34
I never would have pegged Adele as the stay-by-the-bedside type. They’ve assigned my father a bed on a quiet floor, where the only other inhabitants are several doors away from him and one another, as if making it easy on nurses isn’t the plan. At this point, the doctors all seem to agree that he isn’t dead, but comatose, and that he most likely won’t wake up from that, but sink deeper. My stepmother can’t seem to wrap her mind around the ultimate eventuality and acts like this is some sort of television drama where keeping up a constant patter of chat saves the patient. Then again, Adele, as long as I have known her, has kept up a constant patter of chat. I guess it doesn’t matter if the person she’s talking to is unconscious or not. I am uncharitable enough to imagine that my father is sinking faster and deeper just to get away from the persistent sound of her voice.
Any idea that this vigil is based on true affection is ludicrous. Adele is auditioning for the role of martyr. I can hear the ladies at bingo singing her praises: She stayed by his side, la da la da, by his side, by his side, la da, la da. I image it sung as a Strauss waltz.
Adele is so relentless in her vigil that I am stunned when she finally goes out of the room, leaving me alone with my father. We’re both a little squeamish about using the lavatory in the room, so I realize that she’s gone to the public ladies’ room down the end of the hall.
My father is tilted up at a slight incline, as if he might want to relax in bed and watch the news on the suspended television. I reach out and touch the undisturbed thermal blanket, which is just a little off center, gently teasing it into plumb. As I do, I feel the warmth that still radiates from his yet-living body. There is a tiny flutter of breath. I stare at him, trying hard to find something to anchor me to the moment, to the right emotion, to the feelings I should have. What good memory should I cast back for? What bad memory should I cast off?
I remember wandering into Adele’s kitchen, to find my father staring out the window, looking across the fence to our house. It was before they got married, it must have been, because I was wearing a pair of sneakers that were too short for me; I got new ones just before the wedding day. Why this image sticks with me is because I had never seen such an expression on his face before. It was not grief, not even lingering sadness, but almost that of panicked regret.
* * *
“What’s the matter, Daddy?”
“Nothing.”
“What are you doing?”
“Thinking.”
“About Mom?”
“I guess. Yes.”
“I miss Mommy.” I am still talking to his back. He rubs his face with both hands but says nothing.
“Is Adele going to be my mother?”
“Yes.” His voice is raspy, as if he has a sore throat.
“Daddy, I want to go home.”
“This is home now.”
* * *
Another man might have reached out and hugged his daughter, but the great withdrawal had already begun. Adele walked into the room and he quickly turned around and reached for her.
* * *
I give the thermal blanket another adjustment, just to feel that he’s still warm.
Adele is back, and I move away from him.
* * *
I am not staying by his bedside. I am at Paul’s office, checking my e-mails. There are the usual junk e-mails, a couple of notifications that my online bill pay is about to take money out of my account, a thought that chills me to the bone until I check my bank account and see that my dear friend and boss, Candy Kane, has direct-deposited an unearned paycheck into my account. I don’t normally get weepy, but that brings tears to my eyes. I fire off a thank-you e-mail with a promise to work it off. There are e-mails from Candy and Saundra with messages of hope and “Hang in there.”
But there is no e-mail to say “Found your dog.” I scroll down, check the junk-mail folder. I don’t know why I think an e-mail will save my life, but I do, and the lack of an e-mail with that subject line is monstrously disappointing. Alerts have been posted across the country on a million Web sites devoted to lost pets, Shetland sheepdog rescues, animal rights and the like. I follow the list of links Saundra has given me, but not one has a clue as to Mack’s whereabouts, only gentle, supportive comments.
* * *
Back at the hospital, Adele is still talking to my comatose father. The relentless beep of the monitor is the only thing telling me that he still lives. I watch it as if it’s live television, rapt with the spikes and valleys of the constantly streaming green line. I really don’t know what it means, just that as long as it maintains its steady beat, we remain here.
I’ve brought back lunch. Adele slides the bedside tray table away from my father, who for some reason has been given lunch, although he is clearly nonfunctioning. She looks at the ham and Swiss on rye with a little twist to her mouth. “No mayonnaise?”
“In the packets, in the bag.”
