Ark (10 page)

“That's right.”

“But they're still married?”

“Yes,” Rebecca repeated.

Gregory did look happy now, his blue eyes big and jovial, his chest puffed out. He wore a white beard, Freud-like. His body was lean. He had a red, freckled complexion. He kept his cell phone locked into a clip on his belt. “And are Doris and your father getting along?”

“I don't know anything,” she told him. “My father keeps me in the dark. He doesn't want to involve me in his affairs. I don't ask questions.”

Gregory said, “You know, when my mother died, you'll maybe remember, it was all-out warfare. My sister and our siblings, everyone wanted everything, every last coaster and napkin ring. Things which hadn't meant anything to us for the past fifty years as we came and went from our parents' home suddenly had great meaning. It took me time to come to the point where I am now. But I can say that I too could have acted better. I don't even speak to my older brothers and sisters these days. I'm sure you heard that my brother, Tom, and I had a row, and Tom broke my tooth.” Gregory drew back his cheek, pointing at a molar. “Cost six thousand to fix. And do you know what we were fighting about? A box of photos. Photos neither of us had seen for more than thirty years. Well, don't be surprised if your father and his sisters have a difficult time ahead. There's a lot to divvy up, not all of which will necessarily be spelled out in the will.”

Rebecca shrugged at her uncle. “Nothing gets divvied yet. Ben's still alive.”

“But he won't be forever.” Gregory was stern. “And you're your father's daughter. And if what happens with Ben and Eliza is anything like what happened with my parents, all the grandchildren will get involved. People take sides, is what I'm saying. Cousins that you've felt close to your whole life might not show up at holiday dinners anymore. Might not even call to tell you they can't make it. Sondra's one example. She came to my mother's home the day we were going through her things. I didn't know what she was doing there. I'm not sure how she found out we were going to be there. But she started telling us that my mother had promised her the salt and pepper shakers. My sister, Elaine, was not for letting Sondra have them. Which upset Eliza. She asked what it mattered if Sondra had the salt and pepper shakers. Everyone knew Sondra collected salt and pepper shakers, and it didn't seem odd that my mother would've said Sondra could have hers. So just let her have the salt and pepper shakers, right? But Elaine said no. Because
she
wanted them. Elaine got loud, and it looked like she might hit Eliza. Then Sondra shoved Elaine. Elaine tried to retaliate, and my brothers and I had to separate the women. This was all in the first ten minutes of being at the house. An hour later, Tom and I were wrestling on the lawn. We had to bring in a woman who specialized in resolving these kinds of disputes. It was too emotional to deal with on our own.”

“I refuse to worry about what hasn't happened yet,” said Rebecca.

“That's good, but—”

“The will is going to clarify everything.”

“That would be best, yes.”

“Eliza just died, Gregory. I don't think it's right to talk about this sort of thing. Let's stop, please.”

“Okay. I'm sorry. We don't have to.”

“Thank you, Gregory.”

Over the next three months, Ben hardly moved. To see him mute and powerless was a shock to anyone who had known him. Rebecca visited one afternoon, and she couldn't believe his condition. At first, she thought he was dead. Then he let out a moan. Oliver had been with his father all this time. He said that Ben was sleeping twenty-two hours a day. He went to the bathroom in a pot, which Oliver helped him to use. The divan where Ben lay was surrounded by pill bottles and used towels.

Rebecca sat down next to her grandfather on a metal folding chair. She took his hand. Only when shaking hello and goodbye had she ever held his hand in the past—Ben did not hug, he was not the kind to invite his grandchild up onto his lap, he did not let Rebecca call him Grandpa, Ben would do. Or Ark.

Now she rubbed his fingers.

“That's great,” Oliver was saying. “Massage him. Get the life going in his hands. Come on, Dad. You're going to paint again.”

“Dad, please,” Rebecca said. “He can't hear you.”

“Yes, he can!” Oliver cried. “I spend my days talking to him, just like I did with my mother. They hear you. You might not think it. But they do.”

“Dad, even if that's true, you shouldn't be here. Ben has a nurse. She can do everything for him. You have to go back to L.A.”

