“No, Pop. Really, what happens?” Mallory’s father just looked at him. He whipped the towel off his shoulder and dried the pot without taking his eyes off his son. From under the thick eyebrows, Mallory could see the humor had receded. You didn’t question God in Pop’s house. “Are you saying you really believe that when we die, we get sorted into one of three categories, and sent off? Like on an assembly line? Where does this happen? Do you really picture, like, the Pearly Gates or something? And what gets you put on a particular line? What if you got confused, or made a mistake before you died, will that one stupid error get you put in… the worst line? How fair is that?”
Pop flipped the rag onto his shoulder, continuing to gaze at his son in silence.
Mallory swallowed. “I don’t mean to be disrespectful, but I’ve got to know. Because of, I mean… where did he go?”
“In your heart of hearts, you know what you believe. That’s where all your answers are, Frank, and that’s where they will always be.” Without another word, he returned to scrubbing the copper bottom of the immaculate pot.
His sleeping father swatted the air with his right, stirring Mallory out of his memories. Then Pop lowered his hand to the bed cover, and started doing the other thing he had been repeating all night — picking with precision at places on the blanket, clearing off some areas, wiping off others, “cleaning” the brand new blanket.
His father was always casual but precise with his actions, nothing wasted. Which was exactly the thing that scared Mallory; what exactly was his father preparing for?
FIFTY-FIVE
Mallory woke with a start. Had he been out for seconds, or hours? He glanced at Pop’s bed. It was empty. Mallory leaped to his feet, immediately rushing to his father, who was standing beside the bed, engulfed in wires and tubes, trying to walk away.
“Pop, what are you doing?”
“I gotta go.”
“Pop, you’re going to pull these tubes out. Let’s get back in bed.”
“Gotta go.” Pop was reaching for something. Mallory followed the general direction of his outstretched hand. Pop wanted the urine container.
Mallory took Pop’s wrist gently, guided it to the container’s handle. “Pop, you can do that in bed.”
“Men stand.” He took the container and turned his back to Mallory, who also stepped back, to allow Pop his dignity. Holding Pop’s elbow to help steady him, Mallory waited patiently, glad nature’s call was the only thing with which he had to contend.
Pop put the container back on a side table, stood fixing his hospital gown. Without warning, he grew more unsteady, heavier in Mallory’s grasp. His knees began to buckle, and his weight was suddenly almost too much to handle.
Mallory stepped around, bracing himself, holding his father with both arms now, awkward, off balance, not in a position to maneuver easily. Then he saw Pop had taken off his oxygen mask. The machines kicked in, alarms beeping, lights bouncing, none of which Mallory understood. All he knew was Pop was in trouble.
All 220 pounds of his father collapsed, threatening to take Mallory with him. Mallory planted his feet, straining, back muscles screaming, pulling his father around as he fell, unable to do more then aim him at the bed. Pop landed on an angle, his legs dangling off, arms beginning to flail. Mallory reached over and placed the mask back over Pop’s nose and mouth. It didn’t seem to help. Pop couldn’t catch his breath.
He was dying.
Calm spread over Mallory. The nurse call button was in his hand. He pressed. A male voice came on. “Can I help you?”
“I need help with my father. He removed his oxygen mask. His breathing is erratic, labored. The machines are reacting strongly—”
The male nurse, Victor, was there before Mallory became aware that he had stopped talking. Younger than Mallory, thin dark blonde hair, glasses, with a calming, confident demeanor, he eased the dazed son back, and stepped in. Another nurse, short, round, dark, with a calming grace, joined Victor. They called out readings, retrieved equipment they needed, adjusted dials, got Pop back into bed completely, gave him a shot of something with a long medicinal name Mallory didn’t catch.
The first nurse glanced at him. “We are having trouble getting your father’s numbers where we want them to be. Watch the number on this machine. We want the numbers to be in the 80s.” Mallory watched. Sixty-five. Fifty-two. Eighty-three. Forty-four. Forty-two. Forty-four. Fifty. Fifty-two. Forty-six. Fifty-eight. Seventy-six. Sixty-eight. Seventy-two. Seventy-two. Seventy-two. Seventy-two.
