Читать книгу The Complete Collection - William Wharton, Уильям Уортон - Страница 35

Next day, after we come back from the hospital, I begin working on my Honda. First, I spread some newspapers to catch any grease or crud. I blow out the carb jets, then pull the plugs, scrape and set them. It’s been sitting so long there’s mold on both plugs. I push the bike back and forth in gear to see if the motor’s frozen but it’s OK, the pistons are moving.

I clean the points and adjust the timing as best I can without proper tools. Even though I’m a crappy mechanic, I like fooling around with a small simple machine like this; it’s a thing my mind can handle and I’m needing something in that category just now.

Dad comes out and watches me. He’s always been such a tremendous mechanic he makes me nervous. It’s the joke of our family how I’m rotten with machines. For years I was called ‘Hatch’ because I hatcheted things requiring skill. I was away from home five years before I realized my mechanical talents were only low in comparison to Joan’s and Dad’s.

Dad stands over me. I point out what a fine piece of machinery a motorcycle is; nothing extra, just a motor mounted on wheels; the ideal solution for overland travel, the next best thing to wings. I know Dad thinks it’s dangerous and undignified for a grown, middle-aged man to be balancing on two wheels.

I find the key where I’d hung it on the shed door. I hook up the battery, but, of course, it’s run down. I pull the battery, put it in the car trunk; Dad and I drive to the nearest service station for a quick charge. They tell me there it’ll take an hour.

‘OK, Dad, while we wait, let’s go have a beer in that bar across the street.’

He looks at me.

‘What?’

‘There’s a little bar there, let’s go chug one down while we’re waiting.’

‘Do you think that’ll be all right?’

‘Sure, come on, we’re both over twenty-one; there’s no law against having an afternoon beer in a bar. That’s what they’re for.’

It’s an ordinary bar; dim, mildly air-conditioned, an old window blower humming away. There’s something I like about going into a bar daytimes, especially here in California. After a while, that high, bluish sky and the strange blankness of everything bears me down. It’s a relief ducking into the dark, thick air of a bar.

We sit in a booth. This is a classic place; a few regulars are standing or sitting at the bar and there’s at least one hustler working up after-lunch customers.

‘What’ll you have, Dad?’

‘Well, a beer would be fine, but we’ve got plenty of cold beer in the refrigerator just around the corner.’

I order two beers and ask Dad if he’d rather sit at the bar.

‘Do you think that’d be OK?’

‘Sure, come on.’

We climb up on stools; the bartender shoves a bowl of peanuts down to us.

‘Do the peanuts cost extra, John?’

‘Not usually, Dad, unless inflation’s really hit hard here.’

I take a handful and Dad carefully picks out one.

Dad tells me he hasn’t been in a bar by himself for over fifty years, not since before he got married. He’s looking at the people, using the mirror behind the bar. He’s peeking at the women; one of them gives him a nice smile. He looks away fast and stares into his beer.

‘Do you come into bars like this often, John?’

‘In Paris, it’s not so much bars, Dad; we have cafés. You can sit, drink a coffee or a beer, but it isn’t like this; some of them you sit outside. Its different. Not many days go by when I don’t stop in one of my favourite cafés.’

Dad looks as if he isn’t sure this mightn’t be wicked. I glance at my watch; we still have almost half an hour. I try encouraging Dad to talk about what it was like before he was married, when he was working at Hog Island carpentering with his father and brothers. I don’t get anywhere. It’s difficult to know if he doesn’t remember or just doesn’t want to talk about it. He doesn’t even remember when Uncle Harry lived with us at home in Philly. That’s an important part of my personal life and it’s hard for me to accept he doesn’t remember at all.

I know Vron has strong memories of things we did together, things I don’t remember, and it’s the same with me. In a terrible way, we’re all alone.

We pick up the battery, drive home and mount it on the bike. I turn the key, kick it and the motor turns right over. It’s a terrific feeling getting a motor moving again, bringing something back to life.

I buzz the bike up and down the street a few times. It’s been sitting so long it blows off black smoke and backfires but then smoothes out. I roll in and park on the driveway. It idles, ticking over.

It’s coming on to dinnertime and I consider a restaurant but decide the business with the bar was enough excitement for one day. Dad’s already missed his ‘soaps’ and is wandering around looking at the clock, turning the TV on and off. A big part of his life didn’t happen today. He’s gotten to a point where that TV world is real life, and I’m responsible for a missing day.

I decide to compensate by whipping up a tasty dinner. I scrounge the freezer and find a pair of reasonable-looking Spencer steaks. I’ll put together one of my quickie specials. I defrost, then fry up the steaks in a sauce made from mushroom soup. Then I pour a touch of wine over this, simmering it slowly for an hour on the back burner, set low with a cover. It comes out a savory dish somewhere between steak and stew. Using one of those toaster-oven affairs with the glass front, I unfreeze some packaged French fries, and open up a can of peas. I’m enjoying myself. Dad’s out in the garden watering, then he goes into the greenhouse. I keep looking to see if he’s all right but in there he’s invisible to me.

Fixing a spade in the potting shed, locking its shaft in my vise; smooth hickory, shined by calluses, like time.

I set the table and call Dad. He’s surprised again that I’ve pulled food from the kitchen; that it’s hot, and on plates.

He asks if there are any onions in the meat and I assure him there aren’t. I suggest we have beer with the dinner.

‘We’re going to get drunk drinking beer all the time, John.’

‘A couple bottles of beer never hurt anybody I know of, Dad. Come on, it’ll help us both relax.’

So we have beer with the meal and coffee after. I make a reasonably strong cup; it’s instant, and only a matter of how many spoonfuls you put in boiling water, not such a big deal.

Dad pours in his usual single level spoonful of sugar, stirs it intently for almost a minute then dinks off the last drops from his spoon on the inside edge of his cup. He lifts the cup carefully, his lips sticking out the way a horse or mule goes into a bucket of water. He blows gently before he sips. My father’s lips are notorously sensitive to hot drinks.

He pulls his head back and looks into the cup, puts in two more spoonfuls of sugar, goes through the stirring and dinking routine again. This time he sips his way through the rest of the coffee as if he’s drinking calvados or a good marc de Bourgogne.

‘Boy, John, that’s some coffee. Was that decaffeinated? Your mother and I only drink real coffee in the morning.’

I assure him it’s decaffeinated.

‘Well, it certainly is strong. Is that the way they make coffee in the army?’

‘No, that’s French style, Dad. They drink tiny cups of very strong coffee, usually without cream or milk.’

‘I sure hope I sleep tonight.’

After dishes, we head off to the hospital. This time Dad can point out a few street names. It’s coming back. I explain how in an emergency he might need to drive Mother to the hospital.

‘But I don’t have a driver’s license, John.’

‘It’d be an emergency, Dad. If it’s a question of life and death, they’re not going to arrest you.’

I ought to have him drive me around the block a few times, for practice.

Mother’s complaining. They won’t let her watch TV. There’s a TV hanging on the other side of the room but the nurses won’t allow her a control panel. She wants to know if there isn’t some way I can make them take off the monitors.

‘It’s driving me crazy, Jacky; those dumb green lines wiggle up and down and that red dot’s blinking all the time making different numbers. It’d drive anybody insane.’

I explain about the pulse and the electrocardiograph; how the nurses watch all the time.

‘See, they’re only using me as a guinea pig! I knew it! How’s all that going to help me get better? They’re experimenting on me. We pay good money and they don’t care if I live or die.’

Dad shakes his head.

‘Now, Bette, you just do what the doctors say. They know their business. You’ve got to trust them.’

As we’re about to go, he comes out with it again. I was hoping I’d get him away in time.

‘When are you coming home, Bette?’

Mom gives me another look. She has a way of not only raising her eyebrows but dropping her left eye in a slow, lewd, knowing wink. Dad sees and shrivels.

‘Don’t you worry, Dad; Mother’s comfortable here and we’ll have her home soon’s the doctors say she’s ready.’

Mother charges in.

‘Believe me, nobody wants to get out any faster than I do.’

Mom insists I talk with the doctor about her indigestion theory. I tell her I’ll make an appointment.

When we get home, I talk to Dad about the things he has to learn.

‘I’ll never remember all that, Johnny. You have to remember I forget.’

I start making lists. I print these lists in capital letters with a felt-tip pen on five-by-seven cards. It’s like computer programming. I reduce it all to yes-no facts, on-off thinking; binary. I try to make everything simple and clear. For example, when I say wash dishes, I list every act involved in washing dishes. There are thirty-seven distinct steps, such as: put one squeeze of soap in the water, or pull stopper from sink, wring out sponge. I hang this card over the sink. For dusting, I list all the things that need to be dusted, where the dustcloth is and finish with ‘put dustcloth back on hook in hall closet.’

It’s fun for me; and Dad enters into the spirit of things. He isn’t insulted. He likes having me tell him what to do in clear terms so there’s no chance he can make a mistake. It’s the boss-worker syndrome again.

I put one set of cards on a clipboard with the jobs in order as they need to be done during a typical day. He carries that clipboard around. At night he puts it on his night table beside him.

