admin(A companion piece to ‘This is Stu. Leave a Message’)
This is the hospital they’ve taken me to? Sylvia thinks, looking up from a gurney as two young EMTs push her into the ER. She’d prefer Cedars Sinai — much cleaner than crappy Saint Joseph’s with the dusty wooden crosses hanging on the walls. Once in the ER, two people move her from the gurney to a bed. Someone shouts, “Sylvia Nussbaum. Eighty-three. Possible seizure and stroke.”
She tries to speak, to tell them I’m fine. I just fainted. But she’s having trouble forming the words. Sweating and shaking, Sylvia wonders where her husband, Stu is. They were just in the parking lot at Whole Foods, about to buy scallops. Next thing she knows, she’s in this way too bright ER, trying to remember if she ran the dishwasher before they left the house. And she’s sure MSNBC is still on — Stu can never find that ridiculous universal remote.
More beeps. More bodies hovering over her. She wants to scream wait, stop, slow down; I want Stu! But no sound comes out. Eyes close. No more noise. Only quiet.
***
“Sylvia’s had a stroke. Half her brain is gone.”
A stroke? Wait! I just fainted at Whole Foods. Stop exaggerating. Sylvia hears her husband Stu’s voice and wonders how long she has been sleeping. She opens one eye and sees he’s talking quietly to Susan, his oldest daughter — the divorced one, not the gay one with the purple spiky hair. At 91, Stu still has his humor and mind. And even though he’s frail and on a restricted diet for his kidney disease, he can still drive, even at night.
The door opens, and Stu’s son Aaron rushes in.
“It’s not looking good,” Stu says, hugging his son.
I can hear you, Sylvia wants to scream, but when she opens her mouth, she chokes on a breathing tube shoved down her throat. She’s hooked up to IV tubes. Frankly, Sylvia’s shocked Aaron flew down to Florida. Fucking Florida, as he likes to call it. Aaron dislikes anything interfering with his fancy ten-thousand dollar bicycles and even fancier girlfriends. And did anyone call her daughter Ina? Sylvia wants to see her, even though they haven’t spoken in five years since Ina became a Jehovah’s Witness.
Sylvia closes her eyes.
Yes, she suddenly remembers. She did run the dishwasher earlier that day.
Then, black.
***
“I want to bring Sylvia home to die at the house,” Stu says quietly to Susan and Aaron.
Die? Wait, now I’m dying? Sylvia’s head is pounding. She only hears bits of words.
“Sylvia’s…care..Dad.. twenty years,” Susan says. “She…treated right.”
Then, her thoughts become more lucid. For the past twenty years, Sylvia had cared for Stu day and night, keeping their beautiful home spotless; the kitchen, compliant fruits and vegetables allowed on Stu’s restricted diet for his liver condition. Bathrooms with Jo Malone candles, Bobbi Brown hand cream, Molton Brown soaps, and fluffy towels washed once a week by their housekeeper, Rosa, even when they weren’t hosting houseguests. Despite growing up in poor and working-class Newark, down the block from Philip Roth and his family, Sylvia was determined always to show she had taste and class.
“Never treated us right —“
“Aaron, shut up —“
Sylvia wants to slap them both, but she can’t move her arms. She thrashes – faster and faster. Stu, near her, stares at her. Help, help me. Why can’t she be heard? More beeping. Someone wearing a mask pushes a needle in her arm. She hears someone say, “Morphine.”
Sylvia drifts, floating. She sees Ina, her daughter, her two dead husbands, and a black and white photo of her from her fifth birthday. Then, she feels a tug away from here. Even though this is all very amusing, she is sensing it is time for her to move on, and that’s okay—everything has its time, and this was hers. Sylvia just needs to ensure Stu will be okay without her, and she will check on him occasionally until he rejoins her. Now, she just has to make sure Stu can feed himself, organize her funeral, and maybe eventually date again when he’s ready. She closes her eyes, afraid they may never open again. If she is dead now, she hopes they’d have the decency to bury her at the nice Jewish cemetery, the one near Saks, and hopefully a plot under a tree – she detests the Florida sun.
***
Sylvia floats away from the hospital and back to their living room. She hovers from above, watching Stu look around the empty house. She sees him pick up a few pairs of her different-colored readers. He smells her Williams-Sonoma hand cream and folds one of her expensive scarves.
“You promised me twenty years,” Stu whispers.
“And we had twenty good years,” Sylvia whispers back. “Now, just make sure your kids don’t put you in a home.”
“I don’t want to go to assisted living,” Stu says, sitting on the couch, “Those places are where you go to die.”
“Yes,” Sylvia laughs, “God’s holding area before we enter the eternal Torah study room in the sky.”
“Since when did you get so Jewish, Sylvia?”
“When your life is ending, your faith increases.”
“How do you know the kids want to put me in a home?”
“Oh, Stu. I can tell what they’re thinking just by how they breathe.”
Stu wanders into the kitchen. Sylvia follows him.
“How can I stay here without you? I don’t even know how to open a can of tuna fish.”
“I left you with enough food for at least three months. A year if you look in the garage.”
Stu walks into Sylvia’s closet and touches one of her faux fur coats.
“Susan and Jaye get first dibs on my clothing. When you give the eulogy at my funeral, only tell the funny stories. Keep it light and fun. No one needs to hear about either of my ex-husbands or my slight gambling addiction. And you need to manage my Ina. She’ll want to speak at the funeral, but she’s so unstable. Don’t let her ramble on about what a terrible mother I was. I tried my best. For Shiva, get the lox FedExed from Zabar’s. There’s a coupon in the kitchen drawer. It expires in two days, so order the fish today. Now wear that beautiful navy suit we bought in Italy—the one we said you’d wear for our next anniversary.”
She watches Stu put on the suit jacket. She gazes at him, full of love.
“Wait! Sylvia, don’t go.”
“I have to move on. You’re able to go on without me. I love you, Stu. Keep telling our story.”
She sees Stu walk over to their answering machine. He presses record and changes the message.
“This is Stu,” he says. “I’ve lost Sylvia. Leave a Message.”
Sylvia floats up into the ceiling, then says, “And if you’re going to start dating again, I like that Norma from mah-jongg.”
_______
Jen Rudin is an award-winning casting director and the author of Confessions of a Casting Director (HarperCollins). USA Today recently published my op-ed, “Who Helps Make Oscar Winners? It’s past time Academy Awards let casting directors win too.” She has also written for Newsweek, Kveller, The Forward, The Jewish Literary Journal, Backstage, and Broadway World.