by Melissa Bank
The Caliphanos lived there now; they were raising their granddaughter, Lisa, because Lisa's mother was a drug addict. She was a serious little girl, my mom said, adorable in braids; she'd knocked on the door last week and said, "I have a feeling there are rabbits in your backyard."
"What did you say?" I asked.
"I said, 'Let's go see.' "
My mother told me about all the neighbors, going up one side of the street and then the other. After she went upstairs to bed, what stayed with me wasn't the good news—weddings or babies or scholarships—but the Caliphanos' granddaughter living without her mother, Mr. Zipkin losing his job, and Mrs. Hennessy getting robbed. I sat out there on the porch, with a cigarette and another glass of wine, listening to the crickets and the occasional car. It occurred to me that the quiet in the suburbs had nothing to do with peace.
X I I
Over the weekend, my father told me he was concerned about my missing work; when was I going back?
"I'm taking a leave of absence," I said, deciding then. "I'm malingering vicariously through you."
He said, "I'm glad."
Then he looked right at me, and said, "It means a great deal to me that you're here."
—•—
My mother said that there was no reason for Henry to come, as long as I was here. But I kept expecting he would, and Archie did, too. "Stay as long as you need to," Archie said, "but don't forget I need you here."
—•—
One night, Archie told me I sounded vague.
I said that it was the suburbs. "They put tranquilizers in the water."
My mother was standing there, and smiled.
"Honey," he said, "I'm not getting a clear idea of what's going on down there."
I tried to explain, but I realized I wasn't sure myself. So I called Irwin Lasker, one of the doctor friends who visited every day. Dr. Lasker was gruff and his sarcasm had frightened me as a child, when I'd been friends with his daughter and slept over at their house.
"The doctors are telling you what you need to know, Jane," he said, and he sounded angry. "It's up to you whether you want to listen or not."
I got angry myself. "Maybe when you hear about blood counts you get the big picture, but I don't."
He didn't speak right away, and when he did he was grave, and I realized I'd asked him to imagine his own daughter hearing about him. "It's just a matter of days, Jane."
When I told my mother what he'd said, she cried, and then she got angry at Dr. Lasker.
"Mom," I said, "I asked him to tell me." She said, "Irwin's a pessimist."
—•—
The next morning, her eyes were so swollen from crying that they were almost closed. I got her to lie down and brought her ice cubes in a washcloth and cucumber slices. We waited to go to the hospital until the swelling went down.
She put on her prettiest summer dress. This was her way of making my father feel that she was okay. But it was something else, too. It was almost a superstition—like if she looked pretty enough everything would turn out well.
I didn't know what I looked like. I was seeing myself in the mirrors of my adolescence, where I'd discovered that I'd never be a beautiful woman. It mattered to me less now than it ever had, but when my mother said, "Put on a little rouge, Jane," I did.
She watched me anxiously, and I said, "You look like you could use a tall glass of suburban water."
She nodded, not getting my joke. She stood in the doorway in her pretty floral dress, a watercolor of her former self.
X I I I
As a doctor, my father must have known what was happening. It may have been gradual but it seemed to me that all of a sudden he became very quiet. When his friends visited, he answered their questions, and that was all.
—•—
I worried that he was thinking about dying, but I wasn't going to bring it up; I asked if there was anything on his mind.
"Yes," he said. "How's it going with Archie?"
"Pretty good," I said.
"Good," he said.
"I know you were relieved when I broke up with Archie last time," I said. "Will you tell me why?"
He said that he'd noticed Archie's insulin in the refrigerator at the shore that weekend. "Diabetes is a serious disease," he said. "But he didn't treat it like it was. He wasn't taking care of himself, which made me think someone else would wind up doing it. His daughter didn't seem to visit or feel much of an obligation to him. I worried that you'd be the only one. I didn't want you to spend your life that way." He paused. He asked me if I knew how long Archie had been diabetic—an important prognostic factor, he said.
I said I didn't. Archie's standard line was that Beefeaters had eaten his pancreas.
I must have looked worried, because my father said, "It's hard, isn't it, love?"
I said it was.
—•—
I began to notice how formal he and my mother were. She spoke to him in a soothing voice, but distantly, and he was just as cool. He acted as though dying was his own private business, and I guess it was.
—•—
Walking back with my mother to the car, I said, "Wasn't it hard keeping Dad's illness a secret all those years?"
She looked at me as though I'd accused her of something.
"Did you and Dad talk about it a lot?"
She said, "At first we did." Then she told me that she'd cried to him once about how scared she was; he'd told her that he could not comfort her about himself.
I said, "Did you ever want to talk to anybody else about it?"
"No," she said. "It was between your father and me."
—•—
My mother told me that Henry might not come down this weekend as planned; his firm was entering a competition and Aldo had asked him to draw the trees—a big honor.
I realized how angry I was that Henry wasn't here, and I called him right back and said, "You should come right now."
"That's not what Mom said." He told me that it wasn't just the competition, he wanted to research the newest treatments for Dad's disease; he'd read about one in Scotland, but so far they'd experimented only on mice.
