But, he told us, there were too many buts. There were years of accumulated losses, compound interest. He had gambled on bad investments, and in the effort to get rich fast, he had gotten poor fast. It was never what he intended, but it was the way things had worked out. No savings, no safe-deposit box, no adequate preparation.
Dad packed snacks for long days and road trips because he knew we’d get hungry even when we said we wouldn’t; spare blankets for our chills, even though we’d started out being too hot; pillows so we could rest, even when we promised we wouldn’t get tired; assumptions that we could count on him even when we thought we didn’t need to. And yet.
Dad was a dreamer, as Mom used to say, so he probably believed he would win the jackpot, or that his investment in a long shot would somehow pay off.
“What about life insurance?” Nate said.
“Afraid not,” Marty said. “He cashed it out to cover losses, a temporary fix.”
“Didn’t he have a pension from his first job?” Nate said.
“Long gone,” Marty said.
I understood. I knew this was who he was, deep down. But it seemed unfair that I was the only one who let mistakes spill out on my skin and my clothes, through my bruises and stains.
“Why didn’t he tell us?” I said.
“What’s to tell?” Marty said. “He didn’t want you to worry.”
Marty looked at Nate again. “You’re not responsible for his debts. That you need to know. But the estate, the house in other words, there’s nothing for you monetarily speaking. It all goes to the collectors.”
Dad would’ve asked us to see the silver lining. But it was so hard without him there to point it out.
Nate scrutinized the bread as though it contained some secret message. That made me want it.
“Are you going to eat that?” I said.
“No,” he said, pushing it toward me.
He began gnawing at his fingernails. “I’ll get a job.”
Marty nodded. “You’ll have to.”
“And I’ll have to leave school,” he said.
“For a short time, maybe. But they’re understanding about these things,” Marty said.
“I’ll have to give up that internship with my professor, and I guess I’ll have to forget about the band.”
“Temporarily,” Marty said.
“I can work,” I said.
“That’s sweet,” Marty said. “But not necessary.”
He explained that keeping my insurance plan and qualifying for disability meant verifying I was incapable of any kind of serious work anyway, which was something Dad and I had previously discussed in my effort to get him to lay off the idea of going on interviews and job searches. If I was going to get a job, it had to be part-time, and it had to be so low-paying that it was almost volunteer. Marty was the one who first mentioned this idea of going on disability in the first place. After Mom died, he wanted something sustainable for the future, a way for me to keep my insurance and a little extra income regardless of what job Dad was or wasn’t working at the time. So at least that part had been taken care of.
“Then why do you care about me working?” I asked once.
“Why do I care?” he said. “Why don’t you care?”
For Dad, it wasn’t about money. It was about normalcy, or about the ruse of creating normalcy. I got that. But it was also about purpose. If I was going to be a volunteer, I could be the most important volunteer in the country, or the world, someone who could save the children, or the animals for that matter. Or I could become a prolific penniless artist, or a world-class teacher, maybe even a talk-show host. “Why not a talk-show host?” he’d said. I was funny enough, he’d told me. Funny and smart enough to be anything. And if I made enough money as a talk-show host, then I could pay for medicine out of pocket, and then who cared about the insurance anyway? That was the way he talked sometimes—in fantasies.
The problem was I hadn’t figured out what my fantasy was, and in the meantime, we hadn’t determined a realistic alternative.
“I have to go now,” I said, banging my knee on the buffet on my way out of the room. Harry, as if on cue, leapt out from beneath the table and followed me upstairs.
I limped to Dad’s dresser and held one of his Pick 6 tickets, examining the numbers. If only I could feel him somehow. I squeezed the stub for a minute, but there was no life inside.
_________
BY THE TIME I ventured downstairs the next day, Nate was already scanning want ads and making phone calls. He moved the boxes of cookies and fruit baskets and all those fruit bouquets that looked like flowers from the table to the counter to spread his laptop, printouts, and notebook pages across the surface. Dad’s copy of the Times lay beside the stack of sympathy cards, untouched in its blue wrapper, preserved like a prayer book.
“What happened to shiva?” I said. “Are we done?”
“We had a solid day,” Nate said, hardly looking up. “Everyone paid their respects.”
Some distant cousins and a stream of people who said they were old friends had showed, a couple of Nate’s close buddies. The rabbi.
“But didn’t the rabbi say it was about giving ourselves time to mourn?”
“We don’t have that luxury right now,” he said.
“Does that make us bad Jews?”
“No,” he said. “That makes us responsible.”
He must have called every person he knew, in some kind of special order, through a method of checks and balances, using a series of arrows indicating which people came from which other people. There was a particular way he answered his phone: This is Nate, in a deeper tone than usual. He changed his voicemail, and cursed at machines after he hung up, and in between phone sessions, he zipped out of the house to go running.
He looked different depending on the hour, as though he could pass for sixteen early in the day, if I squinted and focused on his faded tee and frayed shorts, and thirty later at night, if I concentrated on the tight hairs springing from his collar. I could almost detect the creases creeping around his eyes, the darkness beneath them deepening.
