“Should I say something to her?” Rudy had asked.
Bee bit her lower lip, thinking. “Don’t congratulate her.”
Rudy decided to spare his daughter the mortification of old Dad chiming in on this life event and just gave her an extra tight hug that night. Oh, but how he’d wept openly when he gave CeCe away at her wedding. Everything about their daughter had been a funny, frustrating, maddening, delightful surprise.
Right now, Rudy was going to drive home, skip dinner, skip turning on the lights, skip the record player and cabernet, and head straight upstairs and under the covers, cocooning into the gentle center of his marital bed.
13
“Papa?” Something was wrong. CeCe hadn’t called Rudy “Papa” since she was a little girl. She must be in danger. He hadn’t saved Bethany. Now he must rescue his daughter! Where was she?
“Papa?” She was playing in the white water of the surf, which only came up to her waist. Every tenth wave or so, a big swell rolled in that could knock a child tumbling. It wasn’t enough to watch from his towel. Rudy had better wade into the water with her. Breakers always came in a series, increasing in size, the largest startling the swimmers. But then there were rogue waves—anomaly monsters that could sweep a person from the shore to their death. (Or maybe CeCe was trapped between the steps of the ladder on the slide in their backyard?)
Something—the surf!—shook Rudy’s shoulder. He tugged away from its grip, trying to wade through a strong undertow. Why had he let her swim alone? What was wrong with him?
“DAD!” A statement this time. The signature tinge of disdain.
Rudy was in trouble.
He opened his eyes. He’d been sleeping. In bed! During the day.
Cecilia had her back to him now, opening the curtains. Sharp shoulder blades, expert creases ironed into the sleeves of her brown cardigan. The afternoon pierced Rudy’s head. He sat up, combing his fingers through his hair, smiling, hoping he looked alert.
“It’s two o’clock.” Cecilia winced at this unfortunate fact, as though it were a bad grade on his report card.
In the days following his chat with Detective Jensen, Rudy had gone from catnaps in the afternoons—something hailed by Bethany as healthy—to sleeping in later and later. Getting up to make toast, which he ate back in bed. By Friday, he was sleeping whenever he didn’t have to work, and had stopped changing out of his pajama bottoms and T-shirt. A few days he called in sick.
At work, Rudy could tell that Sasha was clearly concerned. They had only had one real date. But it seemed to hold such promise. It felt like a lifetime ago, when it had only been a week—and now she met him at the stairs every day during her break, shyly asking what she could do to help shake him out of his doldrums. A movie? She was a wonder to Rudy, but those brief moments of contact brought him a big lift then plunged him into shame and despair for being so disheveled, so suddenly incoherent. He found himself ducking out of their typically lively chats sooner than he wanted to. It was like he was lost on the freeway now, and couldn’t find the exit back to his old self.
Hell, he couldn’t even read anymore. Concentration had become so fleeting. Where once there had been concentration, now there were moths and flies, flittering, fluttering, landing too briefly on the words in the pages of his books. The same page over and over and over each night before turning out the light. The inability to focus, the forgetting to buy milk. He feared the worst—dementia, Alzheimer’s—then decided it would be a relief to not remember that he’d ever even known his exquisite wife. Once the light was out, he lay there, his thoughts the only moths now, just hanging there limply, shedding that weird mushroomy dust. Sometimes he’d give up on drifting off, flick the light back on and just stare at the wall. He hated the wall. He loved the wall, the color Bethany chose to paint their bedroom—the very palest celery. Over the weekend, he went from sleeping all the time to not being able to sleep at all. He’d always been a heavy sleeper. (Someone who might snooze through a person’s death, say. Jackass.) Now he slept lightly, watchfully.
On Monday, he dragged himself to Dr. Martin, his physician, (not Bee’s quack!) who prescribed Ambien as a temporary measure. Rudy only took it one night—just before turning out the light, as instructed—and fell asleep soon after. He awoke the next morning in that only-moments-later way as if emerging from surgery. Only there was no grogginess. There was nothing. It had been a dreamless sleep. He had the uneasy feeling of not knowing where the sleep had gone. There was always a little twinkling of something left in your brain when you first woke up. He knew he hadn’t gotten up and ordered a llama on the Internet or fixed and eaten raw pancake batter. But still the feeling spooked him. The pills hardly felt like a grief remedy. Ambien was probably a good medication to have on a trip, when you had jetlag. On your retirement to Italy with your lifelong partner who knew all about art history, Rudy thought bitterly.
