At the Far End of Nowhere

by Christine Davis Merriman

He begins to take daily sitz baths. First, he sets a plastic dish tub in our old cast-iron porcelain bathtub, fills the small tub with hot water, pours in a cup of Epsom salts, and stirs the water until the salts dissolve. Then he strips from the waist down, lowers himself into the salt solution, and soaks his private parts until the water cools. He calls me to help him into and out of the tub.

  Daddy also tries applying a heated massager, wrapped in a clean sock, directly to the area of his prostate.

  When these therapies fail to solve the problem, Daddy asks me to drive him to a prostate specialist in Mount Vernon. The doctor arranges for prostate surgery. He also informs me that Daddy’s spine has collapsed due to old age.

  Daddy undergoes the surgery at Union Memorial Hospital. He’s released the same day. As I drive him home, he curses the doctor. Tells me they gave him a spinal block, and he was in a lot of pain. Says he could hear an old woman moaning down the hall from him.

  After his surgery, Daddy never seems to recover fully. “These goddamned doctors,” he says. “They’re butchers, I tell you. Should never have given me that spinal block. Can’t lift my feet at all now. Can barely shuffle around.”

  With Spence’s help, Daddy puts up handles on either side of the bathroom doorway to hold onto when he has to get up at night. He has me try to hold onto his arm and walk him around the backyard for exercise, but he can only walk a few yards. Day after day, he loses mobility.

  Soon, Daddy is no longer able to work in his shop or at his watchmaker’s bench. He spends most of his time either seated in his armchair in the dining/living room, in front of the TV, or resting in the Morris chair in his bedroom. He complains that the light has gone out of his eyes; that everything looks dark to him, even when the sun is shining.

  On a Saturday afternoon in late November, I take a break from studying and pull out a record album I bought a few months ago, Jesus Christ Superstar. I find Daddy resting in the Morris chair in his bedroom, listening to the old self-hypnosis record. “I am that I am, I am that I am” drones on as the record revolves slowly on the turntable. Around the base of Daddy’s record player, lined up on the Victorian dresser’s white marble slab, an assortment of homeopathic remedies in bottles, vials, flasks, tubes, jars, and atomizers waits. Daddy’s minions, at the ready!

  I lift the needle and put on the new album. I sit on Daddy’s bed, listening with him to the entire rock opera. Daddy says nothing. He seems half asleep, lost in thoughts of his own, until the final number, “John Nineteen: Forty-One,” begins to play.

  At the sound of nails being driven into the cross, Daddy seems to waken. He sits up, leans forward, and cups both ears to hear the last words of Christ:

  God forgive them. They don’t know what they’re doing.

  We are accosted with sounds of raucous, derisive laughter, rising and fading away.

  Supernatural voices vibrate, drone, and hum, accompanied by eerie background music. Then Christ’s voice calls out again, above the miserable plunking of a single piano:

  Who is my mother? Where is my mother?

  My God. My God. Why have you forgotten me?

  The eerie music and voices continue. Then:

  I’m thirsty. I’m thirsty!

  Oh, God, I’m thirsty.

  Oh, I’m thirsty. I’m thirsty. Oh.

  Thirsty.

  Voices and background music swell.

  It is finished.

  The music is more pained and urgent now, shrieking.

  Father, into Your hands I commend my spirit.

  All sound stops for a brief pause, like the space between two breaths. There is a sweet musical reprise. Then, abruptly, the album ends in dead silence.

  Daddy leans his head back in his chair, closes his eyes, and after a few minutes, seems to drift off to sleep. I tuck a frayed old quilt Daddy’s mother made around his legs, and tiptoe out to let him nap.

  The next day, I find an index card on the desk in Daddy’s office beside his red mechanical pencil. On the card, printed in large block letters, is: “I WANT TO DIE.” The “N” is printed backward; the perfectionist’s handwriting has become dyslexic.

  I take the index card with me and go to find Daddy in the dining/living room. He’s in his chair, napping in front of the television. I turn off the TV, sit nearby on the sofa, and study for a biology exam while I wait for him to wake up.

