by Bob Morris
I wake him up at dawn. He’s in a terrible mood because he can’t eat anything. He can’t even have tea. He hobbles into the bathroom and has his typical marathon in there. Impossible as this is to fathom, on the day of such potentially dangerous surgery, he is lingering, reading a bridge magazine. I find myself tapping my fingers, fuming. Then he puts on his worst shirt (missing button, stained) and throws his personal things into a plastic bag from Kmart. “Dad, come on,” I say. “You’re going to a good hospital. You might meet someone. Wear a nice shirt and pack your stuff in a better bag.”
“What does it matter, Bobby?”
“It matters to me. Is it so wrong I care about your appearance?”
“You used to nag your mother like this all the time, and it wore her out.”
I go to his closet, pull down a decent black shoulder bag, and repack for him. He changes into a blue button-down shirt, resentful as a huffy six-year-old.
“You should be grateful I’m here to tell you what’s good for you, Dad.”
“Okay. Okay, already. For Pete’s sake.”
“Don’t get testy with me, Dad.”
“Okay. But please let’s just go!”
I dislike having to be the parent to this willful kid, and I fume in his car as I drive and he listens to the morning news at a volume that only increases my aggravation.
In the hospital, I wait with him in an empty lobby of the special-surgery unit. It really is a quiet day here, as if it’s Christmas. I can’t believe I almost let him go through this alone. Hospitals are so intimidating. If I outlive my brother, I wonder to myself, will there be anyone around to see me through something like this? Dad is suddenly in such a cheerful mood, with strangers to charm. A slim blond nurse asks him to change into a hospital gown.
“Gladly,” he says. Her name is Mary, he finds out.
“And I’m Joseph,” he says. “We make a good team.”
Two orderlies bring a gurney. They help him climb on. His gown flaps open to reveal his hairless legs and soft belly. He lies on his back with his hands behind his head, smiling, looking around, happy to be getting his way—having his hip fixed despite all the naysaying expert advice. The last I see him, he’s being wheeled down the hall while singing “Bye Bye Blackbird.” Then he disappears through two swinging doors. Gone.
It’s a six-hour operation. So I go find a synagogue to kill some time. What else do you do in Great Neck on Yom Kippur? I choose a modern-looking temple on Middle Neck Road and have to explain myself at the door because I’m a stranger without a ticket. But I get in. I put on a skullcap and prayer shawl and stand in the back of the sanctuary, feeling underdressed without a sports coat, watching all the families, husbands and wives, so scrubbed and attractive. People my age already have teenagers. I see good-looking fathers who could be my peers with arms around good-looking kids.
It’s reminding me of all those years sitting with my parents in synagogue, far into my middle age, when my brother had to be with his wife’s family in New Jersey. I’d watch all the people I knew from my Hebrew school days. Their lives had changed—marriages, mortgages, children. Mine had not. I was still Bobby, the bachelor son.
Dad would fall asleep during the sermons. Mom sat upright, focused on what small wisdoms a small-town rabbi could provide on a day for reflection. Sometimes she would take my hand and squeeze it. I’d often think she was naive, taking faith so seriously. It made her righteous, too. And she could make it hard for friends and relatives who dared to date outside the fold. To her, marrying a gentile was a crime as severe as armed robbery. It made dating hard for my brother, who was so shy. And when I had a lovely Catholic girlfriend my senior year of high school, I had to face Mom’s petty disappointment on a daily basis. But synagogue was her succor. Year after year I’d sit with her there and sigh and roll my eyes as we’d rise and sit, rise and sit, for prayers that were achingly redundant. Later, when she was ill, and so frail, I’d be glad she had had the opportunity to pray for a better year. And at the end of the service there was always a big hug and kiss on the cheek as she’d wish me a good year, with the natural warmth of the one person who cared more than anyone. “Thank you for coming home,” she’d always say. “It means the world to me.” Then, outside on the marble steps above Clinton Avenue, after Dad’s endless shmoozing, we’d head home to her matzoh ball soup.
Yizkor is a section of the service for the deceased. In Great Neck, now, I am alone, praying in memory of my mother. I imagine I am one of many in this synagogue with powerful memories of a parent’s love, and regrets about the conflicts we had. Are regrets about conflicts all I’m going to have with my father? I can’t get the thought out of my head now, while saying prayers in memory of my mother, that my father may not make it through his surgery today.
Soon, we get to the atonement prayer that’s a main attraction on Yom Kippur. It’s called the “Vidui” and starts with the word Ashamnu. The congregation rises, looking repentant. The traditional ritual prescribes that you chant your sins aloud and ask God forgiveness as you beat your breast. It’s dramatic and soulful, the perfect way for expressing remorse for the litany of bad behavior that is my daily life.
We abuse
We betray
We are cruel
We embitter
We falsify
We gossip. We hate. We insult.
