Dance Lessons Page 10

Ellen grabs her around the waist, a drowning grip. Then the two women limp across the room, where Ellen lowers her slowly onto the bed. “Jo? Jo? Are you awake? Answer me!”

  Her arm still supporting the older woman, Ellen eases her further into bed, sets her like a mannequin against the pillows. The loud snoring starts again.

  Ellen crosses to retrieve the black phone from the floor. She dials zero. Zero for the operator.

  “Fintan?” says Dr. Tom Fitzgerald. He’s standing in Jo’s kitchen, taking Ellen in, head to toe. “You’re Fintan’s wife?” The red-haired doctor is smiling, a staged smile. But there’s something in his expression that is edgy, terrified.

  Ellen nods. “Yes.”

  “Well . . .” The doctor swallows. Then he looks past Ellen’s shoulders toward the hallway, Jo Dowd’s narrow staircase. “Is he . . . ?”

  Christ, Ellen thinks. He doesn’t know. Jo got my letter and never even told her own doctor that her son, her only son, was dead.

  “He’s not here, Doctor. He died. Almost a year ago. So it’s just me. I’m here.” She gives a tight laugh. “Well, as you can see.”

  The doctor blinks at her. “Died? You’re not serious?” He runs a hand through his red hair. Ellen studies the little gingery hairs along the back of his freckled hands.

  “I’m Ellen.” She feels stupid. Tom Fitzgerald is still staring down at her, his head cocked to the side. Waiting for her to add something else. “Boisvert,” she says. “Ellen Boisvert.”

  “I’m sorry for your trouble.” He extends a handshake. He seems slightly relieved.

  The doctor is the caricature Irishman. His freckled face under red hair that is thinning at the temples. He wears a rumpled shirt under a beige corduroy jacket. “I’m sorry. I’m . . . God. And she never bloody told me. Never! Heart?”

  “What?” Did Fintan have one? Yes. No.

  “Was it a heart attack?” the doctor prompts. “That young, it’s usually . . .”

  “No. He drowned. In a sailing accident.” She says those words again, so easy, so practiced, like a prayer. Her husband’s death has become a story, almost a party piece. “It happened last August.”

  He is calculating dates. “August. Yeah. That was when she got sick first. Didn’t ring me of course until it was all gone too far. Coughing up blood; hardly able to get out of bed.” He stares at her, bewildered.

  “So you knew him?” It comes in a whisper.

  “Knew him? Yeah, of course. He was a class behind me at school, down in the village, you know. Then we were in college in Dublin together—though he was commerce—business studies, and I was premed. Neighbors’ children away together, up in the big smoke, you know. The college students’ code of secrecy.” He mimics that zipping-the-mouth-shut motion. Then he flashes her a smile. Dr. Tom Fitzgerald likes to be liked.

  On the kitchen table is a box with a pharmaceutical company’s name, a box of animal pain patches, a veterinarian’s typed label: Mr. Edward McHugh.

  Fentanyl patches, Dr. Fitzgerald called them. It’s what Ellen thought was a diaper on the bedside table. Jo, it seems, has been ripping them open, measuring, gauging, and ingesting tiny amounts of the animal powder for her pain.

  Earlier, Dr. Fitzgerald went searching for other secret supplies. He yanked open the cupboards in the scullery, even looked under her bed while she slept. But so far, he has only found this one box.

  He opens his doctor’s bag, takes out a gadget and starts to punch buttons, typing something in there. Parp-parp-parp.

  “What’s going to happen with her?” Ellen asks, gesturing her head toward the parlor.

  The doctor levels his eyes on her. “She’s not in a fully fledged overdose—respiratory distress—I mean, not from the fentanyl anyway, but of course, she knew what she was doing; knew to take just enough. But then there’s her normal distress from the cancer.”

  He goes back to his gadget and deletes something.

  Cancer. The word is just here, pronounced aloud in the freezing kitchen. Suddenly, Ellen knows she’s been expecting it, that she has known this, ever since that day she came here. Jo Dowd has cancer. All that coughing and those lies about arthritic pain.

  Dr. Fitzgerald drops his gadget back into the bag. “Sorry. I have to log that immediately or else it’s no good.”

