DEBIT AND CREDIT

She told him it was a spa.

It was the sort of lie that has the great advantage of being already half believed. For a fortnight she had been gray, and thin, and quiet, and he had been watching her, in the covert, anguished fashion of a man who has promised not to look. When she said on Tuesday night, lightly, over a plate of untouched pasta, "I thought I'd go away for two days. There's a place in Connecticut. I've been told the mud is miraculous," he put down his fork and stared at her for a very long moment, and then said, "Of course."

"You don't mind?"

"I'd come, but there's the Singapore call on Thursday."

"You hate Singapore."

"I find that it hates me back." He reached across the table. He took her hand. "Go. Rest. Eat things. Let a woman in a white coat put you in a bath." His thumb moved on the back of her wrist. "Will you be back on Friday?"

"Friday."

"Promise?"

Don't, she thought. Don't ask me to promise. "Friday night," said Win. "In time for dinner."

She had never lied to him in so many words. The fact lodged in her chest like a swallowed pin.

…

The flight to Cleveland took an hour and twenty minutes. She flew coach.

It was a small, ugly, thrilling act of rebellion. She sat in 24C with a bag of pretzels and a woman's lap-sized elbow in her ribs, and she looked out of the window at the dirty white clouds, and she thought: I used to do this every week. She'd been a person who flew coach to conferences in Atlanta, and ate a sandwich at the gate, and filed expense reports in triplicate. She felt a pang so sharp and so entirely unexpected that she had to close her eyes.

That was a good life, she thought. It was a small one. But it was mine.

It was snowing in Cleveland. A fine dry blowing snow, like salt, that came sideways across the runway under a sky the color of dishwater, and she took a taxi from the terminal through streets she had driven ten thousand times. Euclid Avenue. The Rapid station. The long gray front of University Hospitals, with the same bare maple in the courtyard, and the same sooty heaps of plowed snow along the curb.

She got out. She stood in the cold with her bag over her shoulder.

It smelled exactly the same. Diluted bleach, wet wool, the faint dull sweetness of a thousand institutional lunches. She stood on the pavement and drew it in, and felt, with a little shock, that she was glad to be here. It was the only place on earth where no one needed her to be well.

…

"Sit down, Winifred," said Dr. Voigt.

The office had not changed. The same diplomas, the same brown leather armchair, the same drawing of the digestive tract in its jarring colors. Dr. Voigt herself looked older. She wore her gray hair in the same short crop, and her glasses on the same chain, and there was a new deep crease between her brows that Win did not remember.

"You came without an appointment."

"You said any time."

"I did." Dr. Voigt looked at her for a moment over the glasses. "You look... you look as though you've been well taken care of."

"I've been very well taken care of."

"You've lost eighteen pounds."

"Is it eighteen?" Win sat. "I thought sixteen."

"Eighteen and a half. I'd like to examine you, and take blood, and send you downstairs for a scan." She spoke with the quiet, steady firmness of someone who had decided long ago not to be frightened of a patient. "I'd like it done in the next hour. Then we'll talk."

"Of course."

"Winifred."

"Yes."

"I'm glad you came."

It was said with such plain warmth that Win's eyes stung. She looked down at her hands.

"So am I," she said.

…

It took three hours.

There was a needle, and a long cold cylinder, and a young technician with a mustache who said "Hold your breath" and "Breathe," with the patient monotony of a man calling a bingo game. There was a paper gown. There were many gray corridors. She lay on her back in the white tube with her arms above her head and the machine's great whirring voice going round her, and she thought, I have been here before. She thought of her mother. She thought of a yellow plastic bucket.

When it was over she dressed, in a cubicle, and sat on the edge of the bench in her stockings and looked at her feet.

Four hours ago I was in a kitchen, she thought. Four hours ago I was telling a man I would be back for dinner.

She went back to the office.

Dr. Voigt was waiting with the films. She had them clipped to the light box, in a row, like a series of dark photographs of a distant country. She stood in front of them for a long time with her hands in the pockets of her coat. When Win came in, she turned.

"I'll tell you plainly," said Dr. Voigt.

"Please."

"It has progressed. Faster than I expected." Her voice was very even. "The primary is larger. The liver is nearly seventy percent involved. There's fluid in the abdomen, a small amount, which is the beginning of ascites. Your bilirubin is four-point-eight. It was one-point-two in October."

"Is that bad?"

"It's what makes your eyes yellow." A pause. "And there's a varix. In the esophagus. You've bled."

"Once."

"How much?"

"A cup. Perhaps less."

"When?"

"Last week."

Dr. Voigt closed her eyes for a moment. When she opened them they were quite steady.

"I'd like you to understand what that means. A varix is a swollen vein. It can bleed again. When it does, it can be minor, or it can be fatal in a matter of minutes. We can band it. It's a simple procedure. We could do it this afternoon."

"And then?"

"And then you'd be a little safer for a little while."

Win considered this.

"How long?" she said.

"Winifred."

"I'd like a number. I can bear it. I'd rather hear it from you than guess."

