by Jan Cherubin
“I’ll tell Clyde if you’re scared to tell him, Joanna,” Brenda said.
“I think he should hear it from his doctor. Not us,” I said.
“I agree,” my mother said. “He’s not a baby. He doesn’t need an interpreter.”
“If he’s not a baby,” said Brenda, “why not tell him two weeks?”
After Morales gave my father the prognosis, the doctor came out, and I went in. He was sitting up with the same hat and curly hair. My father’s head hadn’t exploded upon hearing the news of his death. “I just want to be able to sit in my garden in the spring,” he said. “What do you think?”
A small wish. “I think that can be arranged.”
He was sent home with the tube coming out of his stomach. At least he wouldn’t go hungry. Morphine was inserted into the tube along with Ensure, no swallowing necessary, no jabs. I was miserable living with Brenda again, but then Fred came to visit and I got two nights at a hotel with him. I expected the time away to be precious and we did have unusually intense sex with death being in the air and everything, getting closer to understanding Death and Sensuality. But I was worried about my father alone with Brenda.
My mother made reservations at Zingarro’s, a restaurant on the edge of Little Italy, for six-thirty. “You and Fred deserve a nice dinner,” she said over the phone. “And Susan too. She came all the way here. It’ll be good to get out.”
“Why did you make it so early?” I said. “I thought we could spend time with Daddy before dinner. Especially since Susan’s staying with you and I’m staying at the hotel tonight. I’m not happy he’s going to be alone.”
“You spent all day with him,” my mother said. “And Brenda is there!”
“You should see her. Cursing under her breath constantly.”
“You need to get away, Joanna. Brenda’s his problem. You don’t need to watch over them every second.”
Marty drove my mother and Susan downtown, and Fred and I left from our hotel in my father’s car. Zingarro’s was near the harbor. We found it easily enough but we had to park six blocks away. A bitter wind whipped off the Chesapeake Bay and lashed our faces as we walked to the restaurant. I hoped Brenda let Hoffman in.
“Why didn’t my mother tell us there wasn’t any parking!” I shouted above the roar. We continued on until our ears ached and our knuckles were raw inside our gloves. The restaurant was warm and pleasantly noisy, flatware and wine glasses tinkling. I blew my nose with a tattered Kleenex and saw my family seated in the balcony, a space up four steps and fenced in by a polished brass railing. There were hanging lamps bathing the diners at each table in a circle of buttery light. I was struck by how pretty Susan looked—her hair freed from its daytime ponytail and falling thickly over her shoulders, blonder than usual in the lamplight. She could be plain and then spectacular in the same day. My mother glowed too, and even Marty looked good. There was a basket of breadsticks on the table and they were munching and talking.
Fred and I went up the steps. I ran my fingers through my hair to fluff it up but it was full of static electricity.
“Why didn’t you tell us there was no parking?” I snapped as we approached the table. “That’s why we’re late. We wouldn’t have been late if somebody had told us about the parking.”
“I’m sorry,” my mother said.
“It’s OK,” said Susan. “We didn’t mind waiting.”
“Great. You guys are nice and warm in here, but it’s freezing outside and we had to walk ten blocks.”
“It wasn’t that far,” said Fred gently, hoping as the others were, to calm me down.
“Well, I didn’t appreciate it.”
“Sit,” said my mother. “Take off your coat.”
“Do you want something to drink?” Marty asked. The menus came. I was sick of pasta. I didn’t want a big steaming bowl of library paste plopped in front of me. I ordered chicken piccata, the lemon was appealing.
“There’s an antipasto coming,” my mother said cheerfully.
Considering my father was dying, I thought it odd how carefree they all seemed. Marty and Susan were across from my mother and me, and Fred was tacked onto the end, his chair in the aisle and his knee pressing against mine. Fred started right in talking about a documentary on stand-up comedians he was working on, but I ignored his attempt to entertain the table.
“So. Do you want to stop at Cedar Drive after dinner?” I said to everyone.
“I don’t know, Joanna. Let’s eat first, and see how late it gets,” my mother said.
“He’s up all hours of the night,” I said.
Susan ate a piece of roasted pepper, catching its end with her tongue and tried not to look at me.
“You have some crazy ideas about how to take care of somebody,” said Marty. “And now you want everyone to be as crazy as you!”
“I’m crazy? Is that really what you think, Marty?” My face burned.
