by Julia Pandl
Peggy slapped me on the arm. “The ones from the garage.”
I knew those peaches. They had survived three moves and seven presidents. The dented and rusty cans sat on a shelf in the garage right next to the motor oil and the canned ham my mother had purchased during the Cuban missile crisis.
“Seriously? Dad, those peaches are older than I am.”
“They’re fine!” he said. “You kids are such babies. How do you think the West was won? Besides, peaches were the only thing that sounded good.”
That statement raised a giant red flag. Everything sounded good to George, all the time. I looked over at Peggy and said, “I think I’ll spend the night.”
I SAID GOOD night to George and crawled into bed at about ten. The sheets were crisp, cold, and perfumed with fabric softener. I rolled over and stared at the bookshelf across the room. My father had bothered to stock it, alphabetically by author, with books of short stories and poetry. That way, if a guest decided to pick one out and read it, he or she could, in theory, finish it during his or her stay. The bedroom door was slightly ajar, and the light from the hallway cast a shadow along the book jackets, some split and curled with age, some clean and new. In the dark, on the very top shelf, stood the Holy Family: Mary, Joseph, and the baby Jesus, watchful statues placed there by my mother.
Over the soft whoosh of the cool air escaping the floor vent, I heard the light humming in the bathroom. I took a deep breath and quietly began to cry. I was overwhelmed. I looked over at the orange plastic backpack I had packed for the night and realized that I had done nothing to prepare for the move. It was too soon. Tears rolled over my cheeks, down my neck, and soaked into my T-shirt. “Okay, Mom,” I whispered. “I’m a little annoyed that you’re not here, so you’ve gotta help me. I mean it, Terry, no screwing around. I don’t know what to do. Honestly, what should I do? You have to help.” Indecision and anxiety pulled me into a fit of hysterical sobs, peppered with occasional whimpers of “Help me, please.” It wasn’t pretty. Just before I fell asleep, I squinted up at Jesus, Mary, and Joseph and said, “You three could lend a hand here too.”
They were still staring at me when I opened my eyes the next morning. The house was quiet, except for the faint but steady drone of my father’s sleep apnea machine. He was still asleep. I closed my eyes and realized that I had forgotten to throw my book in my backpack. I had been stuck in the first fifty pages of Catch-22 for weeks. Reading in bed with a cup of tea was part of my morning routine, a guilty pleasure that gave the day a peaceful start. From the bed I canvassed the bookshelf, hoping to find an appealing short story. And there he was, Joseph Heller, completely out of place among James Joyce, O. Henry, and Edgar Allen Poe.
When a coincidence occurs, acknowledge it; that’s what the writing teachers tell you to do. So I will. At that moment I thought it was luck, and in the next I realized it was neither coincidence nor luck. I slid George’s copy of the book off the shelf and blew the dust into the morning air. The crusty jacket cracked as I opened it and thumbed through the yellowed pages. And believe it or not, my mother’s Mass card slipped out onto the floor. There she was, St. Thérèse, with her crucifix and her showering bouquet of roses, gazing up at me wisely. Now, I’m not much for signs, but this was a little like being slapped upside the head. I looked up at the Holy Family and said, “I get it. I got it. Nice touch, very subtle.” I bent down, picked up the card, flipped it over, and read the verse from Timothy. “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.”
So I padded down the hall, past the wedding and high school graduation pictures, knocked softly on George’s door, and walked in. There he was, sound asleep. The machine on the nightstand whirred as it pushed air through the mask on his face. It looked like a jock strap with an oxygen mask. He looked like some kind of slapstick version of Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs.
“Dad,” I whispered, and shook his foot. “Dad.” I scanned the empty side of the bed, recalling how every Friday and Saturday night during high school I stood at the foot of that bed and woke them both up. The room smelled like Ammens powder and sherry. “DAD.”
He bolted upright and pulled off the headgear. “What? What? What’s the matter?”
“Whaddya doin’?” I smiled.
Falling back onto his pillows with a gasp, he said, “Nothing, sleeping. What is it?”
I sat on the end of his bed and said, “I’m moving in today, okay? I’m gonna stay here now. I’m not leaving.”
