Annoyed, I consider telling him it’s none of his business. But Tyshaun will put up signs advertising the sale all around town and the ad will run in the paper and online, so Coughlin can certainly figure it out. After all, he is a detective. So I tell him about the Reicker sale. While I’m talking, my gaze strays from Ethel to Coughlin’s gigantic basketball shoes. I don’t think I’ve ever known a man with feet that size. It’s hard to imagine how he can maneuver with those things. The very act of walking must be like steering twin ocean liners.
“You expecting a big crowd?” he asks. He stands with his hands clasped behind his back, his legs slightly spread, like an at-ease soldier. But his voice never loses that interrogator’s intensity.
“Yes. Mr. Reicker had some nice antiques. This will be a bigger sale than Mrs. Szabo’s.”
“That punk still working for you?”
I stare him down. “I don’t have any punks on my payroll. I’m lucky—if it hadn’t been for Tyshaun and Jill, I wouldn’t have been able to get my business back up to speed so soon after the accident.”
“Accident? What happened to you was no ordinary push, grab and run. Someone’s angry at you. Someone wants you dead. You got any psycho boyfriends?”
“I went over this with Detective Farrand,” I say. “Believe me, I’m not the type to inspire insane jealousy.”
Coughlin snorts. “I saw a guy beat the crap outta someone over a three hundred pound chick with a mustache thicker than mine. You never know.”
“Gee, thanks for sharing. I guess there’s still hope for me.”
Coughlin actually blushes. “C’mon—you know what I mean.”
Ethel is busy licking the last crumbs of her bagel stick off the sidewalk. Coughlin reaches down to scratch behind her ears. Immediately she puts her paws on his waist to make his job easier.
“This is a good dog,” Coughlin says. Then he looks at me. “Keep her with you all the time.”
I can only imagine that, once inside a dog’s stomach, a bagel stick must inflate to monstrous proportions because Ethel is quite subdued on the ride to Manor View. We arrive to eerily empty halls and a deserted rec room. Most of the inmates are down at the chapel for the weekly non-denominational service. I guess having one foot in the grave must make everyone more religious. Not my father, though. He’s never embraced what he calls “spiritual claptrap” and his stroke hasn’t changed that. I’m sure we’ll find him in his room, staring at the wall. Ethel charges ahead of me, but before I get to the door of Dad’s room, she has already popped back out again. That’s odd.
I step into his room and find it empty, the bed made, the lights all extinguished. Where could he be? I’m pierced by a shaft of panic. Could he be…dead? Surely someone would have called me? I scramble for my cell phone. Maybe it’s out of juice. Maybe I didn’t hear it ringing during the Ethel confrontation. But it’s on and shows no messages or missed calls.
Just then an aide passes by.
“Excuse me—where’s my father?”
She looks left and right as if she expects him to be running laps around the nurse’s station. Then she snaps her fingers. “Oh, that’s right. He’s out.”
“Out? Out where?”
“He had a visitor who took him out for brunch.”
“Visitor? Brunch?” I couldn’t be more incredulous if she’d told me Dad had hopped in his car and driven to Atlantic City for an afternoon of blackjack.
“He’s allowed to leave,” the aide says. Her tone implies she thinks it’s nice someone has taken him somewhere, since I never do. Frankly, an outing has never occurred to me. Why go to all the trouble of hauling him to a restaurant to sit in stony silence? We can do that right here.
“Who took him out?” I ask. So far as I know, no one visits him but me. The aide points me to a visitor’s log book at the nurse’s station. Someone named Brian Bascomb signed my father out at 11:00 AM and has indicated 12:30 as his estimated time of return. That’s only half an hour from now. Ethel and I sit down in dad’s room to wait.
Brian Bascomb? Is that name familiar? In the weeks after his stroke, Dad received a few get well cards from colleagues at the university, but the trickle of mail has stopped. Seems strange that one of his co-workers would show up to take him out to lunch now that so many months have passed by. Maybe Brian Bascomb is a long-lost friend from the early days of my parents’ marriage, back when Dad was some other man, brimming with sunshine and charm. I hope Brian, whoever he is, is prepared for the Roger Nealon of today.
