America America (36 page)

D
AD HAD HAD A STROKE,
and after that we moved him into a place called Walnut Orchards, just outside of Saline. Assisted living. So now he’s spending his days among the men and women he’s known since kindergarten. But Mr. McGowar, the one he would have preferred above all the rest, wouldn’t come with him, at least not permanently. He did come with me to see Dad off on his new life, on the morning he was transferred over from Islington Lutheran Hospital.

Later that afternoon, when it came time to go home, I took Mr. McGowar aside. “Really,” I said, “you can move in here if you want. You absolutely can. You understand? We’d cover it. Be near Dad. It’d be good for both of you.” I studied his cactus of a face. Implacable as ever. “Clara and I will pay for it. Really—it wouldn’t cost you a thing. I can even watch the house.”

He didn’t have to write his answer. He just flipped a couple of pages back in his pad and turned the sheet face out:

FIN AT DUMFRIES

So Dad is here on his own now, in the end. I visit every Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday, and maybe every fourth time I’ll stop by the old neighborhood to pick up Mr. McGowar, too. At ninety-five, he still insists on walking out to the bridge to meet me, at the same stop where for fifty years he met the quarry bus. But sometimes I’ll surprise him at the house, just to check on things. A new family’s rented 410A, but every evening Eugene still comes over from 410B to watch the news with them, and there are still plenty of rocks for him in the garden. In other words, he remains remarkably spry, despite his years and his lungs, or whatever it is. Maybe he wasn’t wasting energy on anything else.

He and Dad are two fine examples of the human species. That’s what I’ve come to appreciate. When I bring Mr. McGowar over to Walnut Orchards, the two of them will head out together onto the grounds for a walk, and neither one can be deterred from fixing things. Rock out of line on the garden border? Mr. McGowar will wedge it up on his boot toe and shimmy it back into place. Snapped branches hanging over the walk path? Out comes Dad’s pocketknife. And even if Mr. McGowar can’t quite use the pry bar the way he used to, nothing’s ever going to keep his eye from a stray lump in the soil. He’s like a dog that way. Nature is nature, I suppose. When I was a kid he looked like he’d already been powdered for the coffin, but thirty-five years later he still looks the same. The only thing that’s changed are his teeth, which are closer now to the color of old newspaper. The rest of him is still the color of rock dust.

Dad, on the other hand, has become quite a different person.

His second day here, I arrived in the afternoon to check on him. Didn’t want him to accuse me of coddling, so I’d left him alone for the morning. When I came in, he wasn’t in the room. I must have sounded agitated when I asked at the desk, because the young woman there said tersely, “Assisted living, not prison.” She smiled then a little, maybe to show me she hadn’t meant it without humor. “We don’t keep track of anybody, sir,” she explained. “We just provide meals and services.”

I walked most of the grounds before I found him. He was in the library.

“What are you doing in here?”

“Am I not allowed?”

“I just didn’t know you were interested. I’ve been all over the grounds.”

“Next time call first.”

This, of course, was a change—since the stroke.

“All right, Dad. I will.”

“Look at this,” he said, pointing to the walls. “This is unbelievable. Someone told me it’s as good as a college library.”

“It looks like a nice collection.”

“A professor left it. And there’s a group who’s going to put on a play next week.” He pointed to the desk.

“
Hamlet
, I see.”

He nodded vigorously. “I’ve been trying to read a few of the classics,” he said. “It’s hard. But it’s good.”

And that’s what Dad’s done. He’s begun, the way I did at Dunleavy, to read.

Dr. Jadoon, who is the house doctor here, tells me this is not a typical “post-event change.” Dad still has the physical reminders of what happened—the left arm has shrunk a bit and much of the time just stays in his pocket, and he’s still got a little of the frightened look in that one eye—but if you saw him dressed and from farther away than across a table, you might not even know that anything’s different. It’s the brain that’s been transformed. The personality. He spends a good part of his day now with books. And I don’t mean
Pride of the Yankees
. I’ve seen William Manchester and Howard Zinn on his table. When we drive out to visit Mom’s grave, he’ll sit there in the car with a library hardback, until I’ve parked, unlocked the doors, and gotten out. That’s no exaggeration.

The other part of his new personality is his unfaltering politeness, which seems to be—well, gone. Not all the nurses are fans of his; this in itself is a change.

Dr. Jadoon doesn’t think all of it is physical.

“The bodily symptoms,” he said to me on my first visit to his office with Dad, “we can expect those. The upper extremity. The face—which you can still see a bit, no? And you say his character is different.”

“He used to be the politest man in the room. Unfailingly.”

“That could be the stroke. No question. A little loss in the frontal lobe. A pinch of disinhibition, you know.” He pulled on either side of his bow tie. Dad was in the next room, getting dressed. “Just prying the lid off the box. A bit, perhaps. You see, even with all our imaging studies, in the end it’s hard to know what’s going on—or what’s
gone
on—inside a brain.” He shook my hand, holding my elbow with his other one. “As for the remaining changes, Mr. Sifter—what I think, if you’ll allow me, is that he might have been wanting to. All along, you see.” His smile was a genuine one. “
Read
, that is.
Learn
.” He opened the door, steering me forward in his genteel but efficient way. “Now he simply has the time.”

“S
PEAKER
-S
ENTINEL
.”

“Is this Mr. Sifter?”

“It is.”

“
Corey
Sifter?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Eunice Charney, Mr. Sifter.” She paused. “JoEllen’s mother.”

