W e sit in the sunlit breakfast room of our apartment, in white terry-cloth robes that have our initials monogrammed in navy just above our hearts. The robes are Christmas gifts from Bill, his way of showing he is still committed to the relationship even though the wedding date has not been set. A vinegary odor of fresh paint clings to the half-drawn draperies, to the seat covers of our rattan chairs, and to our bathrobes; the sweet rolls taste like pale yellow walls.
“You left the back door unlocked again last night,” says Bill from behind The New York Times.
“I thought I did lock it,” I tell him, scanning the want ads of a neighborhood weekly for a small black love seat to go in our bedroom. I see the top of his head shaking above the newspaper.
“We don’t live in Disney World.”
“Tell me something different,” I say, circling an ad for a black chaise lounge. “Something important that will help get me down those halls this afternoon.”
Bill lowers the paper so that his head pokes out over the top of the sports page. “Pretend it’s your wedding day, and you’re walking down the aisle,” he says, leaning back in his chair. “And everyone there has come to celebrate your nuptials.”
“I’ll have to wear a dress, and carry flowers.” I imagine my pink chiffon formal rustling down the corridors of the Woodlands Nursing Home. “Roses would help — the soft, sweet petals.”
Bill lets the newspaper fall to his lap. “You’re depressed again.” The lines on his wide forehead deepen, while the rest of his face is smooth, peach colored.
“I like the wedding idea,” I say. “I really do.”
“Then perhaps I should come with you,” says Bill, reaching for my hand across the glass table top. “I could be the flower girl, or the soloist. I really am a good tenor, you know.”
But today is not the first time I have gone alone to see my father and walked those halls lined with occupied wheelchairs, some moving on their own power, some stationary, some being dragged backward by people in white uniforms, while the patients’ slippered feet dust the floors. Most fathers his age are semiretired. They play golf, dabble in gourmet cooking, shoot craps for a dollar a roll, and think about making it with girls my age. My father thinks about knee-high support hose that keep his feet from swelling up like water balloons.
“I don’t mind going with you,” says Bill, and I know he means it. He would hold my arm as we passed through the wide halls, stopping to chat with the residents, to press their hands, to give them time to gaze upon his youthful face, because Bill has only compassion for them. He tells me it is fear that makes me uneasy. “You eradicate that, and you get rid of a lot of life’s unpleasantries. Not just the horrors of old age, but crime, drugs, even religion. Look at Sweden,” he says. “It has the lowest crime rate in the world, no crack, and the churches are disappearing.”
“Like Disney World,” I say.
“Seriously,” he says. He goes to the kitchen for more coffee, raising his voice so I don’t miss a word. “The daycare centers are set up next to the nursing homes, and they have recess together, the very young and old,” he says, returning with the coffeepot. “If you grew up with old people, saw them every day, made mud pies for them in the sandbox, and begged them to push you on swings, would you be afraid to become one of them? Would you be afraid to die if you didn’t have to worry about hell?”
I hand him my coffee mug. “It’s not hell that worries me,” I tell him. It’s the bedpans, the bulbed rubber suctions, and the thick beige stockings that hang drying from the aluminum towel racks in the isolated rooms of the Woodlands. Those things terrify me.
My father’s room is too hot. He can reach the thermostat from his motorized wheelchair; he sits propped up there in a cable-knit sweater against pillows edged in white eyelet. He looks like a Valentine heart amid the ruffles. His eyes are closed. A television evangelist preaches from a portable TV in the corner of the room. I switch off the set while my father’s purplish hands twitch over the picture board that rests on the arms of his wheelchair. He doesn’t try to talk anymore in those high-pitched tones like the bleating of a trapped lamb, but points to the pictures when he is hungry or cold. In the bottom right corner of his board I’ve penciled in Bill’s name, because my father wants to know about my live-in boyfriend. He wants me to get married. But I am waiting.
“To grow up,” I tell him. But it’s more than that. I am waiting to think like Bill. Bill the philosopher, the acceptor of circumstance, who always seeks the positive in contrary situations. He believes human suffering is our teacher, our guru in guiding us to prosperity and peace, and that pain is not to be avoided but conquered. He believes that my father is a hero in this, and that there are good reasons for his being imprisoned in a shell that refuses to circulate his blood without Coumadin, and that there are reasons other than selfishness that my mother divorced him and moved to Canada. So I listen to Bill, sleep with him, and attempt to absorb his theories.
“You can’t hate her,” says Bill about my mother, “because that will hurt only you.” But I can’t not hate her, because I feel as if someone should. “So you sacrifice yourself,” he tells me, “by allowing resentment and anger, self-pity and hatred, to occupy your mind.” He rattles these off as if they were substances to be avoided like caffeine or salt, while I think of his parents, married thirty-five years with three grandchildren and yearly vacations to the Greek islands or Australia. I tell him he forgot envy.
