“It’s me, John,” he called out. “I want to come in.” A heavy silence followed. Then his father’s voice said, “Come in, John.” He opened the door boldly, knowing he had a right to be here. His mother, wearing an old sweater over her nightgown, was sitting up in bed, tears falling down her cheeks. When she saw him, she sank low, pulling up the covers, until all he could see of her was her head and her fingers gripping the edge of the blanket.
His father stood in a corner, smoking a cigarette.
“I thought you gave those things up,” he said. His father went on taking big drags, letting out the smoke so the room looked cloudy, as if a fog were rolling in.
Nobody said anything.
“What’s going on?” he said in a wavery voice. “I want to know. Every night I hear you and it’s driving me nuts. If you’re getting a divorce, I can handle it.”
He crossed his arms on his chest, a habit he’d developed in nursery school when he’d wanted to feel brave. His feet were cold.
His father put out his cigarette, taking a long time about it. “You’re right, John,” he said at last. “You should know. Your mother and I should have told you before this. We might have known you’d hear us in here.” His father’s face was pinched and waxy looking. He looked like a man who’d been shut up for a long time, a prisoner of war.
He waited, his hands gripping his upper arms in an effort to keep his cool. So what if they were splitting up? There were worse things. Lots worse.
“I have cancer.” His father was speaking to him, his pale, bloodless lips forming the words that made no sense. “I haven’t long to live. The doctors say maybe three or four months. Six at the most.”
He heard his mother draw a deep breath and didn’t dare, didn’t have the heart, to look at her. He wasn’t sure he’d heard right. He’d got himself ready, psyched up to hear they were getting a divorce. He didn’t want to hear about a death, an imminent death. He wasn’t prepared to accept this news. He shook his head. There must be some mistake.
He watched his father go over to the bed, sit down, and put his arm around his mother. All right, he told himself. You wanted to know. Now you know. What good does that do. What can you do to help, asshole. Standing there looking at them, asshole, doing nothing … they don’t need you. Look at them. They don’t even know you’re here. Get lost, get back to your beddy-bye, asshole.
He went, shutting the door quietly, not wanting to disturb them. They wouldn’t miss him. They had each other.
His room was very cold. He shut the window and put on the socks he’d discarded on the floor. He lay rigid under the covers, arms at his sides, staring up at the ceiling. When he closed his eyes, terrible pictures floated there, pictures of people dying. So he couldn’t close his eyes. He’d have to keep them open all night.
I should do something, he thought. Something must be done. We mustn’t take this lying down. I’m sorry I know. I wish I didn’t know. I wish they hadn’t told me. If I didn’t know, everything would be all right. I don’t know what to do. I want to help but I’m helpless.
Up until now, he’d never really known what helpless meant.
You’re such a big shot, storming in there, demanding to be let in on the secret. Now that you know, big shot, what next?
He felt as if someone had a hand over his face, shutting off his supply of oxygen. He felt as if a big, hairy hand had clamped his throat, as if someone hugely fat were sitting on his stomach. He sat up, turned on the light. He was alone. There were no more noises coming from their room. Then he thought he heard someone pass his door and stop. He thought he saw the doorknob turn. Quickly, he turned off the light and flattened himself in bed. Closed his eyes and pulled the covers up over his head. Minutes passed. No one had tried to come in. There had been no person, no presence, no hand laid on his shoulder, no voice had said, “John.” Nothing. After a long time, he came out from under the blankets.
The docs might be wrong, he thought. Plenty of times he’d read or heard about doctors making mistakes. That was why they had to fork out such big bucks for malpractice suits, wasn’t it. Why they had such heavy insurance policies against malpractice suits, wasn’t it. Docs were only people. They made plenty of mistakes. How many times had he read about people who’d been told they had cancer and it turned out they didn’t. That happened all the time. He needed someone to talk to. He’d call Leslie, except it was the middle of the night by now. Anyway, all that would accomplish would be to upset her and probably make her hop on the next bus or train and come home. Anyway, maybe they’d already told her. No. They wouldn’t tell one of them and not the other. He could call Keith. Keith would have to listen, for once.
