Now I'll Tell You Everything (Alice) (40 page)

The kids were at a birthday party one evening for one of their new friends, after which they were going to spend the night with one of Patrick’s coworkers who said he’d pick them up with his own kids. So Patrick and I walked La Rambla hand in hand, stopping to watch the mime artists, the musicians, and the street vendors who thronged the place. We talked about his work, and Patrick mentioned that one of the men told him that Helene had received an offer from AMOCO and was working for that company now in Dallas.

“That’s nice,” I said blandly. Then we looked at each other and laughed.

“I’m glad things turned out the way they did,” he said finally.

“So am I.”

His hand tightened on mine. “Were
you
ever tempted, Alice? Truthfully?”

I told him about Phil.

“You never mentioned him before,” he said.

“I thought you’d feel I was digging him up to throw in your face.”

Patrick thought that over. “You had every right . . .”

“I know.”

Patrick pulled me toward him sideways. “I would have been jealous as anything,” he said as we staggered along, lockstep.

“Good!” I told him.

“Beaten his brains out. Smashed him to a pulp.”

“Even better,” I said, and laughed.

“Did he ever . . . ever kiss you?” Patrick asked tentatively.

“On the forehead,” I said.

“That’s far enough,” he said, and we stopped right there on La Rambla and kissed under a Catalonian sky.

*  *  *

There was also romance in the air for Pamela, we heard, because she e-mailed that she was seeing a lot of a suave New Yorker named Nick who owned a men’s clothing store. She sent us photos of him, and Liz e-mailed that she had met him, and Pamela and Nick seemed to have a lot in common.
This might be the one!
she’d written.

The real surprise was that Gwen and Charlie were expecting.

Who does an ob-gyn ask to deliver her own babies?
I wondered in an e-mail to Liz.

Someone she sees every day at the office?
Liz e-mailed back.
You think?

But there was sad news too. We received word that Uncle Milt had died. It wasn’t entirely unexpected, because he had a number of health problems. And not wanting to interrupt our trip to Madrid that Patrick and I had planned, Dad didn’t tell us until after the funeral.

I called Carol as soon as I could.

“I’m so terribly sorry,” I said. “I just found out.”

“I know. It was my decision that we shouldn’t call you, because I was afraid you’d zip right back. I had a lot of support from your dad and Sylvia and Larry and all my friends, Alice, and I think I was prepared for it, anyway.”

But I wasn’t. I must have felt that Uncle Milt, being older than Dad, was sort of insulation between my own father and death. That Dad couldn’t possibly die before Uncle Milt. And now Dad was next in line.

Carol and I talked as long as we dared, bringing each other up-to-date. While her husband was managing hotels, she had an executive position in a nursing association and loved it.

“Take care,” I told her as we signed off. “Be good to yourself now.”

“And you take care of your dad when you get back,” she
told me. “We don’t realize how much we’ll miss them till they’re gone, Alice.”

Dad, however, seemed to be doing all right, and we settled back into our Spanish routines in the months we had left. What we did not expect at all was the death of Patrick’s mother, from an embolism in her lung following a hip replacement. We’d arranged to come back to the States two weeks earlier than we’d planned when we first found out she needed surgery, claiming our house once again in Chevy Chase. But her death took us all by surprise, and we didn’t know what would happen to Patrick’s father, whose Parkinson’s disease was getting worse.

This was so difficult for Patrick.
It must be especially agonizing for an only child,
I thought. I knew how hard it had been for Pamela dealing with her mom’s problems.

I don’t remember much about my own mother’s funeral, but helping plan Mrs. Long’s service with Patrick, watching him struggle with his grief, I had a vague sense of
déjà vu
.

It was the first funeral that Patricia and Tyler ever attended, and they were solemn throughout, their attention primarily on their dad. When the casket was lowered and Patrick wept, I saw Tyler swallowing and swallowing, and I squeezed his hand.

*  *  *

Just coming back to the States was, in itself, a shock I hadn’t expected, and the funeral came only a few days before Christmas. There were many more decisions to be made, more choices to be had. I just wanted time to stand still for a while and let me get
my bearings. And driving to Baltimore to see Gwen and Charlie’s new baby boy was just what I needed.