“I won't leave him, Rebecca. Don't you know you can't trust these nurses? They don't give the right care. They're not attentive. I'm telling you, they'll let you sit in your shit for an hour. They won't move you around, and you'll get bedsores. They have no idea when you're thirsty, or if you need your pillow adjusted. No, I have to make sure that things get done the way they're supposed to, or your grandfather will suffer. That's my job now.”

She wouldn't push her father's emotions any further. Instead, she said, “I'll shave Ben's face. He needs it.”

Minutes later, Rebecca returned from the bathroom with a razor, shaving cream, a bowl of hot water, and a towel. Oliver was pulling his father up to sit. Ben, with closed eyes and a limp body, whimpered in his bathrobe. Rebecca began to lather her grandfather's face with shaving cream. She brought the razor through the bowl of hot water. The hairs were soft and came up easily. Her grandfather was silent and still. Rebecca was careful with the razor around Ben's neck, where the skin folded in on itself and had to be pulled back to get at the hairs. Rebecca worked briskly over this part. Ran the blade through the water and saw her father kiss Ben's head. Shaving Ben's mustache, she spread her fingers over his mouth, stretching the skin, and was eager to be done with it. She didn't bother to get every hair below his nostrils. In between strokes of the razor, she watched Ben's eyes to make sure they remained closed. What would he think if he awoke and found her leaning over him? Would he know her? Would he understand where he was? Either way, her father was pleased.

That weekend, Oliver asked his daughter to go to Southampton. They would take her grandfather. What Ben needed was a change of scenery. The beach. Could she make the time? He couldn't do it alone. It was too hard for him to lift his father. Yes, getting Ben up off the divan, out of the loft, into the car and the rest of it was more than he could handle on his own. She could take her work with her, sit at the head of the dining table just like her grandfather had every weekend for the last thirty years, and do it there. He could really use her company, too. And he didn't drive. Rebecca suggested, in that case, her father call up Jerome. He would take them. But Oliver said that was out of the question. He wouldn't spend all that time with his father's assistant, he required a certain level of privacy, his mother had passed and he didn't want to go through all his feelings in front of a stranger.

And so Rebecca went to Southampton. She did the driving and helped her father with Ben. But most of the time, she worked. Occupying Ben's seat at the dining table, while her grandfather slept in a wheelchair on the deck, caused her mind to wander and stall. She watched him through the large sliding-glass doors, his head hung forward, his mouth open, and saliva dripping from his lips. Her father had brought Ben's last bag of reading materials, his cups of blue and red pens, his journals. He set it all out for the artist on the patio table under the umbrella. Of course, Ben didn't touch any of it. But the wind made a mess of things, the newspaper clippings ending up in the swimming pool and in the woods beyond the deck. Meanwhile, her father stayed intensely busy. He cleaned and baked and even gave the front steps of the house a new coat of white paint. He had hardly said a word to Rebecca all weekend. Well, it was just two days and two nights, she reckoned. She could do it. At least this once.

When she dropped her father and grandfather at the loft that Sunday afternoon, however, Oliver said they should go back to Southampton the following weekend. That he had had a wonderful time. Should they meet right back here on Friday at 5 p.m.? Yes? Okay, good. He and her grandfather would be ready then.

On Wednesday evening, Rebecca was at the firm, reading through documents. It was almost midnight. How long had she been at the office? If she spent too many hours in her chair, some part of her back would slip out of place, her neck would tighten and lock, a nerve would get pinched. She had to circulate the blood by taking a spin around the office floor, or her mind would become hazy and she would have to redo her work.

Even ten years into the job, she hadn't grown accustomed to the night-empty halls. The overhead lights were on, the office doors shut. The cubicles at the middle where the paralegals and secretaries sat were vacated. Was there anyone here? Usually someone was tucked away in some office. She would see a body curled up on the floor. Or just hear a door slam. But now Rebecca's cell phone was ringing. No one called her this late. It was Julia Raines. She was an intimate friend of the Arkin family, a one-time schoolmate of Doris's. She would come with her husband and daughter to Thanksgiving, and had even organized Ben and Eliza's fiftieth wedding anniversary. But she had never called Rebecca before. And now she was saying that Ben had gone unconscious yesterday evening. He'd been brought to the hospital. Oliver had been with him. Doris, too. It was pneumonia.