I eat my bagel and drink my tepid coffee and think about my father and mother. According to Mrs. Olsen, my mother had a job she loved. This is the first I’ve ever heard that my mom was at all career-driven. To hear Nana and Pop talk, my mother was one hundred percent devoted to me. June Cleaver, Princess Diana and the Virgin Mary rolled into one—that was the family party line. Dad had never contradicted their portrayal. But now that I really think about it, he never talked their talk either. In fact, he was always stubbornly silent on the subject of my mother. Pop said it was because talking about her was too painful for Dad. And answering my questions about her was too painful for Nana. And my being too curious “stirred things up.”
Pop was adamantly “anti-stir.” I adored my grandfather. As the family’s tidal wave of love, he compensated for my mother’s absence, my father’s coldness and Nana’s bouts of despair. All he asked in return was that I not stir things up. How could I refuse?
I glance heavenward. Pop wouldn’t like what I’m about to do today. Stick a giant spoon in the pot and stir, stir, stir.
“Look who’s here!”
I jump at the sound of a high-pitched voice fluting in from the hallway. Dad is being pushed in his wheelchair by another of Manor View’s fleet of aides. No Brian Bascomb to be seen.
“Two visitors in one day! Aren’t you lucky?”
Judging from the expression on his face, Dad doesn’t feel he’s hit the jackpot. With a little effort, I can convince myself his wooden demeanor is due to the stroke.
Ethel trots over and gets as much of herself into the wheelchair as caninely possible. Dad’s features soften as he strokes her velvety brown ears.
“So,” I begin once the aide has left us, “you had a brunch date. Did you have a nice time? Who’s Brian Bascomb?”
Dad shoots me a stealthy glance, but of course he can’t answer. I retrieve the pen and pad from beside his bed and hand them to him. He keeps his hands sunk into Ethel’s fur so I have no choice but to dump the pen and pad into his lap.
When he makes no effort to use the pen and paper, I press on. “Is Brian Bascomb someone you worked with?” The minute the words are out of my mouth I could kick myself. You better believe Detective Coughlin would never make such a stupid blunder—offer up a ready-made lie. Sure enough, Dad looks up and nods eagerly.
I decide to come back to Brian Bascomb later. I have more important matters to tackle.
“Guess who I saw this week? Melody Olsen’s mother, Lisa. Remember her?”
Dad’s hand freezes on Ethel’s head.
“She and mom were good friends. You must remember her.”
He nods warily.
“She’s such a kind person. Generous, you know? I’d forgotten that.”
I can see his sunken chest rising and falling under the gray shroud of a cardigan he wears every day.
“She was willing to sit and talk to me about Mom. Really talk, I mean. Answer questions, reminisce.” I let this information hang there for a moment. No one moves.
After the silence has dragged on long enough, I continue. “Mrs. Olsen told me Mom had gone back to work a year after I was born. I never knew that. Said she worked for a small PR firm—really loved it.”
Dad nods while keeping his eyes focused on Ethel.
“What was the firm called?” This could be valuable information. Maybe I can find other people who knew my mother well at the time of her disappearance.
Dad shakes his head.
; “You won’t tell me?”
Finally he picks up the pen and pad. He writes and holds it up. Don’t remember.
This may or may not be true. Dad has never had a good memory for mundane details, like when the garbage men pick up or how to change the ink in the printer. But maybe he doesn’t want me to know. Why?
“Mrs. Olsen said mom quit her job in the city when I was born, but then didn’t like not working so she found a job closer to home.” I try to arrange my features to look nothing more than mildly curious. “How close was her office to our house? I think I remember going there with her.”
In the harsh fluorescent light of the nursing home, my father looks exceptionally pale and frail. But his bright blue eyes haven’t dimmed. Despite his refusal to work on his recovery, despite his inability to speak, my father—sharp, shrewd, analytical--is in there. He knows I’m after something although he’s not sure what it might be. We play a non-verbal game of cat and mouse. Me, smiling benignly as I take a little stroll down memory lane. Him, gauging whether I’ll drop the subject faster if he answers or he refuses.