Next morning he dresses himself, makes his bed and comes out, heading for the bathroom, with his aircraft-carrier cap on his head. He’s reading from the clipboard as he shuffles down the hall. It’s pitiful and funny, but he’s happy; it’s like a treasure hunt. That evening, when he isn’t watching television, he goes over his board, looking at the different cards, asking me questions.

‘I can do this; I’m sure I can get this all worked out.’

I also begin preparing him to care for Mom. I’m worried she’ll have another heart attack at home after I’m gone. So much can be done in those first minutes. Mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and external heart massage can be the difference between life and death. Dad has to learn.

I start talking to him about it, but something in him doesn’t want to listen; he doesn’t want to be involved with such a stressful situation. But I press on. It’s somewhere in here I can’t baby him.

‘Look, Dad, I’ll show you how. You only need to follow instructions.’

He won’t meet my eyes.

‘This is something I learned in the army, Dad; hundreds of people’s lives have been saved this way.’

I hate lying to him, but I’m pulling out all stops. The only time I ever gave mouth-to-mouth or external massage was to an old lady in France and she was already dead. I learned what little I know from my personal bible, the Merck Manual.

When the station break and ad come on, I talk Dad into getting down on the floor in front of the TV. He lies out and crosses his hands on his chest like a corpse. He stares at the ceiling, still not looking at me. I kneel beside him, put a hand under his neck and lift.

‘Now open your mouth and stick out your tongue, Dad.’

He does it, I grab hold under his chin, lifting and pulling back at the same time; I pinch his nostrils shut with my fingers; he’s looking at me. All the time, I’m explaining in what I hope is a calm, quiet voice.

‘Now right here, Dad, is where I put my mouth over yours and breathe for you.’

He begins struggling. He twists his head and turns on his side.

‘Oh, no; don’t do that!’

He gets to his knees.

‘I wasn’t going to actually do it, Dad, I was only explaining!’

I lie down on the rug and ask him to take hold of me the way I did him. I work his hand under my neck and stick my tongue out. I position his other hand so he can pinch my nostrils. His hands are shaking so he almost pulls my nose off. He keeps sneaking looks at the TV for the show to start again. He looks down.

‘Do people do this to each other in public, John?’

‘Sure, you might have to do this for Mother. If she has another heart attack, you’ll need to force air into her lungs so oxygen gets to her brain. It’s the only chance she’ll have.’

He leans back. He pushes himself up onto his feet and backs his way to the platform rocker.

‘That might be right, John, but it looks sinful. Do men do that to each other? Maybe sometimes God just means for us to die.’

I relax and watch TV with him. I can understand his feelings but he’s got to get over it; it’s too important.

At the next break, I want to show him something about external heart massage. I talk him into getting down on the floor again.

‘Now look, Dad, while you’re doing mouth-to-mouth, you should also give external heart massage. This is to get the heart beating again. You have to push hard, once every second, right in the center of the chest.’

I lean over and begin pressing him with the heel of my hand on his sternum about half as hard as you should for effective heart stimulation, but hard enough so he gets the idea.

‘Hey, that hurts! That would really hurt a woman; you’d be hitting her right on the … in the … breasts.’

‘She wouldn’t feel anything, Dad, she’d be unconscious. It’s better having a few black-and-blue marks than being dead, isn’t it?’

He lifts himself up on one elbow.

‘She’d never let me do that, Johnny. She’d never let me hit her like that. I’ve never hit a woman in my life. I could never do that.’

‘You’d have to, Dad; it’d be a matter of life and death.’

The program’s on again; it’s about some smart dolphin, if you can believe it. Dad settles with a deep sigh into his rocker. He’s breathing hard and sneaks a look at me as if he’s narrowly escaped from a crazed sex maniac.

While he’s busy with the TV, I write out on cards, in big letters, the hospital phone numbers, the fire department, the nearest ambulance and Joan. I stick these cards on the wall over both phones, the one in the living room and the one in the bedroom. The big trouble is Dad never uses a phone. It’s hard even getting him to pick up a phone and hold it when someone else has called him. To be honest, I’ve never seen him dial a number. We didn’t have a phone when I lived at home. It’s only here in California they’ve had one. I hate phones myself, but Christ, in this world, spread out as it is, you can’t just ignore them.

So it’s going to be tough preparing Dad to dial a number, then get across an emergency message. I try reducing it to simplest terms. I tape the message over each of the phones. It says:

THIS IS A HEART ATTACK EMERGENCY. THE VICTIM IS UNCONSCIOUS. COME IMMEDIATELY. ADDRESS 10432 COLBY LANE, OFF OVERLAND AT PALMS.

I have Dad repeat this till he knows it by heart. We practice dialing Joan’s number with the phone on the hook till he can do it. Then I go into the bedroom and call Joan. I tell her Dad’s going to phone and practice his emergency-call routine. She says she’ll wait.

I put the phone down and go into the bathroom. When I come back into the living room, Dad’s watching dolphins again. I crumple onto the floor in front of him and lie there with my arms spread.

‘Now, Dad, I’m Mother and I’ve just had a heart attack. Call Joan and give her the message.’

He gets up and stands over me.

‘Are you all right, Johnny?’

‘Yes. Now do what we practiced.’

He drops to his knees and starts putting his hand behind my head, pulling away and back.

‘No, Dad. Call Joan first, give her the message.’

He struggles up and goes over to the phone. He dials without lifting the receiver.

‘Lift the receiver, Dad.’

He lifts it and holds it against his ear listening but now he isn’t dialing.

‘Dial, Dad.’

He has the receiver wrong way around, the wire coming out of his ear.

‘Turn it around, Dad.’

He turns the phone around on the table.

‘No, the receiver, Dad. Turn it so the wire comes out the mouth part.’

He pulls it away from his head, stares at it, then slowly turns it around. He smiles. Now he concentrates on the card tacked to the wall.

‘Remember, Dad. Call Joan, not the ambulance or the fire department or the hospital. Call Joan.’

‘Yeah, I got it, John, Joan.’

He begins dialing. He dials each number with great precision, keeping his finger in the hole to and fro. From the floor I can hear the phone ringing. Thank God, it’s Joan’s voice. I strain to listen. Dad’s holding the receiver two inches from his head.

‘Hello, Dad?’

‘Oh! Hi, Joan, how are you, nice to hear from you.’

I loud-whisper from the floor.

‘Give her the message.’

‘Here, Joan, Johnny wants to talk with you.’

He starts trying to pass the receiver down to me on the floor but the cord isn’t long enough.

‘No, Dad. Give her the message, remember, the message.’

‘Oh, yes. I remember. Joan? Johnny’s lying on the floor here, in front of me, and he says he’s Mother and he’s had a heart attack.’

I’m not sure at this point if he’s kidding. I get up and take the phone.

‘Hello, Joan; guess who.’

I can’t get a sensible word out of her. I’d been so involved with making my invincible plan work I hadn’t been seeing how funny it all is. I start laughing, too, and Dad’s sitting in the chair smiling. He’s glad to hear us laughing.

We practice this sociodrama till Dad has it down pat. I phone the ambulance company and ask if they’ll handle a dummy call. They’re cooperative and go along with it. Dad spends half an hour afterward opening the door, expecting an ambulance.

The next day he takes his usual hour making the bed. I peer in. He’s carefully smoothing out every wrinkle, crawling around on his knees, checking to see if the covers are hanging evenly on all sides. I try to show how he can just pull the covers up, tuck them under the pillows, pull the spread tight and smooth it all out. It’s one of those chenille bespreads with little white bumps in a swirling diamond pattern.

Dad’s worrying there are hidden folds in the sheet underneath. I’m building a Frankenstein monster. He’s only got two sheets, the electric blanket and the bedspread but it’s enough to occupy him for an hour.

I move along slowly with the heavy burlap sack hooked to my belt. Every foot length I push a hole in the moist earth with my staff, drop in a seed potato and stomp it down. It’s like sliding eggs under a brooding hen.

I give up. It keeps him happy and gives him something to do. I have more time for myself. I begin doing my yoga while he’s fooling with the bed. I’m already fitting into Mom’s routine.

Two years ago she saw me doing yoga and went into a whole drama about it being a heathen Hindu religion and I could be ex-communicated. She wanted me to confess to a priest. After that, visiting them, I carried on as a closet yogi.

But Dad’s dressing himself. With the help of his cards he’s finding his own clothes, getting washed and generally taking care. He comes out for some ham and eggs. I give him his bearclaw, too. I turn on the music. He does the breakfast dishes and kitchen, using his card, while I do the sweeping and general picking up. With only the two of us there’s practically nothing to do. I scrub out the bathroom sink and tub with Ajax, then scour the toilet bowl.

I show Dad how to put his dirty underwear, shirts and socks in the bathroom hamper and where to hang his slacks. He even learns how to look in that bottom drawer for his sweaters.

The next trip to the hospital, he directs me all the way. He’s beginning to enjoy his newfound capacity to participate. He even asks questions about what it’s like living in Paris and how Jacky’s doing in school.

