by J. M. Monaco
A dingy little bar down the road from Dad’s place, the Rosebud Lounge, was going out of business, finally, and was up for sale. I remember the interior well. It was the local dive where my paternal grandfather took me a few times when I was a child. I always thought it was strange that you had to walk down all those stairs to its lower basement level where the bar sat, dark and waiting with two pool tables, a jukebox in the corner. No windows. A ceiling fan swayed unsteadily as it attempted to circulate the smoky air. I couldn’t see the attraction, but Dave, at least during that particular phone conversation, thought there was a hidden diamond lodged under every mouldy stone.
A friend of Karen’s was selling her nail salon in Somerville. This friend was moving out to LA, the place of her and every north-easterner’s dreams, where the sun shines every day, where it never snows or rains, where people don’t grow old, where the hands and feet of every man and woman are groomed to porcelain-like perfection. Dave could buy the salon with Karen, the nail pro, the one who knew all the ins and outs of that world. They talked about extending the business, buying the shop site next door, to incorporate spa facilities and tanning. There would always be good business in hands and feet, massages and the golden-bronze look.
I wasn’t going to transfer a cent into his account until I was convinced that Dave understood my intention – that this was to be the last time he called on me for help – but turned out none of it was to be. There was never enough money to get anything worthwhile started, Dave claimed. He always needed more, ‘to do things right,’ and it was always more than I was willing to hand over. If it wasn’t money it was something else that halted the next move. Dave had too much work, too much stress and not enough time or patience to get all the details sorted. Karen grew ill, had all kinds of aches and pains and dreaded fatigue. Was it that thing called ME, he wondered, or worse?
‘Jo, what’s if it’s MS? I don’t know if I could fucking cope with that,’ he told me in a panic during a surprise late-night phone call. Ah, yes. The dreaded MS. Who would want to be stuck with someone like me?
In the end, after a series of tests Karen was told it was fibromyalgia. Her doctor advised her to take some time off work.
After Dave let go of the business ideas he bought a second-hand but expensive sports car with money from his own first inheritance instalment, although he wouldn’t tell me exactly how much it cost. And, Dave argued later on the phone with me, why couldn’t he have a decent car? ‘It’s OK for people in your circle to have nice things but not the likes of me, is that it?’ Before hanging up, he shouted, ‘So just mind your own fucking business.’
Not long after that I heard he and Karen had a break on one of the US Virgin Islands, top-end, all-inclusive five-star resort. But the sun and fun was no miracle worker. A month or so later Dave and Karen were having problems. Her fibromyalgia wasn’t cured and seemed to worsen around him. It all came on at once; Dave’s long work days, too much forced overtime from his slave-driving boss.
‘And that girl Karen,’ Dad said, ‘she’s a nag, says to Dave he doesn’t care enough, doesn’t pay her enough attention, spend enough time with her. He doesn’t need that shit. No, he’s better off without her.’
But it was Karen, not Dave, who called it off when she reached the point where she said she needed some space.
‘Hah, she doesn’t know what she wants. He’s better off,’ said Dad.
Each month when we spoke long-distance, Dad’s voice expressed a greater lassitude, as if his body was losing slowly what was left of its electric charge. His voice remained monotone, like he was reading from cue-cards. The conversation exemplified the decline of my father’s mood since my mother died, from its usual disinterested state. I noticed his memory was deteriorating.
One afternoon when I called he was confused because he couldn’t find his credit card and cheque book. He was convinced Dave stole them so he could rob Dad of his money and he told Dave this much.
‘I keep telling him his instalment is enough and he’s not getting anything out of me. And here he was sneaking around the other day making like everything was OK, but I knew. I knew he was up to something.’
A week later he found the items in the glove compartment of his truck.
On another occasion, he referred to his only grandchild Amy as ‘the girl with that shady-looking boyfriend who needed a haircut and was a bad influence on her’.
