The Rules of Inheritance (45 page)

I AM AFRAID to leave the room now, so I take up residence in the chair beside my father's bed. I haven't showered in two days, but I am afraid to be away from him for longer than a minute or two at a time.

 

He passes in and out of lucidity, sleeping mostly, his eyes half-open, each breath few and far between.

 

My friends come over one by one. Holly sits in the living room reading magazines. Abby comes too, and I finally take a shower after she promises to alert me if anything changes with my father. The scalding water feels good and I stay there longer than I mean to. When I emerge, I find her sitting in the gloom, holding my father's hand and singing to him. She'd only met him once before, and I cannot fathom how large her heart must be to do what she is doing in this moment.

 

After Abby leaves I take up my post in the chair again, my father's hand in mine. I am determined to be here when he takes his last breath, determined to be holding his hand. I keep thinking about all the ways he's done this for me. All the things he did for others in his life. The least I can do is be here for him.

 

I watch as his mouth widens and each breath becomes deeper. His eyes are partly open, but I know that he is unconscious. The tendons in his fingers jerk, twitching in sleep. I stare at his face and wonder what is happening in his body, his mind.

 

I imagine that it's difficult for the body to stop functioning, for all these organs and nerves and synapses to just cease to do what they've done for eighty-three years.

 

After a while, I begin to kind of pray.

 

“Pray” isn't the right word because I don't think I really know how to do that. But I close my eyes and I think about my mother. I think about my father's parents too. I try to summon their presence.

 

Can you hear me?

 

Mom?

 

Grandma?

 

Please, please, please. Can you hear me?

 

Dad is here, I whisper to them. He's ready.

 

I picture my mother greeting him, see her pressing herself to him just to feel the warmth that my hands have left in his.

 

After a few minutes I open my eyes to find that his are open.

 

He leans forward suddenly and puts his hand on my face, my hair, my eyes. I close my eyes and let him. I don't think he's touched me like this since I was a kid. When he withdraws his hand, I look at him and see that there are tears in his eyes.

 

He talks then, for the first time in almost a day.

 

Life
is
worth living, he says suddenly, sounding more coherent than he has in days.

 

Years later, when I look down at the note card upon which I copied these words down, they will never cease to slay me.

 

Death and birth are such sweet sorrows, he continues. If there were no death, you would never know how sweet life really is. Somebody was smart enough to put that down in writing one day.

THOSE WORDS WERE HIS LAST. The few things he utters over the next day are nonsensical, unintelligible. My father is all but gone.

 

Colin drives down from Hollywood again that night. We sit by my father's bedside, not talking, just watching his chest rise and fall and counting the seconds between each breath. The intervals grow longer and longer.

 

Past midnight Colin goes to bed, and I pull a blanket over myself in the chair. I am exhausted but I don't know how to let go of my father's hand.

 

I don't know how to let go of my father.

 

I want to scoop him up like a baby, to run away with him. I don't want to do this. I don't want to say good-bye.

 

But I know that I must. I know that in order to walk forward from here, I must. Everything about the last few years rises up through me. My mother and Vermont. Colin and New York. Los Angeles and all that is to come.

 

I stand and lean over the bed, laying my head down on my father's chest. I can hear his heart, distant and muddled within all the layers of him. I let my head rise and fall with each cadence of his breath. I want to stay here forever.

 

I close my eyes and sink into sleep.

 

A few hours later I wake up. Colin is next to me, his hand on my shoulder. I am back in the chair but still holding my father's hand, my wrist throbbing against the bedrail. My eyes flick to my father's face.

 

I watch him take in a breath.

 

I stand and stretch. I open the blinds on the other side of the bed and stand looking out at the sparkling California morning. There are a couple of kids playing in the pool, their shouts and splashes muffled through the glass that separates us.

 

I turn back to my dad and place a hand on his cheek.

 

Dad?

 

Dad?

 

Nothing. No twitches. No flutters. He does not respond, except to draw in another labored breath.

 

In the kitchen I call the hospice number and give them an update. They tell me to expect a nurse by evening.

 

Colin is readying himself to leave.

 

Do you want me to come back later?

 

I shrug. I am delirious. I am exhausted. All I know is that I can't do this for much longer.

 

When he is gone, I shuffle back down the hall and take up my perch in the office chair, holding my father's hand, counting his breaths.

 

Abby, Holly, and Liz all take turns coming to the condo. They sit in the living room, talking in hushed voices, jumping up the moment I enter the room, their eyes wide with concern.

