by Delia Ephron
“How dare you write this,” I hiss at Georgia. “You didn’t see his life ebb, I did.”
“So did I,” says Maddy.
“Barely.”
“Don’t be so noble, Eve. You like that role too much,” says Georgia.
“I just end up with it because I don’t get any help.”
“I resent that,” Maddy sneers.
We are attacking each other across the bed—Georgia on one side, me on the other, Madeline at the foot. We trade barbs over this fading hunk of flesh that is my father. It feels as if we are at some bizarre family get-together. Thanksgiving, perhaps, and we are arguing across the turkey.
“Let me refresh your memory,” says Georgia in a stage whisper. “I looked after him all those years when you weren’t speaking to him.”
“You didn’t. Your assistant did. Besides, it’s not hard on you.”
“That’s not my fault.”
“It’s not Eve’s fault either,” says Maddy. “Dad picked on her especially.”
“She wanted it,” says Georgia.
“I did not.” I abandon all pretense of quiet. I have to deny this really loudly because I know the tiniest bit of it is true. I didn’t welcome the curse of his attention, but was flattered even as I railed against it. Being his confidante and caretaker was a way of standing out, of being in the middle and not being squashed. My crazy father was a trophy in a competition among Georgia, Madeline, and me. Maybe I was the only sister actually vying, maybe I was the only one foolish and needy enough.
At that moment, my father shudders, and his breathing stops altogether. We all hold our breaths, a spontaneous sympathetic response.
A nurse peeks in. “I’m really sorry to interrupt, but my dad died too and, well, reading this helps me a lot.”
“I think you’d better examine my father,” I say testily.
As she walks to the bed, he takes another convulsive breath, we all jump, and then the covers start moving up and down regularly again.
The nurse takes his pulse. One eye is closed, and she pushes up the lid, flashes a light in, then lets the lid drop down like a window shade.
“Can he hear what we say?” asks Georgia.
“Probably not,” says the nurse. “I don’t think there’s too much upstairs now.”
“You’re wrong,” says Maddy.
Three hours later, there are no new incidents. Joe has paid a visit and left again, to get Jesse dinner. He gives me back my copy of Georgia, which he was thumbing through, and I drop it in the wastebasket. Georgia pretends not to notice. She has borrowed a third chair from an empty patient room, and sits with her feet propped up on the edge of the bed. Since none of us is on speaking terms, no one talks. My father is taking his last breaths in a room of angry daughters. Serves him right.
“Who does Dad look like?” Georgia says suddenly.
I can’t resist. “Richard Nixon.”
“He used to, but no more. His hair’s so neatly parted and combed, and it’s white. The color has really left him already, hasn’t it?”
“What about that weird mustache?” says Maddy, indolently stroking her stomach.
“I know who he looks like—that man who wrote detective stories. Who is it? He went with Lillian Hellman. Oh God, another name bites the dust.”
“Dashiell Hammett?” says Georgia.
“Right.” I sit up, pulling at my blouse to neaten it, a feeble attempt at getting a grip. “For weeks Adrienne and I have been torturing ourselves trying to think of this short blonde actress from the fifties or maybe the forties, I’m not sure.”
“Donna Reed?” says Georgia.
“No.”
“Is it the actress who plays the woman who becomes a famous trash writer in the movie about two friends? What’s that movie called?” Georgia says. “Not Two Friends, but something like that. I think her name’s Millicent, or maybe that’s her name in the movie.”
“Is that the same movie where the other friend is a serious writer?” I ask.
“Yes.”
“It’s not her.”
“Jill Clayburgh,” says Maddy. “Isn’t she from the fifties?”
“Hardly. And she doesn’t fit one physical description I gave.”
“Oh.”
“I think this one’s name starts with an l.”
“Short blonde actress …” Georgia muses.
“Played wimps, and she’s kind of wide.” We all stare at each other as our minds experience simultaneous hard-disk failure.
I clasp my hands and raise them high. “Oh, please tell me and give me peace of mind.”
“June Allyson.”
I look at Georgia and Madeline. “What?”
“I didn’t say anything,” says Georgia.
“Me neither,” says Maddy.
“Then who said that? Dad?” I jump up. “Dad!” I stand over his bed, freaked. “Dad, you said that, didn’t you? You said ‘June Allyson.’”
“Who’s June Allyson?” asks Maddy.
“Dad? Nurse, nurse!” I am screaming.
Georgia sprints out the door. “We need a nurse,” she shouts, “right now.”
The nurse bustles by her into the room. “He’s coming around, I swear, he’s coming around.” Maddy grasps my hand.
“Mr. Mozell,” the nurse bellows in his ear.
“He just said ‘June Allyson,’” I explain. “Oh, thank you, Dad. Thank you. It is June Allyson.”
“That doesn’t start with an l,” says Maddy.
“I know, but it almost does. Anyway, that’s who it is. She’s in all these movies where the guy dies in a plane crash and there’s this scene where she doesn’t know he’s dead and—”
Georgia clutches my arm. The nurse is checking my father’s pulse. She puts the stethoscope in her ears and listens to his heart. She pulls the stethoscope off.
We stand immobilized, waiting for her to tell us what we know.
Down the hall, in the distance, I hear a phone. It rings and rings and rings. Why doesn’t someone pick it up, why doesn’t someone answer? I look at Georgia and Madeline. “The phone. No one’s answering the telephone.”