“These are always so hard to open.”
I take the mayonnaise and the mustard and bite into the tough plastic, ripping both open with my teeth. “Here. Squeeze.”
Adele takes the packets from me like they might be contaminated, but she squeezes both condiments liberally on the bread.
We are on death watch and we eat every bite of our sandwiches.
“I’ve been telling your father that once he’s out of here, we should be thinking about selling the house. We could move into one of those residences they built in that warehouse complex. You actually have a view of the water. The house is too much for him to keep up.”
I look away from staring at the monitor. Adele is fiddling with the arrangement of covers over my father. She is telling my dying father that she has plans; that they’ll take up housekeeping in an expensive retirement community when he dodges death. And then I get it. Adele knows perfectly well that she will be making that move by herself, but she doesn’t want my father, if by some miracle he’s still cogent beneath the surface, to think she’s leaving him behind.
“If you sell your house, you’ll be able to live pretty well. Or maybe sell both houses. That should keep you going for a long time.” I’m just making conversation here, nothing more.
Adele purses her lips in that familiar way I remember so well from my childhood, a sour “I do this for your own good” look she’d get when she was about to impart her peculiar justice. Controlled anger. “What do you know about it?”
“What do you mean?”
“You have no idea how hard it was.”
“I think I do. I fed my son oatmeal for dinner often enough.”
“That was your own fault. You left home; you got pregnant and left your husband. Now you think you can swan back here and take over.”
This leap from simple conversation to attack makes me think my earlier impression—that Adele was showing signs of dementia—was more accurate than mean-spirited.
“I’m not taking anything over.”
“We needed those rents, Justine. We still do.”
The tiny hospital room is filled with the mechanics of keeping my father alive. Adele sits at his side in the only comfortable chair. I am perched on a closed commode. The air is tainted with the scent of disinfectant and bodily functions. The single window, a solid pane of immovable glass fretted with wire, throws a glare into the room, so that the white of the thermal blanket and the white of Adele’s hair appear haloed. I throw back the rolling commode and leave the room. I’m done here.
Once again, I wish that I smoked. I could join the small band of hospital employees huddled across the street, puffing on cigarettes, flicking ash into the gutter. A couple of them sip from paper cups. There’s a small coffee shop halfway down the block from the hospital entrance, and I find myself jerking the door open to the sound of clanging bells. I order a large coffee to go and then wonder where I’m going. As I pay, my cell phone rings. I wonder if my heart is going to keep leaping like this every time it does. It’s Troy.
“I found him.”
“Mack?” I have to lean against the faux-marble counter in order to keep on my feet. My heart bangs against my chest with an audible thump. Mack!
“No. Sorry. Rockin’ Roadie. His rig blew a rod and he’s been cooling his heels in Worcester for the past few days. One of my regulars was on the horn with him just this morning. Got a location, if you want it.”
I will not let my optimistic mistake show. I shove too much money into the hand of the barista. I grab a small table and a napkin. “Shoot.”
Troy gives me an address and simple directions to the A-1 Truck Service Center.
“Troy, did your guy mention if Artie still has my dog?”
“I would have said that first. No. Course, he didn’t ask him, either, so maybe he does.”
I hold back the disappointment. “I owe you, my friend.”
“No biggie. Just go find him. Let me know what happens, okay?”
I know where Artie is. I’m a couple of hours away from tagging him. My only problem is, how am I going to get there?
* * *
When we took up canine freestyle, no one knew what I was talking about. Dog dancing? What, like waltzing? Like circus dogs? Then the British version of that television talent show featured a young woman with her dog, a Border collie, dancing to a James Bond theme. Even the professionally dour Simon Cowell was impressed. The video went viral and dog dancing entered the world of YouTube. Even Mack and I have made it onto the Internet. Saundra records all our competitions and demonstrations and posts the best of them. What Mack and I like to do best are the demonstrations. These usually take place during lulls in big dog shows, sort of like half-time performances. The crowd can really get into the act, clapping in time with the music, laughing, cheering us on. Mack is a real ham and loves it—the louder the crowd, the better. I’m always mindful of his dignity and will never subject him to some of the weirder costumes my peers often inflict on their dogs, especially the small dogs. Not for Mack some gold lamé outfit. With his natural silver-and-black coat, he needs only a “formal” collar that looks like a black tie. The black tie looks so snappy against his white ruff. Oh how happy he is when he sees me pull out his “tie.” He wriggles and makes this little chuffing noise in his throat, telling me in no uncertain terms that he’s ready to party.
