TWO BY TWO we trooped past the reception desk and down the glossy hospital corridor, Mama and Virgil, Stella and I. At the door to my father’s room we paused for a consultation. Mama was a little breathless. The powder had vanished from her flushed face and she pushed the fur collar away from her hot neck.
“How do I look?”
“You’d look a lot better if you took off that damned coat,” Stella said, reaching out to strip it from Mama’s shoulders. “I’ll carry it for you.”
Mama relented and Stella bundled the coat in her arms. The brown satin dress beneath the coat looked shabby and wrinkled, as if it might have come from the Salvation Army or the nineteenth century. There were places where her underwear bulged and the dress hung crookedly, the hem on the bias.
“Pull up your stockings,” Stella said.
“Oh, he doesn’t bother with things like that anymore,” Mama said, but she nevertheless gave her stockings a hitch. All of us examined her critically. Poor Mama. Even Dior could not have improved matters. It was the way she stood there, kinda bow-legged, in somebody else’s dress and falling-down stockings and shoes mat looked too big.
“Ready?” I said, reaching for the door handle.
Stella gave Mama a reassuring hug.
“Stay cool now. Don’t cry.”
That started the tears immediately, but she choked them off as we entered the room. Nick sat up on the high hospital bed, serene, almost languid. We gathered around him, saying hello and touching him. He looked splendid, clean-shaven, hair trimmed and combed, mustache clipped, fresh and rested, not sick at all. Mama gazed at him and wilted like warm butter, her eyes filling. She bent down and kissed him, and so did Stella. A strong aroma of shaving lotion wafted from him.
“Where’s Mario?” he asked.
“He had to work,” I said.
“Still mad at me about that baseball business.”
“Not so,” Stella said. “Mario has a family now. He’s forgotten all about it.”
“Not Mario. He don’t forget anything.”
Mama squeezed his hand.
“Do they treat you good?”
“Real good.”
I had never seen him so composed, at such ease. Maybe it was the Valium.
“You look thin,” Mama said. “Do you get enough to eat?”
“Plenty to eat. Asparagus with toast for supper. String beans and Jell-O.”
“Jell-O? You won’t eat Jell-O.”
“Tasted good.”
“What kind of sauce on the asparagus?”
“No sauce.”
Mama was appalled.
“What kind of a place is this?”
“Nice place. Nurses, nice.”
“You look pale.” She turned to us. “Don’t you think he looks pale?”
We didn’t think so.
“I feel good,” he said. Then, pleased: “I take insulin now.”
I asked if he gave the injection to himself.
“Miss Quinlan gave it to me.”
“That’ll be your job from now on, Mama,” Stella said.
“Every day, from now on,” Papa said. “Talk to Miss Quinlan. She’ll show you what to do.”
“Who’s Miss Quinlan?” Mama said.
“My nurse,” Papa said.
It bothered Mama. She folded her arms.
“Lots to learn,” he went on. “What I eat, what I can’t eat. Not like the old days. No more pasta. Not much, anyway.”
Mama was astonished. “No pasta…no spaghetti?”
“A little bit. Once a week.”
“Lasagne?”
“Christmas and Easter.”
“Pastina? The little ones, in garlic and oil?”
“Talk to Miss Quinlan. She’s got a list.”
“I’ll talk to Dr. Maselli. I don’t need to talk to a nurse.”
Virgil had a gift for him, a pack of Italian stogies. He took the pack tentatively, then passed it back. “I don’t smoke no more, son. I quit for good.”
“I don’t believe it,” Virgil said.
“Doctor’s orders. No more wine, no more cigars.”
“And no pasta?” Stella smiled doubtfully. “It won’t be easy, Papa.”
His eyes shone.
“I’ll make it.”
Mama clasped his wrist. “Course you will. First, get out of this place. Come home. Rest a few days, until you feel good. No more work, no more mountains. Sleep in your own bed. Go downtown, walk around. Talk to the menfolks at the Roma. Maybe one cigar after supper. Pretty soon you’ll feel better. I don’t care what the doctor says: one cigar never hurt anybody. Same with a little spaghetti, and a glass of wine. You ain’t gonna live forever, so enjoy it while you can. I’ll talk to Dr. Maselli. He understands.”
It made the old man smile.
“We’ll see.”
A preposterous dilemma. I didn’t think much of his chances. Sixty-five years of wine and pasta and cigars, and now he proposed changing to a life of self-denial. How could he resist the siren fragrances wafted from his wife’s cauldrons? Every room in his house was scented with the good life, the Mediterranean life. I looked down at him in that stark hospital gown, eyes bright with the determination to stay alive, his jaw as square as a stone, fists in his lap, this strong, decaying man, all shot to hell on the inside, who now proposed to pit himself against the tender guile of a woman who had kept him vigorous and content through the thousands of days of his existence. Yet, in spite of everything, miracles did happen. A man could change, if only to survive.
A nurse entered the room. She was around forty, a bleached blonde, tall, attractive, cheerful, chatty, and carrying a specimen jar.
“Good evening all!” she greeted, and we fumbled out of her way as she moved to the bedside.
“And how’s my naughty boy tonight?”
“Purty good,” Papa grinned.
She fluffed his pillow, bending over him with hefty breasts in a tight uniform, rucking him in, brushing back his hair, embarrassing him as he avoided Mama’s cold glare.
“This is my family,” he said.
“How are you all?” the nurse said. “I’m Miss Quinlan. Doesn’t he look fine tonight? You should have seen him last night! It only goes to show what loving care can do. Such a good boy. Not a bit of trouble.”
“When can we take him home?”
“That’s for the doctor to decide.”
She held out the specimen jar to Papa.
“Have you got a bit of something for me, Daddy?”
Daddy!
You could see my mother writhe as she tried to destroy Miss Quinlan with a sneer while the nurse helped Papa out of bed and toward the bathroom, his gown open and flapping in back, his bare ass showing.
He entered, closed the door, bolted it carefully, then reappeared with the half-filled jar.
“What a lovely specimen!” Nurse Quinlan enthused, holding the bottle up to the light. “Clear as honey, the best so far.”
Nick cowered back into bed past Mama’s smoldering eyes, covering himself to the chin, as if to hide his body. Miss Quinlan fussed with his pillow, smoothed his blankets, pushed back his hair.
“Good night, sweetie,” she whispered, marching off with the specimen.
A gaping silence filled the space vacated by Miss Quinlan. Mama looked lost, etherized, a shambles. She glanced toward the door, as if Miss Quinlan were still there.
“Puttana!” she said.
The bell rang, signaling the end of the visiting hour. “Time to go,” Virgil said.
Mama bent to kiss her husband on the forehead, searching deeply into his eyes.
“Be careful,” she warned.
Stella kissed him and Virgil and I said good night. We left, looking back at him watching us, a lonely old man in a stark room, on a high bed, filtered, obfuscated, blended into a blue wall.
Down the corridor in a fast shuffle raced my mother, anxious to put the hospital behind her. Stella and Virgil quickened their steps to keep up but I hung back, intrigued by images on a television screen inside one of the hospital rooms. It was a baseball game. Sitting up in bed, a man watched.
“Who’s playing?” I asked.
“The Giants and the Dodgers.”
It explained what had happened to Mario.