by Alan Shapiro
By the end of the letter, his daughters were crying; his father sobbed.
Miriam said, “It’s a shame, Ethan, you were never famous.”
What was wrong with everyone? Sam and Curly were shaking their heads, the way they did on the opening night of Sunset Boulevard when she had shown how disappointed she was that Ethan hadn’t landed a bigger role in the show. And Ethan, Ethan was looking up at her the way he had so many years ago, whenever she’d forced him to go to Stuart’s, or when they’d visited her father and she had asked him to perform, to sing a song for his grandpa—he was looking at her with such hatred you’d have thought she’d given him the cancer. What had she said? He had so much talent, more talent than almost anyone, and if life were fair, he’d have gotten what he had worked so hard for, what he deserved. Was that such a terrible thing to say? Why wouldn’t anyone look at her? Only Ethan looked at her and his look said, what kind of monster are you? It must be the tumor, she decided, those drugs he’s taking. Her poor boy.
She said, “Honey, can I get you something? Are you thirsty?”
He just rolled over and said nothing.
From then on, he was always sleeping when she was there.
SAM HAD TAKEN Curly back to the hotel, but Miriam hadn’t been ready to leave yet. She had been at Ethan’s bedside all day, every day, for the past three weeks, even though everybody had begged her, Alice especially, to take a break. Three days ago, the nurse had said Ethan could go at any moment. So at the end of each of the past three days, Miriam had said good-bye to Ethan, as if for the last time. Something in Ethan’s uneven breathing and the way the tip of his tongue peaked from the corner of his mouth told her tonight would be the last night. On the windowsill, there was a vase holding a single iris, at the top of which a bud was on the verge of opening into a purple blossom. Outside the window, under an enormous elm tree, a nurse on break was smoking a cigarette, pacing back and forth outside the front door of the hospice. Beyond her and the circular driveway, cars were passing by in both directions, red lights running into white lights, white lights into red. What day of the week was it, a Friday? If so, many of the people in those cars were no doubt heading out for the evening, to dinner maybe or to a movie. How many children would be conceived tonight? How many would be born? Sunrise, sunset. Swiftly flow the years. As the nurse paced, the tip of the cigarette burned like a wayward star. Her uniform was incandescent under the dark leaves. Behind her, Miriam could hear Ethan’s ragged breathing. She could sense the flower’s machinery pumping water up through the stem into the bud, the water changing invisibly, moment by moment, into petals, into fragrance, the fragrance wafting out into the night where somebody, maybe the nurse down there, still pacing, would breathe it in with the raveled threads of smoke. It was obscene how beautiful that budding flower was; how sweet it soon would smell, how bright the nurse’s bright white uniform was against the darkness. It was outrageous that there were people anywhere not mourning. It was absurd and stupid that her son would be dead by the time the flower broke into bloom. Miriam grabbed the arrogant little stalk of it and threw it in the trash. She called Sam to tell him she was ready to go; he should come right away to pick her up.
IT WAS ONE a.m. when Sam returned from the hospice with the news that Ethan had died. The vigil was over. Curly broke into sobs. Miriam said nothing. She pulled a chair to the hotel window. She sat, staring out at the black night. Sam threw some blankets on the floor. Curly got into bed. Wouldn’t it be funny, Sam thought, if tonight of all nights he wet the floor and had to get in bed with his parents? But it was a king mattress, not twin beds. There’d be no crack. No place for him to sleep.
When he woke, he found Curly still asleep in bed, and Miriam still sitting in the chair, staring out the hotel window. “Ma,” he said, “do you want some breakfast? Can I get you anything?” She didn’t answer. She didn’t move. All day she sat there, staring out the window of the Holiday Inn.
JUST BEFORE THE service was to begin, the funeral director approached the family.
“Before we start,” he said, “we have one last piece of business. I’m so sorry. I should have had you do this when you arrived. But before we can close the casket, someone in the family has to identify the body. It’s just a formality. It won’t take a second.”