Mother’s groggy. I don’t know whether they’ve medicated her or if this is the normal aftermath of a heart attack. I have an appointment with her doctor, Dr Coe.

I leave Dad with Mom, and go downstairs to Coe’s office. He’s a young fellow, considerate and reasonable. He gives me a rundown on what’s happened to Mother; shows me cardiograms and points out significant details. Apparently an arteriosclerotic condition has caused an occlusion and insufficient blood is reaching her heart. It’s a question of how much damage was done and how well the heart can compensate. If it gets desperate, they might try a bypass, but at her age it isn’t recommended. He feels bed rest with a medical approach is best.

He reiterates how it’s all a dangerous and treacherous business.

I’m impressed with Coe but depressed about Mom’s condition. I go back to her room and she’s more awake. I tell her how I’ve talked to her doctor, seen all the cardiograms. She’s distinctly had a heart attack, there’s no way around it. I tell her she’ll be fine if she only follows the doctor’s advice. She just must relax, take it easy; she’s worked too hard all her life anyway.

Her eyes moisten; she’s working up her ‘fight back at all costs’ look.

‘But how can I relax, Jacky? How can I possibly take care of your father? You know how he is.’

‘Don’t worry. We’re working things out. Dad’ll be able to take over when you come home. He made his own bed this morning and washed the dishes. I’m teaching him to cook. He’s watering the garden and keeping the lawn up. It’ll all work out fine.’

Now she’s crying, crying mad.

‘Don’t tell me. You’ll go back to your beatnik life and Joan’s too busy with her own family. King Kong, the big-shot wop, will never let her come over more than once a week. He won’t even let her phone me, even though I pay so she can phone free. I know, don’t kid me!’

I wait it out. Dad leans forward. He’s suffering seeing Mother cry; she doesn’t cry all that much.

‘Honest, Bette, you’ll see. I’m really trying; I’ll get on top of this. Don’t you worry; we’ll make out OK.’

Pause for three seconds.

‘How long do you think it’ll be before you come home, Bette?’

It’s not so much the question as the plaintive note in his voice. Mother shoots me one of the looks through tears.

‘Don’t worry, Dad! It’ll be a while yet. The doctor will tell us when she’s ready. It costs over two hundred dollars a day keeping Mom in this intensive care unit and they don’t hold people here any longer than they need to. When her heart’s settled down and is working better, they’ll move her to another part of the hospital, then home. We’ll set up our own private little hospital for her right there in the side bedroom.’

Mother’s crying again.

‘I’d rather be dead than live like this. You mean all my life I’m going to be a cripple, a burden to everybody? It’s not fair. It’s not fair this should happen to me of all people. I’ve always taken care of myself, exercised, eaten a balanced diet with vitamins; everything, and all for nothing. It’s not fair.’

This is so true. It’s never been any fun eating at our house. As kids, when we sat down to eat there’d be three vegetables with each meal. Not only that, we had to drink the pot liquor from those vegetables. I dreaded meals: string-bean juice, spinach juice, pea juice, carrot juice; we’d sit down and they’d be there, each in a separate glass. No matter what you did: salt, pepper, catsup; it all tasted like dishwater. Mother’d savor these juices as if they were the elixir of life; she was a big fan of Bernarr Macfadden. Dad never touched the stuff, and when Grandpop or Uncle Harry lived with us, they got off, too; but Joan and I were stuck.

Then, every morning, we had to slug down cod-liver oil. I think if old Bernarr said cow pee was good for you, vitamin P, she’d run around behind cows with a cup. When we complained too much about the codliver oil, she got a brand with mint in it, like oily chewing gum. She’d hide it in orange juice, fat, minty globules of oil floating on top.

Also there was brewer’s yeast. We had to take a slug of that every morning; the taste of rotted leaves and mold. This was supposed to have some other kind of vitamins in it. Mother knew about vitamins before they invented them. She ran her life, and ours, along the ‘live forever’ line. She was years ahead of her time. Now, with all the health food stores and health freaks, she’s actually more a hippy than I’ll ever be.

She’s right, it isn’t fair. She’ll never accept. I know. Right now, in her mind, she’s figuring some way to lick this heart attack. And it doesn’t involve lying around in bed; that’s for damned sure. I can see her inventing some crazy exercise for the heart. It’s wonderful she has that kind of gumption but this time it can do her in.

Dad and I get home in time for the soap operas. I go into the garden back room and collapse; the strain’s catching up with me. When I wake, I make more detailed lists for Dad. I break down a few jobs like cleaning the bathroom and defrosting the refrigerator.

When the soaps are over, Dad takes me out to his greenhouse. He’s a great one for starting plants from tiny cuttings, especially plants that don’t flower. He has an enormous variety of fancy, many-colored leaf plants. He has Popsicle sticks stuck beside each one with the Latin name, the date and place he found it.

It’s a genuine jungle. Dad’s always pinching cuttings of leaves or twigs from every interesting bush or plant he gets near. In Hawaii he must’ve snitched a hundred bits and pieces. He packed them in his suitcase with wet towels. I’m sure Mother wasn’t too enthusiastic but there’s no stopping him here. Then, somehow, he manages to grow plants from these tiny snips, sometimes only a leaf or a bit of stem.

He’s rigged a unique sprinkler system in the greenhouse to give a fine spray. It’s tied into a humidity gauge so it turns on automatically, keeping the place jungle fresh. It even smells like a jungle; you almost expect to hear parrots or monkeys screeching in the top branches of his creeping vines. Dad spends a fair part of his free time in the greenhouse. He’s more at home there than in the house.

Staking tomato plants, spindly, soft-haired, long-legged, easily bent or broken. Heavy with dark leaves, blossms and new rounding fruit. The strong green pungent smell surrounds me. I carefully lift and catch each sprawling branch, turning it gently to the warming sun, a joining of earth to sky.

In the outside garden, Dad has avocado trees, three different varieties, so they almost always have avocados. There’s a lemon tree and what he calls his fruit-salad tree. This is a peach tree but he’s grafted onto it nectarine and apricot branches. The tree bears all these fruits simultaneously; it looks like something from Hieronymus Bosch.

He also runs a small vegetable garden, with Swiss chard, beets, tomatoes, lettuce, radishes, carrots; easy crops. Dad keeps this garden just for fun, says all those things are cheaper to buy than to grow but he gets a kick bringing homegrown vegetables into the kitchen.

After dinner, Marty calls. She’s just come back from her gynecologist and knows she’s pregnant. They’ve been trying for two years and she’s so excited she can hardly tell me. I’m ecstatic! I’m going to be a grandfather! I put Dad on the line so she can tell him, too. He holds the phone out from his ear, listens, grins and nods his head. He doesn’t say anything more than grunts of pleasure and uh-huhs but he’s smiling his head off. Tears well up in his eyes, then run down the outside of his cheeks. It must be great for him being a potential great-grandfather, to know it’s going on some more.

We put the phone down and look at each other. We’re both smiling away and wiping tears. It’s a big moment, too deep for us to even talk about.

Dad gets up and turns on the TV, but I don’t feel like watching Merv Griffin pretend he’s talking to us. I’m itching to move; I want to work off my swelling restlessness.

‘Come on, Dad; let’s go out and celebrate!’

‘What do you mean, out, Johnny?’

‘I know a place, Dad. It’s down in Venice and it’s called the Oar House. Let’s go there.’

‘What! The what?’

I say it clearly and laugh.

‘The Oar House, Dad: oar, O—A—R.’

The Santa Monica chamber of commerce made such a fuss they took down the sign. There’s only a giant pair of crossed oars over the door now.

This place has wall-to-wall stereo vibrating like a discotheque but with a terrific selection of music; music from the twenties to Country Western, rock and electronic moanings. They sell a pitcher of beer for a dollar and a half with all the popcorn and peanuts you can eat. There’s a barrel filled with roasted peanuts in the shell and an ongoing popcorn machine. A guy could probably live on beer, popcorn and peanuts, plenty of protein, carbohydrates, and corn’s a vegetable.

But the best thing is the walls and ceilings. They’re covered with planned graffiti, and plastered, hung, decorated with the strangest collection of weird objects imaginable. There are Franklin stoves, bobsleds, giant dolls, bicycles, broken clocks, automobile parts. Everything’s painted psychedelic colors.

On Friday and Saturday nights, people dance mostly barefoot. The floors are an inch thick with sawdust so it smells like a circus: sweat, peanuts and sawdust. The light is pinkish and constantly changing. It’s the kind of place I like, a good non-pressure feeling; run-down Victorian; an English pub gone pop. There’s something of an old Western bar, too.

So we drive down; it’s near the beach about ten minutes from my folks’ house. Dad stops in the doorway and looks around.

‘My goodness, Johnny, these people are crazy. Look at that.’

He points. There’s a doll hanging from the ceiling upside down without any hair and somebody painted her blue.

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘Nothing, Dad, it’s only decoration.’

I pick up a pitcher of dark beer and two cold frosted mugs at the bar. I steer Dad to my favorite booth in back, perfectly located for the sound system. In this spot you feel the sound’s coming right out of your head. I get handfuls of popcorn and peanuts, spread them on the table. The tabletop has a laminated picture of a girl in a very tempting pose. I hadn’t noticed that before. I’m seeing things differently, like going to a zoo with a child.

