The Senator's Children

by Nicholas Montemarano

  “They told me this would happen,” he whispers, “but I didn’t believe them.”

  “Who told you what would happen?”

  “Someone told me this would.”

  “What would?”

  “This!” he yells.

  “You can speak,” Avery says.

  “I can whisper or yell,” David whispers. “There’s no in-between.”

  Avery leaves wet boot prints as she walks closer to David’s chair. “We need to get you ready,” she says. “Dressed, shaved, all that.”

  “For what?”

  “The campaign, of course.”

  “Didn’t I concede?”

  “The campaign goes on,” Avery says, and with these words David perks up, straightens in his chair.

  She thinks about it, she stands in front of his chair, doesn’t move, thinks and thinks about it, considers it, but she can’t: this is her father, and she just can’t undress and dress him.

  But she can lay out clean clothes on his bed—blue-and-white-striped boxers, navy-blue socks, khakis, white oxford, blue tie. And she can shave him: she knows how to shave her own legs, she can shave a man’s face. She fills a bowl with warm water and places it in his lap. “Don’t spill that,” she says, and he says, “My hands have a mind of their own.”

  She lathers his face and then shaves him with increasing levels of difficulty: the sides of his face, then his neck, then his chin, shaking the razor in the warm water to clean it after every few strokes, and finally between his lips and nose, careful not to nick him.

  With a hand towel she wipes away the shaving cream still left on David’s neck and by his mouth and ears.

  She can brush his teeth, no problem—the campaign goes on. The inside of her father’s mouth—so what. If not her, she thinks, then who.

  After, she wets a comb and tries to tame a cowlick determined to remain upright; she’s tempted to cut it, but in the end she admits defeat and lets it be.

  She asks one of the staff members—a pretty woman whose name tag says Tiffany—to dress David.

  “I tried this morning,” Tiffany says, “but he didn’t want to.”

  “He’s ready now,” Avery says.

  *

  Four hallways branch out from a central lobby where nurses and other staff greet visitors and answer phones and where residents congregate, many in wheelchairs, to socialize or sleep. There are more women than men. Some sit by the large glass entrance doors and watch the storm. Rain, especially such heavy rain, on a day that looks more like night, must be incredibly interesting, maybe even moving, Avery thinks, to people who have less rain than most left to see. For a moment Avery sees the rain as if through their eyes, and it is moving, and strange, and magical, that water falls from the sky and makes things live and grow. She pushes David along one of the hallways and thinks that wheelchairs too, though man-made, are strange and moving. And aging, what an odd thing that happens to us, utterly strange, shrinking and graying and slowing down. Even her father’s disease strikes her as somehow miraculous, that it exists at all, his shaking, his forgetting. She must be in a weird mood, she thinks, her senses and emotions heightened as she pushes David in his chair to the farthest room at the end of a long hallway.

  “David Christie,” he whispers to a woman sitting in an upright recliner, a small bowl of uneaten rice pudding on her pink plastic lap tray.

  The woman smiles but says nothing. Avery pushes David’s chair closer to her. He takes her hand and says, “I hope I can count on you.”

  “Oh yes, of course,” the woman says.

  “Your name?” David whispers.

  “My friends call me Shirley.”

  “Shirley,” David says. His hand, still holding hers, is shaking.

  On to the next room, and the next. He still has it, Avery thinks. And very few people have it—a natural charm that draws people in. Kennedy had it, so did Jackie, and Bruce Springsteen does, and Julia Roberts, and George Clooney—not her type, but he definitely has it. Her mother too. There’s something magnetic about her. Men like her, always have. Messy emotions and all. Maybe that’s part of the draw, who knows. So she’s the daughter of two people who have it, but it isn’t genetic.

  David keeps shaking hands, asking the same question: “Can I count on you?”

  Whatever they think he means, they say yes, you can count on me.

  Some rooms are too dark, and lost in time. TVs blare reruns of Murder, She Wrote and The Dick Van Dyke Show and Ironside. In one room Andy Griffith is a young sheriff in black-and-white Mayberry, and in the next room he has aged a quarter century into Matlock. Game show contestants scream and jump in place and cry. A woman on a soap opera says to another woman, “Over my cold, dead body will you take my daughter away from me!”

  Avery pushes David’s wheelchair into a room with a man, older than David, still in bed. David whispers to her, “Not here.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “He’s out to get me,” David says. Then he says to the man, “Hey, Bill—hey.”

  “He can’t hear you.”

  “Tell him I’m still standing.”

  “I hate to break the news,” Avery says, “but you’re not standing.”

  David looks down at his chair and smiles.

  Then he turns back to the man and whispers, “You can’t ignore me, Bill.”

  The man cups his hand around his ear and says, “Huh?”

  “Move me closer,” David says. Avery pushes his chair into the room and beside the man’s bed.

  “I’m still here, Bill,” David whispers. “I will never concede.”

  “Who’s Bill?” the man says to Avery.

  “Don’t play dumb,” David says to the man.

  The man presses his call button, and Avery says, “Let’s keep moving.”

  As she’s pushing David’s chair toward the lobby, he says, “Be careful—they’re watching.”

