Goodbye To All That (24 page)

He hauled his tie over his head and tossed it onto the passenger seat before leaving the car. What was he going to say to his father? At their respective ages, they’d reversed the advisor-advisee relationship. His mother walked out on his father and his father turned to Doug for advice. Doug’s wife hadn’t left him, although her familiar blond hair had, and he’d turned to his father for
 . . .
what? Comfort? Scotch? Definitely not advice.

His father looked frazzled when he answered the door. He had on a pale gray warm-up suit which didn’t flatter him, and his hair stood out from his scalp in tawny, gray-streaked tufts. “I’m glad you came,” he said, ushering Doug inside. “Maybe you can help me. I’m trying to iron some shirts.”

“Why?” Doug asked.

“They’re wrinkled. Gert said I look wrinkled.”

Doug had met his father’s office manager many times. He considered her snotty, which wasn’t exactly a negative for someone with her job. “Who cares if you look wrinkled?” he asked as he followed his father down the hall to the den, where his father had set up an ironing board in front of the television. “You wear a white coat over your shirt, anyway.”

“I’ll tell you who cares,” his father said as he shook out the extremely wrinkled shirt sitting on the ironing board. “You want a drink?”

Doug spotted an open bottle of beer on the coffee table. No coaster, he noticed. If his mother were here, she’d be infuriated. Maybe his father was leaving moisture rings on the table deliberately, out of spite.

Doug really wanted a scotch, but a beer made more sense. He’d been lucky not to get a ticket driving over. He didn’t want to risk getting a ticket—or worse—driving home. “A beer looks good,” he said. “I’ll help myself. Who cares about your shirts being wrinkled?” he asked again as he ducked into the kitchen.

The room hadn’t changed much since he’d left home for college so many years ago. Fewer notices and schedules attached to the refrigerator with magnets, less clutter on the counters, no huge bowl of fruit serving as a centerpiece on the table. His mother had always had bushels of fruit in the house, a fair assortment of which she’d heaped into a tinted glass bowl and left on the kitchen table every day. He’d thought nothing of detouring into the kitchen and grabbing a peach, a banana, a twig full of grapes on his way somewhere else.

No fruit on the kitchen table now. No piles of school books. No phone book left open to the page of an orthodontist or a Little League coach. But this room was the kitchen he associated with home, even more than the arena-sized, superbly appointed kitchen in the house he shared with Brooke, a kitchen full of top-of-the-line everything, most of which Brooke had no clue how to use.

Doug knew this room in a way he still didn’t know that other kitchen. He knew the yellow walls, the scallop-edged curtains, the pine cabinets, the four-burner electric stove with the dent near one of the dials, from when he’d been practicing his swing with his brand-new 29-ounce adult bat, the year of his bar mitzvah, and he’d swung a little too wide and slugged what would have been a home run if he’d hit a ball instead of the stove.

His parents’ kitchen looked the same as always
 . . .
only different.

Like Brooke.

Wincing, he helped himself to a beer from the door of the fridge, popped it open with the church-key opener in the utensil drawer—he still knew what was in every drawer—and returned to the den.

“Shari Bernstein,” his father said.

“Who?”

“Shari Bernstein cares if my shirts are wrinkled.” His father ran the iron back and forth across an expanse of shirt, but the wrinkles remained.

Doug sipped his beer, wishing it was something stronger. He wasn’t sure he wanted to hear the answer, but he asked anyway: “Who’s Shari Bernstein?”

“She’s a dermatologist. Why isn’t this iron working? When your mother does this, the shirt comes out smooth.” He held it up to give Doug a better view of the wrinkles.

What was his father doing with a dermatologist? The only reason Doug could think of was skin cancer. “Are you having something biopsied?”

“No. I’m having a cup of coffee,” his father said, then smoothed the shirt across the ironing board once more. “What am I doing wrong here? Should I call your mother? I don’t want to call her.”

Doug’s eyes had strayed to his father’s bottle of Sam Adams sweating condensation onto the coffee table. He pondered whether he should put his bottle down, too. Were two water rings worse than one, or once one was formed and the damage done, more didn’t matter?

His mental debate temporarily blocked his brain’s ability to process his father’s words. “Call her,” he said, opting to place his bottle atop the TV Guide rather than directly on the table. Once that decision was made, he could respond to his father’s statement. “Ask her how the iron works. I think steam’s supposed to come out of it.”

“I have it set on steam.”

“Is there water in it? You need water to make steam.”

“Water. Of course.” His father shook his head. “Gert said I should take my shirts to the dry cleaner. I don’t have time to do that, though. The coffee is tomorrow.”

“What coffee?”

“The coffee I’m having with Shari Bernstein.”

“The dermatologist? You’re having coffee with a dermatologist?” Doug sank onto the sofa as relief crashed over him. No biopsy. No funky-looking nevus, no irregular lesion. Just coffee.

Coffee. With someone named Shari Bernstein. “You’re going on a
date
?”

“Not a date. Just coffee.” His father shoved the iron across his shirt energetically but futilely. “She’s divorced.”

“You’re not.”

“I’m separated.” He balanced the iron on its edge, gazed across the ironing board at Doug and sighed. “What the hell am I doing? It took me hours to get up the nerve to call her. We’re meeting in the staff cafeteria at five-thirty. God forbid my appointments run late tomorrow—I’ll never get there by five-thirty. She’s a dermatologist, she probably never runs late. They don’t have emergencies like we do.”