He opened his mouth to try out the words. “My father …” he said out loud, and could go no further. If he said the words out loud, all of them, then the enormity of it would sink in; it would prove to be true. If he refused to say them out loud, then what his father had told him wouldn’t be true, would never happen.
Now he did hear someone coming. He flipped over on his stomach, facing toward the wall. The door opened. He stayed stiff as a board. He was a coward. Someone was there, waiting. He screwed his eyes and began to count, as if he were playing hide and seek and he was giving them all time to hide before he opened his eyes and began to look for them. The door closed.
So it was a dream. That was it. In the morning, when he woke, he’d realize it had all been a dream.
I will never sleep. Never again will I sleep without having terrible dreams.
And, when he slept at last, he dreamed not of death and dying, nor of his father’s face. He dreamed of Emma.
21
They had become a family of pale people, stepping softly through pale rooms, eating pale food from pale plates. Even their voices were pale. Everyone spoke in whispers. His mother had given up her volunteer work, pleading fatigue. Then Mrs. Hobbs called to say she had to have some corns cut off and needed a ride to her foot doctor.
“Oh, Mrs. Hobbs,” his mother’s voice rose despairingly, “I don’t think I can.” Then she did anyway. Afterward, she told him: “I’ll have to find someone to fill in for me, John. I lost my patience with Mrs. Hobbs twice and snapped at her. Poor thing. It isn’t fair to her.”
The telephone seldom rang. When it did, it sounded pale, too, as if it were hidden under bales of old clothes waiting to be collected by the Salvation Army.
He felt like a good fight. He felt like screaming.
His father continued to go to his office, to straighten out his affairs, tie up loose ends, his mother explained. At the office, did they know?
His mother haunted the library, collecting books on cancer, its causes, its effects, its cures. She took notes frantically, as if she were overdue with a term paper. He found her when he came in from school, filling pages of yellow-lined paper with her small, precise handwriting, telling her everything she needed to know about cancer.
Les called. She spoke to him last and said, “What’s with them, John? Mother sounds clutched, and Daddy sounds like a zombie. Do you have any idea what’s going on?”
“Oh,” he answered blithely, “it’s the weather. It snowed for two days straight. School was called off and I made thirty bucks shoveling driveways. I’m buying Dad a camouflage suit for his birthday with the dough.”
He played soccer like a madman. The coach took him aside, said he was getting downright vicious. “You got something against your fellow man, John?” the coach said, attempting to lay an arm around him. He ducked, dodged, wanting no man to touch him.
“What about Les?” he said to his mother that evening. “When are you going to tell her?”
“When he’s ready he’ll tell her, John.”
“How about Grandy?”
“Soon,” she said vaguely. “Soon.”
He caught himself staring at his father. Then, when his father turned toward him, he averted his eyes, not wanting him to see what was in them. Which was: Now I’ll never get a chance to know my dad.
Never find out what he’s really like. What he’s thinking. Find out why he never loved me. That was the crux of the matter. Why had his father never loved him. Had he done something? Did he, perhaps, look like someone who had, in his father’s youth, caused him pain? Maybe his father had never wanted children. Maybe he only wanted girl children. But didn’t most men want a son? He knew he’d never figure it out.
His dreams became mixed with real life. For instance: He dreamed that he and Woody and his father were in Elaine’s, sitting at a table usually reserved for Warren Beatty. His father ordered champagne. The waiter, bowing and scraping, called his father “sir.” Woody was attired in a tattered nightshirt and sported a flashy cravat tied with a Windsor knot that fought with his Adam’s apple. Autograph seekers, brandishing pencils and paper, besieged their table, asking him, John Hollander, for his autograph. His father kept saying “Woody who?”, which sent Woody into a snit. His nostrils flared and his cheeks quivered with indignation. No one knew who he was. Woody drew an old fedora from a secret pocket in his nightshirt and placed it low on his brow so his face was partially obscured.
“I want no limelight, no publicity, no paparazzi,” Woody said. A beautiful, slender brunette, not unlike Emma, wearing a one-shouldered, flame-colored culotte, perched herself on Woody’s lap.