Finally, he drops his gaze to the notepad, and gripping the pen in his left hand, awkwardly scratches out a few words. When he’s done I squint to read what he’s written: Reston Ave. She took you in stroller.
Whattaya know? The bit about remembering going there with her was total fabrication on my part, but apparently true. “She didn’t take me every day? Sometimes you watched me, right?”
Dad nods, a faraway look in his eyes.
“Didn’t you ever have a nanny, even a part-time babysitter?” I ask. “It must’ve been hard for you to get your work done with a crying baby to deal with.” He shakes his head and croaks out a word I can’t understand.
“What?”
Dad picks up the pen again. Good baby.
Ridiculously, I feel a lump form in my throat. Imagine--I was a good baby. That’s the most complimentary thing my father has said to me in years.
We’re quiet for a moment, but it’s not the usual excruciating silence of seconds counted until we can be released from each other’s company. Instead we’re sort of basking in the glow of a happier time, a time I don’t truly remember.
And then, to paraphrase Frank Sinatra, I go and spoil it all by saying something stupid. “Dad, Mrs. Olsen said she thought Mom might have been pregnant when she disappeared. Is that true?”
I see his hands tighten on the arms of his wheelchair. His eyes widen and he shakes his head furiously, as if I’m the knife-wielding maniac and he’s the cornered babysitter. Then he lurches forward and pounds the call button beside his bed. Of course I shouldn’t have blurted out the question so brutally. It’s just that I’m not used to protecting his feelings. I’m not used to him having feelings.
Out in the hall I hear the squeak of the aide’s approaching feet. I need to recoup. “Dad? Mrs. O. said Mom was excited about something in the weeks before she…, before Christmas. Was it a baby? Do you know?”
But there’s no time to say more. Desiree the aide has arrived and Dad thrusts his chin toward the bathroom. As she wheels him in, the light reflects something shiny.
His cheeks are wet with tears.
Chapter 22
I try to ride out my father’s retreat into the bathroom, but after twenty minutes Desiree comes back in, fixes me with a withering glare, and tells me Dad is having trouble “moving things along” and my continuing presence must be “constricting.” Her dark eyes lock with mine, her broad, brown face frozen with disdain. I know in that moment that if Desiree’s father ever had a stroke she would not put him in a place like Manor View. She’d bring him to her house, carry him in her strong arms, feed him, wipe him, bathe him, all without complaint. She doesn’t understand us Americans, doesn’t like us much either, although it’s our strange ways that create a job for her. She’d like to tell me what a sorry excuse I am for a daughter that I don’t take my father out myself. That I don’t, apparently, even know who his one friend is. But honesty is not one of the perks of her job.
Invalids trump healthy people every time—I have no choice but to leave. But I know damn well it’s not an intestinal crisis keeping him holed up in the loo. I want to shout “we’re not done with this conversation” through the bathroom door as I leave his room, but the aide’s tapping foot and crossed arms silence me, and I slink out with Ethel.
Now she and I are home, grappling with the saddest stretch of the week: Sunday afternoon. This is the time when lovers lounge in bed, trading sections of the New York Times; when families go bike-riding or apple-picking or some other hyphenated activity; when old married couples take long hand-in-hand walks. Ethel and I are none of those things, so we struggle to find ways to fill the long hours between sleeping in and going to bed early. Ethel alternates restless pacing with heavy sighing. I mostly brood.
The Sundays of my childhood were spent with Nana and Pop. They’d pick me up at eight for Sunday school, an activity my father only tolerated because it got me out of the house early and motivated my grandparents to keep me all day. How I loved Sunday school! Making the Popsicle stick manger with the clothespin baby Jesus. Eating the wholesome graham cracker and apple juice snack. Memorizing the 23rd Psalm. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil….Thy rod and thy staff they comfort me…. Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies…. I had no idea what it meant but I loved the sound of the words as they rolled off my tongue.
