The Year of Magical Thinking

21

She’s still beautiful,” Gerry had said as he and John and I left Quintana in the ICU at Beth Israel North.

“He said she’s still beautiful,” John said in the taxi. “Did you hear him say that? She’s still beautiful? She’s lying there swollen up with tubes coming out of her and he said—”

He could not continue.

That happened on one of those late December nights a few days before he died. Whether it happened on the 26th or the 27th or the 28th or the 29th I have no idea. It did not happen on the 30th because Gerry had already left the hospital by the time we got there on the 30th. I realize that much of my energy during the past months has been given to counting back the days, the hours. At the moment he was saying in the taxi on the way down from Beth Israel North that everything he had done was worthless did he have three hours left to live or did he have twenty-seven? Did he know how few hours there were, did he feel himself going, was he saying that he did not want to leave? Don’t let the Broken Man catch me, Quintana would say when she woke from bad dreams, one of the “sayings” John put in the box and borrowed for Cat in Dutch Shea, Jr. I had promised her that we would not let the Broken Man catch her.

You’re safe.

I’m here.

I had believed that we had that power.

Now the Broken Man was in the ICU at Beth Israel North waiting for her and now the Broken Man was in this taxi waiting for her father. Even at three or four she had recognized that when it came to the Broken Man she could rely only on her own efforts: If the Broken Man comes I’ll hang onto the fence and won’t let him take me.

She hung onto the fence. Her father did not.

I tell you I shall not live two days.

What gives those December days a year ago their sharper focus is their ending.