“I was sure something really terrible had happened,” I told Aunt Fran. “I was really sure.”
“Not at all. Your mother said he ate some hot peppers last night. He can’t really do that anymore, but he just won’t quit.”
“Mom shouldn’t buy them then.”
“She didn’t. He did!”
I smiled and moved over a bit so Pete could fit beside me.
“I think I’m going to run home for a while,” Aunt Fran said. “Want me to take the kids back to your mom’s house?”
I looked over at Anthony, who hated hospitals and had ventured no farther than the entryway to the lounge, and at Hannah, sitting nervously at the edge of a chair, her empty cheese curd container still in her hand. “What do you think, guys?” I said. “You want to go back to Grandma’s?”
“We’ll stay if you want us to,” Anthony said, and I could hear the plea in the back of his brain: Say no.
“I guess they don’t really need to be here,” I told Pete. “Why don’t you go too? You might as well take them back to the fair.”
“Can we?” Hannah asked.
“I think maybe we should stay for just a while,” Pete said.
“Well, go in and see him if you want,” Aunt Fran said. “But really, he’s fine. He’s mostly embarrassed. Sitting there in that silly gown.”
“I’ll be here,” I told Pete. “Caroline and Steve will, too. You go ahead. There’s no point in all of us hanging around.”
He stood, his hands in his pockets, deliberating. Then, “All right.” He kissed the top of my head. “I’ll see you later. I’m going to go back to the fair and eat some more of the stuff that will put me in here next.”
As soon as they left, Caroline and Steve came back into the waiting room. “Only one visitor at a time,” Caroline said. “Mom’s in there with him, but she said she’d be out in a minute.”
“I’ll go in next,” I said.
“How come you get to go first?” Steve asked.
“Because I’m the oldest.”
He flopped down onto a chair. “Right. I knew you were going to say that.”
“Then why did you ask?”
“I just wanted to hear you say it again. Warms my heart. Brings back a lot of happy memories.”
My mother came into the room and nodded to us. She looked exhausted: face wan, lines pronounced. Her hair had not been combed; it was in the same messy twist that it was this morning. I stared at her in some removed kind of fascination: I was trying to remember if I’d ever seen her go outside the house this way. As though she was aware of my thoughts, she reached up to push back the sides of her hair, to tighten her pearl studs. “I must look a fright. I left the house without doing anything.”
“I doubt they’ll take points off for your appearance, Mom,” Caroline said.
“My appearance matters to me.”
“Well, I guess we all know that.”
“Stop, Caroline!” I exploded.
“Never mind,” my mother said. “We’re all a little edgy, that’s all.”
“I’m going in to see him.” I walked down the short hall to the intensive care unit. Inside, the lights were low. Two nurses sat at the desk, working at computers. One looked up and smiled at me, and I said I was there to see my father.
“His name?”
“Oh,” I said. “Right. Stan Meyer.”
“Mr. Meyer is right here,” the nurse said, and opened the door to one of the small rooms. My father was dozing, snoring lightly. I sat quietly in the chair beside his bed and looked around at all the equipment, most of which I’d only seen on television. Three moving lines of glowing green ran across a small monitor screen. There was an IV dripping into my father’s arm, a bruised area around the place where the needle was inserted. I could see one of the electrodes on his chest; they’d shaved the hair off around it. On his thick wrist was a plastic name band, and for some reason the sight of this really bothered me. He could be anyone in a hospital. Therefore, anything could happen to him. I thought of a friend who’d lost her father recently, how she sat in the chair beside his unconscious form and told him she forgave him everything and that she hoped he forgave her too. How, moments after that, she’d watched him die.
I changed my position in my chair, cleared my throat. Then, “Dad?” I whispered.
His eyelids fluttered, then opened. He stared at me, blinked. “Oh, hi, Laura. I was dreaming. I was home, outside, painting the fence.” He smiled. “Isn’t this is a kicker? That’s the last time I’ll have those jalepeños.”
“What happened, Dad?”