  “Who?”

  “There are cameras everywhere.”

  “Don’t worry,” Avery says. “I took care of that.”

  “Thank you,” David says. “I knew I could trust you.”

  They pause in the lobby and listen to rain blow against windows and glass doors. A flash of lightning, and the lights flicker. “It’s coming,” David says.

  “We’re gonna need a bigger boat,” Avery says. When David doesn’t react, she says, “That’s from Jaws.”

  “First date we went on after we had kids.”

  “That’s great that you remember.”

  “My son was seven and my daughter was one, I think.”

  “Do you know who I am?”

  “My chief of staff,” he says. “My chief of everything.”

  “My name,” she says.

  “Avery who goes to college.”

  David points to a nurse behind the large desk near the entrance. She’s tall and thin, her gray hair pulled back into a bun. “Go tell her,” David says.

  “Tell her what?”

  “What’s going on.”

  “Can you be more specific?”

  “Bill,” he says.

  “I don’t think Bill’s going to give us any trouble.”

  “She’ll know what to do.”

  “What should I say?”

  “You’ll know.”

  Avery walks toward the nurse with no idea what to say. She can’t possibly say that a man not named Bill is out to get David, and she can’t say that David believes that a man not named Bill is out to get him, and she can’t stand in front of the nurse and pretend to speak to her—move her mouth, gesture with her hands—for David’s benefit, or else the nurse will throw her out. Maybe: “Mr. Christie is a little off today.” Maybe: “I’m worried about Mr. Christie.” Maybe: “I’m worried about my father.”

  She says, “May I please have a cup of water—for Mr. Christie. I’m visiting with him today, and he said he’s thirsty.”

  “Sure,” the nurse says, and brings Avery a paper cup filled with cold water. “Anyth
ing else, let us know.”

  “Thank you,” Avery says.

  But when Avery tries to give David the water, holding the cup near his lips, he turns his head and pinches his mouth shut like a child who doesn’t want to take his medicine. “They got to her,” he says. “She’s one of them now.”

  “She seems very nice,” Avery says.

  David’s eyes narrow. “They didn’t get to you, did they?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “Take me back to my room.”

  When they’re in his room, David asks Avery to close the door. “I need you to help me,” he says.

  “Anything,” Avery says.

  “My raincoat.”

  “Are you cold?”

  “Please, my raincoat.”

  Avery finds a long beige raincoat in the closet. “Burberry—very nice,” she says. She leans David forward in his chair, fits the coat behind him, helps his arms through the sleeves, tries to straighten it out as much as possible.

  “Better?” she says.

  “Better,” he whispers. “But now I need to get out.”

  “It’s not the best weather for a walk, you know.”

  “Listen to me,” he whispers. “I need you to get me out of here.”

  *

  I’m taking Mr. Christie out for a few hours.

  Mr. Christie asked me to take him out—only for a few hours.

  I’m taking Mr. Christie for a drive.

  This storm, I know, but I’ll have him back in a few hours.

  I’m taking my father out. We’ll be back later.

  Yes, my father.

  You’ve seen me here.

  We don’t have the same name.

  Because I changed it.

  Because I wanted to.

  Not that daughter. His other daughter.

  For the past month Avery has worried about running into that daughter, but she must visit on weekends.

  She pushes David’s wheelchair past the nurses’ station, practicing in her mind what she might say. She parks him beside the residents watching the rain. Best to do this in stages, she thinks. She is wearing her raincoat, and so is David, and that might raise suspicions, but before anyone has a chance to question her, she thinks: Screw this, I am his daughter, and pushes his chair outside.

  Stages, she thinks. Take it slow.

  They pause outside the entrance, under a carport, watching the storm. She keeps glancing back at the front desk, waiting for the tall nurse with gray hair to turn away or walk away or—

  The nurse answers the phone and then starts looking through some files. Now, Avery thinks.

  She speed-walks to the Subaru, rain pelting her face, and then fumbles with the keys. She opens the front passenger door, moves David’s wheelchair closer to the car, locks the wheels, straddles the chair’s footrest, puts her arms around her father, bends her knees, and pulls her father to his feet. She turns him and lowers him into the car, then lifts his legs in. She makes sure he’s seated straight and fastens his seat belt. She pulls up on the wheelchair’s seat—she has watched the nurses do this—and it folds in on itself, its sides pressed together; she lifts it into the back of the Outback. She hurries around to the driver side and gets into the car, soaked but exhilarated at having gotten this far.

  She imagines someone knocking on the car window, and what she would say: “He’s my father. I’m his daughter.” Remember those two words, father and daughter, and everything will be okay. Those two words are the truth, and you can’t get in trouble for stating the truth.

  Actually, she thinks, you can.

  “So,” she says to her father, “where would you like to go?”

  “Anywhere,” he whispers. “Away from here.”

  *

  Avery is giving David a tour of campus. Not that they can see much with the rain falling so hard. Even on high, the wipers can’t keep the windshield clear. Driving’s making Avery dizzy. She points out her dorm, the bookstore, and the bust of James Buchanan, which drunk students have been peeing on for over one hundred years. “That’s the library,” she says. “There’s this nook no one seems to know about except me. It’s dark, and if you stay still the motion-sensor lights don’t come on. You have to use the light from your phone to read. This is probably really boring, huh.”