“Rebecca, he received top care. I'm sorry. They were unable to save him.”

Julia continued to speak. She was very good at breaking bad news. She knew just what people wanted to hear, how to say it. Julia's voice, indicative of her whole body—the wide hips and large bosom, the long black hair and dark brow—had a propensity for the low end. In that deep register, she told Rebecca how she'd been with Oliver all day at the hospital. He was coping. She had brought him back to the loft an hour before, and taken the liberty of arranging for Rebecca to transport him to the cemetery for Ben's funeral, which would be held the following day.

“All right?”

“Yes.”

“You don't have to call him now. After the day he's had, I'm sure he's asleep.”

“Okay, Julia.”

“Show up tomorrow at nine outside the loft, with the Cadillac. Your father will be there.”

Rebecca did as Julia had instructed, arriving at the loft the next morning in her grandfather's car. From the moment Oliver stepped out onto the sidewalk, through all the exits in Queens, the scenery along the black road changing from city to suburb, he was on the phone with his wife, insisting that he was fine, that there was nothing to worry about. Sheila didn't have to fly in, no. He had Rebecca here. She was taking good care of him.

Ben had told his granddaughter more than once that he wanted to be cremated and to have his ashes scattered along the beach in Southampton. But Eliza had made him agree to this place, which was not Ben—the crisp green grass, the hedges perfectly manicured, the large black gates at the entrance. The service was at ten sharp. They'd been told to be on time. The rabbi had to get on to other funerals, and he wouldn't wait. Twenty minutes before the funeral was set to begin, they parked the car. Rebecca opened a black umbrella, giving her father cover from the hot May sun. Walking toward the excavated earth where Ben would soon be interred, she saw that Oliver no longer filled out his black suit, his body slimmed by crisis. The jacket could have used a pressing. Rebecca said, “Do you need anything, Dad?”

“No.”

“I have a bottle of water if you're thirsty.”

Oliver didn't reply. His face was sunken, damp. Rebecca gave her father's arm a tug, said, “Look, Dad. It's Emma.”

For an instant Oliver's cheeks regained some of the color they'd lost over the past months from being indoors, nursing his parents. “Oh thank God,” he said, and marched off in Emma's direction, leaving his daughter alone.

Thirty paces away, in the shade of a mausoleum, Rebecca could see Laura Saks, her father's ex-fiancée. How had she found out about the service? Why had she come? Her father had been engaged to Laura three times. As much as anyone, Rebecca had expected them to marry. Rebecca had been pleased that they hadn't. More than the mold growing in the floorboards under Oliver's bed, her father had been allergic to this woman. In the last years of their relationship, Laura had been responsible for hundreds of Oliver's headaches, stomach bugs, dizzy spells, and muscle spasms. What person could make another so sick, and at the same time remain attractive? But Laura and her father didn't speak anymore. So then what was she doing here?

“Rebecca. Rebecca, hi.”

Rebecca turned around and started. Her cousin Marcus was coming straight for her. He was Sondra's child, and Rebecca began looking out across the cemetery, concerned that her father's sister was here. Now, to break the tension, she thought of saying a kind word to her cousin. Did he feel it, too? He must.

“Nice to see you,” she told Marcus.

“Same to you,” he said. He looked like a young Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, with the light curly hair and sensitive eyes. He nodded heavily, his gaze overbearing. “And you're doing all right?” he asked.

“Pretty well,” Rebecca said. She didn't feel any desire to share her thoughts with him.

“I've worried about this day my entire life. You too, I'm sure.”

Rebecca couldn't help but answer yes.

“My mother, your father, Doris—have you ever known a more dysfunctional group?”

“No, I don't think so.”

“I've always looked ahead to Ben's death with fear. Like, the only thing keeping our parents and our aunt from tearing off each other's heads were their parents, and now there's no one to police them.”