Just Fly Away

by Andrew McCarthy

  We heard the screen door slam and there was Davis. My dad introduced himself, thanked Davis, and got the name of the medical center where my grandfather was. Davis looked like he had slept in a tree, as usual. His hair was all over the place and he still hadn’t shaved, but he acted like he was dressed in a tuxedo, all calm and confident. I felt ashamed that I had suspected him of being capable of rape and murder. But I wouldn’t have thought of it if my dad hadn’t planted the seed in my mind.

  I was suddenly furious that my father was even there.

  “You know, I’m not some little kid who needs rescuing,” I told him once Davis had left. “I mean, I made it all the way to Maine without any help from anyone. I don’t need to be treated like I have no abilities. I’m quite capable of taking care of myself.”

  My father just looked at me. “I can see that,” he said.

  “Are you staying long?” I asked him.

  “No. We’re not,” he said. “We’re going to go over to the hospital and see your grandfather, then we’ll head home.”

  “I don’t know that I’m ready to go back just yet,” I said.

  My father continued to stare at me. He kept his voice very even. “Well, you just get yourself ready, young lady.”

  “I’ll have to see if that’s what Grandpa wants—” I started to say, but the phone cut me off.

  My father answered it.

  “Oh, hi, Angela,” he said. “This is Michael.” Then there was a short pause and he said, “Yes.” My dad was probably the last person she ever expected to answer her phone. “I came up to get Lucy.” Then he explained that my grandfather was in the hospital. He was quiet for a while, and after they went back and forth a few times, he hung up.

  My father was very tense driving over to the medical center. I knew he wanted to yell at me but he didn’t say a word in the fifteen minutes it took us to get there. I didn’t, either. I might have said I was sorry that I caused them to worry, but let’s face it, he had caused me a lot of heartache the last few months.

  My grandfather had spent an uneventful night, the nurse said. But his blood pressure was very high and they were “concerned.” My father didn’t seem to have any reaction to that news. I was tempted to ask what they meant by concerned, but since my father was there I didn’t. He headed down the hall in the direction the nurse pointed. He was walking faster than usual—I stayed close behind him. I wanted to see what my grandfather’s reaction would be when he saw his son.

  My dad went right into Grandpa’s room without knocking. “I thought I might see you this morning,” my grandfather called out. He was sitting up in bed, finishing a breakfast of rubbery-looking scrambled eggs and mushy toast. He saw me looking over my dad’s shoulder. “Party’s over,” he said.

  My father didn’t turn around to look at me.

  “Hi, Dad,” was all he said. He paused for a second at the end of the bed, then he went up to hug his father. It was an awkward hug, and not just because it’s difficult to hug someone who’s sitting in bed.

  It was strange to hear my father call someone “dad.” He must have done it the last time we were in Maine—I just hadn’t noticed it. It made him seem vulnerable or small or something.

  “How you feeling?” my dad asked as he pulled a chair up near the bed.

  “I’m great, just ask Lulu.” He smiled at me and I gave him a little wave from back by the door. With my father around, I seemed to have lost all my power, like Superman in the same room as kryptonite.

  “Well,” my father said to him, “apparently your blood pressure is still very high, so they may want to keep you here for a while longer.”

  “That’s nonsense. My blood pressure has been high for years. I operate hot, that’s all.”

  “We can talk to the doctor.” My dad seemed to be getting more tired by the second. “Angela called. I told her what happened—”

  “You told Angela? What did you do that for? Now she’ll just worry.”

  “She needs to know what’s going on. She said she was going to change her plane and come—’’

  “Oh, no.”

  “Look, I’ve got to get Lucy back, and you should have someone with you.”

  My grandfather was shaking his head, getting mad. I’m not sure if he didn’t want to disturb his wife’s trip or if it was just being near my father, but he wasn’t happy.

  The doctor came in and explained that high blood pressure was a primary cause of strokes, and since my grandfather had had a few TIAs, the smart thing would be to keep him in the hospital for another day, just to make sure everything settled back down.

