“They said you were the best legal mind in the state,” I said. “The best lawyer before a jury. The fairest judge.”
“It got away from me, boys. A good reputation goes only so far. Mine was a vanishing act I didn’t see coming. It didn’t fight fair … came up behind me. Ambushed me. Tell them, Jack. You were proud to be my son.”
“Proudest thing about me, Dad,” I said truthfully.
“I’ve quit drinking three times this year, Jack,” the judge said. “But life wounds me in the places only hope can reach. This thing about Lucy. Lucy. My Lucy.”
“Not yours anymore,” Dallas said. “Get that straight before Dr. Pitts takes you in to see Mom.”
Tee was looking out the window, watching something closely, when Dr. Pitts came out of the intensive care unit and made his way to where my father was sitting. We heard the sound of a boat’s motor droning in a high-pitched whine on the river.
“No change,” Dr. Pitts informed us all, then said to my father, “Thank you for coming, judge. Her doctor told me the next day or two are critical. If she can make it through them, he believes she has a fighting chance.”
“C’mon, Mom,” Tee yelled by the window. “Give ’em hell, girl.”
“You’re in a hospital,” Dallas said, “not a sports bar.”
“Thanks for that timely bulletin, bro,” Tee said. “And get ready for a full-contact scrimmage. John Hardin’s tying up his boat down at the dock.”
“Help us, Jesus,” Dallas said.
“Worse than it used to be?” I asked Dupree.
“Still a bit off,” Dupree said. “But he’s become a little dangerous. He spooks easily.”
“Now, for the enjoyment of our live audience, ladies and gentlemen, we present madness,” Dallas said.
“First death,” Tee said, “then drunkenness.”
“Calm down, Tee,” Dupree suggested. “Don’t let him see that you’re nervous.”
“I’m not nervous,” Tee said. “I’m scared shitless.”
“He hasn’t had his shot this month,” Dupree said. “He’s fine after he’s had his shot.”
There was a tap on the window and John Hardin made a motion for Tee to unlock it. Tee made a motion with his arm that John Hardin go around to one of the doorways and John Hardin answered him by selecting a brick that formed the border of a flower garden near a memorial fountain. When it looked as though he was going to hurl the brick through the window, Tee unlocked it quickly and John Hardin pulled himself up into the waiting room with catlike ease.
“You ever heard of doors, John Hardin?” said Dallas.
“Yeah, I heard of them,” my youngest brother said, “I just don’t like them.”
His eyes surveyed the room until they rested on me.
“Mr. Pizza,” he said.
“Hey, John Hardin,” I said. “Yep. I still live in Italy.”
“I looked up Italy in an atlas recently,” he said. “It’s not anywhere near America. What’s the sense of living in a place that’s not even near America?”
“Folks’re different,” I said. “That’s why Baskin-Robbins has thirty-one different flavors to choose from.”
“South Carolina is all the flavor I need,” he said.
“It’s nice to see Jack, isn’t it, John Hardin?” Dupree said.
“Speak for yourself,” John Hardin said. “How’s Mom?”
“Bad,” Dallas said. “Real bad.”
“What’s that supposed to mean, Dallas?” John Hardin said.
“She’s terrific,” Dallas corrected himself. “She’ll be back soon after she finishes her ten-thousand-meter run.”
“Relax, bro,” Tee said. “Let me get you a cup of coffee.”
“Caffeine makes me crazy,” John Hardin said.
“Hold the coffee,” Dupree said.
“I guess you think we should bow down to hail the conquering hero,” John Hardin said to me.
“Put it off for a day or two,” I said. “Don’t feel you have to rush it.”
“I hardly knew you were gone,” my youngest brother said, then went to take a seat as far away from us as he could get. He lit his first cigarette and began smoking it seriously.
“Ever hear of lung cancer?” Dupree asked.
“Ever hear of diarrhea of the mouth?” John Hardin answered and we backed away from him.