  They are sitting at the kitchen table, Jo’s metal teapot set between them, a mug of scalding tea each. Dr. Fitzgerald says, “You know, I did wonder why Fintan never came home when she was in the hospital. When we admitted her, I asked her if there was anyone she wanted me to ring, to contact—meaning, of course, her son. But then, you learn as a local doctor not to ‘go there,’ as they say. Even in a family you’ve been treating for years—actually, my father treated her and her sister, years ago—but you never know what happens in families. Especially with someone like . . .” He grimaces. “Well, sick or well, Jo can be a little . . .”

  “Impossible?”

  He laughs. “Yeah. But tough as nails, too. After the hospital, I got her the usual homecare. But she ran her day nurse out of here. Did she tell you that? Oh, no, of course she didn’t. I got a phone call one day from the community health clinic in Ballinkeady saying there was nothing they could do. Nothing. In fact, the poor nurse—young, you know, and new to this end of the country—was ready to pack in the nursing gig altogether. Find a new career for herself.”

  “And you, Doctor?”

  “Oh, call me Tom, please.”

  “Tom. You must’ve known she was in relapse? All this pain? The coughing?”

  “No. No. I tried visiting a few times. I’d drive up the hill with the big lie that I was ‘on my way someplace’ though that’s a tough one to swallow when you’re the only house up here. But anyways, I came to visit and she’d meet me at the back door with the coat and hat on and the walking stick. She said I might have time for wandering the countryside bothering people and gossiping, but she had her land and cattle to check on.”

  He shrugs. “You can’t force someone to call you out to their house. Or even come and see you.” He studies Ellen. He’s obviously deliberating whether to go on, how much more to tell. “I mean, we even tried the priest tactic—you know, parish priest—”

  “Father Bradley?”

  “Oh, you met him? Yeah, Noel’s a grand fella. Did he tell you he’s a champion bicycle racer? He’s won nearly every race in Connaught. Well, anyways, myself and Noel met for a few pints down in Flanagan’s one night, and, breaking my healthcare code of privacy of course, I tell him the story, see if he can give it a go, do the visiting priest on his rounds, visiting the elderly, part of the priestly ‘job description,’ you might say.”

  “And?”

  Over his tea mug, Tom Fitzgerald pulls an “ouch” face. “Bad. Very bad. Noel comes up on his bicycle, mar dheá just out for a run, and there she is out with the stick, walking the avenue, mistress of all she surveyed.”

  “She gave him what for?”

  “Yup. That’s one way of putting it. Noel tried the caring priest routine—gives her the standard speech about the role of spirituality in healing and wellness. And she jabs the walking stick at him and says, “Isn’t it time you got yourself a bloody job like the rest of the countryside? A job and a wife and kids? Then you mightn’t have time to be out on your tricycle, bothering busy people with your oul’ pisreógs.”

  Tom Fitzgerald pours himself another cup of tea. He asks cautiously, “You did know she had cancer?”

  She shakes her head. “No. This is my first visit. Ever. I only arrived Monday. I’m at the hotel, Flanagan’s. That’s where she called me earlier. Tonight.”

  He narrows his eyes to study her sitting there, her nightgown bunched inside her jeans, the blue sweatshirt she pulled on in her hotel room. Yes, ever since he came from Jo’s bedroom, there’s something he’s been trying to figure out; something that doesn’t add up for him.

  “So you never came to visit?”

  “There was no love lost—some sort of fall
ing out between my late husband and his mother.”

  “Do you know what ’twas about?” He’s studying her face. There is something guarded, hooded in his look.

  She shakes her head. “No. They didn’t speak.”

  Silence stretches between them. “Doctor, what’s going to happen now? Happen to her?”

  He spreads his hands. “We’ll have to get her back into the hospital to run more tests. Re-stage her cancer. I mean, I’m presuming that’s what’s wrong, what”—he glances toward his leather bag—“why she went ordering Ned to get her illegal pain stuff. But the tests’ll tell us everything. Then she’ll have to have some kind of around-the-clock care, no matter what she says this time. Under the circumstances, a nursing home is the only choice.” He looks around the chill, darkened kitchen—the clothesline strung above the range with two tattered dishcloths draped there. “She can’t stay here. That’s for sure.”

  They both stop, startled at the sound of the back door, then the footsteps, light, slow. Here’s Ned in the kitchen doorway, the cap scrunched in his hand; the downcast look.

