The Naked Man

the naked man

part one | part two | part three | part four

I've always hated the rubbery sick smell of hospitals, but I had almost gotten used to it when my wife's cancer became critical. It surprised me, even, the way a scent that I had spent my entire life associating with sickness suddenly meant something else to me. It's not that it didn't refer to sickness anymore, it most painfully did, but it also became associated with Susan, which made it smell wonderful to me.

I guess I could go into the whole thing - the diagnosis, the hysteria, the sickness, the dark days at home when I realized she was dying and there was nothing I could do about it. I mean, I could tell you about all of those things in detail you would never want to imagine, but it doesn't matter. All those things, those things that you dread when your life is first invaded by something like cancer, they get forgotten. Then there's just the little things. Moving her to the hospital, no matter what you might think, it was for the best. I mean, all around, it was. I'm sure some would disagree, but I don't care anymore.

Besides, I had grown to love our time in the hospital, just as I had gotten over my hatred of that horrible hospital smell. We would watch television together, and then, when it got late, I would climb through the maze of wires that was holding her together and I would curl up with her just like we used to before she got sick. It was wonderful.

One night, I was reading to her. I don't remember what, I think it was "Harper's" or something, and she called me over to lie next to her. I did. I carefully pushed the I.V.'s and plugs aside and crawled in next to her as best I could. (I usually had to keep one leg on the floor to keep myself from falling off the bed. I never told her this.)

"Sing to me?"

"Sure," I said, "Anything?"

" Anything," she said.

I started singing:

"You haven't looked at me that way in years,
you dreamed me up and left me here
what was it you were looking for,
what was it that you wanted me for?"

She interrupted me then. "I don't think I'll wake up tomorrow," she said.

I knew that it wasn't something she was just saying. It was a decision.

"You sleep well, baby," I said.

And then I kept singing.

Everything went strange after that. I guess I knew what was going on, but I didn't, really. Have you ever had one of those days where you woke up and thought to yourself that you had an entire day of work to get through, only to realize that you had just gone through the whole day? This was kind of like that. I kept thinking that I had to bury my wife, and then one moment I woke up and realized that I already had.

I guess the most embarrassing thing to me was the amount of time I spent afterwards trying to pretend that everything was all right. It was so foolish. I should have known better. When everyone you know looks at you, waiting for you to cry, eventually you will. That's just the way things are.

I put up a good fight, though. I kept going to work, I started going out. I did everything that I thought would make me look healthy and alive. Without realizing it, though, I was just building a very big wall. I knew it was only a matter of time before the wall fell down.

I just didn't know what it would feel like.

It's not what you would think, I can tell you that. In a lot of ways, it felt great when I finally fell apart. For almost a year I felt as if my entire body had been bound and held tight, but then one day, I broke free. My limbs felt like the air. I could have sworn that if I held my breath I would have floated up into the sky, I was lighter than air. I felt like an angel.

Our house was on Rittenhouse Square, so it was sold easily enough. I found an apartment on Ridge Avenue for next to nothing. Between the money I made on the house and the money I took out of my retirement fund when I quit my job, I was living pretty well. I had more than enough money to eat and drink at the bar that I lived above.

It was like heaven. At least for a while, anyway.