“Okeydokey,” he said, and fell back asleep.
MY BROTHER STEVIE met me at my apartment and helped me pack up my immediate needs—clothes, toiletries, and books. My comfortable furniture had to wait. On my way back to George’s, I stopped at the grocery store and picked up some fresh food and a six-pack of Miller Lite, because I knew he didn’t have either. I wasn’t about to eat the peaches, and George had a thing about light beer.
At some time during my fifth or sixth year at school, just to see what kind of reaction I’d get, I told him I intended to drop out of Loyola University and attend clown college instead. I had even done a little research and found a very respectable school down in Sarasota, Florida, that seemed to “fit my needs.” Completely straight-faced, I expressed my desire to “take the road less traveled” and explore the unique and happy world of rodeos, circus folk, and clowndom. When I finished, he smiled, folded his newspaper, looked me in the eye, and said, “That’s fine with me, Julia, whatever you decide.” But when he found out I preferred a light beer over a porter, a stout, or even an ale, my father stared into my soul with such bitter disappointment, I actually cried. Other people, of course—friends, neighbors, in-laws, even strangers—anyone other than his own offspring—could choose whatever they wanted to drink. I watched my father go out of his way, time and time again, to pick up a bottle of Drambuie, or sloe gin, or crème de cacao. Rusty Nail, anyone? Coming right up. Alabama Slammer? Not a problem. How about a nice Pink Squirrel? The liquor bottles are still gathering dust in the basement.
I lugged the groceries through the garage door and into the kitchen and found George still in his pajamas, sitting at the table. “My God, my God!” he exclaimed, standing up, slapping one hand to his forehead and gesturing to the bags with the other. “Why did you buy all this food? I’ve got plenty of—”
“Oh, no. Listen, Georgia.” I stood with my hands on my hips and looked him right in the eye. “I remember what it was like when you were in charge of the fridge, and I’m still scarred from it.”
He smiled.
“It’s not funny. I’m serious. If I’m living here I’m getting food from a real store. I’m not eating whatever two-decade-old science experiment you’ve got frozen in the garage. Got it?”
“Okay.”
“And don’t try to sneak in anything you pulled out of the Dumpster at the restaurant.” Yes, he had actually done this with a case of pecan halves that had come off the delivery truck infested with some sort of funky insect found only in Texas. They never made it into the restaurant, but they did make it into George’s peach cobbler at home. “I mean it.”
“All right, all right, you’re the boss.”
Stevie unpacked my stuff while George and I put away the groceries. Except for a door loaded with twenty years of assorted condiments with crusty lids, a five-pound bag of Maytag bleu cheese, an upside-down bucket of cottage cheese (he flipped cottage cheese after opening it in order to maintain freshness for months beyond the expiration date—it does work), and a bowl of slippery canned peaches, the fridge was empty. I squatted down and began filling the bottom shelf with yogurt.
“What’re these?” George asked, holding up a clear plastic container of Swedish Fish.
“Swedish Fish. I’m addicted to those, so get used to them.” I had given up peanut M&M’s for Lent a few years earlier and quickly became hooked on Swedish Fish. What can I say? I’m weak.
“What are they?”
“It’s candy, Da
d. You’ve never heard of them?”
“No,” he said, examining the package in the light. George loved candy. As a kid, I remember waking up in the morning, alone in their bed. Their nightstands, both carved oak with a shelf on the bottom, a drawer, and a dusty glass top, matched in style and form but not content. My mother’s was home to the telephone, in case somebody called in the middle of the night, a rosary, a prayer book, and a six-inch statue of St. Thérèse, also in case somebody called in the middle of the night. On the flip side, George’s was littered with books, Ammens powder, candy wrappers, and piles of half-eaten spearmint leaves, orange slices, and gumdrops.
