The Shelf Life of Fire

by Robin Greene

  That was our last time together. My father was becoming deaf but wouldn’t acknowledge it. Instead, he insisted that it was we who didn’t speak loudly enough. Or he’d blame the TV stations that broadcast at too low a volume. He’d turn up the sound until the room reverberated with a laugh track or until the roar of some football game. Our hotel rooms adjoined, and the TV sound kept me up at night, as he’d usually fall asleep in front of the set, like a dead man in a room full of shouting voices.

  The heavy traffic is now stop and go, as Highway 301 merges onto I-95, and I’m carried back to South Shelburne, remembering that when my brother’s gambling first became an obvious problem, my dad wanted to throw Dennis out of the house. Tough love, he insisted. Later, after another gambling crisis, after Dennis had moved into their Florida condo, my dad again wanted Dennis to move out. But my mother wouldn’t hear of it. When my father threatened to leave her, she told him, “Yes, go.”

  But he wouldn’t, of course, ever leave her. My mom made the big decisions in their marriage, and my dad responded by falling further into deafness, then dementia—perhaps both, successful strategies for absenting himself.

  Ultimately, my dad turned against me. I lived too far from him geographically and had separated from my family of origin in a way that Dennis, with all his problems, hadn’t.

  I sigh, approaching my exit, which I dutifully take. Duty. I am a dutiful teacher. A dutiful mother. A dutiful wife. But not a dutiful daughter. I’m stung by my own accusation. Tears come again, blurring my vision as I follow the exit’s curve onto the I-295 connector that will take me to Ramsey Street, approximately two miles from my home. Jake awaits me, I tell myself. Duty.

  k

  At home this evening, in the sunroom, I read Anna rather than watch TV, stopping at around 9:00 when I’ve lost the light. I put down the book, thinking about Anna’s desperation, which leads me to think of my mom’s desperation, about our family’s falling-out five years ago, my father, his move to hospice and death last year.

  Five years ago, they’d all been in that duplex, renting from the Cuban family who lived next door. At some point, Lydia had moved to her one-bedroom in Tamarac and was barely in contact with Dennis or the girls. I don’t know the formal custody arrangement—or if there was one—but Dennis had the girls, was gambling heavily, and they were always on the verge of being evicted.

  My mom and I had a bad argument that year, and she insisted that she couldn’t in good faith continue our relationship. Like Lydia had, she felt Nick and I were abandoning the family. They’d fallen behind on their rent and been threatened with eviction.

  “Rae, what are we going to do? Live on the streets? Is that what you want?” Mom asked. She needed $1,500 and promised to pay me back as soon as she received my dad’s social security check.

  “Mom, I can only give you $500. Not as a loan, a gift.”

  “Rae, thanks. Thank you. But it’s not enough. I need $1,500. Can’t you wire it to me?” My mom’s voice, stressed, became loud, demanding—but carefully demanding.

  “Mom, I don’t have that kind of money.” At the time, we were paying off Cal’s college loans, had a mortgage, car payment, Will’s college tuition, and our living expenses.

  “Can’t you borrow against your credit card? We’ll pay you back, plus interest.” She’d breathe, pause, exhaling her ghost cigarette.

  “Mom, no. We won’t do that. The fees are ridiculous. Anyway, you’re not going to be able to pay us back.” I sat in my bedroom on the wicker armchair.

  “What do you want, Rae?” she asked. “That a mother should have to beg? Would that make you feel better?”

  I didn’t give her the $1,500. I knew that Dennis would keep gambling and that whatever amount I gave to her would never be enough.

  “Mom, tell me where to send the $500. You don’t have to pay us back.”

  “Use Western Union. Tell them Tamarac.” Weary, she knew she’d lost the battle, but she’d take what she could.

  “You need it tonight? Or can I wait until morning?”

  “No, I need it now, tonight. I have to give something to the landlady. She’s such a bitch, Rae. Then she starts shouting in Spanish. Really. I just hope it’s enough. Some people. Give me a call after you wire the money.”

  I agreed.

