One More Stop

by Lois Walden

  The Good Humor man pulls up in his ice-cream truck right in front of school. I want to ask him if my mother told him she was going to kill herself. But it’s twenty years later. For sure he’s not the same Good Humor man. The kids run for the truck, much like I did when I was their age.

  For some strange reason I feel hopeful about the future. My visit with Mrs B. has been an inspiration. Even though she is blind, I felt as if she saw all of me. How healing it is to be seen.

  I continue my walk through town, pass the candy store, the drug store, down Post Avenue, turn right onto Bridge Court. I walk up the steps in front of the shrinking house. I have my key poised, ready for the hole. Open the door, enter the world of sick and dying.

  Patty is sound asleep on the living-room sofa. I tiptoe into the television room. Pop is also fast asleep, talking his dream talk.

  ‘Hurry up, I wanna go up. I’m here. Come on now. Hurry up. Take me up.’ She is in his every sleep, every wake. She is in the bedroom. She is in whatever room he has left for her in his heart. I kiss him on his forehead. I listen for her. She has nothing to say. Where is that missing monkey? It’ll turn up sooner or later.

  I let myself out of the house, walk to the Beechwood train station. It is three p.m. I have had a full day.

  The train arrives; the train that my father took to work every day of his life. I am on his train, going to his city, looking out his window, rediscovering the tall trees, the endless train tracks, the two-story brick buildings, the almost perfect world I took for granted as a child.

  Picking Up Speed

  I was relieved not to be going to Montana. Stuart Manly understood my decision to remain in close proximity to my dying father. What was not clear to Stuart was my complete and utter lack of interest in teaching altogether.

  By sending my replacement to Montana, The Company was caught short. It had promised a three-day residency to Harriet Tubman High School in Harlem.

  Stuart Manly assumed that I was just hanging around New York City having a la di da time. As far as he was concerned, I owed The Company a week. Three days was a deal. In theory he was right. In fact he was wrong. It requires an all-consuming focus to make peace with a dying parent, especially when you have blamed that parent for almost everything that has ever been wrong with your life.

  Dina thought it a good idea for me to keep busy; best not to think … about anything. Keeping busy is another example of the older child syndrome. The oldest child chooses responsibility. The youngest child chooses to be carefree for an indiscriminate, undetermined length of time; as long as possible.

  The tenth graders at Harriet Tubman High were street smart, uncontrollable, wickedly funny and enormously perceptive; white woman has arrived. What can we get away with?

  The boys are slumped so low in their desk chairs that all I can see are their eyes. The black girls look bored. They gaze at themselves in tiny mirrors hidden inside their purses. The Muslim girls wear burkhas. Can barely see their faces. Wonder how they survive during these maniacal anti-Muslim times.

  Begin. ‘I’m going to get right to the point here.’ Three boys yawn and drop down below eye level. I had better keep it moving or else it will be a forehead-only class. ‘Look, we all define ourselves by who we think we are, right?’ One or two nods. Infinitely better than switchblades. ‘Where we come from, who our family is, what our friends think of us … right?’ Not one word.

  Ms Withers, the teacher, screams. ‘Come on class! Say something! … Anything!’

  Screams from the teens: ‘Sure. Right. What? Oh yeah, Ms Withers.’

  ‘Thank you, Ms Withers … What if you are not who you think you are? What happens if how you define yourself is no longer your story? Your parents aren’t your parents? Your sister isn’t your …’ Uh oh … What have I done? A young boy raises his hand. He is no longer a forehead. He is an entire face with neck attached. Things are looking up. ‘Yes. What’s your name?’

  ‘Clarence Darnell The Third.’

  ‘Clarence.’

  ‘If you don’t mind me sayin’ so, miss, I don’t need to do the exercise.’

  ‘Why is that Clarence?’

  ‘Well you see, miss, my mother lives upstairs from my father and me. She lives with my uncle, who is now married to my mother, so he’s my father too. My sister lives with my uncle’s son. They’re living in my apartment. My sister is fourteen. She just had a baby girl. So, now I’m an uncle. My father’s married my mother’s sister … so I think my mother’s sister is now my mother. My father and his new wife, my mother’s sister, and her two kids live in our apartment. So, now my cousins are my brother and sister. You see, miss, I can’t de-fine myself by who my mother, father, sister or anyone is. It’s too confusin’.’

