A Place I've Never Been Read Online Free PDF

Mr. Theodorus, with his black suits, his little mustache, his slicked-back hair; Spiro Theodorus, brother of the maître d’ at the Greek Tycoon’s, mixer of the best daiquiris and joy of group night—was in a coma a few floors below. Arthur and Mrs. Theodorus met to drink coffee in the cafeteria with the tired-out residents. They shook their heads, and sometimes they wept, before returning to the ordeal, the vigil. Mrs. Theodorus told Arthur that her champion bitch Alicia was dying as well, of canine degenerative myelopathy; when she wasn’t with Spiro she was at the animal hospital, stroking Alicia and feeding her small pieces of boiled chicken through the slats in her cage. She talked often, while she drank her coffee, about Alicia’s coat. It was the best coat in the country, she said. Walking out of the cafeteria, Mrs. Theodorus said she honestly did not know which was going to hurt more: the death of her husband or that of her dog. They parted at the third floor. Riding back to the burn unit, Arthur rallied to face his own terrible dilemma of which-was-worse: the possibility that Claire had died without him versus the probability that she was still alive.
    Arthur and Mrs. Theodorus now return to the hospital only once a month, for spouse night. Olivia, the social worker, insists that they are welcome to continue coming to group as long as they want. And Arthur does want to come. He depends on the group notonly for continuity but because toward the end it constituted the very center of Claire’s life; in some ways the members were more important to her than he was, or the children. Still, he is afraid of becoming like Mrs. Jaroslavsky, who attends spouse night faithfully even now, a year after Mr. Jaroslavsky’s passing. Because of Mrs. Jaroslavsky, the big conference table is covered each spouse night with a pink tablecloth and platters of poppy-seed cake, chocolate cake, pudding cake, blueberry pie. Each month there is an excuse, because each month brings dark news, death and sudden spasms of hope in equal quantity. This week, Mrs. Jaroslavsky explains, the cakes are because Christa is having her six-month interim X rays, and she wants to help. “Everyone does what they can,” she says to Christa.
    Across the room, Christa—freckled arms, a long sandy braid, and a spigot in her arm for the chemotherapy to be poured into—looks away from the food, biting the thumbnail of one of her hands, while Chuck, her husband, holds the other. They are both professional ski instructors but have been living in this snowless climate since the illness, hand-to-mouth. Kitty Mitsui got Chuck a job busing dishes at Beefsteak Hirosha’s, but that hardly scratches the surface of the bills.
    â€œThank you, Mrs. Jaroslavsky,” Chuck says now, smiling faintly, then turning again to make sure Christa isn’t going to cry.
    â€œWell, you’re welcome,” Mrs. Jaroslavsky says. “You know I do what I can. And if you need anything else—anything cooked, anything cleaned—don’t hesitate to ask.”
    She sits back, satisfied, in her chair, and takes out her knitting. She is a large, amiable-looking woman with red cheeks and hair, and oddly, the odor that dominates the room tonight is not that of the food, but the faint, sickly-sweet, waxy perfume of her lips.Arthur and Mrs. Theodorus, taking off their coats, know, as some do not, that underneath the pink cloth is a table stained with cigarette burns, and pale, slightly swollen lesions where coffee cups have leaked, and chicken-scratched nicks in the wood where hands have idly ground pencils or scissor points or the ends of ballpoint pens. The carpet is pale yellow and worn in places, and above the table is a poster, its corners worn through with pinprickings, of a cat clinging to a chinning bar. “We all have days like this,” the poster says.
    It is a hard room for the healthy; it looks like death. But the