“It’s, it’s not—”
“It’s not in the 80s,” Victor said, calm but with a reassuring concern in his voice. “But it is stabilizing, and that is half the battle.”
Seventy-two. Seventy-six. Seventy-two. Seventy-two.
“Give it another minute or so.” Victor was barely whispering but the clarity of his voice brought Mallory back to himself. He could sense he was standing, to his surprise, in a corner, having backed awkwardly out of the way. He exhaled for what seemed like the first time in minutes, felt shock at the intake of new air.
Seventy-two. Seventy-two. Seventy-two. Seventy-two.
Seventy-two. Seventy-two. Seventy-two. Seventy-two.
Seventy-two. Seventy-two. Seventy-two. Seventy-two.
“It isn’t getting any better.”
Victor smiled. “Yes, but it isn’t getting any worse. I am seeing this glass as half-full, because your father is stabilized now, so we can do this.” He reached over Pop’s head, turned a valve on the oxygen machine, slowly and just a little.
Seventy-two. Seventy-two. Seventy-four. Seventy-six.
Seventy-six. Seventy-six. Seventy-six. Seventy-six.
Victor turned the valve a little more, seemed surprised, then tried it again. The valve wouldn’t budge; it was fully open.
Seventy-six. Seventy-six. Seventy-six. Seventy-six.
Seventy-six. Seventy-six. Seventy-six. Seventy-six.
Seventy-six. Seventy-six. Seventy-six. Seventy-six.
“The good news is, his numbers are closer to where we want them to be,” he said.
“And the bad news?”
“You father is now breathing 100 percent pure oxygen, and we can only get him up to 76. Bottom line, he needs to keep that oxygen mask on. He cannot take it off.”
Victor adjusted the mask, checked the machine readouts, then pulled the covers back over Mallory’s father. Pop, unconscious, began to pick at the blanket again. This seemed to freeze Victor for a moment. He glanced quickly at Mallory, then left, saying as he exited that he’d be right down the hall all night.
Mallory sat motionless, eyed fixed on the machine. Pop’s labored breathing was the only sound he could hear.
FIFTY-SIX
Dawn had crept through the dirty gray window as if hesitant to disturb Mallory’s father. But Pop was still asleep. Mallory knew this because he’d been alternating between watching his father and checking the numbers on the oxygen machine.
Seventy-six. Seventy-seven. Seventy-six…
Stable, at least. Best you can hope for. His bloodshot eyes went back to staring at his father’s hands pick, sweep, then pick some more. Even asleep, the process continued.
Father Carry stepped in silently, gave Mallory a container with a tea bag string dangling out of it. He sat down with a container for himself, a distinct coffee aroma wafting from it. Another coffee he put on the extendable food tray attached to Pop’s bed. Alongside that he placed the morning edition of the Daily News.
For a second, Mallory became suspicious, asking himself how the priest knew what he and his father drank. Then he remembered ordering tea at the diner. And the priest had been talking with Bitsie, who told everyone she met everything about her whole family as soon as she met them, so no real mystery there. Rumpled suit jacket, the wrinkled pants, the beard stubble, the bags under the eyes. The priest looked as bad as he did. “You really stayed all night?”
“The couch in there is not as comfortable as it initially looks,”
the priest somehow grimaced pleasantly. “But I had planned to spend most of the time in prayer, so business as usual.”
He returned to watching his father’s hands. After several minutes, he broke silence. “Why does he do that, Father? He’s never done things compulsively before.”
“Frank, there are signs, clear, irrefutable signs, that a body is preparing itself for… suffice it to say, if you have some people to call, do so now.”
Mallory stared at the priest for a full minute, the simple honesty of the statement shocking its way through his system. “Is there anything you can do for him?”
“My bag is in the lounge, I’ll go get it.” As the priest walked toward the visitors’ lounge, Mallory refocused his bleary gaze on Pop, who was swatting at something or someone right above him. His lips were moving. “Naa yeh Pa … Nah yeh…”
Father Carry entered, put his small black valise on a chair, opened it. He lifted a stole, a long strip of colored cloth, kissed it and put it around his neck. He then took out a small vial of oil, and a black book from which he read. The priest began at Pop’s eyes, gently blessing them with oil, and murmuring, “Through this holy unction and His most tender mercy, may the Lord pardon thee whatever sins or faults thou hast committed….”
