My Favorite Midlife Crisis (43 page)

“I just didn’t want to put the kibosh on it,” she explained. “It started when we went hunting together for your dad. And we went out a few times. It was great and I thought, well, my luck has finally turned. But then I was pissed when he didn’t ask me out for New Year’s. He was running that party for your gay divorcé group and he didn’t invite me. But when he showed up at your place, things between us kind of exploded and we wound up in my apartment.” She noted my pursed lips. “Give me a break. See, that’s why I didn’t tell you. Also you’d gone out with Harry. So I felt I needed to clear it with you, but I never quite got my balls in a row.”

“Well, now that your balls are all lined up, congratulations. No really, I’m happy for you.” I hugged her for a blessing.

Kat, on the other hand, put her relationship with Lee out in the open from the moment they’d reconnected at her show. Her critically acclaimed show. So she had two good reasons to glow. But occasionally I’d see pain flicker in her eyes and I knew she was eating herself up over her estrangement from Summer. The morning after she’d stalked out of the gallery, Summer sent her mother a raving email, then absolute silence. She refused to take Kat’s calls and when Kat went to the house, Tim blocked the door. Which tore Kat up, although she bravely repeated the mantra she and Lee arrived at together: just as Kat must make the decisions for her life, Summer must take responsibility for hers. And, anyway, they had five months before the baby was born to figure something out.

***

On the fourth of February, Michelle, my father’s social worker, called with the news that a male resident at The Elms had died, creating an opening. We had to work quickly before another old man slipped into the empty bed.

“I can’t do this,” I told her. “I need time to think this through.” Eternity wouldn’t have been enough time.

Michelle put the screws to me. “If you don’t say yes now, and I mean this very minute, we’re going to lose it.” With more warning, I would have agonized over the decision, but there wasn’t time for my heart to be mangled before it was torn apart.

An hour before the move, I sat my father down to explain what was happening. I stroked his hand while I talked about The Elms, trying to sound upbeat. For a year and a half, he’d been disconnected. Now, when we could use some disconnection, he was plugged in and turned on.

“I’d rather go to Ocean City,” he insisted when I urged him to think of the change as a vacation. And he cut me off in the middle of my fairy tale about a beautiful house with people to bring him food and make his bed, waving at the latest temp nervously biting her nails across the room, “Hon does that right here. She’s my gal. I don’t want this other place. Listen, Doc, this is a secret, but I’ll tell you. I walk in there, I come out in a box.”

Michelle had to take over so I could rush to the bathroom and heave.

It took us all of fifteen minutes to pack his stuff into the car, and isn’t that sad? Fifteen minutes to load what was left of eighty years. Some photograph albums, his Bible, the newspaper, an old
TV Guide
in a plastic cover. Although he hadn’t been able to read for two years, these things gave him comfort.

Sadder still, while we loaded the trunk, he slumped in the passenger seat, his stare fixed on the steering wheel. He refused to look back at the house he’d lived in for the last six decades. “Bad, bad, bad,” he muttered as I slid in next to him. What science decided this man’s brain was a Nerf ball of amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tangles? Bad, bad, bad was right. The situation and your traitorous child, both.

“It’s going to be okay, Daddy. I love you,” I choked out. He allowed me a watery glance. Then he shut his eyes and turned his head. Just as well. I didn’t want him to see my tears as much as he didn’t want me to see his. Maybe shame is the last emotion to go. Or guilt. If I’d been the daughter he deserved, I’d have brought him to live with me. Quit my job to watch over him. Michelle said this guilt was a common reaction among loved ones, “but, honestly, Mr. Swanson will be better off surrounded by trained caregivers who can maximize the cognitive power he has left and take all the necessary precautions for his physical safety.”

Sounded like social worker gobbledygook to me. All I knew was that he had enough cognitive power to blame me for his eviction from the Streeper Street house. In his room at The Elms, he shook his head no when the nurse patted the La-Z-Boy they’d already moved in to comfort him with familiar surroundings. Instead, he climbed into bed, fully clothed, and lay there, repetitively smacking his fist into the cup of his hand, staring straight up, refusing to look at the droning TV, refusing to make eye contact with me.

