Godamned pills only let you sleep about four hours. Next morning taste in the mouth sour like dried urine.

  Gerard did not approve of sleeping pills except in desperate circumstances of the kind in which he now finds himself (trapped): barbiturates, opioids, morphine in ever-larger doses to muffle excruciating pain.

  Yet: Michaela has been (secretly) hoarding such medications. Not just since Gerard’s hospitalization but before. Years before. A (secret) cache in a handbag she’d brought with her from Cambridge to Santa Tierra, New Mexico, about which Gerard will never know.

  Ask why? Michaela would protest—I have no idea.

  SOON, THE PATIENT IN ROOM 771 will be allowed to self-administer hydromorphone (morphine) to control pain. Though (of course) the morphine available to the patient is not unlimited but closely monitored.

  Does Dr. McManus have a living will, Mrs. McManus? Please bring a photocopy of this document next time you come to the hospital, will you?

  16

  A Theory Pre-Post-Mortem

  Naegleria fowleri has traveled through their nasal passageways and into their brains.

  Burrowed deep into the marrow of their bones.

  Riding the crests of tiny waves, warm-coursing blood.

  Freshwater heated by the sun, aswirl with muck and teeming with microbes.

  An adventure!—they’d thought. Swimming in the sun-warmed mountain lake in the Berkshires, invited to spend a weekend at the country home of friends from Boston.

  GERARD HAD SWUM LONGER IN the lake than Michaela. Consequently Gerard has become more infected than Michaela. This is the theory.

  Possibly, Michaela isn’t infected at all or if she is, it is not with brain-eating Naegleria fowleri but with another microbe. (This is another theory, unproven.)

  (Until there is an autopsy, or autopsies, nothing can be proven.)

  Their hosts, older than Michaela by a decade or more, longtime friends of Gerard, explained apologetically that they rarely swam in the lake any longer, there was too much seaweed close to shore, though certainly the lake was still beautiful. Also apologizing, they rarely hiked in the woods any longer, too many ticks, Lyme disease, friends had been infected but if you were careful, as surely Gerard and Michaela would be, there was no grave danger.

  Also—We’re not so young any longer! Can’t keep up with Gerard.

  Michaela will long remember Gerard emerging from the lake: water streaming down bare chest, arms, legs flattening dark hairs against his skin like an animal’s pelt.

  Michaela will long remember how standing in the lake with water lapping against their waists they’d kissed. Gerard had been affectionate, playful. The skin about his eyes unusually pale, and his eyes unusually naked, without glasses.

  You know, I love you. My dear wife.

  Hope you know that.

  Rare for Gerard to utter such words. For Gerard was shy, in the language of intimacy. A brilliant speaker, a sharp debater, far more assured in front of large audiences than at small gatherings, often tongue-tied in his wife’s presence. Emotions swept over him, into him. Emotions that could not be named by him did not (in a way) exist. Or could not be acknowledged to exist. Michaela laughed in delight of the man, his fatty-muscled body, folds of flesh at his waist, gut-heavy, though with hard slender legs, ankles.

  Faint with love for her husband. Oh!—she adored him.

  Though not liking it how, when they swam together in the lake in the Berkshires, Gerard frequently pulled ahead oblivious of her. As sometimes he did when they were hiking together. Even walking together unless clever Michaela managed for them to hold hands. As if something in the future tugged at Gerard, he was helpless to resist. Oblivious not of her (she thought) but of the presence of another. A kind of trance overcame the man as if he were drawn by the gravitational pull of private thoughts (a future? but what future? did it include Michaela?) in the languid sun-warmed Berkshires lake in which splotches of light winked and shone like teeming life.

  17

  Lonely Wife

  But how lonely, in the night! Michaela reached out to touch her husband’s hand, or wrist, or side, or flank—lightly, not wanting to wake him.

  Just to know that you are there.

  For if you are there, then I am here.

  Not fully awake but frightened suddenly. Needy, shaky. Oh, where was he—her husband?

  Blindly she groped for him in the bed. In the night. Panicked not knowing where Gerard was. And what time this was.