Mallory stepped backward respectfully until he was out the door, then reached into his jacket for his cell phone. His whole family in the same room? Let the circus begin.
To Mallory’s astonishment, after he’d finished his calls and returned to the room, his father was conscious, speaking. Excusing himself, the priest went to wash his hands. Pop insisted that Mallory crank up his bed to a sitting position. “You sure you don’t want to rest some more before seeing people, Pop?”
“I’ve slept enough,” Pop answered. Then he looked at his son for a long moment. “Thank you… for being here.”
Pop was not one for emotional outbursts. Mallory had only seen about three in his whole life. This was as close to that Hallmark ‘I love you. Son – I love you, Dad’ moment as they ever had come.
Tell him, Mallory pushed himself, tell him everything. Tell him you are proud to be his son. Thank him for teaching you everything, from how to drive a nail to how to be a good husband and father. Tell him you love him, Mallory urged himself, tell him.
“No problem, Pop.”
Pop nodded at the coffee container Father Carry had brought. “Let’s see if you can find… a microwave to… warm it up.”
“I could get you a new one.”
“A priest brings coffee… you gotta drink it. … That’s… Vatican II, I think.”
“How do you know he brought it?”
“I’ve been… faking sleep for 40 years… to get breaks from… all you kids,” Pop smiled weakly. “You, of course used to lift open one of my eyelids with your finger to check… but I could get over on the others… pretty well.”
“Father and I thought you were near…”
“I am, Francis… but I’m not done yet.” Pop winked. “Then I got jammed up when he started Last Rites. … Figured I hadda let him finish. … If I had popped open an eye … I could’ve given him a heart attack.”
“Thanks for the thoughtfulness,” Father Carry chuckled from behind Mallory. “And don’t worry, you’re allowed to keep living after receiving Extreme Unction. In fact, we clergy actually prefer it.” Pop laughed until he was hit by a coughing fit.
***
Ross showed up soon after the calls, with an old cassette recorder. “Sorry I took so long. Had trouble finding what I wanted to bring. Mr. Mallory, I thought you might enjoy this.”
He placed the cassette player near Pop, pushed play. Instantly recognizable organ music played, sending Mallory right back to his childhood, laying on the living room rug with Pop, listening to rebroadcasts of old radio shows. Mallory, Pop, Ross, and even Father Carry joined the eerie voice that followed. “Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? …. The Shadow knows!” Pop smiled wide, eyes closed, slowly nodding his thanks.
The family started arriving about 90 minutes later. For Mallory, conscious now for somewhere around 40 hours, they popped in and out of his awareness like film slides…. Maggie, dressed in a green sweater to offset that red hair because she knew Pop liked that… her husband Matt bringing in Bitsy, coffee, and the Daily News for Pop…. Mallory’s oldest brother, Patty, Jr., bringing Pop coffee, and the Daily News …. Barry the middle brother bringing Pop, what else, coffee and the Daily News …. Patty Jr. stepping out to avoid being in the same room with Barry … Mallory observed his father noticing that move. Damn.
Pop smirked at his line of coffee cups and pile of papers. “At least you… all know… what I like in the morning.” He didn’t actually drink any of it, but from time to time he’d ask one of them to hold up one of the cups, then he’d lift the oxygen mask an inch, and take a whiff. “Ah, that’s what I miss.”
Seventy-six. Seventy-six. Seventy-five. Seventy-six.
Whenever Patty Jr. came back in, Barry would go out for a smoke. Maggie rolled her eyes at both of them. Mallory leaned over, whispered, “Yeah, but you don’t see either of us jumping up to hug either of them, do you?”
Maggie smiled, nodded. “Busted.”
Bitsie, in a long gray “Mystic, Connecticut” sweatshirt Pop bought for her while they were on vacation there a few years back, sat next to “her man” most of the morning, holding his hand or patting his arm. Pop’s only sister, Frieda, five years older but healthier and sharper of mind than anyone in the room, sat on the other side in a blue knit sweater with a scarf around her shoulders, and mirth gleaming in her eyes, never letting the conversation turn dark or depressing. No one had more stories, or could tell them better than Aunt Frieda, and each one pumped a gleam of life into Pop’s eyes for a few minutes.
