One More Stop

by Lois Walden

  ‘For those of you who believe in the hereafter, it is never over. For us, yes it will be over soon. He probably has a month … maybe.’

  ‘Not very long.’ I watch her mix the spritzers.

  ‘I’m sure for him, it will feel like an eternity.’ She hands me my drink.

  ‘Is he afraid?’

  ‘No.’ We toast.

  ‘Are you afraid?’

  ‘No. But I’ll miss him.’ She starts to cry. ‘I will miss that old goat.’

  ‘You will? I wonder if I’ll miss him?’

  ‘He is so wonderful with the kids. He’s been a fantastic grandfather.’

  ‘Finally got something right.’

  Driving up the Saw Mill River Parkway to see Pop. Early evening. The road cuts right through a thick forest of trees. I ask myself, do trees have secrets? No. The beauty of a tree is that it’s just simply there for us to love, something we cherish because of its beauty. Maggie’s like that.

  I park Dina’s car in front of the house, climb up the front steps two at a time just like I did when I was, oh I don’t know, six years old, maybe seven. Before opening the entry door, I stop, turn around, glance at the hopscotch playing field of my youth. It is intact, waiting for one more game.

  From inside my jeans pocket, I dig out a temporary permanent good luck penny. Damn. I meant to give it to Molly. I throw the penny onto the flagstone walkway. I play: hop, skip, jump, balance, both feet hit ground simultaneously, and hop, skip, balance, bend forward, pick up … freeze in place … reconnect with … the little girl who had a little curl right in the middle of her…

  I am prepared to enter his world, her world, our world, the world that none of us left behind. I flip the coin. It comes up heads. I win. I toss it across the street. It lands inside Mrs B.’s overgrown front yard. Wonder who’s living there now? Patty, the maid, will tell me. Patty will tell me more than I want to know.

  The front door seems smaller than it was once upon a childhood. The house, the windows, the white wooden siding, the green shutters have all shrunk.

  ‘Glory be to God. Look who’s come a callin’.’ Patty has lived in the United States for more than twenty years. She has been employed and stealing from my father for almost all of those twenty years. Why does Pop keep her? He never liked the china in the first place … Doesn’t want to be alone. She fusses over him. She never knew my mother, therefore she does not remind him of my mother.

  Patty whispers. ‘It won’t be long now. He’s turnin’ yellow. And she’s in the bedroom. He talks to her all the time. I’m afraid to clean in there. Lord knows what might happen if I run into her. I might not get out alive.’

  One less room to clean. ‘Where is he?’

  ‘In the television room. He loves his new hospital bed: pushes the button, goes up and down, up and down. I swear on my dear departed uncle’s life, God rest his soul, she’s awaitin’, whisperin’, showin’ him the way. She scared Mrs B. blind, killed Burt, now she’s after him. The Lord is watchin’. But mercy, it ain’t the Lord doin’ the work here. The Devil’s come a callin’.’

  ‘Patty! The devil is not in the house.’

  ‘Oh yes, and it is your mother’s soul that the devil’s got a hold of.’

  ‘Patty! That’s enough. She was my mother. You never even knew her. Don’t talk about her like that. Understood?’

  ‘I didn’t know you were so sensitive about her.’

  ‘Now you know. The TV room?’

  ‘Probably sleepin’, he is, like a baby. He’ll wake up when he hears your little footsteps.’

  I walk in front of the old mahogany breakfront, look at myself in the beveled mirror on the wall; no longer young, I am surprised to see this older me … in my childhood house. I gird myself, step over the dining-room line. There lies my father, looking like an under-ripe banana. He is canary yellow. It is the liver cancer. The bile has nowhere to go but into the skin. He is smaller, looks sweeter, and seems unusually lucid for a dying man. His eyes dart in my direction.

  ‘Well, well, well, look who’s come home – the prodigal child.’

  ‘Hi Pop.’ I scoot over to his bedside, kiss him on his yellow forehead, grab his bony hand. His grip is unfaltering. The son of a bitch is as strong as ever. ‘Ouch.’

  ‘Your old man’s still the strongest man in Beechwood.’

  ‘Guess so.’

