Stranger, Father, Beloved

by Taylor Larsen

  Michael had been paid exactly one compliment by his father, and he never forgot it: “Your mother showed me your paper on the Great Depression. She and I lived through that time, obviously, so we know how it was and we learned how to save money by living through it. Your paper was very good. Work hard, Michael. You’re smarter than your sister, as you know, smarter than most, actually, and you could go far.” After that he turned back to his book and began reading, ending the conversation.

  Michael’s sister, Sarah, was half pretty, and into boys and concerned with fitting in. She had sandy blond hair that she wore in a ponytail with a brightly colored ribbon. Michael’s father was affectionate with her and protective of her safety, but he seemed dismissive of the idea that she would ever do anything of import. When Michael had received that compliment from his father, he had taken it inside his heart and nursed it there. Many a time, when he had struggled with his neuroticism, he thought about giving up—school, his career—but the compliment from his father had presented itself several times along his path as a reminder, and that reminder prevented him from failing. As he got older, his father seemed uncomfortable when Michael would enter his room, so he did so less often and then not at all.

  * * *

  Michael arrived at dinnertime, starving, and went right to work heating the food. His mother lay in bed, camped as she was in the dining room by the kitchen. She could no longer go up and down the stairs with ease, and the dining room was convenient, as it was between the kitchen and the front hallway. She had the bed raised and her reading glasses on, yet she was asleep. The chandelier, which used to shine onto the polished dining room table, now shone down on the worn oriental rug in the center of the room. Her bed was several feet from the zone of twinkling light. The dining table and chairs had been moved down to storage after his mother had cracked her hip for the second time. Her crossword puzzle lay untouched, a wrinkled mess in her lap. Looking at her sleeping face, Michael saw that it had a dignified, though no longer stunning, kind of beauty to it, and he could still see traces of her younger face in this one.

  When she awoke, she glanced at him and then at the clock. She smiled with a deep satisfaction, as one of the qualities she loved most in Michael was his punctuality. It was a sign of intelligence, she felt, when a person’s internal clock was wound as it should be and could match the tempo of the external world with its many events.

  Her osteoporosis had caused her spine to curve inward to such a degree that it pushed into her lungs, making it difficult for her to breathe or even move around. The constant pain of it caused her hours of silent agony. She had arthritis in her fingers, a condition she was used to after so many years, but on cold mornings, the ache was another strong punishment upon waking. Michael knew she concealed from him just how painful it was all becoming for her, so as not to worry him, and he wondered if her day-to-day existence with her nurses depressed her. It wasn’t clear to him how long she had left, and at home he would often worry that she might slip away in the night with him hours away, not there to hold her hand.

  Marilyn had never quite gotten over her older sister, Elizabeth’s, death. Even though it had happened five years ago, it still affected her strongly, even more profoundly than her husband’s passing. Elizabeth had been “a wit” and had had a wild independence that was so much a part of her no one challenged it. She had adored Marilyn, and the two had been close with a feverish kind of possessiveness similar to the bond lovers share. Their affection had not lessened when each had gotten married. Now that Marilyn had so many empty hours, her mind wandered back to Elizabeth easily and the memories caused her much pain.

  With Aunt Elizabeth gone, Michael felt he now had a special place in her life; he was her only love left. He knew that she cared for her friends, but she never loved them, for to her, family was the only source of real love and devotion. Marilyn lit up every time upon seeing him, and their already strong bond seemed to deepen as she entered the final phase of her life.

  Michael had always been her favorite child, and, although they quarreled, it was clear that each pleased the other in a basic way. His sister, Sarah, lived out in Nevada and kept only the most minimal kind of contact with the two of them. To everyone’s astonishment, Sarah had refused to finish college and had become deeply religious. For their intellectual family, this was the worst kind of sin. She called them once every couple of months, and they endured the tense brief conversations as best they could. His mother rarely mentioned her, for there was really nothing to say about her that didn’t elicit a baffling kind of shame. Sarah had married a deeply religious Christian. She sent them all pamphlets in attempts to convert her parents and brother to her faith. She had had child after child while living in a tiny house in rural Nevada and sent a photo once to her parents of herself and her husband standing on a dirt “lawn” littered with rusty toys, with the unimpressive house behind them. She had drifted off into her new family and lost touch with Michael and her parents, and it was just as well.

  * * *

  Michael brought out her tray and sat down in his chair across from his mother. They ate together, teased each other, and made insignificant remarks.

  “You’re copying me again,” she said with a straight face, as she brought a piece of chicken breast to her mouth. She was referring to his eating the chicken first, a habit they both knew they shared.

  “Maybe you’re the one copying me, since I’m the one who started eating first,” he replied. She gave a short laugh and went back to chewing.

  “What’s Ryan up to?”

  “She’s a little full of herself these days,” Michael heard himself say, and the ugliness of his response pained him. He felt momentarily paralyzed and then shook it off and his thoughts resumed their regular flow.

