The Last Cadillac (23 page)

I waved and Little Sunshine fled the stage, racing around the inn to the front entrance like an elf, while I followed, wrapping my long coat close, picking my way over the uneven sod. Inside the pub, the deep-set windows in the stone walls were filled with pots and vases of cut daisies and ferns, and crocks of flowers in all stages of bloom and death. Weak sunlight gilded the old wooden tables and chairs. Dad sat on a bench at the fireplace, its opening taller than a man standing. He was staring into the glowing peat fire, talking with John and Mr. Gowan, the innkeeper. I couldn't see Dad's face very well, but I could tell the lines were soft, his eyes distant and bright. He was remembering good times, and they were listening and sharing theirs with him.

“Ah, here they are now,” said John.

Dad smiled. “Shall we?” John was already on his feet, lifting Dad to his walker. They both concentrated on heading toward the bar. John pushed the stools aside, and when Dad was settled, John carefully lifted one of Dad's
legs so it rested on the brass railing that ran along the floor. He thought of everything.

Mr. Gowan stood behind the long dark wood bar, slowly pouring a Guinness from the tap, on and off, slicing off the foam, until the glass was ready. But Dad ordered a Paddy whiskey and a glass of Harp, a lethal combination if anyone should venture too far beyond the one shot and a beer. I drank a Harp, while Little Sunshine finished the dance in a corner with Mrs. Gowan and a large shaggy mastiff named Shep. Mrs. Gowan clutched her skirt in both hands and shared a step or two of her own. Little Sunshine followed her, heel and toe, kick! The dog got up and moved to the door.

Dad tasted the whiskey, then belted it down.

“Drown the shamrock,” said John, chuckling, while he sipped his Guinness.

“
Slan abatable
,” Mr. Gowan said. “Goodbye, safe home. And will ye have another, Mike, for a fare-thee-well?”

Lord, he'll have a stroke and die right here, and then we'll be in a fine mess.

But he didn't have a stroke, and he didn't have another whiskey. He lifted his Harp and took a long drink of it, setting it carefully and squarely on the coaster. He wore his Irish hat and the cane rested against the bar. He looked quite content, bellying up to the bar.

“Thanks, John, for bringing us here,” Dad said.

“Ah, but the thanks is to you and your lovely family for this grand visit. Thanks a million.” He turned and winked at me.

“You're a fine driver,” Dad said, tapping his glass of Harp gently on the coaster. He reached for me with his other hand. “And I have a great driver here, my Nancy. Let's go. Let's go home now.”

“Gamps, I gotta tell you something,” said Tick.

I spied the two of them through the kitchen window, seated at the round table on the patio under the blue corrugated awning. The sun shining through the rippled cover cast a watery hue on their faces. Tick grimaced. Dad turned his head.

“Lad?” My father leaned forward in his chair, and Tick fidgeted with his baseball cap.

“I got in a fight at school.”

“Well, how did you do?”

I was about to go over the sink and right through the window, but my urge to eavesdrop glued me to the floor.

“It wasn't really much of a fight,” said Tick. “It was over pretty fast, with a lot of pushing going on.”

Dad chuckled, tapped his cane a few times on the concrete. “Of course, of course. But you need to know how to hold your own. Guard yourself, don't square off and open yourself up.” Dad lifted his dukes and shifted his shoulders.

Great. Now this.

“Keep your left up and jab with your right.”

“Yeah.” Tick offered his grandfather a Marlboro, then lit it for him. Where was Tick getting cigarettes? And that made three that day so far for Dad.

“What happened?” Dad asked. The tapping started up again and his head was cocked at Tick. “Why'd you get in a fight?”

“I was acting too flamboyant.”

“Well, what's the matter with that?” Dad drew on the cigarette. His hat was pulled down, so I couldn't see his smile, but I heard it in his voice. I saw it in the way he leaned into their conversation.

“I guess nothing. But I've never been picked on,” said Tick. “I was always top dog in school, so I'm kind of used to being in the spotlight.”