“Well, it’s the damnedest thing. I ate a few last night, and then a few hours later I woke up and I was so dizzy. Then this morning, my arm went numb—your mother says I was lying on it. But I got all dizzy again too, and kind of scared, I must admit, so I called nine-one-one and they sent an ambulance. Anyway, the doc told me the good news, which is that it doesn’t look like it’s my heart. Might be what they call a TIA, a ministroke, but I can come back next week and get checked out for that.”
His speech was a bit slurred, his mouth dry. I felt sorry for him, lying there with a half-full urinal hanging off the bedside rail—he was normally a very fastidious man. Then it came to me how lucky I was, to be feeling sorry for him because he was in a hospital bed and not walking the fairgrounds with us. He was fine; he’d go home tomorrow. So many others had been faced with so much tragedy—our family had been remarkably lucky.
“You know,” I said, “you’re messing up our amazing track record.”
“What do you mean?”
“Nobody’s ever been hospitalized in our family except for childbirth.”
He nodded slowly, then said, “Well, that’s not exactly true.”
“Really?”
“It was . . . something happened a long time ago that I never told you kids about. I wasn’t sure I should. But I was lying here after I first came in, and I thought, My God, this could be it. I could never make it out of here. And all of a sudden . . . well, I just wanted to say so much to all of you. I wanted to apologize to you kids for keeping some things from you. I wish I hadn’t done that. It took coming in here for me to realize that. And yet now there’s nothing wrong, I don’t know if it’s a good idea to tell you after all, to dig up such old bones.” He smiled. “You know what I mean? Maybe it’s better just to let things be.”
“What are you talking about, Dad?” Medication? I thought. Is he confused? Should I tell the nurse?
But then he smiled, his old self, and reached out to touch my hand. “I don’t know. I just don’t know if it’s right. And yet if something comes to you so strongly when you think you might be dying, shouldn’t you go ahead and take care of it when you’re alive?”
“Take care of what?”
“Of . . . apologizing, I guess.”
“But for what?”
He hesitated for a moment, then smiled. “You know what, honey? It was a long time ago. I don’t know. Forget it.” He sat up straighter in his bed. “Is your mother still out there?”
For a moment I thought about pressing him to tell me what he was going to say, then decided against it. I’d talk to him about it later, when he came home. It couldn’t be that important, if he’d never mentioned it before now.
“Yeah, Mom’s out there. Aunt Fran left, and I sent Pete and the kids back to the fair.”
“Good. I’m coming home tomorrow, I’ll go with you then. But maybe I’ll lay off the fried food.”
“Okay.” I stood up to move beside him, kissed his forehead. “I love you,” I said, and he answered, “You’re my girl,” which was what he always said when I told him I loved him.
“Want me to send Mom in?”
He nodded, closed his eyes. “Tell her not to be offended if I’m sleeping. I’m so sleepy.”
When I got back to the lounge, Caroline and Steve were sitting together on one of the sofas.
“Where’s Mom?” I asked, and Steve said, “Gone out w
ith Aunt Fran. She’ll be back in an hour or so.”
“Well, he looks fine,” I said. “He’s sleeping now.”
Caroline closed the magazine she’d been reading. “Let’s go to the cafeteria. I need coffee.”
Steve said, “I’m too full.”
Caroline said, “Just come, okay?”
He looked quickly at me, shoved his hands in his pockets, and we all headed for the elevator as though it were a gangplank.
9
“YOU KNOW I WANT TO TALK TO YOU BOTH,” CAROLINE said. “It might as well be now.” She was nervous; her hands were clenched tightly before her.
We were sitting at a small round table, off by itself. The cafeteria was all but empty. But Caroline’s voice was so low I could hardly hear her.
“Now?” Steve asked.
“Do you mind? I mean, we’re here.”
Steve and I looked at each other and then sat quietly, waiting for her to begin.
Finally, she said, “All right. I was at a friend’s house, not long ago. She had some new perfume, and she was telling me about how she always let her husband pick out her perfume, because her mother told her that that and good cooking were ways to keep your man happy. And then she started telling me all these other things her mother told her, most of them funny but some of them really wise, and I started trying to think about what Mom had told me. And I realized she’d never told me anything.”