  I’ve started a load of wash in the cellar. Suddenly, the old washer jerks into an off-balance spin cycle and begins to make a racket as it walks across on the concrete floor just below Daddy’s chair. He starts awake, pulls a soiled white hankie from his pants pocket, and wipes drool from his chin. I use Daddy’s index card note to mark my place and close the textbook. I’ve just started to review a chapter on DNA and the double helix.

  “I’m going to run down and fix the washing machine,” I say. “When I get back, how’d you like me to trim your toenails for you, Daddy?” I know Daddy loves to relax and soak his feet in his favorite bran and borax foot soap.

  “That’d be real nice, Lissa,” he says. “Don’t know what I’d do without my little girl to take care of me.”

  As Daddy soaks his feet, I ask him, “Daddy, don’t you still want to live to be a hundred? You always said that’s what you wanted to do.”

  “Careful what you wish for,” Daddy tells me. “You know, I wanted to be around long enough to see that you and Spence could fend for yourselves. Looks like Spence is doing pretty well these days. Seems to be the golden boy down at the bank. Making good money now. More than I ever made.”

  I pull one of the chairs in from the kitchen and sit opposite Daddy. I pull his right foot out of the soaking tub, pat it dry with a hand towel, and rest it on a larger bath towel that’s spread across my lap.

  “And you, Lissa,” Daddy continues. “You don’t need me anymore. I’m just in your way here.”

  Beginning with the big toe, I use the pointed toenail clipper attachment to dig out gook from beneath the nail and push back the cuticle. The nail is too long. I pinch the clipper around it, start to clip it shorter.

  Then, as always, Daddy shouts, “Ouch! Careful there, Lissa. That’s my toe under there.”

  Then, as always, I say, “I am being careful, Daddy.” This habitual call-and-response dialog is repeated for each toe.

  “Daddy, don’t die,” I say. “I need you to tell me stories, tell me right from wrong, tell me I’m your little squirrel ears. You need to be around so we can read each other’s mind.” When both of Daddy’s feet are done, I massage them with Jergens lotion.

  “Well, you know, Lissa, I’ll always be close by. I’ll be a great escape artist, just like Houdini. And I promise you, if there’s any way I can wriggle my way out of the locks and chains of death, I’ll come back here to be with you. And even if I can’t come back here on Earth, I will always be watching you from afar.”

  As the days pass, Daddy becomes more and more dependent on me. Finally, when he can’t go up and down the stairs anymore, he spends his days either in bed or propped up in the Morris chair to eat the meals I serve him on a lapboard that’s balanced across the chair’s wide, sturdy wooden arms.

  Daddy keeps an old bicycle horn beside his bed and honks for me when he needs me to help him get to the bathroom. He leans on me as we walk. When we reach the toilet, I turn him to face me, help him get his pants pulled down, and help him lower his bony emaciated butt onto the toilet seat. Sometimes he asks me to wipe his bottom for him, or pull out a sticky chunk of poop. I get poop on my hands, sometimes embedded under the fingernails. I become obsessed with handwashing. I scrub my hands over and over, many times, in multiples of four. I pour rubbing alcohol over them. I scrub them with a brush. My hands become red and raw. Sometimes, they bleed. It’s hard to feel safe these days.

  Spence is away all day, working hard at the bank so he can support us financially. I study hard and get good grades. One day, I notice that the bricks are starting to crumble and fall off the top edges of the chimney. Anothe
r day, I notice the pendulum on the Regulator kitchen clock has stopped. I wind the clock and push the pendulum with my finger, but nothing I do can make it run again.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  RIPPING OUT THE LIFE SUPPORT

  IT’S late at night—just past midnight, according to my wristwatch. I’m at the kitchen table, books and papers spread out. I’m working on a report for French class that examines Flaubert’s commentary on nineteenth-century provincial life in Madame Bovary. I’ve just begun to posit that the social context was responsible for Emma Bovary’s boredom and eventual suicide when Daddy cries out, “Lissa, come here!”

  I run upstairs to Daddy’s bedroom. He’s sitting up in bed, grasping his chest and breathing fitfully. Between gasps, he says, “Lissa, get me an ambulance.”

  “What’s wrong, Daddy?”

  “I’m having a heart attack! Call the fire department.”

