One More Stop (17 page)

A lovely nurse’s aide approaches. ‘May I help you?’

‘I’m looking for Mrs B.’

‘She’s in the recreation room, straight down the corridor, through the double glass doors.’

‘Thank you.’ I walk quite a distance, until I reach the glass doors. Behind them, I hear the sound of an out-of-tune spinet piano, playing a familiar melody. I walk through the doors, into the room. There she sits, stunning, elegant, playing and singing her heart out:

‘In Dublin’s fair city,

Where the girls are so pretty,

I first set my eyes on sweet Molly Malone …’

I take a step. The floor creaks. Mrs B. stops playing, turns.

‘Who’s there? Who is it?’ She is so beautiful, like a still life, sitting in the noonday sun. I look at her eyes. Those eyes are so familiar. She looks, but does not see me. ‘Who is it? Who’s there?’

‘It’s me, Mrs B. It’s Loli.’

‘Loli! What a wonderful surprise. Come here. Sit down next to me.’ I sit down on the bench. She squeezes my hand. I take her right hand in mine. I kiss it, then place it back on the ivories. She looks at me. Why, I cannot imagine. She can’t see me. Maybe she can … Those eyes. Yes. Those are Maggie Malone’s luminescent eyes … Maggie and Mrs B. How remarkable.

Do you remember this song?’ She begins to play.

‘In Dublin’s fair city,

Where the girls are so pretty …’

We sing the next few lines together.

‘I first set my eyes on sweet Molly Malone,

As she wheeled her wheelbarrow,

Through streets broad and narrow …’

And together in perfect harmony.

‘Crying, “Cockles and mussels, alive, alive oh,”’

And again…

‘Alive, alive, oh! alive, alive oh!’

And for the finale, she joins us adding a perfect third part harmony.

‘Crying, “Cockles and mussels alive, alive oh.”’

Mrs B. cries. I wipe her tears. As if she could see me, she wipes mine. I wonder if she too has heard my mother’s voice; hears her voice all the time. Has she ever forgotten that day when she found my mother in the bathtub, naked, no longer out of her mind, just out of her body, and for a little while, out of this world. What are the appropriate topics of conversation during a time such as this … with my mother’s best friend, my father’s ex-wife, my former neighbor and stepmother Mrs B. What about Burt? What does she want to talk about? Play it by ear.

‘It’s been a very long time. Hasn’t it, Loli?’

‘Very.’

‘Almost twenty years?’

‘At least.’

‘Are you well? What a silly question.’

‘I’m fine, considering.’

‘Let’s go back to my room. This piano bench was not made for two people.’ I help her to her feet. She is shaky, but has no trouble when it comes to finding her way through the glass doors. ‘I see shadows. I see light and shadows. That’s how I find my way … They call them cotton wool spots. Diabetic retinopathy. That’s the diagnosis. Nowadays they have a diagnosis for everything. Everything. Soon I won’t see the shadows or the light.’ We walk arm in arm toward Mrs B.’s room. ‘How’s your sister?’

‘She’s pretty upset about Pop.’

‘I imagine she would be. He was her favorite.’

‘She was his favorite.’

‘Not true.’

‘It seemed that way.’

‘He’s a good man, your father. God knows it hasn’t been an easy life for him.’

‘I’m so sorry about Burt.’

‘Poor Burt never had a chance. When Sid and I divorced, I thought Burt was going to commit suicide.’ Mrs B. opens the door. We enter her shrinking world. There is a bed, a night
table, and a small porcelain lamp on the table. ‘I love the light in this room.’

‘It’s lovely.’ The room is dark. The air is heavy. Not to Mrs B. She finds beauty in the ordinary. I have always loved that about her.

‘Would you mind opening the curtains?’ I open the
curtains
. ‘Open the doors too. Let some air in the room.’ I open a set of French doors that lead onto a patio where Mrs B. has planted the most beautiful garden: daisies, daffodils, pansies, parsley, Johnny Jump-Ups, and violets.

‘Your garden is beautiful,’ I tell her.

‘I love to garden. It’s my meditation.’

‘You always had a green thumb. I remember how envious my mother was when your flowers bloomed in late spring.’

‘Your mother never had a shred of envy in her body.’

