Ask Again Later (20 page)
Authors: Jill A. Davis
“I'm not sure,” Dad says.
“Have some more water,” I say. “Do you want me to get you to a doctor?”
He taps his fingers on the table again.
“Emily, don't⦔ Dad says.
“Don't what?” I ask.
He slumps forward in slow motion, and I am frozen in my chair. Then I stand up just as his head and shoulders land on the table.
“Dad!? Help!” I say loudly, or yell, I'm not quite sure. Is there anyone else in the room? Are they all still eating? I don't know. Because I can't take my eyes off of my father. His body resting heavily in front of me.
Within seconds Martin and another waiter have him laid out on the floor. They perform CPR. Paramedics arrive.
An adrenaline shot is given. He seems to revive and sit almost upright for a few seconds, only to collapse again. At the Club and in the ambulance, they spend close to an hour trying to convince his heart to restart.
Don't save the grand gestures for the end, I keep thinking. Just don't do it. You might die tomorrow; you might not. But avoid your family and then try to catch up at the very end, and life just won't allow it.
WHAT ARE YOU
supposed to do when someone dies? First order of business, I'm guessing, is to forget all about “supposed to.” Perhaps forget about “supposed to” for forever, in fact. These are the lessons you learn in those pivotal moments.
I'm sitting at my desk in my apartment. I took a cab home but I don't remember the ride. I notice some smudges on the phone, and can't help but clean it. Wendy taught me this. Always clean the phone, and you'll almost never get the cold that's going around. When I lift the receiver to use the phone, I smell Aqua Velva. He must have used this phone that night he got keyed into my apartment.
I call my mom to tell her the news.
“Dad is dead,” I say.
“Jim is dead?” Mom asks.
“Yes,” I say.
“I'll come right over,” Mom says. “You make some tea.”
“Okay,” I say.
That stupid jerk, I keep thinking. He's dead. Popsicles for breakfast. “I'm a bachelor.” Childish jerk.
I don't make tea. I don't move from where I'm seated at my desk. He's gone again.
My mom arrives. She has a shopping bag. She's always prepared, always looking for reasons to shop.
“You haven't been home much in the past few months,” Mom says. “I thought you might need some things.”
“You're right. Thanks,” I say.
“What happened?” Mom says.
“We were having lunch. He had a heart attack,” I say.
“You were there?” Mom asks.
I nod. I can't say the word yes without crying.
My mother starts crying. I start crying.
“I'm just soâ¦mad. I'm so mad at him,” I say. “I can't help it. I'm just furious. What the hell was he waiting for these past twenty years? You wouldn't believe the way people treat him at work. They adore him. I was starting to adore him. They have no idea we've barely seen each other for the last twenty years.”
My mother hugs me. She doesn't know what to say.
“I'm really going to miss him,” I say. “I've always missed him.”
I'M SUPPOSED TO MEET
Perry for dinner. I can't bear the thought of having to talk tonight. I can't bear the thought of staying home alone. Marjorie is skiing, so she's not an option.
“Phil's coming over tonight to watch a movie. Join us,” Mom says.
Really? Phil can't take a rain check for one night? My father is
dead
!
“I had plans to meet Perry,” I say. “I guess I'll just keep them.”
“I'll tell you what, you can choose the movie,” Mom says.
“It's not about the movie,” I say.
Perry and I meet at the Carlyle in the Café. The waiter comes to the table and places snacks and drink menus on the table.
“We'll have two glasses of the same smack that couple is having,” Perry says.
“Red wine?” the waiter asks.
“Yes,” Perry says. The waiter walks away.
“This place has got the most divine bar snacks,” Perry says. “This silver snack caddy makes me feel good about eating salted nuts. Not the cheap nuts, either. Not peanuts. The good nuts. Macadamias, pistachios. They wouldn't think of serving something we had to shell ourselves. P.S. What the hell happened to you? You look like your dog died.”
“My father,” I say.