Dr. Voigt took off her glasses and let them hang. She crossed the room and sat down in the chair beside Win's, not behind the desk, and the movement was so unexpected, so unprofessional, that Win understood before she spoke.

"Weeks," said Dr. Voigt. "To a few months. I can't say better than that. If it's well managed, if the pain is controlled, if you avoid the bleed, you might have three. Perhaps four." She laid a hand on Win's knee. "I think you should stop traveling. I think you should be somewhere with a bed, and a nurse, and someone who knows what to do. I think it's time to talk about hospice."

The word hung in the air.

Win looked at the hand on her knee. It was square, freckled, dry. There was a thin gold band on the fourth finger and a small old scar across the knuckle. She had never noticed before that her doctor wore a wedding ring.

"I know," she said. "I've been thinking about it."

"There's a good unit in Portland. Ashbourne. I know the director." Dr. Voigt took a breath. "There are also private arrangements. I could recommend someone. A nurse who comes to you. A house by the sea, if you like. A place where you could be—" She stopped. "I'm sorry. I'm running ahead of you."

"No. Go on."

"Where you could be comfortable."

"I'd like that."

"Winifred." The older woman was looking at her with a question in her face. "Who's looking after you?"

"I'm looking after myself."

"That isn't what I asked."

Win said nothing. She sat with her hands in her lap, in the brown leather chair, in the cold gray light of a Cleveland afternoon, and thought of a man in a white kitchen with a tea towel over his shoulder. She thought of a hand held out across a table. Thank you for telling me the part you could.

"There's someone," she said.

"I see."

"I met him in New York. It's—" She laughed, a thin brittle breath. "It's complicated. It began as a kind of arrangement. It isn't one now."

"Does he know?"

"No."

"Winifred—"

"He suspects. I think he knows, in a way. But he's promised not to ask." She pressed her fingers against her eyes. "I wrote it into a contract. I'm quite good at contracts."

"You wrote it—"

"It's called clause eleven." She heard her own voice crack. "It says neither of us may ask the other's reasons. I thought it would be a convenience. I thought it would keep the ugliness out. And it has. It's kept it out so well that I've spent four months in a room with a man who is looking at me as if I'm going to live forever, and I'm too much of a coward to tell him I won't."

"You're not a coward."

"I'm the worst sort. I'm a considerate one."

Dr. Voigt was quiet for a long time.

"I won't tell you what to do," she said at last. "I think that you know. But I'd like to say one thing, as a person who has sat with a great many families." She turned her wedding ring slowly on her finger. "The ones who are protected from it, the ones who are told at the end, are the ones who never forgive themselves. They say, why didn't you let me be there? They say it for the rest of their lives."

"I know."

"And the ones who are told, and stay—"

"Are the ones who have to watch."

"Yes. And they would not give it back." The doctor's voice was gentle. "I have never met one who would."

The snow drifted against the window. Somewhere down the hall a telephone rang and was answered.

"I'll think about it," said Win.

"Will you?"

"I will."

It was a lie. She felt it as she said it, a small cold coin, the second of the day. But Dr. Voigt only nodded, and wrote something on a card, and put it in her hand.

…

She called Josie from the airport.

It was past nine. She sat at the gate in a plastic chair with a coffee she did not want and watched the slow blue beacon of a snowplow go up and down the apron, and the phone rang three times, and then a voice, thick with sleep and wine and astonishment, said:

"Win?"

"Hi."

"Where are you? It sounds like an airport."

"It is. I'm in Cleveland."

"You're—" A thud, a rustle. "Wait. Wait, I'm getting up. Don't hang up. Don't you dare. I'm in my pajamas, but I'll be there in twenty minutes, I'm coming, I'll come to you—"

"Josie, stop. I'm flying out at ten."

"To where?"

"New York."

"Then why are you in Cleveland?"

"I saw Dr. Voigt."

The line went quiet. It went so quiet that for a moment Win thought the call had dropped. She heard the sound of an engine on the apron, the cheerful bell of a boarding announcement, a child laughing somewhere in the terminal. She heard, very faintly, her best friend breathing.

"Okay," said Josie, in a small, steady, flattened voice. "Okay. Tell me."

So she told her.

She told her in the plainest words she knew, with the phone against her ear and her free hand flat on her knee. She told her about the scan, and the seventy percent, and the fluid. She told her about the varix. She told her the word weeks. She said it without drama, in the cool level voice she used for a claim, and when she had finished, there was no sound on the line at all.

"Josie?"

"I'm here."

"Say something."

"I can't."

"Please."

"I can't, I'm—" A sob, tearing, ugly, wet. "I knew. I knew, I've known since you called about the gloves. You sounded so—oh, God, Win. Oh God."

"I know."

"I'm coming to New York."

"No."

"I'm coming. I'll bring the—I'll get a bag, I'll get on a plane—"

"Josie." She said it gently. "I need you to listen. I need you to do something for me, and it's going to be the hardest thing you've ever done."

"Anything."

"I'm leaving."

"Leaving where?"

"I don't know yet. The coast. Oregon, I think. Somewhere with a nurse. I'm going to go in a few days." She swallowed. "I'm going to go without telling anyone. Not him. Not you. I'm going to disappear."