“I won’t be bitter,” he said aloud to the room. It was a promise to Bethany. He was not one of those people who would go to her grave and speak to her. He’d never been religious. But now he envied these people. It was a ritual, after all. And just as good, he imagined, and far cheaper, than talking to any shrink. He once saw a family picnicking at a gravesite on Memorial Day and thought how purely un-morose this was. He’d had the urge to wave to them, which would have been ridiculous, of course, but he’d felt such admiration for their outing.
“I’m just really worried about you.” CeCe, sitting on the bed beside him now. She had been talking for a number of minutes. Rudy didn’t want to let on that he’d missed whatever else she’d said. She gently rubbed his shin through the covers. She scooted closer to him. It concerned him that her tone was void of any impatience or irritation now—that it was so empathetic. Empathy wasn’t a Girl Scout badge CeCe had earned.
Rudy sipped water from the glass by his nightstand. Again, he was ashamed of how unkempt he was, unbathed. Surely he had bad breath, maybe even smelled badly in general. But the sadness, and the magnet in the center of the bed, conspired to make the shower seem miles away. His mouth felt mossy. Again he tried to pat his hair into place, but there wasn’t any patting to be done really, because it was greasy and stuck to his head. His hand brushed the sharp stubble on his chin. He saw himself through his daughter’s eyes, and frankly was surprised she didn’t look more horrified.
“I’m fine,” he insisted. “Become a bit of a night owl.” He sat up further on the pillows, tried to make his voice jolly.
“The store said you called in sick.”
“Stomach bug,” he fibbed.
CeCe nodded. The long silence was like a dripping faucet in Rudy’s head.
“I can’t sleep,” he finally confessed. “Then, during the day, I can’t stay awake.”
“I understand.” CeCe spoke as though addressing a good but off-kilter employee. “Which is why Dr. Martin would just like to admit you to the hospital long enough to get some rest, have some tests done, rule a few things out. Perhaps try some medications? Mainly get some rest.”
“What? Who gets rest in a hospital?”
“Well, as I was explaining, he and I were talking and he’s very concerned and would like to admit you today.”
Admit? Today? Were those the words Rudy had missed while struggling to wake up?
“To the . . . hospital?”
CeCe stood, crossed her arms over her slender belly, nodded. “It won’t be for long. And I’ll come every day.” She paused, added, “Dad. Missing work, daytime sleeping? And I see your refrigerator and cupboards . . .” She trailed off.
“CeCe, darling. I love you. However, you are not my parole officer.”
As he set his feet on the floor—socks mismatched—Rudy could see that his stalwart daughter’s eyes were filling with tears. One escaped onto her cheek and she quickly brushed it away. Her hands were small and red and chapped. He wanted to rub them between his to warm them. The last time he’d seen CeCe cry was at her mother’s funeral, and before that
—well, he couldn’t remember.
He stood and gave her a light hug, worried again about not having showered.
“Honestly, sweetheart. I promise you I’m all right.” Bethany hadn’t even been admitted to the hospital, and she’d died! Why did Rudy need to go? What tests couldn’t be done in a lab or with an MRI? “Oh! And I’ve just had a bunch of tests,” he pointed out. He remembered now that he’d had the checkup that CeCe and Spencer had insisted upon after Bee’s frighteningly sudden death. Aside from low sodium indicating perhaps an electrolyte imbalance, low magnesium, and a slightly elevated pulse, Rudy was in pretty good shape.
His pajama bottoms were sweatpants, the top a long-sleeved cotton Jingle Bell Fun Run tee from a Goodwill bag when Bethany had last cleaned out their closet. She’d died before having a chance to take the bags in, and instead of doing laundry, Rudy “shopped” from them, reaching in and putting on whatever was his. Now he donned his moccasin slippers, and headed for the bathroom, where he peed, brushed his teeth, took a long hot shower with a shave, and changed into the jeans and polo shirt he was grateful to find his daughter had hung from the back of the bathroom door. He emerged feeling refreshed, and made a pep rally–like pitch for brunch.
