A Little Help from Above (17 page)

Maybe that’s what she would say to him. Being the sentimental fool he was, it’s exactly what he’d want to hear. No sappy apologies, no hysteria. Just a few, choice words straight from the heart. She hoped. For now that she’d decided she wanted her father back in her life, it would be devastating if he played tit for tat.

To Shelby’s credit, she successfully made it through the hospital parking lot, the lobby, and the elevator without losing her nerve. Of all things, it was the antiseptic smell in the hallways that made her want to bolt, for the rancid association with illness was overpowering. Yet something propelled her to hold her breath and keep moving through the corridors. Perhaps it was the words she’d uttered to Lauren only moments earlier. It was pointless to harbor anger at a building.

Anger at people was another matter completely. She tried not to think about what she would do if she so happened to bump into Dr. Glavin, Scott Rosenthal, Irma or Bernie Weiner, and especially Aunt Roz. In her sensitive state, any encounter with the enemy would surely destroy what little nerve was left in her emotional tank.

To her relief, Shelby found her way to her father’s room without incident. But relief was overtaken by dread when she peeked inside. The Larry Lazarus she knew was a large, strapping fellow with vast hands and a booming voice. He could not possibly be the lump of gray clay who lay bruised and broken, almost beyond recognition, with tubes, wires, and hoses camouflaging his body. He could not be the patient idling in bed, pale and unshaven, teasing the angel of death.

“It’s okay to go in.” A nurse brushed past Shelby at the door. “He’s all cleaned up after his little accident this morning…How you doing, Mr. L?” She parted the blinds to let the sunlight in. “You about ready for your dinner?”

He grumbled something about not caring one way or another.

“Looks like you have some company now. How about I bring it later?”

Shelby flinched. This wasn’t how she wanted to make her entrance.

Larry looked over, then immediately turned away. “It’s no one. Bring my dinner.”

“She doesn’t look like no one to me.” The nurse checked his vital signs. “A little company is good for the spirits.”

“Hello, Daddy,” Shelby waved.

“Oh joy. The great Shelby has descended from the mountain. Go away. I need my rest.”

“How are you feeling?” Dumbest question of the century.

“How should I be feeling?” He stared out the window. “First I was hit by a truck. Then my daughter, my flesh and blood, opens her big trap and sticks a knife in her mother’s heart!”

“I’ll leave you two alone.” The nurse rushed out so quickly she created a breeze.

“It’s not like you think,” Shelby stammered at the door, taken aback by his harsh tone.

“Don’t tell a dying man what to think!” he bellowed. “No matter how you slice it, you did a rotten, disgraceful thing. Go figure, I said to myself. My wife survives a terrible accident, then our daughter decides it’s a good time to waltz in and finish the job.”

Shelby looked down, bristling at the reference to her being Roz’s daughter. But obviously this wasn’t the time to fight that battle. Or any battle. Lauren was right. He didn’t want to see her, so what was the point of trying to make conversation? At that she turned around and walked out the door. Plan B was over.

“Get back in here, young lady!” her father cried out, his vocal cords miraculously as strong as she remembered.

Shelby froze. What was it about a man’s loud voice that stopped women in their tracks? She had smirked at Irma for coming to the same dead halt when her ex-husband yelled out her name. Now here she was, equally intimidated, standing in the doorway.

“Come over here and sit down where I can see you.” He pointed to the chair next to his bed.

A little girl named Shelby followed orders. Clearly he’d come out of the coma intact.

“Why now, Shelby?” He shook his fist. “After all these years, you couldn’t just let it rest?”

“I…It wasn’t my intention, believe me. She provoked me.”

“Oh, bullshit! You’ve never been provoked a day in your life. You did it because you saw she was too weak to defend herself.”

“That’s not true,” Shelby protested. “Bringing it up was the last thing on my mind.”

“So? What? You were in the middle of polite chitchat when all of a sudden it occurred to you, hey, now would be a good time to turn the knife?”

“That’s not how it was, okay? She accused me of being a lousy sister because I won’t buy into this whole stupid surrogate mother thing. Then when she said it was a shame I wasn’t loyal and devoted like she was to Mommy, I guess I just lost it.”

“And what did you think Lauren would do after she found out? Go out and celebrate?”