Not long after this he confessed he wasn’t getting called in for any more work. ‘The boss says there ain’t any work now, maybe nothing for a while and then he says to me, “How about retiring now, Jimmy. Take a step back, relax a bit. Take a vacation.” What the hell is that supposed to mean? I don’t need no vacation.’
He phoned me at close to 2am, London time, and opened with, ‘There’s some shit going down here.’ But this conversation was not about him. ‘The neighbours called the police. David was in the middle of the street there outside his apartment, naked. He was banging on people’s doors, then screaming something about how the CIA was out to get him because they thought he was somebody else, like a case of mistaken identity. He wasn’t making any sense. It’s all screwed up, the mania, the craziness, like those other times. It’s all happening again.’
I asked Beth to follow-up for me and she told me later that Dave was taken to a new state psychiatric hospital, a decent facility where he got back on track with his meds and was well enough to go home after a couple of weeks and back to work a week or so after that. His boss at the air-conditioning place was understanding, apparently.
Dad said, ‘I told him he’s gotta stay on those meds, that’s what Ma always said. Thank God she ain’t around to see all this.’ When I asked Dad about how things were going at his end, his health, what he was doing to keep himself busy, he said that he thought someone must have broken into his house; the front door was wide open when he got home that evening, but nothing was taken. ‘The bastards came in to scope this joint and took off quick when they heard me pulling up in the driveway.’
Did Dad maybe forget, I suggested, to close the door behind him when he left earlier that afternoon? I reminded him also about a couple of other odd things he had done, including his confession that he had put hamburgers and sausages in the bread bin instead of the fridge, only to find them rotting three days later. He only grunted in response. Then I heard an odd gasping noise escape him, which I could only guess was the start of his emotions threatening to overcome him, that dinosaur about to devour him again.
Quickly, as a goodbye, he said, ‘That’s someone knockin’ at the door. Gotta go.’
I tried calling Dave to talk about Dad’s memory when he was back into a routine at work, but he never picked up and didn’t return my calls.
A couple of months later, Dave phoned out of the blue one Sunday evening, his voice uncharacteristically soft and light. ‘I’m in a good place at the moment. Can’t complain.’ He told me he’d been going to church, one of those non-denominational ones in the city. A silent agreement, like so many other ones I had with him and my parents over the years, dictated that I wasn’t allowed to bring up the subject of business, money or Karen. We talked about the weather, the current state of US politics, taxes, Obamacare, the National Health Service in Britain, the deadly state of our cholesterol levels and the wonders of statins. I tried to talk about Dad’s memory problems again, but he didn’t seem to think it was much of an issue.
Several months later the phone rang in the early hours, I opened my eyes wide with a strong sense of foreboding. I struggled to see nothing but darkness. I held my breath, felt my heart pick up a few paces and waited to see if I was dreaming. Jon sat up this time, turned on the light, and stared at me. I stared back. Funny time to notice that Jon had put on some weight. He had mentioned it a few nights earlier when examining his naked body in front of the mirror after a late shower before coming to bed. Without lifting my eyes from my book, I told him, ‘Don’t be silly. You have nothing to worry about.’ But there he was at
3am in the dim light looking noticeably heavier around the neck and with a bit of extra flab that jiggled at the back of his arms when he moved. For some reason I thought about babies; the pain and yet inexplicable sense of relief I felt after that last miscarriage. I thought about how our plans can often not turn out the way we expect them, but can still end up OK, sometimes even better than we had ever dreamed. I thought about the nail clippings my mother left on her bedside. I tried to imagine what Jon would look like in his seventies.
‘Answer the phone,’ he said. ‘What are you waiting for?’
It was Dave. ‘Jo,’ he said, then hesitated. ‘Sorry to call you this late, your time. Look…I don’t know. I don’t know how to say this.’
‘It’s OK, Dave,’ I said, half asleep, in the most comforting voice I could muster. I was getting better at practising patience. I knew I could sound like a genuine, caring person. ‘Take your time. Are you OK?’ I was waiting for him to tell me about another business brainstorm, the need for a loan, or worse, something about the CIA.