I closed my eyes and saw Tick at age four, standing on the piano bench in a navy coat and red bow tie, announcing that he was a “forty year old in a four-year-old body.” Tick had been president of the school in fifth grade—not just his grade, but the whole school, kindergarten through five. He was the lead Christmas tree in the school play and a star catcher at baseball, and now, after all that star power, I'd brought him here.

I gripped the edge of the sink, straining to hear every word. It was all I could do to stay put. The fighting. And the cigarettes.

“I thought I'd own the island,” Tick added. “There's still time,” said Dad. “Just lay low. Let them all do the talking for a while, and keep your ear to the ground.”

“Huh?”

“That's just an expression. Listen for the rumbling and then act on it.”

Tick was silent while Dad pulled luxuriously on his
cigarette and blew the smoke over his hat brim. “Remember when we rode the merry-go-round at Disney?” he said. “Used to be, you grabbed the brass ring and you were in luck then. They don't do that anymore, but you can still grab the brass ring, so to speak.”

“Gamps, did you always have good luck?”

“I'm here with you, and your Mom and your sister, aren't I? But really, don't believe too much in luck. Make your own.”

“Cool.”

Tick didn't talk much in the morning, but he was always in a good mood. His expression was never that of a “cow shite on a frosty morn,” which is the description his Irish great-grandmother reserved for the irascible members of the family. I appreciated this more than Tick could ever know, and I hardly every showed it. He never complained that he was sleeping in the old laundry room—while Little Sunshine got her own room, painted coral with a new rose-splashed bedspread to match.

I reminded myself of Tick's nature as I tapped him gently on the head, pulling back the covers from his shoulders to let the air conditioning nudge him from deep, cozy sleep. It was still dark out, and every school day I loathed the idea of waking him up so early. Sometimes I wanted to let him stay in bed because I knew how tired he was. The urge lasted a second and then lingered, because I knew he was having a hard time at school. Going to high school was tough no matter how you looked at it. The thought of it flashed like scenes from a miserable flaming purgatory. Tick had to be in his first class at 7:35, a barbaric time of day for kids to be “learning.” It's probably why Tick told me years later he
“just wasn't into the whole high school thing.” He ended up spending a great deal of high school at the 7-Eleven, smoking and drinking Dr. Pepper with his friends.

But I didn't know that then.

Each morning, Tick studied the half a kiwi before he scooped it out with a grapefruit spoon. He sniffed the black current tea loaded with sugar. I was long past trying to get him to eat an egg before leaving the house.

“Tick.”

“Yeah Mom?” It sounded like one word—the evolution of a response for the million times I called to him.

“Is everything all right? At school, I mean?”

“Sure. It's cool.” He scooped the rest of the kiwi and plopped it into his mouth.

“Don't worry about me, Mom.” He grabbed his book bag, then stopped and kissed the top of my head and took me by the shoulders. “Really. I'm OK. You've got to stop worrying about me.” He looked me directly in the eye, and I couldn't look away. But as surely as he held on to me, when he let go, I felt like something had broken. Maybe it was the strength of his fingers I couldn't feel anymore, or the nearly imperceptible firm shake he gave me, this hard, brief stare from my son, no longer a baby, but far from being a man. I had to believe him, and I had to let him go, to school and to life, to his problems and to his way of fixing them.

I would not bring up the cigarette issue, or the fighting, for now. I probably should have, but I would not. I would not meddle. The timing didn't seem right. I had time. Besides, I could hear Lucy: “You're right and the world's all wrong.” Well, I would just have to jump on that world and like it for damn well once.

I clamped my mouth shut and watched him stuff a
notebook into his bag, check his hair in the mirror by the front door. “See ya.” The door slammed; there was never a soft click of an exit. He took long strides, finally leaping over the hedge—with the book bag—and he was gone. I was unwilling to interfere just now—afraid that would simply tear a hole, maybe only a small one, but one nevertheless, in the net that held our new, little family together. We needed to get along, and I had taken it for granted, rather blithely, that we would when I brought Dad to Florida to live with us. What if they hadn't gotten along? We never would have gotten this far. I had to thank all of them for the bonds they were making that strengthened the walls of our house. Dad seemed to fill the place, taking up the living room with his old movies and his bellowing, but Tick and Little Sunshine were far more accepting of the unusual situation than I expected. They were busy with their own schedules, which also included their own private alliances with their grandfather.

