A RENDEZVOUS

BY ZACH DAVIDSON

The blinds of his wife’s room are parted, and the ground-floor interior—with its white paint, round edges, growths of grab rails on the walls—looks like a grim fridge.

He stares into her room and, in his car, he picks at the pages of an old magazine, which he has brought along with him to drain his time.

A perfume bottle is the focus of a full-page advertisement. Looking down, he is reminded that, on the night where he called the police to report his wife, when he plucked the gray shards of vase from the carpet of the living room, the odor of the stale flower water startled him.

He punches the overhead light—it clicks—and he continues to study the perfume bottle, whose exotic brand name—letters jeweled with accents—he will not say out loud. Even in his own language, his syllables collide like pool balls: the words bump and self-defeat as they roll off his baize tongue. He often misplays his meaning. The receptionist at the facility, for example—she can never understand his requests. And the flowers—the flowers were a rote translation of his mute contrition.

The light in his wife’s room is on, but the room itself is empty. If only he had not missed today’s visiting hours. But he is not a swift typist whereas his deadlines approach quickly.

In his dim car, he is quiet. Briefly, it is as though he is back at the theater; there, he relishes being a silent member of a dark audience.

Actually, his wife’s room could pass for a stage: the curtain is raised, the backdrop looks flimsy, fabricated. The play he is waiting for might take place in a fridge.

In his car, he suddenly feels like a farmer with sore shoulders in a compact field. He is cultivating her future—preparing her to appear in the next season. It is in her interest to be here! Because “here” can keep her safe, while exposure to the elements—including those humdrum domestic ones: gas stove, sets of stairs, door locks—could kill her. And him. If, say, she were to have left the stove on again, he is not confident that this time he would have detected the odorant the gas company adds to methane, the industrialists moonlighting as perfumers.

A car behind him honks, and he starts his engine, inching forward, returning the gear to park as the vehicle behind him snuggles into the space he has enlarged for it.

Should he just go home? But to eat supper by himself seems to exclaim his position.

No, he cannot go home because if something were to happen to his wife tonight, all those hours of visits would be like unsold grocery-store produce.

He can call the receptionist and ask her if she can ask the nurse to bring his wife to the window. But he does not want to use his voice with anyone further this evening. Earlier, he spoke to the delivery woman on the other side of his door who asked him to repeat himself. The delivery woman had a knock like the chop of a woodcutter. The delivery woman finally told him she would be leaving all of his groceries on his doorstep, and if his ice cream were to melt, that would be his sorrow to deal with.

Even if he was to call the receptionist right now, and ask her to tell the nurse to bring his wife to the window, his wife would still be on the other side of it. It’s not as if making the call would enable them to touch. He would not be able to feel her hand on his shoulder, where his tall wife once naturally placed it, her palm like a coaster.

“It is possible that, when he calls, she does not pick up the phone not because she thinks of the receiver as a razor blade—the nurse told him his wife had relapsed—but because she does not want to hear him.”

His wife is probably watching T.V. with the other residents in the “community room.” Truthfully, his wife is now much more social than he has ever been. She has friends among the residents. Or she used to. Her best friend—whose children he has met, the children telling him how important this friendship is to their father—this friend apparently generated a low noise of pain while being held by his wife. When the nurse apprised him of the incident, he recalled the strength of his wife’s grip, how the delinquent lids on jars were within her purview. The nurse said she had no choice but to file a report on his wife. He responded by telling the nurse that his wife did not know the effects of her actions. If she knew what she was doing, she would not be here, he said. But the nurse said it was not her choice, that she must file the report, that the facility required it, that she could lose her job if she didn’t.

So his wife lost her friend—they are no longer allowed to go on long walks together in the long linoleum corridors—and, frankly, a part of him is very satisfied with this conclusion.

The effects of that precipitating event which led him to commit his wife—the throwing of the glass vase hosting the dead rhododendrons—are no longer recorded in the pile of his living room carpet. At times, quite honestly, he regrets professionally cleaning it. Alone, he rarely uses the living room. If he had just left the carpet as it was, the sight of what had stayed broken might tip him in the direction of self-assurance. Passing it, he might say: Yes, that was the final, warranting straw.

What is waiting for him here is apparently not his wife. His wife is not sitting at her window. It is possible that, when he calls, she does not pick up the phone not because she thinks of the receiver as a razor blade—the nurse told him his wife had relapsed—but because she does not want to hear him.

Even if she were to suddenly appear at her window, it could very well be a misfortune for her to see him here, so late, in his car, waving and blowing kisses at her.

And even if his wife were to blow kisses back at him as he held up his signs—since she will not pick up her phone, he has, in the backseat, printed a few signs: “I love you.” “I miss you.” “I’m sorry.”—even if she were to mime affection, this could be merely a dutiful response intended to expedite a rendezvous.

She was or is, after all, an expert at jettisoning the peelings of his emotions, his temper like the skin of a hard winter squash. Once, over the phone, he vented his feelings over a law-and-order floodlight that had been installed in a vacant lot. The starkness of its authority was unseemly. The line went quiet and then his wife, talking in the timber of a garbage disposal, using the grinding phrases, reduced a layer of himself to small, lost particles.

Every doctor except for one had agreed with him that his wife presented an all-around threat.

And, of course, she would not be here if something was not wrong.

An old cup of coffee survives in his car. When he does make it on time to see his wife during visiting hours—which, as of late, he has missed, what with all those bullying deadlines—he brings her sugar cookies and chamomile tea, and he gets himself a coffee. In alienation, they are as one. On the last visit, his wife started reading to him what was on the base of his paper cup. “Careful, the beverage you’re about to enjoy is extremely hot.” The wife repeated the sentence, as though he had not understood her the first time. “Careful, the beverage you’re about to enjoy is extremely hot.” But the coffee was not hot, for by the time he had arrived at the facility, it had cooled. And now it pesters him—rereading this assumptive, declarative sentence in his car, under the yellow overhead light. The message is false. Patronizing. Rigid in its inability to adapt to the climate of circumstance. The print stretches around the base of the cup like a chain around a forehead.

He can feel his eyes closing as he tries again to reread the sentence.

He yawns. He will leave the overhead light on and his wife, when she returns to her room, will see him in his car. If he does fall asleep, she will know that he was there. That is what counts—to try, within reason, and to be seen for it. He can park here for free—tomorrow is a Saturday—and he has already made room for the other vehicle, which by now has no passengers.