The Last Cadillac (20 page)

“I want to go around one more time on that horse,” he said. And he did.

Lucy worked as a manager at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Chicago, a fantastic job that had its ups and downs. She had to stand up all day—that was the downer—but she hung out with the stars. She was supposed to keep a professional distance from them, but this was difficult for Lucy. There was the afternoon she delivered cocktail napkins to the bar so she could get a peek at Mel Gibson kicking back with his brother over a few Heinekens in the Atrium. She made a point of standing near the elevator when Jerry Garcia, with his wild hair and weird entourage came swooping past. She watched Harrison Ford from the restaurant reservation stand, while he charmed the maître d' and ordered a California pinot noir. Her snooping around about the comings and goings of the stars at the Ritz caused no end of trouble with her boss. Even walking around on duty was a source of agitation. More than once, a couple came up to Lucy and offered her a hundred dollars to leave them alone in a room for twenty minutes, so they could check the suitability of a suite for an office meeting. “Do I have ‘stupid' written on my forehead?” Lucy asked the drunken duo who tottered over to her desk.

Lucy generally maintained her decorum, even though a great number of the human beings she dealt with did not—including the CEO's wife who threw a fit when Lucy accidentally ordered a white limo instead of a black one for a shopping trip. “Always and ever, ever and always,” the wife huffed at Lucy, biting off the words. “Black, I said blaaaaack, not white.” Lucy worked hard, but sometimes, she drew the line with a huff of her own.

Lucy wasn't crazy about the stress of the job, but there were the perks. She called me to say that she and her co-workers were planning a trip to Ireland on hotel business, which was sure to involve a great deal of eating and drinking. She asked if I'd like to go.

Did I want to go? After a horrific year of losing our mother to cancer and my marriage to anger, along with the general chaos of moving, surviving a hurricane, repairing the cottage, and The Leg, yes, I thought—for a fraction of a second—yes, I'd love to go.

But how?

“I'll bet Dad would really like the trip,” said Lucy. “Why don't you ask him, too?”

“What?”

“He'd love to go to Ireland. It would be a blast.”

I stared out my kitchen window at a squirrel (I hoped it was a squirrel) chewing on a mango, while Lucy no doubt was standing in her blue pumps in the sumptuous offices of the Ritz.

“Lucy, Dad has trouble getting to the bathroom.” But as soon as I said it, I thought about how much Dad loved Ireland. “OK, I'll ask him, but I don't know what he'll say. He's different every day.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“Since Mom died, he's acting goofier than ever. It was terrible for him, Lucy.”

“Well, don't you think I know that?!” she snapped. “Yes, we both know that.”

“Yes. Lord.”

We were both thinking about the awful Year of the Doll-house, and about how we wanted to forget the whole thing.

“Look,” she said, “you know him, so talk to him.”

“I will. He might just take to the idea. Some days, he seems to be doing fine, but there are the little surprises.”

“Like?”

“He just has a lot of issues … aches and pains. You know, it's a bitch to get old.”

“Before we're old bitches, let's go. Let's do this,” she said. “You ask him.”

I agreed. On my way to the living room to talk with him, my eyes strayed to the pile of medical forms and nutrition charts, exercise routines for the elderly and insurance guidelines for this and that. Getting old was certainly one enormous pain. Staying young wasn't easy, either. I picked up the applications for the kids' soccer tryouts, bills for gymnastics and guitar lessons. Certain shoes, shirts, and shorts. Places to be—and on time. It had to get done. My plans for a teaching career were on hold; I was “the caregiver” in the sandwich between Dad and the kids.

In the meantime, a trip to Ireland seemed like a fine diversion.

Dad sat in his rocker watching John Wayne ride up on a trio of varmints. The television was turned up all the way. When Ted Turner came up with the continuous offering of
old movies on Turner Classics, he had my Dad in mind. Dad could have eaten, slept, and lived in that chair with Barbara Stanwyck and Joel McCrae to keep him company, and it would have suited him fine. He was normally not a demanding person. He just wanted to have his television programs, his martini with Tom Brokaw (and me), and his two or three cigarettes. He also needed to be warm, and today, he'd chosen his outfit accordingly—several layers of shirts and a sweater, a jacket, and his tweed cap to ward off a possible, though improbable, chill.

