How to Forget

by Kate Mulgrew

  I had seen the interior only a few times in my life, and a kind of awe washed over me when I walked through the front door. It took a moment to adjust to the darkness, having come in from a bright October day, but once I did I saw immediately that nothing had changed. The room opened in front of me, as it had when I was a young girl, with the tension of a suspense novel. Directly before me was the long dark oak bar running the length of the main room, before which were situated a number of high-backed swivel chairs. There were four or five men populating these chairs, all sipping tall steins of beer. The proprietress, whose name was Mary, bustled to and fro behind the bar, although at a fairly easy pace. She was a short, stout, middle-aged woman with teased gray hair and kind eyes, and she was never in a hurry. When the door opened, she looked to see who had come in and said, in a tone both measured and pleased, “Hi there, T. J., how are ya?”

  “Just fine, Mary, how are you?”

  “Can’t complain. Who’s that you got with ya, Tom?”

  Steering me toward the bar, my father made a formal introduction.

  “This is my daughter Kate. Kitten, you remember Mary.”

  I extended my hand and said, “Nice to see you again, Mary.”

  “Well, you’re all grown up, aren’t ya? Where do ya live now?”

  “I live in New York City.”

  “That’s right, I heard about that. How’s that goin’ for ya?”

  I laughed and said, “It’s going well. I’m very happy there.”

  Mary nodded her head and, smiling, said, “I’ll bet you are.”

  As I removed my coat, my father indicated the coatrack on the far side of the room, close to the kitchen. I could smell the hot oil while French fries popped in the deep fryer and the unmistakable, mouthwatering fat of Iowa beef burgers, sizzling on the grill. As I made my way to the coatrack, my father stopped at a large round table in the center of the room. This table, I knew, indicated premium membership in the home-away-from-home club. I hung up my coat and, as I turned, was startled to find several pairs of hooded eyes examining me as if I were an ocelot.

  Each member of this exclusive club had children my age and, though they knew I was T. J.’s oldest daughter, most of them did not know my name. I was another in a long line of children, albeit an adult child wearing a long coat and a striking blue cap, and one who appeared undaunted by the presence of such a distinguished assemblage. My father’s brother, Uncle Bob, half rose to greet me, but I spared him the full effort by stepping lightly to his side and landing a quick kiss on his cheek. He and my father had formed a partnership and built a business many years ago and, whereas Uncle Bob was closer to my father than any other human being, he remained a complete enigma to me. In all the years I’d known him, I’d seen him speak directly to his wife, my aunt Lou, only twice. He disdained speech the way my father disdained food, and yet managed to convey a gravitas that defied explanation. I was a little afraid of him.

  “Katy, nice to see you,” he said, in a voice suggesting that I had done something wrong. He made me bristle, as if he secretly thought I was full of myself and that he might use this against me if I were to overstep my bounds. Those bounds, like everything else about Uncle Bob, were known to him alone. You never quite knew where you stood with him, so I stood apart, and smiled. He lifted his preferred cocktail, Bacardi and Coke, to his lips, and settled back into silence.

  The rest of this collective I recognized as creatures from a familiar if overextended fairy tale; bigger than life, important, and formidable. Mr. Crane, Mr. Murphy, Mr. Conlon, and Mr. Glab sat there and appraised me, Tom’s young daughter home for a visit from New York City, and what they saw will remain a mystery. These men were not flatterers, they lacked hyperbole and scorned politesse but curiously, instead of detracting from their power, these characteristics only enhanced it. Whereas it could hardly be said that they were delighted to see me, one or two of them half rose from their seats and extended a hand, acknowledging that I appeared to have grown up and deserved the respect that attended such a precarious process. An invitation to join them was not forthcoming, nor was it expected. An ocelot should never dine with sleeping dogs.

  “Well, gentlemen, if you’ll excuse us, we’re going to grab a bite to eat,” my father announced, rather formally. The men nodded slowly, as if slightly disgruntled at having had their conclave interrupted and uncertain as to where exactly, in the interstices of the protracted silence they considered conversation, they’d left off.

