plastic bag. Josephine, what with all those scarves, has that same flimsy, maybe-there, maybe-not-there look all the time.

I wait, shaking. Wondering, still, whether it’s better to use my cane as splint or cane. I try again to get up. I can’t. I shout at myself,
“Do it!”
I push myself up on one knee.
“Doooo it!”
But I can’t.

Then I hear Josephine whisper, “Don’t do it,” right in my ear, her hand on my shoulder exactly as lightly as you’d think her touch would be. She has her malicious grin but she’s already found a splint. A discarded slat of some sort. She takes off some of her scarves. She puts one around me. It must be silk. (Of course silk, Josephine would never have anything but silk.) I feel how warming it is right away. Her hands are warm, too. And she has the touch—the healing touch. She takes my shirt and belt from around my leg and binds it to the slat with scarves. Then she puts her arms around me and warms me with her own body. She says, “I love you,” but then she adds, “loyal sycophant.”

Every time I find her she calls me that, or “Flunky.” Sometimes,
“My
good man,” emphasis on the
my
. She always smiles that mocking smile and says, (and what a ridiculous thing to say) “I’ll make you a blueberry pie, I’ll cook up a half a dozen escargots,
my
good man.” They’d never let her anywhere near a stove or any kind of fire. It’s another kind of torment just as saying, “I love you,” is to torment me, too. Even her arms around me are meant to add to my misery.

My boater (ridiculous to wear such a hat in the middle of the night) is lying beside me, more out of shape than usual. It already was a little the worse for wear. (You can’t get hats like this anymore, except maybe at a costume store. And I haven’t any money anyway.) Had I found her as I usually do, I’d have bowed and removed it and held it over my heart, and Josephine would have smiled her little I’ll-get-you-yet smile. I guess she has me where she wants me now.

We rest a bit and I am warmed and feel less pain. She strokes my forehead. She even smoothes my mustache away from my mouth. Here’s her, Now-I’ve-got-you-smile, only now it’s: Now-I’ve-really-got-you and she has a sly look of making plans. I suppose I’ll have to do whatever she decides. But then I always do.

She helps me up. My leg, bound to the slat in silk, is as stiff as a cast. But I’ll have to use my bad leg now. “I can’t go far.”

“It’s not far.”

Not far? What in the world could be not far? Especially to somebody with two bad legs.

There’s a muddy rivulet flowing across the sidewalk near us. Josephine says, “This little trickle is the fountain of youth.”

I can’t help but laugh out loud. There’s a faucet dripping somewhere. Maybe some lawn sprinkler has dribbled all the way down here where there aren’t any lawns.

“You’re thirsty,” she says. “Drink. Lean and drink.”

I am thirsty, but I won’t drink this.

“All right then, if you won’t be young and gay again, let’s go.”

She has put my boater back on my head for me. At a rakish angle of course. That’s to tease me, too. Here I am shirtless, though wrapped in her scarf. Did she bother to help me back into my shirt? She lets it lie there. I don’t have that many shirts. She must know that. Back at our mansion there’s not much we can hide from each other. I’ve turned the collar, but one side is now as worn out as the other.

She helps me. Here she is, hardly coming up to my shoulder and yet strong enough to really support me. Of course she’s strong, how can you be a dancer and slack wire walker, tree climber without being strong? I’ve noticed before how muscled her legs are.

This is exactly what she’s always wanted, I can see it in her eyes. Her mouth twitches. She can’t hide her smile though she’s trying.

We walk over my shirt and go. I’d much rather stay here and wait for help. I’d like to be carted off to the hospital. That would be a nice change. I’d be able to eat by myself. I’d be all cleaned up. Josephine could come visit. She wouldn’t. She would. She’d like to see me in bed with maybe my leg in traction.

I haven’t paid attention to where we’ve been going. I’ve been too concentrated on how to keep on than to notice where. Here we are in some alley I’ve not seen before.

I’d like at least to wait until the pain subsides, but Josephine pulls me on. “Come on, my own, you can rest in a minute.”

I go where she wants me to as I’ve always done, but I’m feeling dizzy and nauseated. I know what that means, I’m going to faint if I don’t sit down, and right away.

Next thing I know my own groaning wakes me. I stop as soon as I realize it’s me making that racket. I’m crumpled up in the backseat of a roadster. Top down. I may be thin but even so I can’t imagine how Josephine got me there. Here she is driving down the road, no lights. She’s driving by the streetlights. I wonder how long I’ve been out of it. My leg is propped up on the door. My boater is on the floor. I’m covered with a dusty, moth-eaten army blanket.

The car seems as old as Josephine. Has she stolen it? If she has, why didn’t she steal one that has working headlights?

I fade off and when I come to I’m groaning again. It’s because the road is suddenly bumpy. We’ve gone beyond the streetlights. Josephine drives slowly, by the stars.

The road is little more than two ruts now, and soon the trees above us close off the stars. And Josephine is driving by instinct. Or perhaps the ruts force the car in the right direction.

This must be her forest. The one she’s wished to be in all this time. But why didn’t she come here long ago, by herself? Or did she need a sycophant? A watcher? As if her whole life means nothing without me to observe it?

We go on and on. I’m gasping at every bump and there’s nothing but bumps. It’s like being on a small boat in choppy seas. I’m actually feeling seasick.

Dawn is coming. I can see Josephine’s windblown mop of hair in silhouette against the grayness. I see the glint of her dangly earrings.

I call out, “I’m going to be sick.”

She stops the car and helps me lean over the side. She holds my forehead. She calls me, “My dear,” but I’m too miserable to think anything about it.

As to my dignity, that she teases me about every day, there’s none left. My vomit and my sweat are all over me.

“We’re already there,” she says. “We’re home.”