“Oh, look at that.” He slapped the arm of his chair and offered me his cheek for a kiss, not missing the posse gallop over the hill. “Always thought he should run for president. John Wayne would have made a fine president.”

“Dad, Hollywood is not the practice field for becoming president of the United States.” I often took this schoolmarm tone with him, and I was beginning to annoy myself.

“Well, look what happened with that fine Ronald Reagan. Great Irishman to boot.”

“You're the great one,” I said. I flopped onto the couch and checked out the tube. My Dad was a great Irishman, a business leader, and the life of the party. His mother was a Murninghan from County Cork, and his father was a German from the Alsace Lorraine. This mix of ancestry and his attitude adjustment throughout the day had prompted my mother to say that Dad woke up a German and went to bed an Irishman.

I waited until the film credits rolled. It was no use trying to get his “good ear” when John Wayne had his attention.

“Dad.”

“Yeees?”

His voice dipped and rose, and then his blue eyes were on
me. I grabbed the opportunity to get my hands on the remote control and turn down the volume.

“Dad, how would you like to go to Ireland?”

That got his attention. He grinned and his eyebrows shot up, flashing a glimpse of a younger Dad. He'd been to Ireland many times with Mom, and in the summer of 1981, they rented a castle in Glin for a month and invited us all over there to live it up on the banks of the Shannon with the knight, Desmond Fitzgerald. Lounging in the garden, we sipped cocktails, surrounded by manicured topiary and a straight lane of pebbles bordered with pruned hedges. One evening a cow wandered onto the wide lawn, the knight dropped his gin and tonic and chased her back to the pasture. One very early morning, she escaped again and gave birth to a black-and-white calf under my bedroom window.

Dad and I, sitting in that Florida living room, were thinking the same thing: Ireland. The days at the castle began with Irish breakfasts of sausage and eggs and breads served on silver trays and blue china in the royal-red dining room. Oona, the housekeeper, stood by my mother, who was seated at the long table in a carved armchair under the paintings of old knights.

“How many for dinner, madame?”

My mother clasped her hands, the queen of the castle. She had no trouble filling that chair. “Ten, I believe” she said, smiling at Oona.

“That will be grand,” Oona said.

That evening, we ate fresh salmon with homemade mayonnaise and buttered potatoes, all garnished with fresh dill—a dinner so memorable, yet so simply prepared. I've never thought of fish and potatoes again in quite the same way. She carried the impossibly large tray—a tiny, straight
little lady, always dressed in a uniform of a navy cardigan sweater, wool skirt, tights, and sensible shoes. Her expression never changed much; she didn't smile a lot, but when she did, a light went on behind those clear blue eyes.

“I trust her entirely. She's the treasure of the castle,” the knight told my mother. “Please, you mustn't push her too much.”

I suppose we did—not on purpose—but because of our sheer, outrageous delight in spending our days there. Oona was gracious at our delight. Nothing ruffled her, not even when the number of guests topped out at fourteen. I slept in a blue satin bedroom with a four-poster bed and wide windows that overlooked a stretch of gardens. Mick Jagger had more or less occupied the very same bedroom.

“A desperate-looking fellow, he was,” said Nancy, the cook. “I couldn't take my eyes off him.” He'd jumped on the bed and broke it, and the knight replaced it well before my arrival.

Ireland was a place in our hearts and a place of great family memories.

“Ireland?” Dad said. Immediately, his shoulders shook up and down in anticipation of a good cry. His emotions floated so easily to the surface in bouts of tears, especially on the subject of Ireland.

I reached over and shook Dad a little. Sometimes, that brought him back to earth.

“What do you say? About going to Ireland?”

“Yes, yes, let's go, let's go.” A smile broke across his face. He let out a good, loud laugh. “I'd sure like to go to the pub and belly up to the bar. At least one more time.”

Little Sunshine was delighted to go, but Tick said he couldn't make it, not with soccer and guitar and “plans” on his agenda.

“What do you mean?” I said. “Just what are these plans?”

