The Hunger Moon by Suzanne Matson

Author:Suzanne Matson
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Literary, Fiction
ISBN: 9780393348460
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 1997-07-17T07:00:00+00:00

ELEANOR BEGAN EVERY YEAR with a complete physical. Her doctor for the last twenty years had once been a student of Robert’s; he knew her very well. When Eleanor forgot her appointment this year, even though she had written it on the calendar, his office called to reschedule. On Monday the ninth, she took a cab to Dr. Brewster’s office.

“Eleanor, you’re looking as beautiful as ever. Feeling okay?”

“I can’t complain, Ned.”

“Still getting out, doing things?”

“Yes, except driving. I’m not comfortable with that anymore. I’ve asked Janice to sell my car for me.”

“You won’t even miss it, now that you live in town.”

“That’s what I thought.”

“What about your state of mind? Any blues? Sleeplessness? Nervousness?”

“I’m probably more crotchety than ever, but no. My mood is fine. My memory seems to be going, though. I completely forgot that I had an appointment with you last week.”

“Lots of people forget their appointments. My own memory’s shot. Lucy has to remind me as I go out the door in the morning where we’re going for dinner, and then, because she knows me, she calls in the afternoon to remind me again. I wouldn’t worry about a little absentmindedness.”

Ned prodded and thumped her, and dotted the cold disk of the stethoscope across her back. She had always been at home around medical people, because of Robert. Hospitals and clinics did not make her anxious. They were places where the world behaved in an orderly fashion. Though illness might strike unpredictably, the doctors and nurses themselves had procedures to follow, and a rational pattern to their actions.

“Your blood pressure is a little higher than I’d like, Eleanor.” He consulted her chart. “Still taking the Aldactazide?”

She nodded.

“Any dizziness, headaches?”

“Some dizziness once in a while.”

“Okay, let’s get another reading next week. Just stop in some morning early in the day and the nurse will take it. If it’s still high, we’ll adjust the dose. I’m going to send you over to the lab now,” Ned said. “We’ll do the usual workup—blood count, electrolytes. Anything else in particular you’re concerned about?”

She shook her head. Aside from a few chronic issues, mainly her blood pressure, arthritis, and hiatal hernia, Eleanor knew that at seventy-eight she was as healthy as a horse. Now that she had a new hip, she thought she was probably good for another twenty years. Her sister, Isabel, had finally succumbed to metastasized skin cancer two years earlier. It had been a slow and painful death, and her husband had been there until the end, with the bedpans, IV tubes, and a hospital bed he had bought for the living room of their Palm Beach condominium. Isabel had been so groundlessly worried about symptoms she exaggerated her whole adult life that everyone including herself was astonished that a painless mole on her back the size of a ladybug had finally killed her. It was odd burying a sister, even a sister you weren’t close to. No one, not even a spouse, had shared the moments that formed the basic core of a person like one’s sibling.

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