  “I’ll go and get you some decent food.” My father finally broke the silence that had descended like a bomb on the room after the doctor left—he was itching to get out of there.

  I stayed with Grandpa. Eventually he told me to get some money out of his pocket and go down to the vending machine to get myself a Coke. He only had a ten-dollar bill.

  The vending machine was just outside the tiny gift shop that sold gum and candy and newspapers and small stuffed animals and a rack full of different road maps. I could understand everything else, but the maps seemed a little out of place. Is anyone going to go on a long-distance driving adventure straight from the hospital? The store also had a plastic bucket on the floor with several bouquets of flowers wrapped in that clear plastic. The arrangements weren’t really very pretty—a bunch of fairly limp carnations mixed with some purplish things I’d never seen before—but at least they were flowers. My grandfather laughed when I came back with one of the arrangements. “Thank you very much, Lulu,” he said.

  My dad returned with some bagels and an egg salad sandwich and a newspaper. Then he left again to make some phone calls. “This is technically a workday for me,” he grumbled as he walked out the door.

  They took my grandfather’s blood pressure every hour. “That’s just making it worse,” Grandpa complained, and I’m sure he was right. How can you relax when someone is coming in every ten seconds to check and make sure you’re relaxed?

  By the time we left him it was late afternoon. Time passed much faster than I would have predicted, considering that only two of the people in the small room all day were getting along with each other.

  19

  There was a message from Angela on the old answering machine when my father and I got back to the house. She’d be home the next night; it would be late by the time she made it to Bennelton from Logan airport in Boston. My father wrote down Angela’s flight number, drifted into the living room, and flopped down in a big armchair. The chair had a good view out the window, down the hill toward the sea. An empty coffee mug on a coaster was still where my grandfather had left it on the side table, next to a pile of magazines and newspapers. It was clearly my grandfather’s chair.

  “Are we going to head back home tomorrow, Dad?”

  “We’ll have to see how your grandfather is doing in the morning, but we might have to wait another day, till Angela is back.” He looked around. When he realized where he was sitting, he stood up and shook his shoulders.

  “I’m going for a nap,” he announced. He had no interest in talking to me.

  I understand that a lot of teenagers hate their parents, maybe for no real reason except that they exist and cramp their kids’ style and are a hassle, and I’ve felt that way about my parents to a decent degree as well, but it was just normal teenager hate, nothing very deep or personal. Standard stuff. My parents just didn’t get me very well, or properly appreciate me, which was fine, I was used to it. But now my relationship with my father truly sucked and was getting worse and it didn’t seem like there was any hope of it reversing itself. Not that I cared all that much, but I did.

  My father reappeared after his nap and we had BLTs for dinner, which under other circumstances might have been a tasty treat. But they just made me think of my mother. No one cooks bacon like my mom—perfectly crispy and without burning.

  Once it got dark, fireflies started blinking
on and off in the front yard. Last time we were here, Julie, my dad, and I went out and caught a bunch. This time I just watched them through the window. I’d gotten a little old for that kind of thing anyway.

  Upstairs, I tried looking at the moon through the telescope. To my great surprise, it actually worked. The moon was just a few days before or after full, I couldn’t tell which. I wonder how you can actually tell which it is—I’ve got to learn that. I got a good look at the man in the moon. He looked content, wise, happy. I could not relate at all.

  I crawled into bed and stared at the cracks in the ceiling. I must have fallen asleep at some point because while it was still dark my father shook me awake.

  “I’ve got to go to the hospital. Something happened to your grandfather. You stay here and sleep and I’ll be back in a few hours. I just didn’t want you to wake up and not know where I was.” He must have been asleep too because his hair was all pushed up on one side and there was a crease down his cheek from his pillow. But he was wide-awake on the inside. His eyes, even though they were all puffy, were super focused.

  “I’ll go with you,” I said, sitting up fast.

  “No. Please, Lucy, just stay here. Sleep. I’ll call you in a few hours and come back and we can go over then.”

