“Nothing should ever be easy, Henry. Isn’t that what you always say?”
“Is that what I always say? What an old windbag I’m getting to be. I’m going to order some manure today. You can spread it, can’t you, John? We’re going to have tomatoes coming out of our ears, given a little luck and plenty of sunshine. We never have enough tomatoes, do we, Ceil? This time I’m planting more than I ever have. You can even put some up.” His mother and father held hands and laughed shakily. His mother hated to put things up.
“Come on.” His father pulled her to her feet. “Come on, John, let’s take a look around outside. The light is beautiful this time of day. If we had Les here, it’d be about perfect.”
As if she’d heard her father speak, Leslie arrived home that evening, bags in hand.
“I’m home to stay,” she announced. “The dean was very understanding. I told her about Daddy, said she could check with you, Mother, if she didn’t believe me. She said she believed me and how sorry she was. My marks are good enough, so she said I didn’t have to worry about making up credits. She said I could take my exams in the fall or whenever I go back to college. Everyone was very kind. I expected an argument, was all ready for one, and they were all so nice.” Leslie turned away.
“So we’re going to have you around all the time now,” Henry said.
“I’m where I should be, Daddy,” she told him.
“Yes,” he agreed. “Yes, Leslie, you are where you should be.”
When he and Les were alone, he said, “How’s Emma?” He was proud of the effortless way he said her name. “What’s she up to?”
“No good, I would imagine.” Leslie lunged and got him in her famous shoulder pinch, with her thumb in that special little groove she knew how to hit just right, immobilizing him.
“Listen, John,” she hissed, looking over her shoulder, making sure they were alone, “don’t get me started. I don’t have enough time to tell you about Emma. Who the hell does she think she is, coming to my house as my guest and seducing my little brother? Just who the hell does she think she is?”
Leslie, mad, was awesome.
“It was okay,” he said meekly. “It wasn’t all her fault.”
“Bullshit.” Leslie, who rarely swore, was on a rampage. “I know her modus operandi. I should’ve had my head examined, bringing her here. But it never occurred to me she’d pick on my kid brother.”
He struggled gamely under Leslie’s thumb. “I’m not a kid,” he said.
“It was your first time, wasn’t it?” Leslie’s eyes dared him to lie to her.
“Sort of.”
“There’s no such thing as ‘sort of’ about the first time,” she said. “Either it was or it wasn’t.” She took her thumb away and stood up straight, tossing her hair out of her eyes.
“Speaking of sex,” he countered, “how’s Varney?”
“He’s gone,” she said. “And even if this hadn’t happened with Daddy, I wouldn’t have gone with him. I decided you were right. I couldn’t bug out on them. I had to finish what I started.”
He was speechless. She had listened to him.
“How’s Daddy? And Mother?” Leslie said.
“Well, he’s all right. We’re sort of friends, Les. I don’t exactly know what’s happening, but we’re sort of becoming friends.”
She turned and he saw her eyes were full of unshed tears. “Oh, Johnny,” she said. “Oh, Johnny. I’m so glad.”
27
His mother called Gleason to tell him of his father’s illness. “I thought it was time they knew, John,” she said.
He knew she was right, but dreaded their knowing.
“Dear boy.” Mrs. Arthur’s voice came at him, sepulchral, lachrymose. Smoothing her rambunctious hair, she said, “You have my—you have my deepest …” She choked up, unable to go on.
“Thanks,” he hollered, and fled.
He found Keith in the lab, studying by himself for a science exam. “If you want, you can help me spread manure on Saturday,” he offered.
“You’ve been spreading manure as long as I’ve known you,” Keith said, looking up from his book.
“You’re a regular laugh riot. You should get a better gag writer. It’s for my father’s garden. I hope you don’t mind,” he hurried on, “but when I was talking to my father I told him about your mother, about the suicide bit. I didn’t mention your name, I only said ‘a kid I know.’”
Keith looked pleased.
“That’s all right,” Keith said. “I don’t care. Anyone around here who wanted to could check the hospital records and find out she’d been in for a suicide attempt. It’s no secret to anyone.”
Keith put down his book.
“You know what my mother told me last night?” he said. “She told me the most important thing she’d ever done had been to try to commit suicide. She said it set her apart from other people and that it was the most memorable, would be the most memorable thing about her. That people would always remember she’d tried to commit suicide.”
He was horrified, and didn’t want to let Keith guess his feelings, so he stood there, head down, waiting for Keith to finish.
“I made up my mind there and then”—Keith’s voice was so low he had to listen hard to hear him—“that there were going to be other things people would remember me for. Damned if I want to be remembered for trying to knock myself off. What a crock. I couldn’t believe I’d heard her right. But that’s what she said, and the worst part was that she sounded pretty pleased about it.”
He thought of telling Keith what his father had said about doing a good job of dying, about not whimpering, but he wasn’t up to it. Maybe some other time, when they were fully grown and in command of things. But not now.
“Keith’s coming to help me with the manure, Dad.”
“Good.” His father peered over his glasses. “John, the money for your college is there. Your mother and I took care of that some years back. That is, if you don’t start writing for Woody what’s-his-name fresh out of high school.” His father’s eyes were kind. The fact was that he knew by now who Woody Allen was.