Everything that has been going on around me fades into the background. I have my first real chance at recovering my dog. My dancing dog.
My mind is racing. How am I going to get to where Artie, miraculously, is held up? I have to get there now; if his truck is fixed even by this afternoon, it will be too late. I have to go now. I can make it from New Bedford to Worcester in two hours, two and a half at the worst if the Pike is backed up. It’s already 1:30. He could be on the road by four o’clock. I need a car. I need to get the car keys from Adele. My heart races and my forgotten container of coffee sloshes in my hand as I race back to the hospital, where I dump it in the nearest trash can.
The visitor elevator tortures me with its slowness in arriving and with its painful floor-by-floor ascent. I should have taken the stairs. When I get to the room, Paul is there, occupying most of the rest of the available space in the room. “Paul, can you take Adele home? I need to borrow the car.”
Paul turns to look at me with a crumpled face. “Justine, he’s gone.”
I wonder for a split second how Paul knows that Artie is gone. And then I understand what he means.
My father is dead.
* * *
I am not prepared for this. Ridiculous, I know, since it’s why I’m here. But still, the fact, the hard, cold fact of his death, has stunned me. It’s like being on a roller coaster. You know it’s going down, and you’re going to have that swooping feeling of lost gravity and maybe your breakfast rising, but you’re surprised anyway. You scream. I don’t scream, but I do reach for the wall to support myself as the room spins just a little. Adele and Paul step apart and I see him there: pale, waxy. The hands that once wrote sales contracts by the dozens are now stilled. Even when he was comatose, they had not seemed inert, devoid of life.
I wish, vainly, that I could be properly grief-stricken. And then I find myself weeping, and the grief is real.
Adele sits on the bed, her back to me, one hand on my father’s left hand, which is free now of the web of plastic tubes. The monitor with its incessant beeping is quiet, shoved off to one side. I should have realized the minute I walked into the room that it was quiet and in that silence heard the news that Paul, with his large weeping face, has given me. But I was so noisy with my own news that I couldn’t hear the silence.
Someone, a nurse maybe, or an aide, has tidied him up. Someone else, a doctor maybe, has granted “the family” permission to sit as long as we want to with the deceased. So we sit, as expected, with the fragments. Who will be the first to blink? What next? We don’t speak, pretending to be contemplating the meaning of life. Praying. I should be praying for my father’s soul, but I am praying that Artie stays put.
“They’ll steal his clothes. Make sure that you get everything of his out of the cupboard.” Adele’s first concern is equally practical and offensive. Who is going to want the old man’s underwear? He arrived without shoes. I want to scream at Adele, tell her to leave it all here. It’s useless. Better for to it disappear than have someone take it to Goodwill. But I don’t. I get up and squeeze around Paul to open the cupboard, where a blue bag hangs, containing the pitiful pajama bottoms and socks in which my father left his house for the last time. It smells.
* * *
“Can you take Adele home?” An hour has slipped by, a precious hour. If I can get on the road now, I can be back by early evening. There is nothing to be done now. The undertaker will be in soon to take the remains once we vacate the room. Adele is Paul’s mother; let him deal with her. Tomorrow, we will make the arrangements. Today, I can find Mack. They won’t miss me.
“Where are you going?” He is incredulous that I’d bolt now. I’m a little incredulous myself, but there’s nothing I can do here, and I’m mere hours away from reclaiming my dog. If I miss this chance, I may never have another one. It’s colossally bad timing, I know, but I can’t help it. There’s no way I’m not going to try to catch Artie.
I don’t answer Paul’s understandable question; it would be too hard to explain. “Please, it’s important.”
Finally, he nods, and I run out the door. As soon as I get to the car, I feel like the weight of darkness in my life is beginning to lighten. I am suddenly free, and if this wasn’t Adele’s car, I am not certain that I would turn around and come back once I find Artie and, God willing, Mack.