“Please.” Wearily, Woody held up one hand. “No pictures. I am a very private person. I want nothing but my fireside, my slippers. Maybe to make a movie or two. Write a play now and then, a short story, perhaps. I do not seek fame. It seeks me. Everything must be kept secret. I do not divulge my plots. I want no bright lights,” he said, blinking into the strobes for which Elaine’s was famous. “No parties.” His voice could scarcely be heard over the din. “I want only to travel the world incognito. I want only to be free to do my own thing.”
“And what is your own thing?” his father asked.
The brunette, waving a wand she had concealed in her flame-colored culotte, had the answer.
“As you wish, sire,” she said in a New Jersey accent. “From henceforth, you are the man in the street.” The wand grazed Woody’s shoulder and he flinched. “The average John Doe, pulling down two hundred big ones weekly as a carpenter’s apprentice.” It appeared that the brunette, now that she had center stage, was reluctant to leave it.
Woody leaped to his feet, sending her spiraling into the air. Fortunately for her, she was as agile as a fox and landed on her feet twenty feet away, scuffling her running shoes in the sawdust that was indigenous to the boîte in which she found herself.
The crowd applauded her wildly, putting Woody into an even bigger snit. “Carpenter’s apprentice!” he howled. “Every time I hear the word ‘carpenter’ I think of Jesus Christ. Was he not a carpenter, the noblest of them all? If I grew a beard and assumed a different expression, more soulful-like, I might be mistaken for the Messiah. It is entirely possible that this will be the theme of my next flick, although of course it is too early to tell and, at any rate, must be kept a secret. I may even star in this flick, which would sure beat fighting off fans in some grubby gin mill.”
Hands clasped in a prayerful attitude, Woody studied them from under his hat brim.
“Of course,” he mused, “Christ did not wear glasses. A small matter, taken care of by contacts. I plan to renounce the Hamptons, the fleshpots, the constant surveillance which my fans subject me to. I may even renounce my yellow Rolls.” A great sigh went up. Woody drew his nightshirt close about himself and scuttled off into the night. Alone. That was the worst of it. He was alone.
His father said, “Who was that man?” and John woke up laughing. It was the first laugh he’d had in days.
Grandy was coming.
“I didn’t want to tell him so soon, John, but your mother insisted. She said he had to know. I know she’s right, but I feel he’s too old to be dragged in. What can he do? He shouldn’t have to deal with this.”
It was the first time his father had spoken to him of his illness. He was dumbfounded. Tongue-tied.
“He’s your father, isn’t he?” he said, without thinking. “He has to know. Wouldn’t you want to know if—” He’d been on the verge of saying “if I was sick.” And said only, lamely, “If it was me?”
His father looked stunned. “Of course,” he agreed, looking, for the moment, almost cheerful. “You’re right, John. That’s very wise of you.”
It was his turn to be stunned. He rolled the word around in his head for a long time. Wise. His father had said he was wise. A first. Was it possible he’d gained wisdom overnight, and would it be wisdom that would enable him to cope with this horrendous thing that had happened, was happening, to them all?
He and his mother drove to the airport to pick up Grandy. He was arriving on a flight due in shortly after noon. The thin March sunshine picked out bits of detritus strewn alongside the thru way, caught in the greasy snow remnants from the last storm. It was Wednesday. His father had gone in to the office. His mother, after saying she would go alone to Kennedy, had changed her mind and asked him to come with her. She’d even called Gleason to tell him she was keeping him out of school today on a family matter.
When they were near the airport terminal, he said, “Are you going to tell them at school? About Dad?”
“I will if you want me to.”
“I wish Dad would let me talk to him about it,” he said. “The only thing he’s said to me is that you made him call Grandy.”
She only shook her head. They parked the car and walked toward the terminal.
“What did Grandy say?” he asked her.
“Only that he would come. Your father didn’t want him to, but there was no stopping him.” She stepped off the curb into the path of a taxi. The driver blew his horn, leaned out of his window, and shouted at her. “Watch it, Ma,” he said, putting his hand on his mother’s arm. He had to learn to be her protector. Up until now, he had never been anyone’s protector. Without acknowledging his touch, she hurried across the street. “Your father told me this morning if he can get through this, seeing Grandy, I mean, handling that part of it, he can get through anything. Poor man. He dreads it so.”