I’m thinking that “we” also judge people by their shoes, don’t return calls from people who can’t do anything for us, and give chatty fathers the bum’s rush on the phone. The prayer is going on, becoming more intense now, as the congregation calls out more sins. I chant with them, beating my breast harder, faster now, with something like desperation.
We resent!
We envy!
We mock!
We judge people for things that are beyond their control!
I stop short. Yes, I do, I tell myself. I do. I judge people. I judge all the time! And it is as unkind as it is limiting.
On my way back to the hospital after services, I feel, if not purged, then at least chastened. Nothing like a breast-beating for some perspective, if only for a day. Yes, I am too judgmental. Too critical. And stuck. So I tell myself that, starting today, I am going to make a real effort to stop judging my father, along with everyone else.
A half hour later, I’m walking into North Shore Hospital. In a sunlit room in a cheerfully painted wing, I find Dad, rosy cheeked and singing. Jeff, my brother, is there, just arrived from holidays with his in-laws. We can’t believe it. Is this how a man with a pronounced heart ailment behaves after going through the major hip-replacement surgery he had been warned against by experts?
“Well, look who’s here,” he says to a nurse. “It’s son number two, Bobby!”
I’m so overwrought with delight at his condition that I can hardly force words out as I kiss his smooth forehead. “How are you doing, Dad? You look great.”
“Everything went beautifully,” he croons. “I couldn’t be better.”
Jeff and I give each other looks. We’ve been giving each other looks about my father ever since we were old enough to be cynical. Tonight, along with our relief and gratitude to still have him around, we are feeling only amusement. Dad loves his epidural. Loves his nurse and our attention. We’re smiling at him in a way we rarely do in hospitals—smiles of happy surprise at a happy ending.
With Mom, hospital visits were never like this. We knew she’d never get better. I always felt guilty for feeling inconvenienced and not spending as much time with her as Jeff did, especially because he was the one with the family and the business to run. And I didn’t know how to advocate for her if she wasn’t getting the best treatment. But when Jeff sensed any doctor wasn’t on top of things he got pushy and belligerent. Mom’s blood condition—called polycythemia vera—was rare, and he knew more about it than many doctors. It made Dad and me feel useless and inadequate. He’d throw questions at staffs, demand answers, and get them. He had many hostile exchanges with arrogant and
misinformed doctors. In hospitals he could be like a raging bull who would do anything necessary to see that attention was properly paid to our mother. And he demanded it from my father and me, too, which caused brutal tension between us.
One day, when my mother had been in our local Long Island hospital for more than a week, I strolled in late for an afternoon visit. Mom was asleep.
“Where have you been?” Jeff asked me.
“I went to the beach,” I said.
“All afternoon?”
“I needed a break from this hospital. What’s the problem?”
“I just got here to find you gone and Dad playing tennis. Mom was alone all day.”
His nostrils were flaring, and his face was flushed, a kind of righteous Jewish Holy Roller look in his eyes. I knew he was right—I shouldn’t have played hospital hooky when Mom was alone all day, trying so hard not to feel frightened. But I hated having him as the family gatekeeper and scorekeeper. Such a pushy conscience.
“I need you to get your ass in here when you say you’ll be here,” he said.
“I need you to stop telling me what to do,” I shot back. “You’re driving all of us crazy.”
He sighed and lowered his voice. He looked exhausted, overwhelmed to be carrying the ball for Dad and me. “Don’t you know what you do for her?” he said. “You’re the one who entertains her. You make her laugh. Don’t make me tell you how important that is. It’s your only job here, and you better damn well do it.”
He was right, of course, but it took me years to understand it fully. And by the time I did, she was dying, without her wits about her. By then all there was to do was sing to her and wait for the morphine to take her down and out, until her life had left her.
But now, today, tra la, there’s this happy, snappy little hip-replacement miracle in which our Wonder Dad, so up for a good time, has pulled through with rosy cheeks and broad painkiller smile.
I feel tears. My brother is teary-eyed, too. It’s for joy, and we shake our heads, amazed. Dad made it. He’s going to be running around with more ease than before.
And then, because we suspect he’d do the same to us, we decide to ditch him. He’ll be fine, we can see, and we go to dinner at a snooty French restaurant in upscale Manhasset, exactly the kind of place with genteel decor, uppity waiters, and overpriced entrées (no sharing plates) that Dad would hate. I’m glad to be out of the hospital and grateful my brother is easing up on the dutiful-son routine tonight. It’s especially gratifying to play hospital hooky together on this, the end of the holiest day of the Jewish year, and in what might be the most Episcopalian restaurant on Long Island.
“It was great you could spend the night and get him to the hospital today,” he says.
“Seemed like a good idea,” I say.
“He told me it meant the world to him that you wanted to be there.”
“Unusually selfless of me, I guess,” I say.
“Not unusual at all. You’ve been great. You’re a great son.”
I blush with pride at the acknowledgment.
