Alex Was Dying

By Philip Goldberg

Tonight, like most weeknights, the old woman placed her small dinner plate on the tray before her recliner. She clicked on the television and anticipated Alex’s company. For the next half-hour, her meal would go untouched, phone calls went unanswered, and on the rare occasions the doorbell rang, she ignored it. 

As soon as Alex walked on stage and spoke, his soothing voice worked better than Lexapro ever had. Still, she couldn’t dispel the sadness at the thought that this healthy-appearing man was terminally ill. She tightened her grip on the chair’s arm as if trying to dig deep into the brown leather. But then came the questions. “He rocked as the father of Pebbles.”  

The elderly woman reared her head forward. Her mind struggled to come up with the answer. It was on the tip of her tongue just as a contestant answered. “Who was Fred Flintstone?”

That she was late coming up with the right answer mattered little. “Old wiring doesn’t work as well as it once did,” was her defense to the television. Shrugging off her tardiness, she continued to watch as question, answer, question, answer followed. Many she got wrong, but it didn’t matter. Being in Alex’s presence was what counted. She felt energized, engaged, unlike most of the day; a day full of nothing, where emptiness clung but took her nowhere. It had been like that since her husband had died of a heart attack nearly three years earlier. With that hollowness, time dragged. But, during Jeopardy’s half-hour, thirty minutes seemed like thirty seconds.

When the show ended, the woman clicked off the television. There’d be no Pat Sajak for her with his silly wheel. Sajak wasn’t anywhere close to being the debonair man preceding him. She stared at the blank screen and grew solemn at the simple truth that Alex would be gone soon. The feeling didn’t last long, knowing that he was there every weeknight, at least for now, smiling and being witty. Could she be that way if a deadly disease invaded her body like his Pancreatic Cancer or Covid, which was ravaging the world’s population? She already knew the answer. All she had to recall was how distraught she’d been for some time after her husband’s death.

Funny, how it was his heart attack was how she first saw Alex. Jeopardy had been playing on the hospital waiting room’s television. She’d had her face in her hands when she’d heard this smooth voice and looked to see this handsome white-haired man on the screen.

It’d been Alex who helped her through the death of her husband. His presence six nights a week brought some measure of comfort to the grieving woman. 

Her son couldn’t understand his mother’s infatuation for a game show host. When he pondered it, he always came to the same conclusion. Living alone was unhealthy. To that, he saw only one viable solution.

 “Can we talk about downsizing, Mom?” His voice resonated with hope from across the room on the sofa where he sat.

“Please, not again.” She rested her head against the back of her recliner.

He appeared perplexed as usual. “Why not? Don’t you think it’s time?”

She looked at him as if he was still a boy. “I am still perfectly at home here.”

He touched the framed photo of the entire family captured in a happy moment. It was unavoidable, sitting on top of the drum table next to the sofa he was sitting on. “But Mom, a new, smaller place in a senior living community would do you a world of good. You could meet people, engage in activities."

She began to tap her foot with great impatience. “Don’t you have something better to do, son? You’ve begun to sound like a broken record every time I see or talk to you on the phone.” She shook her head with finality. “I can still take care of myself.”

“Can you?”

She cast a defiant look at him. He became quiet as he’d done since childhood.

When her son left not long after the conversation, she did what she always did after his recent visits or phone conversations. She sat there stewing. He meant well, but too much of a good thing turned bad fast. She would know when the time was right to make that move. For the time being, she had Alex. His company filled her with appreciation and kept her mind in tune. Still, she wished she possessed the man’s ability to act as if all was well. Maybe, she could learn that by watching him, which would do more than any new friend, planned activity, or any darn senior living facility.

Her son’s visit succeeded in one thing. It exhausted her. Still, at seven o’clock, she watched Jeopardy. Alex read in his velvet voice, “In 1952, the title character of this show asked, ‘Do you poop out at parties? Are you unpopular?’”

 “What is ‘I Love Lucy’?” She nailed it—the first of many questions she aced that night. Being tired hadn’t affected her. And the performance invigorated her.

Unfortunately, the following months brought more bad news. More deaths while unemployment continued to soar. Then there was the election falsehood of victory despite having been defeated. Everywhere craziness was masquerading as sanity. All of it stressed her. And how much stress could an octogenarian take?

But Alex would alleviate any uneasiness that the news had caused.  And with the raging pandemic, her son no longer visited. Instead, he phoned. Luckily for her, the only thing he’d say about senior living was to wait for everything to calm down.

When the old woman learned Alex died that Sunday morning in late November, her reaction wasn’t the uncontrollable sobbing that had followed her husband’s passing. Instead, she was quiet and self-soothing. She considered how the world was beginning to change. A new, compassionate president had been elected. The Covid vaccine was weeks away. All this led her to one crazy idea: Alex had made the ultimate sacrifice. He’d given his life to allow the country—the world even—to begin to heal. She didn’t care if this notion was beyond belief. Nor would she share it with anyone. It suited her, if only for the moment.

Six months later, she moved, with her son’s help, into Crestmont Gracious Living for Seniors. The food was fair, the friendships were few, and she made it her business to avoid the television lounge at seven each weekday night and Saturday. Jeopardy was the popular choice at Crestmont, as she’d heard in the dining room. For those thirty minutes, which seemed slower now, she remained in her room and read. Still, she always smiled as Alex invariably came to mind.

Philip Goldberg’s short stories have appeared in Dillydoun Review, trampset, Thrice Fiction, Straylight, Borrowed Solace, The Chaffin Journal, and Twisted Vine Literary Art Journal. Two more stories have been accepted by The Halcyone/Black Mountain Press and by the Evening Street Review, Microfictions have appeared in Blink Ink and Starwheel.  Three works have been published in Best of collections and one was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. He is currently workshopping a novel.