 

It's almost seven in the evening when the hospice nurse finally arrives. Abby and Holly have gone. Colin has returned and is in the living room with Liz. I lead the nurse back to my dad's room.

 

I take his hand as she checks his vitals. She is quiet and kind, smiling at me with warm eyes. I don't know how she does this day in and day out. She wants to change his diaper, and so I stand to help her. We will have to turn my father on his side to do this.

 

I just want to warn you, she says, sometimes doing this—moving them when they're like this—causes them to go.

 

I stop what I'm doing and stand there, looking down at him. My entire being is flooding downward, pooling out around us on the floor.

 

It feels like a choice, even though it isn't.

 

I'm ready, I say, my voice a whisper.

 

Carefully we turn my father to one side and the nurse unclasps the diaper, pushing it to the side and placing a new one there. I stay on the side that my father is facing, my eyes glued to his, listening to the breath coming in and out of his mouth.

 

It's okay, Dad.

 

I can't tell if I'm saying this out loud or not.

 

It's okay, Dad.

 

It's okay, it's okay, it's okay.

 

We turn him and I go around to that side of the bed, taking one of his hands while the nurse finishes with the diaper. I look down at my father's hand, at the wrinkles and the thin threads of purple veins.

 

I am flooded with a thousand memories of him. In one split second I think about all the things he was in this life. The son and the brother and the father. The inventor and the pilot, the prisoner and the protector. I think about all the ways he held on to me after my mother died. The least I can do is hold on to him in return.

 

The nurse finishes, and we roll him back to the center of the bed. She pulls the sheet up, tucking it around his chest, and we both watch his face, watch him take in a breath. I cannot tell if I am relieved or not.

 

Then seconds go by and nothing happens.

 

More seconds. Too long. His eyelids are halfway closed, his mouth all the way open.

 

Dad?

 

He sucks in a breath.

 

The nurse's voice startles me.

 

Honey, I think this is it. Do you want me to get your friends?

 

I nod at her, my eyes never leaving his face.

 

I'm leaning over the bed, holding one of his hands with both of mine.

 

Dad, Dad, Dad, Dad, Dad, Dad, Dad, Dad.

 

My tears are dripping down onto the sheet that covers his chest.

 

Colin and Liz are there then. Liz is opposite me, holding my father's other hand. Colin is beside me, his arms tight around me.

 

I am squeezing my father's hands, still warm and pliant.

 

This is the moment. All of it swirling together. Me and my mother and father. The shared afternoons of puddled golden light. The future, the past, the present. All of it, all at once.

 

Right here, right now.

 

My father sucks in a breath and then it whooshes out again softly.

 

Dad, Dad, Dad, Dad, Dad, Dad, Dad, Dad.

 

He is gone.

2011, I'M THIRTY-TWO YEARS OLD.

I
'M DRIVING IN frantic circles around Chicago's Lincoln Park neighborhood. I'm looking for a parking spot, but because of last week's blizzard piles of waist-deep snow obscure most of them. Story time at the zoo started ten minutes ago and my daughter, Veronica, is threatening certain death if I don't release her from the car seat soon.

 

Argh! I exclaim, finally cramming the car into a snow-filled parking space and twisting around to unbuckle Veronica's car seat.

 

Five minutes later we walk into story time, harried and frigid. As I remove our hats, scarves, and mittens I take a look around the room. A dozen moms and nannies are sitting on the floor with their toddlers, bopping their heads and clapping hands in time with the music.

 

We plunk ourselves down on the carpet and Vera promptly throws her arms around me in a desperate attempt to thwart the anxiety she is feeling around so many strangers. I rub her back and begin to sing along to “Old MacDonald Had a Farm.” Although she keeps her arms around me, after a few minutes I feel her loosen her grip, craning her head to look around. I can't help but let a small smile creep across my face.

 

Right this moment I'm just another young mom at a playgroup with her daughter.

 

I'm not thinking about anything in the world but me and my daughter, about the feeling of her little body pressed to me, about her breath hot on my neck, about the bond between us.

 

It's only later that I am able to take note of how different I am from who I used to be.

 

I have spent the majority of my adult life thinking about what I don't have. For a long time, I could only look at my present and my future through the lens of my past. My parents' deaths colored everything I saw.

 

There's another side to grief though, and I'm on it.

THE NEXT MORNING my cell phone rings as I'm getting ready for work. Veronica chirps from her high chair, where she's making messy attempts to spear a small pile of scrambled eggs with a fork. Greg sits in front of her, his hair still mussed from sleeping, and cajoles her playfully.