Things Unsaid: A Novel (6 page)

In those days he only had Sunday afternoons off, after his hospital and convent rounds, all in pursuit of greater wealth. How he had liked to take his Cadillac out for a spin. The car was his consolation prize.
Even when enjoying boomtown status as the “rubber capital” of the world, Akron was no joy ride.

Bob wasn’t sure his wife and kids really liked going to Lake Tamsin, a gigantic mud hole that smelled a little bit like their toilet. The summer before, one of the Kofer boys had drowned there after diving off the platform and hitting his head. The lifeguards couldn’t find him in all the sludge and muck. He must still be down there somewhere. The ghost of Kris Kofer—the son of one of those colored families who wanted to be there, too. They should swim elsewhere. No one gets what he wants.

So many southerners and West Virginians had migrated to the tire companies for employment. He knew how they thought: the majority of his patients, just normal people like everyone else he knew. Just because Akron had the largest chapter of the Ku Klux Klan in Summit County and had the Wooster Avenue Riots of 1968 didn’t mean there was no place for the coloreds. Colored people were making too many demands in those days, and his daughter Jules was so upset with his opinions.

“Daddy”—he couldn’t figure out why that word coming from his daughter seemed hollow, without any affection, sort of tinny to his ear—“have you been reading what’s happening in the South?”

His wife smoothed out the bedspread to lay out their picnic.

He thought he sounded like a Sunday school preacher. “There’s nothing but that goddamn Martin Luther King in the headlines.” The beer bottle sloshed and dribbled near his knee. “Who does he think he is? Nothing’s going to change! He’s going to be killed. Mark my word.” He could count on holding Jules’s interest. She was the only one of his three kids to read the newspaper,
Time
magazine, anything with print on it about college students who were marching and protesting in the streets. Jules was intellectual, something of a bluestocking. Too bad it wasn’t his son who had the intellectual smarts. Wasted on a girl.

“I just read that police are using tear gas and dogs. Fire hoses powerful enough to knock the protesters down. But they just stand there and take it until they get hurt. That can’t be fair, can it?” Jules asked.

“Nah … Billy clubs and guns, now
that
would hurt.”

Jules looked worried as he leaned back in his chair, pleased with
himself. “You’re kidding … aren’t you? There are photos of people knocked off their feet by the force of those hoses.”

“What do you expect, huh? It’s water, for God’s sake.” His voice rose. “How can water hurt?”

No one said anything. His wife moved just a bit closer to him to respond. What could she possibly have to say about important matters?

“But the colored are God’s children, too. And don’t say anything but ‘colored’ or ‘Negro.’ It’s too low class,” Aida said, turning towards their kids. He thought that was an affectation. He knew she was more concerned about class than mean-spiritedness.

Confused, stumbling into a response, his older daughter seemed as if it took all her effort to talk back to him. The confidence of a high school freshman—stammering, blushing, fidgeting—was ridiculous. Fake, signifying nothing. “The nuns say the same thing. ‘We’re all God’s children.’ But they don’t like the marches either. Sister de Montfort told us their reward would be in heaven. But why should only Negroes have to wait until after death for their reward?”

Bob’s face felt boiled, swollen, sweaty, and lobsterish. “We all don’t get what we want. That’s just the way it is. Everyone should just shut up and take it. All this ‘I Have a Dream’ nonsense. It is what it is.” He had felt out of breath. Always did with Jules.

Remembering Lake Tamsin and still recovering from his wife’s eightieth birthday party, Bob felt tired, more tired than after those long days making hospital rounds, visiting nuns, and even making house calls to patients rendered immobile by old age. His family always had done that to him: exhaustion. How could anyone be generous under those circumstances? As a kid, he had learned fast. Helping his father pick tomatoes from the time he could walk, harvesting them with a flashlight, Bob and his brothers had looked for the rotten ones they sold to Dole and Hunt’s for canning. They got more money for those than for the perfect-size ones. Taught him a lesson—the prettiest weren’t always the best deal. You could camouflage almost anything and make it palatable.

His stock portfolio could wait. He propped the pillow under his head and turned off the lamp, hoping that Aida hadn’t spotted the light from under the door. A few minutes later, as the sheets on his side of the bed cooled his hot body, he felt her slide in under the light sheet. He always felt seething, a restless turmoil inside. The turmoil was ugly, nasty. He no longer could tolerate even the slightest body contact from Aida. They hadn’t had sex since Joanne was born.

“Don’t pretend. You’re not asleep. Wouldn’t want to soil my new pink negligee anyway.”

He hated all the pink nightgowns: see-through and transparent. Made of gauze, like the surgical kind. The opposite of beautiful. And pink was his least favorite color—reminded him of the bows his stepmother pinned above his ears. Why hadn’t he listened to the residents at Montefiore Hospital who had warned him—I eat-a, you eat-a, we’ll all eat-a. He hadn’t believed what they had said about Aida. He had ignored the nuggets of truth. He always had understood what men wanted more. Aida’s snoring could wake up the dead. He sobbed into his pillow, a child’s kind of sob.

“Bob, this is Alice calling from LA.”