Home!

But we bounce on, and dawn keeps coming. Things are turning pink. We round a corner into a clearing, and there’s a sudden breeze. We stop near a lake full of whitecaps—pink whitecaps. When Josephine stops the car I can hear the lapping. On one side of us there’s a clapboard cottage in need of paint and on the other a tumbledown shed. Ahead of us a rickety dock slanting at a crazy angle.

I’m so sick and exhausted I don’t want to move. I pull back when Josephine tries to help me out. She gives up and goes inside, screen door slamming (at first I think we’re being shot at) and comes out in a few minutes (another rifle shot) with hot tea. It tastes odd, dusty and stale, but it helps right away. Powerful stuff. No doubt some Josephine-type secret herbs in it.

Now she helps me in. The shutters are closed so it’s dim inside. Moth-eaten deer head on the wall, a half a dozen fishing rods crosswise on its antlers. Its eyes glitter with what little light there is.

Josephine plops me down on an overstuffed chair. Dust flies up and I sneeze. She props my bad leg on a footstool. Then she goes into another room and comes back with a white shirt. Seems brand-new. But then she sees how filthy I am, sidewalk dirt and vomit, tea stains…. She brings a basin of warm water and towels and soap. Cleans up my top half.

She says, “No wonder….”

First I think, no wonder what? But then I know: I’m much too thin and my chest much too concave so of course no wonder. No wonder I’m nothing but a toady.

“I’m going to leave you here alone and go get groceries.”

“Get me crutches.”

I can see she won’t. Why should she, now that she finally has me completely in her power?

“Please.”

She looks away. At least she won’t lie. There’s always that about her. I appreciate it.

“I’ll get night crawlers. If you want to fish right now, dig one up. You can drop a line at the end of the dock.”

What a silly thing to say. Well, maybe not if she wants to tease me with suggesting things I can’t possibly do.

“Watch out for snapping turtles.”

Indeed.

She’s off (she reaches to pat the neck of the deer head on her way out, then comes back and kisses him on the lips. Sawdust trickles out.) Here I am, sunk (too deep) in the chair. But clean—top half anyway—and with a new shirt.

I pull myself up, sneeze again from the dust, and prop myself up on the arm of the chair. Using my arms and my one good/bad leg I support myself over to a harder chair. The deer’s eyes follow me like those in front-staring portraits always do. There’s disapproval in its look.

If I tip this hard chair from one side to the other, I can make progress. Without Josephine’s herbs I’d not be able to manage it without pain. It takes a long time. When I get to the closest window and open shutters, here’s Josephine driving up. I notice now that the roadster used to be red.

I watch her bring in packages. She seems much more efficient than she normally is. Likely her confused look, and wandering away all the time was one more game.

I wonder where she’s been, because the first thing she does is hang wind chimes in the doorway. They set to tinkling right away. Can’t she do without that sound for half a minute—even here with ripplings and rustlings?

She doesn’t pay attention to me but busies herself in the kitchen. There’s not exactly running water but there’s a pump next to the sink and every time Josephine needs water I hear lots of its creak-creaking. It sounds as if it’s in more pain than I am. Josephine sings and hums. I’ve never heard her sound so happy. She brings me broth—store-bought broth, the kind we always have at the Home.

“There’s real broth simmering on the stove,” she says, “but it’ll take a while.”

She plops herself down in that overstuffed chair and puts her feet on the footstool she’d pushed over for me. She gives a big sigh just like the one I always sighed before I started off looking for her. Before I realize it (probably before she realizes it) she’s asleep. She does look exhausted. After all she drove all night but I wish I’d stayed in the chair myself.

There’s a screened-in porch. I wobble my chair out there and find a love seat just right for lying with my leg up on the arm. I fall asleep almost as fast as Josephine did. I dream a sick dream of being, not only a toady but a toad in fact, and of herbs that keep me helpless. In the dream I try to wrestle myself out of my own torpor. I fight to wake up and find myself fighting with the wicker back of the love seat, and then I’m on the floor fighting the floor, and then Josephine is beside me and I’m fighting her.

She slaps me, hard, on each cheek. It feels good because it wakes me out of my bad dream. How did she know to do that? Could she ever have been a nurse?

She sits on the floor beside me and pulls me across her lap, calls me, my dear, again.

I lie in her arms, poplars rustling, waves rustling…. There’s a bird chirping right outside. I hear it all as if clearer than I’ve ever heard anything. I feel Josephine has me just where she wants me but I’m where I want to be, too.

After a while she puts a cushion under my head, goes and gets me more of that same dusty tea. She helps me back to the soft chair with the footstool and brings me broth that was on the stove all this time. In these few hours it has turned into real homemade broth with cloudy ribbons in it and little flecks of something or other. I’ve no idea what.

There’s one other room, a little bedroom with a sagging iron bed. The white paint from the iron is chipping and lies all over the bed and floor. Josephine brushes it off and puts me to bed there. It has a lumpy, sagging mattress but I fall asleep instantly. I feel drugged, but I’m glad I am.

In the morning I wake to thumping and bumping and then something falling part way down stairs. Turns out there’s an attic and there was an old desk chair on castors up there. She’s carried it down the steep stairway, castors dropping off and down first. I don’t think I could have done that even without a broken leg. She rolls it next to the bed, helps me on it, and pushes me out to the kitchen.

She has opened all the shutters. With the morning sun pouring in you can see the dust rising. You can even see our footprints across the floor. But Josephine doesn’t clean up, instead (and it actually comes true, just as she said), she bakes me a pie. Not blueberry but mulberry. She’s already been out picking things. For supper we have fiddleheads cooked in butter and fried puffball steaks.

I eat, dressed in another clean white shirt. It smells of having been hung on the line in the sun.