Gwen had e-mailed me a few pictures of him at six weeks old, and he had his mom’s dimples. His huge brown eyes took over his whole face.

“He’s simply adorable, Gwen. I’d want to hold him twenty-four/seven,” I told her, cuddling the chubby little cherub in my arms.

“That’s my problem. I want to play with him forever. Liz and Moe came to visit last week, and their little girls could hardly keep their hands off him. How are
you
doing, other than the funeral?”

“We’re all going a little bit nuts,” I told her. “Patricia’s starting high school next fall, and she didn’t do nearly as well as she thought in Spain, so she’ll have to go to summer school to catch up. She’s pretty upset about that.”

“Wow. I should think so,” Gwen said. “She’ll catch up in a hurry, but try telling that to a teenager.”

“Meanwhile, Tyler will be starting middle school next year, and that’s a trial for every kid, no matter what. And everything’s changed in my department. I’m going to be supervising counselors who are used to doing things their own way now. I won’t even know some of the new ones at all.”

“Alice,” Gwen said, “trust me. It could be so much worse for both of us. I had a patient just last week who had her third miscarriage. . . .”

I was instantly humbled. “You’re right, you’re right,” I said.

“I’m not trying to belittle your problems, but . . . well, I can think of a dozen women who would kill to have spent two years in Barcelona.”

I needed that, and I was determined to be more positive about things. Patrick was worried enough about his dad. He had asked for less travel in case he was needed at home, which meant that many of his coworkers got the work he loved to do while he was stuck with paperwork. And finally one night he said the words I’d been dreading to hear: “Al, do you think it would upset the family too much if Dad moved in with us?”

When I didn’t answer right away—because the truthful reply would have been,
Yes, of course it would!
—Patrick answered for me: “I was hoping it wouldn’t come to this. But he doesn’t want to live on an assisted-living floor of some retirement complex, and who knows how much time he has left?”

I sat down across from Patrick, and we just looked at each other for some time.

“If it were my dad, I know I’d bring him here,” I said, “but I won’t pretend it’s going to be easy.”

“I know.”

“And everyone’s going to have to cooperate and share the work.”

“I know that, too. You can count on my help most of all,” Patrick said.

So we converted our family room into a bedroom, installed a hospital bed for Dad Long, and had a nursing attendant come in during the day to take care of him until Patrick or I got home
at night. But it was the simple fact of having his dad in our house that unnerved us all. Patrick relieved his own stress by jogging, and it seemed to suit Tyler’s tall frame as well. He began going along with his dad, and finally it was a weekly occurrence, sometimes even more often, and it was great to see them have their own thing together.

Patricia and I were having a harder time of it, and somehow having Dad Long living with us led to our worst battles. Most of the time, unlike many teenagers, Patricia wore her heart on her sleeve. We didn’t have to ask what she was thinking or feeling. She would stand behind me at the sink and give me a hug as readily as she would drop her schoolbooks on the floor and bellow, “I hate life!” She could be sunny one minute, grabbing her father and dancing around the living room to her favorite song, and five minutes later be fighting heatedly with Tyler over whose turn it was to empty the dishwasher. But it was Dad Long who upset her the most.

“He’s always
staring
at me! Just
staring
!” Patricia complained one day, coming in the kitchen.

“Shhh, Patty. He’s not deaf!” I scolded. “That’s the way people with Parkinson’s often look. He doesn’t mean to stare.”

“Well, if he doesn’t mean to, then make him stop!” she said, and I felt like grabbing her by the shoulders and shaking her.

“Could we have a little more empathy here, please?” I asked, knowing her grandfather might not last out the year. “Can’t you even imagine what it must be like for him to be so dependent on us?”

“No, I can’t, because I’m
not
him! I’m
me
! And I only know what it feels like to be
me
!” she said.

I was furious with her. “Then I pity you!” I said. I’d had a difficult day already. I’d forgotten to pick up the ingredients I needed to make dinner, I was facing a root canal in a couple of days and the tooth was hurting again, and now this. I turned on her. “I’m embarrassed for you, that you have so little feeling for other people.”