Candy in our house—I’m talking about the good stuff—was well hidden. You just can’t keep candy around with nine kids. The reason, and I’m not sure if it’s related to motion or gravity, is one of Newton’s laws. I hid my Halloween candy in a cigar box behind my Barbie town house. Terry slipped Hershey bars in the bookshelves among the Russians, Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy, where she figured they were least likely to be discovered. And George stuffed his bags of spearmint leaves and gumdrops in his dresser drawers. The boxes of Russell Stover candy that arrived every Christmas and Easter were the one inert exception. Having ferreted out the caramels, we let the crappy stuff sit on the kitchen counter for weeks. There lay the battered raspberry, orange, and coconut cream remnants, each one stabbed through the bottom with a tooth, a fingernail, or a pen and tossed back among the wrinkled wrappers for the next guy.
“Try a few,” I said. “They’re kinda like licorice, only seriously more delicious.”
He chewed a few into his dental work and raised his eyebrows with delight. “Damn good.”
“I told you.”
He picked one up and inspected it. “They’re like Jub Jubs.” That’s Jujubes or Jujyfruits, to the normal person. “What are they called?”
“Swedish Fish, Dad,” I said, continuing to load the fridge. “I can’t believe you don’t know what they are.”
THAT NIGHT WE watched a preseason Packers game. If memory serves, they played Seattle. George, still in his T-shirt and sweatpants, sat in the blue corduroy mechanical recliner he had purchased, postamputation, for Terry. The thing was broken. It had been since day one. It had buttons to move it up and down. The up arrow, which you would think meant “up,” as in “stand up,” actually meant “down,” as in “recline.” And the down arrow, of course, really meant “up,” but the button worked only occasionally, so once you were “up” you couldn’t get “down.” Confusing? Tell me about it. You should have seen George. He sat there, trapped, with his feet up in the air and his finger on the “down” button for the length of the second quarter. Finally, he looked over at me, completely helpless, and said, “Will you get me a couple of those Russian sardines?”
The next day I went to Mass alone. It was jarring, leaving the house without him, like wearing a wool sweater on a boiling hot day. The vacant passenger’s seat and the conversation I had with myself offered palpable insight, but the slow twists and turns on Lake Drive were a bit of a tranquilizer. It didn’t hit me until I sat on the chilly pew at St. Rita’s, slipped my hand in my pocket, and wrapped it around my mother’s pyx. The pyx I had grabbed from the untouched dust on top of her jewelry box before I walked out the door. Its roundness was soothing. I popped it open, closed my eyes, and saw my father sitting across from me at Ma Fischer’s, just two weeks earlier, pushing pancakes around his plate. I snapped it closed and realized that our church and brunch days were over. I would bring him Communion from then on. I popped it open and snapped it closed, over and over, while the voices around me united and fell into the rhythm of the Mass.
On Monday I skipped work. At 7 a.m., I paced in the driveway, my bare feet picking up pebbles from the cool concrete, and dialed Debbie, my new boss.
“Hello, this is Debbie,” she answered.
“Hi, it’s Julie.”
“Hi.”
Having never called in “unable” to work, I had to pull the words out carefully, like a foreign object. “Listen . . . I’m . . . not going to make it in today.”
“What’s up?”
“I moved in with my dad over the weekend, a little unexpectedly, and he’s not doing well. I’m taking him to the doctor today, and we’re having the hospice conversation.” I felt queasy. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” she said.
God love her. I sighed.
“We knew this was coming,” she offered.
We did?
I made George take me out to lunch before his doctor’s appointment. He chose the Whitefish Bay Inn. He looked good. His tan sweater and khaki pants hung around his body like a bathrobe, and he was a little rickety as he slid into the car, but still. He smelled like Old Spice. We sat in the bar at the two-top next to the half-open, half-closed Dutch door. The room was empty except for an old guy with a face like a worn catcher’s mitt, sitting tucked away in the corner, nursing a brown drink, a cigarette, and what sounded like Legionnaires’ disease.
We ordered Bloody Marys. I watched Dad peruse the menu like a first-timer, as if he had never seen it before, as if he didn’t know every ingredient in every recipe. He smiled the same way he smiled when he looked at the mail.
“Whaddya gonna get?” I asked.
“The Denver omelet sandwich.”
“That’s a weird one for you. No chicken liver sandwich?” Just saying chicken liver sandwich made me gag a little.
“Nope,” he said. “I feel like something different. I haven’t had a Denver omelet sandwich in years. How ’bout you?”
“Clubhouse.”
He laughed. “Do you ever order anything else?”
