See What I See

by Gloria Whelan

  “Pity is for weaklings. If I’d been a bleeding heart, I’d never have been the painter I am. I know what you’re asking: Did I miss seeing you growing up? Of course I did. Would I rather have been a good father than a great artist? The answer is no.”

  I scream at him, “Why couldn’t you be both, and why do you have to tell me these things? Just shut up!”

  When Mom calls later in the evening, I say, “I’m coming home.”

  Chapter 12

  The next day I call Erlita. “Honey, someone has to stay with your daddy twenty-four hours a day. That’s three nurse’s aides, and that’s a lot of money. And then there’s the weekend. That’s extra. Maybe you should be thinking about a nursing home.”

  “Money’s not a problem.” I call Mr. Krull.

  “There is certainly more than enough money for nursing help,” he tells me. “Actually I think it’s an excellent idea. I told your father when I was there the other day that I felt strongly that caring for him is too much responsibility for a young girl. I don’t think he realized how much of a burden it is for you. I pointed out that it’s only going to get more difficult.”

  I thought about how when I told Dad I was going home, he just nodded and even looked a little relieved. I was upset at his reaction. After all I’d done for him, after I’d given up school, he was glad to get rid of me? But after talking with Mr. Krull I wonder . . . His wanting to get rid of me doesn’t make a lot of sense. Was Dad saying those heartless things to me on purpose? Did he know it was the only way he could make me leave?

  I stay the week, helping Dad get used to the new arrangement. At first he resents having strangers care for him and won’t talk to the nurse’s aides, but he can’t get out of bed and knows he needs them. I’m afraid the aides will be intimidated by Dad’s shouting and his demands, but even the shyest of the three seems used to abuse. Maybe they know that Dad isn’t fighting them; he’s fighting his illness and his death. They just happen to be in the middle of the battle.

  I go to the store to say good-bye to Emmanuel, hoping Thomas will be there, but he isn’t.

  “He and Mary went to a movie,” Emmanuel says. “I’ll tell him you stopped by. Who’s going to take care of your father now?”

  It’s more than a question, it’s an accusation. In their community, where family is everything, it would be unthinkable to leave a father, never mind what kind of father he is. Are they right? I don’t know.

  Late at night my guilt gets the better of me, taking over my sleep. I prowl around the kitchen, getting a glass of milk and a peanut-butter-and-crackers fix. Anita, the night aide, is there having a cup of tea. She’s tall and slim and bony, with a rounded cap of closely cut hair and large eyes with faint brownish purple circles underneath. Each night she brings a small framed picture of a little boy and sets it up in the kitchen. It’s like she’s saying, I’m sitting here all night for you, son. This money is going to make a difference in your life.

  “Your dad’s sleeping like a baby,” she reassures me. “I expect you’ll be anxious to get home to your mama. A man sick as your dad is a handful for a young girl like you.”

  I’m relieved to have a sympathetic ear. “I don’t know if I should leave him, but he wants me to go, so what else can I do?”

  “I can see your dad is a proud man. Nothing’s as hard as having to depend on someone else. And maybe he doesn’t want you to see him at the end.”

  I consider what Anita says, and it makes sense. Dad wants me to remember him as he was, still in charge. Maybe he’s worried I’ll love him less when he’s weak and helpless. Perhaps I should stay, but that would take away his ability to manage his life, and I can’t do that. It has to be what he wants and not what I want.

  In the morning it’s time for the last thing on my list before I leave: telling Morgan the truth. Morgan’s emails and phone calls are coming thick and fast. Interviews are scheduled. The famous 92nd Street Y wants Dad to give a talk. Dad has said nothing, wanting to let the interest and publicity swell, waiting until the last possible moment.

  Dad calls me into the studio and directs me to get Morgan on his cell. I see him listening to Morgan, to what is probably Morgan’s insistence on wanting details of Dad’s arrival. Finally Dad says, “I’m not coming to New York, not now or ever. I can’t even get out of bed.”