“Wait a second, Marty,” my mother said.
“No,” Marty said. “It’s about time someone spoke up. Look, you can do what you want, Joanna. But your mother shouldn’t be expected to go crazy like you. She’s not his wife anymore.” Marty sat up straighter, emboldened by his argument. “You may wish your parents were still married, but they’re not.”
“You think I’m crazy?” I said. “I hope you have someone as crazy as I am taking care of you when you’re sick.”
“Yeah, well. Your mother never even came to see me when I was in the hospital,” Marty said.
“That’s a lie,” said my mother.
“Well, you didn’t.”
“Why were you in the hospital?” Fred asked politely.
“My leg. I have gout,” said Marty. “Me and Henry the VIII.” Then he turned to my mother. “You wouldn’t drive me home. I wanted you to drive me home.”
“Look, I don’t want to get into this now,” said my mother. “I did come to see you, just not as many times as you would have liked.”
“And now you’re visiting Clyde every day.”
“Oh, so that’s your problem,” my mother said.
“Not every day,” I said. “She could do more. And so could you, Susan.”
“Me?” said Susan. She had been silent so far.
“You could stay with Daddy overnight,” I said. “You could sleep over and give me a break.”
“You don’t need me,” said Susan.
“I do. I do need you. I need all the help I can get.”
“Not from Evie!” said Marty. “She’s his ex-wife.”
Fred squeezed my knee under the table. I hadn’t been sure until then he was on my side. I squeezed his knee back.
“Look, Joanna,” said my mother. “Susan has two children. She can’t be as involved as you are. What you’re asking is unrealistic.”
“One night!” I shouted. “One night is not unrealistic!” My mother leaned back to give the waiter room to put down her fettuccine and then she turned to Marty. “Clyde is their father and if they need my help I’m going to do what I have to do.” “Good news, though, Marty,” I said. “You can thank your lucky stars. Because things won’t be this way for long.”
“Why?” asked Marty innocently.
“Because he’s going to die,” I said.
Susan shot me a wounded look. “I’m afraid to stay there overnight. All right? I’m afraid he’ll die while I’m there.”
The table got quiet.
“I’m afraid, too,” I said, finally. “But I stay there anyway. You, you’re never there when it counts. When things get rough.”
“How can you be so mean?” Susan said.
Maybe I went too far. I didn’t want Susan to cry. But I thought it was odd and unfair how sheltered she was from the trouble around her. “Because,” I said, searching. “Because it’s true. You weren’t there for a lot of things. Like you weren’t there on the camping trip.”
“What’s that got to do with it?” Susan said, and the sheen was finally gone. Her face darkened. “I d
on’t even know what you’re talking about. I don’t even know what happened.”
“Because you never asked! You weren’t interested!”
“You wouldn’t talk to me!”
“You’ve had plenty of years to ask and you still haven’t asked.”
“OK. So what happened on the camping trip?”
“He, he fucked Nola, that’s what. Under my nose, OK?” I saw my mother’s face blanch, and then her shoulders fell in resignation.
“So then why do you want to be his slave now?” Susan said, her eyebrows raised.
“I don’t know. I guess Marty’s right. I’m crazy. I’m a crazy lady.”
“No, seriously, Joanna. You don’t have to do this,” Susan said.
“You love him too, don’t you?” I said. “And he did plenty of things wrong with you. He didn’t go to your graduation because he was in Europe with Nola.”
“No kidding,” said Susan. “Why do you think I didn’t go to his wedding? But you went. Why?”
“I don’t know. I like him. It’s not black and white. He cares what I think. He never cared about how I felt before, but he’s starting to do that, too, now that I’m looking out for him.”
“He should be earning your love, not you earning his,” said Susan. She was with me now, at least for the moment. No faraway look.
The others said it was too late but Fred and I stopped off at Cedar Drive. Shep and Darleen were still there. The mood was festive, an extension of the trippy nights in the hospital. Some things were easier at home, like sitting on his bed, which was big and low, and so we crowded on orgy-like and went through a box of pictures. No one wanted to leave when my father was high.
Fred went back to California and Susan stayed for a few more days. My father slept a lot now, so my sister and I had hours alone together. I was tired myself, so tired I wasn’t sure if I dreamed this conversation or not, but I think I said to Susan, “You never talk about childhood.” And she said, “What about it?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Did something happen?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Back then. Daddy. Johnny.”