Perhaps I want Bill to think more like me. Not that I wish disaster to strike him, but maybe I do. Some loss that would radically shake his carefully organized ideals. Sometimes I know I’m evil, but not by choice. My mother has told me that life is a series of choices, and that it is imperative to make good ones; otherwise you run the risk of ending up like her mother when she was alive, orbiting her small house cleaning corners and closets, and corners of closets. Before she left for Toronto she told me to make wise decisions. My mother is a very happy woman.
“I wouldn’t live like that,” I have told Bill, thinking of my father, who is unable to talk, or to walk, or even to move, except for his right hand.
“You could learn to paint,” said Bill. “I’d bring you canvases and oils and an easel. You’d be famous.”
“You’d bring me a pistol.”
“Would you kill your father?” asked Bill.
“Of course not.”
“Why not?”
“Because he doesn’t want to die.” “Neither would you,” said Bill.
My father’s eyes open, their clearness evincing an active, healthy mind. He points to his nose and then to a flower on his picture board — he smells my perfume. He reaches for me with his good hand and watches me squeeze it. Although he can move this hand, he feels nothing. He then points to the bed where I am to sit and talk while he listens.
I begin. I tell him Mrs. K is down with feline cystitis, and I show him the scratches on my wrist where I have been clawed trying to force antibiotics down my tabby’s throat; she is now being boarded at the vet’s until she is well. I tell him how Bill is on the verge of finishing his Ph.D. in philosophy, and soon he’ll have a whole class to lecture to — not just me. I tell him I leased 1500 square feet of office space this past week. I tell him I’ve bought a black-and-white comforter for the water bed and matching geometric towels and sheets.
“Do you remember Jenny Campbell?” I ask. My father cocks his head to the right, meaning he’s uncertain. “The purple passions,” I remind him, but he still looks confused. So I tell him about the concoction of grape juice, grain alcohol, and tequila that a fraternity mixed in garbage cans for a band party that Jenny and I attended our freshman year.
“Remember that outrageous bill from the infirmary?” He nods stiffly, and I can’t remember if I told him the real story about that night, about the shell-rock road that Jenny and I ran down to escape our blind dates — my shoes back on the dance floor at the fraternity house. How we laughed hysterically, skipping down that road, thinking of those pimply-faced boys waiting for us to come out of the bathroom, finally sending in another girl to find us, but we had escaped out the window. And how we didn’t stop running until we reached our dormitory, until Jenny noticed the dark purple footprints that trailed me down the gray-carpeted hall to our dorm room. She wrapped my bleeding feet in paper towels and we laughed harder; I felt nothing. In the morning I picked the brown paper from my feet. They carried me on a stretcher to the infirmary.
“Anyway, Jenny’s pregnant,” I tell my father, and he points to the happy face on his board. I don’t tell him she’s not married.
More than anything my father wants me settled — safe. He believes that Bill will do that for me; he believes in whole-life insurance policies. I tell him what often appears safe is not — like a sleeping infant or an expansive house in the suburbs — while smoky nightclubs, strangers’ beds, and sharp curves at high speeds can be entirely innocent. He stares blankly at me then, his picture board an inadequate piece of fiberglass, lifeless in his lap, and I imagine holding a stethoscope to his head to lift thoughts like a silent thief would slip jewels from a safe. It is unfair of me to rattle him so, to make his insides quiver with unspoken advice, but I want to remind him that safety is an illusion that settles in dim, vacuous minds, that financial security is merely a seductress that dulls the senses like good scotch. Wasn’t it he who told me he felt safer in the Vietnam jungle than on the streets of New York City? Safer piloting his helicopter through war zones than traveling first-class on a commercial jet? Maybe he was just bragging then, or worse, trying to make me believe that he was invincible, an indomitable hero, and that he would always come home safe.
I have nothing more to tell my father. We sit staring at each other, imagining the other’s thoughts. I start to sweat. I pick up The Road Less Traveled on the bedside table, a gift from Barney, my father’s best friend — the only friend who continues to visit him on a regular basis. “Make sure he reads it,” said Barney. “It’ll help him through the long days.” Barney believes heaven is just beyond the clouds and that earth is a steppingstone to perfection. He tells my father that; it seems to comfort him, so I read Barney’s book aloud until my father raises his good hand for me to stop. Hot air hisses through the vents, causing ringlets to form at the back of my neck.
I get up before my father can protest and wheel him down the Woodlands corridors, keeping a hand on his shoulder to prevent his upper body from slumping to one side. Lined along the walls, the residents bob like those toy potted flowers in department stores, animated and swaying to “The Happy Farmer.” Mr. Seehausen walks behind us playing the tune on a silver harmonica.