I sat on the sofa watching Storm Team Meteorologist, John Winter, tell his television audience about another glorious Florida day. And I thought of Tick going off on the bus, and for the rest of the day facing two thousand peers and a hundred teachers.

Tick said not to worry. Of course, I would worry. None of what any of us did was easy, and the older we all got, the more I worried.

I hid out on the dock at the canal to think. It had been more than six months since we came back from Ireland, about a year since Dad came to Florida. We were doing all right, although some disasters—ranging from hurricanes to Dad's health problems—always managed to mix things up. At least the new hurricane season was cooperating. So far. It was early fall, still in the high eighties, and the Gulf remained relatively calm.

My chair tipped back against a stand of mangroves. It was the lazy time of day for birds and fish feeding on the canal, the last of the sun, low and golden, at five o'clock. The surface of the water dazzled, reflecting pinpoints of light off the shiny fat leaves of the mangroves; more light shimmered like fire on the concrete sea wall rising above the water line and on the bottom of the blue boat that swayed above me on davits.

The day didn't quite want to give up to the dark just yet. I hoped no one would find me. I put my feet on the railing, trying not to tip over into the ropey jungle growing out of the water up the bank. Sometimes the chair's plastic legs ended
up sticking out of the roots of mangroves after a gale blew up the canal and swept every loose thing along with it. The wind had its way of picking up fishing poles and buckets and other chairs and leaving them bobbing in the backyard canal of my neighbors, whose stucco ranch houses leading to Bimini Bay were just like mine. But the Gulf wind was good. It swept away the cobwebs in my brain. On the dock, away from the turmoil in the house, I could think and plan. To keep writing. Dig into those notebooks full of half-written stories. Maybe earn some money, become a teacher. I'd called the board of education to find out about the certification procedure. It would take two years of night classes to get the education credits. I could hear Aunt Marian in my head, cheering me on, “Just take that one, and you're done before you know it.”

The gulls flew over, dipping in wide lazy loops, and the mullet broke the surface of the canal, making long, flat arches as they digested their food. The leaping fish left widening circles that shooed away two ducks skimming the rivulets. Only the cat grew restless, sitting under my chair with a taut neck and wide eyes fixed on the birds and fish. Her white-tipped black tail flicked back and forth on the boards of the dock with a light swick. Somehow all these creatures got along just fine, in this pattern of feeding, leaping, and swooping, even after the hurricanes came through and upset their nests.

I couldn't hide out there for long, with idle musings. None of my neighbors appeared, except for a woman across the canal. She was trying to get fruit out of a high limb with a long stick and a little net attached to the end of it. She couldn't reach it, but she kept hopping up and down on stiff legs until she gave up and went in and left the canal to me.

I wasn't going to give up. It didn't matter how much hopping I had to do.

I stole a few more minutes, took another sip of wine, but then I got up and started walking back. It was feeding time inside the house. A casserole was bubbling in the oven, and there were pills and homework to dispense. I needed to make a trip to the drugstore, to the IGA for milk, and I had to deal with the dishes, the clothes, and answer the phone. I wanted harmony in the house, and sometimes, inevitably, I dealt with chaos. As I stepped on each of the pavers across the backyard, it dawned on me that some changes had to be made. I needed to think of my future. And now, I especially needed help in the house. These thoughts nagged at me. Despite moments of peace, I constantly felt the nagging in the back of mind, like I'd forgotten something and didn't know where I put it.

Dad sat in the rocker in the living room, and Little Sunshine stood behind him. The entire top of his head was covered in strange, little white knobs.

“What's going on?” I shrieked.

My daughter and my father looked up at me, and they laughed. On the coffee table was an array of hairbrushes, hair bands, bobby pins, clips and sprays of all sorts.

“Sunshine needs a hairdo,” said my daughter, pausing in midair with a comb and a fist full of hair bands.