“I do too have feeling for other people!” she shrieked. “I just can’t get along with
old
people! They’re weird and they’re creepy and they
smell
and—”

My patience gave out and I slapped her. I had never slapped either of my children before, other than a quick swat on the seat, and I was as shocked as she was.

“Mo-ther!” she gasped, her face flushed, one hand on her cheek.

I started to say,
Oh, Patricia, I didn’t mean that!
when she rushed upstairs and shut herself in her room.

I leaned against the stove, stunned. What was I thinking? Was
I
never young and self-centered and thoughtless?

Upstairs, I tried to open her door, but it was locked.

“Patricia,” I said, “please let me in. I’m sorry.”

“Go away. I
hate
you!” she cried. I could hear the sob in her voice.

Sadness welled up in my throat, almost choking me. “Patricia . . . ,” I began again.

“Go
away
!” she wept.

I sat down on the floor outside her room, my head on my knees, hugging my legs. I didn’t want things to be like this between us. I wanted us to be close. The phone rang, but I didn’t answer. I heard Tyler come in for a drink of water and run back out to his buddies on the basketball court. I didn’t move.

I don’t know how long I was there. I leaned back against the wall and closed my eyes, trying to remember
any
thing about my own mother, any fights we might have had, but I had simply been too young. I did remember several big ones I’d had with Sylvia. What would Patricia remember of me?

Finally I heard the door open. Patricia started to come out, then stopped. I said nothing. She said nothing. She went on to the bathroom and closed the door. I heard the toilet flush.

When she came out again, hesitantly, I turned in her direction, and for a long moment we studied each other. I held out my arms.

Wordlessly, she came over and collapsed on the floor beside me, both of us crying. I hugged and rocked her.

“I’m so, so sorry, Patricia,” I said. “I’ll never do that again.”

“I’m sorry too,” she sniffled. “And I . . . I hope he didn’t hear me.”

“So do I,” I said. I waited until we were both more composed, and then I told her, “Parents have bad days too sometimes. I have problems and worries you don’t know anything about, and sometimes, if you catch me at a bad moment, I thoughtlessly take it out on you. You’ll probably do the same to
your own children now and then. Not often, I hope, but it won’t mean you don’t love them.”

We continued to hug, her arms tentatively creeping around my waist, her wet face against my neck.

“Are . . . are there any big problems?” she asked.

“None that we can’t handle,” I said, and kissed the top of her head.

I knew that Les and Stacy had been trying without success to have children, and over the years I had hoped they might adopt, but they didn’t. It was a topic we didn’t discuss any longer, and never, of course, unless one of them brought it up. Les was forty-six, Stacy forty-one, and they seemed more or less settled as a childless couple.

They had moved to Virginia, where Lester became head of personnel at George Mason University, and Stacy taught physical education at a nearby high school. They often drove back to Silver Spring so that we could celebrate holidays together, and we all planned to gather at Dad and Sylvia’s for Father’s Day. We brought Patrick’s dad with us, helping him out of the car and moving slowly up to the house as he shuffled along the sidewalk.

My own dad was semi-retired now from the Melody Inn—he only went in three days a week. He and Sylvia were talking about a trip to Scandinavia, and that was beginning to appeal to him a lot.

“It’s probably time to turn the store completely over to another manager,” he said.

“I don’t want you to give up the work you love,” Sylvia told him, carrying a stack of plates to the table. Her hair was thinning prematurely, so that pink scalp showed through in places, and she was self-conscious about this. But she still dressed in those delicate filmy clothes of gorgeous colors. I think Sylvia was born beautiful.

“Well, I love
you
even more,” Dad told her. “I can’t very well take the store to Norway, can I?”

We heard a car door slam outside, and then Les’s and Stacy’s voices as they came up the walk. They descended on Dad with a bottle of wine and a bouquet of flowers from their garden.

“Happy Daddy’s Day,” Stacy said playfully, kissing Dad on the cheek.