We look out at the mob. There’s a fair amount of pushing and flirting going on; strictly a jeans-and-sweatshirt crowd. You’re supposed to be twenty-one to get into this place and they’re strict, but the girls look young. Then again, almost any woman under forty looks like a child to me these days.

Dad’s watching all this. He hardly remembers to drink his beer.

‘Gosh, Johnny; this is better than Fayes Theatre in Philadelphia, back in the old days.’

He swings his head around and laughs. He has a way of putting his hand over his mouth when he laughs, covering his teeth. Both Dad and I have separated front teeth; I mean a significant separation, about half a tooth wide. Dad’s incredibly sensitive about this. His father had it too, and I’m obstinate, or vain enough, to be proud of mine. I feel it’s a mark of the male line in our family. Still, neither Billy nor Jacky has it; Marty did, cost a small fortune in orthodontics bills. I even like separated teeth in women, but you can’t ask a girl to keep something like that if she doesn’t want to.

Dad’s so embarrassed by his parted teeth he’ll never smile or laugh without putting his hand over his mouth; so he’s sitting there snickering behind his hand.

We drink our beer slowly, listen to the music and watch the action for about an hour. We get home by ten. We’re both tired and manage somehow to climb into bed without turning on the TV.

The next day things start fine. I hear Dad back there fumbling around dressing, making his bed. I do my yoga and sweep. By nine o’clock he’s out. He even finds his own medicine, then sits down for a big breakfast with me. All his movements are stepped up by about half. He’s sitting straighter, eating faster. I remember how when Dad was young he used to wolf his food; I wonder if he’ll go back to that.

We even have a reasonable breakfast conversation. We talk about painting. Years ago, I gave Dad a box of paints. There was everything he’d need, including two middle-sized canvases.

So Dad took up painting and did some of the most god-awful paintings I’ve ever seen. He framed them for Mom and they’re hung in the bedrooms.

One trouble is Dad didn’t use the canvases I’d left. He said he was saving them; saving them for his great masterpiece, I guess. He went out and bought canvas board, crappy cotton canvas stretched over and glued to cardboard. These were all of about six inches by nine inches each. Dad sees paintings as hand made, hand-colored photographs. So he paints paintings the size of photographs. He paints from photographs, too. Nothing I say can get him to paint from nature or from his imagination. He wants something there he can measure.

He did one painting of an Indian weaving on a vertical loom in the middle of a desert; all this on a canvas not bigger than a five-by-seven photograph. Dad is probably the twentieth-century master of the three-haired brush. This Indian picture is an outstanding example of eye-hand coordination; but it’s a perfectly lousy painting.

He’s also done two paintings by the numbers. This is right up his line. The paintings are a reasonable size, maybe twelve by eighteen inches. One is The Sacred Heart, the other The Blessed Mother. He framed these, too; they’re hung in the side bedroom beside the bed where I’m sleeping. Again, he’s done an absolutely perfect job, perfect color matching, and he’s stayed completely inside the lines. These two could be used as models for a paint-by-the-number set.

But this morning at breakfast he tells me his painting career is finished. It turns out he’s tried painting one of the San Fernando missions. For him it’s a grand affair, practically a mural, fifteen by twenty-four inches. I hope for a minute he’s really gone out to San Fernando but its another photograph. He shows me this photo; has it squared off in coordinates. It’s a terrible picture to try painting. I’m not sure I could make a composition from this mess myself. There’s a clump of foreground bush, then about half the photo is empty California sky. Between the bush and sky is squeezed a yellowish adobe building, cornered at an angle to the plane of the photo. Worse yet, there are arches running across the near side of the building. It’s practically uncomposable, an arrowlike thrust from left foreground to right rear.

Dad tells me how he’s had one devilish time with those arches. The composition doesn’t worry him but those arches drove him crazy. Perspective is a mystery to him.

After dishes, we go out back and he shows me his painting. It’s hidden so Mother won’t see it. It’s a muddy mess with great green globs in the foreground.

I do a little drawing on it, showing him how to correct the arches and rough in a perspective idea, but it’s impossible to make any kind of painting from such a piss-poor photograph. Painting from photographs is never a good idea anyway; cameras have cycloptic vision, the dynamics of bioptic human vision is lost.

I’m dying to write Vron and tell her about the baby but I’m sure Marty wants to do this herself; it’s her baby; I’m having a hard time restraining myself.

Dad goes into his greenhouse. He sure spends a lot of time out there.

Soil’s just right now, soft enough so the spade sinks to the shaft but not muddy. New dirt opening up, shining where the metal’s pressed tight against it.

We visit Mother and tell her Marty’s news. Mom takes it easily, as if she’d been expecting it. Maybe when you’re almost dying, being born isn’t such a big deal. She might even be feeling pushed.

When we come back, I’m still restless so I go back and work some more on my motorcycle. When I’m finished, I get an impulse to take Dad for a ride. It’d be fun rolling slowly down to Venice beach. I think the sensation of riding might help brush away some cobwebs.

We happen to have two old helmets here. I search them out of the garage. Dad’s watching me.

‘How about it, Dad? How about a slow ride on my motorcycle down to the ocean; it’s a fine afternoon; let’s go watch the sunset.’

He stares at the bike.

‘I don’t know about that; it looks scary to me.’

‘If you get scared, we won’t go. Let’s try it around the block here one time to see how you like it.’

I help strap the extra helmet on him. I don’t know why he looks so out of it, not like a motorcycle rider, more like Charles Lindbergh in one of those old leather aviation hats. Also, the helmet makes his head lean forward as if it’s too heavy for his neck.

I straddle the bike and kick down the foot pegs. I show him how to get on. I tell him to put his arms around me and hold tight.

‘Is that the only way I can hold on?’

‘It’s the best way, Dad. I want you to lean when I lean, as if we’re one person.’

He grabs hold; I kick the starter, put her in first gear gently. We ease out the driveway and cruise very slowly up and down some of these short dead-end streets. I never get out of second gear. We roll back to the house and stop.

‘Well, Dad, how was that?’

‘It’s no worse than riding a bicycle. I haven’t been on anything with two wheels since I was a kid.’

‘You ready to take a chance going down to Venice? I’ll take back streets and we won’t hit any traffic.’

‘It’s OK with me, Johnny, but, boy, I hate to think what your mother would say if we have an accident.’

He giggles and straightens his helmet.

‘There she’d be in the hospital and we’d both be dead.’

‘Don’t worry, Dad, we’re not going to get killed. I’ve been driving motorcycles for twenty years. We’re safer than in a car.’

He starts climbing back onto the bike. I hook my helmet strap.

‘The trouble is, Dad, most people who drive motorcyles are maniacs. If those same people drive cars, they’ll have car accidents.’

I kick but it doesn’t turn over. I give her a little choke.

‘What kills you in a car is the steering wheel, the windshield and a face full of dashboard; the car stops and people keep going. On a motorcycle, there’s nothing to run into; you go flying through the air and slow down some before you hit.’

I hear what I’m saying and decide to shut up. It’s not exactly encouraging. Dad grabs hold and giggles again.

‘John, you could sell holy cards to the devil.’

He tilts his head back and laughs; he doesn’t put his hand over his mouth; he can’t, he’s holding on for dear life.

We start slowly along Palms. It’s a beautiful afternoon and the sun is low in front of us. There are gentle hills along here, almost like a children’s roller coaster. We lift up one side and lower on the other. We go along the Palms golf course and across Lincoln. I roll down Rose Avenue and park on the boardwalk.

We walk out toward the ocean; there are some good-sized breakers; spray is flying up, refracting the sun. There’s a bicycle path built along the edge of the sand; it’s well designed in easy, twisting curves.

We tuck our helmets under our arms like a couple of beached knights. There are people coming in from the water; kids are sitting in the and playing bongos and a drunk is trying to dance with the music. It’s mellow and I hope Dad’s relaxing and not fighting it all too much.

We stop and listen to the music. There are a few guitars with the bongos. It’s like the tropics; hard to believe Lincoln Boulevard is only eight short blocks inland, crowded with cars, light industry and thousands of signs screaming for attention. Dad turns toward me.

‘You know, Johnny, I’ve missed my calling. I think I could be a hippy.’

We stroll along the boardwalk. It’s peculiar they call it a boardwalk, because it’s cement and isn’t up on piers. It’s only a street without cars next to the sand. It might’ve been boards once or it could be a cross-country carry-over from the boardwalks on the Atlantic shore. Or maybe I’m the only one who calls it a boardwalk.

We come on a place called The Fruits and Nuts. A young couple, Tony and Shelly, run it. They take all the time in the world with us. They’re interested in Mom and suggest herbs to strengthen her heart. They offer big glasses of carrot juice squeezed from fresh carrots. They make it with a blender and it’s sweet, not like Mother’s pot liquors. Dad’s peeking at me from the corner of his eye, drinking carrot juice and smiling away. Tony has a beard with long hair pulled back in a ponytail. This is a surefire hippy, the enemy.