  “Ned,” Dr. Fitzgerald says in that expansive voice. “Musha, how’rya Ned? Come in!”

  “Doctor? I saw your car and I got a bit of a fright.”

  “She’s fine, Ned. She’d a bit of a turn, gave us all a bit of a fright, but she’s asleep now.”

  Ned stares at the veterinarian’s box on the table. He looks to the floor, a reprimanded child.

  Dr. Fitzgerald says, “You could go in if you like, Ned. Just to see her.”

  “Ach, no, Doctor. No, ’long as I know she’s all right. Anyways, I’ve jobs for doing abroad.”

  Tom Fitzgerald stands there in the yard, between the house and his Volvo station wagon. Turning, he lifts one hand to shade his eyes from the morning’s pale sun over the house. He calls to Ellen in the back doorway. “You have my mobile number. Ring me immediately if there’s anything unusual. Anything at all. I’ve to make a few calls, but then I’m back for the afternoon. So I’ll be in my surgery—my examining room. I’ll come back out here around fiveish. We’ll just let her sleep.”

  We’ll let her sleep. He assumes that Ellen is part of Jo’s care, or at least, she’s part of today’s emergency team. Ellen’s voice comes exhausted, scratchy. “Sounds fine. I’ll stay here.”

  Tom heads to the car. Then, “Oh, and Ellen?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m sorry. Again. I . . . I still can’t really believe . . . I mean about Fintan.”

  18

  “NO. THESE ARE THE ONLY OPTIONS,” says Tom Fitzgerald.

  They are sitting in a triangle at Jo’s kitchen table—Jo in her usual spot inside the window, Ellen and Dr. Tom Fitzgerald along the side, their backs to the kitchen range. The doctor rocks backward on the kitchen chair.

  Jo’s face is flaccid. Still dressed in her stained old cardigan and the crumpled brown pants, but she’s surprisingly chipper and rested. Ellen watches the old woman’s eyes stray toward the windowsill, toward the ashtray and the cigarettes, where they’re stashed under a newspaper.

  Tom brings the chair legs down, a loud thwack on the linoleum floor. “Mrs. Dowd, we can’t know what’s going on, what the prognosis or treatments are until we get you admitted. Sorry. No other choice.”

  Jo sniffs. “Yes. Yes, I’m not an óinseach.” Then she coughs, that haunting, gurgly cough. But now Jo gets her breath sooner, faster, as if to defy the young doctor.

  With a dry little laugh Tom says, “No, you’re certainly not a fool, any woman who can swindle a poor man like Ned into getting you un-prescribed medicines.”

  Jo’s eyes snap. “That’s my business. Not yours.” Then she turns away to the window again. Her grey hair is pillow-flat. It badly needs a wash.

  Tom shoots Ellen a defeated look.

  Since he left this morning, Ellen has wandered around Jo’s house and yard, then napped on the parlor couch, listening for sounds from the bedroom. Once, she woke with a stiff neck and lay there listening for the sounds of breathing from beyond the door. I could just leave, she thought. Tiptoe out through that back door and into my rental car and keep driving to Shannon Airport. She may never remember my being here. From across the sea and my newly found apartment or condo in Coventry-by-the-Sea, I need never inquire for her, never call the hospital in Galway where they plan to take her for another round of tests. And afterward? I will never know whether my husband’s secret mother is alive or dead.

  Now Jo says, “What if I make up my mind to just stay here, here in my own house? No more of them bloody machines and the wakening you up in the middle of the night for nothing; bloody nurses talking to you like you’re gone seafóid in the head.”

  Tom Fitzgerald sighs, then rocks the chair backward again. “You could stay here. For a while. Maybe even three days until I get you a bed in the hospital. Sooner, not later. But we can’t plan your next treatment until we know more. Look, as it is, it’s a miracle you didn’t kill yourself with them pain—”

  Jo interrupts. “Couldn’t I just get some sort of a n—”

  “—A nurse? You had a nurse and you sent her crying out of here.”

  Jo abandons caution and reaches into the window for the packet of cigarettes. She lights up, then inhales defiantly, blows the smoke toward the doctor. Tom rolls his eyes toward Ellen, shakes his head. I don’t believe this, the look says.

  The cigarette relaxes Jo. “I didn’t like that woman. She was stupid. So once you”—a mimicking voice—“‘decide my treatment’—what’ll ye do with me then?”