Georgia puts her arm around me. Maddy buries her head in my shoulder. My eyes are blurry now. “It’s never going to be him again.”
“That will be a comfort,” says Georgia. She is crying too.
It’s past eleven, Joe and Jesse have gone to bed, but my sisters and I hang on, sprawled in the living room. I am on the floor on my back, perhaps in some semiconscious mimic of a dead man. Georgia is stretched across the couch, her arm flung up across her forehead in classic damsel-in-distress mode, except that she is never distressed, only flamboyant. Maddy slouches in an armchair, a Chinese-takeout container balanced on her stomach. It is very cozy being too tired to talk much, and besides, I don’t want the night to end. When will we get together again? Will we commune on the phone as often, now that we share no burden?
“Why doesn’t your lipstick wear off?” I ask Georgia.
“A special brand. I’ll send you some, but not red.” She lifts her head to scrutinize me. “I think you want plum.” Her head drops down again.
“Where do you think Dad is now?”
“In a refrigerator,” says Maddy. “At the mortuary in a gigantic refrigerator.” She blows her nose into a paper napkin. “My baby’s never going to have a grandpa.”
“Stephen says the thing about losing a father—”
I butt in. “We don’t want to hear what Stephen thinks. If we don’t know him—”
“No, listen.” Georgia sits up. She takes a moment to shake off the dizziness from switching to vertical so rapidly, before making her pronouncement. “Stephen says that once your father is dead, there’s no more hope. It’s now set in stone: For better or for worse, that’s the father we got.”
“Well, what’s sadder? Who he was or who he wasn’t?”
“My baby’s never going to have a grandpa,” Maddy moans again, now digging into the takeout co
ntainer and coming up with a cold sparerib. She views it sadly.
“It’s like he was a house, and when you walked into the living room, sometimes you’d find what there was supposed to be in a living room and sometimes you’d find what should be in a kitchen. And when you walked into the bedroom—”
“No,” says Georgia, “you never walked into the bedroom.”
“Was he kinky always?”
“Who knows,” says Maddy.
“‘You can exist without love, but never without like.’ Dad said that to me after I broke up with the horrible Philip.”
“You know,” says Georgia, “even if you have no photographic talent, if you take a million pictures, one of them is bound to come out great.”
“I guess so.”
Georgia unscrews her earrings, giving each an affectionate gaze before laying them on the table. “Stephen gave these to me.”
“I hope he’ll be a good uncle,” says Maddy.
“Anyway,” says Georgia, “Dad was wrong. Lots of couples exist without love. Isn’t hate just as binding?”
“Maybe, but I think he was right. He meant that you can exist happily without love if you really like the person. Anyway, thank God, this isn’t my problem—I love and like Joe.”
“So why do you care?” asks Georgia.
“Because it’s—” I look at her puzzled.
“A moment of clarity,” suggests Georgia.
“Yes. And kindness.”
“Do you think one of us should tell Mom?” asks Maddy, aimlessly conducting an orchestra with her sparerib bone.
“You mean, do we think you should tell Mom?” I say. “Does she care?”
“Probably not,” says Maddy. “But it seems only proper that if your father dies, your mother should be informed.”
Georgia hoots. “In case she was thinking of going back with him. And what about telling Claire, wherever she is?”
I sit up now too, hugging my legs to my chest to keep out the cold. I can almost hear his voice, “Hey, Evie. Hey, it’s my Evie.” I miss him. I actually miss him. I hate to think he’s in a refrigerator. I’ve seen it in the movies, where they slide the bodies in and out on trays. “Do you think he has a tag on his toe?”
“No,” says Georgia, “they don’t put on toe tags. Or maybe they do.” She smiles. “That might be something I don’t know.”
Madeline tosses her sparerib back in the box and looks around glumly. “Where’s his bullet, anyway?”
“I don’t know. I think it’s still in his room at the Home. I’m sure that’s where it is.”
“I want it,” says Georgia.
“Well, so do I.”
“I want it too,” says Maddy. “I brought it up.”
Georgia stands, dusting off and straightening her shirt. “We’ll choose, all right?”
She takes off in the direction of the kitchen. We hear her rummaging around, opening closets and cabinets. Maddy makes the cuckoo sign, circling her finger next to her ear. I giggle. We are girls again.
“Where’s your broom?” shouts Georgia.
“For what?”
“Straws. Never mind, I’ll use toothpicks.”
She reappears, gleeful. “Come on, let’s go. Short one wins.” She offers them up.
If you enjoyed Hanging Up, check out these other great Delia Ephron titles.
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About the Author
Delia Ephron, author and screenwriter, has written books for adults and children. Her most recent novel is Hanging Up. She also worked as a writer and producer on the film Hanging Up, as well as on You’ve Got Mail, Michael and Sleepless in Seattle. She lives in New York City.
Also by the Author
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Teenage Romance or How to Die of Embarrassment
Funny Sauce
Do I Have to Say Hello?
FOR CHILDREN
Santa and Alex
My Life (and Nobody Else’s)
The Girl Who Changed the World
Copyright
Fourth Estate
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
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First published in Great Britain in by Fourth Estate 1996
Copyright © Delia Ephron 1995
Delia Ephron asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
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Source ISBN: 9781841153803
Ebook Edition © OCTOBER 2012 ISBN: 9780007401949
Version: 2013–12–04
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