We turned our attention to him, but secretly. He was tall, thin, and sunburned in an unhealthy way. There was something about John Hardin’s eyes that carried the terror of suddenly freed birds in them. Though each of us recognized that we had survived a spectacularly rocky childhood and thus carried a portion of impairment and breakdown, none had been as grievously harmed as John Hardin McCall. Even as an infant, John Hardin carried sensibilities primed and calibrated to register the slightest disturbances. Always he seemed too openhearted and innocent to survive the battle that was our parents infamous love affair with each other.
He was the baby of the family, the best-loved child of all of us, and he was not tough enough to endure the long years watching our world go corrupt around the edges, our father drink enough hard liquor to fill up an averaged-size mobile home, and our mother grow weary of even faking the art of mothering.
Tee, the brother nearest John Hardin in age, watched him in alarm. “Tell Jack about your tree house, John Hardin.”
“Tree house?” I asked.
“Grandpa gave John Hardin an acre of land on the water,” Dupree whispered. “John Hardin’s become something of a hermit. He’s spent the last year building this tree house in an oak tree that hangs out over Yemassee Creek.”
Dallas said, “It’s nice but it’ll never make the tour of homes.”
Dupree whispered to me, “The elevator never made it to the top floor in that boy.”
John Hardin said, “Why can’t this family shut up? Is there anything wrong with everybody just shutting up?”
“Have you had your shot this month?” Dupree asked John Hardin.
“Every time I get upset you ask me if I’ve had my goddamn shot,” John Hardin answered, flushing with rage, and punching the palm of his hand to keep his hands from trembling.
“Your doctor called me,” Dupree said, walking up to his brother. “You skipped your appointment. You know you get agitated when you don’t get your shot.”
“I get agitated when you get on my ass for not getting a shot.”
“You ought to quit eating red meat for a while, bro,” Tee suggested to John Hardin. “Try a little Zen meditation. I don’t believe in medication.”
“A guru is born,” Dallas said acidly. “Quit sounding like you were born in California.”
“I hate California and everything that comes from there,” Dupree agreed. “It makes me sorry we won the Mexican war.”
John Hardin ended all talk of nutrition and geography by saying, “Fourteen medical doctors went on trial last year for murdering their patients. That’s a fact. Put that in your pipe, losers.”
“So what?” Dupree asked after a silence that waited too long.
“You don’t get it. It doesn’t reach out and slap you in the face. What do you guys need to face the truth? Skywriting? Wake up. It’s perfectly clear.”
“You’re scaring Jack,” Dupree warned. “He’s never seen you since you turned into Quasimodo.”
“I’m going to tell your boss, Dupree,” John Hardin said. “I’m going to report you to the proper authorities. Bet your ass, I am. You work as a government employee for the state mental hospital. On the scale of one to ten, that’s a minus three. No status, no pay, the bottom rung of society.”
Tee threw a newspaper over to Dupree and said, “You might want to check the want ads, bro.”
“I’m happy in my job,” Dupree said. “I get to work with neat guys like John Hardin all day long.”
“One day, you assholes are gonna go too far with me. You’ll get to me because I know what you’re saying. I’ve got ways of knowing everything you think about me
, what you’re planning.”
“C’mon, John Hardin,” said Dallas. “That’s just the red meat talking.”
“Do you want to go in and see your mother, John Hardin?” Dr. Pitts asked. “Your father’s upset and maybe you could help him by joining him.”
“I know what you’re trying to do,” John Hardin said. His face twisted as the howling winds of paranoia rose out of deep uncharted canyons within him. “Don’t think I don’t know what you’re trying to do. I’m on to you. I’m on to all of you.”
“I just wanted you to have a chance to see your mother,” Dr. Pitts tried to explain. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“You know she’s dead,” John Hardin cried out, but there was a rising fury in his voice, not grief. “You want me to be the one who discovers she’s dead when it’s you who killed her. You. She didn’t have cancer when she was married to my father. Ever think of that? You’re a doctor. A goddamn doctor. You could’ve given her a physical exam every goddamn day. But no. You ignore all the signs of cancer. The seven deadly warning signs. Every doctor on earth knows about the seven deadly signs.”
