30 Pieces of a Novel (60 page)

father pulled through three or four of them after the doctors gave him just a few days. He said to the doctor this time, “There is a problem, though. My younger daughter's sick with a bad croup and my wife's unable to drive her to a doctor or hospital if it suddenly becomes a real crisis, so I want to stay till early tomorrow to see how it turns out. You think I have time?” and the doctor said, “Never a guarantee. Your mother could be expiring this moment as we speak. You just have to hope she holds out that long. Keep me informed.” He wrote down most of what the doctor said, while he was talking to him, and what he remembered after when he was sitting by his mother the next day. All those notes, several pages of them, are stapled—not stapled; he doesn't have a stapler. His kids do, one between them, but he didn't use it. How come he can't remember the simple name of such a common object, one he's used thousands of times or at least a thousand, both as a word and an object? It binds pages, holds them together. It's the first time he's forgotten it—paper clip, he paper-clipped the pages and put them someplace, probably also in the top night-table drawer with that other thing he was thinking or talking of before and thinks he put in there, and which he also now forgets what it was. Something to do with his mother? He means, did this other thing have something to do with her? Photos? He doesn't think so. More notes? It's possible but doesn't ring a bell. Since when does memory loss have anything to do with grief? Or the other way around: grief cause memory loss? Maybe he's just tired. But he's slept more the last few days than he has, in so short a time, in years. And he's only sleeping this much to avoid remembering things about her. Should he reach over to the drawer—it'd take just a little turn—and get them out, the notes plus that other thing, if he put either of them there? No, he doesn't think he'll ever want to read those phone conversation notes. Why would he? So why'd he write them down then, when he was on the phone? It seemed important at the time, as if he were being given instructions on how to take care of her at the end. When he was with his mother: just to do something, he supposes, or more than that, but he forgets. He also doodled; he also tried reading; he also cleaned his nails with his thumbnails and bit off most of the torn cuticles; he also just stared at her for minutes, hoping her heavy breathing would suddenly ease up and that she'd open her eyes, blink, give some recognition that she knew where she was, turn her face or just move her eyes to him—he'd be saying softly, “Mom? Mom?”—and smile and maybe even say something: his name, how is he? where's her dear friend Ebonita? she's thirsty and would like something to eat, and so on. He also remembers thinking, What is she thinking? Is there anything going on in her head? Is it more like dreaming? Then what is she dreaming? Is she in any pain? Is her heavy breathing and chest congestion affecting her thoughts? Is there anything he can do to make things better for her? A different position? Raise or lower the top of the hospital bed? Another pillow? One less pillow? Put a cushion under her feet? Should he be talking to her? Should he read to her from a book or even today's paper so she just hears his voice? Would that bring her out of it? What would help her come out of what more and more seems like a coma? Is she shitting, peeing? She wears paper diapers, but do these have to be changed? He'll know when she starts smelling. Water? Shouldn't she have water or some sugar solution so she doesn't starve? Is she really dying? Can this be it? Will she never recognize him again? Can he really be sitting here the last day or hours of her life and where she'll never wake up? If she hears his voice—he was told when his father was comatose that the last sense to go is hearing—will that help her see him in whatever pictures are in her head? About those notes, does he think—he also thought a few times while he sat there looking at her: Maybe it'd be best if she went now without pain rather than have to go through this another time and then maybe another time before she dies—but does he think that, let's say in a year or two or even six months, when he's going through that top drawer for something else and comes upon the notes, if he put them there—or any place he put them—that he'll read them or leave them in the drawer without reading them or just throw them away soon as he recognizes them? How can he know that now? But what does he think? He thinks, How can he know now what he'll do? though he thinks he'll more than likely throw them away unread. But things she said that he took down—in fact, isn't that what that “other thing” is?