  I can hear Morgan shouting. Dad waits impatiently and then says, “If you just shut up, what I’m trying to tell you is that I’m dying. No! I’m not drunk. I’m not crazy. Just a minute.” He hands me his cell.

  We figured this would be how Morgan would take it. “It’s true,” I say. “Dad has cirrhosis of the liver. He tried to get a liver transplant, but he also has something called dilated congestive cardiomyopathy.” And then I say, “He’s very sick.” I choke up.

  Maybe it was Dad’s voice, which is not much more than a whisper, maybe it’s my listing the medical names of the terrible things that are happening to Dad, or maybe it’s the way I lose it at the end, but Morgan believes me.

  “What am I supposed to do?” Morgan says. He pulls himself together. “That’s terrible. I’m really sorry. What a lousy break. This show is going to put him back on the map. It could have changed his life.” There is a pause; then he adds, “Of course as soon as people know there won’t be any more paintings by Quinn, the prices are bound to go up.”

  I punch the End key. Immediately the phone rings again.

  “Don’t answer,” Dad says. He wants to know what Morgan said.

  “He said how sorry he was.”

  I take off for the Tergiversate. I’m leaving three of my paintings at the gallery. “Where are you going?” Diane asks.

  “Up north.”

  “That’s the end of the world.”

  “It’s the best part of the world. I’ll send more paintings down to convince you.”

  I go to see Lila next. She takes my hand and pulls me up the stairway to show me a couple of empty rooms. “Auntie’s rented the rooms, and this summer we’re moving up there to live. All the downstairs is going to be her alterations and my shop. I’ve designed a blouse in a lot of fabrics and colors. It is so neat and it’s selling.”

  When I tell her about Dad and how I’ll be going home she says, “I feel so sorry for your father. It must be hard taking care of him, but I hate to see you go. Promise you’ll come back to school.”

  “I’m going to try. I really want to, but right now I don’t see how.”

  “You sound like an old lady. Girl, you’re only eighteen. You’ve got a life ahead of you, not behind you. Anyhow you’ve got to come back and see my new place.”

  We hug and I promise. She sends me away with one of the blouses.

  That evening Thomas comes over. “Dad told me you were leaving.”

  I tell him how Anita thinks Dad wants me to go because he doesn’t want me to see him get sicker and sicker and die.

  “Anita is probably right. I’ve never seen anyone as determined to control things as your dad.”

  “I can’t leave him.” I start to cry. Thomas’s arms go around me, and I smell the wool of his sweater, something he uses on his hair, and just a whiff of hospital. I haven’t really been able to cry, and now I can’t stop. Thomas digs out a handful of crumpled Kleenex, but I have my own. The harsh kitchen lights shine on my red eyes and nose. I’m sure my face is all blotchy.

  “I just wish I had your father’s guts,” Thomas says. “I wish I were as certain and as brave as he is about what to do with my life. What about you?”

  “I don’t know. I still want to paint, but it’s so connected with Dad now. Before I can come back to school, I’ll need to work awhile to get the money for a place to stay anyhow.”

  “I’ll look for your paintings one of these days at the Art Institute.” He gives me a hug and then he’s gone.

  * * *

  I’m not taking the bus up north. Dad insists on my flying back. My suitcase and backpack and a couple of small canvases I’ve been working on ar
e stacked at the door, waiting for the taxi that will take me to the airport and the plane that will fly me home. Only I’m not sure what home is anymore. It’s been a thousand years since I dragged my things into this house, with Dad standing there furious, telling me I couldn’t stay. What if I had left the next morning, like he wanted me to? Even now I don’t know where I got the courage to defy him. How different my life would have been if I had left. No Thomas, no Erlita, or Lila or Ruth, and no paintings of mine hanging on the Tergiversate walls. A whole chunk of my life never lived. The worst thing that can happen isn’t failing; it’s not trying.

  I ask Anita if she’ll feed the cat. “That’s a nasty cat,” she says. “I don’t know why you want it around.” But she promises.