  Was it possible, she hadn’t (yet) met Gerard McManus? All their happiness lay before them, like sunlit land stretching to the distant horizon seen from a small soaring plane?

  Yet she was remembering the man, in the future in which he would become her husband.

  The very word has acquired for her such terrible power, mystery: husband.

  Sickness and health. Till death do you part.

  How has it come to this, Michaela has become so weak! As a younger woman she’d been much stronger. As a younger woman oblivious of the future she’d exuded an air of confidence, self-sufficiency. Yet now it has come to seem as if her bones are turning to water. Her sense of herself melting like ice in late winter.

  Flashes of ice-water rivulets on a steep shingled roof. Glistening, streaming down in curlicues like snakes.

  Michaela was one who hadn’t wanted to marry. Boasted not wanting children. Not needing children to extend herself. A false sense of immortality.

  Yet now, Michaela is incomplete without the man. Without the husband stunted, disfigured.

  Love is the bitter taste. Love is what devours. You have taken half my soul from me. Now, I am only half a person.

  EMERGING FROM THE SHOWER INTO the steamy bathroom. Unsteady on her feet, wrapping herself in a large towel as if for solace. Seeing on the tile floor, in a corner near-opaque with steam, what appears to be a figure, small, dark, dwarfish—Michaela stops dead, staring. Is it—alive? Something that has crawled into the house from outdoors?

  Everywhere in this landscape are lizards, snakes, large glinting-backed beetles. Spiders, scorpions?—deadly venomous creatures.

  Michaela sees that the object is inanimate, carved and painted wood: the gape-mouthed potbellied Scavenger God Ishtikini, sometimes called the Skull-God.

  Surpassingly ugly, this thing! And why is it here?

  Michaela recalls how Gerard teased her for not appreciating “exotic” Native American art. He’d laughed at her but he hadn’t objected to her hiding the objets d’art out of sight. The memory brings tears to Michaela’s eyes.

  Without Gerard, there will be no one to tease her. No one to chide her, even in pretense. No one to provoke her to protest, and to laugh at her protestations.

  In a trance of horror Michaela stands wrapped in the towel, in the heated air, shivering as this realization comes to her. Alone. You will be so alone. Staring at the misshapen figure on the floor. She has no idea how the thing has come to be in such a place, and why the sight of it is so upsetting to her.

  Then she understands: the ravenous Scavenger God has come for Gerard. But it is blind, its comprehension is stunted, it has come to the wrong place for Gerard.

  “Ugly! Evil!”—Michaela is desperate to drag the likeness of Ishtikini to a cupboard beneath the sink counter, where (she is sure) she’d hidden it weeks ago.

  How Gerard would laugh at her! In fact, if Gerard were here in the house, Michaela might have suspected that he’d placed the ugly thing in a corner of the bathroom as a prank.

  Not that Gerard is one to play pranks on anyone. Certainly not Gerard, and certainly not such a crude prank.

  Yet—(Michaela is reasoning wildly)—if Gerard were home, and if Gerard were behaving out of character (affected by medication, perhaps: steroids, if not opioids), he might have played a prank on Michaela.

  A more reasonable explanation: a cleaning woman employed by the Institute was sent to the house in Michaela’s absence, and cleaned the house, without Michaela’s knowledge; for some reason, the woman removed the Ishtikini figure from its hiding place beneath the sink . . .

  Michaela hasn’t seen any evidence of housecleaning. Michaela is determined not to look around, to see if she can locate any. For this is a logical explanation for the presence of the Ishtikini carving in the bathroom and if Gerard were here, Gerard would likely agree.

  Indeed, Michaela knows that Gerard would agree, and in what terms.

  Occam’s razor: Do not multiply entities beyond necessity. The simplest explanation is (likely to be) the correct explanation.

  SHE WILL TELL GERARD ABOUT the Ishtikini figure, she thinks.

  But maybe not. No. (Why would Michaela tell Gerard anything to confuse and upset him?)

  To entertain? To remind him of her, his wife’s, disapproval of the ugly objets d’art, which had amused him, and provoked him to laugh tenderly at her?

  To remind him of the precious intimacy of their marriage, now in danger of slipping away into oblivion?