Miriam said, “Sam, you go do this. I just can’t do it, and you know it’s too much for your father. Go with the man, please.”
Sam came back, ashen. “Are you okay, dear?” Miriam asked, but he just sat there, staring straight ahead, saying nothing.
The service was beautiful. Ethan’s daughters both spoke about Ethan as a kind and devoted father, how funny he had been, how much they’d miss him. Several of Ethan’s show business friends gave testimonials to Ethan’s unforgettable voice and his charismatic stage presence. Miriam wasn’t amused by the funny stories they told of his short-tempered personality, but she savored every compliment, every remembered instance of his generous heart, his loyalty, his comedic gifts. Miriam wanted Sam to speak; he was the writer in the family, after all, but Sam refused. He sat beside Miriam without expression, off in his own little world, as always.
As they were filing out of the funeral home, Sam disappeared into a side chapel. The limousine was waiting out front to take them to the cemetery. This was no time for his shenanigans. She told Curly she’d be right out; he should tell the driver she’d be just a minute.
Sam was sitting in the back pew off to the side, slumped over, his face in his hands. His sobs reverberated in the chapel. When was the last time she had seen him cry? She put her arm around him.
“Honey,” she said, “come on now, we have to go, the limo’s waiting.”
“He was waxy, Ma,” he said. “He was cold and waxy, like a wax statue, like a mannequin.”
Miriam shivered. Suddenly it was sixty-five years ago and she was in the back room of her mother’s shop, surrounded by bald-headed plastic bodies.
“And the hair was all wrong, it was combed down over his forehead, like he was hiding a bald spot or something—and the mouth, the lips, they were all wrong, it wasn’t him, it just wasn’t him. Didn’t you give them a picture?” Now he looked at her. There was more rage than sorrow in his face. She couldn’t speak.
“Why did I have to do it?” he said. “Why me?”
“Do what?” she asked, not knowing what else to say.
“That should have been your job. Not mine. You don’t ask a child to do a thing like that.”
“But you’re not a child, Sam, you’re a man,” she said.
“That,” he said, pointing back behind him, “that thing in there—how am I going to see anything but that from now on when I think of him? How am I going to get that image of him out of my head?”
“No, darling, no,” she said, and he stiffened as she tried to pull him closer. “You’ll see him; you’ll see Ethan, your brother, as he was, as he really was, on a stage singing and dancing.”
“Remains to be seen,” he said, and laughed without amusement.
“What?” she asked.
“I’ll see a corpse,” he said.
When she didn’t reply, he added, “You’re right, Ma, though, about one thing: I’m a man. I’ve always been a man; I was never a child.”
“No, that’s not what I meant,” she said, choking back her own sobs now. “You’re my youngest, my baby.”
“I was never a child,” he repeated.
“What do you mean?”
“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “What can it matter now?”
“Oh, darling,” she said. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” And now his resistance slackened as she pulled him close. He was like a boy again, a child. When was the last time she had held him like this, her baby? Had she ever done so? Was there ever a time? “Oh, darling,” she repeated, her voice now hoarse with sorrow. “I’m sorry; I’m so sorry for everything.” And they sat like that together until the funeral director came to tell them that the limos were waiting; it wa
s time to go.
Scene II
She had one knee replaced. Sam flew out to California to look after Curly while Miriam recuperated. Curly was nearly blind now, incontinent, and the Parkinson’s made his hands shake so badly when he ate that most of the food ended up on the floor. Most of what he spooned into his mouth was air.