Wasn’t it only last year that he spent the whole summer sunbathing, sprawled out on the roof? No job beyond some random house painting he said he was contracted to do, no plans beyond his beer, his guitar, and his friend’s basement.
“You’re tanning?” I said to him on one of those days.
“Just getting some sun.”
“Isn’t that how you get cancer?”
“Vitamin D,” he said. “It’s natural.” He spent a few minutes admiring his forearms, holding them out against my whiteness. “Look how dark I’m getting.”
I lay with him for a minute, if that, before the heat became unbearable. “You like this?”
“It’s the best part of summer,” he said.
I supposed that now Nate was getting his vitamins through his running, baking on the pavement while the roof remained bare.
“Is there any way I should be helping?” I said to him after I watched him zip through two phone messages—no stutters or pauses.
“I’ve got this,” he said. “It’s under control.”
It didn’t feel that way to me. There were no tasks, no lists to follow, or to pretend to follow.
I didn’t leave the house, fearing I wouldn’t be able to get back in. If I lost my key, there’d be no one with a spare. If I lost my way, there’d be no one to tell me where to go. It hurt to get up, and it hurt to sit down. Everything felt heavy. Mostly I stayed in bed, absorbing sheet creases in my face, staring at the cracks in the ceiling. It would probably collapse soon, fall on my head and press against my skull. I could almost feel the strain against each strand of hair, the pressure pulling in all directions, the dull throbbing and pinching. When the roof caved in, I’d have nothing to hold on to.
10
AFTER GIVING US A COUPLE OF DAYS, MARTY RETURNED ARMED with a dozen bagels and a pound of lox. We sat at the dining-room table, where it was impossible
not to notice the empty seats.
I savored the saltiness of the fish, comfort sliding down my throat.
“How’re you doing, honey?” Marty said. “You hanging in there?”
“I’m here.” I touched my head. It ached.
“Any leads on jobs yet, Nate?” he said.
He sighed. “I should be able to start next week.”
I stopped chewing for a second.
“Already, huh?” I said.
“Looks like it,” he said.
“That’s great,” I said. “You always get what you want.”
“You think this is what I want?” He looked at me. “It’s not what I want.”
He cut his serving into tiny pieces, until we could hear the scrape of metal against plate.
“Believe me, I’d much rather be sitting here planning my courses for next semester.”
“You’ll be able to do those things later,” Marty said.
“I know,” Nate said. “It doesn’t matter now. None of it does.”
“How much will you make?” I said.
“Enough,” he said. “I hope.”
“Enough is very little at your age,” Marty said. “What will you be doing?”
“Well, considering this economy, and my lack of experience and degree . . .”
“You’re not going to sell your body, are you?” I said.
He smiled at me. “Luckily, one of my buddies has a cousin who has a restaurant. I told him I’d work any and all hours doing whatever he needed. They’re desperate, so it’s good timing.”
“Good for you,” Marty said.
I surveyed Nate’s plate. He hadn’t made a dent in his fruit salad. He caught my glance at the strawberry, and for a second we connected.
“Take it,” he said, bumping it beside my bagel.
But he kept looking at me.
“What? I have something on my face?”
“Anyone need more coffee?” Marty said, heading for the kitchen without waiting for an answer.
“Listen,” Nate said when he was gone. “We’ve been thinking about how to handle all of this.”
“Who’s we? Where was I?”
“You were here,” he said. “Marty and I were talking when you were asleep. You were kind of out of it after the funeral.”
“I still am.”
“Understandably. But the thing is, if you don’t have a job—”
“I thought I wasn’t supposed to have one, for the insurance?”
“Right, but if I make what I make on a great day, living in the city—”
“I get disability checks. It’s just a little bit, but Marty knows how all of that works. He can show you. And I’ll get more now because of Dad and his Social Security. Marty said that. It won’t be a lot more, but still. I can support myself.”
Marty returned then. “We wanted to talk to you about that,” he said. “Part of the reason I’m here.”
He pulled out a brochure and handed it to me, a sunny display of smiling faces from every major ethnic group. There were printed schedules and routines, meal option plans, a room with computers in it.
“What is this, a retirement home?”
“It’s for people who need a hand,” Marty said. “And it’s only forty minutes north of the freeway.”
“A hand?” I said.
It was a home for disabled people who were handicapped, or otherwise severely incompetent.
“What the hell?” I pointed the fork at Nate and lost control of my voice. “You want to stick me in here?”
It wasn’t the home that bothered me so much as the concept. “Disabled” conjured images of wheelchairs, palsy, spittle, thick glasses. I wore contact lenses.
My brain worked well enough to let me think and reason and understand things, and as freely as I could acknowledge why I had no job and why I lived at home, whenever I spent time with other disabled people, I felt disconnected.
