Goodbye To All That

by Judith Arnold

  Why? Why did he feel he was losing Brooke?

  Because if his father couldn’t hang on to his mother after forty-two years, how the hell could Doug hang onto Brooke?

  He hit the speed-dial for his parents’ home number. His father’s number now—he’d programmed his mother’s new number into his phone, but he hadn’t assigned her a speed-dial number because he hoped this phase of hers wouldn’t last and she’d be back at the old number before too long.

  His father answered on the third ring. “You’re home,” Doug said.

  “I answered. Of course I’m home.”

  “Can I come over?”

  “Now? Sure. What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing’s wrong,” Doug lied, but at least he’d turned the lie he’d given Brooke about where he was going into the truth. “I’ll be there in fifteen.”

  It took him less than fifteen minutes to get to his father’s house. He drove fiendishly. If a cop stopped him, he’d say he was having heart palpitations and was on his way to see a cardiologist. Not that he was having heart palpitations, but his fingers were still icy, which clearly meant he was suffering some sort of medical emergency involving his circulatory system.

  As it turned out, no cops intervened, and in ten minutes he pulled into the driveway of his parents’ house. He knew the driveway’s dips, its frost-heaves, the crack spanning the asphalt just beyond the front walk. How many times had he cruised up this driveway since getting his license more than twenty years ago?

  He still remembered steering up the driveway in his first car—actually, his mother’s car, but once he’d gotten his license he’d used it more often than she did. Unlike his mother, he’d had places to go—school, cross-country practices, parties, Lynette Baker’s house. He and Lynette had been quite the couple most of senior year. She’d been his first, and even though she’d been kind of narcissistic and given to the annoying habit of finishing other people’s sentences for them, he’d always remain grateful to her for what he’d learned on the worn tweed sofa in her finished basement.

  He hauled his tie over his head and tossed it onto the passenger seat before leaving the car. What was he going to say to his father? At their respective ages, they’d reversed the advisor-advisee relationship. His mother walked out on his father and his father turned to Doug for advice. Doug’s wife hadn’t left him, although her familiar blond hair had, and he’d turned to his father for . . . what? Comfort? Scotch? Definitely not advice.

  His father looked frazzled when he answered the door. He had on a pale gray warm-up suit which didn’t flatter him, and his hair stood out from his scalp in tawny, gray-streaked tufts. “I’m glad you came,” he said, ushering Doug inside. “Maybe you can help me. I’m trying to iron some shirts.”

  “Why?” Doug asked.

  “They’re wrinkled. Gert said I look wrinkled.”

  Doug had met his father’s office manager many times. He considered her snotty, which wasn’t exactly a negative for someone with her job. “Who cares if you look wrinkled?” he asked as he followed his father down the hall to the den, where his father had set up an ironing board in front of the television. “You wear a white coat over your shirt, anyway.”

  “I’ll tell you who cares,” his father said as he shook out the extremely wrinkled shirt sitting on the ironing board. “You want a drink?”

  Doug spotted an open bottle of beer on the coffee table. No coaster, he noticed. If his mother were here, she’d be infuriated. Maybe his father was leaving moisture rings on the table deliberately, out of spite.

  Doug really wanted a scotch, but a beer made more sense. He’d been lucky not to get a ticket driving over. He didn’t want to risk getting a ticket—or worse—driving home. “A beer looks good,” he said. “I’ll help myself. Who cares about your shirts being wrinkled?” he asked again as he ducked into the kitchen.

  The room hadn’t changed much since he’d left home for college so many years ago. Fewer notices and schedules attached to the refrigerator with magnets, less clutter on the counters, no huge bowl of fruit serving as a centerpiece on the table. His mother had always had bushels of fruit in the house, a fair assortment of which she’d heaped into a tinted glass bowl and left on the kitchen table every day. He’d thought nothing of detouring into the kitchen and grabbing a peach, a banana, a twig full of grapes on his way somewhere else.