  “Depending on the results, they might discharge you. But then you’ll need home nursing care. Twenty-four hours. We’ll get a day nurse from the health board, no problem. And for the nights, we can just put in an advertisement for a caretaker, someone—”

  We. We. We. Again. He keeps saying “we,” Ellen thinks.

  “—Someone that’d rob and murder me in my bed?”

  Tom flinches from another gust of cigarette smoke. “Mrs. Dowd, it’s standard care for someone in your situation.”

  Jo jabs her cigarette hand at him. “An ad? Sure there’s nobody in this country’d take a job like that nowadays. Only foreigners. An’ I won’t have one of them here, won’t have some latchigo from Latvia or some god-forsaken place sleeping above stairs in my house.”

  A phone rings. Tom reaches into his inside-jacket pocket, looks at the small screen, snaps the phone open. “Hel-lo, there?! Okay, love. I’ll be parked out front when you’re finished, all right? And does Trina need a lift, too? Uh, huh. Right. See you. Bye-bye.” He snaps it shut.

  “My daughter, Riona. Goes to ballet lessons after school.”

  Tom raises his voice down the table. “Now, Mrs. Dowd, I’m going to get onto the hospital first thing tomorrow morning, and then I’ll give you a ring here, or call out, so you can tell me when you’re packed and ready.”

  “Keep your bloody voice down; I’m not deaf.”

  “Right, well. Tomorrow. Until then, you should get more sleep. And for God’s sake, eat something.”

  Then for the second time that day, Dr. Tom Fitzgerald walks across Jo’s kitchen to her back door.

  Ellen and Jo stay at the kitchen table, the silence stretching between them. Jo has another coughing fit.

  Ellen starts, “Can I get you?—”

  “—I’m fine.” She coughs up into the paper spittoon from the window. Jo winces when she shifts in the chair. She’s obviously been holding off, waiting out this latest lower-back pain.

  Earlier, Tom Fitzgerald left some pain pills—real, prescribed pills, to be taken at bedtime or as needed. One should last twelve hours. They work on a slow release.

  Jo’s voice is defensive. “I’m sorry I rang you last night. Sorry you had to come out here, interrupt your holiday.”

  Ellen takes her in—all of her, the cardigan, with the cuff edges burned and scorched from the kitchen range. The long grey hair filthy. I have already touched her, thinks Ellen.
Could I actually stay and help the old woman get undressed again, offer to help her into a hot bath, a clean nightgown, pack a hospital bag for tomorrow? “I can stay tonight,” Ellen says, almost a whisper.

  Silence. She watches Jo’s mouth moving, how the lips twitch, disappear.

  At last, Jo says, “It’s been a quare few hours, a quare night. I’d like to be left alone a while, in my own kitchen, my own telly to think things out about all this hospital rigmarole.”

  Down the table, Jo’s eyes are mournful and defeated. “There’s three rooms upstairs—two of them with beds in them. Pick which one you want. There’s sheets up there someplace in the hot press. That fella”—she tilts her grey head—“he’ll be back here tomorrow bothering me. If I stay alone all night he’ll be even worse, I suppose.”

  Ellen looks down at herself, her crumpled jeans, the nightgown still stuffed inside the sweatshirt. “I need to go down to the village anyway; get some overnight things, grab something to eat. Then I’ll come back. Will I bring you back something?”

  “Take your time. I might even be gone to bed when you come back.”

  Outside, the early-evening sunlight is a surprise—the birds scrabbling and twittering in the apple orchard. There’s Ned’s car along the orchard wall, and Ellen’s own black Fiat is there, just outside the yard gate. How strange that this summery day has gone on brightly, loudly.

  Ellen doubles back into the house, across the scullery to the kitchen door. Jo has moved from the table to the chair by the range. The television is on; she’s lit a new cigarette. The television burbles—a police program in which they enlist the public’s support: “If you were in this area of Limerick and remember any suspicious activities . . .”

  Ellen leans against the door jamb until Jo looks up and sees her. “I thought you were gone,” says Jo.

  “There weren’t—aren’t—any,” Ellen says.

  Jo looks annoyed. “What? Aren’t any what?”

  “Children. Mine and Fintan’s. That’s what you asked me, what you wanted to know when you called my hotel last night.”