Chapter 21

The task of informing Phil Cavilleri fell to me. Who else? He did not

go to pieces as I feared he might, but calmly closed the house in Cranston

and came to live in our apartment. We all have our idiosyncratic ways of

coping with grief. Phil's was to clean the place. To wash, to scrub, to

polish. I don't really understand his thought processes, but Christ, let him

work.

Does he cherish the dream that Jenny will come home?

He does, doesn't he? The poor bastard. That's why he's cleaning up. He

just won't accept things for what they are. Of course, he won't admit this

to me, but I know it's on his mind.

Because it's on mine too.

Once she was in the hospital, I called old man Jonas and let him know

why I couldn't be coming to work. I pretended that I had to hurry off the

phone because I know he was pained and wanted to say things he couldn't

possibly express. From then on, the days were simply divided between

visiting hours and everything else. And of course everything else was

nothing. Eating without hunger, watching Phil clean the apartment (again!)

and not sleeping even with the prescription Ackerman gave me.

Once I overheard Phil mutter to himself, "I can't stand it much

longer." He was in the next room, washing our dinner dishes (by hand). I

didn't answer him, but I did think to myself, I can. Whoever's Up There

running the show, Mr. Supreme Being, sir, keep it up, I can take this ad

infinitum. Because Jenny is Jenny.

That evening, she kicked me out of the room. She wanted to speak to her

father "man to man.

"This meeting is restricted only to Americans of Italian descent," she

said, looking as white as her pillows, "so beat it, Barrett."

"Okay," I said.

"But not too far," she said when I reached the door. I went to sit in

the lounge. Presently Phil appeared. "She says to get your ass in there," he

whispered hoarsely, like the whole inside of him was hollow. "I'm gonna buy

some cigarettes."

"Close the goddamn door," she commanded as I entered the room. I

obeyed, shut the door quietly, and as I went back to sit by her bed, I

caught a fuller view of her. I mean, with the tubes going into her right

arm, which she would keep under the covers. I always liked to sit very close

and just look at her face, which, however pale, still had her eyes shining

in it.

So I quickly sat very close.

"It doesn't hurt, Ollie, really," she said. "It's like falling off a

cliff in slow motion, you know?"

Something stirred deep in my gut. Some shapeless thing that was going

to fly into my throat and make me cry. But I wasn't going to. I never have.

I'm a tough bastard, see? I am not gonna cry.

But if I'm not gonna cry, then I can't open my mouth. I'll simply have

to nod yes. So I nodded yes.

"Bullshit," she said.

"Huh?" It was more of a grunt than a word.

"You don't know about falling off cliffs, Preppie," she said. "You

never fell off one in your goddamn life."

"Yeah," I said, recovering the power of speech. "When I met you."

"Yeah," she said, and a smile crossed her face. " 'Oh, what a falling

off was there.' Who said that?"

"I don't know," I replied. "Shakespeare."

"Yeah, but who?" she said kind of plaintively. "I can't remember which

play, even. I went to Radcliffe, I should remember things. I once knew all

the Mozart Kochel listings."

"Big deal," I said.

"You bet it was," she said, and then screwed up her forehead, asking,

"What number is the C Minor Piano Concerto?"

"I'll look it up," I said.