  At a small table close to the bar, but in full view of everyone in the room, my father came around and held my chair while I settled into it. The tavern was divided into two areas: one with a bar, and one without. The tables were adorned with red tablecloths, white cloth napkins, and glasses of ice water. The ambience was relaxed and friendly, particularly on a Friday afternoon when the October sun, mellow and still warm, promised a weekend of good weather. Nothing made the people of Iowa happier than fine weather, except maybe the opportunity to celebrate that weather in their favorite bar. Many of the tables were occupied, and raucous laughter emanated from the back room, where a long table was crowded with people enjoying an extended lunch.

  A waitress approached our table, a woman of about forty, worn but still pretty, with long black hair caught up in a frosted silver clip. In contrast to Mary, this woman was heavily made up, her eyes outlined with kohl, her mouth a cantaloupe orange, her earlobes adorned with multiple silver hoops. The way she stood, one hand on her hip, her left leg taking most of her body weight, told me that she probably had young children at home and thoroughly enjoyed spending her afternoons inside the relative comfort of a well-run establishment like the Coach House.

  “What’ll you have, T. J.?” she asked, pad in hand.

  My father looked at me and raised an eyebrow.

  “I’d like a cheeseburger, please, medium,” I said.

  “Basket or plate?” she demanded, cocking her head to one side, as if it were a trick question.

  “If by basket you mean burger and fries, then by all means, the basket, please. I’m not dead yet,” I declared, satisfied with the unseemliness of my choice.

  “Honey, you ain’t close to dead,” the waitress opined.

  My father emitted a subtle groan, as if the very idea of watching me consume a basket heaving with greasy fries was the punishment he deserved for offering to take me to lunch in the first place.

  “I’ll have a dry martini—”

  “And a plain hamburger medium, no bun, with a sliced tomato on the side,” the waitress interrupted, finishing his order.

  “Roger that, sweetheart,” my father agreed, relieved to be spared the discomfort of having to vocally enumerate food items.

  “And I’d like a glass of white wine,” I said, casually.

  Our waitress pursed her lips and looked heavenward, as if pondering the weight of my request.

  “We got some, but it’s only the one kind. That okay?”

  “That’s perfect,” I replied.

  “I don’t know about perfect, but that’s what you’re gonna get,” she said, snapping her pad into her hand and tucking it neatly into the pocket of her black nylon apron.

  Keeping my eyes on the waitress as she leaned over the far end of the bar and barked her drinks order to Mary, I asked my father if he liked my beret.

  “Nifty,” he replied, a response I was not expecting. Suddenly, the beret assumed a chicness it had not possessed when I bought it.

  “Bought a new hat, a new coat, and moved into a new apartment in less than a week. Not bad, huh?” I asked, efficiently filling my father in on the movements of my life.

  “That’s a lot of dough to throw around in a few days, isn’t it?”

  He could not bring himself to ask me directly about my career but would vigorously engage in any conversation concerning money.

  “I’m doing pretty well on the soap. The more shows I do, the more I make, and I’m doing a lot of shows. My character is very popular,” I said.<
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  At that moment our drinks arrived. Two olives on a tasseled toothpick adorned my father’s frosted martini, which he picked up rather gingerly and lifted in a toast.

  “Cheers,” he said.

  “Cheers to you for picking me up at the airport,” I declared, causing him to shake his head and smile wryly.

  “So, what do they pay you for this—whatever you call it—serial?” my father asked, his curiosity piqued.

  “That’s better than soap opera, Dad. More dignified. But really, everyone in show business calls a soap opera what it is—a soap,” I stated definitively, showing off my expertise.

  “Everyone needs soap, is that it?”

  “Exactly! I’m paid $350 a show, and if I do a minimum of five shows a week, which is typical, I can bring in $1,750, but if I do two shows in one day, which is increasingly the case because my character is so popular, I can make as much as $2,500 a week. That’s not chopped liver,” I said, taking a sip of my wine.

  My father emitted a low whistle and conceded that such a salary was far from chopped liver, that to the contrary, it was a honeypot.

  “Yeah, I’m lucky. They like me on this show. And the city is so expensive! I can throw away fifty bucks without blinking in New York. A taxi, a movie, a couple of drinks—bang! Gone.”