“It’s still the best in town.”
The waitress brought our drinks and took our order.
George raised his glass, smiled, and said, “Cheers.”
“Cheers.”
“What do you call those things again?”
“What do I call what?”
“Danish . . . trout?”
I laughed. “Swedish Fish, Dad!”
“Oh.” Smile. Twitch.
We sat quietly for a few minutes, comfortable together in silence. I watched him glance around the cozy, dark bar. I don’t know what that look was, but there was something behind it—peace, joy, maybe warmth. His eyes glistened as if he were saying hello, or perhaps good-bye, to a very old friend. Eventually, those eyes landed on me.
“Well . . . Julie, what are you thinking?”
“Dad,” I said, folding my paper place mat up from the bottom, pressing an even crease, once, twice, three times. “I think we need to ask for hospice today.”
“You do,” he said, more a statement than a question.
“I do.”
Twitch.
“I do, Dad. We all do.” We did. The siblings, myself included, had discussed it. Our mother had hospice for exactly fifteen hours. Everyone felt gypped then and scared now. We had barely settled in to having help and had almost missed the boat and let her die in the hospital. With George, sooner rather than later got the vote.
“Hospice can be helpful now.”
Twitch. “Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Yeah.” He raised his glass and smiled again. “Okay, whatever you kids think.”
Okay. That was it. I felt lighter, buoyed somehow against the weight of the circumstances. He had handed over his trust then and there. He gave my siblings and me a wonderful gift and paid us a tremendous compliment. Is there a greater act of true love than trust? If there is, I don’t know it.
18
Stella
From the very beginning of his illness, we kept a maroon Mead assignment notebook with a yellow Post-it on the cover that read “George’s Notebook.” Inside we taped the business cards for a slew of doctors—family practice, urologist, hematologist, and oncologist—and we wrote down the number for Kopp’s Frozen Custard, just in case. It went wherever he went. It detailed appointments, phone conversations, me
dications, hormone treatments, and test results. We all scribbled notes. Reading it now, nearly two years later, feels like the slow backward peel of a fresh and deeply rooted scab. They’re just words, really, lined up on a page, one after another; some cold, some messy, others scary, still others funny. Each one is something else, though, a moment, a snapshot, capturing both absolute sadness and perfect joy.
Prostate/Bones/Ribs/Spine/Skull, Tuesday, Dr. Kerns, 12:00. Careful, weight-bearing areas
Affairs in order
It was July, a balmy, breezeless day, sometime after the fourth. I was between jobs and mooching off Chrissy and her family. They were vacationing in Oostburg on Lake Michigan. The corn, indeed knee high, stood peacefully still as Chrissy and I drove south toward Milwaukee. The city lapped eagerly against the farmland, a hospital, a Target, and the shell of a soon-to-be Costco. We were meeting George at the bank so he could approve my signature on his checking account. “There will come a day”—that’s what I had said to him—“when you’re too sick.” Chrissy made for the exit ramp and the words rolled around in my mind, until they folded in on themselves and captured his willingness to surrender ownership of such an intimate task.
We found him in the bank lobby, sitting at a broad mahogany desk with a white marble inlay. The clerk across from him wore a navy pinstripe suit and her hair was in a painfully tight-looking bun. George made the introductions and we commenced the rigmarole of authorizing my signature, a process that undoubtedly had CIA origins. As I inked my John Hancock next to thirty-five green SIGN HERE stickers, I waited for bun lady to ask me for blood and urine samples. Seriously, I think it took less time to get the Iran-contra affair under way.
“When we’re through here,” George said, “I want to show you my safety-deposit box.”
“Excellent,” I said, not looking up. “Does that mean I get to keep everything in it?” Bun lady, who, despite the fact that my father found me capable, seemed unconvinced as to my worthiness; she let out a flimsy chuckle.
We left Chrissy waiting in the lobby and walked to the vault. The door looked a lot like a door to a prison cell, except cleaner and prettier. It was beautiful, a shiny golden cage with an intricate system of locks, steel-reinforced concrete, and an armed guard protecting boxes full of important documents and valuable stuff. Treasures. George’s box had been placed on a table in the middle of the room.