A Window Opens: A Novel (32 page)

“I have no idea. On one hand, he’s suffered enough. On the other—well, the other hand is unimaginable.” My eyes filled, but I didn’t trust myself to lift a hand to wipe them. The angry tailgater was still in close proximity, now with a hairy middle finger thrust out his window in the direction of my minivan.

“Alice, remember: I adore you.”

“I adore you, too.”

A scalding hot tear slipped down my cheek.

•  •  •

I stood in the ocean, chin-deep, worn out from treading water. I faced a massive wave, gathering speed as it rolled toward shore. I took a deep breath and dove into the middle as the water crested over my head.

Be brave.

•  •  •

Every light in the house was on when I arrived. Electric Christmas candles still shed their garish orange light in each window. My dad was in his chair, feet propped on a leather ottoman, with his head tilted back and his mouth open. He was wearing a yellow short-sleeved shirt and powder-blue Carolina shorts in mesh. He didn’t look like he was in pain, but he also didn’t
appear to be entirely present, either. He had lost a lot of weight since he’d come home from the hospital. Now all of a sudden, he looked puffy.

“His kidneys are shutting down,” Linda explained. “Honey, it won’t be long.”

My mom and I just stood there, staring at each other and then back at my dad.

Linda was on her way out, but she had a lot of instructions for us, as if we were preparing for a home birth. “This binder will walk you through what will happen. Remember, it’s the most natural thing in the world. Should you have any questions or concerns, here’s the number you can call, day or night, and hospice will advise you. There will always be someone at the end of this line. If he passes, you should call this number. If he appears to be in any pain, you should give him that shot from the fridge. I don’t think he’ll need to use the toilet, but I’ve put a wee-wee pad under him just in case.”

A
wee-wee
pad? I tried to catch my dad’s eye, expecting to trade mortified smirks, and then remembered . . . Oh. He wasn’t in any condition to share private jokes.

I wanted Linda to leave, and I couldn’t believe she was leaving.

When it was just my mom and me—which was how it felt, suddenly—I called my brother, who answered on the first ring. “Alice. How’s Dad?”

“He . . . he really doesn’t look good.”

“Do you think I should get in the car and drive down there now?” By this point, it was eight o’clock.

I took the phone in the coat closet since I suddenly felt rude having this conversation within earshot of our dad. “Yes.”

“You think I should drive down now?”

“Yes.” It wasn’t like Will to seek my counsel; I had the queasy feeling of being in over my head.

“I’m just thinking out loud. Mary is on call. If I drop the kids at her mom’s, they can all drive down together in the morning, and I can be there in seven hours with no stops. Do you think—?” A rough sob ripped
through the phone. I pictured my brother and our dad, listening to a Mets game on a small transistor radio in the backyard, their fists pumping in the air every time Keith Hernandez hit a homer. Will was the only person who knew the secret ingredient in our dad’s recipe for Irish soda bread.

“I think that’s a good plan. I’m staying over . . . in case.”

“How’s Mom?”

“She’s making lists. She’s listening to opera and sitting with him right now.”

“Okay. Listen, I should—”

“Be safe, Will.”

“You, too.”

•  •  •

I put my hand on top of my dad’s wide, warm head and I told him I would see him in the morning. He nodded weakly. Then I went upstairs to check my e-mail.

To: [email protected]

From: [email protected]

Alice, I know your plate is full right now but Greg wants answers on MMO and GO. Please finalize your white paper and drop a date on his calendar to present it to him via teleconference. It is imperative that we demonstrate commitment in the gaming space.

T
hat night, asleep in my childhood bedroom, I dreamed Nicholas and I were renting our own beach house on Long Beach Island. When we went to collect the key from the real estate agent, we learned that we’d actually rented a houseboat by mistake. It was a huge sloop, with billowing sails and a slippery, varnished deck. Our kids skittered all over the place while we tried to figure out how to steer the unwieldy vessel into Barnegat Bay.

Suddenly I noticed my dad sitting in a lawn chair next to the old-fashioned wooden steering wheel—the same yellow and white chair that left checkerboard patterns on the back of his legs every summer. He was reading the
New York Times
, with the newspaper covering his face, but I heard him say in his deep, familiar voice: “You guys will figure out the way. It just takes time.”