“I don’t know. I wasn’t thinking about her…”

“No, of course you didn’t think about her,” he yelled in spite of excruciating pain. “Why would you think of her? You’re always so wrapped up in yourself and your goddamn career. But if you knew what we’d been through with her…Believe me. It’s been one heartache after the next.”

“I know.”

“You know nothing!” Saliva sprayed from his mouth.

“Fine.” Shelby jumped. “I know nothing.”

“Don’t pacify me!” He bellowed. “Lauren’s been through hell, and who do you think has been there to pick up the pieces? Your mother and me! Poor kid goes and marries two different guys without a pot to piss in, and every month we’re putting money in the bank so they have something to live on. And when we’re not covering her expenses, we’re there for her to lean on when she gets depressed because she’s not pregnant. Or, because the medication to help her get pregnant is making her sick. Then finally the Great Shelby shows up, not to be a big sister to her, oh no, that would be too much to ask. No, she has to make even more trouble by telling her that her father had an affair.”

Shelby was dizzy. To what did she respond first? The accusation she was a horrible person, a horrible sister, a horrible daughter? “But it’s true, Daddy. You did have an affair.”

“How dare you be so disrespectful!”

“I’m disrespectful?” Shelby raised her voice. “You’re the one
who slept with your sister-in-law while your wife was in this hospital dying of cancer. What were you thinking when you betrayed Mommy? That it was okay because she was too sick to find out?”

“Thinking? Who was thinking? I was in pain. An agony I hope to God you never know.”

“I’m sorry.” Shelby wiped her wet nose with the back of her hand. “What you did was unconscionable, inexcusable, and…downright shitty.”

“Well how’s this? I don’t have one single regret. Roz saved my life.”

“Yes, but she ruined mine!”

“You don’t know what you’re saying.” He turned to her with tears in his eyes. “Roz took you into her life as if you were her own. She cared for you, she loved you, she did everything she could to help you forget your pain.”

“I didn’t want to forget!” Shelby cried. “I wanted to remember everything about Mommy. How she smelled so nice in the morning, how she always combed my hair and kissed my head, how she loved to pick out my clothes for the next day of school. Roz was nothing like her. She was a fat pig. I don’t even know how you looked at her naked. She was nothing like Mommy.”

Larry tried to prop himself up on his elbows, but had neither the strength nor the maneuverability. Even the slightest movement inflicted pain. “Come over here,” he signaled.

Shelby moved closer, not expecting that in one swift motion her father would extend his arm and slap her face. He fell back in agony, as did she. He had never raised a hand to her before.

“I should have done that years ago,” he huffed. “How dare you speak that way. You looked at Roz and saw someone who chose not to starve herself for the sake of being stylish. I looked at Roz and saw a loving woman who was healthy as a horse. A good woman who could move a roomful of furniture, do the shopping and cooking, and still have the strength to hold me at night.

“I tell you, watching your mother wither away to a bag of bones was a horror, and I didn’t care if I lived or died, kids or no kids. But your aunt Roz. She gave me the will to carry on. She made me survive, so I was there for you and Lauren. I’m telling you right now. Without her you would have lost me, too.”

Shelby was still holding her hand over the cheek her father had
struck, shocked not by the soreness of her jaw, but by his words. She had never allowed herself to believe he might love another woman after her mother, let alone a woman who stole him out from under her nose. Yet he was truly speaking from the heart. He loved Roz.

“I’m sorry,” she spoke softly, suddenly feeling a chill from the frosty air-conditioning. “I guess until now I never considered your needs.”

“No kidding.” His voice softened. “That’s why I’m going to tell you a story. An unbelievable story. Like the fairy tales I used to read to you at night. Only this one is true. Every last word.”

“It’s okay. I don’t need to hear this.” Shelby stood.

“Sit down!” he barked. “You do need to hear this.”

Shelby, the newly obedient one, sat back down.

“First of all, you have to understand this wasn’t planned. It just happened.”

“Men always say that. ‘I swear, honey, I had no idea it was going to happen.’”

“Be quiet, or I’ll slap you again. And stop with the sarcasm. You think this is easy for me?”

Shelby folded her hands in her lap.

“One morning I’m on the way home from the hospital after another sleepless night on a cot in your mother’s room, and I’m depressed as hell. Scared. Shaken. Miserable. You name it. And I’m thinking, I’m not strong enough to go on. Maybe I should just drive off the side of the road.