“Jesus Christ,” I said.
Dupree said, “Let’s go together to get your shot.”
John Hardin’s eyes blazed as he spoke. “I hate you the most, Dupree. You’re number one on my list. Then comes Jack. Precious Jack, the firstborn son who thinks he was born in a manger. Then comes Dallas, who thinks he’s some kind of genius when he actually doesn’t know shit …”
“Let me buy you a drink, son,” my father said, hearing the commotion as he came out of the intensive care unit shaken.
“That’s the last thing he needs, Dad,” Dupree said. “Liquor makes it worse.”
“It don’t do a lot for Dad either,” Dallas observed. “Why don’t you try one of those shots on Dad?”
“I’ll go with you,” Tee said to John Hardin. “You and I’ll go with Dupree to get that shot.”
“The only cure that’d help me at all is for everyone in this room to get cancer and for my sweet mother to walk out of here with me.”
Dupree rose and approached his brother cautiously. “Please, John Hardin. We know how this ends. You’ll get disoriented and do something stupid. You won’t even mean to do it or know you’re doing it. But it’s in your hands. Get a shot or the cops’ll put out a bulletin to pick you up.”
“If I needed a fortune-teller, asshole, I’d go order a Chinese meal,” John Hardin screamed. “You want me to get that shot so you can be part of the cover-up. Right? You know that they’re killing Mom right now. They’re poisioning her bloodstream. It destroys her liver, her kidney—everything. Know anything about science, losers? Any of you guys pay attention in Mr. Gnann’s chemistry class? Mom’s not coming out of that room. She’s not. She’s not.”
“Just what we need,” Dallas whispered to no one in particular. “An optimist at a death watch.”
“I’m the nicest of the brothers,” John Hardin said. “Mom said that, not me. I’m just reporting the facts. She said I was her favorite. The pick of the litter.”
“You were the baby,” I said. “She always loved you the best.”
“How you like them apples?” John Hardin gloated, pointing at my other brothers. “Even the precious one, the oldest, sides with me.”
“Son, why don’t you sit here with me and we’ll talk about the good old days,” the judge suggested.
“The good ol’ days? What a laugh that is. You want something funny, losers? Want something to laugh about? How’s that for a punch line? The good ol’ days.”
John Hardin moved quickly to the open window and let himself out. We watched him sprint to the boat dock and gun the boat out toward the main channel, heading away from town.
“It may take time,” the judge said, “but this’ll make us closer as a family.”
“I can feel it working already,” said Dallas as he watched John Hardin’s boat in the distance.
Late in the afternoon I took my fifteen-minute turn at my mother’s bedside, holding her hand and kissing her cheek and softly telling her everything I could about her granddaughter. I also told her that her face was still pretty by any measure or at any age, but I knew that she would hate to be studied without her makeup on or her hair combed as I was doing now. Small lines radiated out from her eyes in a dozen cutting streams. Similar lines flowed from the edges of her lips, but her forehead was as smooth as a child’s. My mother had used her beauty as a razor in this town; it was the only weapon she had brought to a luckless life. There were other women in Waterford more beautiful than she but none more sensual, or indeed, more overtly sexual. I have never seen a sexier woman than my own mother and for as long as I could remember, she had attracted men in droves. Her figure was still full yet slim and was the envy of her peers and the wonder of her sons. Her feet, which she took great pride in, were beautiful, her ankles shapely and perfect. “Your mother’s a package,” the judge used to say in admiration. “She’s a real package.”
I looked at the silver bag of chemotherapy dripping its poisons into my mother’s veins. It seemed pure as spring water, the color of expensive gin, and I imagined the malignant engagement of cells that was being joined in the underglooms of her bloodstream. The chemotherapy smelled acrid and corrupt, and I thought again of the warning that Lucy was in as much danger of being killed by the chemotherapy as by the leukemia.
