The Corrections

It made a difference, certainly, that all three of her kids were helping out. Chip in particular seemed almost miraculously transformed. After Christmas, he stayed with Enid for six weeks, visiting Alfred every day, before returning to New York. A month later he was back in St. Jude, minus his awful earrings. He proposed that he extend his visit to a length that delighted and astonished Enid until it emerged that he’d got himself involved with the chief neurology resident at St. Luke’s Hospital.

The neurologist, Alison Schulman, was a kinky-haired and rather plain-looking Jewish girl from Chicago. Enid liked her well enough, but she was mystified that a successful young doctor wanted anything to do with her semi-employed son. The mystery deepened in June when Chip announced that he was moving to Chicago to commence an immoral cohabitation with Alison, who had joined a group practice in Skokie. Chip neither confirmed nor denied that he had no real job and no intention of paying his fair share of household expenses. He claimed to be working on a screenplay. He said that “his” producer in New York had “loved” his “new” version and asked for a rewrite. His only gainful employment, however, as far as Enid knew, was part-time substitute teaching. Enid did appreciate that he drove to St. Jude from Chicago once a month and spent several long days with Alfred; she loved having a child of hers back in the Midwest. But when Chip informed her that he was going to be the father of twins with a woman he wasn’t even married to, and when he then invited Enid to a wedding at which the bride was seven months pregnant and the groom’s current “job” consisted of rewriting his screenplay for the fourth or fifth time and the majority of the guests not only were extremely Jewish but seemed delighted with the happy couple, there was certainly no shortage of material for Enid to find fault with and condemn! And it didn’t make her proud of herself, it didn’t make her feel good about her nearly fifty years of marriage, to think that if Alfred had been with her at the wedding, she would have found fault and she would have condemned. If she’d been sitting beside Alfred, the crowd bearing down on her would surely have seen the sour look on her face and turned away, would surely not have lifted her and her chair off the ground and carried her around the room while the klezmer music played, and she would surely not have loved it.

The sorry fact seemed to be that life without Alfred in the house was better for everyone but Alfred.

Hedgpeth and the other doctors, including Alison Schulman, had kept the old man at St. Luke’s through January and into February, lustily billing Orfic Midland’s soon-to-be-former health insurer while they explored every conceivable avenue of treatment, from ECT to Haldol. Alfred was finally discharged with a diagnosis of parkinsonism, dementia, depression, and neuropathy of the legs and urinary tract. Enid felt morally obliged to offer to care for him at home, but her children, thank God, wouldn’t hear of it. Alfred was installed in the Deepmire Home, a long-term care facility adjacent to the country club, and Enid undertook to visit him every day, to keep him well dressed, and to bring him homemade treats.

She was glad, if nothing else, to have his body back. She’d always loved his size, his shape, his smell, and he was much more available now that he was restrained in a geri chair and unable to formulate coherent objections to being touched. He let himself be kissed and didn’t cringe if her lips lingered a little; he didn’t flinch if she stroked his hair.

His body was what she’d always wanted. It was the rest of him that was the problem. She was unhappy before she went to visit him, unhappy while she sat beside him, and unhappy for hours afterward. He’d entered a phase of deep randomness. Enid might arrive and find him sunk deeply in a funk, his chin on his chest and a cookie-sized drool spot on his pants leg. Or he might be chatting amiably with a stroke victim or a potted plant. He might be unpeeling the invisible piece of fruit that occupied his attention hour after hour. He might be sleeping. Whatever he was doing, though, he wasn’t making sense.