I think about my mother … ‘You’re right.’

‘She was too kind, sensitive to ever be jealous of what someone else had.’ She stares into space. ‘Like Burt. Poor thing. Where was I before we started talking about your mother?’

‘Burt.’

‘Oh yes. So after Sid and I got divorced, Burt was never the same. We sent him to a psychiatrist. It didn’t do him a bit of good. Instead, he buried himself in those books of his. He did well in school. Went to M.I.T. The pressure nearly killed him, barely got through, such a sad man. When he met Lorraine, his ex-wife, he was so happy, if you could call it that. I never understood what he saw in her. Then one day, I realized she was just as unhappy as he was. They fed off each other’s misery. When he took a position at the University of Iowa, she didn’t want to go. She hated Iowa. Made him pay for it, told him he’d ruined her life. Honest to God, what people do to each other.
Burt wanted kids. Lorraine didn’t. The more he tried to make her happy, the less she cared. She drove him crazy.

‘One day he had had it with her. He hauled off, hit her; out of frustration. Nowadays you don’t hit a woman, especially a woman with a good lawyer. That was it. She took him to the cleaners. He got thrown out of the university because of the scandal … spousal abuse. He had to sell the house. She got the bulk of the money.

‘Then he came home. All he did was sulk. Of course when I started going blind, he didn’t know how to deal with it. Good grief, if you can’t deal with life, you might as well lay down and die. That is exactly what he did. Found a gun at some
secondhand
store, shot himself … in our backyard.

‘There was no point in me staying after … I couldn’t take care of myself, and being near your father for all those years, all the memories, your mother’s death, finally it was time to move on. So here I am. It’s not so bad. It really isn’t; just another chapter in my life.’ She closes the French doors, draws the
curtains
. ‘I’m so glad you came to visit.’

‘I’d like to come again, if that’s all right with you?’

‘That would be lovely. It’s about time both Greene girls were back in my life.’

‘Better late than never.’

‘So true. Please give your father my love.’

‘I will. After I leave you, I’m going to the house … surprise him.’

‘He was never big on surprises, your father. He must have changed.’

‘I would hope so.’ I say my goodbyes.

‘Don’t take twenty years. I can’t wait that long. I probably won’t be around.’

‘Maybe next time, Dina and I will visit you together. The Greene girls together again for a return engagement at Mrs B.’s world of botanical enchantment.’ I close the door behind me, walk down the corridor, out into the late-spring daylight. It is a gorgeous day in Beechwood.

I walk down Worth Avenue, stroll by Beechwood elementary school. I kissed Ron Johnson in the corner of the playground. Maggie is no longer in my hair, on my fingers. She is still with me, but I’m afraid to keep her too close. Simone is with me too. I can’t stop swinging in the playground called mind.

The Good Humor man pulls up in his ice-cream truck right in front of school. I want to ask him if my mother told him she was going to kill herself. But it’s twenty years later. For sure he’s not the same Good Humor man. The kids run for the truck, much like I did when I was their age.

For some strange reason I feel hopeful about the future. My visit with Mrs B. has been an inspiration. Even though she is blind, I felt as if she saw all of me. How healing it is to be seen.

I continue my walk through town, pass the candy store, the drug store, down Post Avenue, turn right onto Bridge Court. I walk up the steps in front of the shrinking house. I have my key poised, ready for the hole. Open the door, enter the world of sick and dying.

Patty is sound asleep on the living-room sofa. I tiptoe into the television room. Pop is also fast asleep, talking his dream talk.

‘Hurry up, I wanna go up. I’m here. Come on now. Hurry up. Take me up.’ She is in his every sleep, every wake. She is in the bedroom. She is in whatever room he has left for her in his heart. I kiss him on his forehead. I listen for her. She has
nothing to say. Where is that missing monkey? It’ll turn up sooner or later.

I let myself out of the house, walk to the Beechwood train station. It is three p.m. I have had a full day.

The train arrives; the train that my father took to work every day of his life. I am on his train, going to his city, looking out his window, rediscovering the tall trees, the endless train tracks, the two-story brick buildings, the almost perfect world I took for granted as a child.