Oh, his sister-in-law was a good woman. His brother was a luckier man than he had been. Alice reminded him of his former fiancée, Nancy, except that Alice had also been something of a flirt. That had been his downfall. Just a game, couldn’t resist—and that’s how he’d ended up marrying Aida. He was still recovering from her “birthday blast” two days before.

“Oh, Barbie. Such bad news, I’m afraid.”

While Alice was trying to speak, Bob knew what the next words would be.

“Wilson has suffered a massive stroke, Barbie. Can you fly out here as soon as possible?”

How could he refuse his ninety-year-old brother, the head of what was left of their clan? Almost thirty years ago, when it came time for Wilson to collect on Bob’s promise for his son Charlie, he’d dutifully
handed over $10,000, the exact amount that his tuition had been in the late 1940s. Bob was pleased he could honor his promise and still have enough for his own kids. But his brothers seemed ungrateful, even outraged, and he didn’t understand why. Did they think he owed them interest on the loan—or perhaps the 1980s equivalent, somewhere in the range of $100,000? Only a fool would promise that—a tenfold increase on the original loan—and he was no fool.

Charlie applied for financial aid and a student loan and eventually became a renowned neurologist at UCLA medical school. And one of their other brothers also helped Wilson pay back his son’s loans. So everyone should be happy, shouldn’t they? No great loss to anyone. Besides, by his own mental calculus, he had paid his debt in full. And he was good with figures.

“Wilson Whitman, please. He should be in ICU. I’m a doctor—Dr. Bob Whitman. There isn’t much time. I need to see him before it’s too late,” he said to the nurse at reception.

“I’m sorry, Dr. Whitman. As you know, very few visitors are allowed in ICU. I’m afraid your name’s not on the list.”

“But that’s impossible. Some kind of mistake, I’m sure of it.” He turned to see Alice beside him, reaching out to touch his arm.

“Alice, would you please explain to her who I am?”

“Oh, there’s been a mistake—this is my brother-in-law. Please put his name on immediately. We have to rush upstairs.” Her cheeks were tinged pink. “Your brothers are already with him.”

Wilson, tethered to a ventilator, blood pressure monitors, and IV drip, looked shriveled. How many times had Bob seen identical steel medical equipment? But not attached to his brother. Where the oxygen tube had pressed against it, a small boil, filled with pus, had formed on Wilson’s lower lip.

“Who’s that? Who’s that?” Wilson rasped, agitated, picking at the sheets.

“Sweetie,” Alice said, tears near the outer corners of her eyes, not sliding down. “It’s Barbie. He’s come to see you, darling.”

“No, no. Not him.” Wilson’s mouth twisted. Bob shifted his weight from one foot to the other, wanting to touch him, at least to move the tube so it wouldn’t irritate his lip.

Wilson died without another word for his youngest brother. Bob remained composed and quiet. One brother down, only two besides himself remained standing.

“Who makes more money, Dad? You or Uncle Wilson?” Jules had asked him this question way too often, usually when they were discussing allowances. His older daughter loved to talk about his brother just to make him feel bad, he was almost sure of it. Wilson had earned more money than he had—quite a bit more in fact—in real estate development in the Santa Barbara and Orange County areas. And this had always rankled him. After all, Wilson had started with practically nothing—just a sporting goods store on Centinela Avenue in LA. Wilson had been a small tomato farmer, and he and his brothers had run the sporting goods store together. But his farmland in Anaheim had proved extremely attractive to the Walt Disney corporation, who bought it at a premium in the 1950s. After that, Wilson never had to farm again. So he bought strip malls and apartment buildings in his spare time instead. And he had lots of spare time with his beautiful wife, Alice. She was intelligent, too. Worked hard and quietly. They raised two sons—a doctor and an engineer, honorable professions—and they did everything together. Wilson almost unintentionally developed into a real estate mogul.

“Spends way too much on his kids and grandkids, if you ask me. What a waste. Save for your own future, not theirs,” Bob told his daughter, playing with his sideburns. Always the same thing with his kids. Money, money, money.

“Well, you’re always arguing about what Mother spends on clothes and shoes, aren’t you? Uncle Wilson and Aunt Alice never do that. At least I’ve never seen them argue.”

“You never know what really happens in families, now do you? Anyway, I’m not interested in comparing myself with others, and neither should you. End of story.” Talking about Wilson always and forever put him in a bad mood, though he didn’t know why. And now he was dead.

Some people did not understand the meaning of true obligation. Of debt. But in the end, his older daughter would come through. Blood is thicker than water—for better and for worse. Eighty-four years old and reduced to this. Why had his two daughters even bothered to celebrate his wife’s birthday anyway? Out of a sense of guilt? Certainly Aida hadn’t appreciated it.

“Y
ou have to move from the penthouse to an efficiency,” Jules said, filled with dread. She could hardly wait to fly home the next day. She hated this. Obligations. Having to talk about this with her parents two days after her mother’s birthday. So much for celebration. But this had to be faced head-on.

“What a step down that would be. For people like us, mind you. In our so-called golden years. We have no room even here. How can your father and I live in one room, darling, without killing each other?” Her mother’s voice cracked. “Just because you insist we start saving rent,” she continued. “What’s the big deal, anyway? Two thousand dollars’ savings per month. Chicken feed, when you’re in our position.”