“Dad,” I pleaded, leaning over, blocking his view of the ceiling.

He swung at me. Missed. But not by much.

“Time to go,” the nurse said. She steered me toward the door. “They make a better adjustment on their own, first day. Besides, you look like you could use a break.”

So I left him. At home, I collapsed into vacant sleep. Or maybe I dreamed but mercifully blanked it out because when I awoke at nine, my pillow was damp with sweat or tears and my teeth were chattering. My first conscious thought was that I had to see my father. Make sure he was all right. Not wandering. That someone was checking on him. I drove the seven miles to The Elms breathing through a panic attack.

I found him sleeping soundly in his bed, the TV emitting tinny waves of laughter from an ancient
Newlyweds Game
. A dinner tray with a slab of meatloaf half-consumed sat on the side table. So he’d eaten.

Someone had cared for him. Helped him into his pajamas, combed his hair, removed his dentures for a soak. I wouldn’t have been surprised if the perp was Dan Rosetti—my doc in shining armor—who was dozing in the La-Z-Boy next to the bed, Roman coin profile etched against the brown corduroy, one arm stretched protectively over my dad’s blanket. His other hand rested on a photograph album open in his lap.

I craned over Dan’s shoulder to see. Dear God. How long had it been since I’d set eyes on that picture? Me at seventeen, in hip huggers and an angel-sleeved blouse, hair flipped à la Farrah, posed on the Enoch Pratt library steps waving the letter announcing I’d been awarded a scholarship to Barnard. My passport to college in New York
,
beyond the reach of my mother’s long arm. Hence the blazing smile and the eyes clear for once of their underlying sadness.

Maybe it was that I looked achingly hopeful and as beautiful as I’d ever be. Maybe it was that this particular photo lay under Dan’s gentle hand. For one or none of those reasons, I found myself biting back tears as I tiptoed from the room.

At the nursing station, I asked, “When did Dr. Rosetti get here?”

“He still sleeping?” The charge nurse chuckled. “He came in a couple of hours ago to check on Mr. Swanson. Calm him down. They talked Redskins, Ravens, some kind of football. Didn’t make much sense to me from either of them. I’m a basketball fan myself. Then they both fell asleep. I figured we’d wake Dr. Rosetti at shift change around eleven. Unless you think we ought to wake him now, Dr. Berke.” Old-school RN, automatically deferring to the physician. They didn’t make ’em like that anymore. Thank God.

As it turned out, I didn’t have to decide. When I reentered my father’s room I found Dan on his feet, pacing. He raised a hand to me in greeting, but continued to talk into his cell phone.

“Yes, I am sorry. No, I don’t know how long it takes for Salmon Annabelle to dry out. That fast, huh?” He winked at me while talking to her. I was sure it
was
a her even before he said, “I’ll make it up to you. You pick the restaurant tomorrow night, how’s that? Sky’s the limit. Listen, I’ve got to go. I’ve got a colleague here with some questions. I’ll call you in the morning.”

Colleague, huh? Fine by me.

“Who knew salmon was such a temperamental fish?” he said after he clicked off.

“Poor Connie,” I guessed.

He gave me a sheepish grin. “She was making dinner for us at her place. Apparently, I ruined it. I’ve been told I don’t have my priorities straight. She’s probably right.”

“Well, I for one am grateful you don’t.” I glanced at my father, jaw unhinged, snoring heavily. “He was really agitated when I left. And look at him now.”

“He just needed some man-to-man football talk,” Dan said with a laugh. “The shot of aquavit didn’t hurt either.” He grinned as he picked up the bottle twisted into a brown paper bag and draped his coat over it. “Okay, Harald’s out for the night. And if he wakes up, the nurses can handle him. You don’t need to be here, Gwyn. Go home. Get some sleep. Come on, I’ll walk you to your car.”

Remembering how Harry Galligan and I launched our minor romance in the FRESH parking lot, I searched Dan’s face for a hidden agenda. But no, it radiated innocence. Unlike some people of the philandering persuasion, Dan was a one-woman man.

