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could do very little but walk. Sometimes in Central Park. Sometimes down Central Park West, over to Columbus, and all the way down to the La Fortuna bakery on Seventy-First Street. I’d plop onto a chair and order two mini cannolis but eat only one. On the way back, I’d rest on a bench and watch the elderly couples from the nursing home shuffle by, leaning into each other as if against some fierce wind only they could feel. Peas in a pod. Yogurt and cucumber. Dates and almonds. How things should be. We should have gotten old at the same rate, I thought. That’s what you hope for, that’s luck: not waiting around.
     
    Now, in our apartment, the air wafted in from the street, refreshing and bright. I decided to go out again. I’d get a FrozFruit for Joseph in case he remembered later. Ada was reading him a Bellow story. She didn’t laugh at the right parts but neither did he. His face was smiling. I loved how it could do that: smile without moving. Someone else, some stranger, would never have known that he was happy inside. But I did.
    “I’m going for a walk,” I said.
    I put my cheek to his face. He didn’t kiss me though I waited for it. It wasn’t easy on the muscles, but I waited, hoping. He was gone again. Finally, disappointed and in a full-body cramp, I left. More than fifty years together and I was still telling myself not to take these things personally.
    I headed south. The street was quiet and wet, the air thick. I’d been inside for only an hour, but it had hailed in that time. Little puddles winked along the curb. The buildings seemed bigger at night. For a moment, I imagined one crumbling, out of nowhere. Just crashing. Me getting trapped. It wasn’t the pain I wondered about. It was Joseph. If he would miss me. If he would even know.
    The moon was a butter smudge. I allowed myself to imagine our daughter looking at the same moon. It’s such a cliché, everyone under the same sky. But it wasn’t just that for me. I wanted to know that the sky was hopeful for her, that it seemed limitless and promising. I wanted to know that she didn’t mind being vulnerable and that someone was holding her even when she looked away, despite me giving her up. That maybe she was loved even more for it, because of who she’d become. Call me an old goon but I imagined that one day she’d just show up—her feet turned in but her body strong like a dancer’s—and that she wouldn’t be angry. She’d be as curious as we were, maybe even grateful. Proof I’d been watching too much television.
     
    I walked past doormen who nodded their heads, businessmen whose shoes clacked as they stepped out of cabs, streetlamps that poured down orange light, big dogs, little dogs, empty bags of chips that lifted with a tiny gust of wind, a dead tomato with half its skin beside it. People still dropped tomatoes. People still stepped on other people’s garbage, I thought. Everything despite everything and maybe because of it—because my Joseph was dying.
    And then it hit me, just when I was feeling most sorry for myself. He’d been smiling for her. For Ada. He didn’t give me a kiss but he’d been smiling for her. I picked up my pace. For a moment, I thought of all the things he could be doing. If he could smile, what else could he do? Make his own tea? Help me sort papers? Maybe I didn’t push him enough, but not everything was my fault.
    I was angry. I walked until I hardly realized I was walking anymore. I was really moving. I sped up. I gave it my all. I didn’t care how old I looked—that I had to swing my arms like I was putting out a fire, that you could hear my huffy breathing from here to Hoboken. Sweat broke out on my back and grabbed at my sweater. My chest pounded harder and harder. It was exhilarating. Two more blocks. I could do it. I felt part of the world again, for the first time in months, destructible and indestructible. These emotions, this anger. Jealousy is invigorating in small doses. I knew I’d