  No fruit on the kitchen table now. No piles of school books. No phone book left open to the page of an orthodontist or a Little League coach. But this room was the kitchen he associated with home, even more than the arena-sized, superbly appointed kitchen in the house he shared with Brooke, a kitchen full of top-of-the-line everything, most of which Brooke had no clue how to use.

  Doug knew this room in a way he still didn’t know that other kitchen. He knew the yellow walls, the scallop-edged curtains, the pine cabinets, the four-burner electric stove with the dent near one of the dials, from when he’d been practicing his swing with his brand-new 29-ounce adult bat, the year of his bar mitzvah, and he’d swung a little too wide and slugged what would have been a home run if he’d hit a ball instead of the stove.

  His parents’ kitchen looked the same as always . . . only different.

  Like Brooke.

  Wincing, he helped himself to a beer from the door of the fridge, popped it open with the church-key opener in the utensil drawer—he still knew what was in every drawer—and returned to the den.

  “Shari Bernstein,” his father said.

  “Who?”

  “Shari Bernstein cares if my shirts are wrinkled.” His father ran the iron back and forth across an expanse of shirt, but the wrinkles remained.

  Doug sipped his beer, wishing it was something stronger. He wasn’t sure he wanted to hear the answer, but he asked anyway: “Who’s Shari Bernstein?”

  “She’s a dermatologist. Why isn’t this iron working? When your mother does this, the shirt comes out smooth.” He held it up to give Doug a better view of the wrinkles.

  What was his father doing with a dermatologist? The only reason Doug could think of was skin cancer. “Are you having something biopsied?”

  “No. I’m having a cup of coffee,” his father said, then smoothed the shirt across the ironing board once more. “What am I doing wrong here? Should I call your mother? I don’t want to call her.”

  Doug’s eyes had strayed to his father’s bottle of Sam Adams sweating condensation onto the coffee table. He pondered whether he should put his bottle down, too. Were two water rings worse than one, or once one was formed and the damage done, more didn’t matter?

  His mental debate temporarily blocked his brain’s ability to process his father’s words. “Call her,” he said, opting to place his bottle atop the TV Guide rather than directly on the table. Once that decision was made, he could respond to his father’s statement. “Ask her how the iron works. I think steam’s supposed to come out of it.”

  “I have it set on steam.”

  “Is there water in it? You need water to make steam.”

  “Water. Of course.” His father shook his head. “Gert said I should take my shirts to the dry cleaner. I don’t have time to do that, though. The coffee is tomorrow.”

  “What coffee?”

  “The coffee I’m having with Shari Bernstein.”

  “The dermatologist? You’re having coffee with a dermatologist?” Doug sank onto the sofa as relief crashed over him. No biopsy. No funky-looking nevus, no irregular lesion. Just coffee.

  Coffee. With someone named Shari Bernstein. “You’re going on a date?”

  “Not a date. Just coffee.” His father shoved the iron across his shirt energetically but futilely. “She’s divorced.”

  “You’re not.”

  “I’m separated.” He balanced the iron on its edge, gazed across the ironing board at Doug and sighed. “What the hell am I doing? It took me hours to get up the nerve to call her. We’re meeting in the staff cafeteria at five-thirty. God forbid my appointments ru
n late tomorrow—I’ll never get there by five-thirty. She’s a dermatologist, she probably never runs late. They don’t have emergencies like we do.”

  “Someone could charge into her office at the last minute with a humongous zit,” Doug pointed out, then laughed. His father on a date.

  He’d been the one who’d raised the idea of his father dating a few weeks ago, the afternoon his parents had announced their separation to their assembled children. But now that it was actually happening . . . His fingers started going icy again, practically numb. He took a few long gulps of beer, but that only chilled him even more.

  “So, who is this woman? This dermatologist. Have you met her?”

  “Gert gave me her number.” His father struggled mightily with the iron. Without water in it, his efforts were bound to be in vain, but Doug didn’t know where the water went, how to inject it into the appliance. His mother hadn’t taught him how to iron. She’d done all the laundry tasks for the family when he’d been growing up.