  I listened to my father go down the creaking steps and out the front door and then heard his car crunch over the pebbles on the driveway. I lay awake until the sky started to lose its darkness and the birds began their morning chatter. When I went to the window, the cardinal was there on the branch just outside. I guess that was his spot after all.

  By the time my dad called me at around ten in the morning, I was certain the news was going to be bad. It was. My grandfather had had another stroke. They’d taken him by ambulance from the small medical center to a larger hospital about forty-five minutes away. My dad was trying to be very calm and clear on the phone, but I could tell by his voice that he was kind of shaken up. He sounded young. He said he’d come back as soon as he could to get me, probably around noon or one.

  “Can I go over and see Grandpa?” I asked him.

  “We’ll have some lunch and I’ll take you over.”

  I was sitting on the front stoop when my father’s car turned in the driveway. He got out slowly, walked toward me, and stood there. He looked like he needed a hug.

  “Have you eaten anything?” he asked.

  “Not really,” I said.

  “Well, let’s find something.” He walked past me into the house.

  My dad made us omelets—there wasn’t much left in the fridge besides eggs. Then he called my mom. The news was not good. They weren’t sure the full extent of the damage at this point, but my grandfather had not regained consciousness. My father used the word “massive” to describe the stroke.

  Grandpa was on the second floor in intensive care. There was a strong smell to the place: a combination of disinfectant, sweat, medicine, and something I couldn’t place—maybe death. He was in a room full of beds, most with curtains pulled around the patients. I tried not to look at the ones whose curtains weren’t closed.

  Grandpa’s curtain was open, and when I saw him from a few feet away, I stopped. I didn’t mean to stop—I just did. I don’t know what I had expected, but it was as if everything I had in my mind about how a sick person in the hospital would look was blown to smithereens—this was much worse. He was hooked up to about fifty machines and looked sunken in on himself. His mouth was open and hanging off to the right, his eyes closed. He looked like he might already be dead.

  My father touched my shoulder, and we moved closer to the bed. “Come on, Lucy, let’s sit down.” He pulled up a chair beside the bed and stood behind it. “Hi, Dad. I’ve got Lucy with me here.” He was talking like my grandfather was awake and could hear him. There was a lot of beeping from various machines in the room.

  “Hi Grandpa,” I said. My voice sounded very small. I turned to my father. “Can he hear us?”

  “I don’t know.”

  We only stayed a few minutes, then went to the cafeteria. My dad had a coffee and I got a Coke. We sat around a table in plastic orange chairs. My dad took one sip of his coffee, made a face, and pushed it away. Under the fluorescent lights he looked awful. His eyes were bloodshot, with dark, puffy circles underneath.

  “You wait here. I’m going to go find the doctor. I’ll be right back.” He pushed back his chair.

  I’d never really thought of my dad as old, but the way his shoulders slumped as he trudged away, I hardly recognized him.

  As I looked around, everyone seemed exhausted. Private tales of heartache were everywhere. It took my father a lot longer to come back than he said it would. Somehow he managed to slip right in across from me without my noticing. He was quiet for a minute; I could tell he wanted to say something to me.

  “Let’s go see your grandfather again. Then we’ll head home.”

  “Our home? You can go if you want, but I’m not going to leave Grandpa here all alone and head back to New Jersey.”

  “No, Lucy. To Grandpa’s house. I just meant . . .” but he didn’t finish the sentence.

  I wasn’t nearly as shocked to see my grandfather this time, but in a way it was almost worse, since I was able to take in the scene a little bit more. I could see where he’d missed a spot shaving under his jaw. How could this have happened so fast? How could life be so precarious?

  I sat in the chair again and my father stood behind me. We didn’t have much to say. After a few minutes my dad reached out and squeezed his father’s hand.

  “Careful,” I said. “He’s got a tube there.”

  “I see it, Lucy,” he said. His voice was quiet. Then he looked at my grandfather, and whispered, “We’ll see you a little later, Dad.”