  Michaela will decide when she arrives at the hospital if she will tell Gerard, or not. Much will depend upon Gerard: if he appears to be clear-minded, or confused.

  Before leaving the house Michaela checks the other demon-artifacts she’d hidden which include the shriek-mouthed female (subsequently identified as Skli, Goddess of Creation and Destruction) and the squat frog-like creature with the blind pop-eyes (Weyaki, God of Chaos). The leather stag’s skull with “real” antlers which (she thought) she’d hidden in the front hall closet she can’t seem to find and decides to forget about.

  18

  “Please Let Us Help You”

  No visitors, please!—his condition wasn’t serious.

  No (adult) children, relatives, friends from Cambridge—not yet.

  Only just a mild case of pneumonia. Well, maybe a blood clot in a lung. Should be discharged within a few days.

  Then, as his condition was gradually revealed to be more serious, indeed critical, he certainly hadn’t wanted visitors—for reasons of privacy, vanity.

  No no no. Not right now.

  By and by—maybe. Not now.

  Each time she’d tried to reason with him. For those who loved him would want to see Gerard—of course! And knowing that she, the wife, the “new” wife, would be blamed if—if something went terribly wrong, and she failed to contact them in time . . .

  “I told you, Michaela. Not now.”

  “But—when?”

  “By and by.”

  “Especially Lucinda will—” (Lucinda was Gerard’s twenty-nine-year-old married daughter living in Seattle.)

  “I said—by and by.”

  This was becoming a refrain with Gerard. A new phrase she’d never heard on his lips before, uttered in a bemused/dismissive tone:

  By and by.

  I’ll let you know.

  In the meantime just stop, Michaela. Please.

  Trying to reason with him. But carefully—not in a way to upset him. For it’s risky to upset Gerard McManus in a weakened state when he isn’t altogether himself.

  Above all you did not want to see the mask of gentlemanly warmth fade from Gerard’s face, a look of raw fury coming into the beautiful blue-gray eyes.

  No. You did not want to see that.

  And if you did, if you have seen it: quickly erase from memory.

  Don’t oppose him. Don’t contradict him. If you love him don’t ever, ever provoke him.

  STILL, ALARMING NEWS OF GERARD McManus must have made its way back east like airborne spores for one day a Cambridge friend calls Michaela to exclaim into Michaela’s ear: “We’ve heard that Gerard is in the hospital there!—is that true? Shall we come out? Does Gerard want visitors? Do you want visitors? Let us help you, Michaela!”

  No no no. Not right now.

  By and by—maybe. Not now.

  “But it must be a terrible strain on you too, Michaela. We’ve heard that Gerard is seriously ill. And you don’t have anyone else out there, do you? Any of Gerard’s family? No? And where on earth are you? Someone said—Santa Fe? New Mexico? Could you air-lift Gerard back to Mass. General, if you have to? Is that a possibility? Though I don’t suppose your insurance would pay . . .”

  An air of reproach, chiding. And beneath, genuine alarm.

  Michaela stammers a reply explaining that she can’t talk right now, has to hang up, but the emphatic voice persists: “At least let Rob and me come out and help you. We can cook for you, drive you to the hospital, do errands for you—even if Gerard doesn’t want visitors . . .”

  Help me? Cook for me?—Michaela laughs. This is funny: most of her food these days is scavenged piecemeal from Gerard’s untouched meal trays. Dwarf packages of Cheerios, dwarf containers of (overly sweet) orange juice, apple juice, cranberry juice, dwarf yogurts, Jell-Os, ice creams. Hasn’t had what you’d call a meal, seated at a table, in memory.

  Michaela protests: she doesn’t need help, really she is fine, she is all right.

  “You can’t be all right alone, Michaela! It’s a terrible ordeal, when a spouse is in the hospital. When it’s ‘intensive care.’ Let us come out and help you. It’s the least we can do, you’ve been so generous with us . . .”

  Generous? When? Vaguely Michaela recalls—an incident from her old, lost life in Cambridge . . . Feeling a sensation of panic, that she might be trapped in the present tense by random acts of generosity in the past: accompanying this friend to a clinic for a colonoscopy when no one else in her family had been available, waiting for her, greeting her in the recovery room . . .