  “I’m meeting her tomorrow,” his father said. “Gert knows her. She says she’s pretty.” His father put down the iron again, flat on his shirt, and sighed. “I don’t know how to do this.”

  “Don’t leave the iron that way,” Doug said, rising from the couch and standing the iron on end. At least he knew that much—that if you left an iron hot-surface down, you could scorch the garment you were trying to press. “Maybe the water goes in here,” he noted, pointing to an opening built into the handle.

  “If you’re wrong, we could short-circuit the damn thing.”

  “If I’m right, you could have an ironed shirt to wear tomorrow.”

  His father thought for a minute, then left the room.

  Alone, Doug circled the den with his gaze. The TV was on, the volume low enough to be ignored. The screen showed devastation somewhere. A storm? A battle? An attack from outer space? Given the way Doug felt—that the earth had somehow tilted slightly, that nothing was quite what it was supposed to be—he’d bet money on the third option.

  His father returned carrying a measuring cup full of water. “In here?” he asked, pointing to the opening on the iron’s handle.

  “Give it a try.”

  His father poured some water in. The iron hissed like a venomous snake. “That sounds good,” his father said. Doug didn’t think he was being facetious.

  “If Mom can do this, you can do this,” Doug cheered him on. “Give it a try.”

  His father rubbed the iron across his wrinkled shirt. A cloud of steam wheezed out of the vents. Doug and his father exchanged a triumphant look across the ironing board.

  “So, does Mom know about this date?”

  “It’s not a date. It’s just coffee. And why should your mother know about it?”

  Good question. His parents were separated. Maybe his mother was dating someone, too.

  No, Doug couldn’t imagine that. Not possible. Even if space aliens had attacked the planet. “If she knew, she might get jealous,” he said.

  His father peered up from his shirt. He appeared intrigued. “You think that’s a good idea?”

  “If she’s jealous, maybe she’d come home.” On the other hand, if the dermatologist was spectacular, maybe Doug’s father wouldn’t want Doug’s mother to come home.

  Scratch that possibility. Doug’s parents belonged together. No dermatologist, regardless of how pretty, should come between them. Ruth and Richard Bendel were a couple. A pair. United unto death in the eyes of God, not that Jews were as rigid about divorce as Catholics. And if Doug’s parents remained apart, who would baby-sit for the twins when Doug and Brooke went to Nevis?

  His father rested the iron flat, then remembered and balanced it on end. He held up his steam-ironed shirt. The sleeves were still a mess, but the back was a smooth expanse. “Look at that. A little water was all it needed. I wish the cuffs were cleaner, though. Your mother always got them so clean.” He sounded wistful. Doug hoped his rueful mood arose from thoughts of his absent wife, not his dingy cuffs.

  “So, you’re meeting this woman for coffee,” Doug said, crossing to the ironing board and taking the shirt from his father. He spread the cloth on the silver padding covering the board. It was warm, the back of the shirt hot. He smoothed a sleeve out on the board and lifted the iron, which sighed and sputtered as he pressed the sleeve smooth.

  Brooke never did this, he realized. He wasn’t even sure they owned an iron. They probably did, since they owned just about every consumer item a person could buy. But Brooke never ironed anything. He suspected their cleaning service took care of the dirty clothes, and what they didn’t launder Brooke brought to the dry cleaners.

  He felt an odd surge of pride performing a domestic task Brooke didn’t know how to do. She was no homemaker—he’d known that when he married her, and he’d been okay with it. But he liked acknowledging that at a crucial moment he could figure out a steam iron.

  “You really think I could make your mother jealous?” his father asked as he circled the ironing board and grabbed his beer. “I’d have to let her know I was meeting Shari. How do I do that? I can’t just call her and say, ‘Guess what? I’m having coffee with another woman.’”

  “I could tell her,” Doug said, then grimaced. He didn’t want to get caught in the middle. “Or I could tell Jill and Jill could tell her.” Much better. Jill was a daughter. She’d be more likely to call their mother and sound alarms about their father’s flourishing social life. Not that meeting a fellow doctor for coffee in the staff cafeteria of the hospital qualified as a flourishing social life.

