A Widow's Story by Joyce Carol Oates

masculine bravado: If I ever get bad as —(referring to an elderly chronically ill and complaining relative)— put me out of my misery!
    But when Daddy grew older he would live for years with myriad illnesses—emphysema, prostate cancer, macular degeneration—and he did not express any desire to die, still less any desire to be put out of my misery.
    For this is the fallacy of such wishes, made in “good health”—truly they will not apply to the person who has uttered them, at a later time.
    So too the prospect of taking sleeping pills at this time is unthinkable. No more than I would escape the cold by flying to Miami tomorrow morning. My responsibility to my husband would not allow such impulsive behavior.
    “Honey? What should I do with these things?”
    Not quite aloud, in a murmur not to be overheard these words are uttered. Of course I know, I know perfectly well that my husband is dead, and will not hear me, still less reply.
    Another habit begun this past week—talking to myself, querying myself. Animated conversations with myself while driving the car. If at home, talking to the cats—in a bright ebullient voice intended to assure the frightened animals that all is well. (It is always allowable, to talk to pets. One may be eccentric but not crazy talking to pets.)
    Here is a fact, I think—I think it is a fact—not once in our forty-seven years, twenty-five days of marriage did I overhear Ray talking to himself. It was rare that Ray muttered to himself—swore, cursed.
    When I return to the hospital room—to Ray’s bedside—I am relieved that no one else is there. I think that there was a nurse here just a moment ago. I think that she told me something, or asked me something, though I don’t remember what it was. I want to cry with relief, she has gone. We are alone.
    Outside Ray’s room in the hospital corridor there is no one. Those five or six medical workers, strangers to me, as to Ray, including the very nice soft-spoken Indian-American woman doctor, have vanished utterly.
    Were these individuals united in their effort—a failed effort, a futile effort—to save my husband’s life? Is there some term for what they are, or were—not a Death Team —though in this case their effort ended in death—a Life-Rescue Team ?
    Badly I want to speak with them. I want to ask them what Ray might have said, nearing the end of his life. If he’d been delirious, or—deluded—
    This rash thought, like others, rushes into my head and out of my head and is lost.
    There is something that I must do: make a call. Calls.
    But first, I must gather together Ray’s belongings.
    “Honey? Tell me—what should I do?”
    I am feeling very light-headed. The phone ringing and waking me from that frothy-thin sleep is confused with a ringing in my ears and the taunting lines of the ballad— And she sailed upon the sea and the name of our ship was— I am thinking that Ray so much admired Richard Dyer-Bennet—strange how we’d stopped listening to folk songs, which in the 1960s we’d loved.
    Though there is no one in the hall yet I am conscious of being observed. Very likely, all the nurses on the floor have been alerted— There is a woman in 539. Ray Smith’s wife. Smith died , the wife has come to take away his belongings.
    I have been watching Ray—I have been staring at Ray—I am transfixed, staring at Ray—I am memorizing Ray as he lies on his back beneath a thin sheet, his eyes shut, his recently shaved face smooth and unlined and handsome—and I am thinking—that is, the thought comes to me—that Ray is in fact breathing—but very faintly—or he is about to breathe; his eyelids are quivering, or about to quiver. As in sleep our eyeballs sometimes move as jerkily as in waking life—if we are dreaming, and seeing in the dream—so it seems to me that Ray’s eyeballs are moving, beneath the shut eyelids; it seems to me He is dreaming something. I shouldn’t wake him.
    It’s an instinct you quickly