I was relieved not to be going to Montana. Stuart Manly understood my decision to remain in close proximity to my dying father. What was not clear to Stuart was my complete and utter lack of interest in teaching altogether.

By sending my replacement to Montana, The Company was caught short. It had promised a three-day residency to Harriet Tubman High School in Harlem.

Stuart Manly assumed that I was just hanging around New York City having a la di da time. As far as he was concerned, I owed The Company a week. Three days was a deal. In theory he was right. In fact he was wrong. It requires an all-consuming focus to make peace with a dying parent, especially when you have blamed that parent for almost everything that has ever been wrong with your life.

Dina thought it a good idea for me to keep busy; best not to think … about anything. Keeping busy is another example of the older child syndrome. The oldest child chooses
responsibility
. The youngest child chooses to be carefree for an
indiscriminate
, undetermined length of time; as long as possible.

The tenth graders at Harriet Tubman High were street smart, uncontrollable, wickedly funny and enormously
perceptive
; white woman has arrived. What can we get away with?

The boys are slumped so low in their desk chairs that all I can see are their eyes. The black girls look bored. They gaze at themselves in tiny mirrors hidden inside their purses. The
Muslim girls wear burkhas. Can barely see their faces. Wonder how they survive during these maniacal anti-Muslim times.

Begin. ‘I’m going to get right to the point here.’ Three boys yawn and drop down below eye level. I had better keep it moving or else it will be a forehead-only class. ‘Look, we all define ourselves by who we think we are, right?’ One or two nods. Infinitely better than switchblades. ‘Where we come from, who our family is, what our friends think of us … right?’ Not one word.

Ms Withers, the teacher, screams. ‘Come on class! Say something! … Anything!’

Screams from the teens: ‘Sure. Right. What? Oh yeah, Ms Withers.’

‘Thank you, Ms Withers … What if you are not who you think you are? What happens if how you define yourself is no longer your story? Your parents aren’t your parents? Your sister isn’t your …’ Uh oh … What have I done? A young boy raises his hand. He is no longer a forehead. He is an entire face with neck attached. Things are looking up. ‘Yes. What’s your name?’

‘Clarence Darnell The Third.’

‘Clarence.’

‘If you don’t mind me sayin’ so, miss, I don’t need to do the exercise.’

‘Why is that Clarence?’

‘Well you see, miss, my mother lives upstairs from my father and me. She lives with my uncle, who is now married to my mother, so he’s my father too. My sister lives with my uncle’s son. They’re living in my apartment. My sister is fourteen. She just had a baby girl. So, now I’m an uncle. My father’s married my mother’s sister … so I think my mother’s sister is now my
mother. My father and his new wife, my mother’s sister, and her two kids live in our apartment. So, now my cousins are my brother and sister. You see, miss, I can’t de-fine myself by who my mother, father, sister or anyone is. It’s too confusin’.’

Good God! Families are so damn confusing; an organism we call home … What do we do when parents who hold certain positions switch roles? Who do we mimic, until we are confident enough to be original without fear. Who!? It is so fucked up.

Forced to be spontaneous, I change the exercise to fit the moment. ‘Let me put it another way?’ They’re waiting for you … ‘How well do you know yourself? What turns you on?’ Music, Sunday
New York Times
Business section, sex … ‘Who turns you on?’ Maggie … Simone. The class roars. ‘Seriously.’ Seriously. ‘How did you become who you are? … Pick a time, a time from your past that changed your life.’ I remember my mother’s funeral like it was yesterday. ‘Have a dialogue with the you you were then. See what your present self has to say to your past self.’ Change her legacy. ‘Who are you now?’ Who was I then? ‘How has your past influenced your present?’ She never said goodbye. I never, never say … goodbye.

After class, I hail a cab, head downtown via the parking lot doubling as the West Side Highway. On Wednesdays the traffic in New York City is nightmarish. It is matinee day; two shows instead of one. Twice as many Jersey drivers clog the city’s arteries. It is an eighteen-dollar cab ride. That’s no joke.

Mary is happy to see me. No, I am happy to see her. She
seems
happy to see me; projecting again.

‘You wouldn’t believe the class I just came from in Harlem. I feel like an absolute idiot. Stupid. I was … I … was … so insensitive. I don’t want to talk about it.’

