50 (26 page)

“Men are supposed to give themselves away in bed. You would have been the first to give yourself away in the kitchen.”

Doug went to work the next day trying to compare his current job with Daley’s proposal. His first call of the morning was from Sy Chapman asking if Doug would agree to having Chapman’s picture and motto on all T-shirts and banners in return for sponsorship of the walk race. Doug offered a compromise to get the tie-in: the motto, but no pictures. They were concluding their conversation when they were interrupted by the operator who said there was an emergency call coming in. The call was from Doug’s mother.

“It’s about your father,” she said.

“What?”

“He had another heart attack. He’s alive. He’s not dead yet.”

“What do you mean, yet? How bad is it?”

“Worse than the last time.”

“Where is he?”

“Broward General.”

“Did you speak to Marty?”

“He was out. He’ll be back soon, they told me.”

“We’ll be on the next plane.”

They went down on the first available flight. At the hospital, Doug and Marty found Norma in a housedress sitting in the reception room.

“Mother, what’s happening?” Doug asked.

“No visitors again for an hour.”

“How is he?” Marty said.

“Critical.”

Doug and Marty spoke with the cardiologist. They were going to run tests when Frank was stronger, to check the feasibility of a bypass. Visitors were permitted, a limit of two at a time, and since Norma had been there earlier, Doug and Marty went up together. Frank was tied to a system of tubing and connected to monitoring equipment. He looked white and waxen. In the room were two other men behind screens, also wired to technology.

“My guys. My guys have come to see me,” Frank said, speaking with difficulty.

“Hello, Dad,” Doug said.

“How are you feeling?” Marty asked.

“You gotta have heart. That’s what we say at the condo. It’s supposed to be funny. I still got heart.”

“Sure you do, Dad,” Doug said.

“How are the children?”

“They’re fine,” Doug answered.

“Everybody’s good,” Marty told him.

“We saw your doctor. He wants to run some tests,” Doug said. “They can do amazing things these days.”

“I want you two to make me a promise. When I go—”

“You’re not going, Dad,” Doug said.

“When I go, I don’t want to be put in the ground where the worms can eat me. I want to be cremated.”

“Dad—”

“Promise me you’ll do this. You promise?” I promise.

“Marty, speak up.”

“I promise.”

“I want my ashes to be taken out to sea. And I want you to scatter them over the water, in the clean, beautiful water. But not in Florida,” he said, his eyes going back and forth between them. “It can’t be in Florida. I don’t want my ashes out there with any southern fish. You take me to Sheepshead Bay and you go out and scatter me over the water, and my soul will rest with good New York flounder.”

The effort of speaking drained him and he closed his eyes. Doug and Marty sat for a while watching him as he slept. They went down to the lobby and Norma went up for a half hour and returned, saying he was still sleeping. She checked again, he hadn’t awakened, and they went back to the apartment. Doug and Marty stayed in the guest room that night, the brothers sharing a room together as they had when they were young, whispering in the dark, this time not of girls or plans, but medical talk about their father. The phone rang at five in the morning. Frank Gardner was dead.

“He would do this,” Norma said, crying. “Just when it was getting good.”

Doug and Marty handled the arrangements concerning cremation, tickets for people to fly down from New York, the planning of a memorial service. Doug raised the question about where the service should be held, in New York or Florida, Norma preferring to stay in Florida. On the night before the ceremony the family assembled at Norma’s apartment and collectively wrote a eulogy. They decided the group effort would best be read by the rabbi. He was provided by a nearby synagogue, a suitably sympathetic man, but young, he looked no more than 30. The
rabbis
are now younger than I am.

The main house in the Palm Vista development contained a chapel, where the memorial service was held. A few of Frank and Norma’s friends from New York who had moved to Florida were there, and two men introduced themselves as fishing friends of Frank’s. The eulogy was an accumulation of details, Andy’s recollections of card games with his grandfather, Karen’s playing board games with him; Marty and Ellen’s daughters contributed their memories of Frank helping them make snowmen, Marty and Ellen recalled Frank’s visits to their country house, Norma remembered how hard he worked for so many years, and this touched on Doug’s contribution, the sheer longevity, all those years of paying bills and staying solvent, which had come to seem, in time, a form of heroism.