  ‘What kind of malarkey did that Irish bitch feed you? The devil’s come to get me? Should have booted her Irish ass out years ago, when she was feeding me dog food, telling me it was ground round. Sure I ate it. I never let on that I knew. Thought she was trying to save me money. Now I can’t get rid of her; at least she shows up. Loyal … She’s good to me … You have no idea what it’s like when you can’t take care of yourself. Don’t get old. More important, don’t ever get sick. They treat you like an animal. It’s despicable, demeaning, and downright demoralizing.’

  ‘How are you, Pop?’

  ‘Don’t be a smart ass.’

  His perspicacity is not diminished. He knows he’s losing his grip on life, his power being stripped away. He feels it. He will go out kicking and screaming. Though he be jaundiced, incontinent and irreconcilable, he will fight for life until he is turned inside out. The bad boy from the wrong side of the tracks who got ahead has nowhere to go. He has nothing to show for making it in the world, nothing but remorse and rage; lethal combination for the final journey.

  ‘Let me see your lip. How are your teeth?’

  ‘Look.’ He opens his mouth wide, like a racehorse having an oral exam.

  ‘Great job.’

  ‘The good doc fixed the chip, stitched the lip. It was nothing. He’s a genius. You know it was Saturday, he took me anyway. Normally, he charges overtime on Saturday; big bucks, not me, not your old man. Didn’t charge me a cent. What a great guy. Imagine not charging me … on a weekend. There’s a gentleman. Tell me again? Where were you, kid? Omaha, right?’

  ‘Here we go round the mulberry bush,

  The mulberry bush, the mulberry bush …’

  Good timing, Ma, right on cue. ‘Beatrice, Nebraska.’

  My father turns his head away. ‘Oh.’

  I want to cry. I’m sure that he does too. ‘Daddy?’ No response. ‘Daddy?’

  ‘Hmm.’

  ‘… Is something the matter?’

  ‘She’s in the bedroom … Your mother’s chased me out of the bedroom.’

  ‘Maybe she just wanted to visit … had nowhere else to go … wanted to say …’

  ‘She’s come to get me. I know that’s why she’s here.’ He turns toward me. ‘I’ve given her the room. She’s won.’

  ‘Dad, it’s not a contest.’ I try to comfort him. ‘She speaks to me, you know?’

  ‘Your sister told me.’

  ‘Nursery rhymes.’

  ‘Not her. Never her.’

  ‘That’s what I said, but it’s her. It is definitely her … her voice.’

  ‘She never knew … any… how to take care of you kids … never heard a nursery rhyme from her. We hired somebody to help …’ He turns away again. ‘Would you check on my monkeys?’

  ‘Be right back.’ I get up, walk away. Always walk away.

  He asks, ‘Are you sleeping here tonight?’

  Wasn’t planning on it. God, I hate this house! I didn’t bring a change of underwear. ‘Yes. We’ll have breakfast tomorrow morning. I’ll make you some eggs and toast.’

  ‘I’m not very hungry these days, but I’ll sit with you.’

  ‘That’ll be wonderful. Be right back. Do you need anything?’

  ‘The monkeys. Someone’s been moving the monkeys.’ Those monkeys, his good luck trophies … Whenever he closed a deal, made a killing, clobbered a hated business rival, he bought a monkey. There were jade, silver, gold, onyx, brass, glass, wood, ivory, soapstone, all kinds, types, sizes and shapes. How he loved his monkeys. The more money he amassed, the more monke
ys he accumulated. His bureau top was brimming with them. Her bureau drawers were brimming with bottles; her drugs. Now she was keeping a watchful eye on his monkeys.

  I walk into the parents’ bedroom. The closet doors are unhinged, paint peeling, bed upside down, footprints on ceiling … high-heeled shoes, no less. She has been dancing on the ceiling. I want to dance with her on that cracked, aged, off-white ceiling. We have never danced upside down in her boudoir. This seems the ideal time. The room spins. I want to faint. Instead, I open a window and breathe some Beechwood air. It is toxic in that monkey master bedroom, toxic.

  A ghost can hold you close, turn you inside out and upside down, but you still love it, because it is your ghost. After all these years, my father and I finally have something in common. Her. She has moved the monkeys. Each and every one of them has been turned on its side. They are lying next to each other, like a stack of dominoes in a grave.