I didn’t like the idea of repeating my time in the special class with Lewis Lessen, the pale boy who threw up once a day, just because I didn’t get math. I clung to the goal of getting back to the regular track, even if I understood that I would never be regular. As much as they teased me when my clothes didn’t match, or when I tripped over their feet or backpacks, as often as they excluded me from their parties and their lunch tables, as many times as they actually pasted signs on my back without me knowing, and once deposited hundreds of pieces of paper in my hair affixed with gum, I didn’t want to be special.
I preferred spending time with people like Nate and Dad, even though I didn’t really fit into their world either.
Dad got that. That’s why the job search had seemed so important to him. That’s what I realized after the fact. Even if I didn’t perfectly blend in, at least with my family I thought I always had a place at the table.
Until that moment.
“Are these people brain dead or retarded?” I said.
“Lucy,” Marty said.
“What, I’m not supposed to call them retarded? You’re right. I’m the one who yells at other people for doing that. Sorry. I probably do belong in that home.”
“A,” Nate said, “we never said that.”
He slowed his speech enough to speak calmly and rationally. I wished I could do that.
“And B, it’s not a home. It’s a community with solid facilities. They’ll make sure you get your meds every day so you never have to go back to the hospital, and you’re never in danger. It’s peace of mind.”
“Right,” I said.
I didn’t want a community. I wanted a family.
“It’ll be easier on you I guess, on me too really.”
I started to get up.
“Hang on a minute, sweetheart.” Marty touched my arm. “We just want to consider all of our options in case.”
I moved away from him. “In case what, I get more disabled?”
“Come on, Luce,” Nate said. “This isn’t all about you.”
“I never said it was!”
“Okay,” he said. He took a breath. “You’re obviously not in a state to discuss this right now.”
“I’m fine,” I said.
“Listen, you have to understand that Dad did certain things for you that I can’t necessarily take on.”
“Like what?”
“You want a list?” He used his fingers to count. “One, he shuttled you around in the car. Two, your daily schedule. Three, your shopping. Four, your prescriptions. Five, your meals. Six, doctors. Seven—”
“I get it,” I said.
He took a second. “We weren’t prepared for this, obviously, and we just want you to maintain the level of care you’ve always had.”
“You’re right,” I said. “You should worry about your own life.”
“You’re not listening to what I’m saying,” he said.
I looked to Marty, searching for some element of Dad’s parental perspective that would set things straight. But Marty didn’t have any kids, and he hardly knew us, let alone how to handle us.
“Guys, it’s a lot to digest,” he said. “Enjoy the bagels, think it over, and I’ll check in later. Nothing has to be decided now.”
WHEN MARTY LEFT, I went straight to my room.
I imagined the people at that disabled home were nice, even with half a brain. They might have played checkers at night, and Candy Land, Monopoly without the houses. People there would think I was a genius because I’d have things to say. But I didn’t like the idea of talking to myself.
I had joined a brain injury group once, thanks to Dad, to learn real-world skills and to become a part of a community. But the people in that group weren’t like me. They all had different scales and variations of hurt. A couple of them had actually been lobotomized, and while I didn’t blame them for that, I worried that somehow their missing brain cells would start infecting mine. I knew it didn’t make sense, but that was how it felt, so I distanced myself until they accused me of elitism. Then I got defensive.
&n
bsp; “I’m sorry if I’m not stupid enough to want to join your club,” I’d said.
I didn’t mean that they were stupid, necessarily, but that’s how it came out. I said I was sorry, and really I was—“It’s the filter!” I’d cried—but I was still kicked out for losing control, for what they claimed was one too many times. I felt badly that I had made anyone else feel bad, assuming they were smart enough to realize that I had been insulting, but overall, I wasn’t terribly disappointed.
It was a little different those times I was in the hospital for the depression, in the psych ward. When we took group walks to the coffee shop or around the block, everyone stared at us like we were Cuckoo’s Nest come alive, half-comatose and cracked, just because we didn’t brush our hair or button our shirts correctly, because we had bigger things to worry about. But in the hospital, there was always an out, the goal of release—after two weeks, or four weeks, or once, even eight weeks. Back on the meds, back on routine, back to reality meant back to life outside of an institution.
Plus, I always had this feeling that madness was one with genius, with the best art, with deep understanding and connection to the world. Anyone who had any kind of a soul saw a therapist at some point, had a bout with hopelessness, got a little anxious sometimes. But a brain injury was something else. Because even those who were injured were all injured in different ways, and even if you could alter the brain’s composition with pills, you couldn’t necessarily repair broken cells. You could remove them, but you couldn’t replace them.
Thinking about all of this made my head hurt. All I wanted was to go back in time. Back to before all of this.
I shut my eyes until I saw stars, tightened my fists, clung to Harry, and tried to summon Dad by visualizing him materializing in the humidifier. I would have taken him in any form then—vapor, ghost, insect—some kind of signal to let me know things were going to work out, that he was behind it in a weird kind of way.
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