Doug could not keep from thinking, One day this will be me. If they follow this script, I’ll go out on a good song, something from
Guys and Dolls
or
Annie Get Your Gun.
Under instruction from Doug, the organist was concluding the service by playing a song Frank Gardner liked to hum, “When My Baby Smiles at Me.”

Doug helped Karen and Andy through these few days, Karen frequently weeping openly, Andy fighting his tears. He reminded them their grandfather had lived a long life and they had been part of it. Both stayed close to Doug, always sitting near him. Andy with his manly gait—I’m in college, I’m not a child—and Karen with her burgeoning womanly carriage were unnerved by this lesson in human perishability. Doug sensed their need to be physically near him was to reassure themselves that
he
was all right. He saw, in his father’s death, his own mortality, and so did his children.

After the ceremony people milled outside the building, everyone agreeing the service had gone well, but Doug was feeling something was not right here. His father’s memorial service was held on a balmy day in Florida, people strolling outside in shorts, golfers and palm trees in the distance. This had nothing to do with his father. They should have been in Manhattan with cabs and cars going by, city textures, movement, noise. These were part of Frank’s world and Doug wondered if coming to this place had actually accelerated the end and that Frank Gardner hadn’t belonged here any more than he should have had his memorial service here.

Doug and Marty chartered a fishing boat by phone, and when they arrived in Sheepshead Bay without fishing equipment and with Doug carrying a briefcase which contained the urn, what they did not look like was fishermen. The boat owner was in his 30s, a tall, lanky man who viewed them suspiciously.

“Are you going to rent any stuff?”

“We won’t be fishing,” Doug answered.

“You won’t be fishing. I guess I better just take you and not ask any more questions, huh?”

“Sounds good,” Marty said.

“Poor guy,” Doug said to Marty. “He’s got to think we’re with the Mob.”

When they were out away from shore Doug opened the briefcase and removed the urn. Doug and Marty both held the urn, and as the boat cruised along they let the ashes trail into the water.

“Goodbye, Dad,” Doug said. “You worked so hard. You did your best.”

“I haven’t anything to say,” Marty told Doug. “Basically, he never liked me.”

“What do you mean?”

“He didn’t.”

“That’s not true.”

“I was too short.”

“Marty—”

“He wanted his son to be tall, and I wasn’t much taller than he was. And he was disappointed in the way I turned out.”

“He was very proud of you, of the stores, Ellen, the kids, the house in the country. You could see it in his face whenever he was around you. He was proud, Marty.”

“Really?”

“Really. Ellen and the kids remembered that for the service. And the height thing, that’s in your head. How tall was he? Neither of us was going to be Kareem Abdul Jabbar.”

“Well, I would want to say to him—you
did
do your best, Dad. And I’m going to miss you.”

The boat headed back to shore and they sat in silence, watching the water.

He was 69. In six weeks I’ll be 50. If it seems like two minutes ago since I was 30, what do I have left, two more minutes? What difference does it make how I spend them, working for Macklin or working for Daley? Time is rushing by so fast, it’s frightening.

Doug made no decision about Daley’s offer in the period following his father’s death. He went back to work. At night he watched movies on the video recorder. He did not read. He had all the information he needed. He was going to be 50.

The children called him at home from Susan’s new apartment asking how they could celebrate his birthday. They wanted to give him a party.

“I don’t want to do anything.”

“Dad, your birthday is going to end in a forfeit,” Andy said.

“You have to do something wonderful,” Karen said. “Something you haven’t done before. Like a helicopter ride over New York.”

“Maybe I could overwhelm it with banality,” Doug answered. “Dinner at Burger King. Then you go to bed and it’s over.”

He had spoken to Ann when he was in Florida. She called wondering why she hadn’t heard from him since.

“It’s this birthday. It really is a myth that men should celebrate their fiftieth. What is there to celebrate?”

“Your achievements.”

“Oh, is that it?”