“Someone could charge into her office at the last minute with a humongous zit,” Doug pointed out, then laughed. His father on a date.

He’d been the one who’d raised the idea of his father dating a few weeks ago, the afternoon his parents had announced their separation to their assembled children. But now that it was actually happening
 . . .
His fingers started going icy again, practically numb. He took a few long gulps of beer, but that only chilled him even more.

“So, who is this woman? This dermatologist. Have you met her?”

“Gert gave me her number.” His father struggled mightily with the iron. Without water in it, his efforts were bound to be in vain, but Doug didn’t know where the water went, how to inject it into the appliance. His mother hadn’t taught him how to iron. She’d done all the laundry tasks for the family when he’d been growing up.

“I’m meeting her tomorrow,” his father said. “Gert knows her. She says she’s pretty.” His father put down the iron again, flat on his shirt, and sighed. “I don’t know how to do this.”

“Don’t leave the iron that way,” Doug said, rising from the couch and standing the iron on end. At least he knew that much—that if you left an iron hot-surface down, you could scorch the garment you were trying to press. “Maybe the water goes in here,” he noted, pointing to an opening built into the handle.

“If you’re wrong, we could short-circuit the damn thing.”

“If I’m right, you could have an ironed shirt to wear tomorrow.”

His father thought for a minute, then left the room.

Alone, Doug circled the den with his gaze. The TV was on, the volume low enough to be ignored. The screen showed devastation somewhere. A storm? A battle? An attack from outer space? Given the way Doug felt—that the earth had somehow tilted slightly, that nothing was quite what it was supposed to be—he’d bet money on the third option.

His father returned carrying a measuring cup full of water. “In here?” he asked, pointing to the opening on the iron’s handle.

“Give it a try.”

His father poured some water in. The iron hissed like a venomous snake. “That sounds good,” his father said. Doug didn’t think he was being facetious.

“If Mom can do this, you can do this,” Doug cheered him on. “Give it a try.”

His father rubbed the iron across his wrinkled shirt. A cloud of steam wheezed out of the vents. Doug and his father exchanged a triumphant look across the ironing board.

“So, does Mom know about this date?”

“It’s not a date. It’s just coffee. And why should your mother know about it?”

Good question. His parents were separated. Maybe his mother was dating someone, too.

No, Doug couldn’t imagine that. Not possible. Even if space aliens had attacked the planet. “If she knew, she might get jealous,” he said.

His father peered up from his shirt. He appeared intrigued. “You think that’s a good idea?”

“If she’s jealous, maybe she’d come home.” On the other hand, if the dermatologist was spectacular, maybe Doug’s father wouldn’t want Doug’s mother to come home.

Scratch that possibility. Doug’s parents belonged together. No dermatologist, regardless of how pretty, should come between them. Ruth and Richard Bendel were a couple. A pair. United unto death in the eyes of God, not that Jews were as rigid about divorce as Catholics. And if Doug’s parents remained apart, who would baby-sit for the twins when Doug and Brooke went to Nevis?

His father rested the iron flat, then remembered and balanced it on end. He held up his steam-ironed shirt. The sleeves were still a mess, but the back was a smooth expanse. “Look at that. A little water was all it needed. I wish the cuffs were cleaner, though. Your mother always got them so clean.” He sounded wistful. Doug hoped his rueful mood arose from thoughts of his absent wife, not his dingy cuffs.

“So, you’re meeting this woman for coffee,” Doug said, crossing to the ironing board and taking the shirt from his father. He spread the cloth on the silver padding covering the board. It was warm, the back of the shirt hot. He smoothed a sleeve out on the board and lifted the iron, which sighed and sputtered as he pressed the sleeve smooth.

Brooke never did this, he realized. He wasn’t even sure they owned an iron. They probably did, since they owned just about every consumer item a person could buy. But Brooke never ironed anything. He suspected their cleaning service took care of the dirty clothes, and what they didn’t launder Brooke brought to the dry cleaners.

He felt an odd surge of pride performing a domestic task Brooke didn’t know how to do. She was no homemaker—he’d known that when he married her, and he’d been okay with it. But he liked acknowledging that at a crucial moment he could figure out a steam iron.

“You really think I could make your mother jealous?” his father asked as he circled the ironing board and grabbed his beer. “I’d have to let her know I was meeting Shari. How do I do that? I can’t just call her and say, ‘Guess what? I’m having coffee with another woman.’”

“I could tell her,” Doug said, then grimaced. He didn’t want to get caught in the middle. “Or I could tell Jill and Jill could tell her.” Much better. Jill was a daughter. She’d be more likely to call their mother and sound alarms about their father’s flourishing social life. Not that meeting a fellow doctor for coffee in the staff cafeteria of the hospital qualified as a flourishing social life.

“And you think your mom would get jealous?” His father sounded awfully eager.

Doug scrutinized the sleeve he’d ironed. He’d exercised a degree of care and precision that wouldn’t be foreign to his operating room, and it showed. No accidental pleats, no crumples along the shoulder seam. He arranged the other sleeve on the board and applied the iron. “It wouldn’t be fair,” he said cautiously, “to meet this doctor for coffee if the only reason is to make Mom jealous. That would be using her, you know?”