I hugged my father. He was always stiff when it came to demonstrating affection, especially in public. I wasn’t sure he even realized I had kissed him.
‘What are they saying?’ I asked.
‘She’s ticking down,’ he replied.
What a strange way to put it, I thought. He made my mother sound like a bomb.
‘They say we all have a finite number of heartbeats determined at conception,’ Ronnie offered. His mother’s eyes widened. His father shook his head as though he pitied him for being so stupid. He was simply trying to find something to say, but no matter what anyone said right now, I thought, it wouldn’t satisfy anyone else.
Kelly stepped out from behind him and my father showed more emotion. Parents always give their grandchildren more affection, I thought. It’s as if when their children reach a certain age, that display has to be constricted and put into storage until the grandchildren come along and it can be revived. He hugged her tighter and kissed her and smiled. Then he looked at me.
‘Where were you?’ he asked.
‘I had to do something,’ I said, hoping that would suffice for now. He grimaced and shook his head.
‘You can go in to see her,’ he said. ‘She goes in and out. If there weren’t the machines, she would have been down for the count.’
First she was a bomb and now she’s a prize fighter, I thought and started for the ICU. I paused and looked back at Kelly. My eyes asked. She hurried to catch up with me and we entered together.
Ronnie liked to joke and tell our friends, ‘Look at your mother-in-law and that’s what your wife will be like in thirty years or so.’
Whenever he cracked that line, everyone laughed on cue as if there was a built-in laugh track like the ones they use on television comedy series. But when I saw my mother hooked up to oxygen and the monitors, looking as if she was shrinking in the bed, I did think of myself and what it would be like for me. I thought there was no way I could end up like that. I’m not going to die. I’m going to evaporate.
‘You don’t think about Death,’ Lancaster had told me during one of our deeper conversations. ‘Death thinks about you and you are like a voyeur listening and looking in on the discussion.’
‘What’s the difference?’ I had asked.
‘The difference is that if you could avoid the word itself, you would; we all would. Death doesn’t like to be ignored.’
Death wasn’t being ignored here. The entire complex was dedicated to dueling with him. Some would hold him off for a while, but from the looks of it, most would succumb. Certainly, my mother would.
Kelly started to cry. I embraced her and she embraced me. My mother didn’t look conscious. I moved softly away from Kelly and kissed my mother’s cheek. Then I took her hand and looked at Kelly. She kissed her, too.
‘Mom,’ I said. ‘We’re here. Kelly and I are here. Can you hear us?’
I thought her eyelids fluttered, but maybe it was my wishful thinking. She didn’t open them. We stood there. A nurse came and looked at the monitor and at us, but quickly moved away before she had to deal with questions or sorrow.
Kelly looked as if she was about to get hysterical. I saw she was trying hard to swallow back the tears. She was trembling, too.
‘I’m just going to sit here, Kelly. You can go out with Dad. Maybe go to the hospital cafeteria with him and get something to eat or drink.’
Kelly nodded, glanced at her grandmother. Obviously she was hesitant about kissing her again, about getting too close to death. She was probably terrified that she would feel cold to her lips. I nodded, excusing her, and she hurried out. Fleeing, I thought. I envied her.
I sat and held on to my mother’s hand. She had smaller hands than I had. I always thought her fingers were more feminine than mine. She was so attentive to her skin, religiously applying her favorite creams and lotions. Her nails looked as if they had been manicured an hour ago. Just like her to be perfectly prepared. She told me often, as repetitiously as someone sniffing around memory loss in fact, that her mother always insisted she have on clean undergarments whenever she went out. ‘Just in case.’
Just in case? For whom? If you’re dead, you can’t be embarrassed, so it had to be for those you left behind so they wouldn’t be embarrassed. How selfish was that?
I was sure that somehow she had clean panties on. I drew closer to her.
‘I’m so sorry this is happening now, Mom, so soon, too soon. I needed you. I wanted to talk to you about my life. You always said you couldn’t even imagine being with someone else but my father, but I’m sure you fantasized about it sometimes. Dad’s good-looking, strong and reliable, but he’s not Mr Perfect. I know daughters are supposed to think of their fathers as being perfect, but you know I never did. He wasn’t around enough.
‘Anyway, I met someone and I can’t seem to stay away from him, and even though he pretends to be so independent, I’m sure he can’t stand to be away from me.’
I looked at the door and then I leaned in closer.
‘The truth is he haunts me. Stalks is not the right word. Stalks is too impersonal, and if there’s one thing he’s not, it’s impersonal. He gets so into me that I think he hears my thoughts. He anticipates everything I do almost before I intend to do it. Although neither of us has said the word, I think we love each other. Love leads to all that I have described, don’t you think?’
I waited and then sat back.
Was this the conversation I wanted to leave with her, the last conversation between us? What else should I be talking about? Should I tell her things I liked about her? Should I sit here reminiscing about the good times we had with each other? Should I laugh about things we had laughed about together, things about my father? Should I ask her to repeat that recipe for chicken paprikash her grandmother gave her? I would have to confess that I didn’t pay enough attention to her when she told it to me, every time she told it to me.
