The Last Cadillac (17 page)

“Leave him alone. I tell you, he's fine.”

I wasn't going anywhere with this argument. Besides, it was way too early for one. Tick had another bathroom he could use. He didn't have to be waking up his grandfather at six in the morning.

“I tell you, it's fine,” Dad said. “This is our bathroom. We have an understanding, Tick and I. I mean it. I'm telling you to leave it alone.”

I didn't want to start the day off on a bad note, but then slowly—so slowly for a non-morning person—I began to get the picture. I was thrilled, and, once again, surprised: Dad and Tick had an “understanding.”

“All right,” I said.

“Good,” he said. “I want him to like me.”

I walked over to him and kissed the top of his wispy head. “Mission accomplished.” I swung his legs around onto the bed and under the covers. He crossed his hands on top of the covers and smiled. Tick's blues song was coming to a close, and I left the room quietly. Let those walkin' dogs lie, and let the shower rain forth, I said to myself.

I should have thanked Tick. The “understanding,” I learned, was that Tick helped Dad into the bathroom early almost every morning, so I didn't have to deal with that business. It was a lesson taught to me by my young son—I didn't have to micro-manage everything.

Tick went to school, and later I turned on the
Today
show. Katie and Matt announced the worst news of the day, nationally speaking, before moving on to tips on how to grow moss, make and bake twenty dishes with carrots, and decorate the mantel. They interviewed the bright and the thoughtful, who answered “absolutely” to every rhetorical question posed to them during each two-minute interview. I was surprised to hear that there were so many absolutes in the world. Especially since I wasn't absolutely sure of anything anymore. But they were.

Is this the biggest test of “trusty” pots and pans in the world? Absolutely. Ivanka, at seventeen, you earn $10,000 a photo shoot. Absolutely. Do you think the Dalai Lama will return? Absolutely.

As I watched the world go by in small bites, I wanted to be there again in New York, walking amongst the crowd. Absolutely anonymous. No one depending on me, or calling me up.

The camera panned Rockefeller Center, and I saw myself walking there dressed in a green seersucker coat dress in 1967, pointed-toe shoes killing me but not caring a bit, because I was going to an interview at
Time
magazine. I also had an interview at
Look
at 488 Madison that day. Both magazines offered me jobs in the secretarial pool for the editors. I took the
Look
job because it paid five dollars more at $85 a week. I was on top of the world. I bought a coffee ice cream cone at the corner of 53rd and Sixth Avenue, then walked all the
way south to Herald Square and back up Fifth Avenue. It was a bright August day, everything shining, and I was a working girl in New York City. I soon moved out of the Barbizon Hotel for Girls on East 63rd and rented a room at Mrs. Marcella Chamber's at 811 Lexington, a second floor walk-up at only sixty-four dollars a month. I felt rich.

“Never pay more than twenty-five percent of your monthly income on rent,” Dad said. “Balance the old budget.”

Rich, not because I was balancing my budget, but because I was in the most exciting city in the world, where David Rockefeller tipped his hat outside P.J. Clarke's after a late night hamburger, and I went dancing at Ruffles in the Pierre with an older man. Where, at the card table on the corner of Sixth Avenue and Eighth Street in the Village, protestors against the war in Vietnam collected signatures; the wealthy folk on Sutton Place near Marilyn Monroe's old place on East 57th walked their poodles and watched the river go by from the pocket park. The smell of hot dogs and chestnuts mingled with the pizza and blintzes and Chinese food. I didn't have to spend anything on food, because I worked for food editor Elizabeth Alston. We tested broccoli and pilaf with pistachios, eggs piperade, and pizzas that Peter Max drew up in a psychedelic layout for the magazine article.

In those years, I couldn't turn my head without finding another adventure. I loved New York. I love New York. My stint in Florida with Dad and the kids felt temporary, and so far away from that earlier, independent life. Everything, I decided, is temporary. Except New York.

I longed to get on a plane and go there again, and I would.

But before I made that happen, I had other things to do. For one, I had to get Little Sunshine out of bed and off to school on time. I smoothed away the gold streaks of tangled
hair, and studied her freckles, and patted her legs and rubbed her back. But nothing. She slept like a rock, just like her Big Sunshine. I told her it was after eight. I heard the same old complaint: “Just five more minutes.”

