Epilogue by Anne Roiphe Read Free Book Online Page A

baskets, on couches, Scrabble pieces fell under the table, cookie crumbs were ground into the rug. Wet bathing suits hung on the shower pole, mice were in the cereal boxes, insects in the bag of f lour. Also f ights. This sister complains about that sister. This sister weeps for her dog who died. This sister feels ignored by the others. This boyfriend goes off on a bike ride and disappears for a full day. This is the place where one daughter and her husband decided we didn’t want them to stay longer in the house and became angry with us. This is where we brought one daughter home after an eye operation. This is the house where one daughter wept on learning that another was pregnant. This is the house that was invaded by rabid raccoons who jumped about inside the walls, a terrible stench f illed two rooms until they were trapped, caught in steel jaws that left them lying open-mouthed, bloody, bones, fur, guts spilling, on our porch.
    I no longer wanted the house. It was ungrateful of me. The tightness in my chest was not the house’s fault, although the blame must fall somewhere.
    I have a strange virus. I have not had such a fever since long before I met H. Now this ache in the limbs, the rise

    in temperature, the need to sleep, the muscle cramps last and last. I am tested for Lyme disease. I don’t have it. I go by jitney to my doctor in New York. My liver is inf lamed. My potassium level has sunk to an unacceptable low. I give more blood for more tests. The unnamed virus remains with me. I am alternately hot or cold. I try to go to a party but my head swims. I leave the party. I try to read but the lines dance on the page. If H. were here I would be coddled, calmed. He would make carrot-ginger soup. Am I sick because he is not here? They say that the immune system responds to crisis by shrinking. Has my immune system turned from plum to prune in the season since H. died? I know that everything is not a matter of psychology. On the other hand the body is not separate from the mind and this mind feels as if an ax has cleaved it in two. No wonder I have a virus.
    After three weeks it does depart. I never learn the name of my tormentor. It would cost one thousand dollars, my doctor explains, to find its name. I am not that interested. I think of Adam in the first week of the world naming the animals as they walk past him. Was there also a parade of bacteria and viruses and other microscopic life forms crawling across the grass of Eden so that Adam could grant them their identity? I know I am fortunate—I could have been invaded by a million worse diseases, ones that might have consumed me altogether. But I am not grateful. The absence of H. seems, like an oncoming tide, to be covering more and more of my being with each passing day. Run, run to high ground, I tell myself.
    I’m invited to swim in a friend’s pool. I don’t want to swim. I don’t know why. I am a good swimmer but now I

    dislike the idea. Why move my arms and legs about just to get from one side of the pool to the other? Why bother?
    I think of other summers I have had that were less than perfect. In August, when I was three, my brother was brought home from the hospital. August has never been my favorite month. Once in August in the time of my first marriage I was alone in the city with my young child. My first husband was gone for good and the slightest sound could make me jump. I had dreams of falling objects, closet doors that wouldn’t open, cliché and bathos followed me everywhere. My friends were away. There was a heat wave that could kill. I sat at an outdoor table in a nearby coffee shop, sweat dripping down my peasant blouse, and chain-smoked Camel cigarettes while my child rode her tricycle around in circles by my feet.
    I have trouble reading. I am an escape artist who reads newspapers, books, cereal boxes. But now my concentration is cracked. Stray thoughts disturb my peace. The bird song on the nearby tree makes me close the covers of my