  Good God! Families are so damn confusing; an organism we call home … What do we do when parents who hold certain positions switch roles? Who do we mimic, until we are confident enough to be original without fear. Who!? It is so fucked up.

  Forced to be spontaneous, I change the exercise to fit the moment. ‘Let me put it another way?’ They’re waiting for you … ‘How well do you know yourself? What turns you on?’ Music, Sunday New York Times Business section, sex … ‘Who turns you on?’ Maggie … Simone. The class roars. ‘Seriously.’ Seriously. ‘How did you become who you are? … Pick a time, a time from your past that changed your life.’ I remember my mother’s funeral like it was yesterday. ‘Have a dialogue with the you you were then. See what your present self has to say to your past self.’ Change her legacy. ‘Who are you now?’ Who was I then? ‘How has your past influenced your present?’ She never said goodbye. I never, never say … goodbye.

  After class, I hail a cab, head downtown via the parking lot doubling as the West Side Highway. On Wednesdays the traffic in New York City is nightmarish. It is matinee day; two shows instead of one. Twice as many Jersey drivers clog the city’s arteries. It is an eighteen-dollar cab ride. That’s no joke.

  Mary is happy to see me. No, I am happy to see her. She seems happy to see me; projecting again.

  ‘You wouldn’t believe the class I just came from in Harlem. I feel like an absolute idiot. Stupid. I was … I … was … so insensitive. I don’t want to talk about it.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I was trying to make a point about how we define ourselves. What if you weren’t who you thought you were? What if your father wasn’t your father or your mother wasn’t … Oh fuck it’s too complicated to explain!’

  ‘Try.’

  ‘It’s not important. This one kid lives with his father who’s married or living with … his mother’s sister … The mother’s sister has two kids … They all live together. You get it? His cousins have become his brother and sister, his mother is living with his uncle, his fourteen-year-old sister has already had her first child. For fuck’s sake! Fourteen. Do you believe this story? It’s not a story. It’s real life. A fifteen or sixteen-year-old kid … is now an uncle with two, count them, two sets of parents. He was right. He didn’t need to do the exercise. Why do people have children? Why? What about commitment? What about responsibility? Who gives a shit.’

  ‘Do you have to have children to be committed? Aren’t you committed to, excuse me, what is your partner’s name?’

  ‘Simone.’

  ‘Are you committed to Simone? Do you feel a sense of responsibility toward her?’

  ‘I was. I do. But, now there’s Maggie … I’m not so sure.’

  ‘How long have you known Simone?’

  ‘Twenty years. That’s not the point. If Simone weren’t fucking around, I wouldn’t have fucked around. I did and something happened. Shit happens in an open relationship, in any relationship. Simone made the rules a long time ago. I think she made them.’

  ‘You went along with them.’ She leans forward. ‘Why? Why did you go along with those rules?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Off the top of your head what do you thi
nk?’

  ‘I said, I don’t know!’ Mary stares right through me. ‘What do you want me to say? … I don’t want to lose, I don’t … want to be … I’d rather be with her the way we are, than not be with her at all.’

  ‘Her or anyone?’

  ‘Her! Maggie just happened. Whatever we’re talking about doesn’t have anything to do with Maggie!’

  ‘It probably goes back much farther than Maggie or Simone.’

  ‘It all has to do with my mother, doesn’t it? Is that what you’re trying to say?’

  ‘You brought up your mother.’

  ‘I certainly did … What, if anything, does this conversation have to do with people and their lack of commitment to one another?’

  ‘You tell me.’

  ‘I liked it better with Dr Guttman.’

  ‘I’m sure you did.’

  My father was fading away. By Thursday, the changes in his physical appearance were staggering. He had turned a bright canary yellow. His eyes were glazed, milky, lifeless. His skin pulling away from his body. His bones piercing through his skin. There is an expression. ‘The only thing that you can be sure of in life is death.’ Very well put that expression is. Life, in other words, is full of surprises. Death, on the other hand, is a clear voyage.