“C’mon!” he declared too loudly. “I’ll make you eggs Benedict!”
“Pretty soon it’ll be suppertime,” CeCe said softly.
“Good thing this establishment serves breakfast all day.” He clapped his hands together. When you got right down to it, being mentally fit was something you could pull off in bursts—like acting in the school play.
His daughter smiled weakly and left the room ahead of him. As he started down the stairs, she made her usual tour of the house to look at and cradle and touch all of the pictures of her mother—on walls and end tables, the refrigerator, tucked between the glass and frames of mirrors. Rudy had sprinkled more photos of Bee all around the house since her death, but at CeCe’s place she’d only hung two additional photos—black-and-white portraits of her mother in college—as though she were on a grief diet. Rudy wondered if there was anything his daughter wasn’t disciplined about. It was a funny feeling as a parent—being proud, filled with loving admiration, and also a little afraid of this perfect child.
The eggs in the refrigerator were expired, but not too expired, Rudy was pretty sure. There wasn’t any milk, but by some miracle there were English muffins and a stick of butter. A package of bacon in the meat drawer! He got out two frying pans. He put on an apron, turned on the radio, and set some coffee brewing.
“Smells good.” CeCe nodded at the pan on the stove as Rudy layered in strips of bacon.
“Well, I had lunch,” she said, her tone suddenly a bit nervous. “But I’ll join you.” She took out placemats and silverware and started setting the kitchen table. “Napkins?”
“Bachelor,” Rudy sighed, pointing at the paper towels. Bee had a system where everyone had his or her own napkin ring, so you could tell which was your linen napkin. But the rings lay empty in the basket on the side table now, the napkins all dirty somewhere. Rudy loved, yet somehow didn’t have the heart to keep up with, Bee’s day-to-day household customs.
“It’s not like the booby hatch,” CeCe explained, her voice serious, apologetic. “It’s the medical-psych floor.”
Rudy held a strip of bacon dangling from his fingertips. “The what?”
Since Bethany’s death, Rudy had become a connoisseur of worst-case scenarios. He worried about all the terrible things that could go wrong or happen to a person—ran these scenarios over and over in his head during the insomnia. Car accidents, hiking tragedies. He’d convinced himself it wasn’t safe to take a shower while living alone. He’d remembered a story about a shaving cream can exploding and killing a woman.
“As I was saying.” CeCe took ChapStick from her purse, dabbed it on her lips a bit excessively. “At Stanford. The medical-psych ward—well, people go for all kinds of things.”
The bacon popped and snapped, and a spray of fat burned Rudy’s wrist. “Dammit!” he shouted at the pan. The heat was too high. I can’t even cook goddamned bacon and eggs for my daughter on a Sunday afternoon. Rudy felt a wave of self-hatred like nausea. Then it was interrupted by another thought. Was it even Sunday?
“Well, Dr. Martin will admit you ahead of time and you can go straight up to the unit—it’s very private. He and I have been talking, and he’s let me know that there’s a bed available this afternoon. They’re holding it.” She folded sheets of paper towels into triangles, creased and creased them again. Arranged forks and knives over them. “You’ll get back on a regular schedule. Depression is very common after the loss of a loved one, Dad, especially a spouse.”
Rudy thought CeCe sounded like one of those TV ads on late at night—the plaid lady blending into the plaid couch, suddenly getting up and smiling after taking the advertised pills. Rudy did not feel like a plaid sofa, as depressing a piece of furniture as that might be. And Dr. Martin was his doctor. CeCe wasn’t even his patient! This was certainly a violation of privacy, his daughter always thinking everyone needed to rise to her standards or the earth would crash into the sun.
“What about HIPPA?” he asked. “And what is rest a euphemism for? Because we all know that rest is the last thing you get in the hospital. Besides, it was your mother who clearly needed medically ordered rest. But we all missed that one, didn’t we? Let her work so many hours, always standing, never complaining. We missed that one, and we lost her, and now you want to commit me?”