She looked up from her coffee at me, then at Steve. He was staring straight ahead, probably trying very hard not to drum his fingers on the table.
“I don’t know what you mean,” I said.
“I mean she never told me anything. Like . . . about how to iron, or sew, or cook.” I rolled my eyes at this last—who would want to learn to cook like our mother?—but Caroline saw me and said, “Or about fashion. Or how to talk to boys. Or girls! And when I started thinking of that, I realized—”
“Caroline,” Steve said.
“What?”
“Is this going to be . . . I mean, are you going to tell us about all the injustices you suffered at the hands of our terrible, terrible mother?”
“Steve,” I said.
“What?”
“Let her talk.”
“She can talk. I’m just asking what this is about.”
Caroline leaned forward, spoke earnestly. “I want to know something, Steve. I wonder if you can tell me about one time when you saw some tenderness in her. Let’s just start there.”
“In Mom?”
“Yeah.”
“Well . . . lots of times.”
“Such as?”
He slumped back in his chair and looked around the room, impatient. “I don’t know, like when I got hurt and stuff. Or sick.”
“What did she do then?”
“Look, Caroline. I know you’ve got problems with Mom. You always did. But I don’t want to sit around and talk about my relationship with her. I don’t have any problem, okay? So if you want to talk about it, you need to talk about you. But just say it, and don’t make such a big fucking stageplay out of it!”
“You know what, Steve?” She smiled bitterly, started to speak, then stopped. “Never mind. What a dumb idea, to think I could talk to you. You’re not here. You’ve never been here. You avoid thinking about anything; you just buy big-boy toys and—”
Steve stood and pushed his chair hard under the table. “I figured when you said you wanted to talk to me and Laura, it’d be some crap like this. You know what I think, Caroline? I think you should grow up. You’re fifty years old, for Christ’s sake.”
“Fifty-one, thank you. And excuse me, I should grow up?”
“I’m going back upstairs,” he said. “Dad’s in the hospital. That’s why we’re here, remember? Believe it or not, we’re involved in something here that has nothing to do with you.”
“Steve,” I said, but it was too late. He walked away.
Caroline watched him disappear out the swinging door. “I don’t know what I was thinking. He’s never cared anything about me.”
“That’s not true,” I said.
“It is. I shouldn’t mind, really. I should be used to it.”
“He does care about you. He doesn’t like to talk about things, that’s all. I mean, you ask him about tenderness . . . he’s not like that. He’s a guy, only worse. And—well, Dad is in the hospital.”
“I know he is, but he’s fine! And I just figured, since we were all here together, now was as good a time as any. I needed something. I really needed something from him, and I thought I’d ask.”
“Well, ask then. You’ve got to be direct with him.”
She looked down. “It’s hard.”
I wanted so much to say, tiredly, Everything is hard for you, Caroline. But I didn’t. I looked out the window, at the birds flying free, and said, “Well, ask me, then. I’m here. Ask me.”
She nodded, took a deep breath in, blew it out. “One thing I want to know is what I was asking Steve. Really. I want to know if you can remember anything . . . tender that Mom ever did.”
“Okay, so you mean being hugged and kissed, stuff like that?”
“No. I know she did that sometimes, but it was always . . . it felt like it was for show. It was always in front of someone else. No, I mean other things. Things she did just for you, without an audience. Like . . . did she ever just sit on your bed and talk to you?”
I thought back and tried to remember. Truthfully, I couldn’t recall anything like that. And so I said, “No. I don’t think she did. But, see, I don’t think I minded.”
She pushed her cup aside, leaned in toward me. “All right. Let me ask you this, then. Do you remember her ever being overtly cruel to you?”
“Oh, Caroline. Weren’t you, as a mother? Weren’t you ever cruel to Eva?”
“Yes. Yes, I was, I’m sure. But not . . . it wasn’t intentional. It wasn’t dispassionate or calculated.”