“Doug, you have to get out of this. We’ll have a fantastic party. We’ll do it at the Fairlys’ house. We’ll get Lester Lanin. Do it black tie. Sumptuous. But I’ve got to work fast. I’ll start calling people.”

“I don’t want it, Ann.”

“Right now you don’t know what’s good for you.” I agree.

“And what about tomorrow night?”

“Tomorrow night?”

“The Hilton. The awards dinner.”

This was a banquet Ann had helped organize to honor major contributors to United Way.

“I totally forgot.”

“Doug!”

“I know it’s important to you. I’ll be there.”

He took her to the event, wearing his tuxedo, and made courteous small talk with various people in his new crowd. Tom Daley, who was one of the guests, came over to him. “Well?”

“I can’t say yet.”

“Doug, I’m going to Europe for a few weeks. When I get back I’d like to have you start working for us.”

Among the people at the table where he and Ann were seated was a venture capitalist planning a luxury resort in New Jersey, which he talked about with religious zeal, and a retired general, who had been in service during the Vietnam war, attempting to rewrite history at dinner tables. Champagne was poured freely, and Doug interspersed the champagne with double Scotches to get though the speeches at the table and the podium. His head was spinning from the drinks and he sat uneasily in the cab back to Ann’s apartment, worried that he might throw up. He kissed her goodnight at her door—this was a weekday night and he was not staying, and rather than take a cab home he thought it wiser to walk for a while. Unsteadily he headed down Fifth Avenue and turned west on Central Park South.

He started to think about his father, who had never gone to an event such as this evening’s, or owned a tuxedo, who had never set foot in rooms such as Doug now passed through, a workingman about whom the summation was that he did his best. Doug had gone far beyond his father, they were not in the same social class. But the question he asked himself on this night was, Am I doing my best? Was working for Macklin his best? The job offered by Daley was probably a better version, but was work where he promoted a corporation his best? Was this relationship with Ann, businesslike and formal for mutual convenience, his best? Was going to her events, spending that much time at balls and parties his best? Would marrying Ann and playing croquet on the great lawn be his best? The marriage to Susan, was
that
his best? To be attracted to someone because of her style and then to resent it when she takes that style into the business world? So she began to work longer hours. You can’t be attracted to a woman for her qualities and then resent where her qualities lead her. That was so pitifully second-rate. And what about Nancy? You let her get away and you settled for this—this tuxedo. The tuxedo suddenly became the embodiment of everything that was wrong. He was choking in these clothes. He pulled the bow tie from his collar, threw the jacket to the ground, pulled the cummerbund away from his body. No air. Choking. Can’t breathe.

He was going to rest sitting against the wall of a building for only a moment to catch his breath. He passed out on the sidewalk. An ambulance came for him and Doug was revived by an orderly’s slapping him on the face. He entered the ambulance on shaky legs. “Where are we going?” he asked. “Roosevelt Hospital.” They took Dad to Roosevelt Hospital.

The doctor in the emergency room said to him, “Our medical analysis is you’re drunk.” Doug was released and he walked to his apartment in shirtsleeves, throwing up twice in the gutter along the way.

He took a hangover to work the following morning, canceled a lunch appointment, and managed to get through the day. He was not seeing Ann that night; he thought of himself as “off” for the evening. He noticed in the paper the Mets had a night game against the Philadelphia Phillies. It had been months since he had been to a ball game and he decided to go. He went by subway to Shea Stadium, bought a general-admission ticket and walked to the highest point of the ball park, the last seat in the last row in the right-field corner, so he could have the entire panorama in front of him. The sky grew darker, the lights in the stadium took effect, converting the playing field into deeper contrasts, the greens and whites more vivid, the field coming into sharper focus for him. The dimensions of the game were striking from that high up, the open expanses of baseball. The spaces were the beautiful aspect, the empty spaces between the players, between the bases, the fielders attempting to fill the spaces, the instant of not knowing whether the ball would drop, go fair, foul, into the seats. In that instant, in those spaces was the beauty of the game. He was reminded of that again, sitting at this distance.