There was a message from Angela on the old answering machine when my father and I got back to the house. She’d be home the next night; it would be late by the time she made it to Bennelton from Logan airport in Boston. My father wrote down Angela’s flight number, drifted into the living room, and flopped down in a big armchair. The chair had a good view out the window, down the hill toward the sea. An empty coffee mug on a coaster was still where my grandfather had left it on the side table, next to a pile of magazines and newspapers. It was clearly my grandfather’s chair.
“Are we going to head back home tomorrow, Dad?”
“We’ll have to see how your grandfather is doing in the morning, but we might have to wait another day, till Angela is back.” He looked around. When he realized where he was sitting, he stood up and shook his shoulders.
“I’m going for a nap,” he announced. He had no interest in talking to me.
I understand that a lot of teenagers hate their parents, maybe for no real reason except that they exist and cramp their kids’ style and are a hassle, and I’ve felt that way about my parents to a decent degree as well, but it was just normal teenager hate, nothing very deep or personal. Standard stuff. My parents just didn’t get me very well, or properly appreciate me, which was fine, I was used to it. But now my relationship with my father truly sucked and was getting worse and it didn’t seem like there was any hope of it reversing itself. Not that I cared all that much, but I did.
My father reappeared after his nap and we had BLTs for dinner, which under other circumstances might have been a tasty treat. But they just made me think of my mother. No one cooks bacon like my mom—perfectly crispy and without burning.
Once it got dark, fireflies started blinking on and off in the front yard. Last time we were here, Julie, my dad, and I went out and caught a bunch. This time I just watched them through the window. I’d gotten a little old for that kind of thing anyway.
Upstairs, I tried looking at the moon through the telescope. To my great surprise, it actually worked. The moon was just a few days before or after full, I couldn’t tell which. I wonder how you can actually tell which it is—I’ve got to learn that. I got a good look at the man in the moon. He looked content, wise, happy. I could not relate at all.
I crawled into bed and stared at the cracks in the ceiling. I must have fallen asleep at some point because while it was still dark my father shook me awake.
“I’ve got to go to the hospital. Something happened to your grandfather. You stay here and sleep and I’ll be back in a few hours. I just didn’t want you to wake up and not know where I was.” He must have been asleep too because his hair was all pushed up on one side and there was a crease down his cheek from his pillow. But he was wide-awake on the inside. His eyes, even though they were all puffy, were super focused.
“I’ll go with you,” I said, sitting up fast.
“No. Please, Lucy, just stay here. Sleep. I’ll call you in a few hours and come back and we can go over then.”
I listened to my father go down the creaking steps and out the front door and then heard his car crunch over the pebbles on the driveway. I lay awake until the sky started to lose its darkness and the birds began their morning chatter. When I went to the window, the cardinal was there on the branch just outside. I guess that was his spot after all.
By the time my dad called me at around ten in the morning, I was certain the news was going to be bad. It was. My grandfather had had another stroke. They’d taken him by ambulance from the small medical center to a larger hospital about forty-five minutes away. My dad was trying to be very calm and clear on the phone, but I could tell by his voice that he was kind of shaken up. He sounded young. He said he’d come back as soon as he could to get me, probably around noon or one.
“Can I go over and see Grandpa?” I asked him.
“We’ll have some lunch and I’ll take you over.”
I was sitting on the front stoop when my father’s car turned in the driveway. He got out slowly, walked toward me, and stood there. He looked like he needed a hug.
“Have you eaten anything?” he asked.
“Not really,” I said.
“Well, let’s find something.” He walked past me into the house.
My dad made us omelets—there wasn’t much left in the fridge besides eggs. Then he called my mom. The news was not good. They weren’t sure the full extent of the damage at this point, but my grandfather had not regained consciousness. My father used the word “massive” to describe the stroke.
Grandpa was on the second floor in intensive care. There was a strong smell to the place: a combination of disinfectant, sweat, medicine, and something I couldn’t place—maybe death. He was in a room full of beds, most with curtains pulled around the patients. I tried not to look at the ones whose curtains weren’t closed.
Grandpa’s curtain was open, and when I saw him from a few feet away, I stopped. I didn’t mean to stop—I just did. I don’t know what I had expected, but it was as if everything I had in my mind about how a sick person in the hospital would look was blown to smithereens—this was much worse. He was hooked up to about fifty machines and looked sunken in on himself. His mouth was open and hanging off to the right, his eyes closed. He looked like he might already be dead.
My father touched my shoulder, and we moved closer to the bed. “Come on, Lucy, let’s sit down.” He pulled up a chair beside the bed and stood behind it. “Hi, Dad. I’ve got Lucy with me here.” He was talking like my grandfather was awake and could hear him. There was a lot of beeping from various machines in the room.
“Hi Grandpa,” I said. My voice sounded very small. I turned to my father. “Can he hear us?”
“I don’t know.”
We only stayed a few minutes, then went to the cafeteria. My dad had a coffee and I got a Coke. We sat around a table in plastic orange chairs. My dad took one sip of his coffee, made a face, and pushed it away. Under the fluorescent lights he looked awful. His eyes were bloodshot, with dark, puffy circles underneath.
“You wait here. I’m going to go find the doctor. I’ll be right back.” He pushed back his chair.
I’d never really thought of my dad as old, but the way his shoulders slumped as he trudged away, I hardly recognized him.
As I looked around, everyone seemed exhausted. Private tales of heartache were everywhere. It took my father a lot longer to come back than he said it would. Somehow he managed to slip right in across from me without my noticing. He was quiet for a minute; I could tell he wanted to say something to me.
“Let’s go see your grandfather again. Then we’ll head home.”
“Our home? You can go if you want, but I’m not going to leave Grandpa here all alone and head back to New Jersey.”
“No, Lucy. To Grandpa’s house. I just meant . . .” but he didn’t finish the sentence.
I wasn’t nearly as shocked to see my grandfather this time, but in a way it was almost worse, since I was able to take in the scene a little bit more. I could see where he’d missed a spot shaving under his jaw. How could this have happened so fast? How could life be so precarious?
I sat in the chair again and my father stood behind me. We didn’t have much to say. After a few minutes my dad reached out and squeezed his father’s hand.
“Careful,” I said. “He’s got a tube there.”
“I see it, Lucy,” he said. His voice was quiet. Then he looked at my grandfather, and whispered, “We’ll see you a little later, Dad.”
When we were in the car my father told me that Grandpa was in a coma.