  And after this call to say that I’d wired the money, she broke ties. Nick and I figured that we probably gave my parents more than $20,000 before the break. The $10,000 was the largest single amount. But there were many, many smaller amounts throughout the years—some loaned and repaid, but many given as gifts. This was my therapist’s suggestion. Give what you can comfortably give but don’t “loan” because you can’t control the outcome. You won’t be tied to an expectation.

  My therapist was right: because when the $10,000 was never completely repaid, I felt betrayed, lied to, hurt, angry. On some level, I knew my parents could never pay back a loan of this size, but I felt that I had to believe them; they’re my parents and wouldn’t let me down.

  Then my mom would get testy if I’d bring up the money she owed. “You think I forgot, Rae? You think a day doesn’t go by when I don’t remember what I owe you?”

  “I don’t know, Mom. If you never mention it, I can’t read your mind.”

  Once, Nick got mixed up in one of these loan requests. I’d been out grocery shopping when my parents called, and my dad ended up speaking to Nick. My dad wanted to borrow another $1,500—the standard request amount. My dad probably already had some dementia at the time, but it was undiagnosed and his responses were erratic—sometimes clear, sometimes appropriate, other times not.

  Nick had tried to explain to my dad how the loans and non-repayment made me feel—that when I trusted my parents to pay back loans and they didn’t, I felt betrayed, like a trust had been broken. At this point, perhaps in a moment of candor, desperation, or as a consequence of dementia and his filters not working, my dad simply said, “We just need the money; I don’t care about Rae’s feelings.”

  After my dad said that, Nick hung up on him. Later, my mom wrote one of her famous letters to me in which she recalled the conversation differently, faulting Nick for being so disrespectful as to hang up on his father-in-law. Nick became very angry, and to this day, curses whenever he recalls the episode, which probably contributed to my mom’s decision to sever the relationship.

  All of this I think about, sitting in the darkening sunroom. Then about not seeing my dad before he died. When he was transferred to hospice, my mom had called me to say that my dad was dying. She wanted me to know and for the family to reconnect. I agreed, and we both apologized. I made my plans to fly to Florida, but then my mom wrote me the letter, telling me not to come.

  “To hell with what she thinks. Go see him anyway.” Nick had said. “He’s your dad! She doesn’t get to call that shot. You do.” With that, Nick had walked out of the house and into the garage, where he often paced.

  I followed him out, shouting, “If I’m not wanted, I don’t think I should go.”

  “She’s only taking care of herself,” Nick yelled. We stood alone in the cluttered garage, then walked back into the house to talk. Cal had moved out, lived in Boston with Jess, who was still in nursing school, and Will lived in Cleveland, attending art college. Jake, sensitive soul, had put his tail between his legs and had scurried upstairs, where he’d be away from our yelling. I took the letter back from Nick, who’d been waving it around. “Let me read it again.”

  But ultimately, I went upstairs to my office and called Expedia, who held my reservations. After hearing my story, the woman agent helped me cancel all my tickets and absolved me of most of my financial responsibilities connected with the trip. I think there were some minor penalties, but these came to less than $50.

  After a few days, I called my mother. She apologized but was firm about me not coming. I quickly understood that Dennis was behind the decision.

  So, I imagined my father in hospice. I pieced together details from m
y mother’s description. I’d asked my mom lots of questions: What does the hospice look like? Is it a free-standing building? Is it located on a busy street? What does dad see from his window? Is he in a private room? What’s on his night-table? Is there a TV in the room? Where is it located? Where do you sit when you visit? Does Dad get out of bed? Is he taken to a day-room? Does he walk or is he in a wheelchair? Who are the other residents? How many of them live there? When you visit, with whom do you speak? Is there a social worker? Are there aides whom you’ve gotten to know, who know Dad? What are their names?

  I needed to visualize everything, to form a kind of mental diorama so that I could place myself there. I even asked my mom to describe my dad’s blanket, to tell me specifically if it was tucked in with hospital corners, and if the bed had a metal side-bar that could be raised and lowered. In this way I was able to construct an imagined vision of the place where my father died.

  k

  The building is brick and free-standing. The social worker in charge of my dad’s case is a French-Canadian Buddhist nun. She’s completely bald and has always been so, having been born with some congenital condition. She likes my mom and willingly engages her in philosophical conversations about life’s meaning, the nature of suffering. She tells my mom “to accept,” and “to love the man by letting him go.”