  ‘Peter, Peter, pumpkin-eater,

  Had a wife and couldn’t keep her…’

  ‘What the hell are you doing in here?’ Why talk out loud? Why ask a ghost questions? It won’t answer. ‘He, your husband, and I would appreciate it if you would leave his monkeys alone. He surrenders. You win. What more do you want from the poor guy?’ There is no reply.

  I look up at the ceiling. The footprints have disappeared. I leave the monkeys and the madhouse behind. I walk into my bedroom, close my eyes and listen. Through the walls I hear her crying: no sobs, no hysteria, just muffled cries in a pillow. It is a time long past. I am once again of hopscotch age. I listen harder. Because she cries, I cry. And I am still crying.

  I stay the night. Try to fall asleep. I am fully clothed, afraid to undress, afraid that someone is watching. In my fitful slumber, I hear her feather pillow become drenched with tears. I hear my father mumble under his breath. He gets out of bed, plays with his monkeys, leaves the bedroom. Where he goes, I do not know. Where he is, well, he is downstairs. Isn’t he? He too is in the master bedroom. He is in a shrinking world with no possibilities. No. He has one possibility left. But if you have but one possibility, nothing else is possible. And that is what makes life before death seem impossible.

  He and I will have breakfast together in the a.m. That is a first. You see, while we are both alive, anything is possible.

  When I wake up in the morning, my eyes are stuck together with sleep and nursery rhymes. I rub my eyes. The sleep falls onto my bedroom floor, floor awakens, yawns, boards creek, stretch into the new day. Still fully clothed, I walk into the upstairs hallway, once again I peek into my parents’ room. The monkeys are upright, the bed on all fours, the ceiling is ceiling-white. From where I stand, in the doorway, it looks freshly painted. I take a closer look at his monkey collection. His favorite picture-jasper monkey is missing. A hidden message from the past has slipped into a disharmonious world of apparitions. She has stolen his grief and made it her own. It is no wonder that he is dying. He cannot locate a place within himself for his personal sorrow. She is his sorrow. She holds his grief in her transparency.

  At breakfast I eat half a grapefruit, one poached egg and toast. He watches, does not eat a morsel. His eyes are glassy, like a still blue lake.

  ‘Did you sleep well?’

  I lie. ‘I did. How ’bout you?’

  ‘Didn’t sleep. I was too worried about the monkeys.’

  I lie again. ‘They’re fine.’

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘Positive.’

  ‘She hasn’t been playing with them?’

  One more breakfast-time lie … ‘She’s not there.’

  ‘Oh … I hope …’

  ‘Do you want a piece of toast? Marmalade?’

  ‘Marmalaud.’

  Bless him and his phony English accent. ‘Do you?’

  ‘Not hungry. I’ll watch you. You need to put on some weight.’ He stops. He thinks about what he has said. ‘No, you’re just fine. You’re fine the way you are.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Don’t let the eggs get cold. Nothing worse than cold eggs.’

  ‘So, that’s where I get it from.’

  ‘The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.’

  ‘The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.’

  I look. I listen. ‘I know.’

  ‘I’m glad you came home.’

  ‘Me too.’

  He yells at the top of his failing lungs. ‘Patty! It’s time for my medication!’ He whispers. ‘She’s not getting a penny, not a penny. Don’t you girls give her a cent. You hear me.’

  ‘Have a piece of toast, Pop.’ He leans over, nearly falls off his chair, finds his balance, nibbles at my toast.

  ‘Needs marmalaud.’

  ‘I’ll put some on.’

  ‘Don’t bother. Just enjoy it before it gets cold.’

  I am not hungry, but for you, Father, I will eat. Oh shit! I forgot to ask Patty about who’s living at Mrs B.’s. ‘Dad?’ He is lost in space. ‘Dad!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Who’s’ … better not to ask … ‘What’s the best stock fund? If you were investing, who would you give your money to?’

  ‘Warren Buffet … Berkshire Hathaway. Didn’t I tell you I had business in Omaha … when I first started the firm?’

  ‘You did.’

  ‘How’d you like Omaha?’

  Don’t bother. ‘I liked it. I liked it a lot.’

  ‘Your mother would have hated it. She never liked small towns. Never.’ Simultaneously, we turn toward the kitchen doorway, listen. Her voice fills the air.

  ‘I went up one pair of stairs.’

  ‘Just like me.’

  ‘I went up two pairs of stairs.’