"Mice?"
We had to be open-minded, Henry said; we'd given conventional medicine a chance and it wasn't working. In a different voice, he said, "I can't just sit around waiting for Dad to die."
"Henry," I said, "Dad isn't going to Scotland."
"Maybe we'll have to force him," he said.
I was about to say, Force Dad? Instead, I took a breath. "Please come," I said. "I need you here."
After I hung up, my mother avoided looking at me. I said, "What do you think I did that was so wrong?"
"I didn't say you were doing anything wrong," she said, in the even tone she now used with my father.
I said, "You're not talking to me anymore."
"That's not true." She turned her attention from the dishes to the stove and back to the sink.
"Mom," I said, "you look at me like I'm the enemy of hope."
"Sweetheart," she said. Her voice was creamy. "This is hard on all of us."
—•—
Henry arrived the next morning.
At the hospital, he took over, talking to the doctors and the nurses. He reminded me of my father in an emergency; he was calm, getting all of the facts.
We went into my father's room together. He was sleeping. My mother was sitting by the bed, and Henry put his arm around her, which I'd never seen him do before. I was grateful to him for that.
My mother wasn't angry that he hadn't come sooner, of course. I didn't think my father was either. After all, Henry had done as he was told.
—•—
At home, in the kitchen, Henry and I split a beer.
"Oh," he said, and he took a gadget out of his bag. I recognized one of Rebecca's water purifiers. He attached it to our tap, and then ran the faucet. He handed me a glass, and got one for himself.
"It tastes the same to me," I said.
H
e said, "Your taste buds are dead."
In a Southern accent, I said, "That girl is a waterhead."
He said, "I like her." Then: "When'd you get back with ol' Archie?"
"I don't know," I said. "May?"
He nodded. I steeled myself to be teased, but Henry just said, "Ready?" and turned off the kitchen lights.
—•—
In the middle of the night, the phone rang.
I sat up in bed not breathing right and waited for my mother to come into my room.
"Jane," she said, at my door. "It's for you." I followed her to the phone. It was New York Hospital. Archie was in intensive care.
X I V
I took the first train to New York in the morning.
At the hospital, I was told that Archie had been moved from the ICU to a regular room. He was asleep, so I went into the hall and asked the resident what had happened.
She told me that he'd been admitted with severe front-to-back abdominal pain, dizziness, shortness of breath, intense thirst. Then she spoke in the medical language I'd become accustomed to not understanding.
I interrupted and asked what had brought this on.
She said that he had a flu and because he wasn't eating, he hadn't taken his insulin, which was a big mistake.
"But nothing about drinking?" I asked.
She said, "I haven't spoken to him myself."
When I went back into the room, Archie was up. "I thought you needed a vacation," he said, trying to smile. "But it's kind of a busman's holiday."
I said, "I hate buses."
He said, "I have acute pancreatitis."
"I thought it was just average looking." I looked up at his IV. "What're you drinking?" I asked.
He said, "I'm sorry you had to come." Then he fell asleep again.
—•—
I went to the pay phone and called my father's hospital room in Philadelphia.
"What's going on there?" he asked.
I told him what the resident had said about the flu and insulin. My father said, "He went into DKA, diabetic ketoacidosis," and explained what it was so that I understood.
I was relieved to hear him sounding like himself. "Sweetheart," he said, "this was what I was talking about."
"I know," I said.
Then he said, "Did the resident say anything else?"
I said, "Something about acute pancreatitis."
He was quiet a second. Then he said, "Is Archie an alcoholic, Jane?" He sounded as though he already knew.
I didn't want to answer, but I said, "Yes."
His voice was gentle. "We'll talk about that when you come back." Then he said, "He's on an IV, getting sodium and insulin?"
"Something clear," I said.
He told me that Archie would be fine.
I said, "How are you, Papa?"
"About the same," he said.
I said, "I'll come as soon as I can." And he didn't argue.
—•—
I met Archie's real doctor in the hall.
"You're Jane?" he said.
I nodded.
"Okay," he said, "now listen to me." I couldn't tell whether he was furious or just in a rush. Did I know how serious this was? He told me that Archie could've lapsed into a coma and died. The doctor seemed to hold me responsible: I needed to regulate his diet and exercise; I needed to be vigilant about monitoring his blood sugar.
I said, "You better talk to him."
He said, "I'm talking to you." Then he walked away.
—•—
I sat by Archie's bed and repeated what his doctor had told me. I said, "He wants me to boss you around."
"We'll pick up a pair of stilettos on the way home," he said.
I said, "I need to go back to Philadelphia."
"Your mother's there," he said.
I told him that Henry had finally arrived, too.
"So, can't you stay?"
"No," I said.
"Jesus," he said. "Not even one goddamned day?"
"My father's about to die," I said. "And you're about to get better." I asked him who I could get to help us out, and as I said it I realized how few friends Archie seemed to have.
"Call Mickey," he said.
"Isn't he kind of clownish for this situation?"