—he'll keep and read, keep forever, in the drawer or someplace safe, not just what she said on the phone the last time but all the things she's said the past few years that he's taken down, and regret if he couldn't find them and regret more if he thought them lost. After about an hour and a half of sitting near his mother—he got up once to make coffee, another time to get it after it was made and wash the carafe and coffee machine cone—Ebonita, sitting a couple of feet farther away from her than he, pointed out phlegm dribbling over her lip and he thought, I suppose she wants me to wipe it, she obviously isn't getting up—well, she spent a long night with her, didn't get much sleep—and he got up and wiped his mother's mouth and chin with his handkerchief. “Tissues,” Ebonita said. “We have a whole box of them and more boxes in the closet,” pointing to what was the broom closet when he was a kid but which now held all kinds of medical supplies and things, and he said, “Sorry; it's also not sanitary, using this rag,” and stuck the handkerchief back into his pants pocket, but first, he remembers, folding the wet part up so it wouldn't soak through to his thigh. Ebonita, he now remembers, had actually said, “Look at what's coming out of her mouth; we should fix it.” Then more phlegm spilled out and Ebonita stood beside him and kept supplying tissues to wipe with, and he wiped her mouth and inside her lips and with wads of tissue dabbed her tongue and around it to absorb the constant rise of spit, dropping the tissues and the wads one by one into an old ice bucket that was being used as a trash container by the bed. “How come she doesn't have a real trash can?” he said. “There used to be lots of them in the house. This one fills up so quickly,” and she shrugged and said, “Up till now this one did all right.” Then his mother started coughing while he was wiping her mouth, and he put his arms behind her and raised her up and held her there with one arm, thinking, This'll help her cough up the mucus better and maybe even help her breathing and where she won't choke on all that stuff, and it'll also be easier to get the phlegm out of her mouth. Then, as long as he had her up and she had stopped coughing and bringing up phlegm, he thought about giving her water. “Don't you think she should have some water? How long has it been?” and Ebonita said, “Hours. I tried to before but none got in. And she hasn't evacuated for a long time neither, which isn't good. But it isn't easy getting liquids down her; she coughs it all up.” “We should have an eyedropper to give it. Even drop by drop would do some good. You don't have one around, do you? I thought of bringing one—I sort of knew she'd need it—and found some old one at home but left it.” Regrets: he did think of it but never looked for one. His wife had said, “If she's unconscious or too weak to drink anything, how do you get medicine and fluids into her? Probably she should be in a hospital and on IV,” and he said, “Believe me, they'll only make matters worse for her there, forcing things down, sticking a million needles in. Maybe I should bring an eyedropper—I know we have one here—or go out now for one of those dropperlike spoon things we used for the kids when they wouldn't swallow their medicine,” and she said, “We never had to give it that way,” and he said, “Then I've seen them displayed in the pharmacy here,” but that's as far as it went. He could have driven that night to a local Giant that has a pharmacy and big drug department or bought one in a drugstore when he walked to her building from the subway or gone into the drugstore at Penn Station, but forgot. He didn't forget; he thought of it when he got out of the subway and passed a drugstore but then thought, Just get to her building, you could miss seeing her alive by minutes, and started to jog. When the train was pulling in to New York he thought of calling her from Penn Station, but after he got off he ran through the terminal to the subway station with a token in his hand and ran up the stairs to the platform, not wanting to waste a minute calling, but had to wait several minutes for the uptown train. He looked for a phone on the platform but the only one operating was taken and continued to be taken till the train came. Then the person hung up and got in the same car with him. He set his mother down and said to Ebonita, “Can you get me … no, I'll get it; watch her,” and got a tablespoon and cup of water from the kitchen, raised her in his arms again, and while Ebonita held the cup he got a spoonful from it and stuck it in his mother's mouth. It seemed to go down. “Good, Mom, good,” though she didn't open her eyes or make any response or motion that she knew anything was going on around her or happening to her. He got another spoonful of water and was ready to stick it in her mouth when the other water, or some of it, dribbled out. “Mom, if you're hearing me,” he said, wiping her chin and neck, “you have to take some water; you need it.” “Maybe you gave her too much, though I didn't see her neck swallowing any of it. Try half,” and he spooned half a tablespoon of water into her mouth and looked and it seemed to go down. “It's gone. Did you see her neck moving this time?” and Ebonita said, “I think so, but I can't say for sure.” Then some white liquid rose from her throat, and he said, “Oh, my God, what the hell's that?” till her mouth was almost full of it and it was about to spill out, and Ebonita threw her hands to her face and said, “Oh, no, this is the end, I'm sure of it. Delilah”—to her daughter, sitting there looking at his mother—“cover your eyes,” and he said, “What are you talking about? Get me a towel; lay it down here,” while he held his mother up with one arm and stuck a bunch of tissues into her mouth to soak up the liquid and when the towel was down he held her face over it and all the liquid seemed to come out. He held her there a few seconds more and then got her in a sitting position to wipe her face and see if any more liquid was there, and some seemed to be coming up, white again, and he held her face over the towel and said, “Get it all out, Mom, this is good for you; all the junk in your lungs is coming up,” and when no more of it came out he held her in a sitting position and wiped her face and patted her cheeks and head with