Should I talk about Kelly and reassure her that she is going to be all right in life? Should I talk about what life would be like for my father without her and what I intended to do about it, if anything?
It was horrible, I’m sure, but none of that trumped my desire to talk about Lancaster. I suddenly had this comforting and confident feeling that somehow he would find out about this. He wouldn’t insert himself, but he would get here just so I could see him and he could give me a sympathetic and supportive look. He would want to do that.
I don’t know how much longer I sat there talking softly to my mother, who probably did not hear a word. I think she was already gone, despite the report from the machinery tracking blood pressure and heartbeats and oxygen levels. Eventually, my father came in and stood beside me, and then Ronnie came in with Kelly, and somewhere during that traffic I went out to the bathroom.
I felt my cell phone vibrate while I was still in there. I smiled and said hello.
‘How is she?’ he asked.
‘Not good. How did you find out?’
‘Good news hobbles along; bad news has wings.’
‘I’ll be down here until …’
‘Look for me,’ he said.
‘I will,’ I promised.
Afterward, we all ate in the hospital cafeteria, even Ronnie’s parents. We were nearly finished when my father spotted the cardiologist in the doorway.
‘Well,’ he said, rising slowly. ‘I’ll go speak to him,’ he added, nodding at the doctor in the doorway.
We all froze. Kelly started to cry.
Please, I thought. Please don’t come back and say, ‘She expired.’
Then she would have gone from a bomb to a prize fighter to a parking meter in a matter of hours.
TWELVE
After every one of our relatives died and the deaths of some of our closer friends occurred, my father used to annoy my mother when he would inevitably say, ‘I envy the Jews. Traditionally, they don’t wait more than twenty-four hours to bury their dead, as long as it’s not on the Sabbath.’
I k
new why he said that. He hated all the anticipation and he hated to be stuck in the groove of one emotion or another too long. For him, it was like being on cruise control on the freeway, eventually too monotonous. He had a desperate need for choice and eventually would slow down even though he didn’t have to reduce his speed, which was something that also drove my mother bonkers. And me, too, for that matter.
I understand that it is in most everyone’s nature to want to spend the least amount of time being sad, but my father even believed that being happy too long brought you close to idiotic. He was especially relentless about his objection to mourning, to wearing the clothes and the face of the bereaved for a moment longer than he absolutely had to. In these clothes and under those scrutinizing eyes of fellow mourners looking for a sign of deep emotional loss, he resembled someone whose entire body itched.
‘By the time the man or the woman gets buried, everyone else feels like jumping in after them,’ he muttered once. That brought a blast from my mother about his selfishness which sent him fleeing to the ninth hole on the golf course. Golf was the modern man’s substitute for a monastery, except for those who exploited it for a business meeting. ‘Get them when they’re frustrated with their putt,’ was my father’s motto.
When I looked at him now, I knew he was thinking he was already cruising too long at grief speed on the freeway. Despite the cousins and my mother’s brother and his sister, and the friends they had made who were all attending the funeral, and despite the comfort they all tried to bring, he obviously longed for a chance to mourn alone and bring this all to a quicker end.
As did I.
Only Ronnie seemed really to enjoy the fellowship. He fished for and hooked into as many different conversations as he could. Unlike most who were timid about showing interest in anything on such a depressing occasion, he rushed about like a kid in a candy store with a limitless budget. I knew it was his way of handling the sadness, but anyone watching him would think he was starved for companionship. It was as if he had been in solitary confinement for years. Seeing him in action was the only thing that brought any sort of smile to my face. When he caught me looking at him and laughing to myself, he rushed over.
‘What?’ he asked.
I just shook my head.
‘What?’
‘Nothing, Ronnie. Don’t make a scene,’ I said, and he shrugged and turned to Wade Barry, a cousin on my mother’s side who was recently elected to the state assembly. Wade was a short, stout man with ears too big, suggesting he was built to hear more, especially complaints. In minutes, Ronnie was lecturing him on what taxes to eliminate.
Fortunately for Kelly, my cousin Amy had brought her teenage daughter Ellen with her and they could go off to compare life in their schools and cities, as well as the unreasonable rules parents seemed to pull out of pure air. I saw them smiling discreetly at what each other was saying, and I recalled some of the cousins I had met infrequently and only at funerals.
I thought of the old adage that nothing brings families together more than weddings and funerals with little in between. Memories of weddings weren’t bad, but having to refer to funerals to recall the last time you had seen some relative had to be gloomy. After all, the smiles had to be quick and the laughter suppressed. You fled the images, the scent of candles and the sounds of quiet sobbing. You promised to stay in touch with those you met there, but rarely did. We don’t realize how attached we are to moments, and how we are remembered or avoided because of them. A friend you were with in New York City when you and she were rushing not to be late to a show or an uncle who had burned himself on a hot pan in the kitchen were bells that rang the resurrection of faces and voices more vividly. You could know someone for years or a lifetime, and if he or she did one thing that really upset you, that would be the sole doorway to envisioning.