When I opened my eyes, my mom was sitting on the edge of my bed. Maybe she was there to wake me up so I could squeeze in a little studying before a Spanish quiz.
Hablo, hablas, habla, hablamos, hablan.

Or was there an early student council meeting?

Then, I knew.

•  •  •

We stood together by my dad’s chair: me, my mom, my brother. Will’s coat was still on, his hands still holding a chill from outside. I held them in my hands and choked out, “He hung on for you.”

Will nodded, his lips tightly pursed, eyes glassy with tears.

Our mom’s white hair commingled with our dad’s salt-and-pepper curls as she leaned over, kissed him on the forehead, and said, “Good night, sweet prince.”

Will said, “Bye, Dad.”

I said, “I’ll miss you every, every day.”

It was the most gut-wrenching moment of my life so far, and also the most peaceful.

The future stretched in front of us like a long road.

To infinity and beyond.

•  •  •

I glanced at the clock in my mom’s kitchen—it was all hers now. Four fourteen. Was it too late—or too early—to call the number at the back of Linda’s binder? I dialed, haltingly, and a nasal voice answered: “Hospice. North Jersey. Reason for your call?”

“Hi. I’m calling because my patient . . . died.”

“Patient name?”

“Edward Pearse.”

“Middle initial?”

“V.”

“Patient number?”

“Sorry?”

“Last four digits of patient’s social?”

I handed the phone to Will.

•  •  •

My conversation with Nicholas happened in split screen: on one side, my husband leaned against our kitchen counter, left elbow in right palm, left hand on his forehead, massaging new worry lines and wiping his eyes; on the other, he was twenty-four and my dad pumped his hand up and down, up and down, right after their first Scrabble game. Nicholas was the winner, but my dad was the one who looked victorious. He had hit the jackpot of future sons-in-law and he knew it.

•  •  •

The gears shifted. We were on a conveyor belt, moving down a prescribed path toward the gaping maw of whatever came next.

The undertakers arrived. One of them was a puffed-out, grown-up version of a boy from the maintenance crew at the pool. I remembered him in a Co-Ed Naked Lacrosse T-shirt and Umbros; now he jingled change in the pocket of pleated khakis. “Are you . . . ?”

I reached out a hand, literally over my dad’s dead body. “Alice. Mike, right?”

“Alice, I am so sorry for your loss.”

Standing there barefoot in my mom’s flannel nightgown, I had the sinking sensation that I might have hooked up with this guy behind the snack bar, wedged between two chlorine tanks. Didn’t he have a goatee back then? Was there more to it than kissing?
Come on, nobody can see us
.

Mike and his sidekick warned me not to watch them work, but I watched.

As their minivan hearse drove down the hill, I glanced out an upstairs window and saw a cluster of neighbors at the end of a driveway across the street. They were in bathrobes, shaking their heads, with newspapers in blue plastic bags dangling from the same hands that once doled out my Halloween candy and babysitting money.

Ed Pearse. A good man. One of the best.

•  •  •

Nicholas arrived with our kids and Judy and Elliott. Later, as they efficiently disassembled the hospital bed and tucked my mom in under an afghan for a nap, I did the math and realized that my in-laws had driven through the night from Cleveland to be with us. I never asked how they knew it was time to come.

The kids eyed me nervously, as if I had a strange new haircut they couldn’t quite get used to. I knew Nicholas had already told them about my dad.

Oliver looked me square in the eye and said, “Mommy, we’re all really sad.”

“I know, lovebird. I am, too.”

Margot said, “Wherever Pop is, I bet he’s talking a
lot.
”

“I’m pretty sure he is.”

Georgie pointed at the empty penny loafers by the back door. “Mommy, Pop forgot his shoes!”

I sat down at the kitchen table and cried through an entire box of Kleenex.

To: [email protected]

From: [email protected]

I regret to inform you that Alice Pearse’s father, Edward V. Pearse, passed away this morning after a courageous battle with throat cancer. He was 69. On behalf of our team, I will send an Edible Arrangement to the family.