  This kind of information both fascinated and repulsed my father, who studied his martini with a curious intensity. He sat facing the imperial members of the home-away-from-home club, a vulnerable position and one that demanded subtlety of expression.

  “Why the hell are you blowing your money like that? Complete extravagance. Don’t you have suitors lined up to buy you a drink, a bite, a blue beret?”

  Since I’d left home, my father had rarely expressed an interest in my private life—he considered the subject essentially distasteful—but now I marveled at his ability to dig into the topic as a sign of his earnest protectiveness regarding my newly acquired fortune.

  “I try to limit the suitors to one at a time—two, if I’m feeling frisky,” I divulged, a truth masquerading as a joke. My father raised an eyebrow, sipped, and looked at me suspiciously.

  “No, no, I’m kidding. I have a boyfriend. He’s very handsome, very smart, a theater director. He’s Jewish,” I said, “and he’s broke most of the time.”

  “Jesus,” my father muttered, then lifted his empty glass to Mary, indicating that he’d like another. I did the same.

  “What the hell is a broad like you doing with a guy who can’t afford to buy you a drink?” he demanded. “Doesn’t make any sense.”

  “What do you mean, a broad like me?” I was intensely curious to divine his meaning and, in that moment, could have rolled the dice either way.

  “A knockout is what I mean,” my father declared, accepting his second martini with a wink at our waitress.

  I busied myself by handing the waitress my depleted wineglass and receiving the replenished one. There was no hiding from my father’s comment, no pretending I hadn’t heard it. It reverberated in my head like a bell. Suddenly, I was overcome with a shyness I’d never experienced in my father’s company, and before I knew what was happening, my cheeks had turned pink.

  “What’s the attraction?” he asked. “What’s this guy got that somebody with a steady paycheck hasn’t?”

  Composing myself, I took a breath and fixed my father with a look that warned him I was about to take a chance. He was familiar with this expression, and a small smile tugged at the corners of his mouth.

  “He’s quiet, he’s deep, and he’s a wonderful kisser,” I explained, trying hard to keep my gaze steady, despite the magnetic pull of the earth, which threatened to open beneath me.

  Slowly, deliberately, and very gracefully my father lifted his glass and held it there until I brought my glass up to join his. We clinked.

  “Arguably the only currency superior to money,” he observed, his eyes full of mischief.

  We toasted to superior currency and, just as our waitress arrived bearing a basket containing what I knew was going to be the tastiest meal I’d had in ages, I looked at my father and said, “You know, Dad, even a lady can have fun.”

  He considered me, then snapped his napkin sharply before placing it on his lap.

  “Sounds like a line from this soap opera you’re doing,” he remarked.

  Startled, I glanced at my father, my attention momentarily diverted from the basket of French fries in front of me. It seemed incredible to me that he had forgotten the words he’d said to me the night before I’d left for New York to study acting at NYU, four years earlier. In his bedroom, he had looked at me closely and told me to enjoy myself. He had suggested that Catholicism was not always the path to enlightenment, and could put a fork in romance, if I let it get in the way. You can have fun and still be a lady, Kitten, he had said. Remember that.

  Delicately lifting his fork, my father paused for a moment as he examined the hamburger on his plate.

  “Tell your writers they need to work on their material,” he said.

  Chapter Seventeen

  If I step back a little, I can see it clearly. The house, beckoning from within its copse of trees, a mystery. The figures within, light-footed and laughing, running up and down the stairs. That’s not entirely true. My father did not run up the stairs, it wasn’t in his character, but my mother could not do otherwise, and so I suppose he was always chasing her. Into that room at the far end of the upstairs hallway, always dimly but warmly lit by table lamps. It was sacrilegious to turn on a ceiling light. Only farmers did that, and their houses were stark and grim, their rooms flooded with false light. In my house, the house of my childhood, the evenings were shaped toward charm, and I see golden light, someone with mischievous eyes putting a long match to the kindling and newspaper in the dining room fireplace. Doors swing open to a busy kitchen, stutter shut on a burlap bag full of library books.

