up in an ungainly, uncomfortable knot, side by side with arms patting each otherâs shoulders for a few long seconds before Naomi moves away.
Like two cats in a room full of rocking chairs, Hank thinks, watching from outside.
The weight of the day lands on Harry suddenly, with a force that makes standing a task. He can barely keep his eyes open.
âHarry,â Freda says, âdo you need to sit down?â
You donât look so good, he can almost hear her thinking. But they donât say things like that to Harry these days.
Artie takes his elbow, more gently than Bob the Driver and just as depressingly. Artie Marks, for Godâs sake. Harry used to babysit for Artie Marks.
Harryâs guest room is the good one, away from the street, facing the carriageway behind Freda and Artieâs brick Victorian house on Monument Avenue. It has a nice, high ceiling. It is chilly, though, and Harry hurries into his old-manâs pajamas and works his way under the covers. He looks up at that ceiling for a few seconds. It seems so far away, and so blue, that it might be sky. Before he can reach over to turn out the bedside light, he is asleep.
âHarry,â Freda says. âWake up, Harry. Wake up.â
She looks worried.
It takes a few seconds for him to regain full consciousness.
âWhat? What was I ⦠Was I talking in my sleep?â
âYelling would be more like it.â
She looks down at him, frowning.
âYou kept saying youâre sorry, that you tried.â
Harry is silent. Maybe he should share this dream with someone other than Ruth, but he doesnât know if heâs up to it. Freda gets him a glass of water.
Now Harryâs wide awake. Itâs 2:30 a.m., heâs in pain, and experience tells him there is little use in trying to go back to sleep. He knows heâll just toss and turn, then do a facedown in his breakfast cornflakes.
âHarry?â
âWhat?â
âDoes it scare you? It shouldnât, you know.â
He realizes his face is wet. It is difficult for him to explain even to his sister that it isnât the future that makes him sad; it is the past.
She puts her hand on his head. Her smell reminds Harry of Freda as a little girl, tagging along after her big brother. Amazing, he thinks, how that basic scent, that basic Fredaness, hasnât changed. He wishes he could say the same for himself, but even though heâs heard that a person canât smell his own stink, he can tell that his night sweats are the odor of decay, of rot.
He decides to go ahead and tell her about the dream, without revealing its source.
âOh, Harry,â smoothing his dwindling hair as if he were a child, âitâs only a dream. There isnât anything to dreams but dreams. You dream about what you think about.â
He knows sheâs probably right, but as he has more or less accepted The End and its smirking, scythe-wielding inevitability, all things great and small have become portents. This acceptance did not come easily or quickly; it just came, until one day he woke up and could swallow it. What Harry would like to tell everyone: You think you have accepted death? You think youâre a big boy or girl now, well aware that you wonât live forever? Just wait. Wait until you make the victory tour, going around one last time to visit everybody you donât think youâre ever going to see again.
When Harry appeared unexpectedly two months ago on the doorstep of the former Gloria Tannebaum Stein, mother of his children, forgiver of so much, he found that neither of them had the words to tie it all up neatly. They had their nervous cup of coffee. They talked, with her present husband in the next room, about the good times, pretending the bad never existed. Finally, silently, they agreed to not voice regret, to not curse fate or second-guess. To just get on with it. To compare notes on âthe kidsâ and let it go at
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