Nurse Jane unlocks and holds the side door open while I back my father over the threshold. I push him into the courtyard where wild daisies, dandelions, and pansies surround the gazebo. The air smells clean, though the news reports a pollution index of 105, due to ozone. The motion has eased my father to sleep, and the summer breeze feels cool, raising goose bumps on my arms. A shiver passes through my father like unwanted voltage, and I sit on a white wooden bench next to him, placing my fingers close to his mouth and nose. His breath comes softly, slowly — but it comes.
I touch his cheek, papery and dry like onionskin, and I undo the first two buttons of his sweater. It does not seem so long ago that he was dressed in uniform, trotting down neighborhood sidewalks, balancing me on a two-wheeler. He explained the Pythagorean theorem with milkshake straws, rigged up the hottest stereophonic sound system bought strictly on allowance money, and showed me the scar on his back from a knife wound inflicted by a Viet Cong. It was just last year that Bill and I attended a lecture he gave at Columbia University about the psychological effects of Hiroshima, Auschwitz, and My Lai on young Americans who have not yet experienced war firsthand. He said the slaughter of human beings has the same emotional impact on their lives as Hansel and Gretel facing the witch’s oven in Grimms’ fairy tale.
“But what’s the point?” Bill said after the lecture. “Hansel and Gretel to a kid is scary. That old witch fattening up the brother to eat him.”
“But it’s not real,” I said. “Do Hansel and Gretel bother you now?”
“It’s a fairy tale.”
“Exactly.”
It was just a week after the lecture that Bill asked me to marry him, in Trastevere’s on East Eighty-third. He had called ahead to reserve a front table in a separate alcove, overlooking the quiet street. The waiter brought wine, dishes of tortellini, and Australian lobster tails. Bill offered the diamond solitaire on his knees, an exquisite marquise. I couldn’t refuse, so we found a sunny apartment in Madison, close enough to the city and the Woodlands. We keep house there, paint walls, buy furniture and sheets; we cook bouillabaisse in a wok and invite Bill’s friends from NYU to dinner, but we don’t set the date. Bill thinks I am waiting for him to become a full-fledged professor, but I think maybe if I wait long enough, my father will strive to be invincible again. If I give in too soon, he may too.
My time here is almost up. I imagine what I’ll do first. Skip down the sidewalk that leads to my Mustang, remove the convertible top, pray for rain. Ride through thunder to Cyrano’s, sit sideways on a bar stool, watch the regulars stroll in, and shoot tequila with lemon and salt. If I wait there long enough, the bumps on my skin will turn smooth like beige silk stockings, and I’ll lean against a young man who keeps putting quarters in the jukebox, playing my favorite songs. If I wait there long enough, Bill will come to find me dancing slow, buried against the stranger’s chest, pressing my hips to his, and sweating. Bill will politely cut in and promise me tequila, lemon, and salt. He will promise me soft music, soft rain, and a quiverless water bed, and I will be numb enough to believe him.
The sun is bright against the thick summer grass. The pollution index soars. I sit in the shade of the gazebo and think of breathing pure ozone from the air. The noxious gas can melt lungs like candle wax, causing a quick but painful death. Next to me my father snores. Leave now and I won’t have to say goodbye. Just a note to Jane and I’ll be back next week. Leave now and I won’t ride with the top down to let the sun scorch my skin, or stop at Cyrano’s for tequila and salt. I’ll park in the vacant lot across from Saint Mark’s to light a candle or sit in the empty confessional and beg forgiveness for hiding my engagement ring in the corner of my underwear drawer.
Jane calls from the side door. It is time for my father’s medicine. Time is important in keeping him alive. Blood thinner at regular intervals keeps his blood watery and flowing. Keeps it from forming clots. But he could die falling from his wheelchair, from his bed, internally drowning in his own adulterated fluids. He could die from the stick of a hatpin. I let Jane wheel him back into the Woodlands, telling her that I’ll be along shortly, after she spoons the pink liquid into his mouth and wipes the drool with a blue-checked bib that she will tie loosely around his neck.
I sit back on the bench of the gazebo and stare out at the cedar fence that borders this courtyard like a rustic picture frame. There are no gates, so that residents can’t wander away. I imagine Mr. Seehausen would like to slip out, perhaps slither under the fence, his harmonica tucked away in the pocket of his suit coat. He used to be a stockbroker on Wall Street. He still dresses the part — smart ties and gold cuff links made to look like ancient Roman coins. He calls figures off an invisible ticker tape, walks proudly and straight-backed through the halls of the nursing home; the only thing missing is his mind. He was my father’s first roommate at the Woodlands, clean and well-mannered in the daytime, but the darkness disturbed his chemistry, altered his brain, and affected his memory. The night shift medicated him, put up the sides on his bed, but he crawled over the top in his pinstriped pajamas. He went through the closets, my father’s too, looking for a shirt, a tie, something to remember. Those first two weeks my father didn’t sleep watching Mr. Seehausen pull his golf shirts off hangers, try them on, two and three at a time; he tried on his undershirts and sweaters, his jockey shorts. My father watched him squirt shaving cream into the toilet, onto the mirror; watched him pee in the wastepaper basket and sob when he couldn’t find his harmonica. Jane told me that’s when they would hear Mr. Seehausen, crouched in a corner, layered in my father’s clothing, whining for his mother, or his cocker spaniel. Those first days my father’s blood pressure climbed to frightening numbers, his medication increased, and he scratched thief in shaky letters on a yellow pad all day. Finally they moved Mr. Seehausen into a room of his own. Whenever my father sees him in the hall, he shivers and points to the frowning face on his board.
