“The hour that I first knew you were mine…” Allen mumbled.
“Gee, Allen, I didn’t know you cared.”
“Shut up. Trying to rhyme it.”
Milo tilted back in his wheeled office chair and chanted the line to himself a few times. Then he sat up and blurted: “Softly came a melody divine.”
“Heh. Not bad.” Allen leaned forward to scribble.
“What are you up to, anyhow?” Milo stood up from his chair to come look over his friend’s shoulder. From this vantage, he could see the pink of Allen’s scalp through his wispy blond hair. In front of him on the desk was some manuscript paper, and a melody scrawled in smeared ink.
Allen looked around; though they were alone in their office, it had glass walls starting halfway up, and the blinds were open. “Don’t tell the boss, eh? But in between plugging I’ve been working on something of my own. Only, I’m rotten with the words.”
“You gonna cut me in on the credit now?” Milo walked away, shaking his head.
“You just became my lyricist.”
“Wisenheimer.”
Milo put his hands on the keys and played the song again Allen had just taught him that morning. He was already thinking of who might like to hear it. There was a new act that had been coming around looking for material, a boy-girl set of cousins from St. Louis… He said out loud to Allen, “This one might be perfect for the Debonairs, you think? I heard that they’re auditioning for George White…”
“I wasn’t kidding about the lyrics. Why not? You go around making up words to songs all the time, and you come up with rhymes without even trying.”
“Ha, you did it just now.”
“Must be contagious. C’mon, it’ll be a few laughs, maybe. We’ll work on it in slow times here, or maybe after hours.”
“Where we gonna do that?” Milo continued to play, the tune settling into his fingers like they had a memory of their own. “I don’t want to sit around here any more than I already do.”
“My apartment. I’ve got a piano even.”
“No kidding?” Milo paused the song. “Well, sure. After work tomorrow we’ll make like the Gershwins and be rich and famous in no time.”
“Ah, don’t make fun.”
“I’m not, at least not very much. But look, I feel so lucky just to get this far, I’m not gonna get my hopes too far up.”
“Well, as long as you’re sure of failure, we’ve got nothing to lose.” Allen bent back over his music.
“That strategy seems good enough for the government, eh?” and Milo switched tunes on the piano: “These so-called happy days, my friend, should like to drive me round the bend…”
“Suit yourself, Short. I’m going to aim a little higher than that if it’s all the same to you.”
“It is all the same to me, now shut up so I can do the work I’m getting paid for.” Milo switched back to the tune he was learning, for the Debonairs or some other hopeful musical act, also likely to fail but with a faint spark of a chance at stardom. It seemed to him that the whole system was powered by that little spark: his own job, plus the costumers, set builders, singers, actors, producers. He glanced around at Allen, hands still playing the tune, as his friend scowled over his song. Hope away, pal. Keeps us all in business.
New York, 1999
I wake up like crawling out of a long, narrow cave.
Voices. Daughter-in-law, Linda: “Terrifying. The nurse found him curled up on the landing. He could have fallen down the stairs and broke his neck.”
A voice I don’t know: “Of course, that must have been terrible for you.”
For you? I’m the one … And I was on the floor?
Awareness dawns on me that I’m once again in that stiff, flat mattress hospital bed contraption. My eyes snap open the same moment I remember seeing Vivian, and worse this time, hearing her voice in my head. And next thing I knew I was on the ground and a young nurse with a blonde ponytail was interrogating me and checking me over and sticking me back in bed, at which time I crashed right back into sleep.
The people in my parlor don’t notice that I’m awake right away, though, so I close my eyes again, to eavesdrop about myself.
“I am so sorry about this. We’ve already spoken to the nurse on duty, I assure you.”
Oh no, I hope they didn’t fire her. It wasn’t her fault.
“I should hope so,” Linda sniffs. “I mean, I realize he unclipped the alarm, but honestly, she didn’t notice him walking up the stairs? This place is older than old and everything creaks!”
“Of course, you have every right to be upset.”
“I just hate to see him like this. Just a couple of weeks ago he was so vibrant and active, like he’d live forever.”
I’m not dead yet. You’re all acting as if I’m three-quarters deceased.