  ‘We all fall down.’

  ‘Thank you for that uplifting comment.’

  Dina and I suffered less than most children during my father’s final days. Saul had FedExed a two-pound care package of hallucinogenic Mexican marijuana.

  During one of Pop’s delirious moments, ‘Hurry up I want to go up … aah … please get me out of here!’ We gave him a hit of the stuff. It calmed him right down.

  It was a three-ring circus. Dina and I took turns with the diapers. Some days we had the pleasure of each other’s company. Patty kept herself busy stealing whatever sheets and silverware was left in the house. She made numerous trips to her car, always wearing her winter coat. It was late May.

  During the death watch, I had my daily appointments with Mary. They were work. She led me so far down into my unconscious, sometimes I had no idea where I was, or if I was. She was up on all sorts of techniques: breath work, Kabbalistic symbols, dream therapy, role playing (my favorite: reminded me of my early days as an actress), chakra clearing, hypnosis. Some days we would just sit and talk.

  My mother showed up every now and again. I assumed she was working overtime, trying to pry my father out of his hospital bed, out of the television room, back into the bedroom, and finally over into her world.

  On Sunday night, while I am trying to call Maggie on the phone, Simone shows up at the apartment. As the lock turns, I quickly hang up the phone. Her homecoming is auspicious indeed. We do not have much to say to one another. But, Lord, do we give the word ‘hot’ a new meaning. We make anal love on the couch, nearly drown making love in the tub. I make love to her on top of the kitchen table. She makes love to me on top of the window bench … By late May, the radiators are turned off; we don’t have to worry about burns. Though, I did have rug burns on every inch of my exposed body parts. During our sex scenarios, I am grieving inside. I feel a revulsion for myself like I have never felt before. I can’t look Simone in the eye; can have sex in any configuration imaginable, but can not, will not make eye contact. Until finally we talk.

  ‘Do you want another joint?’ She kisses my forehead.

  ‘No.’

  ‘I missed you.’ I don’t respond. ‘What is wrong?’

  ‘I’m tired.’

  ‘It must be so difficult. Your father.’

  ‘At least I know the outcome.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m tired, that’s all.’

  ‘I do love you.’ She pulls me into her beautiful breasts. I can’t resist. ‘You will adore Zurich.’ She spreads her legs, grabs my hand, slides it down to her pussy. ‘Here darlin’. Feel how wet I am.’

  ‘Not now. Later maybe.’ Habits, like ghosts, have a way of holding you so close that you don’t dare give them up, because you don’t know what your life will be like without them. How could I say goodbye to the shadow that kept me incomplete?

  The day before Memorial Day weekend, Dina and I receive early-morning wake-up calls from Patty. Her rosary beads are working overtime. Pop has lapsed into a coma.

  I cancel Mary Michelin, say goodbye to Simone, run down the stairs. The elevator is still out of order.

  Dina picks me up. We drive in silence until I speak. ‘Would you mind opening a window?’

  ‘I have the air on.’

  ‘Just a crack.’

  ‘That is such a weird habit.’ She opens the window.

  By ten a.m. we arrive in Beechwood. We hold hands as we walk up those familiar front steps. I begin to hyperventilate.

  Dina panics. ‘You can’t do that now!’

  ‘I’m not doing it on purpose,’ I wheeze.

  ‘Before we walk into the house, you have to breathe normally or else I will fall apart. I will. Take some deep breaths … Now!’

  ‘Alright.’ Gasp …gasp … ‘How’s that?’ I pray to God to make me breathe better than I breathe.

  We open the front door only to hear the sound of Patty’s Christ this, mercy that, Mary and Joseph, holy spirit, holy ghost, and other holy biblical phrases I am not familiar with. We walk into the TV room. My hyperventilation has now vented itself into a quiet wheeze.

  My father looks exquisite; yellow like the sun, small and sweet like a newborn, and calm like he has never been in all the years since I have known him.

  Patty prays. ‘Oh heavenly Father! Will ya look at him, will ya.’ Dina cries.

  I give him a good looking over. ‘Patty, are you sure he’s in a coma?’