  “She has every right to be. That is one precious girl. Bring her with you next time.” Michael quickly wondered if his presence alone was not enough for her, then dismissed the thought and concentrated on his food. How could he tell her that Ryan despised him and would never agree to spend time with him? He was careful to preserve the atmosphere of peace. They would retire early, and, unlike in his own house, he would sleep well here. He could feel it in his bones.

  “How’s work been?” she asked between bites, her antique face still beautiful in its own way.

  “Just fine,” Michael answered. He thought about what would happen were he to get fired. It wouldn’t matter, as he had saved up so much money over the years from working there. He wouldn’t even need to work anymore, considering the inheritance he would receive when his mother died. Money was not an issue and never would be, but he found none of it enjoyable. He had hundreds of thousands of dollars in the bank. He thought of John, who probably had thirty thousand saved up at most. He wondered what John would do with all of Michael’s money were he to possess it.

  Michael thought about tomorrow morning, when Marilyn’s two closest friends, Betty and Anne, would come by. He would play bridge with them, and the women would have a great time teasing him and beating him out of money. He would make many trips to the kitchen while they played, refilling the ladies’ teacups and bringing out cookies and pecans. These simple acts were appreciated by all, and he never felt so useful.

  Michael could hear the familiar sound of Betty’s deep voice in his head. “Doll, bring me a teaspoon of sugar,” she’d say, her eyes on her cards, a smile playing at the corners of her mouth.

  After he did the dinner dishes, he and his mother played gin rummy for a while, and then he went upstairs to his room. Once in his room, he checked his mother’s answering machine to see if he had received any calls. There were none. He was surprised, as Nancy usually called him on the first night of these visits.

  * * *

  The next morning, Michael was up before his mother and, instead of waking her, he made her breakfast, knowing she would eventually awaken from the noise.

  He was looking forward to the da
y ahead. It always unfolded without their noticing the passage of time. After breakfast they read the paper together and did the crossword, and then Michael set up the card table in the living room for the group of ladies. Betty showed up first, a plastic container of Virginia ham in her hand, and helped Marilyn make her way into the living room with her walker. Betty still wore elegant shoes over her swollen feet, even though she would have been more comfortable in orthotic shoes.

  “Great to have you here, Michael,” Betty called to him as she passed the kitchen, and Michael smiled to himself as he made her usual cup of orange spice tea with a lemon slice. When he set it on the coaster by her place at the card table, Betty looked up at him and remarked, “Still so handsome, isn’t he, Marilyn? You always were a real doll, Michael. Such a well-formed face.”

  “Well, I had a good gene pool to work with, didn’t I?” Michael said and gave his mother a playful smile.

  Anne showed up fifteen minutes later, as she always did. Older people had such lovely, predictable routines—the same schedule, the same beverages, and similar conversation. Everyone knew his or her place—all was in order.

  As they sipped their tea, they set out the cards and began their game. Michael preferred it when his mother or one of the other ladies won. For when he won, as he often did, he became embarrassed and quickly gathered the old, brittle cards together to start a new game. After an hour or two, when his mother started to tire, Michael escorted her back to bed to lie down for a little while and then made lunch for the group. After a meal of sandwiches with a few potato chips, Marilyn once again made her way back into the living room for another hour of cards. Then Betty and Anne left, kissing Michael and fussing over him before he closed the door.

  Next Michael faced the only awkward part of the day, the span of time after his mother’s friends left and before dinner. There was nothing to do. This block of time was troubling, as both of them were moody at the hour of four p.m., their personalities tired and soured, struck with a certain rush of melancholy that colored the progression to dusk. She chose this time to clean her dentures, which were her principal source of anguish. Throughout her life, she had flossed and brushed her teeth after every meal to preserve them for as long as was humanly possible. The method had worked until she was seventy-five, by which time her teeth were in such bad shape that she’d had to get the dentures. She called them “a disgrace” and fussed over them in private and in his company only.

  When she was irritable, her normally saucy comments had a biting edge, and this mean-spiritedness was something Michael respected in her, even though he hated to be on the receiving end of such sharp-tongued commentary: “Don’t stare at me with that gaping stare, it’s not attractive. You shouldn’t tease Betty so much—she can’t handle it. She’s not the kind of person who can handle that way of teasing. I’m sure she’s at home right now, thinking of all the things you said to her. Don’t drop that with your fumbly fingers.” Though they had both been mean, Michael mused that he had turned out so differently from his parents. Neither of them had had mental troubles that he could detect. Where had his twisted mind come from? They were both bizarre in their own ways, but neither of them was a “disturbed person.”

  When he pushed her into the corner of the kitchen in her wheelchair and they began cooking dinner together around five, they would both become lively, almost giddy, as food was in sight, and the rest of the evening was a breeze ahead of them. Michael placed a cutting board on her wheelchair tray. She liked to have something to do with her hands, and she would slice up a tomato with her knotty arthritic fingers. Then they would finish the crossword begun earlier, mulling over meaningless conversations, retelling old jokes such as the anecdote of his father putting the cork in his ear at The Old Inn, or the day he’d appeared at the pool in his army-green swimming trunks and done a cannonball into the pool. His father had rarely acted out or shown emotion of any kind, so that the times he had were unforgettable for the family.