“What?” said Susan.
”Did Johnny, you know, did Johnny Dolan . . . I don’t know. Make a pass at you or something?
”Susan laughed. “Well, sure,” she said. “Who didn’t he make a pass at? But I certainly didn’t take him up on it. . . . Why? Did you?
”I opened my mouth and closed it again. “Me? No,” I said.
That night, even Susan and my mother piled onto the bed with Darleen, Shep, and Uncle Harry, who had flown in. But Brenda wasn’t having it this time. “Everybody out,” she hissed. “I have to get up and go to work tomorrow.”
My mother was sympathetic and got up, collected her bag and keys, and headed out through the kitchen where she’d cooked a thousand meals. “Well, I’m leaving if that helps.”
Susan and I went with her, to a coffee shop where we could talk. We told her about the lineage chart my father had drawn earlier that day in the margins of the newspaper. “You see here,” he had said. “I want Brenda to get the house and the cars. And fifty percent of the $47,000 I have goes to her, and twenty-five percent goes to you, Susan, and twenty-five goes to you, Joanna.” He wrote fifty percent under one arm of the family tree and twenty-five and twenty-five under two smaller arms. His whole life he saved $47,000. It was a pittance, and yet it was a fortune for a schoolteacher.
“So I was right, dammit. He’s not leaving me the credit union money,” my mother said. “I’m getting nothing except what he asked you to hand over to me.”
“But wait, maybe that sum includes the credit union money,” said Susan.
“No,” my mother said. “That money wouldn’t get divided up.”
“He asked if I would help him fill out some forms his lawyer sent over,” Susan said.
“The executor?” my mother asked.
“Yeah,” Susan said. “Thank God Daddy didn’t ask me to be executor of his will.”
“She must be pressuring him,” my mother said. “Why else call the lawyer?”
“To change things for our benefit because he realizes how horrible Brenda is,” I said.
“I hope you’re right, Joanna. But I doubt it. So did you fill out the forms?” my mother said.
“I filled in his name and address,” Susan said. “His Social Security number. But then I asked for the bank account numbers and beneficiaries, and he said he wanted to take a nap, we’d work on it later, and then he forgot about it.”
“Whatever changes he’s making must be good for us,” I said. “Or he wouldn’t have asked Susan to help him with the forms. He would have asked Brenda.”
“Not necessarily,” my mother said. “Don’t be naïve. Something’s fishy, I know it.”
Susan went home to Larry and the kids and I spent every night at my mother’s apartment to get away from Brenda. My father didn’t like it when I left in the evening, but I told him I’d be useless if I didn’t have nights to myself. As soon as I got to Cedar Drive in the morning, Brenda sped off to her job at Hutzler’s. At six, when she returned, I fled to my mother’s apartment on Charles Street. At first, the shifts worked well, Brenda and I each with our own domain, but one morning I walked in on a mess, purple morphine stains splattered on the counter and oddly around the burners on the stove, sticky syringes in a jumble on top of crumby plates, pills we would grind up with a mortar and pestle and add to the feeding tube tumbled out of overturned bottles. I wasn’t neat about most things but with the meds I was compulsively neat. You had to be. “How’s Brenda been?” I asked my father.
“She’s no good,” he said. “Go get my will.” I’d seen it the other day, an extra-long manila envelope swaybacked to fit in the wire basket on the sewing machine cart in the den. Now when I looked, it wasn’t there. I rummaged around on the desk, but I was suddenly exhausted. A crushing weight pressed down on me. I came back and collapsed into the swivel chair. “It’s not there,” I said, “and I’m too tired to look for it.”
He reached over and held my hand. “Would you like it if I left you my books and papers?” he asked. I was rattled by the offer. The talk about leaving us money was one thing. But to speak of not needing his books and writing—his mind, his consciousness—that was unbearable.
“Well?”
I felt out of breath as if I’d been climbing stairs, but I managed to say, “Yes, of course.” My long-ago wish to walk around in his mind was granted, access to all I had been barred from. Voices came rumbling down the hall, his and Peter Grafton’s, when we were children, Marie, Marie, my cousin the arch-duke, the hyacinth girl. I saw the eager boys at his elbow studying headlines, iambic pentameter, Julius Caesar. They were gone now, Peter Grafton descending into schizophrenia. The others went on to live their lives no longer in need of Clyde Aronson’s advice.