“Woody only wants guys with experience, Dad. It’d be a while before he’d take me on. But, thanks. It’s good to know I can go if I can get in.”
“You’ll get in, John. No doubt about that.” It looked as if there were to be no more diatribes, no more sessions about maturity, responsibility. There wasn’t time.
“Daddy,” Leslie bounced in, “I’ve been looking for you.” She went to him, kissed him on both cheeks. “I love you,” she told him severely, keeping his head in a tight grip. “You’re a wonderful father. You know that, don’t you?”
He watched his father’s face flood with color. Les had the light touch, the right touch. Without being self-conscious, she said the important things straight out. Why couldn’t he? Because he couldn’t, that’s all. He turned and, dragging his tail behind him, went out to await Keith and Mr. Tyler, purveyor of first-class fertilizer.
He and Keith whiled away the time by turning over the soil in the garden, getting rid of the rocks that seemed to grow there. Connecticut was famous for its rock crop. Mr. Tyler must have been delayed; didn’t show until almost five.
“Sorry, lads. It’s my busy season. Spread it in dawn’s early light, lads. Gives the green things a better chance if the fertilizer’s spread early.” Mr. Tyler never referred to it as anything other than fertilizer. Though he resembled a linebacker for the Rams, Mr. Tyler had the sensibilities of a patrician.
“Don’t forget to set your clocks ahead tonight, lads. We gain an hour’s daylight, an extra hour of sunshine. A present from the Almighty.” Mr. Tyler sent a reverent glance skyward, giving credit where credit was due. Also covering all the bases.
John had been trying not to dwell on the swift passage of days. Daylight savings time meant it was the last weekend of April. Spring was really here. His father was getting his wish.
There was a lot of fertilizer. He and
Keith went to work. By dusk, they still hadn’t finished. “Spend tonight here, why don’t you?” he said to Keith. “That way we can get at it in dawn’s early light, like the man said.”
“I can’t.” Keith wiped his forehead. “I don’t want to leave her overnight. It’s better if I’m there. It keeps her mind off the bottle. I’ll be over first thing, though, John.”
He went on raking after Keith left, liking it out here; the smells of earth, of manure, the promise of warmth to come.
Leslie found him. “He looks awful, John,” As usual, Les got right down to it. No beating about the bush for her. Hit the nail on the head. Nail everything to the wall.
Leslie shook her head. Even in the dim light, he felt the motion of Leslie’s head, expressing bewilderment. “I thought he might beat this somehow,” she said in a small, sad voice. “I’m always hearing about people being cured of cancer. One way or another. I kept thinking Daddy might be one of the lucky ones.”
“No,” he said. “He’s one of the other kind.”
“I can see it in his face. I couldn’t before, but I can now.” Leslie picked up Keith’s discarded rake and began to work beside him.
“What will we do without him?” she said in a small voice.
“I don’t know,” he answered.
He and Keith worked all day Sunday. His father came out to supervise, offer tips. The sun was hot. It was a day worthy of full summer, a present from the Almighty. Les put on some shorts, found a nearly toothless rake somewhere, and worked alongside, singing old Beatles songs in a loud, enthusiastic voice. He saw Keith regarding her now and then, a bemused expression on his face.
His mother brought them a pitcher of iced tea and some plastic cups. His father sat in one of the canvas chairs, watching them, his face tilted up to the sun. His belt was pulled to its last notch and his pants and shirt billowed around him like a jib filled with wind. He dozed, and his mouth opened a little, making him look like a very old, very frail child.
“I think it’s nice enough to cook outside tonight,” his mother said. “I can make some potato salad, and Les brought a bottle of rare old Bardolino. We can have a picnic.” She smiled at Keith in an open, friendly way, and Keith smiled back. “You’ll stay, won’t you?” she asked Keith, who said he’d like to, very much.
“I’ll cook the burgers, Dad, if you want.” His father always cooked the burgers.
“If you promise to remember about dousing the fire when it gets too hot, John.”
When at last they sat down, the sky was perfectly clear, almost without color, except for a band of pink that circled the horizon, as if just beyond it lay an all-night carnival; or a terrible fire raged, consuming acres of timber, herds of wildlife. There was no moon, and the stars showed off brilliantly.
“I don’t think we’ve ever been able to eat out this early before,” his father said.
When John was small, he’d asked where mosquitoes went in the winter. His father had told him mosquitoes holed up in a cave, hibernating, like bears, waiting for the first warm weather so they could come out and start biting people. He had believed his father and imagined a big cave, bulging with mosquitoes, lined up and waiting for the go-ahead from the head mosquito. On your mark, get set, GO!
Tonight, blessedly, there were not yet any mosquitoes.
He drank two glasses of wine and felt slightly tiddly. They all drank the Bardolino, which was as good as Les had said. Two spots of bright color decorated his father’s face.
“How’s my friend Emma?” his father asked Leslie.
“Oh, fine, Daddy. Sent you and Mother her best.” Leslie refused to meet his eye.