Three of my girlfriends – Rosalie Okun, Brondi Spector and Toby Ludlow – drove to Palm Springs together to give me support, but I suspected they were going to make a day of it, shopping at the outlet mall off the 10 Freeway as well. They each made the point that they were sorry it took my mother’s funeral finally to see me. I had been so aloof lately. The questions were smeared like hot fudge over their faces. Where had I been? Why hadn’t I answered their calls? My silence in response rushed them out faster than they had intended, which was something I welcomed as much as I would taking off a heavy sweater on a warm summer day.
I was so prepared for the loneliness of sorrow. It was as if I had been practicing with an undertaker for days. Dark corners and empty rooms brought sufficient comfort for now. People avoided me as if I was the one looking up at them from an opened coffin.
I didn’t see Lancaster until we were at the cemetery the following morning.
I wasn’t looking for him especially, but while the minister recited the prayers, I raised my eyes and looked across the row of tombstones and monuments. It was a remarkably beautiful day, with not a cloud in the sky – a day too beautiful for funerals. People should be able to wait for the weather report before dying. Every color was vibrant. Even black looked more like an elegant tuxedo black than a funeral black. I had the funny image of my mother pounding on the inside of the coffin, having it opened, sitting up and declaring it was a better day for a picnic.
Lancaster was standing by one of the larger tombs, leaning against it actually, and looking toward us, looking at me. He was in a dark blue suit and tie, glowing like some sort of angel. He was smiling, but it wasn’t out of place or disrespectful; it was a smile full of warmth and affection, a smile meant to give me strength. I was holding Kelly’s hand with my right hand and Ronnie was holding my left. Ronnie was shifting his weight from leg to leg periodically like some little boy who had to pee. He wasn’t as sad as he was just plain uncomfortable.
Afterward, we returned to my father’s condo on the golf course. Having mourners there seemed totally out of place. While we gathered, just outside the rear patio doors we could witness men and women in colorful golf clothes intently addressing their little white balls on the plush carpet of green, as if what they did with it would determine how they would spend eternity. Occasionally, one or more of them looked our way, saw or knew what it was and instantly returned to their safe, insulated world of putts and drives. Ronnie stood outside with some of the other men, watching the golfers and criticizing their approach to the ball or their follow-through.
His mother, rather than I, supervised the food and drink, along with a caterer my father had hired. The way he referred to him made it sound as if he was part of the funeral preparations package or had to give the undertaker a kickback.
Kelly spent the most time looking at my mother’s things. My father gave her some of her jewelry. I saw the conflict in her eyes. She wanted it, but hated taking it.
‘It’s all right,’ I told her. ‘Someone would probably steal it right out from under him eventually.’
‘Why didn’t he want to give it to you?’ she asked. A clever question.
‘I don’t wear what I have,’ I replied. A poor answer. She knew it, too.
We didn’t wait for the last mourner to leave before we did. My father looked so envious. I had the feeling he would leave with us and desert the funeral, even his condo if he could. Our hugs and kisses weren’t much different from what they always were: short, as official as government protocol.
Ronnie waited for a little more than eight hours afterward, a deadline he had obviously established for himself, before he asked me any more about my disappearance, as he put it. It didn’t happen until we were home and were getting ready for bed. We had a pair of French Charles X antique Fauteuil chairs with velvet upholstery in our bedroom. They were an anniversary gift my parents had given us, mainly, I thought, because they had too much furniture when they were moving from a house to a condo in Palm Springs. Ronnie claimed they were very uncomfortable chairs and rarely sat in them unless he was putting on socks and shoes. I told him they were really meant to be works of art and there to add st
yle and beauty to our room.
‘Furniture that isn’t meant to be used is a waste,’ he replied. He always thought we would be better off selling them and using the money for something sensible, like a new wireless sound system.
Tonight, he was seated in one of the chairs, sitting back with the tips of his fingers pressed against each other in the shape of a cathedral. He wore only his briefs. The sight of him dressed like that and sitting in one of these antique chairs, probably originally owned by some nobleman who would never have tolerated anyone sitting in them practically naked, brought a broad smile to my face. I couldn’t help it, even though I knew from his demeanor that he wanted this to be a very serious moment.
‘What is it, Ronnie?’ I asked, seeing that was what he wanted me to do: speak first.
‘I still don’t understand why you didn’t call us to tell us about your change of plans? What if something had happened to me or to Kelly? How would anyone have gotten in touch with you?’
‘I wasn’t thinking about any of that,’ I said. ‘I’ve already explained it. I wanted to get away from any interruptions.’
‘Even something happening to one of us?’
‘I told you. I didn’t think about that,’ I said firmly.
He still kept his fingertips pressed against each other, his back straight, his eyes fixed on me like some high court judge in the Middle Ages deciding on life or death for heretics.
‘You’re different, Clea,’ he said. ‘I can see that now.’
‘I’m tired. It has been quite a stressful few days for all of us, not any less for me.’
‘No, I don’t mean because of what’s happened to your mother or any of that. You were different before all this.’
‘That’s why I wanted some time alone,’ I replied and pulled back the blanket and top sheet.
Lost in His Eyes Page 18