THENEWYORKER,DECEMBER2, 2019 55
H
e was walking back up the
street from the seafront when
he looked up and saw the
woman coming at him. He’d been
watching the leaves. Ex-Hurricane
Ophelia was heading toward Dublin
and the leaves were blowing the wrong
way. They were passing him, dashing
by him, rolling up the hill. The cur-
few would be starting in half an hour.
He’d been giving out about it earlier,
before his wife left for work. Do they
think there’s a civil war? It’s only a bit
of weather. But, actually, he liked the
drama of it. Even now, walking home—
striding, he was striding, a man on a
mission—he felt involved, ready, ahead
of the coming catastrophe. It was doing
him good. He was carrying drugs in
a paper bag, but he felt like a man who
didn’t need them. He’d already folded
the garden chairs and put them away,
he’d tucked the wheelie bins well in
under the hedge. He’d put candles
around the house, just in case. He’d
done other stuff, too. He was all set.
He liked the word—curfew. He liked
the daft importance of it. There’d be
Army tenders patrolling the streets,
amplified voices warning citizens to
stay in out of the rain. Get back inside—
you’ll catch your death! There’d be bursts
of gunfire; blood would flow in the gut-
ters, downhill, while the leaves skipped
and swirled up the hill.
He didn’t have to visit his mother.
He didn’t have to work.
He didn’t have to tell his wife about
himself and the widow’s block.
He’d be safe inside the curfew for a
while.
—Bring it on, he said, aloud. There
was no one else on the street. Blow,
winds, and crack your fuckin’ cheeks.
Then he looked up and saw the
woman. She was wearing one of those
baby slings, and the baby was facing
out, looking his way, right under its
mother’s chin. There were two faces
coming straight at him.
It wasn’t a baby.
- —What should I do? he’d asked.
—Nothing, the doctor had said.
—Nothing?
He’d had a health check a couple
of weeks before. A routine check,
offered by his health insurer—free.
Heart, prostate, eyes, ears. He couldn’t
remember what else, and all he could
really recall was the prostate test.
The doctor was a woman, and he
hadn’t cared. He’d lain on his side and
grabbed his knees as she’d told him
to, and he’d been fine with it, and
pleased, even when he saw her drop-
ping the latex gloves into a bin as she
told him he could sit up again. He’d
felt modern. It was something he’d
never tell his daughters about, but he
would still remember, as they lectured
him on gender identity or the glass
ceiling in Irish universities. I know
what you’re talking about, he’d be
tempted to say. A woman doctor had
her finger up my arse, and she was
thoroughly professional.
He loved his daughters’ lectures.
A week after the checkup, his phone
had vibrated in his pocket. He didn’t
know the number on the screen.
—Hello?
It was the doctor.
—How are you today? she asked.
—Grand, he said. Yourself?
She told him he had coronary-artery
disease.
—Oh.
—You shouldn’t worry, she said.
—What does it involve? he asked.
Exactly.
She told him there were high lev-
els of cholesterol in his arteries. One
of them was seventy per cent blocked.
—Seventy per cent?
—Yes.
—That’s nearly three-quarters, he
said.
—We’ll need to do further tests, she
said. And, again, there’s no need to be
worrying yourself unduly. It’s called the
widow’s block, by the way.
She sounded cheerful. He liked that.
—The blocked arteries? he asked.
—Yes, she said. The condition. That’s
what they call it. The widow’s block.
He liked the sound of it. The fact
that he had a wife helped. It made sense,
somehow. It was almost noble. He was
taking the pain for her.
There was no pain. There had been
no pain. Not an ache, not a twinge. But
now he had a heart problem, a heart
condition, a fuckin’ disease.
—What should I do?
—Nothing.
—Nothing?
—For now, she said. You’re fine.
There’ll be further tests, and we’ll or-
ganize an angiogram. Stents might be
wise. But nothing for now. And don’t
Google.
—O.K.
—That way lies madness, she said.
—What’s an angiogram? he asked.
—You can Google that one, she said.
That’s just information.
He liked her. He couldn’t remem-
ber what she’d looked like.
—Can I Google “stents”?
—You can. But leave it at that.
He put his phone back in his pocket
and continued working.
He wrote “angiogram” on an enve-
lope. He wrote “stents.” He wrote “ar-
tery” and “coronary.” And “nothing.”
And “disease.”
It wasn’t a baby in the sling. It was a
Teddy bear. They—the woman and the
bear—had nearly reached him now.
He didn’t have to move, or shift—sway
to the left or right—as he often had
to when he encountered people com-
ing the opposite way. They were be-
tween trees, him and her, so there was
plenty of room on the path.
A Teddy bear—a biggish one; it
fit neatly into the sling. A baby-sized
bear—a big baby. It was wearing a
jumper, and it wasn’t new. It was older
than any baby who might have owned
it. He looked at the woman, although
he didn’t want to; he didn’t want to see
her looking back at him. He didn’t want
to be caught. She looked straight ahead.
He felt like a spectator watching her
through a window. He wasn’t there,
near her, right beside her.
She passed. He didn’t look back. He
kept going, up to the house. The cur-
few was coming, the ex-hurricane was
coming. He wanted to check the wheel-
ies again, he wanted to make sure all
the windows were fastened. He wanted
to get off the street.
She didn’t look like a mother.
He didn’t know what that meant,
really. He could hear himself telling
his wife this, and she’d ask him. She
was thin, he’d say. She didn’t look like
a woman who’d recently been preg-
nant. They’d had four kids of their own;
he’d lived in the world of babies and
pregnant women. He wasn’t a total