Dupree relieved me after my fifteen minutes were up and I noticed that we were instinctively obeying an innate chronology, taking turns from oldest to youngest in the exact order of our birth.
The weight of my brothers’ gaze was almost too much for me when I returned to the waiting room. My exile had changed their understanding of me and I could feel their morbid curiosity. I was leading a life none of them knew anything about, with a child none would recognize if she walked into the room that very moment. I wrote about places they had not seen, of food none had tasted, of people who spoke languages few of my family had heard. My clothes were different and they no longer felt easy in my presence, nor I in theirs. In some way we all felt measured, discarded and dismissed. And I was found guilty because I proclaimed by my absence that the South was not a good enough place for me to live and raise my daughter.
Flowers kept arriving for Lucy that were forbidden in the intensive care unit, so my brothers and I fanned out through the hospital dropping off bouquets to patients who lacked flowers. Dallas’ wife, Janice, came by with their two kids and I watched young Jimmy and Michael look at me with suspicion as they climbed easily into the laps of their other uncles.
“Serves you right for being a stranger so long,” Dallas said and I laughed in agreement.
At five o’clock, Lucy’s young doctor, Steve Peyton, gathered us together for the grim yet hopeful prognosis. My mother had let the symptoms go on far too long before she sought medical help. The doctor told us again that the next forty-eight hours were critical, but if she could make it through that time period, she would have a chance of surviving this episode. We stood uncomfortably before him like prisoners before a judge famous for his harshness. Though his words frightened us, we tried to make the best of a bad situation. As soon as he left, Dr. Pitts went back in to be with his wife.
My brothers and I sat together in silence.
Then Dallas said, “Anyone seen Dad?”
“You took him home to change,” Tee said.
“And I brought him back here.”
“He went to smoke a cigarette a couple of hours ago,” I said.
“Uh-oh,” Dupree said. “I’ll take the West Wing.”
Dallas found him passed out in an empty room on the second floor. He had drunk a whole bottle of Absolut Vodka. My father thought that no one could smell vodka on his breath and he often drank it when he made long appearances in society. It was unconsciousness that betrayed his secret drinking, not bad breath. Dupree and I carried him out of that hospital room and down the stairway as Tee and Dallas ran ahead, opening d
oors. We laid him in the backseat of Dupree’s car and Tee got in and let our father’s head rest on his lap. Dallas and I jumped in the front seat with Dupree, who drove us to my father’s house. Because I had been gone so long the town’s loveliness ambushed me as I listened to my brothers’ small talk.
Dupree went slowly along the oak-lined avenue that ran beside the Waterford River. Twelve mansions, immemorial and speechless as chess queens, lined the other side of the road. The mansions and the water oaks stood in exquisite counterpoint and one could feel the urge of long-dead architects to build splendid houses, asylums from the long summers, houses without artifice or whimsy that would last a thousand years and not dishonor the water oaks, so lordly and fine on the green altar that rose from the salt river.
I heard my father stir in the backseat. For a moment, it seemed as if he had quit breathing, then a soft, childlike snoring began again and I relaxed.
“I thought he’d stopped drinking,” I said.
“He had,” Dupree said, checking his father in the rearview mirror. “He blamed the liquor for the divorce. Like he was some kind of prince when he wasn’t drinking.”
“When did he start back?”
“Immediately,” Dallas said. “Dad claimed liquor was the only thing that could get him through his grief over his lost mate. His words—lost mate—not mine. He’s an old-fashioned kind of guy.”
“Hey, you think I don’t have ears, you little bastard,” the judge said from the backseat.
“Oh good,” Tee said. “Dad’s up.”
“You think I don’t have feelings?”
Dupree looked at me and we both shrugged our shoulders.
“Those aren’t feelings you’re experiencing, Dad,” I said. “Those are delirium tremens.”
My father roared back, “How do you say ‘fuck you’ in Italian, Jack?”
“Va fanculo.”