He tells Dad how he has herbs to help with blood pressure. I want to buy these for myself; I’ll try anything! But Tony gives them to me. I’m feeling so guilty I buy some apples and bananas; Tony assures us they’re fresh and tasty. He quarters an apple with a penknife so the four of us can share around.

It’s hard to get away. We walk along munching our apple. Dad can make more noise crunching into an apple than anybody in the world; he makes an apple sound like the most delicious food ever invented.

‘Goodness, John, those people are nice; do you know them?’

‘Nope. I don’t know how they stay in business either; they give everything away.’

Dad takes a bite into another apple from the bag.

‘Maybe they’re rich. Maybe they only have this store for fun.’

‘Yeah, that could be it.’

‘But they don’t look rich.’

We put on our helmets, climb on the bike and roll slowly back to the house. The sunset is still redding the sky behind us. It’s one of those balmy evenings you get sometimes in California, when the coastal fog holds off till dark.

We’re just inside the house, and the phone rings. It’s Marty. She and Gary want to phone Vron and tell her the news. They want me with them. I say they should come over here, we’ve got an extension phone.

They arrive as we finish eating. Marty’s eyes are bright with excitement. We direct-dial and get straight through. Marty starts crying soon as she gets the words out of her mouth. I’m on the extension in the bedroom. It’s so good hearing Vron’s voice. She could be crying, too; I am. We spend ten dollars crying at each other over six thousand miles by satellite. When we hang up and I come back in the living room, Dad’s pulled off his glasses and is wiping his eyes. He looks up at me.

‘What’re we crying about, Johnny?’

That cracks us up and we’re practically dancing with excitement. We drink some wine together before they go home.

Dad turns on the TV. I’d asked Marty to bring me a book. I try reading it, but every time I start, Dad interrupts me. Reading’s a vice in this house. Mother’s a great one for burning all newspapers and magazines the day after they arrive. Paper, for her, is like falling leaves, a natural continual nuisance you have to fight. A book is only paper; after you read it, burn it. Keeping books is like not making the bed. Also, reading softens the brain, ruins the eyes and gives Protestant or Communist ideas.

Dad has something of the same reaction to reading but for different reasons. His father, my grandfather, insisted bookwork was only for girls. He educated his girls, sent them through high school, but the boys were pulled out soon as they were old enough to learn farming, carpentry and metalwork. He believed men do things; women remember and pass it on. This idea is deep in my father’s family.

At about ten-thirty I sneak back into the bedroom. I don’t know how long Dad stays up watching Johnny Carson.

Three days later Mother’s out of intensive care. Dr Coe tells me she’ll be in the hospital two more weeks. All the tests show she’s had a severe heart attack and it’s going to be a long uphill recuperation.

In the meanwhile, Dad’s been coming along fine. He’s practically self-sufficient. One Sunday we even go sailing with a friend of mine and neither of us gets sick. We only sail inside the marina an hour or two and it’s an exceptionally calm day.

It’s while we’re sailing I notice Dad needs a shave. I can’t ever remember my father having more than half a day’s whiskers. On the way home I ask if he has a skin rash; I think maybe he’s missed an item on his morning bathroom list. He looks at me as I’m turning onto Jefferson Boulevard.

‘No, Johnny, my skin’s fine.’

He runs his hands over his stubble. I wait a minute, not knowing how to approach it.

‘Well, Dad, I only asked because I think you missed shaving this morning.’

He smiles and runs his hand over his face, covering his smile.

‘You know, John, I’ve never seen my beard. I started shaving when I was fifteen, and I’ve been shaving every morning all my life. Even before I was married, when I went hunting with Dad and the rest, I shaved with cold water. Just once, I’d like to see what it looks like. I think that’d be all right, don’t you? Mother’s in the hospital and I’ll shave it off when she comes home.’

I’m surprised at my own reactions. I’m worrying what the neighbors will say. Maybe they’ll think I’m letting Dad go to seed.

Then it hits me. I start laughing. Dad’s laughing too; we’re still laughing when we pull into the driveway. Sure as hell the neighbors aren’t going to think we’re completely broken up over Mom’s heart attack.

We watch a Dodger ball game on TV. Afterwards, Dad starts up a conversation. He begins with how he’s always been an Angel fan because there are too many niggers on the Dodgers. My first impulse is to back off; I don’t want to ruin the good feelings we’re having. But he wants to talk; there’s something bothering him.

‘You know, John, when I was a kid and we first came from Wisconsin to the East Coast, we lived down there in southwest Philadelphia near a lot of Negroes. It wasn’t safe for us to walk through some parts of town and we’d kill any nigger who came west of Sixtieth Street or north of Woodlawn Avenue. It was like a war going on all the time.

‘It’s the main reason we moved to Upper Darby. I hated moving five miles from my family but we were afraid of those niggers. Saint Barnabas Church had the only school with no niggers in it and we were proud of that; even the priests used to talk about it in those days.’

He stops. I wonder what he wants me to say.

‘Now, Johnny, they tell us in church we have to forget all that. Our priest says it’s a mortal sin having those kinds of feelings. Honest, I don’t have anything personal against niggers, Johnny; it’s just a feeling I get down my spine, like a dog’s hair standing stiff when he’s mad or scared. And I’ll bet them niggers have the same feelings about me, too.

‘When Bette and I go to church at Saint Augustine’s, we always look around for some place away from any niggers or Mexicans. With this “kiss of peace” business, you’re supposed to smile and shake hands with the people near you, and we can’t get ourselves to do this with some Mexican or a nigger.

‘John, you can’t change people so fast. I tell the priest in confession and he tells me to pray for love and charity.

‘I pray, Johnny, but nothing comes. I’d sure as the devil hate going to hell just because I can’t work up love for a nigger. It’s not fair. You do what you’re supposed to do when you’re young, then they change the rules.’

He stops. I still don’t know what he wants from me. I’m glad it isn’t my problem, not just the race part but the whole business of somebody else saying whether I’m a good person or not. People give up control of their lives too easily.

I fix us a snack: beer, potato chips and pretzels. Dad goes to turn on the TV, checks himself and settles into his platform rocker; I sit in Mom’s gold chair.

‘You know, Dad, one trouble with your growing a beard is Mother’ll have a fit when we visit her. You can’t go to the hospital looking like this.’

He gives me one of his sly smiles, gets up and goes into the bathroom. He comes out a few minutes later with a surgical mask over his face, eyes twinkling.

‘Mother wears this when she dyes her hair. We’ll tell her I have a cold and we don’t want her to catch it.’

I choke on my beer and run to the kitchen sink. He follows me, worried. I peek at him again; he looks like a distinguished surgeon. Considering Mother’s fear of germs, it’s so diabolically clever.

We work out the mask routine in the hospital just fine. Dad even develops a creditable sniff and cough. His beard grows in a hurry. Within a week, it’s past the itchy stage and beginning to curl over. It’s curly and compact, a pubic-hair-type beard, wiry. The most amazing thing is it’s a grizzled, dark chestnut. Dad doesn’t have much hair left on his head, and it’s white. There are still a few dark hairs in his eyebrows, all that’s left of his original hair color.

But this beard is something else. It’s more dark brown than white. He looks at least ten years younger, incredibly vital.

I keep catching him staring in the bathroom mirror. Those split teeth of his are perfectly framed by a beard. I have a hard time adapting myself. It’s as if Dad’s stepped back a generation and we’re contemporaries.

Joan flips. She strokes his beard while he smiles and she gives him a big kiss. She almost laughs herself to death when we show her the trick with the surgical mask. But she’s worried Mother will find us out anyhow.

During that last week, Dad and I go regularly down to the Oar House, evenings. We have our pitcher of beer and it’s fun watching; one hell of a lot better than T V. We even have almost-conversations. We talk about Mother, her health and all the things we’ll arrange to make the house comfortable for her. He’s begun having ideas of his own. He rigs an intercom system between the side bedroom, where she’ll be, and the back bedroom; even into the garden bedroom. It’s a regular Amos ‘n’ Andy ‘Miss Blue, buzz me’ affair, but it works.

Once, he scares the bejesus out of me by ringing in the middle of the night. He says he wants to check if it’s loud enough to wake somebody who’s asleep. This is at three o’clock in the morning when he gets up for his nighttime pee. There’s a strong strain of joker in Dad.

Several times, I take Dad over to visit Gary and Marty. He doesn’t say much but obviously enjoys the conversation. Mostly we talk about the new baby or how Mom’s doing. We don’t watch TV.

The day comes to bring Mother home. We have everything ready. Dad comes out of the bathroom that morning clean-shaven; nothing said. We drive Mom home in the car and she’s babbling away ten miles to a minute. She’ll have another heart attack before we even get her in the house.

I put her to bed, pull all the blinds and insist she take a nap. I hadn’t realized before what a tremendous responsibility it’s going to be having her home. If anything happens, it’s more than fifteen minutes to the hospital.

I’m having more panic feelings than Dad. He and I share beer and sandwiches on the patio. He asks when I think he can sleep with Mother again. That one I hadn’t even considered.