I was on the Scroll Global list, of course, so the reply-alls rolled in. Responses included but were not limited to:

Thanks for letting us know, Genevieve.

Our Cleveland team is thinking of your New York team today.

Do you have a sense when Alice will return to work?

Do we know where Alice was on her evaluation of this week’s GO list?

Poor Alice. Any idea if he smoked?

The food was breathtaking. Trays of fried chicken, cold cuts, and deli sandwiches; Pyrex casserole dishes accompanied by heating instructions for ziti, lasagna, quiche, shepherd’s pie, moussaka; towers of brownies, lemon squares, rugelach, linzer torte. One well-wisher left a gigantic, shivery bowl of tapioca pudding on the back steps, and the dry cleaner dropped off a blender. (“Gee, eyeballs and smoothies. That’s
my
idea of comfort food,” said Will.) Judy covered these offerings with pink Saran wrap and arranged them in the refrigerator with military precision. We ate and ate and ate, and we were still starving.

The line for the wake snaked out the door of the funeral home and into the parking lot of the CVS next door. I stood in the center of an arc of intimidating, sash-bedecked flower arrangements with Will and my mom while Mary and Nicholas took turns keeping an eye on the kids, who toppled a watercooler during a game of leapfrog.

Waves of people rolled in, with no rhyme or reason to the order of their arrival. Will’s former drum teacher walked in on the heels of my dad’s first cousins; a dry-eyed great-uncle knelt on the prayer bench alongside my dad’s barber, whose sobs were audible from the ladies’ room. My college friends chatted with three of my dad’s sisters, while my mom’s brothers mingled with a town councilman my dad had never liked.

There were a few surprises: a stranger who said he’d shared a paper route with my dad in 1954 (he slipped my mom his business card in case she needed a life coach); a Town Car full of
You
editors (“Your friends are
hot
,” said my cousin, eyeing their long legs and stilettos); a high school friend who had visited us one summer on Long Beach Island (“Your husband encouraged me to go to law school,” she told my mom. “Now I’m a federal judge.”) Great, I thought. And I’m peddling video games for a living.

Everyone offered a variation on the same lines:
I’m sorry to see you under these circumstances
,
I’m sorry for your loss
,
He put up a good fight
,
He’s in a better place
,
If there’s anything I can do
 . . . My favorites were the ones who went off script:
He made a helluva martini
or
Ed Pearse was no-bullshit
or
He was a cheap son of a bitch.
For the most part, I was on autopilot, but I almost lost it when my dad’s brother held on to my elbow and leaned down to whisper, “He was one proud father.”

•  •  •

Mike materialized from behind a vase of calla lilies as I was leaving the funeral home.

“Alice?”

“Yes?”

“I just wanted to let you know—”

“Yes?” I didn’t mean to be impatient, but Nicholas was waiting in the car and I felt gutted by the day. My feet were sore and my face was exhausted from the effort of wearing an appropriate expression for four hours.

“Um, I don’t usually say this to families of people I’ve worked on but—”
Worked on?
The image was too gruesome to contemplate. “I mean, what I’m trying to say is, I knew your dad. I remember him from the pool.”

“Really?”

“Wasn’t he the dude who used to sit by the diving boards? Smoked a pipe, got super tan?” Mike shifted from foot to foot. Under the bright overhead light, I could see the smooth pink of his scalp.

“That was my dad.” Past tense.

“He was a cool guy. A good listener.”

“Really?” I learned this later; when I was a teenager, I couldn’t be bothered to give my dad anything to listen to. In fact, most times when he came to the pool, I pretended I didn’t know him.

“Yeah, I bummed a light off him one day and he told me I should quit smoking. We got into this whole conversation about money. About how
people should spend what they have, not rely on credit. Dude was frickin’
smart
.”

I smiled. That sounded like my dad. “So, did you quit?”

“I did. Cold turkey. Switched to dip, but that’s it.” Mike bowed awkwardly, one hand on his tie, which was printed with a dizzying pattern of dice. “Well. I just wanted to let you know. My best to you and your family.”

He disappeared behind a door marked Employees Only.

I thought, if only my dad had followed his own advice.

•  •  •