And identified with himself again.
I wanted to call Ricky—in the country.
To call her from the vegetable garden, where she might be weeding, or from the rock garden, when she might be replanting the daffodil bulbs, to call her from a book, or from washing the cocker pups, or from painting shelves, or from anything that she was doing. I wanted, with overwhelming urgency to tell her to come down to New York and share this weekend. Carry it with me and for me.
She would. She has the grit and the amenability to Nature. Besides, she knows me.
But I sat there, my fingers growing slippery on the phone.
If it proved to be harmless—then the consummate hours, the pain, the anxiety, and the quiet planning would be a mere excess.
If it proved malignant—what purpose would be served by destroying her tranquillity, by adding her dread to my own, until the hour when the fact was established?
She would willingly, wantingly, accept the burden—to ease my share of it.
But why should she?
Monday would be soon enough—win, lose, or get some cursed clinical draw. Radiation. Surgery. Artificial larynx. Gueules cassées, I thought. I'd seen friends. Getting their throats cut inchmeal. Burping to make speech. Shedding their chins.