“Yeah? What about Jim? What crazy life lesson are you extrapolating from being his receptionist this week?” Perry asks, throwing back a handful of nuts.
“My father died,” I say.
There is an audible gasp.
It gets more real each minute. He's dead.
“I am just so humiliated. I can't believe that you let me go on and on about salted snacks,” Perry says.
How often do you get a second chance? Every day.
How often do you take the second chance? Almost never. Things were kind of odd and extraordinary while they lasted.
IT'S A MISTAKE
to wait until someone dies to eulogize him. It's too late.
I sit at my desk not knowing what to write. This letter is for me, not him. I don't want to leave things left unsaid. I don't want to forget how I feel this time.
Dear Dad,
Most of my life when I've thought about you, I've felt some vague pity for you and for what you've missedâseeing Marjorie and me grow up.
It's only after spending time with you that I've realized it was easier to imagine what
you
were missing out on, because it was too painful to imagine what I was missing. I was just getting to know you. Things were just starting to become more clear to me.
I'll miss the formality in your voice when we shared a cab in the morning, and the way you called the cabdriver “sir.” I'll miss listening in on your phone calls and eavesdropping on your relationship with Wendy.
Your desertion was part of you, but it wasn't all of you. And what I've learned about you, I've really liked.
When we had lunch at the Club that first day, you told me you never knew your father. I guess we had a lot in common. There have been surprises every day that I've known you, but what surprised me the most was that you were knowable. A few months ago, you were a mystery.
I can't help wonder if the past six months will slip away and turn into a mirage. Your return, my job as the receptionist, our lunches at the Club, your taste in wacky socks, and your polite lack of interest in my love lifeâ¦When I was five and you left, I forgot what it was like to have a father. I grew up making myself forget. I don't want to forget this time.
MY MOTHER HAS
always loved parties. She can control what people eat, what they see, what they drinkâ¦and at the same time transform her dining room into a circus tent or planetarium.
“I think it's a good idea to have people come back here after the service,” Mom says. She is remarkably calm.
“Yes,” I say. “I think so, too. Do we have this catered? What do we do?” I ask.
“Oh, you let me take care of that,” Mom says.
What wasn't in the form of a casserole was in the form of a ball. This being the only way to describe the food served after my father's funeral.
Within a week of my mother's diagnosis, she started interviewing caterers for her own postfuneral luncheon. She wanted the theme to be “whimsy” and for people to feel “happy” that she had lived. Out of guilt for making a full recovery, she hired the same caterers for my father's funeralâbut slashed the budget in half.
“It only seems fair to hire them,” Mom says. “After that show they put on with canapé tasting and wine pairings. That was positively embarrassing. I had to hire them after that.”
The caterers seemed more than a little relieved that
someone
had died.
Marjorie opted to boycott this gathering in my father's honor. Most of my life I've resented that the rules were different for her than for me. I guess I never considered how much you might miss if you're always given the option to opt out.
I considered borrowing some Xanax from my mother's medicine cabinet to get through the day. I decided against it because it seems a lot like sweeping dirt from one part of a room to another. You can make it disappear from your line of vision temporarily, but at some point you just have to deal with it. Now is that time.
Will puts his arm around me. He kisses my cheek.
“I'm going to miss him,” Will says. “He was a good man.”
“Yes,” I say. “He was.”
“And a maniac on the squash court,” Will says.
Wendy walks into the living room. We should have let her plan this. She's an excellent coordinator. Den mother. She's holding what looks like a piña colada. There is an umbrella in it.
“Is that a piña colada?” I ask.
“I've been here twenty minutes, and it's my second one,” Wendy says. “Jim would have loved this.”
Wendy is wearing black. Her eyes are teary and puffy, and she's obviously been crying off and on since Friday. She will miss my father more than most other people in this room today. That's the tricky part about life. Where is Wendy going to meet my father's replacement? The man she can love but stay distantly safe from? She's cultivated her ideal relationship for fifteen years, and she's only forty. Where will she meet another man she's tempted to confess her love to on a daily basis because if he dies tomorrow, she'd wish she had? Does she wake up every morning wishing she'd confessed her love for him? Wondering what might have happened? Will she have to break form and find a new kind of love? Am I talking about Wendy or myself? Or a combination of the two?