damp tissues and thought of getting a damp rag to lay across her forehead when she started choking and her eyes were open and he said, “Mom?” and she looked blankly ahead while her body started shaking and she was still choking, and he said, “Mom, what is it? Can you hear me? What can I do for you?” and her eyes never moved and she was still shaking and choking but nothing was coming up, and he yelled, “Mommy, oh, no, Mommy, oh, Mommy!” and held her to him with both arms and put his mouth to her forehead and said, “It's all right, Mommy, it's all right, I'm here, Gould's here, I'm here with you, Mommy, I won't leave you, oh, no, Mommy, my Mommy, oh, Mommy, oh, please don't go, Mommy, please, please don't go,” and Ebonita said, “She's stopped, she's quiet, I knew it, close her eyes, close her eyes!” and he held her head up and shut her eyes and let her head down softly till it hung over his shoulder, and he kept her that way for around a minute, his eyes closed and head against her neck, hugging her, and then laid her on her back and put his ear to her chest and mouth and chest again and then rested his head on her chest and started to cry. The cat jumps onto the bed, walks around him on both sides, and then steps up on his chest and lies on it facing him, and he says, “Please get off, you weigh a ton, I can't breathe with you on me,” and the cat stays and he picks it up and drops it on the floor. It jumps right back up and lies on his chest the same way, and he says, “Listen, I told you, I know you mean well and want to help me, but you're just too big a load,” and raises his arm to lift it off him again. The cat sits up, resettles itself on his chest till it faces his feet, and stretches out more so there's much less weight in one place than before, and he says, “Okay, all right,” and rests his hand on its back; “you don't feel so heavy now, stay.”

He's walking to town—there's no bread in the house for tonight, he'll probably get a few other things at the market, doesn't know what, certainly a coffee for a quarter—and thinks of his daughters, doesn't know why this thought suddenly popped in—sure he does, because of what happened earlier, Fanny saying when he dropped her off at school, “I love you, Daddy,” and probably also Josephine, last night, lying in bed, lights out, he'd just finished reading her a fairy tale and kissing her good night, saying, “I love you, Daddy,” and he saying, “I love you very much too,” and to Fanny, at school, “I love you very much too, sweetheart.” Tears come. Silly. Why? Okay, then not so silly, but if anyone saw him up close now he'd still feel embarrassed. Walking to the village, the back way through people's properties and along hilly streets with lots of big trees, to the market to buy bread and also to take a break from work, nice day, fall but early fall, temperature in the mid-sixties, sun out, soft breeze, he's in shorts, T-shirt, and sandals, wishes he'd worn sneakers. What else they need? Doesn't know; don't they always need milk? He'll get the coffee for sure. Has he missed getting one there five times in the four years he's been going to this store? and he goes, by car, bike, or foot, about three times a week. They usually have, on a shelf by the deli department, two regular coffees and one decaffeinated in tall Thermoses, but he always gets the most exotic caffeinated. Sometimes they have Kona, and always a pint container of half-and-half in a bowl of ice water next to the Thermoses, but which he's rarely used, and a few times a hazelnut- or amaretto-flavored nondairy creamer, all for a quarter, which you can put into the coin box on the shelf or pay for with your other items at the checkout counter. Store doesn't lose money on it; in fact the coffee makes the customer stay longer, he's sure, and buy more. Maybe a dessert. Ones he bought for the kids yesterday they didn't touch, he saw this morning, when he opened the bakery bag thinking there were rolls inside he could heat up for them, and they were what, honey-glazed? so by tonight they'll be a little stale. Thinks of his older daughter. Didn't come from thinking about the doughnuts, did it? Oh, one thought leads to another and probably helped by the action and solitude of the walk and no distractions, not even a bird squawk or squirrel zipping around nearby. Dropping her off at school today. She got her things together in the car after he stopped with the motor running and gear in PARK (heavy backpack, big sketch pad, and something else: brown lunch bag with the lunch she made) and turned to him—she opened the door first—and said, “I love you, Daddy,” and he said that “very much” line (this is all pretty much ritual) and kissed her cheek (which he also does every day when she leaves the car unless it's obvious she's angry at him, though he doesn't often kiss her hello when he picks her up at school in the afternoon), and she left the car and he smiled at her through the window on the passenger's side and she smiled back, affectionately, not mechanically (usually she heads straight for school without looking at him again; he doesn't know why today was different for her), and headed for the steps leading to the school entrance. Still awkward, he noticed:
ungainly