“What does that mean? You think Mom was intentionally cruel to you?” I was beginning to wish I’d walked out with Steve. Given my mother’s background, it was understandable that she wasn’t particularly cuddly, that there was about her a certain dark mystery. But she had never raised a hand to us, had rarely even raised her voice.
“She was. And she crippled me in ways I can’t even . . .” She closed her eyes, rubbed her forehead. Then she looked at me, her green eyes hard. “This is part of the deal I made with the therapist, okay? I promised I’d talk to you and Steve. If I can just get some sort of acknowledgment—”
“Caroline. I’m sorry for what you’ve been feeling. I am. I know your life growing up was difficult; you were a very sensitive kid. And . . . highly imaginative in ways that I think hurt you. I think you hurt yourself because of the way you seemed to dwell on sad things. I thought you’d have to be hospitalized after we saw Bambi.” I smiled at her, but she didn’t smile back.
I leaned in closer, chose my words carefully. I didn’t want her to know what I was thinking, which was that she was a liar. I had to find a gentler way to say that—and to think it. Deluding herself; that might be a better way of saying it. I’d think of something.
For the time being, I just said, “Look. I understand you’re going through a lot of pain now. I wish I could help—I’m worried about you. But you’re talking in circles. I think we should go back upstairs. We can talk more about this later, I promise.” I stood, picked up my purse. Caroline stayed seated.
“Are you coming?”
She didn’t look at me. But she said, “One time, when I was about seven, she came into my room and I was lying on the bed, naked—I wanted to see how it felt to have all my skin against that silky coverlet I used to have. And she yanked me off the bed and shoved me up against the wall and said, ‘Shame on you! Shame on you!’ and shook me so hard I thought my neck would snap.” She swallowed. “Then she put her hands around my throat and wouldn’t let go. She didn’t squeeze, but she wouldn’t let go. Finally, I bit her. Then she let go.” r />
I sat back down at the table.
“That’s not the only thing she did like that. She told me it was my fault, that I made her do these things to me. I believed her.” She laughs. “And you know what? Telling you all this now, I can feel some part of me still believing it.”
“Caroline, is this really true?” She looked up quickly at me, and I said, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, but is it? Tell me honestly, now.”
Caroline laughed, a short, bitter sound. “Right.” She slid out of her chair and walked quickly away, and I cast about for the right thing to do. Call her back? Call her names? The truth was, I didn’t believe her. I couldn’t imagine my mother doing such things. Then it came to me that maybe what I couldn’t imagine was my not knowing. And by extension, of course, my not doing anything about it.
I remembered a winter night when Caroline and I were perhaps eight and ten. We were lying together in my bed, the blankets pulled up high over us. We’d had a flashlight that we were using as a microphone, and we’d been playing some sort of game where I was the host and Caroline was a glamorous movie star who was being interviewed about her glamorous life. “And how many Christmas pres-ents did you get this year?” I’d asked, and Caroline had said, in a pleasingly affected voice, “Oh, my heavens, so many; too many to count. I got a horse, a Tennessee Walker. And I got a jewelry box full of diamond necklaces. And I got toilet paper made of satin and silk.” We’d giggled, I remember, and then, all of a sudden, she’d turned to me and said, “I wish I could die.” At first, I was confused, thinking the “star” was talking. But then I had understood it was Caroline, speaking for herself. “Don’t you?”
“Don’t I what?” I was beginning to be afraid of her. I could feel a coldness rising up my spine. I hated how her bangs were cut crookedly, how pale she was, the bruise-colored circles beneath her eyes.
“Don’t you wish you could die now?” she whispered. “Just like this?”
“No!” I’d said, and she stopped smiling. I think she was genuinely surprised at my response. “Why would you wish a thing like that?”
“Because. We’d go to heaven if we died right now. If we live much longer, we probably won’t. Our sins will get bigger and bigger.” She had turned on her side, facing me. “Anyway, I don’t like it here. I don’t really like it.”