“Especially the umbrellas. It's a cute idea,” Wendy says.
“Seems oddly festive, doesn't it?” I say.
“Why shouldn't it be? He was a really happy guy,” Wendy says.
She's right. He was. I'm relieved she remembers him as a “happy guy.”
“I know that you meant a lot to him,” I say.
Wendy eyes me suspiciously. Hopefully.
“It was obvious,” I say.
“Was it?” Wendy asks. Tears roll down her cheeks.
“Yes,” I say, hugging her.
Perry walks toward me. He hugs me, and the hug feels like it arrived just in time. Like it is the only thing keeping me standing on two feet.
“The bartender is serving mud slides. Is there any chance they confused this with a bachelorette party?” Perry asks.
“Thanks for coming,” I say.
“Well, if it's a bachelorette party, there's the guy I want to see in the G-string,” Perry says.
I look in the general direction of his lust. It's Sam.
I pegged Sam wrong. I thought he was the sort of person who would require an invitation to a funeral. He certainly wouldn't show up without knowing he was welcome. Except that he did.
“Sam,” I say, quietly to myself.
His being there is more important to me than I would have imagined. And that makes me cry again.
When I see Sam there, in our living room, I don't go over to say “hello.” Saying “hello” might be the permission he needs to leave. His appearance will have served its purpose.
Mostly I remember the whole event seeming like some
sort of advertisement for meatballs. You manage not to see ball-shaped food for a good portion of your life, then suddenly you're surrounded by it. There are Swedish meatballs, turkey spheres, crab balls, and for the oft-ignored vegetarian funeralgoer, orb-shaped food made of cheese and also saffron risotto.
Nana is seated at a table near the front door. When people walk by her, she asks if they've signed the guest book. There is a line for a signature, and a line for a comment or greeting. No one can muster a greeting. So instead we have a record of attendance.
I go to my mother's bedroom to find Nana's coat. As she slips it on, I notice she smells like mothballs. We'll all be old someday.
“My fur has that awful mothball smell, doesn't it?” Nana asks.
“Oh, thank God it's your coat,” I say.
“Excuse me?” Nana says.
“I'm sorry,” I say. I never will get the knack of grieving gracefully.
I sit down on the bed. I decide to take a nap, right there on top of a soft sea of coats belonging to my parents' friends and acquaintances for the past thirty years. I'm not sure how long I'm out before I am awakened.
“There you are,” Sam says. “Too many meatballs?”
“Too many people,” I say, sitting up.
“Don't move,” Sam says.
He turns out the one dimmed light in the room. He lies
down next to me. And kisses my forehead. It's not enough. I kiss his lips, his neck. I pull him to me, on top of me.
“I've missed you,” I say.
“I can tell,” Sam says. “I've missed you, too.”
I CLEANED OUT
his stuff. I did his closets, because when Wendy tried, she broke down. She did the fridge, the kitchen cabinets, the impersonal stuff.
It's not clear if she's crying because she's being flooded with regret over what could have been, or if she's so moved to be included in the decision making and chores usually left to a wife. Either way, my sister Marjorie would not help me, so I called Wendy because I knew she'd be careful with his belongings. Maybe a little too careful. She treats every dish as if it were a piece of pre-revolutionary porcelain.
His closet is an archaeological find. In the back of the long closet were the suits he hadn't worn in years, the earliest layer of history. There is a tennis sweater that might have even been from his college days. I have a vague recollection of it. But it's vague enough not to be true. He is a paper doll, and I've dressed him in my head, in each suit in this closet. Fact: His waist grew from size 36 to 38 to 40, and then down to 36 again. His heart wanted more than that, apparently.