I walk back through the side door that has been left unlocked, leaving the sun, the flowers, the ozone, and the absent children who should be swinging and making mud pies in the sand. They would clap for Mr. Seehausen and his harmonica. From the hall I hear familiar voices trickle from room 201; my father is not alone. Jane is still wiping my father’s chin as I enter, and Bill stands in the middle of the room with his shiny peach face and deep voice, talking excitedly about the New York Mets quashing the Cubs.
“Here she is,” says Bill, reaching for my right hand. He pulls the diamond solitaire from his pocket and discreetly slips it on my finger. He has come to rescue me. “There’s a new receptionist out front today. What happened to Myra?” he asks Jane.
“Just up and quit a week ago,” she says. “Said she was getting too old to work here — felt like she was going to be here soon enough. She got a job down at the Tastee Freeze. She brought a dairy cone for your father here, just yesterday. He was her favorite, you know.”
My father glows, either from the medicine or because Bill has come to see him. He loves Bill for loving me. Jane removes the bib from around my father’s neck and leaves us to visit alone. My father points to the happy face on his board and then to Bill’s name marked in capital letters. He motions for his yellow pad and ink pen and scribbles illegibly on the paper.
“He wants to know when we’re getting married,” I tell Bill.
My father’s eyes shine, as if he knew I couldn’t remain silent while he struggled to communicate with Bill.
“Didn’t you tell him?” asks Bill. I stare at this young man standing between me and my father. I want to block the words before they can tumble from his mouth. He has promised my father too many things, like tickets to the Super Bowl, Christmas at home, and grandchildren.
“We talked about it this morning,” says Bill. “About the soloist and the flower girl. We’re getting real close, aren’t we?”
I nod, but I don’t want my father to think that I am safe — not yet. “It’ll still be a while,” I say. I feel I’m bargaining for my father’s life.
Bill holds my arm as we pass through the halls of the Woodlands. He stops to shake the hands of the residents as they reach out to him. They love him too, but not because he loves me. He introduces himself to the new receptionist at the front desk on the way out. He calls me his fiancée, and shows her the elegant marquise on my right hand. He promises to show her pictures of the wedding.
Out in the sun Bill scoops me into his arms like a child. I kick and scream for him to put me down, but he laughs, hugs me tighter, and carries me all the way to the car. He has taken a bus here, so we can ride home together.
“You left the car unlocked,” says Bill, opening the passenger door. “You know you’re flirting with danger.”
I sink into the black vinyl seat of my Mustang, feeling its heat penetrate to my bones. “How about a margarita at Wet Willy’s?” I ask. Bill smiles and slides into the driver’s seat.
Bill is a good driver, a safe driver, no sharp curves at high speeds. We pull out of the parking lot, and I get this gripping feeling in my chest, just below my breastbone, as if the air were being squeezed from my lungs. Bill is telling me how much he accomplished on his dissertation today. He says he can’t always work that well even when he’s got the time. I roll down the window to take in air and watch the rows of neat houses pass in succession along Blue Avenue. A child with golden curls and red shorts speeds down the sidewalk on a tricycle. I can’t tell if it’s a boy or a girl.
“You just can’t force some things,” says Bill, and I think that is the one thing he has said that I agree with totally. I nod, and the pressure in my chest eases. The sun is not so bright now as it dips in and out behind the peaked roofs as we drive through the quiet neighborhood. A stately gentleman in a familiar cocoa suit saunters down the sidewalk, and it is not until I see the harmonica and the Roman cuff links that I realize it is Mr. Seehausen. I lean close to Bill, whisper in his ear that I love him. Perhaps it is the evil in me that does not want Bill to see my father’s ex-roommate, that does not want him to cajole the old gentleman into the back seat of my Mustang and return him safely to the Woodlands. Or perhaps it is the good in me that feels the rush of excitement that the stockbroker slipped past the new receptionist to walk in freedom along the edge of the earth, to chance it all the way to Wall Street as the sun slowly sinks into Saturday evening.
This story first appeared in the Florida Review.