His mother rested her elbow on the table, then set her chin inside the pocket made by her cupped hand.
“If you ask me,” she said, taking a long sip of her wine, “that Emma is some tough little broad. That is my considered opinion.”
“Ceil!” his father said, a look of amusement on his face. “Such language.”
John saw Keith and Leslie smiling across the table at him.
Ma’s really flying tonight, he told himself.
“Be a good boy, John,” his mother said, “and get two glasses and the bottle of calvados for Dad and me. Leslie?”
“No thanks, Mother.”
He rounded up the bottle and the glasses. Solemnly, he poured the brandy out, handing a glass to each of them in turn.
His father took a sip.
“Ceil, I think I’ll go up now. I feel tired, and cold.” His father rose in slow motion. They rose with him.
“Good night, everyone. Thanks, Keith, for all your help. It’s been a fine evening, all around.”
“I’ll come with you, darling.” Ceil took her husband’s arm. Together, still in slow motion, they went upstairs.
When they’d gone, John picked up his father’s unfinished brandy and drank it down, fast.
“That makes my eyes smart,” he said, blinking.
That evening, as it turned out, marked the last time for a lot of things.
The last time they all sat around a table together. The last time his father felt well enough to be among them. The last time they would love life as much as they had before.
Ben called, several times a week, his voice reassuring, consoling.
Dr. Hall, it developed, was not without compassion, after all. They became friends, of a sort. He watched the doctor’s face closely as he examined him, looking for signs first of puzzlement, then of astonishment, indicating the patient had confounded the medical experts, the patient was on the road to recovery.
With a longing so intense it was almost palpable, he imagined the day the doctor reared back and exclaimed, “You’re cured! You’re a well man!” and joy would illuminate the room.
John was a good and tireless companion, ready to run errands, read aloud, recite poetry if that was what his father wanted. Too late. He felt a surfeit of love clog his throat as he looked at his son. Too late. What had happened, why had he allowed this to happen? This was his son.
And Ceil was there. She was always there now, never distant as she had sometimes been in the past. He no longer had the energy to make love. His love for her was all in his eyes, his hands, whose strength was fading.
When he woke from one of his increasingly frequent naps, he found Leslie sitting beside his bed, reading, or sometimes just sitting quietly. He studied her, the planes in her face, the way her hair fell over her shoulders. Leslie would be all right. They would all be all right, in the long run. John would turn out to be a fine man. A responsible, loving man with a good heart and a good head. The children would take care of Ceil, as she had taken care of them. That, ideally, was how it should be. And very often wasn’t.
They would pick up the threads of their lives and time would work its usual healing.
“I’m so tired,” he said.
Leslie stirred, laid a hand against his cheek.
“Can I get you anything, Daddy?”
He shook his head with great effort. “If only I weren’t so very tired.”
Les seemed not to hear him. She brought him a glass of water and smoothed the sheets and put her face next to his. “I love you, Daddy,” she whispered. “I love you.”
Ceil made custards, floating island, chocolate pudding. No amount of sweetmeats could fatten him up. His flesh was melting away, his bones lay close to his skin.
“I’ve let you down, Ceil,” he said. “All the things we planned to do when we had the money and the time, when the children were grown up and on their own, and now we’ll do none of them. I’m sorry, Ceil. I’m sorry I’ve let you down.”
She buried her face in his pillow. “Henry,” she said. And although she wanted to close her eyes against the sight of his ravaged face, she kept them open, exerting her will so strongly that when he turned away at last, to sleep, she was nearly unable to close them then.
“This is for you, Dad.” John laid a package on the bed. “Open it, why don’t you?” Inside lay a medium
-sized camouflage suit, the real McCoy, genuine army issue.
“You said you wanted one,” John reminded him. “So I sent away for it.” What John didn’t say was that he’d paid for it with money earned shoveling snow, that it was meant as a birthday present. An early birthday present. With John’s help, he put it on, over his pajamas.
A perfect fit, they both agreed.
“It’s supposed to be loose,” John explained. “You know the army.”
“Yes.” His father smiled. “One size fits all. Thank you, John.” He raised his arms, laid them across John’s shoulders. “I didn’t realize how tall you’d grown. And still growing.” John inched forward, so his father wouldn’t have to reach so far. The arms encircled him, tightened. He’s hugging me, John thought in amazement. He’s actually hugging me. He hugged his father back and even through the heavy medication he could smell the much-loved scent of his father.
“It’s the nicest costume I’ve ever had,” his father said, releasing him at last. “I thank you for your thoughtfulness, John.”
“That’s okay, Dad. Glad you like it.” His father looked pale and tired. “I better go,” he said.
“John.” His father’s voice came clear, distinct. “I’m going to miss you.”
His throat was very dry.
“Same here,” he said.
28
In the late spring, with the lilacs in full bloom, his father died. At home, right on schedule, quietly, with no fuss, without pain. Mrs. Bickford, the day nurse, called them to his room.
“I think it’s time,” she said softly.
Any time might have been time. The day before his father had grabbed their hands and, for a minute, his grip was incredibly strong. He knew they were there, all of them, Mrs. Bickford said. She could tell.
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