"Win."

"If he looks for me, he'll find you. He's very good at finding. He'll come to your door. And I need you to promise me, on your life, on my mother's grave, that you will not tell him where I am."

"I can't promise that."

"You have to."

"He loves you."

"I know."

"Then why—"

"Because I love him back," said Win, "and I'm not going to make him do it twice."

Josie said nothing. The sob had gone out of her. In its place was a long, shuddering quiet, the quiet of a person who has run up a flight of stairs and found the door at the top locked.

"What does that mean?" she said at last. "Twice?"

"It's a long story."

"I've got time."

"You haven't," said Win, and smiled, and wiped her eyes with the back of her wrist. "Neither have I. Promise me, Josie."

A pause. A long one.

"I swear," said Josie, in a voice like paper tearing. "I swear on your mother. I hate you. I swear."

"Thank you."

"I'm going to be so angry."

"I'm counting on it."

"I'll never forgive you."

"That's all right," said Win. "You'll have time to practice."

…

She wrote the letter on Friday, in the Fifth Avenue apartment, at the desk in the library.

He was at the Tower. It was three in the afternoon, and the light slanted low and pale through the long windows, and Mrs. Dray had gone. The house was silent. A single radiator ticked. She sat with a sheet of cream stationery in front of her, and the Montblanc in her hand, and she began.

Dear Callum,

She looked at it. She crossed it out.

Callum—

I am writing because I cannot say this to your face. I have tried. I have stood in the hall of your house with my coat on four times this week and I have not been able to open my mouth. That is a failing of mine, and not of yours. I have never been good at saying the things I mean.

She crossed that out.

Callum, I am leaving.

It is not because of anything you did. You have been—

She crossed that out.

She wrote six versions. She tore each in half, and then in quarters, and laid the pieces in a neat pile on the blotter. She wrote one long, passionate, unsparing letter, three pages in her smallest hand, in which she told him everything: the tumor, the liver, the weeks, the names of the drugs. She read it through once, with her chin on her fist, and her eyes dry. Then she put the corner of it into the flame of a candle and watched it curl and blacken and drop into a saucer.

He would read that, she thought. And he would come. And he would hold me. And he'd do it all, the whole terrible thing, on his knees, with that face, and I would let him, and at the end of it there would be nothing in the world that I would be able to say to the boy on the dock.

She took a clean sheet.

She wrote:

NOTICE OF TERMINATION

Pursuant to clause 9 of the Draycott Agreement dated 7 November, I, W.C., hereby give written notice of termination of the said Agreement, effective twenty-four hours from the delivery of this notice. I have complied in all respects with the terms of the Agreement. I have breached none. I do not request, and I do not require, any settlement.

She stopped. She looked at the paragraph. It was correct, and flat, and perfectly legal. It sounded as if it had been written by a stranger.

She wrote one more line beneath it, in her ordinary handwriting, small, upright, a little unsteady.

Thank you for the best part.

She stared at it for a long time.

That's all, she thought. That's everything I can say, and not say.

She folded the sheet in three. She sealed it in a plain white envelope and wrote on the front, in capitals, C.D.—PRIVATE. She put it in her bag, behind the ledger.

…

On Saturday night she watched him sleep.

He slept badly. He always had; but tonight he slept more heavily than she had ever seen, out cold on his back in the white room under the skylight with one arm flung above his head. He had come home at eleven. He had been tired and tender and a little drunk on the news that the Singapore deal had closed, and he had held her face between his hands and said, I missed you, and she had said, I missed you too, and neither of them had said anything else.

She lay on her side and looked at him.

It was one in the morning. The skylight was a square of faint blue, with a few stars in it. She could see the line of his jaw, and the pulse in his throat, and the hand lying open on the pillow, palm up. In the palm, the small white crescent. Beside the hand, on the table, the watch, closed.

Credit, she thought. Debit.

It was an old habit, and she let it run. In the left-hand column she wrote the oysters, and the glass floor, and a man running into the sea in an overcoat. She wrote an omelet, a whale, a card in a library. She wrote Thank you for telling me the part you could. She wrote Stay. She wrote I find I'm not afraid of the answer.

In the right-hand column she wrote: everything I have left.

She did the sum. It took a long time. It was a long column, in a long ledger, and she had never in her life been so careful with a total. And at the bottom she drew the line, as she had drawn it ten thousand times, and wrote what the arithmetic gave her.

Balance: he is better off without me.

Balance: I am better off with him.

Net: I am the debtor.

She lay there in the dark. She did not weep. She had done all that she had to do in a bathroom at the Plaza. She only looked at him, for hours, with the whole of her attention, as a woman looks at a landscape she is leaving; and she tried to memorize the slope of the shoulder, the hollow at the base of the throat, the faint line between the brows that deepened when he dreamed.

At four he stirred.

She shut her eyes. She felt his hand move, across the sheet, and find hers, and close. He said something. It was a word, a murmur, formed on the edge of sleep, so slurred and soft that she nearly missed it.

Stay.

She lay perfectly still, with her hand in his.

I'm sorry, she thought.

At five, quite calmly, she got up and began to dress.