‘Why not?’

‘I was trying to make a point about how we define ourselves. What if you weren’t who you thought you were? What if your father wasn’t your father or your mother wasn’t … Oh fuck it’s too complicated to explain!’

‘Try.’

‘It’s not important. This one kid lives with his father who’s married or living with … his mother’s sister … The mother’s sister has two kids … They all live together. You get it? His cousins have become his brother and sister, his mother is living with his uncle, his fourteen-year-old sister has already had her first child. For fuck’s sake! Fourteen. Do you believe this story? It’s not a story. It’s real life. A fifteen or sixteen-year-old kid … is now an uncle with two, count them, two sets of parents. He was right. He didn’t need to do the exercise. Why do people have children? Why? What about commitment? What about responsibility? Who gives a shit.’

‘Do you have to have children to be committed? Aren’t you committed to, excuse me, what is your partner’s name?’

‘Simone.’

‘Are you committed to Simone? Do you feel a sense of responsibility toward her?’

‘I was. I do. But, now there’s Maggie … I’m not so sure.’

‘How long have you known Simone?’

‘Twenty years. That’s not the point. If Simone weren’t fucking around, I wouldn’t have fucked around. I did and something happened. Shit happens in an open relationship, in any relationship. Simone made the rules a long time ago. I think she made them.’

‘You went along with them.’ She leans forward. ‘Why? Why did you go along with those rules?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Off the top of your head what do you think?’

‘I said, I don’t know!’ Mary stares right through me. ‘What do you want me to say? … I don’t want to lose, I don’t … want to be … I’d rather be with her the way we are, than not be with her at all.’

‘Her or anyone?’

‘Her! Maggie just happened. Whatever we’re talking about doesn’t have anything to do with Maggie!’

‘It probably goes back much farther than Maggie or Simone.’

‘It
all
has to do with my mother, doesn’t it? Is that what you’re trying to say?’

‘You brought up your mother.’

‘I certainly did … What, if anything, does this conversation have to do with people and their lack of commitment to one another?’

‘You tell me.’

‘I liked it better with Dr Guttman.’

‘I’m sure you did.’

My father was fading away. By Thursday, the changes in his physical appearance were staggering. He had turned a bright canary yellow. His eyes were glazed, milky, lifeless. His skin pulling away from his body. His bones piercing through his skin. There is an expression. ‘The only thing that you can be sure of in life is death.’ Very well put that expression is. Life, in other words, is full of surprises. Death, on the other hand, is a clear voyage.

‘We all fall down.’

‘Thank you for that uplifting comment.’

Dina and I suffered less than most children during my
father’s final days. Saul had FedExed a two-pound care package of hallucinogenic Mexican marijuana.

During one of Pop’s delirious moments, ‘Hurry up I want to go up … aah … please get me out of here!’ We gave him a hit of the stuff. It calmed him right down.

It was a three-ring circus. Dina and I took turns with the diapers. Some days we had the pleasure of each other’s company. Patty kept herself busy stealing whatever sheets and silverware was left in the house. She made numerous trips to her car, always wearing her winter coat. It was late May.

During the death watch, I had my daily appointments with Mary. They were work. She led me so far down into my
unconscious
, sometimes I had no idea where I was, or if I was. She was up on all sorts of techniques: breath work, Kabbalistic symbols, dream therapy, role playing (my favorite: reminded me of my early days as an actress), chakra clearing, hypnosis. Some days we would just sit and talk.

My mother showed up every now and again. I assumed she was working overtime, trying to pry my father out of his
hospital
bed, out of the television room, back into the bedroom, and finally over into her world.

On Sunday night, while I am trying to call Maggie on the phone, Simone shows up at the apartment. As the lock turns, I quickly hang up the phone. Her homecoming is auspicious indeed. We do not have much to say to one another. But, Lord, do we give the word ‘hot’ a new meaning. We make anal love on the couch, nearly drown making love in the tub. I make love to her on top of the kitchen table. She makes love to me on top of the window bench … By late May, the radiators are turned off; we don’t have to worry about burns.
Though, I did have rug burns on every inch of my exposed body parts. During our sex scenarios, I am grieving inside. I feel a revulsion for myself like I have never felt before. I can’t look Simone in the eye; can have sex in any configuration imaginable, but can not, will not make eye contact. Until finally we talk.