  I go to say good-bye to Dad. We love each other, but it’s angry love. I resent his caring about his work more than he cared about me, but I have to take what I can get, and I guess it’s better than nothing.

  Dad is propped up in bed. “Get out,” he says to Anita. “I want to talk to my daughter.” Anita and I exchange a knowing look, and she stalks out of the studio.

  “You think I’m selfish,” Dad says.

  “I don’t know what to think about you,” I say. “It’ll probably take me the rest of my life to figure you out.”

  “I hope you’ll have better things to think about. Like your painting.”

  “You said it was no good.”

  “I lied.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I didn’t want my daughter competing with me. Because I wanted to spare you the heartbreak I’ve had, and any good artist has, of always falling short of what you want to accomplish. The better you are, the higher the expectation gets. You never win.”

  “But it’s not a game,” I say. “It’s just what you have to do.”

  All this talking is hard for Dad. He begins to cough, a choking cough that scares me. I call Anita, who reaches for the oxygen mask at Dad’s bedside. He gulps air. Looking out the window, I see the taxi pull up. I take Dad’s hand. His fingers close over mine. “Let me stay,” I beg.

  He shakes his head and gives me one of his wicked smiles.

  Anita says, “Time to go.”

  Dad pulls away the mask. “Kate Quinn,” he whispers. “Be Kate Quinn.”

  Chapter 13

  When I get home, Mom throws her arms around me like I’ve survived some scary life-threatening catastrophe. I guess I have. Of course she is devastated when I tell her I haven’t been going to school. She’s furious with Dad and doesn’t want to hear a word about him. The only argument we have is when I tell her I’m changing my name to Kate Quinn.

  “It’s not fair,” she says. “All these years he never gave you a thought.” When that doesn’t make me change my mind, she warns, “People will think you’re trading on his name.”

  “I can’t help what other people think. Anyhow, there aren’t going to be any more paintings of Dad’s. He wants to think of more paintings with the name Quinn on them. You’re my mom and I love you, but you’ve got me; he’s got nothing.”

  The next day I begin to ease back into my old life. I get up and look for something to have for breakfast, keeping quiet so I don’t wake up Mom. This morning I find some croissants she’s brought home from the restaurant and I have one with my coffee. There was a fog last night, and this morning when the sun comes out, I see that the drops of moisture on the branches have frozen into a thousand crystals of ice, glistening like shiny knives in the sun. I pull on my jacket and boots and head outside with the shovel to clear a path to Mom’s car. I get the broom and sweep the light snow from the car’s roof. Everything glitters and glistens. The most amazing thing is the silence. There is no silence like this in the city, only a constant background of hum and roar that leaks into your life and smothers your thoughts. I’m more sure than ever that when I finish school, this is where I’ll settle down. You don’t have to go to New York to be an artist. You need to paint where your heart is.

  Dad died the day after his show opened. The Detroit papers had articles about “the famous recluse.” The New York Times had a long obituary. Mom’s name was there, and she hated it. So was mine. It called me Kate Quinn and said I was an aspiring artist. The obituary talked about how Dad had dropped out of the art scene and about his drinking problem. But most of the article was about the new show, with quotes from museum curators. The New York Times’s own art critic wrote of how brilliantly Dad’s work illustrated the emptiness of a world where cars and houses and computers take the place of relationships with people.

  There is one exception in all the article’s praise. The writer says, “Some critics attack the ugliness and the anger in the paintings; other critics say that is Quinn’s strength. Quinn is not simply critical of what the world has become, but his paintings suggest he doesn’t know what he would put in its place.”

  Morgan has kept in touch. The show has sold out, except for a couple of paintings Morgan is keeping for himself. He says they’re an investment, because with no more Dalton Quinn paintings, the prices are sure to go up.

  We learn from Mr. Krull that Dad wanted to be buried here in Larch. Mom and I are both shocked. “He won’t leave us alone,” Mom says. My guess is he didn’t want a celebrity funeral with photographers and gossip. Or was he saying, “I’m finally coming back,” and asking Mom and me to forgive him? Or maybe there was just no place else to go. I don’t know.