  “I’m sorry,” David whispers. “Sometimes I get lost.”

  “Me too.”

  “I know this place,” David says.

  “Maybe you’ve been here before,” Avery says, and immediately regrets it. She’s fishing; she knows that. What does she expect—or want—him to say? Yes, it’s all coming back to me now. My wife used to teach here. She died years ago. So did my son. But I have two daughters still alive, and I know you’re one of them. I’m sorry I wasn’t a father to you. It’s no excuse, but I was in pain, I was angry, I was humiliated, I was guilty, and I needed to take it out on someone, and it shouldn’t have been you. But here we are now, so let’s make up for lost time.

  “I had a dream about this place,” he says. “Are you part of the dream?”

  “I’m real,” Avery says.

  “Tell me the truth.” David’s head shakes in a no motion. His hands are crossed on his lap as if each is trying to hold the other still.

  “The truth?” Avery says.

  “Should we concede?”

  “As your chief of everything, my advice is: you’ll know when it’s time.”

  “I don’t feel like stumping today.”

  “Let’s get lunch.”

  “Not at the state fair.”

  “The state fair’s rained out,” Avery says. “I know this great taco place. Do you like tacos?”

  “I don’t remember,” David says.

  *

  The taco place, called Angel Tacos, probably should have been called Angel’s Tacos because the owner’s name is Angel, but it sounds better without the possessive, Avery thinks, because it makes the tacos sound as if they’re heavenly good. And they are. Peter was the one who took Avery to Angel Tacos—one point for him for being a first-year and already knowing about a taco place not many students know about.

  She drives away from campus and through Buchanan, past row homes, people smoking on porches, watching the storm.

  She thought she knew where the taco place was, but now that she’s in the vicinity—she thinks she is, anyway—she’s not so sure. She drives carefully down a long, steep hill, and at the bottom, after driving slowly through a deep puddle, she pulls the car over to wait out the rain—not that it seems to be letting up—and to try to remember whether to turn right or left at the bodega where students buy cigarettes and rolling papers.

  She turns off the wipers. “Looks like we’re in a car wash,” she says, and then she and her father are quiet, just the rain against the car, and maybe they can stay here for a while, forget lunch, maybe she should turn to him and say those two words, father, daughter—four words, my father, your daughter—eight words, you are my father, I am your daughter. But she doesn’t want to confuse him, or frighten him, and even if he does understand, he might forget a few minutes later.

  “Tell me the truth,” he whispers.

  “Do you remember your name?”

  “David.”

  “Last name?”

  “David . . .” He stares at the rain through the windshield. Avery looks where he’s looking, but it makes her dizzy. She looks back at him. “David . . .”

  “Christie,” she says.

  “Am I married?”

  “You were.”

  “I’m sorry if I’ve asked you these questions before.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “Remind me of your name.”

  “Avery.”

  “Avery who goes to college.”

  “My last name is Modern,” Avery says.

  “Avery Modern,” David whispers.

  “Actually,” Avery says, but pauses, unsure what comes next, if anything should. She imagines saying, “Actually, my last name use
d to be Bautista-Christie.”

  Pounding on her window startles Avery. She can make out a blurry man. She thinks: Carjack.

  The man bangs on the window again.

  Maybe he’s in trouble, she thinks. She rolls down the window a few inches and rain blows into her face. He’s a middle-aged white man with a ponytail and a long beard. He looks like Willie Nelson, but taller.

  “Get out of the car!”

  “I don’t know you,” she says. Before she can locate the power-lock button, the man pulls open her door.

  He’s standing in water above his knees.

  “Flash flood,” he says. “You need to get out of this vehicle.”

  The man lifts Avery from the car and carries her through the water to a Ford pickup a few feet away. Two children, a boy and a girl in school uniforms, probably the man’s kids, sit in the passenger seat. The man lays Avery in the truck bed and says, “Don’t move.”

  Avery pulls up her hood and watches the man wade back to the Subaru to get David. “He can’t walk,” she calls out to the man, but he doesn’t seem to hear her.

  Shit, she thinks. Shit. Fuck.

  Peter. His mother’s car.

  Her father.

  She tries to think of a plan. What to tell Peter. How to get her father back. What to say to the nursing staff.

  When the man lays David next to her, Avery says, “His wheelchair is in the back. I can’t leave it.”

  “He can get it later.”

  “I can’t leave it.”

  The man goes back to get the wheelchair. “Thank you,” Avery calls out, but her words seem to get lost in the wind and rain. David’s hair is soaked flat, but somehow—maybe it’s the Burberry—he manages to look not too bad. She puts her arm around him. The children turn to look at Avery and David, then turn away again.

  “This is real,” he whispers.

  “Yes,” she says.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Are you okay?”

  He smiles and says, “I think it’s time to concede.”

  The man carries the folded wheelchair above the water and lays it on the truck bed. He tries to start his truck, but the engine won’t turn.

  He tries again. Nothing.

  On the third try, it starts, and he drives them away from the water deepening around them.