room lights! dining room lights! hall lights! bedroom lights! Ray’s study lights!—I turn on the radio in the kitchen—I turn on the television in our bedroom— can’t bear this silence—you would think possibly I am rehearsing Ray’s homecoming—the entire house lighted as if a party were taking place within—No first: clean with manic energy I will vacuum the rooms of the house, lingering over the carpets, of all household tasks it is vacuuming I most enjoy for its brainless thumping and the immediate gratification it yields—there is something especially gratifying about late-night vacuuming—vacuuming into the early hours of the morning which one could not do, surely, if one’s spouse were home and trying to sleep—inspired then I will polish a selection of the household furniture—though it doesn’t really need polishing, I am eager to polish the dining room table for it’s at this table that Ray will eat his homecoming meal in a few days—I am not sure which of his favored meals I will prepare—must discuss this tomorrow—what a pleasure to polish the dining room table which can be polished to a ravishing sheen though it’s but mahogany veneer—No first: Ray’s desk—this is crucial!—I will remove the accumulation of mail from Ray’s desk—both Ray’s desks—I will polish both desks with lemon polish, to surprise him—I will straighten the items on Ray’s windowsills which include such curiosities as semi-used Post-its, ballpoint pens whose ink has long dried up, small boxes of paper clips, coiled-together rubber bands, a small digital clock with red-flashing numerals like demon-eyes glowering in the dark—charged with the urgency of my mission I will gather Ray’s scattered pens and pencils—as an editor, Ray indulges in crimson, orange, purple, green pencils!—and arrange them in some sort of unobtrusive order on his desks; I will Windex his windows, what a pleasure to swab at the glass with paper towels, as beyond the glass-surface there hovers a ghost-woman whose features are lost in shadow—it is very dark outside—moonless—somehow, it has come to be 1:20 A.M.—no more am I inclined to lie down in that bed in that bedroom than I would lie down in a field in glaring sunshine—as a traveler in even quiet surroundings I am wracked by insomnia—the slightest alteration of my life, I am wracked by insomnia—impossible to sleep while Ray is in the hospital, and distasteful somehow—for What if the phone rings? What if—but housecleaning is an antidote to such thoughts, next I will peruse Ray’s closets, bureau drawers—or maybe I should sort books in the guest room, which have begun to spill over the white Parsons table—No first: flowers—as Ray welcomes me back home from a trip with flowers on my desk so I should welcome Ray back from the hospital with flowers on his desk, must remember to buy flowers at a florist—potted begonias? Cyclamen?—but which florist?—you can buy flowers at the Medical Center but—maybe not a good idea, what if they are suffused with the dread hospital-smell—thinking such thoughts, plotting such stratagems drifting through the rooms of the brightly lighted house singing to myself—humming loudly—talking to myself—giving detailed instructions to myself—for when there is no one to whom one can reasonably speak except two wary and distrustful cats, one must address oneself—in my heightened mood of anxiety commingled with relief—the relief of being home—my uplifted sparkly voice reminds me of no one’s so much as Jasmine’s—now I remember Mail!—it’s urgent to place Ray’s mail in rows, neatly—for a magazine editor receives many items of mail daily—this mail I will sort: personal, business, important, not-important—all advertisements discarded—like a diligent secretary I open envelopes, unfold letters so that at a glance Ray can absorb their contents; since Ray entered the hospital I’ve been paying bills, a household task Ray usually does, and these bill stubs I will set out for Ray to see, and to record; for Ray keeps assiduous financial records; you will say But it isn’t necessary to pay bills immediately when they arrive—you can wait—you can wait for weeks!—but in waiting there is the threat of forgetting, there is the threat of chaos—there is the threat of totally losing control; now in the snowy courtyard there are shadowy hulks like crouching animals, these are UPS and FedEx deliveries for Raymond Smith, Ontario Review, Inc. which I haven’t noticed until now—2:20 A.M.—it seems to me urgent to haul these packages inside the house, struggle to open them—several are deliveries Ray has been asking about, and so tomorrow I must bring them to the hospital—page proofs, galleys—proofs of book jackets—there is a special pleasure in bringing Ray something he has requested—something attractive, striking—page proofs for the May issue of the Ontario Review cover feature on the artist Matthew Daub whose watercolors of small Pennsylvania towns and rural landscapes Ray so admires—something that will be cheering to Ray in his grim hospital room, something we can share—as for more than thirty years we have shared planning issues of Ontario Review and books published by Ontario Review Press—in my dreamy state staring at reproductions of Matthew Daub’s watercolors—thinking how much happier visual artists must be, than writers—writers and poets—we whose connections to the world are purely verbal, linear—through language we are beseeching others who are strangers to us not merely to read what we have written but to absorb it, be moved by it, to feel—then with a jolt I remember—Postpone trip!—this is urgent—I must postpone our upcoming trip to the University of Nevada at Las Vegas where our writer-friend Doug Unger has invited Ray and me to speak to graduate writing students—this trip, long-planned, is within two weeks—impossible so soon; maybe later in the spring, or maybe in the fall, Ray has suggested—Tell Doug I’m really sorry, this damned pneumonia has really knocked me out—I will send Doug an e-mail for I can’t force myself to telephone anyone, even friends, especially friends—abruptly then another thought intrudes—even as I am preparing to write to Doug on my computer—No: “Vespers”—at 2:40 A.M. I am moved to play a CD—Rachmaninoff’s “Vespers”—one of Ray’s favorite pieces of music—sonorous choral music of surpassing beauty which Ray and I heard together at a concert years ago—it might have been in Madison, Wisconsin—when we were newly married—when the great adventure of accumulating a record collection together had just begun—beautiful haunting wave-like “Vespers” which a few months ago I’d heard, returning home from a trip climbing out of the limousine in the driveway and smiling to hear this thrilling music from inside the house where Ray has turned the volume up high, to hear in his study, and thinking Yes. I’m home.
February 16, 2008.
To Richard Ford
Ray is definitely feeling better but I am not going to tempt fate by going on too long optimistically. Thanks, Richard, for your moral support. It is greatly appreciated . . . Maybe you could (come down from Maine) and drive all the Princeton afflicted around. That could be your “new phase.” Biographers would be thrilled. How much easier than writing . . .
Much love to both,
Joyce
(Richard Ford, hearing that Ray was hospitalized, very gallantly offered to fly down to Princeton and “drive me around”—an offer of such generosity, I was deeply moved even as common sense advised me to decline.)
February 17, 2008, 4:08 A.M.
To Emily Mann
Ray is said to be improving—and I think that this is so—but he has such a long way to go & is so weak & prone to fevers, I’m dreading the future; somehow I don’t think that he will ever be “well” again—this experience has been so ravishing. And in any case I have to see it as a presentiment of what lies ahead, unavoidably. I can’t sleep for thinking of all that there is to do, that I doubt I can do . . .
However, you did get through a worse and more protracted experience so I suppose that I will, too. Night thoughts are not productive but—how to avoid them?
I put together a little packet of snapshots to bring to Ray, to cheer him up, and came across the most beautiful photo of you and Gary, taken some years ago by Ray at one of our parties. . . . I’m sure that I’d given you a copy at the time.
Much love,
Joyce
(Emily Mann’s husband, Gary Mailman, stricken by a virulent infection following a medical procedure by a physician associated with the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York City, was hospitalized for ten days at about the time Ray was in the Princeton Medical