  When we were in the car my father told me that Grandpa was in a coma.

  20

  Angela arrived in the middle of the night. I woke up to find that my father had already taken her over to the hospital and would be back around noon to get me, same as yesterday. I learned all this from a note that my dad had left on the kitchen counter. Beside the note he had placed Grandpa’s large box of Wheaties along with a bowl and spoon. “Rice milk in the fridge,” said a P.S. at the bottom of the note.

  I ate some of the stale flakes and wandered out front. I was looking up into the trees at some birds twitching around when Davis came out from his apartment.

  He was in full action mode. He had shaved and said he’d switched shifts at work till later and was going over to the hospital to see my grandfather. Did I want a ride?

  My dad and I had run into Davis the day before as we were returning from the hospital with the take-out pizza we had gotten for dinner. My dad had filled Davis in on the situation, and Davis reacted the way you would expect, which was basically with disbelief, confusion, shock, and then sadness that seemed to spread out around him. He didn’t say a lot and he declined when my dad invited him to have pizza with us. I couldn’t wait any longer and put the pizza box on the hood of my dad’s car and took a slice. Then my dad grabbed a slice and then Davis took one too. We all just stood around the front yard eating pizza till it was gone, as the air around us got dark.

  I hopped in his car. As we drove, Davis started telling me about how my grandfather had helped him out by giving him a place to live. “And he vouched for me at the fish-processing plant, even though he didn’t know me from a hole in the head at that point. He said the only reason he did it was so that he could be sure I had a job so he knew he would get his rent.” He tried to laugh at that. “But he went out on a limb for me.”

  It was pretty clear that Davis was still shaken up by what had happened and was in a rush to see Grandpa for himself. Both his hands clutched the wheel as he drove. Apparently Davis had been in drug rehab for a long time. He’d gotten in some legal trouble, too, and he had been trying to get himself sorted out.

  “Every day I’m more grateful to that old man,” he said to me. “I can’t imagine what wo
uld have happened to me if your grandfather . . .” but he didn’t finish the sentence.

  When we turned into the hospital parking lot, he said, “To this day I have no idea why he did it.”

  They had moved my grandfather to another floor. The atmosphere here was even heavier than in the last place they had him, if such a thing was possible. You could feel it the second you got off the elevator. It was also much quieter: no buzzing or ringing machines, no one hurrying past with a clipboard and an urgent look on her face, no patients walking up and down the hallway in hospital gowns, stretching their legs, wheeling IVs beside them, no delivery boys with flowers scurrying this way and that.

  Grandpa was in room 319—a single room. The door was mostly shut but Davis pushed it open with a soft knock. Angela was in a chair beside the bed and turned to look over her shoulder as we came in. My dad was standing on the far side of the bed.

  “Lucy,” he said.

  “Davis was coming over anyway, so I hitched a ride.”

  “Thanks, Davis,” my dad said.

  “No sweat,” Davis whispered. He was staring at Grandpa, who, if anything, looked worse than the last time I saw him. His eyes were still closed, his mouth still hung open at that weird angle, like he was screaming a scream out of the side of his mouth that only he could hear. He seemed to have sunk deeper into himself since yesterday.

  Angela got up and hugged me. She said how much I’d grown up and all the typical stuff, which seemed rather weird considering where we were and what was happening, but I guess that’s what people do—cling to the normal things to help them get by.

  After a few minutes the three of us left Davis with Grandpa and went to the cafeteria. I wasn’t very full. Both Angela and my dad looked pretty worn out. She had flown all the way from Germany and he basically hadn’t slept in three nights. They each got a coffee and I had an OJ that was absolutely not fresh squeezed. Once we were sitting, Angela started to cry, then she stopped suddenly and got very still. At this point my dad had a funny look on his face pretty much all the time, as if he was just bewildered by life. We all just stared off, each in our own world. It’s an interesting experience to space out when you’re with other people who are spacing out as well. It’s different than doing it alone. It was comforting.