“Oh, you know, Mom, just plans. Stuff comes up. I'll be fine. I can stay at Tony Mark's.”

He was pulling away from me. I could feel it again, but I also felt that I had to trust him. Trust had to start somewhere, and it was about time. Tick was just this side of fifteen years old.

“Well, I guess so. You are busy, and you'd better stay busy with school and practice.” I tried to sound stern, but it was difficult with this engaging kid who had taken on a lot of adventure in just a couple of years. He always threw himself into his plans, including teaching himself to play the guitar. His instructor, George, told me that Tick had a technique more promising than B.B. King's. I didn't know much about technique, but I could hear what was going on in that tiny laundry-room-turned-bedroom. I stood outside his door sometimes and wondered: Where did that come from? Tick was full of rude and lovely surprises, and I wouldn't have had it any other way, because then I wouldn't have him at all. My Island Boy. Tick will be fine.

Little Sunshine dug right into the business of planning the trip. She did a collage for school with family pictures from Ireland—pictures of castles and pubs and gardens that we photographed years before she was even born. She twisted her long chestnut hair into a knot on top of her head and practiced her Irish dancing until she nearly tapped a hole in her hard shoes. She'd taken Irish dance lessons at the Trinity
school in Chicago—and so had Tick. They'd both been in the St. Patrick's Day parade, wearing their Aran Islands sweaters, freezing to death, and glad of it. Florida was so different, a place of swimming, year-round sports, and bike riding, with not the remotest connection to their Midwestern roots. My daughter—and Tick—left a life behind, and, I hoped, were getting the most out of The Adventure.

“Girl, are you going to take that act on tour?” I said, watching her dance to the wild, repetitive strings and squeezebox of the reel. Laughing, she kicked her legs and kept her arms straight at her sides.

“Mom! Why not?”

Little Sunshine, Dad, and I planned to fly over with Lucy's team from the hotel. And then Lucy called and said she couldn't go.

An enormous amount of convention business came into the hotel all at once, and it required booking ASAP. Lucy was tied down. She said it was a great idea for me to go ahead and take Dad anyway.

“Why not?” she said. “What the hell?”

“Sounds like it to me. I don't think I can take a ten year old and an old man in a wheelchair to Ireland by myself.”

“That doesn't sound like my old sister Nan,” said Lucy.

I asked my other siblings if they would like to go with us. They told me I was nuts, taking a be-stroked man across the ocean on an airplane to God-knows-where once you get there, if you get there. That was the sum of their thoughts on the matter. Besides, they said, the winter weather in Ireland was always especially grim.

“It'll be too cold to play tennis,” brother Jack said. The
weather also mattered to my sister, Julia. “I'd go if it were warmer.”

My daughter, however, was not discouraged. “I can do it, Mom.”

We could do this. Our ancestors crossed the Atlantic in the bottom of those awful ships. I didn't have a clue about hardship, about giving birth in the freezing lower deck next to the engine room, such as the case of great Aunt Margaret and cousin Timothy, who made it after all. We could do this, even if Little Sunshine and I had to wheel Dad all over Ireland and I had to prop him up at the bar for that Paddy whiskey and a glass of Harp.

Dad's doctors—the neurologist and the urologist—said Dad was able to travel to Ireland. Then we paid a visit to the family doctor. This would be the test, because if Dr. Gordon said we could go, then we could go.

Dad sat on a little metal stool with his hands folded and a smile on his face when Dr. Gordon breezed into the small office, taking up the entire room with his large, white-coated presence. He was a lively ebullient man who used his right arm to make a point.

“Ireland! Well, why not?” he said. “It might even do you all some good.”

I liked him because he took care of Dad with gentility and humor, and a good dose of common sense. The more I got involved in the medicine of old age, I was seeing less and less of that.

Dr. Gordon recommended saline nasal spray and antinausea pills, antacids, and Tylenol for the flight. Then his jowls deflated. He looked at me out of the corner of his eye.
“Don't forget the diapers. You'll play hell getting diapers over there, and what about getting him in and out of the restrooms? What about the airplane?” He hardly made eye contact then. “Oh, mercy!”