  “The house is nice with you here, Michael,” she said as she sliced the tomatoes. He turned to her, and she quickly said, “No, no, don’t worry about not being here all the time. I’m like you—I like being alone. I always have. I have my friends and nurses for company. They drive me crazy sometimes, though, so clumsy! They seem to take up the whole room. I liked one girl a lot, Cora, but she had to move back to Trinidad to be with her husband. Sad to see her go . . .”

  His mother had become more solemn after his father’s passing, but it also seemed as if a burden had been shed. The vigilance over him and his activities, which had lasted for almost fifty years, had been released upon his death. Though he had never strayed from her again after the incident when Michael was eight, a minor, ever-present wariness hung about her previously carefree self, as if she had known she was now in charge of this man who had almost ruined them. She had had so many suitors before she had agreed to marry his father that Michael wondered if she regretted her choice. She had been beautiful, a tall Greta Garbo type, and could have had her pick of men.

  Michael’s father had loved that his wife was a great reader, like himself, though her focus was literature. At cocktail parties, her long lean figure perfectly displayed in a tasteful black dress, she would often surprise the men with a witty comment about a new book or about political developments from reading the paper, and he saw his father’s face soften and shine with admiration as he watched her, his cultured and intelligent wife who knew when to stay quiet and when to dazzle all around her with a quick, clever remark.

  Even though he loved and admired his wife, Michael’s father had always eyed his friend’s wife Sally, who was blond, unlike his wife Marilyn, and who had an hourglass figure. Sally was a bit of a flirt, and it was clear from her presence that she was not intelligent. That somehow appealed to his father’s lust, and he flirted with her at dinner parties. Michael would park himself on the landing and listen to the commotion of their parties below, his father’s deep laugh, the records playing horns and trumpets, and the velvety female voices of the singers floating up the stairs. His father had come up the steps once when Michael was twelve in the middle of the party to get something from his room and seen Michael sitting there. His father had had a few drinks and his expression was more relaxed than usual.

  “Did you see Sally in that green dress?” he asked Michael and grinned conspiratorially. “I’m not sure it is legal for a dress to be that low cut, I mean, if she’s not looking for paying customers, that is. Could see those tits from a mile away.” He looked again at Michael and laughed. Michael tried to grin back, but it took a bit of effort, and his father became uneasy at his lack of response and stood there, shifting from foot to foot. He sighed, trudging past Michael and into his room. Michael was ashamed then—he had not given the proper response. But he didn’t know why he was ashamed or how to act like his father wanted. Now he was here in the same house, the memories were as fresh as ever, but the figure attached to them was now in a box in the earth. Funny how the mind floats down the same corridors over and over, Michael mused.

  * * *

  After he turned out the light in his mother’s room and went upstairs to his own room, Michael felt the anxiety return. These visits were so short—he barely had time to get settled in, and then he had to leave. All of the tasks that he would have to do tomorrow before leaving lingered in his mind. He would have to check the oil in the tank and fill up the car with gas. He cursed himself for not filling it up on the way there. His laziness was now crippling his good time. He had a work meeting Monday with Henry, one of the senior managers, whom he knew felt Michael was too uptight. But Henry couldn’t touch him because he was so smart about staying on top of the numbers.

  Without his superior intellect, Michael knew he was nothing. His mind was beginning to race. He sat on the carpet and then lay down in a ball and tightened up hard, closing his eyes. He wasn’t sure if he could go back. Being in the house with his mother just worked.
The two knew how to live together, and it felt as if he might indeed still be a younger man when he was here with her, one who had not chosen incorrectly but who would take the right path this time.

  He opened his bottle and shook a pill loose, then crawled over to his glass of water to wash it down. Henry judged him for being so uptight, and there was not a damn thing Michael could do about it. Yes, he was not easygoing in the least, he ruined things with his uptight nature, but if they only knew how much effort it required for him to appear normal, they would forgive him his strained and stern countenance. Every second of every day was a wrestling match between him and his nerves. And it was all because he had faulty wiring.

  Panic seized his heart, the whole chest constricted, as he imagined going into the office on Monday and seeing Henry’s face that never quite smiled big enough for Michael; the disapproving look on his daughter’s face; climbing into bed beside Nancy and switching off the lamp, feeling the mild hope for sex that drifted from her side of the bed. He could feel her expectant emotions all day, every day. They never seemed to go away.

  As the minutes passed, the pill kicked in to a degree and dulled down his racing thoughts. He got up from the floor and quietly exited his room to roam the house.

  The house had a smell of old wood to it, and Michael walked around the upstairs after his mother was asleep. The floor beneath him creaked, but he knew that nothing except the banging of pots and pans would wake his mother. She slept like the dead now, her bones heavy on the hospital bed that had been moved into the house. The nurses usually bathed her before he arrived, as she liked to preserve her modesty. Once, while she was napping, he had pulled back the cover to find her TV remote and been frightened by the gauntness of her frame. There was elegance to the complete lack of fat, but her bare legs still startled him and he felt he had committed some form of treason to see below her sheet.