  “And you think your mom would get jealous?” His father sounded awfully eager.

  Doug scrutinized the sleeve he’d ironed. He’d exercised a degree of care and precision that wouldn’t be foreign to his operating room, and it showed. No accidental pleats, no crumples along the shoulder seam. He arranged the other sleeve on the board and applied the iron. “It wouldn’t be fair,” he said cautiously, “to meet this doctor for coffee if the only reason is to make Mom jealous. That would be using her, you know?”

  “It’s just coffee,” his father insisted. “It’s not like I’m sleeping with her.”

  “Good.”

  “I can’t even imagine . . .” His father shuddered, as if the very idea of sex with the dermatologist disgusted him. Then he seemed to reconsider. “Gert did say she was very pretty.”

  “Just take it slow,” Doug warned him. “If you walk too far down that path, it may be impossible to retrace your steps.”

  His father blinked a couple of times as he digested Doug’s metaphor. “How would you know? You’re an expert on having sex with people who aren’t your wife?”

  “I was thirty when I got married,” Doug said. “And I wasn’t a virgin.”

  His father’s dark eyes flashed, not with disapproval but with competitive fire. He probably hadn’t been a virgin when he’d gotten married, either. But he’d gotten married right out of college. Forty-two years was a long time to be having sex with the same woman.

  Yet Doug could imagine nothing he’d like more than to have sex with Brooke for forty-two years. The Brooke he knew, though. Not the Brooke with feathery hair in layers of gold and bronze and copper, and probably a few other metals, all done up by a Manhattan-based pretty-boy who might, God forbid, wind up becoming his brother-in-law.

  “So,” his father broke into his thoughts, “what’s up with Mackie and Maddie? How are my two little angels?” He took the iron from Doug and arranged the shirt on the ironing board so he could press the front.

  His ironing services no longer needed, Doug flopped onto the sofa and drank some beer. His digestive system was empty—better than full of egg foo yong from Colonel Ping’s, he consoled himself—and the lager’s bitter, yeasty bubbles sloshed inside his stomach with nothing solid to absorb them. Thinking about Brooke’s hair stole his appetite, though. Not even pretzels or beer nuts could tempt him. Not even a sprig of grapes or a banana from his mother’s fru
it bowl.

  “The girls are great,” he said, wondering whether they would someday grow up and journey all the way to New York City to change their hair styles. These days, they both wore their hair straight and shoulder length. Madison liked to clip brightly colored barrettes shaped like flowers and butterflies into her locks, and Mackenzie sometimes insisted on having a single narrow braid woven from the hair beside her left ear, but otherwise their hair was a sweet, honey-blond color, the color genetics had given them.

  “What a pair,” Doug’s father said, shaking his head and smiling fondly. He lifted his shirt, scrutinized it and draped it on a hanger, evidently satisfied that it would pass muster with the dermatologist. “I can tell them apart all the time, now. It takes me a minute or two sometimes, but I’m usually right. How does Melissa tell them apart so well? You and Brooke, of course you don’t need a minute or two. But Melissa sees them only once in a while, and she can always tell one from the other, right away. How does she do that?”

  Melissa’s name dragged him back to thoughts of Melissa’s boyfriend. “So, Melissa’s still with that hairdresser,” he said experimentally. His father’s reaction would inform him as to whether this was a subject they could discuss.

  “The goy? Marlon Brando?”

  “Brondo,” Doug corrected him. “Something Brondo.” Lucas Brondo, he knew damned well. Since his father didn’t veer back into mushy grandpa comments about the girls, Doug decided to share his uneasiness about the situation with Brooke. “It’s the weirdest thing, Dad—Brooke arranged to have this Brondo guy do her hair.”

  “Brooke? Your Brooke? What, she couldn’t find someone with a scissor and a mirror closer than two hundred miles away?”

  “That was exactly what I thought. Why the hell would a woman travel all the way to New York City to get her hair done?”

  His father settled on the sofa next to him, lifted his beer and snorted. “You’re asking me why women do what they do? I know a lot, Doug, but not about that.”