“I’m sick of wild salmon,” Sylvia says to Stu, tapping away on the new iPhone she insisted he buy her. “Let’s get Nantucket Bay scallops instead.”

Stu is driving the Tesla on their way to Whole Foods. At 91, he still drives, but only during the day. After twenty years together, Sylvia knows he doesn’t like scallops, but she is a woman who always gets her way.

“After Whole Foods, I want to stop at Saks,” Sylvia rambles. “That scarf I bought is too long, the pants are too short, and the Tory Burch purse is stained.”

“Sure,” Stu parks the car, thinking, I’ve heard this all before.

“And then I want to book the tickets for Disneylaaaa…” Suddenly, she stops talking.

“What, Sylvia? Sylvia?”  Stu glances over at his wife. “Sylvia? Can you hear me? CAN YOU HEAR ME?” He turns to her and touches her shoulder, but she’s unresponsive, trance-like. Her face is sallow, her icy blue eyes wide open, staring straight ahead at nothing and everything.

“Siri, call 9-1-1,” Stu shouts. He suddenly flashes back to that terrible day when he drove his first wife, Betty, to her final chemo treatment twenty-five years ago. His hands get cold and clammy, like they did for months after Betty died. An ambulance arrives quickly, whisking Sylvia onto a gurney straight to Saint Joseph’s. Stu follows the ambulance in the Tesla. The EMT team rush Sylvia to the ICU, motioning for Stu to sit in the dingy hospital waiting room.

Shaking, Stu looks around. Lowering himself carefully onto a broken chair, he knows he should call his kids and Sylvia’s daughter; instead, he stares at the TV hanging from the wall. Fox News is on, an angry Trump muted. He can’t believe they don’t have MSNBC. He knows Sylvia would be furious at Stu if she knew he brought her to this crappy hospital and not the much more modern Cedars Sinai hospital, twenty minutes further away.

Fishing for his phone in the Michael Kors bag Sylvia bought for him, a young doctor who looks thirty at most approaches.

“Mr. Levine? I’m Doctor Peck.”

Stu nods, lifting himself from the broken chair. He’s gotten much thinner these past few years — he follows a strict diet due to his stage four kidney failure — and while he still has mobility, he moves slowly, always careful not to fall.

“Your wife has had a massive stroke. She’s unresponsive. We’re doing everything we can. Please go home and get some rest. I’ll call you as soon as I have more updates.”

Stu shuffles slowly toward the hospital parking lot, his cold fingers touching the large gold Chai necklace he’s been wearing, a gift from Betty on their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. How quickly everything can change, he thinks. One minute, you’re arguing about scallops, and the next, you’re on life support with half your brain gone. Once inside the Tesla, Stu has another pressing thought: he needs to change the outgoing message on the answering machine. Dialing his home number, he records a new message:

“This is Stu. Sylvia’s had a stroke. Leave a message.” 

THEN

Stu started changing his outgoing answering machine greeting twenty-five years ago. He was exhausted every time he answered the constantly ringing phone, having to update their intimate group of family and friends on Betty’s day-to-day decline. Changing the outgoing message every few days with new information was manageable, almost cathartic. Even though Stu knew each time he recorded a new message, Betty was one day closer to dying.

Stu was supposed to die first, not Betty. At fifty, he got a stomach cancer diagnosis on a rainy Tuesday afternoon in 1980. The doctors predicted six months, at most, to live. When Stu told Betty the news at their tiny round kitchen table in Paramus, New Jersey, she immediately burst into tears, chain-smoking Kent 100s, wondering how she would tell their kids their father was dying.

Betty hugged Stu. They both cried. After a few minutes, Betty put out her cigarette and fixed her mascara. Stu checked in to Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. Over the next five months, during Stu’s chemo treatments, Betty prayed to God to save her husband and cried every day. She stopped buying and applying her mascara. She’d need to save every penny.

God listened. Stu survived. 

Twenty years later, it was Betty’s turn. She was diagnosed with stage four lung cancer.  On that first day of chemo, Stu touched his Chai necklace and made a pact with God. Take me, he pleaded, let Betty live until she’s ninety. Take me now if we can make this deal.

But this time, God didn’t listen.

