They May Not Mean To, but They Do: A Novel Read Online Free Page B

was very small, and Tony would put a hot towel on his face.
    “Tony?” his mother said. “Tony died years ago.”
    Joy began talking about all the people in the neighborhood who had died. If they hadn’t died, they had gone out of business. She held the green plastic basket of strawberries and Daniel noticed her fingers were already stained pink with the juice.
    “But we’re still here,” she concluded.
    Daniel’s father took his hand and held it. “You making a good living these days?” he asked.
    “Pay no attention to him,” said Joy. “I’d better wash the berries. Where’d you get them? On the street?” She licked a pink finger. “Now I’ll get mad cow disease and Ebola.” She went into the kitchen.
    “I’m making a living,” Daniel said. “Let’s just leave it at that.”
    “I don’t know why you work for that organization.” He said the word “organization” with distaste. “Go where the action is.”
    “Where’s that, Dad?”
    “Just ignore him, Danny,” his mother called from the kitchen.
    “Wall Street.”
    Daniel rolled his eyes.
    “Well, you can lead a horse to water,” said Aaron.
    Daniel left them sitting in the dining room eating the strawberries. As he closed the front door, he heard his father say, “Nice boy. Good work, Joyful.”
    “Wall Street?” she answered. “You want your son to be a crook?”

 
    6
    Aaron was lying on his side, turned away from her, when Joy got into bed. She put her arms around him and they talked about the past. He remembered unexpected things, digging clams in Cape Cod right after they were married, the poem he’d memorized for freshman English (“ how do you like your blueeyed boy / Mister Death ”). She talked about the children, about the grandchildren. A little bit about work, though he was no longer interested in her work, could not really follow what she was telling him. He was very romantic these days, more romantic than he had been in what she sometimes thought of as their real life, before he began to drift away. He called her darling, asked what the hell the colostomy pouch was, apologized for it, thanked her for putting up with it and him. Then they fell asleep. That was how it went most nights. Sometimes when she lay down on the bed with Aaron, her face pressed against the back of his head, she would cry. When he asked her what was wrong, she would say she missed her parents.
    But one night, just as Joy climbed into bed, when Aaron pulled up his pajama shirt and poked at the pouch and said, “What the hell is this?” he yanked it out before she could stop him.
    She cleaned him up. She changed the sheets. She settled him back in bed. He told her he loved her. She held him and cried, said again that it was because she missed her parents.
    It began to happen frequently, regularly, sometimes twice in a night. What the hell is this , and a yank. Joy didn’t tell anyone. That would have been disrespectful to Aaron. But beyond that, she knew if she told anyone, her children, her friends, they would tell her she needed to hire help or that Aaron ought to be in a nursing home.
    “Please don’t pull out the pouch tonight, Aaron.”
    “I’m hungry,” he said. She’d gotten him into his pajamas but not into bed yet. He was in his chair watching television. The TV was on so loud she could feel the vibrations in her stomach. She brought him some ice cream, then canned pears. He smiled at her and asked for toast and tea. She imagined the plastic colostomy pouch puffing, swelling, being pulled off by his big restless hand.
    “Look,” she said, pointing to the pouch when she got him settled in bed. “Your colostomy pouch from your surgery.”
    “I had surgery?”
    “It saved your life.”
    Aaron looked away from her. “Some life,” he said with a sigh.
    Joy rigged up the bed so that she could strip any wet or soiled sheets from his side without disturbing the king-sized bottom sheet. She put down layers of chux and towels and an