“I knew the doctors were bullshitting me. They’d tell me about this new drug, or that new experiment so I’d keep my hopes up. But a husband knows when his wife is dying. She’d just been through another round of radiation and was weak from nausea. She couldn’t go on much longer.

“Anyway, I walk in the door and there’s Roz, looking like an angel, I swear. She had just moved in with us to take care of you and Lauren, and she’d been running around trying to fill your mother’s shoes. She was baking, and cleaning and carpooling, the works. And remember, she was a single girl then, totally unaccustomed to our lifestyle.

“So she greets me at the door, a basket of laundry in her hand, and I say, ‘Why are you doing the laundry? I’ll bring it over to the plant.’ And she says, ‘I have to keep busy, or I’ll die.’ And, of course, I understand.

“Then she tells me she just made coffee and baked a fresh banana bread, and I should sit down and join her. Well, you know me. I hate banana bread, but the house smelled so wonderful, and I was just happy not to be at the hospital. So we sit at the dining room table and we talk. And the house is so nice and quiet because you girls were at school. And the phone wasn’t ringing for a change, and Tony Bennett’s on the radio…

“And I see that Roz has been crying, too, and we talk about Sandy, and how much we love her, and I take her hand because I realize I’m not the only one who’s suffering. Then she kisses my hand, and I feel her tears on my skin, and I want to comfort her. So I get up, and we hug. And there we are, holding on to each other for dear life, and suddenly I go to kiss her cheek, but she turns, and our lips touch, and I’m feeling dread and shame and love all at once, and I kiss her back with more passion than I can believe, and I’m feeling her warmth, and we began to undress each other. Right there in the dining room.”

“Please. Daddy. I really don’t want to hear this.”

“Yes. Yes you do. Because you need to understand the moment. Understand how two frightened, tired people can seek solace from one another without the National Enquirer passing judgment on them.

“So we go from the dining room into the living room, and there’s piles of clean clothes on the couch, on the chairs, towels folded on the rugs, so much laundry I’m thinking to myself, She’s trying to compete with me. She’s taking in the neighbor’s laundry. Anyway, I guess you could say we fell into the softness of it all, and we made love. Beautiful love. I tell you the moment still brings tears to my eyes.”

And to mine, Shelby thought.

“I tell you, Shelby, it was innocent and passionate, and when it was over we didn’t feel shame or dread. We felt alive. We weren’t giving in to death, we were reminding ourselves we were whole and healthy. Then, of course, reality hit, and we were so embarrassed we avoided each other altogether. And that was that. No one had to know. It was our little secret.”

“Until she found out she was pregnant.”

“Exactly. That’s when everything changed. I hoped she might tell me there was someone else, but Roz wasn’t the kind to sleep around. In fact, if you want to know a little secret, she had quite a
crush on me when I first met your mother. She was a little girl then. A baby. Anyway, she was heartbroken when Mommy and I got married, and I guess I knew when Roz and I made love that she still had strong feelings for me. So what was I supposed to do? She was pregnant with my child. Break her heart? Tell her to get an abortion?

“Then I began to think. Maybe this was God’s plan. He was taking my wife away, but he was bringing me someone else who really loved me, and you, and Lauren. Roz is not like your mother, I know, but she’s a wonderful woman. Very strong and vivacious and caring. And a helluva good bowler. A one-sixty handicap, and I don’t have to tell you how that’s helped our league.

“Anyway, your mother died a few months later, and now Roz is as big as a house, and of course everyone is asking questions. Who’s the father? Are you getting married? So she makes up this story about a fella from Philly that didn’t work out, but she was keeping the baby and living with us until she could get her own place.

“I tell you, Granny Bea was beside herself. She just lost one daughter to cancer, and now the other one is going to have an illegitimate child. She’d walk around saying, ‘Thank God my Sheldon didn’t live to see this day.’

“Then before we knew it, Eric was born, and I tell you now, it was the best thing that could have happened to me. Instead of living in a deep depression, I had a reason to live. I had my son to raise, and two beautiful daughters. We were a family again. A strong, healthy family. No more hospitals, and doctors, and ambulance calls in the middle of the night. We had love and stability, and I admit it was a little cockamamy how the whole thing came to be, but somehow it just seemed right. Not sinful. Not dirty.”