I drove down to meet her at Cleary Brothers, which is now run by a chain from Burlington, Vermont. It features a four-spigot Italian espresso machine at the bar and a half-dozen sienna-colored awnings out back. She was sitting under one in a flowered hat, and I had no trouble recognizing her, even though she didn’t look as well as the last time. She still resembled her daughter, though, strikingly. The eighty-year-old version of a famous beauty.

As soon as she saw me, she said in her soft voice, “Thank you.”

“It’s the least I can do.”

She looked out from her hat when I said that.

I sat down. “Sure is hot out here,” I said. “For this time of year.”

“You’re thinking why did I call you up.”

“I was glad to hear from you, Mrs. Charney.”

“George is fishing on the lake, over nearby. Near enough, anyway. Still can do that, glad to say. One of his pals got a boat—didn’t do what George did with his money. Call me Eunice. If I was the one watched the money, we’d have
our
boat, too.” She brought out a large purse and began rummaging in it on her lap. “You work,” she said. “I’ll get to the point.”

“No need to rush. Can I treat you to something else?”

“I got my tea.” She pointed to the cup, then lifted it to her lips. Held it close up against her chin and took a sip.

“These are some pictures,” she said. She rummaged in the purse again and set a packet on the table.

They were clippings. Senator Bonwiller alongside Hubert Humphrey at what appeared to be a state fair. A forty-year-old newspaper. Yellowed. Senator Bonwiller in a rodeo hat in front of a crowd in Saline, speaking at a stand-up mike. The grays and blacks migrating toward a single dark tone in the center of the page and the ink fading off completely at the sides; but still a little newer, I could tell. She flattened the crease and set out another. Senator Bonwiller waving from the front seat of the Cadillac. Same evening, it looked like. I leaned in to get a closer look.

“That’s what I thought,” she said.

I lifted my face.

“Let’s see it again.” She moved aside her hat and looked me over. “Recognized you the minute I took them out.”

“I was in high school.”

“I figured about that.”

“Mr. Metarey hired me to work around his estate. My Dad worked for him, too, like everybody did around town. I drove people, that was just one part of the job.” I pointed. “That’s the Senator’s Cadillac. I must have been driving it when the picture was taken.”

“So you were his driver?”

“Senator Bonwiller’s?”

She didn’t answer.

“Sometimes I was, Mrs. Charney. But not all that often.”

She took another sip. Held the teacup close to her chin again as though she needed it to warm her. Then another sip. Let it settle. Looked over at me from under her hat. “JoEll loved singing,” she said.

“Is there something particular I can help you with?”

“She had a voice, too. The voice of an angel. She used to sing ‘Danny Boy’ down in the cellar before she went out at night with her friends. Nice kids, all of them. She was good that way, before she gave them all up for him. Had her room down there in high school—that’s the way she wanted it, don’t ask me why. Even though we had a nice one for her upstairs. A plenty nice one. But she wanted her independence. Always did. I’d hear her singing up in the kitchen. Got used to it, though. Hate to say that I didn’t always remember to think of it as the miracle that children are. That’s what she was, too. A miracle. So beautiful.”

“I can imagine, Mrs. Charney.”

“Of course you can. You got daughters. How many did you say?”

“Three.”

“How old?”

“Grown now. Gone from the house.”

“I had
one
,” she said.
“Have.”

“Mrs. Charney, I don’t know any more than anybody else.”

She set down her cup in the center of the table. “Don’t you?”

“I wonder about it just like everybody else does, ma’am. There’s no one alive who knows for certain—I’m convinced of that. I drove Senator Bonwiller every now and then but I wasn’t driving him that night.”

She looked up. “Which night?”

“The night it happened.”

“Why do you say it happened at night?”

“Mrs. Charney, that’s what everyone says.”

She looked away. “Nobody’s ever proved anything about it,” she answered. “Nobody’s even proved she was in the car. If they can’t prove that, what are they ever going to prove?”

“I don’t know, ma’am.”

“They say she froze to death. That she’d been drinking. That my daughter’d been
drinking
. Somehow ended up in those woods
by herself
.” She sniffed. “Those woods are a mile from the nearest corner, Mr. Sifter. Or were
then
.”

I waited.

“Was she in the car?”

I didn’t answer.

A quiver began under her eyes. “Mr. Sifter,” she said evenly. “I’m her mother.”

“I don’t know for certain, Mrs. Charney.” I looked away. “But I believe it’s possible she might have been.”

“That’s the kind of stuff they can tell for certain in an autopsy. I know they can tell something like that, right?”

“An autopsy was performed.”

She looked at me sharply.

“I’m sorry,” I said softly. “Really, I didn’t mean to worsen any of it.”

“Did you know my daughter?”

Next to the table, a web of moss was spreading between the paving stones.

“Did you know JoEll?”

“No, ma’am. I didn’t.”

“Never met her? Not in all the time you drove him?”

“No.”

“Well, she was a beautiful girl.” She glanced down where I’d been looking. “And kind. And she liked to sing like that. But she never did have airs. Even after Miss Three-Counties—won the whole thing, too. Didn’t affect her one bit. She told me once she was involved with—a married man.
A married man.
That’s all she said. No airs at all. Never went on any more about it than that. Never told her friends, either. All those nice kids who might have helped her out of that situation, or warned her. Or even noticed when she didn’t come home that night, when she was lying out in that field”—she bit down on her lip—“by herself.” But she drew her posture up. “And I suppose
he
must have been the one told her to keep her mouth shut.”