  ‘Of course I am. I remember my dear departed uncle’s coma. May he rest in peace.’ Dina and I almost laugh out loud. But, this is a time for piety. I try prying open my father’s closed eyes. As if a bolt of lightning has struck him in the ass, he sits upright in his hospital bed.

  With eyes wide open, he speaks. ‘Hurry up. I want to go up. Hurry up. Take me up.’ He lies back down like a ton of skinny bricks.

  ‘Oh Lord. She’s calling his name. He can hear her. I have been around death, I have. But never a death like his. Mary, Jesus and …’

  ‘Patty. Would you mind leaving Dina and me alone with our father?’

  ‘Of course not. I have so much ironing to do in the basement. I’ve been ironing his underwear for days.’ What ironing? He’s been in diapers for over a week now … Patty leaves the room. Dina and I sit, transfixed, staring at my father.

  Suddenly Pop sits up again. ‘Hurry up. I want to get up. Take me up.’ And he’s down again. And so it goes up and down, up and down, life and death, up and down. She is not only near him. She is with him, in him, all around him.

  I smell her perfume. ‘Do you smell that?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing.’ I listen for her; not a word. The afternoon creeps into early evening, the spectacle continues; an outstanding final performance.

  From outside, we hear the Good Humor truck pass by. Dina and I decide to have one last Good Humor. I yell down to the basement. Of course Patty is not there. She is on another silverware run to her car. I open the hall closet. Her coat is missing. I would be such a good detective.

  Dina orders an orange popsicle. Boring. I have a chocolate chocolate-chip Good Humor bar. Only seconds away from asking the ageing Good Humor man if he knew my mother, a blood-curdling scream resounds throughout the neighborhood. Dina and I drop our sweets in the street. We beeline it back to our father’s house.

  I open the front door, race into the television room. He is nowhere to be found. From upstairs Patty screams. ‘HELP! HELP! OH MY GOD! GLORY BE …’

  Dina and I run upstairs. The door to the parents’ room is shut. Patty stands outside the door. She is white as a sheet.

  ‘She’s in there with him. God help us all. She
has come for him at last.’

  I try opening the door. It’s locked. Impossible! I bang, push, scream, kick, and … mysteriously, the door opens …

  There he lies … on the bed; dead as a dead man, with a winter-white smile, with lipstick kisses all over his face. Hail Mary is in order.

  ‘I heard footsteps, ran into the study. The hospital bed was empty. The control box ripped out, thrown on the floor … in the corner by his slippers. I heard a door slam upstairs.’ Patty falls to her knees … ‘Oh Lord in heaven I thought … praise Jesus …’

  I preempt her hallelujahs. ‘Patty, please go downstairs. Call Ralph and the kids. Tell them it’s over.’

  ‘But.’

  ‘Please, leave us alone. And Patty, close the door behind you.’ Patty exits muttering the Lord’s Prayer. Dina bursts out crying. I hold her close. After all, we are sisters and orphans. ‘They’re together now.’

  She cries and cries. I cry only a little in comparison. But it isn’t a contest.

  I look down at his glorious corpse. His left hand is closed tight. I open it. There rests the missing monkey; his favorite picture jasper monkey. Before Dina notices, I slip the monkey into my pocket. I look at the pillowcase next to my father’s head. I swear to whomever there is left, since Patty has used up the quota. There on my mother’s old pillowcase are tears. My mother’s tears no doubt. I turn the pillow over.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Straightening up.’

  ‘How can you be so anal? He just died.’

  I touch his forehead. ‘Goodbye Pop.’

  ‘Look at his face. That’s her lipstick.’ Dina can’t catch her breath.

  ‘It is.’ I breathe a sigh of relief. We sit on the bed, staring at our father’s corpse. I listen and listen. She is gone. He is with her. Finally. She is out of this world.

  Dina whimpers. ‘You know what?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I won’t mind being an orphan as long as I have you,’ she says between hiccups.

  ‘I love you, Dina.’

  ‘We’d better start making phone calls,’ she says anxiously.

  ‘There’s hardly anybody left to call,’ I say reassuringly, as I close my father’s eyes.