“Thanks,” I said, “but I’m going to hang out here for a while. Not for him as much as for me. And I caught a nap earlier.”

“Me too,” he said with a laugh. “That old chair sucked me in.” He wound his scarf around his neck. “You do know he’ll be fine, right? Your dad’s a pretty adaptable guy. The good thing is that soon this will be home to him. The lousy thing is that he might forget he ever lived anyplace else.”

It turned out Dan was half right. My father remembered Streeper Street deep into the thickening fog. In spite of my mother, his life there shone a light that dementia had to fight to extinguish. On the other hand, once settled into The Elms, he seemed happy. Within a few weeks, he put on weight and his eczema cleared up. Somebody on the staff—not my ex-husband—shaved him regularly. And when I visited, he was usually stretched out in that funky brown recliner snoring through the pandemonium on the Game Show Network, as if he’d never left East Baltimore. Even better, sometimes I found him sitting in a circle with the other Alzheimer’s patients, shaking a tambourine as the music therapist knocked out “Margie” and “Blue Skies” on the piano. And he liked the rice pudding.

But still, I couldn’t forget he said he’d leave there in a box.

***

Another memorable exit. This from Bethany, who arrived in my office the following week looking more chipper than she had in ages. Roses back in the cheeks, hair recently brightened. Mascara?

“I just came in to thank you,” she began. “I really appreciate the reference you gave to Davis Standish.”

“Ah, did it work out for you?”

“I begin March fifteenth.”

“Congratulations. We’re going to miss you.” I played with my pencil. “You sure you want to do this?”

“Oh, yes. I have to get out of here. The thing with Seymour and that bitch Mindy. I’m not going to hang around to watch.”

“You’re positive there’s something going on?” I’d sniffed the mild aroma of hanky-panky, but nothing more.

“Oh, please. It’s so obvious. I can’t believe you, of all people, haven’t spotted it.”

Of all people. Because I’d caught the action between her and Seymour? Or because, after having had my head up my butt for the duration of my marriage, I should have been the most observant of creatures?

“All the signs are there, trust me. I mean, how much do you have to know to really know, right?” I nodded to show her I got it. Got it? After Stan, after Simon, I could have written the book on it. “So,” she sighed, “it’s time for me to move on. And California has a malpractice insurance rate cap. Paradise for obstetricians. So anyway, thanks. You know, for everything. I mean it.” She extended her hand and we shook. Very professional. Maybe I hadn’t exactly been the best mentor, or Bethany the best mentee, but we’d come a long way, the ferret and I. “Oh, I almost forgot,” she said at the door, kind of a farewell gift, “we just did Summer Ellicott’s latest sonogram. It looks like she’s further along than we originally calculated. I estimate her delivery date for June tenth.
If
she goes the distance. Which, of course, I doubt.”

“Meaning what? Twins?”

Bethany’s eyes took on an uncustomary playful twinkle. “I assumed you knew from your friend. Two boys.”

“Really? Isn’t that nice,” I said, making the comment professionally bland when what I really wanted to do was dance around the room and work my arm into that train-whistle pull my kids used to make while hissing “Yesssss!” Because this was very good news for Kat. There was no way bratty, spoiled, self-centered Summer would be able to handle two baby boys without help. Tim’s parents lived in New York, which left Kat the only on-site grandparent. Doesn’t God have a wicked sense of humor? Two XYs and at least one of them was bound to inherit Summer’s personality. Oh, yes, little Miss Tantrum would really need her mother now.

And maybe Lee the Sculptor could make a mobile for the nursery.

Chapter 46

On Valentine’s Day, Fleur and Harry announced their engagement accompanied by all the bells and whistles. Fleur posted a notice in the
Baltimore
Sun
(mostly for Jack and Bambi’s benefit—the plump paragraph listing Harry’s degrees and accomplishments was revenge Talbot style) and selected a restrained 1.5 carat round diamond set in Grandmère Broussard’s Victorian setting. When push comes to shove, we are what we are. In Fleur’s case a flower on the venerable Caldwaller-Talbot-Broussard family tree. She wouldn’t have been caught dead wearing a fourth-finger flashlight.