Rachel Alexander 04 - Lady Vanishes

this, her face gaunt, her body barely visible beneath the hospital blanket, my voice sounding hollow to me as I read the poems, thinking, how will I live, how will I go on?
The doctor has finally said that there is no going back from where we are. He suggested hospice care, but I am reluctant to do that as she will know then that there is no hope. And if she felt that, I think she would die sooner and in despair.
Don’t think me an utter fool, L. I understand that she is aware now of how grave the situation is. But I think a little hope still burns in her, and I long to keep it that way until the end, if possible.
S

Venus’s answer was short.

Without hope, there is nothing at all. I’ll read Frost tonight and think of you both.
L
L,
My wife’s sister came today. She and her offspring are our only family, but I feel far closer to you, wherever you are. Her sister comes once a week. She stays a short time. She is awkward and does not know what to say. She usually stands. She never touches either me or her sister. Her children don’t come at all, and I must admit, I like these people less and less, and trust their fondness for my dear girl not at all.
I think, like vultures, they see only the future, the meal they can have if they are patient. All she means to them is a tidy distribution, as if she were gone already. They do not treasure any moment they can spend with this gentle woman. Perhaps they never did, who knows?
S
S,
You remind me of a scene in Zorba the Greek in which the old woman is dying, and the townspeople come and strip her things away as she lies in bed watching.
Some people seem to discount the person at the first
bad news.
L

    I folded the pages and put them back under my waistband, looking at the sun setting on the Hudson, the ball dropping behind the half-built buildings across the way in Jersey City and Hoboken, the light so fierce at one point that even with the amber shades to cut down glare, I had to raise one hand to shield my eyes.
    It was fascinating to read the letters, this one-sided conversation—he says, she says, but not at the same rime. There were no interruptions, no changes in the direction of the conversation because of what you perceived in the other person’s facial expression or body language. The phone didn’t ring; you were using the phone line, especially since providers started offering a flat rate and you no longer had to watch the clock.
    There was a heightened intensity to the exchanges, everything made more intimate by the speed with which you could send your thoughts and feelings across space and time and onto the small screen in someone else’s home, where he would read your words without the interference of normal life. No one ever interrupting an e-mail “conversation” by saying, “Hey, did you remember to take out the garbage after dinner?”
    They were good friends, listening to each other’s concerns, offering support. The intimacy was strange, disembodied, verbal intimacy that had nothing to do with age, race, physical characteristics of any kind. Harry, remembering when he was young, seeming younger than Venus sometimes. On-line, he was unencumbered by a seventy-four-year-old body: no stenosis, no arthritis, no enlarged prostates in cyberspace.
    Venus was the supportive one, the nurturer. Venus was sensible and caring.
    So what was she getting from all this? The chance to do what she did all day at work, only this time there was someone on the receiving end who could express appreciation? I thought about that for a while, wondering if it had been enough for her, wondering how soon after Harry’s wife died did things change.
    “I’m here for you, S,” she wrote, the sexual charge beginning to appear early on. Even without scents and pheromones, you could feel the charge coming off the words.
    But was it real? Would it last? Would it stand the test of a virtual meeting?
    Often it didn’t.
    In this case it did.
    I had too little here. But I still had Venus’s keys, so I punched up the machine, walking as fast as I could without breaking into a trot, hoping the workout would give me more than it took away so that I would be able to get back to Venus’s computer and track the meeting of two minds, a love affair that never would have happened the old-fashioned way.
    Out the window, there were three lanes of traffic moving north, the newly built median filled with dirt, waiting for the trees and flowers that would partially block the view of three