Three weeks before she died, they celebrated their fiftieth wedding anniversary with a fancy party for over a hundred guests. A very ill Betty somehow rallied and looked regal, sitting at her table in her Chanel suit and diamond bracelet. Stu toasted his wife, “We met and married at twenty. We’re still those kids from Brooklyn, me driving a cab and Betty working at the kosher caterer on Flatbush Avenue. Only now, we have a few more shekels in the bank.” Betty, wearing a silver chemo wig, put her head back and laughed, tears dripping from her eyes, her expensive mascara smudging.

Later that night, after the anniversary party, Stu recorded a new message.

“This is Stu. Betty’s taken a turn for the worse. Leave a message.”

Things went downhill fast.

Stu recorded the next message, those final few days, with Betty surrounded by the hospice nurses:

“This is Stu. Betty is on her final few days. No visitors, please. Leave a message.” 

The next afternoon, his voice shaky, Stu recorded a final message:

“This is Stu. Betty has left us. Don’t leave a message.”

NOW

“I want to bring Sylvia home,”  Stu says on the phone with his daughter Susan. “Sylvia has been in the ICU for five hours. I can’t let her die there, under the wooden Jesus and Joseph statues, surrounded by dusty crosses.”

“I’ll get on the first flight, Dad,” Susan assures him, then adds, “But you can’t bring her home.”

Relieved Susan is on her way, he calls his son. He knows Aaron will only come down because Susan will tell him to. Susan is his oldest, and they are closest to each other. She was a saint who could deal with any kind of trauma, especially after witnessing her boyfriend Dave shoot himself in 2009 when he was heavily leveraged on three spec houses and the housing bubble burst. Susan was the one you could count on in an emergency. She’d show up in her Honda CRV with a smile, a bag of prepared foods from Whole Foods, and her homemade chicken soup. If Sylvia died, Stu was sure he could persuade her to move to Florida to care for him, even though Susan’s daughter depended on her for babysitting.

Aaron referred to Florida as Fucking Florida, God’s waiting room, and the few times a year he’d visit, he’d complain obsessively about Florida’s humidity. He’d inherited Stu’s hairy genes, and his shirt would be soaked just minutes after he got off the plane. Aaron was stubborn, an Alpha male with a temper. And he didn’t like anything getting in the way of his lycra shorts and the small seat on his beloved custom bicycle. After hanging up with Susan, his phone rings. It’s Doctor Peck.

“I’m so sorry, Mr. Levine. I am afraid Sylvia is gone.”

Standing in front of the answering machine a few minutes later, his hands in gloves, Stu takes three tries to get the words out without crying.

“This is Stu. I’ve lost Sylvia. Leave a message.”

THEN

“Stu, this is my new friend, Sylvia,” Betty said. “She’s just joined our bridge group.” They were outside the card room at Cypress Cove. Stu had just finished playing softball with the guys.

“Wonderful. It’s nice to meet you. We should have dinner with you and your husband some time,” Stu suggested.

“I’ve already buried two husbands,” Sylvia winked. “So you’ve just got me.”

The following week, Stu drove Betty and Sylvia in the Mercedes to dinner at Joe’s Stone Crab, their favorite spot in Miami. Two martinis later, her mouth filled with crab, Sylvia told the epic story about her two husbands.

“I met my first husband at Weequahic High School in Newark.” Sylvia bit passionately into another roll. Stu loved that she seemed to have a healthy appetite when Betty was always on some fad diet, determined to lose “just five pounds.”

“Herman was socially awkward. My mother called him a little slow.” Sylvia grabbed the empty bread basket and shook it at the waiter for a refill. “I only married him because my mother told me I’d never find anyone better with my plain looks.”

Stu didn’t think her looks were plain at all. She had a round, full face and a nice cleavage too. Betty’s new friend Sylvia was bold and had chutzpah – the complete opposite of Betty, all manners and grace.

“So I did what other working-class Newark girls did—get married. The second time around, I thought I’d found a real looker when I married Norm — he looked like a shorter, Jewish Gregory Peck.” Sylvia signaled to the waiter to bring her another martini. “Deep down, he was just a schnook who dabbled in various travel and ticket businesses that went south.”

“Maybe you’ll meet a nice man here at Cypress Cove,” Betty said, glancing at Stu; perhaps he could set up one of his softball buddies with Sylvia? Stu silently focused on cutting his baked potato.