  I do as he says, and within minutes, the ambulance arrives, manned by volunteers. The driver is the pharmacist at our local drugstore. He’s assisted by a pretty blonde woman. I recognize her from high school. She used to ride the same school bus.

  I’m embarrassed that our house is so shabby. I’m glad it’s too dark for them to see how much dust I’ve let accumulate on the furniture, floors, and stairs.

  I ride beside Daddy in the ambulance. The young woman I know from high school—I remember now her name is Cassie—goes about her work, checking Daddy’s vitals. I wonder if she remembers me, but I don’t say anything.

  We pass through Grangerville. The town is no longer the quiet rural crossroads our Oldsmobile transported us through on weekend visits to Grandma and Grandpa’s farmhouse, so many years ago. New buildings are going up—banks, restaurants, a video store, a strip mall anchored by a supermarket and a 7-Eleven. A liquor store thrives next to the old hardware store. Some people are calling Grangerville a boom town, and we hear rumors of further expansion.

  En route, we get stuck behind a long, slow dairy truck that seems to be returning to the Beltway after delivering milk to the new supermarket that’s putting Sweeney’s out of business. The pharmacist sounds the siren, the truck pulls over, and we zip past on our way to St. Joseph’s Hospital in Towson.

  Daddy is whisked off to an emergency room. I stay behind in the waiting room. In the panic of getting Daddy to the hospital, I’ve forgotten to bring along any reading material from school. I’m wasting precious time. I could have been studying. I soothe myself by reciting, over and over, the opening lines from Ronsard’s famous carpe diem poem: Mignonne, allons voir si la rose qui ce matin avait déclose…. Sweetheart, let us go see if the rose that unfolded this morning….

  Between three and four A.M., Daddy is released from the hospital. The doctor comes out to chat with me briefly, telling me it was a false alarm. Not a heart attack. But he recommends that Daddy see a geriatric specialist.

  I call Spence, and he comes to drive us home in the Corvair; his new sports car is only a two-seater. An attendant delivers Daddy to the car in a wheelchair. I sit with him in the back seat.

  “So, how’d it go? Are you okay, Daddy?”

  “Yes. I think I’m all right now, Lissa.” Daddy’s voice is amazingly calm. “When I first got here, they called in a priest. He gave me the Last Rites, performed Extreme Unction on every part of my body, asked God to pardon me of whatever sins I may have committed. It was good to hear those words after all these years, ‘Per istam sanctan unctionem et suam piissimam misericordiam, indulgeat tibi Dominus quidquid per….’ I’m grateful to that priest. I feel as if some burden has been lifted. I’m relieved.”

  Daddy does have me make an appointment for him with the recommended geriatric specialist, Dr. Tan, a slender Asian man with delicate hands and a gentle demeanor. He has Daddy checked into Greater Baltimore Medical Center for observation.

  I visit Daddy after his first round of tests.

  “How are you, Daddy?” He’s sitting up in bed. “I’m so glad to see you, Lissa. They’ve been poking and prodding me since early this morning. A man can’t get any rest around here.”

  “So, what did the doctors tell you about your tests?”

  “You tell me, Lissa. You used to be able to read my mind.”

  “I don’t think I can do that anymore, Daddy. Guess I grew out of it.”

  “You used to promise me you’d never grow up, that you would always be my little girl and sit on my lap.”

  “The nurse tells me you’re not eating much of anything. You should try to eat something.” Daddy looks thinner and frailer than ever.

  “I don’t like hospitals or hospital food. I miss your home cooking.”

  “So, what did the doctors say?”

  “They told me I have the most beautiful organs they’ve ever seen in a ninety-four-year-old man. What do you think about that?”

  “That’s good to hear,” I say and squeeze his hand.

  After a few days in the hospital, Daddy stops eating altogether. He begins to fret, and tries to rip out the IVs.

  A doctor I’ve never seen before stops by Daddy’s room while I’m there, and asks if he can have a few words with me. This doctor is young, efficient, all business. “Your father’s senile. There’s nothing more we can do for him here.”

  “Senile?” The word catches me by surprise. It sounds harsh and impersonal. My daddy, senile? I’ve never thought of him that way. Some of the patients at Bonnie Blink were senile. But not my daddy.

  “Yes. You’ll need to take him home. We need the bed space.” The doctor shakes my hand briskly and strides off down the hall.