Fifteen minutes later, the frenzy began as the clothes, bags, and shoes whirled from room to room. She wasn't a morning person, and she didn't like to chat. She was in a twit because she couldn't get her shirt tucked in quite right over the top of her jean shorts. I watched from the sofa, with eyes half closed and my mug of sugary tea about to slip from my grasp, as she ran back and forth, changing a succession of shirts and pants until she decided on the pink T-shirt with the jeans shorts, finally all rolled, belted, and tucked into place. I could see her in the bathroom, at the sink, peering into the mirror, turning her head from side to side, applying lip gloss, wrapping her hair in a scrunchie. She pulled it out and shook her long hair, took a whiff of the inhaler for her distressed breathing, assembled the contents of her Little Kitty purse and her Jansport backpack, gathered the apple, the two dollars, the gym shorts, permission slip, homework, and trombone. I got tired watching her. She finally sat down, briefly, to eat a few orange slices and yogurt without lumps.

She gave me a kiss and was out the door before nine, a tornado of activity, and her room looked it. That afternoon she would have baseball practice—her coach said she ran “like a deer.” And she was a finalist in the county speech contest with her first-hand rendition of “Queen of the Quiet Table”—where she often reigned for talking too much. She placed second among all fifth graders in the county. She was the most beautiful fifth grader in the land, and the apple of Old Sunshine's eye.

The day after her prize-winning speech, a large paper cone
arrived from the florist with her name written on a small white card. I put the package on the table next to the door, where it commanded attention throughout the day. Dad sat in his chair watching television, watching the door.

Finally, at 4:30, the front door flew open, and there she was in a flurry of sports equipment and books.

“Hi, Sunshine,” she said, lunging at him for a kiss. He was a sucker for affection. She stuck her nose in his mouth and drew back, laughing. Dad let out a mock howl.

“Quit teasing,” I said. “And, by the way, miss, it looks like you have a package there on the table.”

She turned around and went for the card: From Your Sweetheart Sunshine.

“For me?”

“For you,” said Dad.

She tore the paper off and a profusion of white gloxinia, done up with pink ribbon, exploded from the wrappings. “Oh,” said Little Sunshine.

Dad grinned from ear to ear. “You like? That's for my great little speaker.”

“Sunshine,” she said, lunging at him this time with a hug that almost knocked his chair over. “I love it. My first flowers.”

“Well, it won't be your last,” he said, hugging her back.

The plant flourished on the bookshelf in her room in a sunny spot. She watered and fed it, turned it and pinched back the dead flowers, so that it grew in the sunshine.

I never did find out how that flower made it to our door.

Dad was a complicated man—a once prominent businessman and naval officer—working on a relationship with his
young grandchildren, caring deeply about what they thought of him. This surprised me, and heartened me. Some good things came along all by themselves.

Dad's big contribution was getting along with the kids, but he was like an old kid himself. Mom said that children need schedules. Dad thrived on a schedule, too. He wanted to know what the plans were day to day. Sometimes I told him the day before, but that turned out to be a bad idea most of the time. He began staying awake ruminating about the upcoming events—visits from friends, family, therapists, doctor appointments, haircuts, excursions to lunch or dinner. I gradually stopped telling him the plans for the following day. He protested some, but the schedules on the USS
Barnes
(his aircraft carrier during World War II) weren't relevant, and I told him so. He slept much better.

I went in to wake him by 10:00 one morning. I opened the door quietly and found him almost dressed, sitting on the side of the bed in his pants and a bright green golf T-shirt.

“Lorin called,” he said.

“Who?” It was a goofy thing to say. He didn't have a telephone, and if he did, I guessed he wouldn't know how to use it with all the buttons. In the dim light, I couldn't see his face, but I felt a fleeting dread that something was wrong.

“Who, Dad?” I said again.

“You know. Lor-in. Larry. Lorry. Lor-en.”

I still didn't get it. Then he pointed to the emblem on the front of his shirt. “Ralph,” he said. “He wants to play polo today.” Then he laughed.