Immediately after her nap, I find Mom sitting on the side of her bed working her arms into a bathrobe. She wants to use the toilet, insists she can’t get herself to ‘go’ sitting in bed on a bedpan. Nothing I say will stop her. We move down the hall, slowly. She’s holding a wall with one hand and me with the other. I maneuver her into the bathroom, she shoos me out and locks the door.

Dad and I hover outside, hearing her pee hit the side of the bowl, then the flush. We wait but she doesn’t come out. Finally, Dad can’t take it any longer.

‘Are you all right in there, Bette?’

Bette, by the way, is said as in ‘pet’.

‘I’m fine. Don’t hang over me so, it makes me nervous.’

Then she unlocks the door. She’s made up, and her hair’s in curlers. Guts my mother’s got; good sense I’m not so sure.

Things go a bit better every day. Mother’s color is coming back or maybe it’s only rouge. Our trouble is keeping her down. She’s wanting to take over again. At the same time, she’s complaining about how hard it is to breathe.

On the third day, we take her out on the patio. It’s a warm day with no wind and she’s been cooped up for a long time. It seems to help; she lies in the sun and tries to relax.

Dad’s doing most of the cooking. He’s justifiably proud of himself. Every morning he’s out of bed by eight and we take turns sweeping or making breakfast. It turns out he’s the mad sweeper, too. This drives poor Mother crazy; she wants us to vacuum; says we’re only pushing the dirt around, making everything dusty.

By the end of that week, there’s a full load of wash; Dad volunteers to do it at the Laundromat. He wants me to drive him there and show him how. Joan’s willing to do our laundry but Dad wants to do this himself.

So, while Mom’s napping, I drive Dad to the shopping center and demonstrate the machines. He’d gone with Mother before, but hadn’t paid much attention.

This turns out to be just the kind of thing he likes. The efficiency and predictability of it all give him enormous satisfaction. I say if he gets bored to look around the Lucky Market or go across to the bowling alley. I leave him there. He’ll be off on his own in the big world for a whole hour.

When I get home, Mom’s awake. She asks where Dad is.

‘He’s at the Laundromat doing the wash.’

‘Oh, Mother of God, Jacky, he can never do that! I take him along, but he’s more in the way than anything. He keeps folding sheets so there won’t be any wrinkles till I almost go nuts!’

‘Oh, he’ll be all right, Mom.’

She snorts, instantly classifying me in the great, growing category of ‘simps’.

‘You’ll see. He’ll put bleach in with the colored things or some goofy trick. Joan said she’d do the wash; don’t you two worry about it. She isn’t doing much of anything else.’

‘It’s all right, Mom, and it’s something for him to do. Joan has enough on her mind.’

But Mother’s lack of trust gets to me. I refuse to go back but I’m checking my watch. It’s like the first time you send a young child to the store alone; the temptation is to follow.

When I leave, I tell Mother I’ll fix lunch soon as we come back. I can see she’s feeling itchy; things are getting out of her control. It won’t be long before she’ll do something dumb.

At the Laundromat, Dad’s sitting with all the clothes dried and piled in the basket. He’s even broken down the clothes into Mother’s things, my things and his. I can’t believe it. And he’s so proud of himself; he’s sitting there sucking on a raspberry Popsicle.

‘Gee, John, I had a fine time. I went over and watched the bowling. I haven’t bowled since I used to bowl with Ira Taylor up on Sixty-ninth Street; that has to be over thirty years ago. I’d forgotten what fun it is. Here we are living only two blocks away and I’ve never even been to this place. You get in the habit of working and then forget how to have fun. It’s only fifty cents a line. We can afford it and I have all the time in the world. I’m not too old.’

I’m packing clothes into the laundry bags.

‘Sure, Dad, maybe we can come up and bowl. I haven’t bowled in a long time either.’

We pile our clothes in the car and Dad finishes his popsicle. I don’t want him charging in the house with a Popsicle hanging out of his mouth; that’d do Mother in for sure. We drive the car into the patio and start unloading. Mom is out of bed and opens the side door. Dad and I carry the clothes in. When I go into the kitchen, I see she’s fixed lunch.

I stand a minute trying to figure how to handle it. I resent treating her as a child; I don’t want her seeing me angry, either. I decide to accept. I can’t figure any other procedure more likely to discourage this kind of stupidity.

Well, that’s the way our days go. Mom’s into everything and there’s nothing Dad or I can do right. She’s even complaining Dad isn’t brushing his teeth at night.

‘You have to watch him, Jacky; he’ll only scrub the front and forget the rest.’

This is about a man with every tooth in his head. Mother has bridges across the whole back of her mouth. At first, we keep trying harder. We sweep, vacuum, line garbage pails, scrub toilets, dust, beat rugs, the whole scene; but it’s all wrong.

Joan comes and I tell her what’s going on. She laughs and sits down.

‘Don’t you know, Johnny, nobody can please Mom? I thought you knew that. Every week I come here to help with heavy cleaning like washing windows, scrubbing floors. I know she’ll do it all over again, wash every window a second time, muttering the whole while. It’s Mom’s pleasure to convince herself, and everybody else, that nobody’s as good at anything as she is. The world is filled with two kinds of people, Bette McCarthy and the rest. The rest are incompetent and basically filthy. Relax, Jack, live with it. You and Dad have a good time; you can’t win.’

Hell, I know all this. Only in my enthusiasm about how well Dad’s doing, I forgot.

Joan can’t get over how sharp, full of life, he is. It’s hard to believe it’s the same man. I tell Joan some of the things we’ve been doing; the Oar House, sailing, motorcycling. She thinks it’s all fine but we’d better not let Mom find out.

‘She’ll make life miserable for him, Johnny. And if she ever hears about that beard; God in heaven. All the noise I’ve listened to about your beard; it’d kill her for sure.’

We’re both giggling. Mom’s napping, Dad’s out in the greenhouse.

Plowing for sod corn, new-cut ground turned close, one row onto the other, small tufts of grass and reeds marking the depth of furrows. Jimmy pulls, slowly, easily; and I lean, just strong enough to turn over topsoil; corduroying the earth.

The next day when I go to do the bathroom, the tub’s been scrubbed. This is too much. If there’s anything a heart patient shouldn’t do, scrubbing a tub must be high on the list. Mother’s in the patio sunning with Dad. I go out.

‘Mother! Did you scrub the tub?’

‘Jacky, it was such a mess, rings of dirt and water splashes all over everything, I couldn’t stand it anymore. I’m sure you two step straight out of a tub and never look back; you leave curly hairs over everything and an inch thick of scum. I may be sick but I don’t have to live in a pigpen.’

‘Come on, it wasn’t that bad. I just went in to scrub it out. You only had to wait another ten minutes. For ten minutes with a few hairs in a bathtub you put your whole life on the line.’

I’m working up a stupid mad.

‘Dad and I are doing our best while you spend your time making things difficult. Mother, I’m telling you right now, if you don’t lie back, take it easy and do as the doctor says, I fly home tomorrow. If what we do isn’t good enough, hire a professional nurse. Do whatever it is you have to do but I’m not taking any more nonsense.’

Mother looks at me, then starts crying.

‘If I can’t even do a little work around my own house, what’s the use of living. You know he can’t do anything.’

She flings her arm in Dad’s direction.

‘Joan never comes and you’re only waiting so you can go back to Europe with all the foreigners.’

I turn and walk into the house while she’s raving. Dad comes in after me. I’m getting lunch ready. He’s upset; we all are.

‘It’s not her fault, Johnny; don’t be so hard; it’s not easy for her to relax, you know how she is.’

‘Sure, Dad. But remember: this isn’t only the usual spoiling, letting her have her own way; she can very easily die. I don’t intend to watch her kill herself out of pride, and a frustrated need to dominate.

‘And you’ve got to stand up to her, too, Dad; for her good and yours. It’s something we can’t put off. If she’s going to wash out bathtubs, there’s no chance she’ll live; I’m not kidding.’

I can’t tell if he understands. He’s so scared he’s into his nodding routine, looking serious and doing his worker-boss thing.

‘You’re right, Johnny. You’re absolutely right. I’ll talk to her. She’s crying out there alone; she doesn’t cry much; crying can’t be good for her heart, either.’

‘It’s better than scrubbing tubs, Dad.’

God, will we have to watch her all the time? I go back out with sandwiches, beer and some Coke for Mom. She’s still red-eyed, wiping away tears. She won’t look at me.

‘Listen, Mom. You’ve got Dad worried to death with your bullheadedness but I’m not going to say another word. If you want to climb up on that roof right now and start tap dancing, I’ll sit here and applaud. If you get a scrub brush and start scrubbing the lawn, that’s OK with me.

‘Then, when you have your next heart attack, I’ll try to help, I’ll try getting you to the hospital on time again and maybe they can save you. If they can’t, I’ll make arrangements for the funeral and help set Dad up. But that’s it. I refuse to treat you like a baby! You’re a grown woman, you’re not senile and it’s your life. If you want to kill yourself, that’s up to you.’

I pause to let it sink in. She’s looking at me now.