The automatic doors opened and they went inside. Why does he dread seeing his own father so much? he wondered. Grandy might be old, but he was also tough. He wouldn’t break down. Grandy would know what to say to his son. John was certain Grandy would know the right words. He counted on Grandy, was glad he was coming. How did people act in situations of this kind? How did they handle a notice of impending death? Either their own or that of someone deeply loved. Maybe Grandy would know what to say because he was old and—until now, anyway—closer to death than any of them.
They got to the gate just in time. Grandy was walking briskly toward them, a middle-sized man, his silver hair cut just so, dressed in a pin-striped suit. He was carrying an overcoat, his Homburg, and a briefcase.
They waved and Grandy came over to them, kissed his mother, and shook his hand. He liked that, was glad Grandy hadn’t kissed him, as if he were a child. “Helen sent her best,” Grandy said. “She wanted very much to come, but I told her no. I thought it was better if I came alone. How is he, Ceil?”
“As you might expect, he’s perfectly contained and very brave,” his mother said evenly. “He’s handling everything methodically, wrapping up all sorts of loose ends in a very businesslike way.”
Grandy peered down at her, his brown eyes sad. “And you,” he said, “you are also brave.” It wasn’t a question, it was a statement of fact. She braced her lips against smiling, but a little laugh, tremulous but not without pleasure, came from her. “I’m so glad you’re here.” She hugged his arm. “It was good of you.”
“As you can see, I came prepared.” Grandy indicated his overcoat. “I almost forgot a coat, Ceil. I’m getting used to the California weather. I forgot it was March, that it’d probably be cold here. But Helen reminded me.” They walked toward the luggage pickup. “She also insisted I bring two bags.” Gr
andy smiled slightly. “If it had been up to me, I would’ve managed with one. Helen has me under her thumb, as you can see. She even packed for me. I had to unpack when she wasn’t looking and do it over my way.” He grimaced and they all laughed. “I’m set in my ways. Can’t help that, at my age, can I. But Lord knows, if I can’t pack my own suitcase at my age, I’m in bad shape.”
They waited at the carousel for the bags to come down the chute.
“It’s hard on you, John.” Grandy regarded him intently. “Terribly hard. And on Leslie. I know you’ll both bear up, for your mother’s sake, as well as your father’s.” Grandy cleared his throat and brought out an immaculate handkerchief to blow his nose, not expecting any answer from him, for which he gave thanks. “I’m prepared to stay as long as you want me, Ceil. As long as I’m of some use. Thought I’d play it by ear, as Helen is fond of saying, although what that means I’m not precisely sure. Now.” He turned as the bags began their trip around the carousel. “Let’s get this over with. Hope they haven’t lost mine. All of my friends in California have stories of luggage winding up in the Azores or some such fool place.”
They saw Grandy’s bags almost immediately. “Helen read somewhere that bags should be marked conspicuously with their owner’s initials, so she cut out some huge white letters and taped them on mine. I feel rather like a schoolboy going off to summer camp. Only thing she didn’t do was sew name tapes in my socks and underwear. Helen is a born executive.”
He grabbed the big bag, his mother dealt with the smaller of the two. Grandy hailed a porter, who loaded the bags onto his cart. They followed the man out to the street.
“You stay here and I’ll bring the car around,” his mother said.
“Nonsense. John and I can manage,” Grandy told her. “I’ll take the little one, John can have the big one. Why do we have strong teenagers around if not to wrestle with the luggage, eh, John?”
“I can take them both,” he said masterfully. “Stand aside,” he ordered, and they did as they were told, giving him a feeling of immense power and satisfaction. For a minute, he forgot why they were here, at the airport, loading Grandy’s bags into the car. For a minute, he knew a moment of pure happiness. Then it came back to him with almost physical force that Grandy was here on a terrible mission, and guilt at his little instant happiness took hold of him. He put down the bags and took a deep breath. When he picked them up again he felt smaller, diminished, a child once more.
Other Plans Page 19