The night Sam arrived, each separately complained to him about the other. According to Miriam, Curly was and always had been a tightwad, a penny-pincher, a skinflint, who cared more for his meager savings (what he inherited from his perfect father!) than he did for her. He haggled over every expenditure; he made her feel guilty and irresponsible for buying even basic necessities. He hated to travel, hated to go out to dinner. God forbid, she shouldn’t have to cook one night! He would never do anything for her. As his eyesight had worsened, she had taken over paying the bills and keeping records, but he nagged her constantly about what they had, how much she was spending. Whenever she talked with anyone long distance, he hovered by the phone, pointing to his watch to remind her how much the call was costing. He refused to believe her when she’d say they had unlimited minutes on the weekend or in the evenings, the only times she ever made long-distance calls. He was self-absorbed and pig-headed and wouldn’t put himself out in even the smallest ways to make her life easier. He refused, for instance, to sit down when he peed. Just refused to do it, no explanation or justification offered. He’d stand because that’s how he’d always done it, never mind the mess he made or how bad the apartment smelled, or how much trouble it caused her, having to clean up after him, day in, day out. What had he ever done for her?
“You know, your father—he’s never loved anybody but himself,” she said. “He never wanted to go and do like my girlfriends’ husbands. I couldn’t complain about it without him saying, ‘Go write your Bosnian pen pal,’ or ‘Thank your lucky stars we’re not in Baghdad.’ But what does it say about your life if the only way you can feel good about it is to think ‘at least I’m not in Baghdad.’ ”
So what if it’s worse for other people somewhere else? She’s not other people. Unfortunately, neither is he.
ACCORDING TO CURLY, Miriam took good care of him. Boy, did she ever. She was two-faced, a phony, all “darling this” and “darling that” when others were around, but a regular Bride of Frankenstein when it was just the two of them. He knew he was a handful, but what could he do? Was it his fault he had gotten old and sick? Besides, she’d been complaining about him for as long as he could remember; what had he ever done for her? what had he ever done for her? What hadn’t he done, that’s what he wanted to know. He had worked like a dog, he had paid the bills, she had made nothing working for that faygela Stuart; he had bought her a good house, a car; he had never cheated on her, had never beaten her. What the hell else did she want?
LATER THAT NIGHT, Sam was helping his mother down the hallway to the bedroom. They passed the guest bathroom. The door was open. There was Curly standing at the toilet. He was looking down, shouting at his penis, “Piss you, goddamn it, piss!”
She called out, “Who are you talking to in there?”
He called back, “No one you would know, sweetheart.”
She laughed all the way to bed, where the pain in her knee would keep her up all night.
ON THE FIRST Passover after Ethan’s death, Sam visited his parents again. Curly slept most of the time. Miriam was so overweight, she couldn’t stand up without panting and sweating. She wouldn’t let anyone help her prepare or serve any meal, not even breakfast, though she complained constantly about having to do all the work herself. Afterward, she wouldn’t let anyone help clean up. Instead, she panted, she sweated; like her mother, she said, “Oy Gottenyu,” as she hobbled around; she said, “I’m tired of taking care of everyone. Your father, he should be in a nursing home already.” Curly started to cry. She told him to forget it; he wasn’t going anywhere. They couldn’t afford it, anyway. Now she was crying, too.
THE APARTMENT COMPLEX held a luau in the Aloha Room. As Miriam and Curly entered, their neighbor Sabina came up to Curly and put a lei around his neck. She said, “Curly, do you want a lei?” And he said, “Boy, do I want a lay!”
Scene III
The poetry reading was supposed to start at four thirty. That was the time he had told her. She had written it down. She had gotten directions. She and Emma, Ethan’s youngest, had gotten there at four fifteen. Now it was four thirty-five, the room was nearly empty, and Sam himself had only just arrived. She had never been to a poetry reading before, except for the choral recitations back in high school, which she had hated. In fact, she’d never actually read through any of his books. Oh, she was proud of his achievements. She bragged about him to all her friends. She kept his books out on the coffee table for all to see. But the truth of the matter was, his poems befuddled, enraged, or depressed her. She hated the way he wrote about the family, and her, in particular. He would find so much “significance” and “complexity” in moments she remembered (if she remembered them at all) as being meaningless, or happy in a simple, uncomplicated way. Everything he wrote about was tinted with gloom or anger. Nobody, not even Sam himself, came off as especially attractive. People she knew, herself included, were depicted with warts and all, living lives that were a far cry from everything she had once wanted to see on the stage. Nothing he wrote about could she imagine in a musical—how do you sing about bedpans, hospices, the Holocaust?