  Spence and I spend some time in a hospital business office, signing release forms and chatting with a social worker who’s been called in to advise us. She’s middle-aged, overweight, overworked. Her eyes are bright blue and kind, but she looks frayed around the edges. Her name is Mrs. Kay.

  Mrs. Kay asks us questions about our family situation. I answer as best I can. Spence just responds yes or no. He doesn’t believe in giving unnecessary explanations.

  Mrs. Kay is flabbergasted that we haven’t applied for any kinds of Social Security or Medicare benefits.

  “Do you realize that, based on your father’s age and situation, the two of you could have been receiving financial support from the government for years? You know, you might want to look into getting some home care for you father.”

  Spence and I bring Daddy home that afternoon. Spence drives the Corvair. I sit up close to Daddy in the back seat. He’s wrapped in a blanket. He’s very weak, and tends to list to one side or the other whenever Spence negotiates a turn. I put my arm around Daddy to steady him.

  On the way home, we pass scores of well-tended suburban homes, all decked out for Christmas—colored lights strung along roof-lines and looped on outdoor evergreens, life-size Nativity scenes, beribboned wreaths on doors. My favorite is a rooftop straddled by Santa’s sleigh and eight not-so-tiny ascending reindeer. A jolly Santa stands waving in a sleigh, brimful of presents. It is one week before Christmas 1972.

  Daddy is so weak now he can’t sit up on his own to eat. I have to prop him up with pillows in the Morris chair in his bedroom. He is unable to chew solid food. I’m not sure how to take care of him.

  “Daddy, maybe we should get a nurse to check in on you at home,” I suggest. “Or maybe Aunt Essie can come over from next door. She is a nurse, you know.”

  Daddy shakes his head like a stubborn child. “I don’t want anybody but my little girl taking care of me.”

  I try to serve him some of his favorite foods—steamed fish, canned pear halves—but he doesn’t seem to be able to chew them. I cut them up into small pieces and try poking a piece at a time into his mouth on the end of a fork, but he either lets the piece of food sit on his tongue until it falls out onto his shirtfront, or he swallows involuntarily and nearly chokes.

  I remember that at Bonnie Blink some of the residents were given baby food to eat. I buy a selection of strained vegetables and fruit.
Daddy’s favorites seem to be pureed butternut squash and pureed prunes. I tie a dish towel around his neck to serve as a bib and spoon-feed him.

  December 23rd is a cold, gray day. I’m on break from college, and spend the afternoon with Daddy in his bedroom. I have him propped up in his Morris chair, wrapped in blankets, but the wind is rising, and I can hear it whistling through the newspapers we use to seal the gaps around the edges of our front door downstairs. I turn up the thermostat in the hallway, and the old radiator in the bedroom sputters, pulses, and rumbles as it heats up.

  Daddy doesn’t do or say much these days, but he seems to listen intently to everything I say.

  “Daddy, would you like me to tell you a story? I think maybe it’s my turn to take you with me to once upon a time.” I sit across from him on his bed.

  I can see a flicker of recognition in his eyes, and the hint of a smile on his face.

  “Actually, I’m going to read you a story I wrote for college last semester, for my creative writing class. Would you like to hear it?”

  No change in Daddy’s expression. I take that for a yes, and begin to read him a story I wrote at the beginning of December called “Passage.”

  The child felt very small and warm inside her sweater, inside her coat, inside the bus. She pressed her cheek against the frosty window, unfocused her eyes, and watched the passing blur of twinkling Christmas lights. She saw a plastic Santa, sleigh, and reindeer atop a passing roof. She saw strings of lights, rows of winking candles, swirling Christmas trees. Through the pane of glass came strains of music—bells and tambourines and trumpets played by men and ladies in gold buttons, black bows and caps. Her left cheek glowed cold from the press of icy glass. Her right cheek pulsed warm from the chafe of her furry coat collar.

  The child sat alone, four seats back, directly behind the driver’s seat. She could not see him. He was isolated by a plastic curtain. But she knew he was there. She could see the press of his shoulders against the plastic flap. It was Christmas, the child was coming home, and she was very tired. Her eyelids drooped, her small lips parted, she slept.