The following day, we’re visiting Dad again, when a wide-hipped peroxide blonde runs into his room in a high state of alarm. “Oh my God! Joey! You’re alive! Thank God!” She’s wearing brown lipstick and mascara, tight black slacks, a turtleneck, and a little white fur coat. Her name is Mini. She is anything but. And she is shrieking.
“I really thought you were dead, Joey!”
“I don’t understand,” he says.
“The security guard in your building told me you died in this hospital.”
“What made him say such a thing?”
“It was a terrible misunderstanding,” she says, as she fans herself with her hand.
“I’ll say,” he says.
“But that’s what he told me when I went to wish you a happy holiday. So I got very upset and spread the word. So now your entire building thinks you’re dead. It’s a national day of mourning at the Centra, Joey.”
“That’s very flattering,” he says.
“I better get back over there to tell everyone that you’re still alive. Everyone loves you so much, Joey. They’ll be thrilled. See you soon!”
Then she leaves, leaving my brother and me in a cloud of eau de something or other.
“Who was that, Dad?” my brother asks.
“Mini,” he says. “Just friends, nothing serious.”
A moment passes. It’s a little awkward, but nothing out of the ordinary.
Later, in the hospital parking lot, my brother tells me, “Mom was right. Life with him may be irritating, but it’s never dull.”
CHAPTER 2
Rehab Horribilis
In a week, he’s over in rehab. But even though his new hip is going to be fine, he’s depressed. He’s not a patient patient, and six weeks of recovery time looms over him the same way it would for a little boy—he can’t imagine taking that long to get back on his feet, and he’s not interested in being stuck in a routine that isn’t his own. To me, the rehab facility is kind of fabulous. It’s in Manhasset, surrounded by woods, a low-rise brick design that could almost be Scandinavian. And at a time when celebrities are in and out of one kind of facility or another, the word rehab has a glamorous connotation. I wonder who else is in rehab with him. Maybe an elderly socialite or two?
“This place is surprisingly nice, isn’t it?” I chirp.
I go out to see him often. To my dismay, he isn’t getting many visitors. He doesn’t like seeing friends when he isn’t at his best, he tells me. What he needs is a wife to fuss over him all day long, bring him chicken soup, arrange his bedside table, do crosswords with him. He’s bored. He spends hours watching TV, looking forward to visits from my brother, sister-in-law, their children, and guilty, guilty me. I’m busy in the city, working on revisions for an upcoming reading of a solo show, as well as a treatment I’ve been invited to pitch to a network. I am struggling to find a national audience. Meanwhile, I have become Dad’s private entertainment.
Today, a week into his rehab, I am committed to getting a smile out of him. He’s in a wheelchair in his room in a flannel shirt, with smudged glasses crooked on his nose. His mouth is turned down in a way that’s unfamiliar to me. He’s usually so sunny.
“Okay, ready for a joke, Dad?”
“Not in the mood,” he says.
“Oh, come on. Since when do you turn down a joke?”
“Okay, fine. Go ahead,” he says.
I pull my chair up close to make sure he’s paying attention.
So two young woman and one old woman are sitting in a sauna. There’s a beeping sound. The first young woman presses her forearm, and the beeping stops. The others look at her with raised eyebrows. “That was my pager,” she says. “I have a microchip under the skin of my arm.” A few minutes later, a phone rings. The second young woman lifts her palm to her ear. When she finishes, she explains, “That was my mobile phone. I have a microchip in my hand.” Now the older woman is suddenly feeling very low tech and out of it. But not to be outdone, she leaves the sauna, then returns with a piece of toilet paper hanging from her rear end. “Well, would you look at that,” she says. “I must be getting a fax!”
Dad doesn’t laugh.
“Get it?”
“Yes, I get it.”
“You don’t think it’s funny?”
“Eh,” he says. “It’s a little demeaning.”
“To who?”
“’Who do you think? The elderly. We’re not that ridiculous.”
Maybe he’s right. But that furrowed brow, weary voice of the dying—I have to turn his spirits around. Outside his window, the October leaves are gold and red, sifting in the afternoon air. He’s in the autumn of his life. I’m no spring chicken either. But I refuse to accept that this is how it has to be with him for the next five weeks.
“You know what, Dad? Let’s get you in a sweater. If you’re going to sit around depressed, let’s take it outside.”
“No, I don’t want
to go outside.”
“Why not?”
“It’s too cold.”
“You have no idea what the temperature is. It’s a beautiful day, and if I schlep out here from the city, the least you can do is let me get some fresh air. Here’s your sweater. I’ll help you put it on.” I grab his beige pullover from a shelf and try to drape it over him. He refuses it, like a willful two-year-old, pushing it back at me.
“Come on, Dad!”
“Bobby, please don’t nag me. You want to come and visit, that’s great, but I don’t want to be forced to do anything. I’d rather be left alone.”
He turns his attention to his TV. I let out a sigh.
“So that’s it, Dad? We’re going to have to spend the morning watching TV?”