  I see her lanky figure as a shadow—everything but her face, which I imagine as having high cheekbones, a pronounced nose, gray eyes. Her name is Agnes, a German name, and she speaks with a slight French accent although her English is perfect. My mother loves to hear her voice, with its softened consonants, perfect grammar.

  My dad has a private room at the end of a hall. The building is a single story, accommodating twelve residents. My dad’s window opens to a courtyard with a lush garden, brick-paved walkways. My dad is wheeled out during his first two weeks, but he’s bedridden after that. Every afternoon after work, my mom visits him; her new telephone sales job consists of selling greeting cards made by handicapped artists to businesses throughout the country. So, she talks to lots of people and actually enjoys these conversations during which she charms, cajoles, sells. In fact, my mom is already the second highest producer in her sales group of ten.

  twenty-six

  This is what I know—pieced together and imagined.

  It’s late in the day at the hospice; the intense South Florida sun is low but still saturates the sky. My father lies on his side, stares out his open bedroom door to the hallway, watching people walk by. The TV is tuned to Wheel of Fortune, the old game show he’s enjoyed for years. Today, as my mom comes into the room, my father recognizes her, the love of his life, the only woman he has ever desired.

  “Ed,” he says. “Take my hand.” My mother sits on an upholstered side chair that’s been pulled up to my dad’s bed.

  “Bernie,” she says, “oh, Bernie,” forcing a smile, for his sake.

  “Where am I?” he asks, shifting his emaciated body to indicate that the room is unfamiliar.

  “You’re here, in this facility, where you need to eat and get strong so you can come home.” She squeezes his hand, large-boned after the acromegaly.

  “I’m thirsty, Ed. Could you get me some juice? I’m sick of water.” My mom gently strokes my dad’s head, smoothing his comb-over so it lies nicely over his mostly bare scalp. My dad smiles. His dentures are white and clean, his smile is genuine, his expression grateful.

  With a plastic cup of apple juice and a bent straw, my mother returns to the room. But by now, my dad has closed his eyes.

  “Bernie?” my mom questions. No answer. She places the cup on a tissue in case the cup sweats on the wooden night-stand.

  And she sits, waits with him.

  An aide brings him dinner—a slice of roast beef, a small mound of mashed potatoes, a tablespoon of peas, a wedge of iceberg lettuce.

  “Bernie,” the aide says, “Blue cheese with that?” My dad opens his eyes, smiles.

  “Yes, honey.” He turns to my mother, who has stood up, placed her chair back against the wall, picked up her purse, is about to leave.

  “She knows how I like it,” he says to my mom and winks.

  “Bernie, I’d better go. You’ve got your dinner. Eat. Get strong.”

  The roast beef is one of his last meals. His dying begins at the Sabbath, or Shabbos—Friday at sundown—and ends on a Saturday, before Shabbos is over. It’s a Yiddish word; in Hebrew, it’s Shabbat, but at our home, we used Yiddish. My mom and dad grew up speaking English and Yiddish; both of them were fluent. Around the dinner table when my parents didn’t want Dennis and me to understand, they spoke Yiddish, which, with effort, I did learn enough to understand, although I never could speak it. When my friend Sonya and I hitchhiked across Europe after our first semester of college, we traveled through Germany—much to my family’s dismay—and I understood German because many of the words are so close to Yiddish.

  According to the Old Testament, God made the world in six days, and on the seventh day, Shabbat—the noun form of shavat, a Hebrew verb meaning “to rest”—He rested. It felt appropriate that my dad’s dying began at sundown on the beginning of Shabbos and that his death occurred before the Sabbath was over.

  After dinner that day, my father becomes mostly unresponsive, then comatose. What happened, what precipitated his decline at this particular moment, no one knows.

  The next day, a Saturday, my mom visits, stays the entire day. Dad sleeps, no longer waking in intervals as he usually does. His breathing is labored.