‘It’s Dad,’ he said, then stopped again, took another noticeable deep breath. ‘He shot himself.’
Twenty Seven
Dad had gone to the same marina on the morning of his death to rent his friend Hank’s boat to do some fishing, near the cottage at the Cape. He had talked about maybe buying his own fishing boat again, but complained they were all over-priced, the mooring costs were too much, he’d take his time and look for a better deal and if one didn’t come around he wouldn’t bother.
He had his gear; fishing rod, hooks, bait, beers, and a bottle of whisky that was empty when they found him. There was no sign of any food, which he normally would have taken – no lunch bag, no snacks, not even a bottle of water. The boat was found anchored far out sometime that evening, just where he would have been if he were looking for sea bass, but the rod and bait hadn’t been used. His body was located in the lower deck area among the mess of life jackets and other supplies. I wasn’t sure I wanted to ask for details but Dave offered them anyway.
‘He did it through the mouth so his face was intact. Right through the mouth, you know, makes it clean. Wonder if he had that in mind beforehand,’ Dave said.
An image popped into my mind then out again quickly: what about the toothpick? I couldn’t stop thinking about what had happened to the toothpick.
I pictured my father stepping up on that rickety kitchen chair, that stupid toothpick secure in its usual corner of his mouth, and reaching for the gun inside that shoe box, wrapping it in a towel before packing it. Maybe he would have left the $1000 ‘play money’ behind; there would be no point in taking it, no play time for Jimmy O’Brien at that stage. A simple note with Dad’s handwriting in blue ballpoint pen on an old grease-soiled receipt from a local fish and chips take-out joint was left tucked under the box of bait: ‘Sorry,’ it said. After all these years, I thought, when Dave told me about the note, Dad was willing, finally, to offer us this much, but it had to be on his own terms. Dad always liked having the last word.
I flew back to Boston with Jon a few days later, this time without the usual worries about work. At that point I had plenty of time to accept that my stint in the ivory tower was well and truly up. The university had been edging me out for a while, they were just waiting for the right opportunity for the final push. The news came not long after warnings from the university about brutal cross-faculty cutbacks, with the dead-weight senior staff being the first targets. Middle-aged colleagues like me who had been loyal for twenty-plus years, but whose research and teaching interests were no longer ‘desirable’, were ‘invited’ to consider early retirement. Managers told us the leaving packages were attractive but wouldn’t stay that way if we waited too long. They didn’t attempt to dress up the situation; if some of us didn’t volunteer for early retirement, the university would no longer offer us a ‘voluntary’ option. These dead-weights, including myself, I was told, but in nicer terms by my line manager, Adam, had become somewhat tired and perhaps ‘even a little bitter’. Maybe we had lost our passion for higher education, our love for the subject area, and needed to hand over our office to the younger (and presumably cheaper) generation of scholars.
Adam, who had been so warm and fuzzy with support when I took time off sick, when I rushed to Boston when my mother didn’t die the first time, then rushed back after she did, now confronted me with a list of concerns. Apparently my so-called bitterness had affected my teaching, not to mention my obvious lack of research output. While student feedback over the last year showed vast improvements for others in the department, my positive feedback had declined significantly.
She kicked me and my mate out of a seminar because we hadn’t done the reading. She’s just out to get us, wrote one third year undergrad.
I tried to hold my ground. ‘I told them to go to the library and come back when they finished reading the chapter. What’s the use having them there when they haven’t done the work?’
Another second-year student reported, All she does is talk at us in lectures. Her slides suck. If we raise our hands to question anything she tells us to wait until the end, but by that time we’ve all fallen asleep and she’s run over time and no one cares anymore. What am I paying for? I want to change courses.
‘Come on, Adam. That’s just a perfect example of these kids wanting us to hold their hands and spoonfeed them. Higher education died with the invention of PowerPoint.’