‘Do you understand, Mom? There won’t be another word from me. It’s up to you; you take hold of your own life. I think you have more sense than you’ve shown so far. I think you really want to live but you enjoy pestering the life out of Dad and me. Eat your lunch.’

After this it’s better. Now she has to prove she isn’t stupid. But her idea of what she can do without hurting herself is bizarre. I feel sorry for Dad because the whole guard duty falls on him. I shake my head in disbelief when she makes a bed or washes out undies, but I say nothing.

Marty calls most evenings and says she’ll come over to spell me if I want. I tell her it’s OK; I know how much Mom bugs her and almost everything about Marty annoys Mom. Mostly that she’s young and has her own life.

After two weeks, it’s time to take Mother back for a checkup. I call the doctor ahead of time and ask him to throw the fear of God into her because she’s too active.

He does a great scene but I can see Mother sitting inside herself resisting. He shows her the X-rays but she scarcely looks. He gets out the cardiograms, explains her blood chemistry, pulls out charts to show which part of her heart is affected. It’s not registering; she doesn’t want to know. Afterward, when I’m pushing Mom out to the parking lot in a wheelchair, she turns and looks back at me.

‘Jacky, I don’t think he’s a real doctor. I’m sure he’s not a heart specialist. Did you see that belt he was wearing and those tight pants? He’s another hippy. They let anybody get through medical school these days. He’s probably only a student anyhow, he can’t be thirty years old.’

I disappoint her and keep my mouth shut. All the way home she stays on the same themes, knocking Dr Coe and the Perpetual Hospital. Then she starts on the ‘nigger nurses’. She’s pulling out all stops.

I keep smiling, nodding like an imbecile and concentrate on the driving. Mother’s putting on the brake and clutching all the way. I swear next time I’ll slip a sack over her head and put her in the back seat.

At home, she begins telling Dad how she’s had a very light heart attack, so light in fact it’s doubtful she had one at all. She isn’t saying anything of what the doctor told us, only what she wanted to hear. I’ll give Dad a straight story later; I don’t want to start her crying again. Dad’s right, crying can’t be the best thing for a heart patient.

After lunch she’s at full steam.

‘Look how the paint on this house is peeling. The garden is going to pot, nobody’s weeding. The windows are filthy. We haven’t had any really balanced meals since I’ve been home. Dad isn’t taking his pills regularly, he doesn’t look well and he’s running around so much he’s going to have another stroke.’

Far as I know, he hasn’t had a first one.

I try to reassure her Dad’s doing fine and he’s getting good food. But nothing will do. Things are slipping away from her, and she’s in a minor panic; her very reason for living is being pulled out from under her.

The truth is Dad is getting away, gaining independence. He’ll go back, and in his new breezy way ask how she’s doing and what he can do. This bugs Mom, the roles have been reversed, so quickly, easily. He’s bringing her glasses of water, fixing her medicine, straightening her bed, regulating the electric blanket, giving her massages and trying, generally, to help her relax. Everything he does makes it worse. She’s caught in an unplanned double bind.

Dad’s cooking is improving, too. It isn’t serious cuisine, but then there’s never been anything resembling good cooking going on in this house. Dad’s opening cans of soup and making sandwiches in the toaster. He makes a couple complete dinners without my assistance; nothing difficult – lamb chops with canned peas and mashed potatoes, or some steaks with canned string beans and defrosted French fries – but it’s good.

Sometimes Dad will go into the bedroom to see how Mom is and he’ll forget to take off his apron; this drives her up the wall. I almost begin to suspect he does it on purpose; that apron, like his aircraft-carrier cap, has become a badge of authority. And I know all this is almost worse for Mom than her overexertions, but I can’t think of any other way. I’ve got to leave sooner or later and Joan can’t do everything.

Joan’s concerned, but can’t see any way out either. Dad has to take over. It would be even worse having a professional nurse. Mother makes no bones about that; no strangers living in her house.

Well, this goes on another week. Dad’s getting better every day while Mom fumes and keeps overdoing herself. Dad’s seventy-third birthday is rolling around. We decide to have a quiet party for him, just the four of us; Joan, me, Dad and Mom. We don’t want Mother getting involved with the preparations, but we can’t keep her down. I’m baking the birthday cake and she’s convinced I’m going to burn the house down; wants me to buy a cake at Van de Kamp’s. She opens the oven door so often the damned cake falls. It’d drive anybody bats. I haul her back to bed at least ten times. She’s on the point of tears. Her lines are:

‘This might be the last birthday I’ll ever celebrate with my husband and you want to do it all. I know myself; I feel just fine; you can’t know how I feel …’ and so on.

Joan buys Dad a pair of blue striped flannel pajamas, also a button-down-the-front sweater from Mom. I buy him a new dark green aircraft-carrier hat. I want to give him a roller singing canary but there’s not one to be found anywhere; the Newcastle blight’s almost wiped out canaries in America.

Dad enjoys helping with the cake. We do it from scratch, no cake mix. He can’t believe you can make a cake with only flour, sugar, eggs, milk, butter and salt, with a little flavoring and baking powder. It’s terrible how far removed from the fun parts of life most men get. We bake another cake after the first falls, and put them on top of each other.

The party’s a big success. We cut the cake and it’s a bit compact but delicious. Dad blows out all the candles in one fell blow; seven big ones, and three little. He makes a thing about opening each present, shaking to see if it rattles, making wild guesses and insisting on untying every knot and preserving the wrapping paper. He folds the paper carefully before he’ll go on to the next present. He’s dragging out the pleasure.

‘Come on, Jack, open it; stop playing with the paper; we don’t have all day.’

Dad turns to Mom and smiles.

‘Oh, yes, we do, Bette; we have all day; today’s my day, all day.’

He says it nicely and he’s smiling but it’s the first time I’ve heard him come back in more than twenty years. Joan looks over and gives me one of her looks. Joan’s look is to close her mouth, with her eyes wide, so white shows all around the iris. While doing this she nods then tucks her head into her shoulders. It’s best translated as ‘Well, I’ll be damned!’

Because I couldn’t find a canary, I give Dad the Swiss army knife Billy gave me for my fiftieth birthday. I hope Billy doesn’t mind. There’s something fulfilling about owning a knife like that. This one has thirteen different blades and instruments, including a magnifying glass, an ivory toothpick, scissors, tweezers, a saw, two blades, two screwdrivers (regular and Phillips), a can opener, a bottle opener, a corkscrew and a leather punch. Dad’s fascinated and opens all the blades simultaneously. It bristles like a hedgehog. Mother comes on with the expected ‘simp’ remark, and the three of us laugh.

‘You’ll see, he’ll probably cut off his finger before the day’s out.’

She’s also worried about washing the flannel pajamas; they take so long to dry.

Later, Dad goes into the bathroom and comes out with his pajamas on, his new sweater over them, and the aircraft-carrier cap on his head. He stands there smiling and opens up the Swiss knife to the magnifying glass and peers through it like a lorgnette.

Mom claims this proves he’s getting more senile every day and soon he’ll be crazy as his son. Dad says he feels like Dagwood, or a prisoner, in the striped pajamas. He sings a few lines from one of his all-time favorites.

‘Oh, if I had the wings of an angel,

O’er these prison walls I would fly;

Into the arms of my loved one and

There I would so safely hide.’

His voice is tremulous but strong and in tune. I don’t think I’ve heard him sing since he used to sing us to sleep when we were kids.

That night they want to sleep together. I move from the garden room into the side bedroom and Mom goes to sleep with Dad in the back bedroom. He smiles and says it’s the nicest birthday present of all. This is verging on the risqué from him; Joan laughs and he blushes.

In the middle of the night I hear the buzzer beside my bed. I pick up the receiver but there’s Dad at my bedroom door; his face is white in the dim light.

‘Mother thinks she’s having another heart attack, Johnny. She looks awful.’

I jump up and run back to their bedroom. She’s pale and sweating but conscious. She says she’s having terrible pain and tightness in the chest. She’s crying. I give her some digoxin but it doesn’t help. Now I have to do all the things I’ve been preparing Dad for. I leave him with her and tell him to yell if she goes unconscious.

First, I call an ambulance, then phone the hospital to alert them we’re coming in.

I go back to the bedroom. She’s still conscious but in great pain, crying. I think she’s crying mostly from disappointment and discouragement; she’d actually almost psyched herself out of that heart attack. She’s also scared.

The ambulance arrives in less than ten minutes. They roll in a stretcher and oxygen; they put her on oxygen immediately. The paramedic takes her blood pressure, shakes his head and says we’d better hurry. We wheel her out to the ambulance; I say I’ll go with them and ask Dad if he wants to come along. He says, no, he’ll stay home and pray.

We take off in the ambulance, with the orange light twisting and sirens blaring, through the red light on Palms. At the hospital, we go straight through emergency and they move her up to intensive care. I’m left in the emergency waiting room.

Half an hour later, a young doctor comes down and asks for me. He tells me she’s having another attack and they’re doing everything possible. He says there’s nothing I can do and I should go home. They’ll call me if there’s any major change. He means if she dies.