  At first Mom says she won’t go to the funeral. “Why should I? I haven’t seen him in years. He doesn’t mean anything to me, and look how he used you.”

  “He didn’t use me,” I tell her. “I stayed because I wanted to.” I can’t help adding, “If you don’t feel anything for Dad after all these years, why are you still so bitter?”

  Mom gives me an angry look and goes into the tiny cubbyhole that is her bedroom, slamming the door after her. Trailer doors are too flimsy to really slam, but I get the idea. An hour later when she comes out, she says, “Maybe you’re right—maybe it’s time for me to let go. Anyhow, I don’t want you to have to go to the funeral alone.”

  We go to our church together to explain to the pastor the complicated relationships among Dad and Mom and me, but Pastor Hoyer says of course he’ll do the funeral. Anything for Mom, who has been active in the church. So it’s Mom who gets Dad his funeral. “I hope Dalton appreciates it,” Mom says with a rueful smile. It’s the first time that Mom has ever accompanied Dad’s name with a smile, even a skimpy one.

  It’s a small affair, just me and Mom and Mrs. Smouse, who goes to all the funerals at the church as a kind of entertainment, and some friends of Mom’s from the resort and her bridge group. There are a few curious townspeople too. Mr. Krull comes up from Detroit, and there’s a local reporter from the Larch Chronicle. The surprising thing is that Morgan flies in. It’s amazing meeting him in person after all the hundreds of calls and emails. He isn’t at all like I pictured. He’s short, with a shaved head and sad eyes, and he’s dressed in New York City black: black turtleneck, black blazer, and black trench coat. New Yorkers are always ready for a funeral. After an awkward expression of sympathy Morgan looks around at the modest church and sprinkling of mourners.

  “We could have given Dalton a terrific send-off,” he says. “The papers would have covered it.” He keeps looking around as if he can’t believe Dad came from so small a town, as if a mistake has been made or something is being hidden from him. Finally he goes over to the reporter from the Larch Chronicle and starts to give her a lecture on Dad’s painting in relation to contemporary art. She is startled and then a little desperate to get away from him, but Morgan isn’t going to miss an opportunity.

  The pastor has never met Dad and only knows he was once married to Mom and that he grew up here. In his remarks the pastor quotes a passage from the Bible: “Where my treasure is, there will my heart be also.” He says how the places where we grew up and the people we love stay with us all our lives. I thought about how Dad had run from Larc
h and about how much he left behind.

  Immediately after the service Morgan takes off in a hired limousine for the airport in Traverse City. His last words as he makes his getaway: “Dalton must have seen something here I don’t.”

  Mr. Krull asks to go back to our home with us. He seems surprised to find home is a trailer. Mom makes coffee for him. We want to be hospitable, and we appreciate his coming up for the service, but we really just want to be alone to deal with our feelings: my saying good-bye to Dad and Mom trying to figure out if there’s a little bit of Dad she can forgive.

  Mr. Krull sips his coffee, refusing the store-bought cookies I offer. He looks around doubtfully and says, “I don’t suppose you’ll be unhappy to find something a little more spacious.”

  In a frosty voice Mom says, “I don’t know what you mean. We’ve been very happy here.”

  “Yes, yes, of course. It’s very cozy.” He reaches for his briefcase and reads Dad’s will like he’s a CEO giving a report to his board of directors. There’s a lot of money from the sale of Dad’s paintings. The show was a great success. Dad has left most of his money to the art school in Detroit for scholarships for students, but he’s also left me money, enough to buy Mom a house and to put myself through school. Mr. Krull will be my trustee until I’m twenty-one to see that I don’t blow it all on a trip around the world.

  Before I can say anything, Mom says, “I’ve never taken a cent from Dalton and I won’t now.”

  In a quiet voice Mr. Krull corrects her. “I understand how you feel, but he didn’t leave it to you. He left it to Kate. It’s for her to decide.”