But never mind what or how he wrote—she couldn’t stand the fact that he, and he alone, got to present her to the world; she had a right not to be written about, didn’t she? Didn’t she at least have the right to control how she’d be described? Yet let her suggest, however gently, that he got this or that detail wrong, and he’d get all Mr. Fancy-Pants Professor on her (as snooty as Mrs. Pinkerton!) and go on about “the truth” and how she wanted to deny it, wanted to live in an “airbrushed” world. Some defender of the truth, he was. What about that CO essay he had written years ago—how much respect for the truth did he show in that? “Facts,” he’d say, “I’m not talking about facts when I talk about the truth. I’m talking about my experience of facts.” But facts were facts. If he found out that Helen Keller had only been near-sighted and a little hard of hearing, wouldn’t he call her book a lie?
And even if some of what he wrote about was true, did it ever occur to him that there might be some truths worth denying? She’d never gone around telling the world he’d been a bed wetter—for all she knew, maybe he still was; maybe that’s why he had never married. Mr. Don’t-Write-About-Anything-But-The-Truth, why haven’t you hung out that piss-stained laundry? But, God forbid, she should suggest that maybe everything didn’t have to end up in a poem, and suddenly she’s no better than the Nazis. Still, someone must like his work enough to publish it, to give him a job because of it, and to invite him to a fancy university, all expenses paid, to read it to people probably just as depressing as he was.
She had never seen her son “perform.” She had always imagined that a reading would be like an off-Broadway play, only smaller, a little kookier maybe, a dimly lit, smoky room of beatniks snapping fingers while a Maynard G. Krebs look-alike chanted gibberish (“floating face down in the ego swamp”).
A few more people wandered in—the seats were filling up. It was four forty-five now. No one seemed in a hurry to get things started. If it didn’t start soon, it would take her hours to get home on the 405, it would be stop-and-go the whole way. This would never happen in the theater.
Sam came over. He was wearing a tie and jacket, which was good, and a surprise to Miriam, but the jacket looked like it had been slept in by a wino, and the tie was stained and rumpled. A Beau Brummell he wasn’t.
“Ma,” he said, “you got here all right.”
“When are we gonna get this show on the road? I’ve been here since four fifteen, and the traffic’s gonna be murder by the time we get outta here.”
“Ma,” he said, “it’s not my call.”
“I’m just sayin,’ a show’s supposed to start when a show’s supposed to start.”
“Well, I have to say hello to a few people. I’ll see you afterward.”
“Break a leg,” she said, smiling. “Or is it break a line?”
It was five o’clock when he began to read. Everything Ethan was as a performer, Sam wasn’t. Sam fidgeted, he scratched his head, he adjusted his glasses. He couldn’t keep still, like he had ants in his pants. Worst of all, he made no eye contact with the audience; he hadn’t memorized his lines—instead, eyes glued to the book, he read. He read too fast. He mumbled (“Expectorate the spuds!”). It was like he couldn’t wait to get this over with—which in a way she appreciated, considering the traffic—but, still, he could use a little polish, a little training. He didn’t know the first thing about commanding the stage; he didn’t know how to work a crowd. When he finished the first poem, he looked up at the clock to check the time. He finished the second poem, and again he looked up at the clock. She couldn’t contain herself.
“Stop lookin’ at the clock!” she barked.
He looked around, flustered, as if he couldn’t believe his ears, as if he must have dreamt what he had just heard. Was that . . . could she have? He read another poem. When he finished, again he glanced at the clock, and again she called out, “Enough with the clock already. Buy a watch!”
He was fifty years old and his mother was telling him how to give a reading. He was being heckled by his mother! He picked up the pace. He finished the reading in record time. It was clear to everyone he couldn’t get away fast enough. The mild applause hadn’t yet abated when she said, “You’re a big boy—why don’t you wear a watch?”