Dance Lessons: A Novel

18

100 “No. These are the only options,” says Tom Fitzgerald. They are sitting in a triangle at Jo’s kitchen table—Jo in her usual spot inside the window, Ellen and Dr. Tom Fitzgerald along the side, their backs to the kitchen range. The doctor rocks backward on the kitchen chair. Jo’s face is flaccid. Still dressed in her stained old cardigan and the crumpled brown pants, but she’s surprisingly chipper and rested. Ellen watches the old woman’s eyes stray toward the windowsill, toward the ashtray and the cigarettes, where they’re stashed under a newspaper. Tom brings the chair legs down, a loud thwack on the linoleum floor. “Mrs. Dowd, we can’t know what’s going on, what the prognosis or treatments are until we get you admitted. Sorry. No other choice.” Jo sniffs. “Yes. Yes, I’m not an óinseach.” Then she coughs, that haunting , gurgly cough. But now Jo gets her breath sooner, faster, as if to defy the young doctor. With a dry little laugh Tom says, “No, you’re certainly not a fool, any woman who can swindle a poor man like Ned into getting you un-prescribed medicines.” Jo’s eyes snap. “That’s my business. Not yours.” Then she turns away to the window again. Her grey hair is pillow-flat. It badly needs a wash. Tom shoots Ellen a defeated look. Since he left this morning, Ellen has wandered around Jo’s house and yard, then napped on the parlor couch, listening for sounds from the bedroom . Once, she woke with a stiff neck and lay there listening for the sounds of breathing from beyond the door. I could just leave, she thought. Dance Lessons * 101 Tiptoe out through that back door and into my rental car and keep driving to Shannon Airport. She may never remember my being here. From across the sea and my newly found apartment or condo in Coventry-by-the-Sea, I need never inquire for her, never call the hospital in Galway where they plan to take her for another round of tests. And afterward? I will never know whether my husband’s secret mother is alive or dead. Now Jo says, “What if I make up my mind to just stay here, here in my own house? No more of them bloody machines and the wakening you up in the middle of the night for nothing; bloody nurses talking to you like you’re gone seafóid in the head.” Tom Fitzgerald sighs, then rocks the chair backward again. “You could stay here. For a while. Maybe even three days until I get you a bed in the hospital. Sooner, not later. But we can’t plan your next treatment until we know more. Look, as it is, it’s a miracle you didn’t kill yourself with them pain—” Jo interrupts. “Couldn’t I just get some sort of a n—” “—A nurse? You had a nurse and you sent her crying out of here.” Jo abandons caution and reaches into the window for the packet of cigarettes . She lights up, then inhales defiantly, blows the smoke toward the doctor. Tom rolls his eyes toward Ellen, shakes his head. I don’t believe this, the look says. The cigarette relaxes Jo. “I didn’t like that woman. She was stupid. So once you”—a mimicking voice—“‘decide my treatment’—what’ll ye do with me then?” “Depending on the results, they might discharge you. But then you’ll need home nursing care. Twenty-four hours. We’ll get a day nurse from the health board, no problem. And for the nights, we can just put in an advertisement for a caretaker, someone—” We. We. We. Again. He keeps saying “we,” Ellen thinks. “—Someone that’d rob and murder me in my bed?” Tom flinches from another gust of cigarette smoke. “Mrs. Dowd, it’s standard care for someone in your situation.” Jo jabs her cigarette hand at him. “An ad? Sure there’s nobody in this country’d take a job like that nowadays. Only foreigners. An’ I won’t 102 * Áine Greaney have one of them here, won’t have some latchigo from Latvia or some godforsaken place sleeping above stairs in my house.” A phone rings. Tom reaches into his inside-jacket pocket, looks at the small screen, snaps the phone open. “Hel-lo, there?! Okay...