‘Do you want another joint?’ She kisses my forehead.

‘No.’

‘I missed you.’ I don’t respond. ‘What is wrong?’

‘I’m tired.’

‘It must be so difficult. Your father.’

‘At least I know the outcome.’

‘What?’

‘I’m tired, that’s all.’

‘I do love you.’ She pulls me into her beautiful breasts. I can’t resist. ‘You will adore Zurich.’ She spreads her legs, grabs my hand, slides it down to her pussy. ‘Here darlin’. Feel how wet I am.’

‘Not now. Later maybe.’ Habits, like ghosts, have a way of holding you so close that you don’t dare give them up, because you don’t know what your life will be like without them. How could I say goodbye to the shadow that kept me incomplete?

The day before Memorial Day weekend, Dina and I receive early-morning wake-up calls from Patty. Her rosary beads are working overtime. Pop has lapsed into a coma.

I cancel Mary Michelin, say goodbye to Simone, run down the stairs. The elevator is still out of order.

Dina picks me up. We drive in silence until I speak. ‘Would you mind opening a window?’

‘I have the air on.’

‘Just a crack.’

‘That is such a weird habit.’ She opens the window.

By ten a.m. we arrive in Beechwood. We hold hands as we walk up those familiar front steps. I begin to hyperventilate.

Dina panics. ‘You can’t do that now!’

‘I’m not doing it on purpose,’ I wheeze.

‘Before we walk into the house, you have to breathe normally or else I will fall apart. I will. Take some deep breaths … Now!’

‘Alright.’ Gasp …gasp … ‘How’s that?’ I pray to God to make me breathe better than I breathe.

We open the front door only to hear the sound of Patty’s Christ this, mercy that, Mary and Joseph, holy spirit, holy ghost, and other holy biblical phrases I am not familiar with. We walk into the TV room. My hyperventilation has now vented itself into a quiet wheeze.

My father looks exquisite; yellow like the sun, small and sweet like a newborn, and calm like he has never been in all the years since I have known him.

Patty prays. ‘Oh heavenly Father! Will ya look at him, will ya.’ Dina cries.

I give him a good looking over. ‘Patty, are you sure he’s in a coma?’

‘Of course I am. I remember my dear departed uncle’s coma. May he rest in peace.’ Dina and I almost laugh out loud. But, this is a time for piety. I try prying open my father’s closed eyes. As if a bolt of lightning has struck him in the ass, he sits upright in his hospital bed.

With eyes wide open, he speaks. ‘Hurry up. I want to go up. Hurry up. Take me up.’ He lies back down like a ton of skinny bricks.

‘Oh Lord. She’s calling his name. He can hear her. I have
been around death, I have. But never a death like his. Mary, Jesus and …’

‘Patty. Would you mind leaving Dina and me alone with our father?’

‘Of course not. I have so much ironing to do in the
basement
. I’ve been ironing his underwear for days.’ What ironing? He’s been in diapers for over a week now … Patty leaves the room. Dina and I sit, transfixed, staring at my father.

Suddenly Pop sits up again. ‘Hurry up. I want to get up. Take me up.’ And he’s down again. And so it goes up and down, up and down, life and death, up and down. She is not only near him. She is with him, in him, all around him.

I smell her perfume. ‘Do you smell that?’

‘What?’

‘Nothing.’ I listen for her; not a word. The afternoon creeps into early evening, the spectacle continues; an outstanding final performance.

From outside, we hear the Good Humor truck pass by. Dina and I decide to have one last Good Humor. I yell down to the basement. Of course Patty is not there. She is on another silverware run to her car. I open the hall closet. Her coat is missing. I would be such a good detective.

Dina orders an orange popsicle. Boring. I have a chocolate chocolate-chip Good Humor bar. Only seconds away from asking the ageing Good Humor man if he knew my mother, a blood-curdling scream resounds throughout the
neighborhood
. Dina and I drop our sweets in the street. We beeline it back to our father’s house.

I open the front door, race into the television room. He is nowhere to be found. From upstairs Patty screams. ‘HELP! HELP! OH MY GOD! GLORY BE …’