I need to take a piss something awful, and go into the rest room. I glance in the mirror and I’m almost pale as Mom. I’d no idea how much shock I’m in. I’m also feeling guilty about the birthday party and them sleeping together. She fooled me. She probably fooled herself, too. It’s so hard to know where to draw the line.

I take a cab home. Dad’s standing at the door waiting. He’s still in his pajamas but he’s had the sense to put on a sweater and his new cap. I pay off the taxi and go in.

‘How is she, Johnny? How’s she doing?’

He’s close to tears; he has his rosary in his hand.

‘She’s OK, Dad; don’t worry. She’ll be OK. They put her back in the intensive care unit. The doctors are doing everything that needs to be done. They have all the backup machinery.’

I lead Dad to his bedroom and help him into bed. While I was gone, he remade the bed completely in his meticulous way. I put out the light and close the door. I think of phoning Joan but decide against it. It’s out of our hands. There’s nothing we can do and Joan needs her rest. I’m feeling wrung out. I go back to bed and somehow do get to sleep.

The next morning I phone the hospital; there’s no change. I go over things with Dad. He seems OK; he hasn’t gone into any withdrawal symptoms like the first time. He’s with it, wanting to help.

‘This has to be a lesson for us both, Dad. We can’t listen to her. She doesn’t want to believe she’s sick so she isn’t to be trusted. We need to protect her from herself.’

Dad nods.

‘Yep, it’s hard keeping ahead of her, John. You never know what she’s really thinking.’

I call Joan and tell her what’s happened. She’s shocked and feels as guilty as I do. She agrees to meet me at the hospital. Dad says he’ll stay home, clean up the kitchen and work in his greenhouse. It’s best not laying too much on him.

Mother’s heavily sedated and all the monitors are on. She’s tied into IV and catheter; the whole works spinning to keep her alive. The nurses remember us. They say Dr Coe has examined Mother and wants us in his office.

We go down. He tells us there’s definitely been another attack but it doesn’t seem’s severe as the first one. He asks if there’d been any sudden shock or stress situation. I tell about the birthday party and Dad sleeping with her. He shakes his head.

‘We need to be more careful with her, Mr Tremont. You’ve got to see she doesn’t overdo herself; she can’t take many more of these traumas, her heart’s not up to it.’

On the way home, Joan and I stop for a pizza. We’re both depressed. We try to think out what we can do. Dad can’t keep her down any more than we can. I want to remove all the cleaning equipment from the house so she can’t get to it. I’ll lock the dirty wash in the garden bedroom. It’s like hiding razor blades from a potential suicide. Joan shakes her head.

‘Look, John, we’ve got to let her live her own life. She has a right to that, at least.’

I can’t be so sure. It’s hard for me to let go.

Joan says she’ll come twice a week and try keeping things impossibly clean. I volunteer to buy her a toothbrush so she can clean out cracks in the hardwood floors.

We talk about my ticket; I’m almost run over the forty-five days. Joan says she and Mario will split the cost of the return ticket if I can only stay on. She knows I want to get home but what else is there to do?

Next day I take Dad to see Mom. She’s conscious but still heavily sedated. She’s weepy. Dad’s crying, too, and in shock seeing her so low. He hadn’t seen her at the worst part the first time. Mother speaks in a thin, broken voice.

‘If a little thing like a birthday party is going to give me a heart attack, what’s the use of living? Just to stay alive I’m not going to be an invalid all my life.’

I hesitate, then play my last trump.

‘Mother, that’s despair; the more you talk and think like that, the less confidence you’re showing in God. It doesn’t help your chance for recovery and you’re endangering your immortal soul. Also, it’s cruel to Dad.’

I hate using this line, but it’s looking desperate to me. If Mother decides not to live, nothing in this world could keep her alive.

Dad looks at me as if the local paperhanger had suddenly turned into an axe murderer.

‘Mother, when you talk this way, it’s sinful; false pride, an insult to God and his mysterious ways.’

What the hell, it probably won’t do any good but it’s worth the try. Mom’s torn between spite and salvation, but gradually settles down. She doesn’t have many choices.

Dad and I go back to our old routines. Dad begins perking up. We both enjoy the camaraderie we had before. With Mother home it was a rat race: scurrying around trying to please her; continually feeling inadequate.

First, we build a handrail for the staircase from the side door to the patio. It’s healing to work with good tools and oak in the sunshine.

Later, after we store the lounge chairs and turn the sprinkler off in the back garden, we stand staring at the lowering sun.

‘Johnny, what would you say if we go down to the ocean and watch that sunset?’

I jump at the chance.

‘Sounds good to me; maybe get our minds off things.’

Dad goes inside for his coat and I start warming up the car. Dad comes out with the motorcycle helmets.

‘No use dragging the car out, John; I thought we’d go on the motorcycle.’

So we strap on the helmets and putt on down to Venice. At the beach, Dad takes off his shoes and rolls up his pants as we stroll along the edge of the sea. There’s a soft, slow sunset with red approaching purple. The ocean is calm; long, easy rollers. The tide’s out. Sunlight reflects on the wet sand as water slides back under breakers.

There are other people walking along; a few joggers. Everybody smiles or says hello. An Irish setter is running and chasing with a young girl; she’s throwing sticks, stones or shells out over the breakers. It’s a magic moment; a chance to forget how hard life is sometimes.

We don’t talk much. Stolen pleasure like this, undeserved, unplanned, you don’t talk about.

It’s almost seven o’clock and we haven’t prepared anything for dinner. I suggest eating at a restaurant called Buffalo Chips next to the Oar House. It’s owned by the same people and has a similar general atmosphere. In fact, you can walk from one place into the other by a backstair passage.

We head over and I find a parking place right in front. They’re already checking ID cards for the Oar House because it’s Saturday evening. These young guys must get a kick seeing a fifty-two-year-old dude riding a ten-year-old motorcycle with his seventy-three-year-old Dad hanging on back. A pair of them come over while I’m pulling the bike up on the kickstand.

‘I sure hope you two have your ID cards; nobody under twenty-one’s allowed in here.’

Dad’s slowly taking off his helmet, his feet straddling the bike. He’s smiling.

‘Well, I’ll tell you something, sonny. I’ve been working on being twenty-one for years. This is the fourth time around but I just can’t get the knack of it.’

We laugh and shake hands. They say they’ll keep an eye on the bike for us.

The restaurant specializes in sandwiches, from pastrami to steak. The hot roast beef sandwiches are something special. We order two with a pitcher of beer. They serve the roast beef with a good dab of horseradish. Dad and I both love it. We talk about the Italian horseradish vendors in the streets back in Philadelphia.

The crowd here is just as informal as the Oar House. There’s laughing and kidding around, flirting and counter-flirting. After we eat, we go through the backstairs into the Oar House. We luck out with two seats high on one wall where we can watch the dancing. I get another pitcher of beer and we sit there in the center of chaos.

I see the ID checkers and bouncers drifting toward us. They’ve been picking on the younger-looking people and checking. They come up to us.

‘Ah, here they are.’

It’s the taller one, a husky guy with a great bushy handle-bar mustache.

‘I knew you guys went in the restaurant just to sneak in here.’

He smiles.

‘OK, let’s see your ID there, fella.’

Dad looks up, smiles, laughs.

‘You’ll have to throw us in the clink, sonny; we don’t have IDs. I don’t drive anymore and my son here lives in Paris, France.’

It’s good hearing Dad so proud and assertive.

They laugh and move on. We finish our beer slowly. It’s getting close to eleven; I figure we’d better be on our way. We go toward the door. Some of the crowd’s been tipped off about the motorcycle and come to watch us take off. I help Dad strap his helmet because his hands are shaking. I strap on mine, kick the starter and she turns over first time.

It’s a cool, relaxing trip home. Dad’s getting to be a good rider; leaning on the turns, not fighting me.

Next morning when he comes to breakfast, I see he’s not shaving again. I don’t say anything. We’re going to see Mom at two and by then it’ll be really obvious. Dad does the dishes and I sweep. When we’re finished, we go out to straighten up his shop.

He has some of the finest tools I know. They’re fitted to the walls with painted silhouettes in white to signal when they’re not there. The tools which aren’t on the walls are in metal toolboxes with rollered drawers. His old carpentry box is there too, everything in order, including a wood-handled Stanley hammer and three Deitzen saws, two crosscut, one rip. Dad’s always been a toolman and knows how to use them. Dad’s tools are a biography and description in themselves.

Out there in the shop, I ask Dad what he’s going to do about Mother and his beard. He can’t pull the mask routine again. He says he’s going to tell her he’s growing a beard.

‘Gosh, John, she gets her hair cut and dyed without asking me; why shouldn’t I be able to grow a beard if I want?’

‘But, Dad, it’ll kill her for sure.’

He looks up at me from his bench.

‘You really think so, Johnny? I don’t want to kill her.’

The way he says it, it’s as if he’s thought it through and decided not to kill Mom after all.

‘OK, then, I’ll shave. I’ll wait till she’s in better shape before I tell her.’

Afterward, we go inside and he shaves before we head for the hospital.