  Upstairs, chaos, and sometimes a silence inscrutable and thrilling. Never, never is the door to their bedroom tightly shut. It is always slightly ajar. If she is inside alone, we enter softly but with confidence. If he is with her, we do not enter at all. It has never been forbidden, it simply is not done. We step away, we stand apart, almost happier that we are not included. If they are in there together, and there is the occasional sound of laughter, and if that laughter is my mother’s, we are content to do without. Their mystery is so much greater than anything we might offer, and infinitely more powerful. It is intensely clear to me that this is where my father most likes to be, in this bedroom with my mother. She may be trapped, caught in those bedclothes, but still she laughs, so there is no need to be afraid. He is the king, in that bed. I see him there, one arm behind his head, ankles crossed, smoking. His languor doesn’t fool me. He is wide awake, every nerve alert, waiting. He is waiting for her.

  Time shifts, and I am many years older. The room is the same room of my childhood, only now it is cramped and full of people. In the bed, my father still waits for her. It cannot end until she comes. Slowly, she is led in by Lucy, who has prepared her for this visit. My mother has been bathed, her white hair shampooed and brushed, her thin lips animated with pink gloss. Lucy looks at me expectantly, and I accept this as the cue to take my mother’s arm and lead her to the bedside. One of my brothers quickly reaches for a chair and places it as close to my father as possible. My mother is uncertain, but I assure her that she is fine, and that she should sit down. I take her hand and place it on my father’s chest.

  “This is your husband, Mother,” I say. “This is Tom. Your husband.”

  Again, my mother hesitates, and withdraws her hand. She plucks at the blanket drawn neatly over my father’s body. Her eyes dart about the room but settle on nothing. Suddenly, she begins to hum. I kneel next to her and say, “Mummy, this is your husband. Tom. Don’t you want to say good-bye to him? I think it’s time to say good-bye.” My mother looks at me, unseeing, but the humming ceases and she seems to relax. Her gaze falls upon my father’s face
and she is still. She cocks her head slightly to one side, as if trying to ascertain the nature of this puzzle. The task is too demanding, however, and she gives up. She does not know if she has failed or succeeded, only that it doesn’t matter.

  When the tuneless humming begins again, there is a palpable tension in the room. We have gathered for this moment, and we cannot proceed without this, the smallest of miracles. We cannot finish this until my mother unlocks her mind for a split second and in that particle of time lets her husband go. It is a senseless wish, and yet we are collectively bound by it. All of her children, her grandchildren, and her great-grandchildren are riveted to her; it is a cathedral, and we are watching her as she awaits benediction at this strange altar. Suddenly, my mother lifts her hand and, resting it on my father’s brow, begins to drum her fingers very lightly on his forehead. There is the nuance of a smile, the memory of a smile, and she leans in closely, as if studying a palimpsest. What she utters is unmistakable. Still drumming her fingers on my father’s forehead, in the voice of a girl my mother says, “Adiós, el señor.”

  After a silence, in which the irony of this final parting is not acknowledged, the room comes to life. There is music to honor my father, the music he loved. Frank Sinatra sings “Summer Wind” from a boom box set atop the bureau which was once, and for so long, the treasure chest of a mighty king. My older brother, Tom, catches my eye, and we are captured in the same lens, a brief transcendence. We, my father’s progeny, celebrate transubstantiation in the manner he would have preferred. Trays bearing glasses of Irish whiskey are passed around, and my father is toasted, first by Tom and then by all. In the air, in the dust that films the sheer curtains, in the whiskey-brightened cheeks of the young, in the long mirror’s reflection, in this room where so many began, in the waning light of this January day, there is empirical evidence of love.

  The whiskey and rising emotion of the crowd hold actual grief in abeyance. That will come later, much later. Bodies sway together and around the figure whose dominion is without question, even as my mother is led out of the room and down the stairs to a quieter place. This place is far from quiet. Children, despite the too-still figure lying on the bed, have begun to dance, some of the women are still weeping, the young male cousins are gathered in a corner recounting memories and drinking freely from their small chalices, and I am still standing at the foot of the bed.