Dad usually took a shower and shaved, dressed himself, and put his teeth in, mostly on his own. I was determined that he do most of these duties himself, for as long as he could, and the longer the better. It kept him going and
independent, although some days it tired him out. I stood in the doorway of the bedroom, sometimes like a cheerleader, sometimes like a cop directing traffic.

The shower was the challenge. I'd had bars installed and a shower chair for him to sit on and wash himself, but I had to help him get started, setting the water to the right temperature and putting the towels out, then stepping out of the way. It got to be a regular dance every morning, but he got the job done.

I laid out his clothes, his diaper, and golf shirt, and slid the belt through the loops of his pants. His socks and shoes together, ready for him to pull on last. Sometimes I ducked in to help him out. It took him a good hour, but at last he rolled out on his walker, with his hat and jacket on, his hair combed, and face pink from the shaver, smelling of Old Spice from the bottle he shared with Tick.

Some day—I hated to think when—he wouldn't be able to do this himself. Then what? What were we going to do then? Each day I thought about it, and each day I put the thought aside, because each day was different. Like Lucy, I was living in the moment, and giving it my best. Under the circumstances, though, I really didn't know what my best was.

He was enjoying himself, and that was the important thing. He ate a huge breakfast of grits, butter and syrup, a banana, a bowl of frosty flakes, cinnamon toast, a couple of scrambled eggs twice a week, a glass of milk, coffee, and prune juice. He read the sports section, then folded it into a ratty bundle, and stuck it under his arm. He headed toward the patio and sat in his chair under the mango tree to watch the cat that Tick named Puny, but whom Dad called Blacky. I watched Dad and the cat, and the bright green parrots,
graceful egrets, pokey doves, brilliant cardinals, and the blur of hummingbirds that visited our sanctuary, all under the ever-loving vigilance of Blacky.

One day, Blacky caught a gull and leapt around the backyard with it. She shook it wildly, feathers flying, me running about and squawking in chorus with the bird. Dad sat on the patio, bouncing his cane up and down, squawking loudest of all. I didn't know if he was cheering on the bird, the cat, or me. I felt for that bird, but I gave up and retreated to the patio, after which the cat finally dropped it.

“That was quite a performance,” he said, stubbing out his cigarette. “You all have the fight in you. Hey, team, fight!” He got up, slowly, heading toward Donald O'Connor on Turner Classics. Then he stopped and turned. “Just make sure that bird isn't suffering.”

Three days a week we had a visit from a rehabilitative expert—a therapist—and we often went to the doctor. After which, Dad took a two-hour nap.

It was not a demanding schedule, but it needed close attention all the same. Dad was upset when breakfast was late, or he missed his cigarette, his movie, his sports section. Our day revolved around these simple things, and in between the shifts, I did humongous mounds of laundry, sweeping, and cooking. I paid the bills, fed the cat, pulled the weeds, bought the groceries, gassed and washed the car, and cleaned out the garage. The kids came home late in the afternoon, only to drop their backpacks, grab their sports equipment, and disappear until dinner.

One morning, after Dad was ensconced with Richard Widmark, I struggled toward the garage with a load of wet
sheets—it didn't seem to matter how much I limited liquid intake, or how many diapers Dad wore, he still “leaked,” as he called it. I had to strip his bed and wash the sheets almost every day.

In order to get to the washing machine in the garage, I had to go through Tick's room (the former laundry room). Typically, his bed wasn't made, as if he would even bother. His guitar stood ready at the foot of the bed; the built-in desk was covered with Legos, wrappers of edibles, notebook paper (balled up), a jock strap, at least a dozen books, and a baseball glove. And centered in the mess was a black and white composition book. I knew what it was. I stopped and plunked the clothes basket on the floor, curious to see what was written inside the notebook. For just a second, I weighed Tick's privacy against my curiosity. The latter won, again. I opened the notebook.

My mother brought up moving to Florida a long time ago—way over a year ago. She didn't want to stay in what she called “the armpit of America” with my father living down the street. So we left town.

At first I thought my mom was bluffing, but I was very wrong about that. My mom doesn't bluff.