“He may yet live a long time.” This was said by the stranger. Head nurse I guess? Some kind of boss lady. And she didn’t say that with any kind of reassurance. She pronounced it like a sentence of doom, and this makes me feel as cold as a corpse already.
I leave my eyes closed so I can better remember what that—vision, apparition, whatever, said. What Vivian said.
I just want to be heard.
But she was heard by me, boy was she ever. They could hear her in Hoboken, that one.
The nurse and Linda continue talking about my “care,” like I’m a finicky house pet.
Why can’t I just get back to normal? I swear I’ll appreciate being able to get around without being watched, I’ll make good use of my voice and be nicer to everyone, tell my kids and grandkids I love them all day. If only I could rid myself of this Vivian-vision, and…
What if? Now that’s the ticket. What if when I get my voice back, Vivian goes away? I only started going crazy in this particular way since the day I fell, the day I saw this impossible Vivian.
I vow to myself to be nice to Marla when she comes by, and really look at her flashcards and things. I’ll try to sing along with her silly songs, and when she says “Cat and …” instead of looking at her like she thinks I’m an imbecile, I’ll actually try to say “dog.” I’ll be a good sport for the physical therapist trying to make my good arm work. I can come back from this, sure as hell I can.
I open my eyes, then, and elbow myself up to sitting, feeling for my glasses on the side table. Linda rushes over. “Pop! There you are, oh, it’s so good to see you awake and alert. You gave us quite a scare. What were you doing up? Oh, I’m sorry, I know you can’t say. I don’t mean to…”
The nurse I can now see is a gray-haired lady with tortoiseshell glasses and the severe shape of an arrow: all straight up and down. She interjects, “No, it’s good to keep talking with him, asking him things. Don’t treat him like a child. He will answer if he can, when he can, in what way he can, right, Milo?”
I nod, but I’m biting back a grimace. People these days are so familiar, right off. I can’t get used to how people who barely know me, people half my age, use my first name like it’s nothing. But I know this is one of the many ways the world has moved on without me.
I point to her and tilt my head, squinting my eyes a bit. The arrow lady gets me.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t introduce myself. I’m Caroline Bates, and I’m with Companions Home Health, the agency providing the care for you now. You won’t often see me, you’ll see our care workers, but I promise they are all attentive and professional. The very best in the city. And we won’t have another lapse like tonight.”
“And you won’t unclip the alarm and go traveling at night, will you?” Linda asks. The two ladies are like sentries, the boss with the glasses and Linda with her erect dancer’s posture, which seems, impossibly, even taller and straighter than usual. “We’d hate to have you in a nursing home, but if that’s what it takes to keep you safe…”
How dare she! This… girl, not even my own blood. I decide she’s bluffing. No one wants to do that to me. She’s trying to threaten me, like with her kids.<
br />
Still, it’s safer, no doubt, if I play along. At least until all this is over.
Linda goes on, “I don’t know why you were headed upstairs anyway, Pop. There’s a bathroom on this floor, and you’ve got a little buzzer there if you need help and…”
I shoot a gaze up the staircase, trying to evoke longing, sadness. I never was much of an actor but I’ve sure seen enough stage people hamming it up to make like a copycat. It feels a little ridiculous, truth be told.
“Oh!” Linda says. “Oh, you miss your own bed, don’t you?”
I nod, again with the sad face, though maybe laying it on a bit thick.
Linda says, more to herself than to Ms. Bates, “I wonder if we could get some movers to bring his bed down here? Could that alarm thing be used on his bed? We’d have to move things around, it’s a narrow room here… Or hell, just walk him up the stairs at night. Esme used to do that before he fell, even. There’s a bathroom up there, too.”
The Bates lady is getting ready to speak, but Linda raises a slim hand to stop her. “He won’t be clomping up and down the steps all day. Just like before, he’d come down in the morning and only go up at night. His leg recovered quickly from the stroke, after all. We’re keeping him at home to keep him comfortable and in familiar surroundings. The hospital bed is overkill.” Linda looks down to address me. “And you won’t be trying these solitary journeys at night anymore, right, Pop?”