, he means. Other girls around, obviously older—some had driven cars to school and parked them in the lot—walked with so much more grace and confidence. Well, her age, and that she's new here, he thought, a freshman, it's been just a couple of months for her, and she stumbled going up the sidewalk curb, almost tripped but quickly righted herself, dropped the lunch bag when she stumbled (nothing fell out), picked it up, continued a few steps, hesitated, turned back to him, no doubt hoping he wasn't looking at her. He waved—he immediately knew he shouldn't have, and was smiling, though she might have been too far away to see that; besides, she wears glasses and she didn't have them on; she'd told him in the car, when he asked, that they were in her backpack and scowled at him—maybe a smile through a car window's more difficult to make out than a scowl, even with your glasses on—and went up the steps and into the school. She probably forgot about it a few minutes later, certainly once she got to her homeroom and started talking to one of her friends. No, homeroom was what she had in middle school; here, if she doesn't get to school early, she goes right to her locker and then to her first class. Did his watching from the car have anything to do with her stumbling? How could it have? Maybe she was aware his car hadn't driven off—no familiar sound of its motor—and sensed he might still be parked, or just assumed it, and was looking at her from behind, and she became self-conscious because she knew she was somewhat ungainly and didn't walk as gracefully as a lot of the other girls and that was what made her, or helped make her, stumble. That could be it. He'd love to tell her but probably won't, better not to bring up things that remind her of recent embarrassments—“Don't think that way, my darling. Everyone's like that when they're young—you're still growing, in height and your feet and so on. And if you saw me smiling in the car, believe me it was only an adoring smile. When I saw your head turning around I smiled, which is what I almost always do in something like this, because I thought you were going to look at me. It had nothing to do with your stumbling, which anyone could do, by the way. You should see how many times I do it in a year, and sometimes when I'm jogging—this probably happens about once every six months—I trip over an exposed tree root or sidewalk bump or something and fall flat on my hands and knees and cut them … I must have told you that. So I'd never find anything funny in your stumbling. And if you really had tripped, spilled things and landed on your hands, I would have run out of the car to you, though you might not have liked that: drawing too much attention to it. So let's say I would have wanted to run to you to do what I could to help, certainly picked you up if you were still lying there, and said things like ‘I'm so sorry, my darling, are you all right? It can happen to anybody. I trip all the time and occasionally hurt myself badly, cuts and bruises and such, so I'm as clumsy, if not even more so, as anyone your age, in action as well as trying to put across my ideas and phrasing words, though don't ask me what the last two have to do with it,'” and he drove home, it only takes seven to ten minutes from her school, and thought then and thinks something like it now, What a lovely girl; and what a lucky guy I am in having such a daughter, so sweet and bright and kind and modest. It's so painful to think she might be hurt—she will be—in the future, and many times, or at least several, physically, emotionally. But what else they need? Can't think of anything. Cat food they can always use. Opened the only can of it he could find in the crowded cupboard this morning, so two cans of cat food—don't want to make the bag too heavy and almost no space at home to store it. And of course the coffee, that he'll have drunk before he leaves the market or, as he's sometimes done, standing outside. Then his younger daughter. Last night, while she was sitting up in bed and he came in to say good night, that sad look she had over nothing, it seemed. As if he said something truly horrible to her—he's said some lousy things but nothing deliberately or even unintentionally horrible: it'd destroy her or at least for the night and maybe a few days, and he'd feel terrible, a lot more than when he's just said those mean things. What could he say that'd really be horrible? That she's not pretty. That'd be just mean. But will never be and, to add to it, never was. That she was an ugly baby and hasn't grown prettier as a child. That she's dumb, just about as dumb as anyone he knows, and so on. That the short haircut she begged to get and just had makes her look stupid and homely. The mean or lousy things: when he was working at his desk in the bedroom and she ran in and said, “Daddy, I have to ask you something,” and he said, “Damn, don't you see I'm working?” And once, “Must you always burst in here like that? Dammit, you scared the freaking shit out of me!” And, “Listen, it's obvious you didn't study for the test and that's why you got such a crappy mark, so stop making up excuses.” Other times. But why does she so often have that sad look? Something he's done or continues to do? Doesn't think so, and it certainly isn't anything from his wife. An accumulation of those mean and lousy and insulting remarks that she knows he's liable to make anytime? He hasn't made that many to her, and they were spread out enough where they wouldn't have accumulated like that, though who knows? And whenever he's said something like that to her—and “insulting” only a few times—he's always quickly apologized. And if—and she almost always does this—she ran out of the room or away from him to wherever she goes, usually her bedroom, where she slams the door, since it usually happens at home, and started crying, he went after her