Every once in awhile during a lull in the laughter, Pop looked up at a framed print of a nature scene. It was a field, with tall grass and some trees in the background, on a sunny day — nothing special. But it seemed to captivate him. He would lose himself in it, and when he came back to them, he’d ask whoever was sitting next to him at that time the same question. “Hey… what do you… see in that picture?” All offered their lame interpretations. Pop even asked Father Carry, who said the scene looked peaceful. “Yeah, of course, Father… But what do you see in there?”
Finally Bitsie turned the tables on him. “Patty, tell us what you see.”
Pop’s eyes nearly overflowed. “I see my father, and Mom, and Uncle Jack, and my sister.”
“Pop, Aunt Frieda’s sitting right next to you,” Barry, the middle brother, said.
Never taking his eyes off the print, Pop’s smile widened, watery eyes glistening. “Not Frieda… Marguerite.”
Everybody was stunned, except Frieda and Bitsie. “Pop, you only have one sister. She’s right here,” Mallory said.
Frieda shook her head. “No, he’s right. We had a sister Marguerite; she died three weeks after we got her home. Beautiful baby.”
The silence thickened. Finally Maggie asked, “Dad, you see a baby?”
Tears stained his pale, drawn cheeks. “She’s all grown up… she’s so beautiful. So beautiful.”
Frieda quipped, “Well, I’m glad someone is beautiful, the rest of us have more wrinkles than Moses.”
Mallory stepped out of the room shortly after, finding himself in the hallway with a doctor making his rounds, Maggie’s husband Matt, his oldest brother Patty Jr., and Father Carry. They were discussing what Pop had seen. Matt seemed stunned. “This isn’t the first time. He supposedly got a visit from his dead father at the apartment too,” he told the doctor.
“Merely part of the process. Medical findings suggest these type of experiences come from misfiring synapses triggering memories in the brain,” explained the doctor, who was young and arrogant without knowing he was either.
Ross was leaning on a wall a little ways down the hall. Without looking over, he spoke just loud enough to be heard. “That reduces the
mind to ‘merely’ electro-chemical stimuli. Some believe there’s much more to it than that.”
The doctor seemed taken aback. “What he is seeing are merely comforting memories.”
Mallory edged toward the doctor. “Yeah kid, I’ve read all about that. But the thing is: how does a synapse misfire to create a memory that never existed? How does the memory of a baby transform into the image of a beautiful woman?”
If the doctor had an answer, he kept it to himself. Father Carry looked at Mallory, smiled his approval.
There was one more sibling to arrive. Despite long-standing friction between his parents and Mallory’s older sister May, and Patty Jr. and May, and Barry and May, and, well, even Maggie and May, Mallory had called and told her to come down. When May had hesitated, Mallory lied, “Pop has been asking for you.”
When the elevator doors opened, it was like lightning striking; everyone felt it before they turned to see.
Wearing high-heeled western boots, black with powder blue detailing, tight black pants, a stylishly cut powder blue button down shirt over which she wore a black vest with powder blue embroidery, and, finally, a jet black Stetson exactly like the one made famous by the late Stevie Ray Vaughn, May’s entrance was anything but subtle. Mallory saw her take a deep breath before she stepped out, but then she strutted down the hall like it was a fashion show runway. Others exited behind her, but they were hard to see; May had that kind of impact on any room she entered.
Patty Jr. immediately grabbed the doctor’s arm and walked him in the opposite direction. Barry took the stairs, yanking at his cigarette pack. In one of the few times they ever agreed on anything, Maggie’s husband Matt joined him. Maggie herself sped into Pop’s room. Only Ross and Mallory were left to watch the show.
For his part, Mal’s old friend was everything May needed, having been in this situation before. He sauntered over, gave her a big hug, a kiss on the cheek, and a powerfully welcoming smile, probably saving her from fleeing. Mallory was next, wrapping his arms around his big sister, holding tight for a few seconds, then whispering in her ear, “He’s going to be so happy; he’s been waiting to see you.”
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