I shake my head emphatically. Hell no, if this means I get to sleep in my own bed like a normal person.
A slam of the front door telegraphs my son’s entrance. Paul is a slammer, always has been. He comes around through the door and I can’t believe he looks so old all of a sudden. He comes in and when he sees his wife he stops short, and something comes over him. It’s a rigid posture that looks unnatural, but most of all it’s the distance between them he chooses not to close.
Ms. Bates takes her leave to look over the schedule for my “care.”
Paul stares at his wife a moment. Linda stands without speaking, her hands loosely clasped, and her face a mask of passive waiting. It’s easy to imagine her in this posture in the wings, wearing her toe shoes, listening for her cue to come to life.
Paul approaches me and pats my hand like he’s petting a snake and isn’t too sure I won’t bite him. Physical affection was never very much his thing. “You gave us quite a scare,” he says, parroting his wife’s words almost exactly.
Linda interjects to explain how I want to go back to sleeping in my own room. “Oh, sure, fine, whatever you want,” Paul says, as if we’d asked for his permission.
And I’m tired again, suddenly, though I’ve been sleeping for who knows how long. So I lie back down and close my eyes. The good part about being close to ninety is that no one cares if you nap at any given time, all the livelong day if you want. Like a housecat.
I roll onto my side, too, on my left, which was the side I always slept on with my dear Bee in our big four-poster bed. I could see her sleeping form, rising and falling in the faint light from outside: the moon, city lights, lampposts, all of it, the constant seeping glow of the greatest city in the world.
“He must be exhausted,” Paul says, but his voice has an absent quality to it. I bet he’s looking at his little electronic scheduler whatsit.
“It’s so strange.” This from Linda.
“What?”
“How he seems to have recovered so well, in almost every way. He walks well now, his left hand can play the piano. His face isn’t droopy or anything like that. But even with all the therapy, he’s just made no progress. Not on writing or speaking.”
“Well, he’s old.”
“He didn’t seem so a few weeks ago. Are you listening to me? Can’t you put that gadget down for five minutes?”
“Sure I’m listening, but what? What else am I supposed to do? We’re already hemorrhaging money for all this. I’m spending as fast as I can.”
“God, Paul. That’s not what I meant.”
“You’ll forgive me if I’ve got it on the brain. Pop always acted like Short Productions would go forever, but it’s not like magic, you know. We haven’t had a hit in too long, and this…” A pause. He’s probably waving his hand over me, this problem here, “… is taking a bite out of the one solution I had in mind.”
“The High Hat.”
“Yes, The High Hat. Book and show, and what the hell? Maybe even movie. Can you see it? I wonder if Leonardo DiCaprio can dance.”
“All our problems solved by a dancing DiCaprio? How convenient.”
“You joke, but it would probably do the trick.”
“You never talk like this in front of him.”
“He won’t listen anyway, is why. Anyway, I’m not talking in front of him. He’s out like a light there, and no wonder after his little adventure. Did you threaten him with the nursing home?”
“I mentioned it, yes, though I got no pleasure out of it. I’m not ready to parent your father. I do that enough with my parents.”
“Oh come on, you love being in charge of everything.”
“That’s not fair and no, I don’t. Hardly. But it’s not like I have much choice.”
Their conversation devolves into bickering, and I’ve gone from a harmless, sleeping elderly stroke victim to something even more insubstantial. They don’t even concern themselves now with waking me.
Their argument breaks off quick, like a tape reel that’s snapped. I hear the quick clicking of a woman fleeing in pointy heels. I wait to hear Paul’s footsteps follow, but instead I hear him flop into one of those chairs by the fireplace, and he doesn’t move.
Go after her, I’d like to say. Make up, apologize even if you’re right, because so what? This little argument is worth so much to you? I’d say the same to her. Who cares who started it?
I care.
You again. Go away. Are you a dybbuk now? I’ve heard the stories.
Ha, a shiksa like me? I hardly think that’s allowed.
You’re nothing. You’re stroke damage in my brain.
I’m nothing, am I? So why am I the only one you can talk to?
I scrunch my eyes tighter shut, resisting the urge to plug my ears with my fingers, knowing that it won’t help.