"This situation calls for a clown." He hummed "Send in the Clowns."
—•—
Mickey arrived, wearing cutoffs and yellow high-tops. He was unshaven, and his hair looked greasy. He bent down and kissed Archie's cheek.
Archie made a face.
"I'm sorry I have to go," I said.
Mickey said, "I'm going to steal some drugs," and went into the hall.
I could see how hard it was for Archie to say, "Stay just a little longer?" and I took a later train back to Philadelphia.
X V
When Henry picked me up at the station, he told me that Dad was on a respirator now and heavily sedated. He was being kept alive, but that was it.
At the hospital, the respirator made a big inhale-exhale sound, breathing for my father. I held his hand. But I couldn't tell if he was still in there.
The nurse came in with a square plastic bag of blood. "He knows you're here," she said to me. "I can tell by the monitor." Then she turned to him. "I'm giving you some red cells now, Dr. Rosenal."
—•—
Henry called friends and relatives, and they started coming.
—•—
Once everyone had left, I sat in the chair beside my father's bed again. I thought of Kafka's story "The Metamorphosis," and how Gregor's sister knew to feed him garbage once he'd become a cockroach.
I tried to explain to Henry that this was the transcendent act I wanted to do now.
He said, "Please don't feed Dad garbage." "I don't know what Dad wants me to do," I said. "I just know I'm not doing it." Henry took my hand and held it.
—•—
My father died later that night.
X V I
I called Archie at home. He said all the right things, but I didn't really hear any of them. He asked when the funeral was, and I told him.
"Do you want me to come?" he said.
"No," I said, "I'm fine," as though answering the question he'd asked.
—•—
Sophie drove down. She stayed with me in my room, and scratched my back while I talked.
—•—
My mother's mother didn't come to our house until the funeral. She spoke to the caterers. She looked over the trays of meat and salads that would be served after the funeral when people would come back to the house. She clicked around the kitchen in her high heels and talked to my mother about who was coming and how many people and—Remember Dolores Greenspan? She called. I thought that maybe my grandmother couldn't bring up my father. But then I realized that she was trying to help: make everything appear fine and sooner or later it would be. This was what she'd taught my mother.
—•—
My mother, Henry, and I got into the black limousine that had come to take us to the funeral. When a woman I didn't recognize walked up the driveway, Henry said, "Who's she?"
My mother said that she was a neighbor who'd offered to stay here during the funeral, when burglars might come, thinking the house would be empty. "Mrs. Cali-phano," she said to me.
The woman waved, and my mother nodded.
"She seems like a nice lady," my brother said. "I hope they don't tie her up."
—•—
The night before Henry went back to Boston and I to New York, I told him that I hated to think that Dad was worrying about me when he died.
"He wasn't worried," Henry said.
"How do you know?"
"I was there when you called," Henry said. "After he hung up, I said that I'd be happy to kill Archie if he wanted me to. And Dad said, 'Thanks, but I think Jane can take care of herself.' "
X V I I
Archie was kind and patient. He kept fresh flowers on the table. He somehow found soft-shell crabs
for dinner, even though they were out of season. He drew a bath for me every evening when I came home from work. A tonic for the spirit, he said.
—•—
He invited Mickey to spend Labor Day weekend with us in the Berkshires, maybe hoping to break the spell of my grief.
Mickey told a lot of jokes, most of which were of the animals-sitting-around-talking variety, my favorite. He did little comedy bits: after lunch, he turned to me and in a twangy voice said, "I have weird thoughts sometimes. Do you think that's weird?"
It hurt not to laugh. Finally, I asked him to give up on me for a while.
Sunday, when they went to play golf, I stayed behind at the house. I took the manuscript for Mickey's new book out to the picnic table underneath the apple tree.
I adored Mickey. I thought he was sweet to try so hard to make me feel better. But he irked me that weekend as he never had before. The tiniest things bugged me—like, his not washing his cereal bowl or coffee mug. I even wondered if Archie had noticed—and it bothered me, thinking he hadn't.
Monday night, Archie called Mickey and me in from the meadow, saying, "You kids ready to go?" And I realized that what I'd been feeling that weekend was sibling rivalry.
X V I I I
There's a passageway connecting Port Authority to Times Square—the Eighth Avenue subways to the Seventh—and one morning when I looked up I saw a poem up in the eaves, sequential like the Burma Shave billboards:
Overslept.
So tired.
If late,
Get fired.
Why bother?
Why the pain?
Just go home.
Do it again.
Something changed then. I saw my life in scale: it was just my life. It was not momentous, and only now did I recognize that it had once seemed so to me; that was while my father was watching.
I saw myself the way I'd seen the cleaning women in the building across the street. I was just one person in one window.
Nobody was watching, except me.
—•—
At the office, Mimi told me that there was another of Dorrie's acquisitions that needed to be edited.
I stood at her desk, looking at the bulky manuscript. "Wow," I said. "This is a long one."
"The author's been calling me and yesterday he called Richard," she said, referring to the editorial director. "So it's sort of a rush."