  “Michaela? Are you still on the line? You haven’t sounded well. Please let us help you.”

  But no one can help us. No one can intrude.

  Summoning her strength to rebut the friend’s argument. Speaking rapidly, thanking profusely, explaining, on Gerard’s cell phone (Madelyn Bronwell had called Gerard’s number, Michaela discovered the phone forgotten on Gerard’s bedside table, vibrating weakly) that they really don’t require help right now, things are going reasonably well and Gerard’s daughter Lucinda is planning on coming soon, she’ll be staying at the house with Michaela—“It’s just a matter now of treatment. All the tests are in, and there’s a regimen planned. Gerard is in good hands here. The medical care in Santa Tierra is first-rate.”

  Good hands. First-rate. Language so banal, Michaela cannot believe that she is speaking it. Yet, it is the language that comes spontaneously to our lips in such circumstances.

  “Still, Mass. General would be so much more—”

  “Sorry, we are here. Gerard isn’t about to be ‘air-lifted’ anywhere.”

  Michaela speaks sharply. The friend has more questions but Michaela explains that she can’t talk right now, she will call back later. Her voice is cracking, hoarse with the effort not to scream.

  After the call Michaela is trembling as if she has narrowly escaped danger. Hoping that none of their other Cambridge friends will call. And no one from Gerard’s family.

  If these are Final Days these are precious days. No one else is wanted.

  19

  The Vigil III

  No beginning.

  And no end.

  SHUDDERING RELIEF IT HAS NOT (yet) happened.

  Not this morning. Not this noon. Not this afternoon. Whatever it is that will happen, but not (yet).

  Asking where is my wife?

  (But which wife? Michaela steels herself to hear the wrong name but Gerard is too shrewd to utter any name at all as, she’d sometimes noticed, at large parties or receptions in Cambridge Gerard has begun to refrain from introducing people to one another allowing them to introduce themselves if they wish but risking no embarrassment to himself if he has not remembered their names.)

  Demanding to know why is he here? What is this place? Where is his doctor? Who is his doctor? (Dr. T___, from Cambridge?) Why do people here speak with Russian accents? Is this some sort of Fulbright exchange, is the CIA funding the Institute, will he be expected to sign a loyalty oath?

  He will refuse, Gerard says. God damn he will not sign any loyalty oath.

  Shaking his head vehemently to clear it as if the confusion inside might be remedied by shaking things up even more.

  Pushing away Michaela’s hand when she tries to comfort him.

  “. . . time to go home. The car is parked in the—what’s it called—parking garage.”

  He is becoming fretful. He is becoming excited. He is becoming angry. He is becoming despondent. He refuses to eat: he won’t/can’t swallow solids. He refuses to drink: liquids make him gag. A spoon lifted to his lips makes him gag, he pushes Michaela’s hand away. Makes him angry, and makes him gag. She, the wife, is making him angry, and making him gag.

  “I told you—it’s time to go home. They’re not doing a damned thing for me here.”

  Home. Michaela has the idea that Gerard means, not the glass-walled house on Vista Drive, Santa Tierra, but the brick town house on Monroe Street, Cambridge, where he has lived for most of the past quarter-century.

  “. . . need to work better, at home. Goddamned interruptions all the time here.” Still Gerard is working, or trying to work, on the copyedited manuscript of The Human Brain and Its Discontents. But the pages are becoming scattered, in bedclothes, on the bedside table, windowsill, even the floor behind the bed where Michaela has several times discovered them.

  Several times she has checked, surreptitiously: the inscription page is still in place—for my beloved wife and first reader Michaela. Mornings are not Gerard’s best time, for the heavy narcotic slumber of opioid sleep still weighs upon him, until midday.

  And midday, and mid-afternoon, are not Gerard’s best times for the steady procession of attendants and medical workers exhausts him.

  Evening of an interminable day. Dinner brought on a plastic tray, dinner removed on a plastic tray. It has come to seem evident: Gerard is not himself.