Away from Her

her experience in the hospital led her from her routine work in the registrar’s office into her new job. Grant himself did not go overboard, at least in comparison with some people around him. He never let another woman get as close to him as Jacqui had been. What he felt was mainly a giganticincrease in well-being. A tendency to pudginess that he had had since he was twelve years old disappeared. He ran up steps two at a time. He appreciated as never before a pageant of torn clouds and winter sunset seen from his office window, the charm of antique lamps glowing between his neighbors’ living-room curtains, the cries of children in the park at dusk, unwilling to leave the hill where they’d been tobogganing. Come summer, he learned the names of flowers. In his classroom, after coaching by his nearly voiceless mother-in-law (her affliction was cancer of the throat), he risked reciting and then translating the majestic and gory ode, the head-ransom, the Hofu-olausn, composed to honor King Eric Blood-axe by the skald whom that king had condemned to death. (And who was then, by the same king—and by the power of poetry—set free.) All applauded—even the peaceniks in the class whom he’d cheerfully taunted earlier, asking if they would like to wait in the hall. Driving home that day or maybe another he found an absurd and blasphemous quotation running around in his head.
    And so he increased in wisdom and stature—
    And in favor with God and man.
    That embarrassed him at the time and gave him a superstitious chill. As it did yet. But so long as nobody knew, it seemed not unnatural.
    * * *
    He took the book with him, the next time he went to Meadowlake. It was a Wednesday. He went looking for Fiona at the card tables and did not see her.
    A woman called out to him, “She’s not here. She’s sick.” Her voice sounded self-important and excited—pleased with herself for having recognized him when he knew nothing about her. Perhaps also pleased with all she knew about Fiona, about Fiona’s life here, thinking it was maybe more than he knew.
    “He’s not here either,” she said.
    Grant went to find Kristy.
    “Nothing, really,” she said, when he asked what was the matter with Fiona. “She’s just having a day in bed today, just a bit of an upset.”
    Fiona was sitting straight up in the bed. He hadn’t noticed, the few times that he had been in this room, that this was a hospital bed and could be cranked up in such a way. She was wearing one of her high-necked maidenly gowns, and her face had a pallor that was not like cherry blossoms but like flour paste.
    Aubrey was beside her in his wheelchair, pushed as close to the bed as it could get. Instead of the nondescript open-necked shirts he usually wore, he waswearing a jacket and a tie. His natty-looking tweed hat was resting on the bed. He looked as if he had been out on important business.
    To see his lawyer? His banker? To make arrangements with the funeral director?
    Whatever he’d been doing, he looked worn out by it. He too was gray in the face.
    They both looked up at Grant with a stony, grief-ridden apprehension that turned to relief, if not to welcome, when they saw who he was.
    Not who they thought he’d be.
    They were hanging on to each other’s hands and they did not let go.
    The hat on the bed. The jacket and tie.
    It wasn’t that Aubrey had been out. It wasn’t a question of where he’d been or whom he’d been to see. It was where he was going.
    Grant set the book down on the bed beside Fiona’s free hand.
    “It’s about Iceland,” he said. “I thought maybe you’d like to look at it.”
    “Why, thank you,” said Fiona. She didn’t look at the book. He put her hand on it.
    “Iceland,” he said.
    She said, “Ice-land.” The first syllable managed to hold a tinkle of interest, but the second fell flat. Anyway, it was necessary for her to turn her attentionback to Aubrey, who was pulling his great thick hand out of hers.
    “What is it?” she said. “What is it, dear heart?”
    Grant had never heard her use this flowery expression before.
    “Oh, all right,” she said. “Oh, here.” And she pulled a handful of tissues from the box beside her bed.
    Aubrey’s problem was that he had begun to weep. His nose had started to run, and he was anxious not to turn into a sorry spectacle, especially in front of Grant.
    “Here. Here,” said Fiona. She would have tended to his nose herself and wiped his tears—and perhaps if