‘Well, Jo, I wouldn’t say all the grad students are thrilled either. Anyway, look, that leads me to Nina Hayes. She’s asked for another supervisor.’
The mention of her name made me shiver. ‘Oh,’ I cleared my throat. ‘Go on.’
‘She saw me about a week and a half ago worried that she’s lost the focus of her project, that it’s gone off in too many directions she never intended, and she says this is because you’ve confused her. Now I know she has a bit of a history of being difficult, but she does happen to be one of our stronger students.’
‘Well, sure she’s a strong one,’ I chuckled nervously. ‘That’s because I’m the one who took her on for her master’s dissertation back then when no one else wanted her. You haven’t forgotten that, have you?’
‘Just hold it, Jo. I’m not finished. I took the time to read some of her work and to be honest it’s a shambles. Great ideas, great potential there, but all over the place. I asked her to show me copies of your supervision reports, the targets you should have set for her, and all she had was a few pieces of paper, not the official forms we use, some handwritten lines that hardly say anything. Like this one here.’ He picked up a wrinkled yellow-lined A4 sheet. ‘Getting there with great lit review, looking good so far but need to explore more.’ Adam gave me a look. ‘We do expect to direct them a bit more at this stage, Jo, and for them to be putting something together that’s cohesive. And she says you’ve ignored her emails. With her upgrade coming up soon this is close to a disaster.’
I took the sheet from him. Only Nina could have produced this as evidence of my incompetence. ‘What about all the verbal feedback I gave her? And I told her I was going to re-write this note. My schedule was completely crazy and I just ran out of time, and then my mother was dying, then she died. And you know what Nina’s like. It’s delicate, finding that line between forcing too much direction and giving them the freedom they need, you know, to find their own way.’ Adam’s expression didn’t change and it dawned on me how feeble I sounded. Those summary notes were written in cafes and restaurants, through all the laughing, joking, and flirting. Then I remembered the email she sent when I was in Boston. ‘Can I see you?’ I had made a conscious decision to ignore her request and it had gradually moved down my to-do list. Soon it became invisible, lost in a digital nowhere land where I had willed Nina to disappear.
‘I’ve already decided to move her over to Rachel. And with Andrew, Dylan and Caterina completing this summer you won’t have any more PhD students to worry about.’ Adam closed his folder. ‘The t
hing is this, Jo. There’s no choice here. It’s time to finish. You’ve done some great work, but now it’s time to go.’
When I got home that evening Jon was preparing dinner. The sense of failure and defeat still emanated from my face. I poured a large glass of Merlot and tried to explain what had happened. I wasn’t sure myself. All I knew was, my career had finally been shot down. The career I had worked for so hard and for so long.
‘What about your PhD supervisions? Nina’s the one you’re really invested in. Maybe they can keep you on contract to work with her till she finishes. I know some people who’ve done that.’
‘Oh no, no, no, Jon.’ I raised my hands in despair, barely able to meet his eye. ‘You were right about her.’
‘I thought she was your friend. All that time you spent together, you saying how bright and talented she was.’
I could sense Jon looking at me hard. He knew me so well.
‘So, what,’ he said slowly, ‘you finally realised she’s had her eye on you?’
I pictured that night with Nina, the two of us in her bed at the hotel in Manchester, and I tried to convince myself again that I did not cheat on Jon. We’d both flirted with people in the past, but that meant nothing. Our many years together, that was what counted. And this was just a stupid indiscretion, not an affair. I could never lie to Jon. I did not have sexual relations with that woman hadn’t worked for Bill Clinton – it wasn’t going to work for me. Get it over with, that was the way forward. I took a big breath.
‘OK, Jon. You were right about her. When you said she fancied me. OK, so when we went to the conference in Manchester, and that’s when she made her move on me. And I’d been drinking, she’d been drinking and then, well, one thing kind of led to another. You know.’ I stopped gabbling.