caboose and where it’s going, hey, who cares.” He shrugged and turned his palms face-up in the classic New York gesture of disengagement.
Whose side
was
he on? “Tobacco companies are immoral. Children are amoral. Bankers are feckless.” Sour.
“What on earth do you expect Niedecker to do?”
“How about starting with a full apology?”
“That would require bankers acknowledging a relationship between cause and effect. It would also leave the firm open to lawsuits.”
We walked across the plaza to the Winter Garden, Mike with his hands in his pockets and whistling the tune of “Everybody Knows,” which only succeeded in irritating me even further. I was tired of irony, of rue; we were cobwebbed with the stuff.
As a parting shot, I said, “We’re pathetic, both of us.” Mike just raised an eyebrow. He went back to his office to calculate how far Niedecker traders had gone out on a limb that day, and I to mine to finish a speech that Horace would give at Harvard to recruit MBAs to the firm and the free-market cause.
15
Bailey backed away from me, cowering in a corner of the bedroom. “I look after you! I cook! I sew! I iron! I polish your shoes!” He wept. He was crying because I was admitting him to a nursing home.
The call informing me of a vacant bed had come that morning at work as I was finishing my coffee and booting up the computer. I had been waiting on it for months, a packed suitcase at the ready in the back of a closet. The admissions officer gave me twenty-four hours to deliver Bailey or his bed would be taken. I stood at the window for a moment to summon courage, quell dread. From there I could see the Colgate clock on the Jersey side of the Hudson. The time dimly registered: 8.45. In front of it, a fireboat, testing its equipment, was spraying playful arcs of coruscating water high into the air.
What I was doing was against Bailey’s wishes—or the wishes he had expressed when of whole mind. I could not help him end his life as he had asked; I felt it would scar my soul. Not that I believed in souls. I hope never to live through a day like that again. Even now, as I try to reconstruct it, I fall into a sinkhole of regret. I feel as lost, alone, guilty, as if it had just happened. If only I had found some way to keep him at home until he was completely oblivious of his surroundings. No doubt I did the best given the circumstances, but that’s small consolation. I broke his heart. That damn disease.
The decision was made after consulting an assortment of professionals: a psychiatrist, a gerontologist, a social worker. They patiently pointed out that Bailey was as sick as his worst days, and the network of care I’d put together—a housekeeper, neighbors, students, hourly phone calls from me—was no longer sufficient. Nor could I afford or cope with round-the-clock homecare nursing.
I followed through with blinkered resolve: having him certified as needing nursing-home care; hiring an eldercare lawyer to place him on Medicaid; prepaying for his cremation as the law required; putting him on a waiting list at an institution near where we lived, run by nuns with scrubbed Irish faces and brisk demeanors. I tried to prepare him, repeatedly explaining the reasons, even gaining his approval. To no avail. His mind couldn’t hold the information. When I arrived home and told him what was about to happen, it was news to him.
An old friend of Bailey’s arrived to help. “Let’s have a cup of tea,” I said, and we coaxed him, whimpering, from his corner in the bedroom. Whimpering like Giulietta Masina in
La Strada.
By the time we finished our tea, he had forgotten the home. “How about a drive?” I suggested.
We sat on either side of him in the cab, each holding a hand. He was merry. A child on an outing. But when we entered the lobby of the home and he set eyes on its infirm inhabitants, some clamorous and distraught, others inert and broken, he recoiled in horror. “No! No!” he
Whose side
was
he on? “Tobacco companies are immoral. Children are amoral. Bankers are feckless.” Sour.
“What on earth do you expect Niedecker to do?”
“How about starting with a full apology?”
“That would require bankers acknowledging a relationship between cause and effect. It would also leave the firm open to lawsuits.”
We walked across the plaza to the Winter Garden, Mike with his hands in his pockets and whistling the tune of “Everybody Knows,” which only succeeded in irritating me even further. I was tired of irony, of rue; we were cobwebbed with the stuff.
As a parting shot, I said, “We’re pathetic, both of us.” Mike just raised an eyebrow. He went back to his office to calculate how far Niedecker traders had gone out on a limb that day, and I to mine to finish a speech that Horace would give at Harvard to recruit MBAs to the firm and the free-market cause.
15
Bailey backed away from me, cowering in a corner of the bedroom. “I look after you! I cook! I sew! I iron! I polish your shoes!” He wept. He was crying because I was admitting him to a nursing home.
The call informing me of a vacant bed had come that morning at work as I was finishing my coffee and booting up the computer. I had been waiting on it for months, a packed suitcase at the ready in the back of a closet. The admissions officer gave me twenty-four hours to deliver Bailey or his bed would be taken. I stood at the window for a moment to summon courage, quell dread. From there I could see the Colgate clock on the Jersey side of the Hudson. The time dimly registered: 8.45. In front of it, a fireboat, testing its equipment, was spraying playful arcs of coruscating water high into the air.
What I was doing was against Bailey’s wishes—or the wishes he had expressed when of whole mind. I could not help him end his life as he had asked; I felt it would scar my soul. Not that I believed in souls. I hope never to live through a day like that again. Even now, as I try to reconstruct it, I fall into a sinkhole of regret. I feel as lost, alone, guilty, as if it had just happened. If only I had found some way to keep him at home until he was completely oblivious of his surroundings. No doubt I did the best given the circumstances, but that’s small consolation. I broke his heart. That damn disease.
The decision was made after consulting an assortment of professionals: a psychiatrist, a gerontologist, a social worker. They patiently pointed out that Bailey was as sick as his worst days, and the network of care I’d put together—a housekeeper, neighbors, students, hourly phone calls from me—was no longer sufficient. Nor could I afford or cope with round-the-clock homecare nursing.
I followed through with blinkered resolve: having him certified as needing nursing-home care; hiring an eldercare lawyer to place him on Medicaid; prepaying for his cremation as the law required; putting him on a waiting list at an institution near where we lived, run by nuns with scrubbed Irish faces and brisk demeanors. I tried to prepare him, repeatedly explaining the reasons, even gaining his approval. To no avail. His mind couldn’t hold the information. When I arrived home and told him what was about to happen, it was news to him.
An old friend of Bailey’s arrived to help. “Let’s have a cup of tea,” I said, and we coaxed him, whimpering, from his corner in the bedroom. Whimpering like Giulietta Masina in
La Strada.
By the time we finished our tea, he had forgotten the home. “How about a drive?” I suggested.
We sat on either side of him in the cab, each holding a hand. He was merry. A child on an outing. But when we entered the lobby of the home and he set eyes on its infirm inhabitants, some clamorous and distraught, others inert and broken, he recoiled in horror. “No! No!” he
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