I spot Daniel from halfway around the pond. He moves with pacing energy, slicing along the path in his severe dark clothes. When he picks me out of the crowd he brightens, that look of “There you are! Happy to see you!” that was always one of my favorite things. Now this brief zing of happy comes with a fresh crack across my heart, and I am starting to believe this is not worth it. This generous emotional support, this thoughtfulness and consideration held out from a distance by an outstretched hand with no obligation or promise, with him only lingering at the doorway of my life—it’s worse than a Daniel-shaped absence. Perhaps that is only bravado. I haven’t been brave enough to test it.
“Hey.” He grips me around the shoulders in a brief hug before falling into step, matching my unambitious amble. Joggers trot past. Nannies, mothers, and children flow around us like leaves on a current.
“Going to see Grampa Milo today?”
“Yes,” I answer, patting my shoulder bag with its notebook and tape recorder, though why I’m bringing the tape recorder I’m not sure I could even explain, considering.
Packing my bag this way did feel more solid and believable, as if I’m a real reporter on the job and not just a kid following her uncle’s orders. My spurt of chutzpah in taking on this book has been thinning out by the day, and it’s only the humiliation of calling to change my mind that has prevented me from doing just that.
“I’m in over my head,” I tell Daniel.
He waves his hand over the empty space above my skull. “That’s not exactly hard, Shorty.”
I elbow him lightly. “I’m not that short. Just compared to you.”
“Anyway, it will all work out. It always does.”
I don’t even bother to reply to this. I used to waste my
breath correcting him: me with the absent, rejecting mother and dead father. He’d counter with a heap of small disaster predictions that never came to pass. Maybe his point was that my orphaning was a weird outlier, an exception to his blithe “always.” Or maybe he thinks because I’m still walking and breathing, this too has “worked out.” Just now I’m tempted to ask if things “work out” for suicides, but that could alarm him uselessly. It’s not nihilism as much as scoring rhetorical points. Only in my head, though, which I suppose makes those points somewhat less than rhetorical.
“Ellie? You in there?”
He used to ask me this all the time. I reply with my usual answer: “No, but you can leave a message.”
“I really mean it. That you can do this book. I know you think it’s just me being glib, but it’s true.”
He’s answering as if he can read my mind. After two years together, I suppose he can.
He goes on, “You’re a great interviewer, and look, this is your grandfather. It’s not like it’s going to be all hardball and stuff.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“I’m trying to be reassuring. I know the last time…”
I’d eventually told him about my freakout in front of the mother in Bed-Stuy. I’d edited the story to remove the exact reference to the timing. Not so much to protect his feelings. I just didn’t want to endure his agonizing apology that would churn up that whole day again.
“I know,” I say, letting him off the hook. He’s not even mine anymore, no reason he should be on that hook in the first place.
“It’s not like you were bad with tough interviews, anyway. You just needed strategies, is all. Eye contact, rehearsing how it would go mentally beforehand.”
“No more coaching, thanks. Anyway, that’s all over.”
“Why? I mean, after this book, your name will get back out there…”
I tug on his elbow to stop his walk so he will face me. “Didn’t I ever tell you how I got into this magazine thing in the first place? Eva did it. I was all set to do another summer making copies and answering phones at Short Productions, having a blast and staying out of the way. I used to tag along with Grampa when he went to check on shows in rehearsal, or at auditions, and that was the best, watching something creative get born right in front of my nose. But then Eva said I was ‘wasting my talent,’ and went and got me a magazine job with one of her college friends. It was the same thing, making coffee and such, but they gave me little writing assignments, too, about cosmetics and new romance novels. And then Naomi all but wrote my resume for me, did all the work preparing my clips on sheets of paper—I mean, she probably had Shelly do it at the office—and she got me my first freelance assignment after I graduated, interviewing some tech startup guy she dated once. All because Aunt Rebekah happened to read an essay I wrote for sociology and said I had a way with words. All because I didn’t want to be a little Junior Naomi in pinstripe suits sitting in human resource meetings, and I wasn’t sure what else I wanted to do. Don’t ever say you’re ‘not sure’ in front of my cousins. It’s like chumming the water.”
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