  My mother later reports to me that she speaks to him, but he never responds.

  “Bernie, I love you,” she says.

  She holds his hand; he slightly squeezes hers back.

  “I know you can hear me,” she whispers, bending so that her face is near his. His warm breath is precious to her.

  The aides and staff hang back, coming to the doorway to check if anything is needed but not entering the room.

  My mother tells me how the sun enters the room through the slats of the closed blinds. How all that last day she sits by my dad’s bedside, listening to the heavy traffic on Commercial Boulevard.

  My mother weeps. She retells the stories of their youth—and I take a moment to recall a couple of the stories she’s told me.

  My mom and dad met through a friend at Brooklyn College, at a dance in the gymnasium. Mom was nineteen; Dad was twenty. But even before they were introduced, my mom had noticed my dad—a handsome young man and wonderful dancer, as he let go across the wooden floor, doing a wild version the Lindy Hop with a partner who couldn’t keep up. After the song ended, Mom’s friend Belinda, noticing Mom’s interest, took her over for an introduction.

  “Bernard,” Belinda began, “this is Edna. Edna, Bernard.”

  “Bernie,” my father had responded, offering to shake hands as the next song began. And when Mom took his hand, the introductory handshake became an invitation to dance, which they did. And they danced together for the rest of the night.

  Coupled with this memory is their proposal story—how Dad had proposed to her at the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens, where they’d gone on a date. It was an unusually warm March Saturday, and they held hands, strolling through the outdoor gardens, barely in bud. Then, they went inside to the extensive hot house, where exotic flowers were kept in bloom all year. Mom admired the aisle filled with “Birds of Paradise,” and Dad suggested they sit on a nearby bench. Then, Dad got down on one knee as a small crowd gathered to watch. Almost a cliché—albeit a romantic one—Dad had said, “Eddy, you’re the love of my life. Will you marry me?” Mom had told him “yes,” thrown her arms around him, and the group had applauded.

  Shifting back to my imagined death scene, I hear Mom remind Dad how handsome he was back then, with his thick wavy dark hair, regular features, his shining brown eyes, expressing both mischief and passion.

  She doesn’t tell him that he has lived the wrong life, that he wasted his talent for math and engineering when
he appeased his parents by going into business with them. She doesn’t tell him how his love for her subjected him to an inauthentic life—how he gave her what she wanted, how he sacrificed himself.

  I think about how many times my father wanted to throw Dennis out of the house: when Dennis would borrow money from bookies or from low-level Mafioso, when he’d lose a bet or lose at the track, when he’d steal.

  Once, when we still lived in South Shelburne, I’d come home from college to hear my parents fighting about Dennis, who was out for the night but had recently stolen my mom’s diamond necklace, a valuable piece of jewelry she’d inherited from her mother.

  “Ed,” my dad began. “A little tough love. Dennis needs consequences.” He stood by his clothes closet, getting dressed for a formal dinner.

  “Never,” my mother said in her best definitive voice. She could command an army with that voice; soldiers would walk into active fire and die because of that voice. I, certainly, was afraid of it.

  “Ed, when will it end?” my dad asked, knotting his tie, even before his pants were on. He looked at himself in the closet’s mirror, as I walked into the room with them: my dad’s handsome figure, standing in his boxer shorts and white shirt, my mom in the master bathroom, fully dressed in a black sequined dress, fooling with her hair, finalizing her makeup.

  “I’d rather die than send Dennis away. Do you understand? He needs us. He’ll get over this. This gambling is just a phase. Would you send me away if I had a problem? Would you? Is that who I married?” Her voice was stern, dictating exactly what could and couldn’t be said.

  “This isn’t the time. We’ll talk again,” Dad said as he noticed me there in the room, then pulled his pants on, neatly tucked in his starched white shirt, and put on his suit jacket before slipping on his black patent shoes. He approached my mom, who brushed him away until he insisted, and gently hugged her.

  I had watched them, stood there like a shadow, a hollow shell of a person, embarrassed in front of such love, such devotion. I realized then that my dad adored my mom. She completed him.