look, I’ve got it right here,” he said.
He opened the fridge to reveal a row of labeled sandwiches. She noticed the script on the labels, cursive and feminine, decidedly not Melville’s. Peanut Butter, Tuna, Deviled Ham—dates scribbled under the titles. Finch took out the deviled ham, pointing to the others and telling her to help herself.
He couldn’t swallow very well anymore. She remembered Melville’s telling her that. Melville had also told her that bowel movements were becoming increasingly difficult for Finch, peristalsis slowing with the disease. She remembered he was supposed to eat prunes. She looked around for some, searched in cabinets and in the fridge. Then she wondered if they had settled on some medication instead.
She needed to ask Melville these questions. Even if he was gone, as Finch insisted, she still needed to talk to him.
“What do you want to drink?” she asked.
“Milk,” he said.
He wasn’t supposed to drink milk with his pills. He knew that. She poured him a glass of ginger ale instead. She chose a tuna sandwich for herself.
They ate in silence. She could see the difficulty he was having swallowing his food. It made her sad. But at least he was eating. Melville had long ago replaced Finch’s favorite Wonder bread with whole wheat. Two Oreo cookies had been placed on the side of each plate, Saran Wrap tight over the top. Finch had always loved Oreos.
She slid the two cookies on her plate across the table to him. He smiled at her. Standing up slowly, he shuffled toward the fridge.
“What do you want?” Zee asked. “I’ll get it for you.”
“I told you,” he said. “Milk.”
“You can’t have milk with your pills,” she said. “Milk interferes with dopamine absorption.” She was there when the doctor had told him that.
Finch acted as if he had no such recollection. But Zee could tell by his smirk that he was lying. This was his form of cheating. Oreos with milk.
“I took my pills half an hour ago,” he said.
“Twenty minutes,” Zee corrected.
He rolled his head back and forth to demonstrate the ease of movement. He was acting, exaggerating the range, imitating the looping head of the dopamine at its peak. “See, it’s working already,” he said. He was right, of course. If it weren’t working at least a little bit, he would be too stiff to fake any movement. As if to punctuate, he touched his thumb to his middle finger over and over, the way they made him do in the doctor’s office.
“Suit yourself,” Zee said. But he knew she didn’t mean it.
He ate the cookies and sipped at the milk. The fun had gone out of it for him, though. He left half a glass on the table when he got up and made his way into the den.
By 7:00 P.M. he was asleep in his chair, heavily dosed with Sinemet, his head flopping forward. A long string of saliva dripped out of his open mouth and onto his pressed shirt. He wouldn’t wake up again until it was almost time for the next pill. Then he would be agitated, looking for something, anything, to take away the tension his brain was creating. He might open his cent shop again for the tourists, though they had cleared out by now. Most likely he would try to walk, the worst thing he could do.
It turned out that Finch had been right. The medicine was working. The flattened midpoint of normalcy the doctor always drew on the wave graph had happened exactly when Finch said it had happened, when they were in the kitchen eating the Oreos. She realized that now. She should never have complained about the milk.
Strangely, it was Michael and not her father who finally let her know where Melville was.
“He’s been leaving you messages on the home phone,” Michael said.
“Why didn’t you tell me before?”
“You’re in Salem. I figured you knew.”
She could tell that Michael was angry. She’d been feeling guilty about it all week, but now she was angry, too. He’d been traveling again, and he hadn’t called. She’d been leaving messages on the home phone as well as his cell. She’d also been texting.
“So how was the funeral?”
“Okay,” she said.
“Did it turn out as you expected?”
“I don’t know what I expected,” she said. “But no.”
A long pause, then from Zee, “Could we please get back to Melville?”
“I told you all I know.”
“He didn’t say anything else? Just that he had moved out?”
“That and the phone number,” he said.
She wanted to call immediately.
“How’s Finch?” he asked.
“Not good,” she said.
She could hear his tone soften as they talked about her father. The two men had always gotten on well together. In many ways they were a lot alike. “You want me to come out there?”
“Not right now,” she said, a little too quickly.
“Jesus,” he said.
“That didn’t sound the way I meant it.”
“You sure about that?”
“Let me call Melville and see what’s going on. I’ll call you right back,” she said. “Then we can decide whether or not you should come out.”
“Don’t do me any favors,” he said. “I already had plans for the weekend—we had plans, actually.”
More wedding stuff, she thought. “I can’t talk about any of that right now,” she said.
“Nothing to talk about. Just a statement of fact.”
“I’ll call you back,” she said, hanging up.
She dialed the number Melville had left for her.
He picked up on the first ring. “Oh, thank God,” he said. “You’re in Salem.”
“Yeah, I am. Where the hell are you?”
“Finch kicked me out,” he said.
“Excuse me?”
“He’s very angry at me.”
“I can see that,” Zee said. “What did you do to him?”
“I don’t know.” He paused for a long moment. “Actually, I do know. But it doesn’t make much sense. It was something that happened a long time ago, something I thought we had worked out.”
“Evidently not,” she said. “He was selling all your things through the window when I got here.”
“Please tell me you’re kidding.”
“I’m not,” Zee said. “He has re-created Hepzibah’s Cent-Shop in the front room. He was selling all your belongings.”
Melville couldn’t help but laugh.
“It’s not funny,” she said.
“No, but it’s creative,” he said. “Forgive me, it’s the only time I’ve even smiled all week.”
“I rescued some of your shirts,” she said.
“For that I am eternally grateful.”
“The doctor thinks it’s the new meds,” she offered. “They were causing hallucinations. We took him off them.”
“What’s he doing instead?”
“More