After church, we’d go out to lunch at the Afton Restaurant and I’d get a Shirley Temple with my grilled cheese sandwich. At the table Nana would pull out the neatly clipped THINGS TO DO column from the Palmyrton Daily Record and suggest outings. Petting Zoo? Hay ride? Gingerbread house competition? As I look back on those Sundays, I marvel at my optimism. Every week, brimming with anticipation, I’d choose an excursion. Every week I was just slightly let down. I could never lose the feeling that the other kids—the ones who were there with their screaming little brothers and bored older sisters and piggy-back ride giving fathers—were having more fun than I was. Most of all, I couldn’t shake the sense that if my mom had been there to shoo away the aggressive goose at the farm or take my picture in the funny colonial hat, my Sunday afternoon would have been pure bliss. Instead, on the way home I often wept quietly in the back seat, overcome by waves of sadness, while my grandparents chatted away in the front of the big Buick, pleased with the success of their entertainment.
Sundays haven’t improved much in the past twenty-five years. I still feel pulled toward tears, and it doesn’t take much to set me off. A guy puts his hand on his wife’s shoulder as they’re crossing the street and I start scrabbling through my pockets looking for a balled up napkin to mop up my over-reaction.
Sometimes I surrender to the sadness and wallow. Make like a pig and wade right into the mire. That’s when the scrap book comes out.
I slide my feet out from under Ethel’s sprawl at the end of the sofa and pad over to the bookcase. The scrapbook resides on the top shelf, holding the only remnants of family I possess. Nana assembled it, and every page is a testament to her resolute cheerfulness and her despair.
The book begins with my mother’s birth. A velum card, only slightly yellow around the edges, trumpets the arrival of Charlotte Elizabeth Perry, 6 pounds, 7 ounces. Proud parents: William and Elinor. The next few pages chronicle my mother’s meteoric rise: star of the ballet recital, champion of the summer swim league, top seller of Girl Scout cookies. Nana has saved every ribbon and award, carefully mounting and labeling them. Nestled between the mementoes are faded snapshots of a smiling Charlotte in a number of different get-ups, even then projecting an astonishing grace.
I study the pictures as I always have, searching for some similarity between us. Where in that beautiful, confident, athletic girl is the seed that would one day become me?
I turn two pages and we are into the high school years. Cheerleader, prom queen, school musical solo
ist, field hockey star. Face it—if I had met my mother at my high school, I would’ve been scared to death of her. Wouldn’t any mere mortal? I know Nana assembled this scrapbook with the best of intentions. She wanted me to know my mother, to love her as she and Pop did. But the scrapbook has always backfired.
If you asked the average person to conjure up the sensation of dread what would they imagine? A trip to the dentist, maybe, or a phone ringing in the middle of the night. For me, it would be the sight of Nana advancing on me with that scrapbook in her hands. I knew I should have enjoyed snuggling on the sofa with Nana, breathing in her familiar combination of peppermint Lifesavers, Estee Lauder and Aqua Net, leafing through the pages of my mother’s life. The fact that I hated it scared me, and instinctively I knew I could never tell Nana how I really felt. I needed Nana, needed her desperately, so I couldn’t afford to do anything that might make her stop loving me. That’s why I endured those sessions, endured them right up until the day before she died.
I still hate the scrapbook, but with Nana gone at least I don’t have to pretend to like it. Now when I get it out it’s because I want the perverse pleasure of picking at a scab. Today I flip past the early years and cut to the chase: Charlotte as wife and mother. I study the wedding pictures with an interest I’ve never felt before. Naturally, my mother was a stunning bride. But today I don’t focus on her elegant gown or the flowing illusion veil. I scrutinize my father. He appears in only two photos, as if he were a bit player on this big day. But in both pictures he looks like he’s just won the Nobel Prize, basking in the glow of knowing the world finally recognizes his true genius. Dad was never conventionally handsome, but in these pictures he radiates an energy that makes him attractive. It’s not a stretch to understand why my mother married him.
My hand hesitates on the scrapbook page. These final photos have always been the hardest for me to look at. Charlotte as Madonna. Nana has selected only those photos that portray my mother with one foot in Heaven. Exhausted but proud Charlotte in her hospital bed. Doting Charlotte nursing. Laughing Charlotte spooning in the baby food. Energetic Charlotte pushing the stroller. I’m in the pictures, but just like my father at the wedding, I seem like nothing more than a prop.
Another Man's Treasure (a romantic thriller) (Palmyrton Estate Sale Mystery Series Book 1) Page 12