  ‘Just like me.’

  ‘I went into a room.’

  ‘Just like me.’

  ‘I looked out of a window.’

  ‘Just like me.’

  ‘And there I saw a monkey.’

  ‘Just like me.

  Blow Out

  I ring the outside buzzer. It rings back. Through two heavy wooden doors, I enter the brick building. I ring the office buzzer. It rings back. Push the black door open, enter Mary Michelin’s anteroom. As I had imagined, the walls are beige. We will begin on a blank page. The usual magazines are on the glass table: Vogue, Bazaar, Newsweek, Time, People, Vanity Fair.

  The door opens. There she is. Mary Michelin is no 60,000 miles guaranteed tire. She is a silver-haired beauty, wearing a black turtleneck tucked inside a long black straight skirt. Around her slim waist is a leather belt with silver buckle; and black boots underneath the fashionable skirt; not a lot of color to her outfit. But, her eyes sparkle as if she has a secret or knows the secrets that wait in her waiting room.

  She opens her interior door. ‘Loli Greene?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Come in.’ She closes the door. I sit in a comfortable padded armchair. She sits in a reclining easy chair. She looks so at ease in her body, in her world. I am petrified.

  ‘Where do I begin?’

  ‘What brought you here? Let’s begin there.’

  A therapist who asks questions. The jig is up. ‘My father is dying – cancer. He’s got about a month to live. My mother, who’s been dead for at least twenty years, chased my father out of his bedroom, which was their bedroom. About a year after she died, she started talking to me in nursery rhymes during this nervous breakdown I had in LA. When she was alive, it wasn’t like her to recite Mother Goose to anyone, especially her children. She’s talking nursery rhymes again … now. My sister, I have an older sister named Dina …’

  ‘How much older?’

  ‘Six years. We’re very close, not in age, but in other ways. She has children. I don’t. I’m gay … I guess that’s what I am. I’ve been in a … how can I say it, a … very … on-again, off-again, relationship for nearly twenty years, but now I’ve fallen in love with a married woman. She’s getting a divorce, I think. My
other relationship, Simone, the long one, has always been an open relationship.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘We, me and Simone, wanted it that way, or she wanted it that way. I don’t remember who wanted it what way… I just came back from Beatrice, Nebraska. That was my mother’s first name … Beatrice. The accent is on a different syl … Never mind. It was phenomenal; see my mother’s name everywhere. I fell in love with a straight woman. I already said that, didn’t I? It’s not important.’

  ‘It isn’t?’

  ‘Maybe it is. Her daughter, it turns out, thinks of me as a role model. Now that’s crazy.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I’m not a role model type … Hate to work. Since my mother died, hard getting up in the morning. My father and I never got along. Never. But we got along yesterday … for the first time, ever. We have my mother in common now. He sees her. I hear her. I almost liked him, loved him yesterday.’

  ‘How lovely for you.’

  ‘It’s so sad.’ Floodgates open. ‘It’s all … so sad. I feel so sorry for him. He’s so alone, even though my mother’s ghost is in the house. He has a housekeeper who takes care of him, but she doesn’t care about him. She’s been stealing from him for years. He pays her to stick around. He has no friends left.’

  ‘Are you sure about that?’

  ‘Ever since she killed herself, he hasn’t had any friends, maybe one or two.’

  ‘Ever since who killed herself?’

  ‘Oh … my mother killed herself. Then he went and married my mother’s best friend. It’s been a mess for years. He tried to seduce my lover … I think. That was a while ago. My mother’s best friend, my father’s ex-wife, is blind. And, somehow, my mother is somewhere in this world, but she’s been dead for years.’ I laugh hysterically, split my sides … guts ache. ‘The story is, believe it or not, it’s true.’ I can’t stop laughing and crying. I can’t … br … bre … brea … breathe … ‘Help! Help!’ Can’t breathe! Oh my God! Suffocating … in Mary Michelin’s office, first visit. She doesn’t know what’s happening, does she?

  ‘Are you … Can you hear me?! Loli, are you alriii …’ Fade to black.

  Pounding in heart space. Pounding, pounding so hard, so heavy. Drop down through a portal onto a furry mound. Shadows surround me. Noises come toward me from all directions. Warm skin, a warm hand picks me up. I am safe. Once again I have survived.