“What, Dad, no.” Cecilia’s eyes filled with tears again, and she rushed toward the stove, trying to hug him.
He took a step away from her, holding out the bacon tongs as though he were ready to joust.
She didn’t know it, but Rudy harbored more criticisms of himself than his daughter could dish out in a lifetime, because there was no one who hated Rudy more than Rudy when it came to the loss of his beautiful wife’s life.
“Let’s look at reality: I lost my real job, and your mother went on working herself to death so she could get her hospital pension while I worked at my kooky part-time idiot job.”
Women adore him at Nordstrom, Bethany had always bragged at parties or when they ran into friends, exaggerating the regard in which he was held at the department store. He felt silly now for having appreciated that praise after his humiliating layoff.
“You want to commit me to the nuthouse? Fine.” He turned off the heat under the eggs, the yolks of which were becoming a little too solid.
CeCe gripped the back of a kitchen chair as though it were a towel she was trying to wring out. “It’s not the nuthouse,” she said in an almost-whisper. “Not the cuckoo’s nest.”
“I’ll go, but I am not losing my mind.” Who was he kidding? He had already lost his mind. It was as though he’d left it in the car trunk or piano bench. He felt that absentminded, that blank and lonely. His mind had become a haunted house. Sleeping all day unbathed in sour old Goodwill bag clothes? Christ, he didn’t even know what day it was now.
Rudy had always been absentminded—a trait Bee compensated for. What was Cecilia’s definition of losing it, anyway? Laundering your ChapStick? Putting the milk away in the cereal cupboard? Rudy was guilty on two counts there. He’d accidentally laundered a large load of nothing but water and soap. During the worst draught in one hundred years—before he lost Bee. He remembered her chiding him sweetly. “Composing a sonata in that bright mind of yours, no doubt,” she’d insisted, kissing his cheek, forehead, and hair in a signature display of affection he’d appreciated and taken for granted at the same time. Isn’t that what marriage was? For better and for granted . . . Sweetheart, not right now, let me finish this one page, episode, email. Sure, Rudy had once put the Dustbuster away in the refrigerator. CeCe could write that into her little report to Dr. Martin. It was as though his daughter had come out of the womb clutching a clipboard. But, honestly, was there a more useless appliance on the planet than a Dustbuster? Refrigera
tion could only improve upon its feeble performance. Why was Rudy so irritated—no, angry—with his daughter?
Okay, sure, every day by at least noon he was certain he was, indeed, collapsing into insanity, but this was not for his compulsively flawless daughter to determine.
“Nobody says you’re losing your mind,” CeCe said softly. “Thank you for going in, going in and just, just, just getting checked.” For a brief time as a child CeCe had stuttered. Every so often it came out—always shocking Rudy, because he couldn’t ever remember her being anything but perfect. “They have a bed available tonight. We just go to the ER, but they take us right back and admit you. It’s completely private.”
Rudy served up the plates, watching his daughter’s face as he did so. He could see she was genuinely worried, her eyes red around the rims from crying, the circles beneath them as purple and delicate as plum skin.
He thought of one word: burden. He had become a burden to his child. He sighed. Certainly he wouldn’t trouble her with the Detective Jensen situation now. This was hardly the time.
“Don’t worry, sweetie, I’ll go. Thank you for all the work you’ve done.”
He gathered himself, breathed in calm. It was easier to think of this trip to the hospital if it was for CeCe. What had he done for his daughter since her mother died, anyway? He hated himself for just moments ago wanting to shake her by her slender shoulders—the familiar knobs at the top like finials. For wanting to shout, “GRIEVE MY WAY!”
“I got a list from the doc of what to pack,” she added more cheerfully. “You can bring your laptop and everything.”
They sat down together and ate, both of them clearly hungry by now. No eggs Benedict. Just eggs and toasted muffins and bacon and thankfully juice from an unopened carton.
Rudy covered the top of the carton with his hand.
“Guess the sell-by date.”
“1974,” CeCe said through a mouthful of eggs, a bit of her lopsided smile even showing.
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