and apologized there, blaming himself for his short temper and for being high-strung sometimes and jumpy, especially when he has his back to the door and is busy working and someone bursts into the room, and promised to do things for her, like get her something she's been wanting for a long time and which he didn't think she needed, till she made up with him and they hugged and he'd kiss the top of her head and close his eyes a few seconds and hope hers were closed for a short time too, though not necessarily when his were, and then be extra solicitous to her the rest of the day and probably the next, or at least till he saw her off at school. And it's not that she's a gloomy child. She's in fact the skipper of the family. He doesn't mean the boss of it, the way some people use that word for kids and wives. Just that she frequently bounces around, has for years, much more than her sister ever did and is a lot more cheerful than her sister too, singing in the shower, laughing at the comics, things like that, though her sister's witty and usually smiles and sometimes guffaws when she sleeps. Once bounced exuberantly into the refrigerator and broke a front tooth. Wailed then. He went to her first. Around a year ago, family was at dinner. She usually eats fast and leaves first, even when he and his wife say to stay—“Sit and talk with us, we like your company”—did they say to stay that night? What's the difference? And she usually gets up a minute or two after one of them tells her to stay—twirled around past them from the living room into the kitchen—he was probably glad she was so happy. His wife and he might even have exchanged smiles when she twirled past, though also concerned she was jumping around too much so soon after eating. She was singing as she spun into the kitchen, lost her footing, and smacked her face into the refrigerator. (The refrigerator can't be seen from the dining room; she later told him how she hit it.) Then she screamed. He thought she was kidding, he doesn't know why—maybe the scream didn't seem like a real one at first and he thought she wanted them to think she was hurt or he just didn't want to believe she was—but it continued and he yelled, “Josephine, anything wrong?” and she screamed harder and he ran in and blood was dribbling out of her mouth and she wailed, “Oh, no, my tooth, my tooth,” and he told her to open her mouth wide and she kept it closed and he tried forcing it open, he wanted to relieve his worry that one or both of her front teeth were broken—a side or back one, even one of the eye teeth, wasn't that important—and she said, facing away from him, “No, no, don't look, my tooth, I felt it, I'm so sorry, so sorry, I'm so sorry, Dada, I didn't mean to, I'm so stupid, I was so stupid,” and he said, “It's all right, I won't blame you, just open your mouth,” and she did, and the bottom half of a permanent front tooth was gone, and he yelled, “Oh, no, oh, my darling!” knowing right away what it meant to her, and hugged her and said, “I'm so sorry, so sorry, oh, what can we do?” and they both cried, and his wife came in and said, “Calm down; what about her tooth?” and he said, “She broke it, a front one,” and his daughter screamed and wrenched free of him and ran into the bathroom and started shrieking and he ran after her and she was looking at her mouth in his shaving mirror and he said, “Don't look, it's no good for you; we'll get it fixed, I promise,” and wiped the blood away, got ice and treated her, and called her dentist, who said to come in tomorrow morning, “But if you can see a dark spot in the core of the cut part then it could mean she'll lose it,” and soon after that a friend of his wife's called and just happened to have lost a front tooth the same way when she was a girl but against a stove and said she got the bottom half replaced with a toothlike bond and when her mouth was fully grown a permanent fixture and no one's ever been able to tell the difference and she can bite into apples and carrots with it and she thinks a quarter of the women she knows have lost part of a front tooth, and he said, “Tell Josephine all that,” and she did and things quickly got better. He looked for the tooth part on the floor, found it, and it seemed to be the whole piece, didn't want to hold it under the broken tooth it came from to see if it was a perfect fit, so later went into her room and said, “Open your mouth again, sweetheart; I want to see how your tooth's doing,” and then, “It's looking a lot better. A clean break, two pieces, very simple, so it's going to work out fine, no complications,” thought of bringing in the found part to the dentist the next day but then thought, What for? and it'll just get lost, and taped it to a piece of paper and wrote the date and event on it—
J's broken front tooth, fridge, disturbing scene for both of us
—and put it in a small container where he keeps every tooth his daughters have lost except the one Fanny swallowed, all taped to paper with just the date on it except the first two of theirs, which also say what number it was and where it came out. Anyway, last night, that sad look, he asked if anything was wrong, she shook her head and asked why, he said, “Your look,” and she said, “What's wrong with it?” and he said, “Nothing, it's fine; one doesn't always have to be smiling,” and read to her awhile. After he turned off the light and said good night, she said, “I love you, Daddy,” and he said, first kissing her forehead and lips—ritual; if he didn't she'd ask him to by saying, “A huggy”—“I love you too, veddy