He said I was a great nurse. I’d make a terrific wife and mother. But Susan was the wife and mother. I was a freak, half-girl half-boy. He called me a saint. I chafed at it. I wanted to be a real person. “You want to get into Harvard, Yale, Princeton? Just do what I tell you,” he promised his boys. “I’ve got recommendation letters in my desk so good they’d get you into a convent.” Everyone laughed. Imagine, boys in a convent!
He saw clearly now, though, didn’t he? A daughter could share the life of the mind. He could see that now. He would die, but I wouldn’t lose him entirely. I would have his poetry. We sat quietly, listening to the wind under the door.
“I’m experiencing such love,” he said after a while. “If only I had known, Joanna, I would have been better.”
If only he had known what? In what way would he have been better? I almost asked the questions out loud, but stopped myself. Let the possibilities remain limitless. I would add to them as the years went by. He would have been better if only he had known sooner that I was worth knowing.
CHAPTER 49
My mother and Marty were going to Ne
w York for the long weekend. Saturday was Valentine’s Day and Monday was President’s Day. Marty had a convention. “I feel terrible leaving you,” my mother said.
“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “I’m staying overnight with Daddy from now on, so I wouldn’t be hanging out with you anyway. I can’t leave him alone with Brenda. It’s that bad. She stopped washing the syringes. And last night, she made a mistake and he almost overdosed. She started to give him 30 milliliters instead of 30 milligrams of morphine. Thirty milligrams converts to 10 milliliters! That’s three times as much! So I’ll be here the whole weekend. You might as well have fun in New York.”
When I got off the phone he was yelling. “The BED! Joanna, come quick! The BED! The BED! It’s on TV. The 800 number. Get a pencil! Hurry!”
By the time I found a pencil, Brenda was in the living room and the commercial was over. “Oh no,” she said. “Nothing doing. I told you, mister, I’m not having a hospital bed in this house.”
“You don’t mean that,” I said.
“There’s no room for it,” Brenda said. “Where would we put it?”
“We’d take out the platform bed. Obviously we can’t fit two beds in there. So we’ll take apart his bed. I’ll do it. I’ll get Shep to help me.”
“And have the platform bed standing around in the carport? Forget it.” Her lip quivered, and for a second I thought she was going to cry. Instead she recovered, put her hands on her hips, and whistled in amazement at how impossible we were.
I waited until she left the room, and whispered in his ear. “Would you be happier without her? If she weren’t here, I mean.” He had to know what I meant. Just the other day, Uncle Harry mentioned the suitcases in the driveway idea after my father complained about the pee pad. “Would you like it better if she lived somewhere else?” I said.
“Make me a cup of tea.”
That night, I tossed on the sofa. As tired as I had been all day, I couldn’t sleep. Voices clamored in my head. The will, the will. He was talking to Shep and I overheard him. They’re gonna put me in a box, he said. For a second, I didn’t know what he meant, and then I shuddered. Sometimes I wished we could talk that way, with brutal honesty, only we each thought the other couldn’t handle it. I was all tangled up in the sheet. It was no use, I couldn’t get to sleep. I sat up and turned on the light. I didn’t know what I was going to do without him. What would life be like? There would be no point to anything if I didn’t know what my father thought of it. Who would I be if not Clyde Aronson’s daughter? I was a saint. A saint was selfless. Virtually nonexistent. But no matter how small and insignificant I made myself, it still wouldn’t keep him alive. And what would be left of me? Nothing. Instead, I had to be larger than life myself. I had to do something big. Drastic measures were called for. I had to get rid of Brenda. Who knew what she’d do next, mixing up milligrams and milliliters, signing him up for castration. The situation was dire. I had to act. The minute she left for work in the morning, I’d jump on the phone and send a locksmith over. Then I’d jam as many of Brenda’s belongings as I could fit into her set of sky-blue Samsonite luggage. Of course, I’d be left with no one to help take care of my father. But we’d scrape together the money for round-the-clock nursing. What was the $47,000 for anyway? He might as well spend it on himself. When Brenda got home from work, she’d find the blue suitcases at the bottom of the driveway just like Uncle Harry said. I’d have to be strong, though. She wouldn’t go quietly. No doubt, she’d put up a fight, bang on the doors, rap on the windows, but I wouldn’t back down. Just let Brenda tell me I was under his thumb, or her thumb, or anybody’s thumb.