On the drive home later that night, a little buzzed and stuffed with delicious crabs, Stu glanced in the rear-view mirror; he caught eyes with Sylvia sitting in the back seat. He was terrified to admit he had a sudden secret crush on Sylvia. Sweat dripped down both armpits. He regretted wearing a white linen shirt and hoped Betty wouldn’t notice. He’d sneak it to their cleaning lady tomorrow to launder.

Fourteen months after that Joe’s Stone Crab dinner, Betty passed away. Stu started noticing Sylvia hanging out at the club’s weekly softball games. Still grieving Betty’s loss, Stu was polite to Sylvia but aloof. One Sunday, she approached him on the baseball diamond and asked him to borrow his glove.

“We’re both lefties. What are the chances?”

Sylvia borrowed Stu’s lefty glove for the next three softball games, then went in for the kill. Dolled up with a blowout and red manicure and in her favorite Burberry trench coat, Sylvia knocked on Stu’s door.

“Are you hungry? I brought something.” First, she offered him a tuna sandwich. “I also brought dessert,” Flinging open her coat, she revealed her naked body.

Two weeks later, she moved in.

Stu’s kids were incensed. During one visit, Stu overheard Aaron talking to his sister. “What’s he doing? She’s a monster. Why can’t Dad take his time and play the field? I’m sure there are at least two hundred available single women at Cypress Cove – all nicer than that woman.”

Sylvia had also overheard Aaron. She sashayed past Stu, poured Aaron a double bourbon, and shouted, “This woman and your father have sex. And sometimes more than once a day. Isn’t that wonderful at our age?”

Later that night, Stu overheard Sylvia recording a new answering machine message.

“This is Sylvia. We’re not here right now. Leave a message.”

NOW

It is the morning of Sylvia’s funeral. Typical Florida weather. Schvitzy. Stu feels the sweat dripping down his face and into the collar of his shirt. He is so warm that he is afraid he will pass out. Susan and Aaron help him into the air-conditioned funeral home, and suddenly, he’s shivering again. Sylvia would have given him his sweater from her purse or pulled out his favorite pair of leather gloves they’d bought in Florence, but she couldn’t do that for him anymore. His children don’t leave his side. Friends from Cypress Cove greet him, but he can’t talk. He hears small gasping sounds — then realizes they are coming from him. Susan stands close, passing him a tissue, then two more. Stu has never felt so alone in his life.

When the Rabbi signals it’s time, Aaron helps his father to the podium to deliver the eulogy.

“Let me tell you a love story,” Stu tells every detail about their life, starting with the softball games and the tuna fish sandwich. He leaves out the part about the trench coat. Forty-five minutes later, he finally whispers: “Sylvia promised me twenty years. And we got our twenty years.”

  After Sylvia’s funeral, Aaron stays with Stu for a week. Each morning, Aaron swims laps in the pool. Stu stays inside and watches MSNBC for hours. He used to watch with Sylvia. Stu needs voices, company, and noise. When Aaron leaves for the airport in a few hours, Stu knows he will suddenly be alone for the first time in over twenty years.

“Dad! Come outside!” Aaron calls out that final morning of his stay. “The water is so warm.”

Stu hesitates. Since Betty died, he hadn’t been in his pool in over twenty years, and Sylvia had never liked to swim. Stu opens the sliding door to the lanai and pool.

Aaron splashes water toward Stu.

“You’ve spent your entire life caring for everyone,” Aaron shouts. “Now it’s time for you to step up and take care of yourself.”

Stu unties his shoes, takes a deep breath, dips a toe in the water, and lowers himself in, fully clothed. Sylvia would have had a fit if she’d seen this – God forbid he got pneumonia at age ninety-one. Aaron reaches out, embracing Stu in a wet, long hug. Stu takes a breath, the first step from grieving to breathing. He gets out, wraps himself in a Matoux towel, and goes inside. He walks straight to the answering machine and presses record.

“This is Stu. I’m still alive. Leave a message.”  

 

JEN RUDIN is an award-winning casting director and author of Confessions of a Casting Director, published by HarperCollins. Her writing has appeared in USA Today, Newsweek, Kveller, The Forward, and Backstage. She wrote and produced the short film Lucy in the Sky, starring Whoopi Goldberg, and is currently working on a memoir.