Ask Again Later (6 page)

“Sure,” I say. I walk to the kitchen to get a champagne glass.

“While you're in there, can you get the ladder and the mop?” Mom asks.

“Yes,” I say. I find the ladder, the mop, and a glass and return to the living room.

“Stage one?” I say. “In this situation that's good news, right? Great news, even?”

“Yes, great news!” my mom says with zeal and annoyance. “Do you see that smudge up there? It's been driving me crazy since yesterday. Life is too short to have to look at dirty windows!”

“Life is too short to waste time cleaning windows or even to be thinking about windows,” I say.

My mother climbs up the ladder to the fifth rung. She's
wearing jeans, a blue cashmere sweater, and matching driving moccasins. Her hair is up. She's wearing lapis teardrop earrings and a lapis beaded necklace. Her nails are freshly painted with a shade of red called I'm-Not-A-Waitress. She's tipsy and climbing ladders.

I'm sitting on her couch, reading a magazine.

“Are you sure I can't do that for you?” I ask.

“I'm enjoying this,” Mom says. “It's therapeutic.”

“As much as I hate to steal your joy, it really doesn't seem safe,” I say.

“Did I get them clean?” Mom asks. “Can you see any streaks from there? I can't stand the idea of strangers looking around the apartment and seeing dirt. I wouldn't want anyone to think I didn't care.”

“What strangers are hypothetically judging you now?” I ask, not looking up.

“When I'm gone, you and your sister aren't going to want to keep this place. Are you? Maybe you do want this place. Well, if you girls decide to keep it, consider the clean windows to be an extra gift,” Mom says.

“You aren't going to die. Strangers aren't going to be walking through your home. It sounds like they caught it very early. You should be thinking about renovating this place, not about selling it,” I say. “No one has avocado-colored appliances anymore. It's like a KitchenAid museum in here. Seriously, who knew those appliances would last so long?”

“Longer than me, you mean?” Mom says.

“Your mantra should be Stage One Cancer Is Curable. You're more likely to die from making bad decisions like getting buzzed and climbing a ladder to clean windows,” I say.

“So according to your mantra, I still die—just not of cancer?” Mom says.

The doorman buzzes. Mom dismounts the ladder and answers the intercom.

“Yes, send him up,” Mom says.

My mother disappears from the room. She comes back wearing more lipstick, and climbs back up the ladder. Very casually, she turns toward me.

“Do I have lipstick on my teeth?” Mom asks.

“No,” I say.

“Emily, I just want you to know that I've been in such a state. The oncologist told me not to make any important decisions for a few days. That's easy for him to say. He's not dying! I may have only a little while…am I supposed to sit on my hands and do nothing?” Mom says. “I'll say one thing about cancer. It's really grounded me.”

There's a knock at the door.

“Who's here?” I ask.

“Can you be a good helper and grab the door?” Mom replies.

“I haven't been a good helper since I was five,” I say.

I open the door. Initially, I am confused. I think he might have accidentally knocked on the wrong door. What are the chances of that happening, though?

The awkward stranger standing at the door is my father, Jim. I haven't seen Joanie and Jim in the same room since my high school graduation. They refused to make eye contact or speak or appear together in any photographs.

For a while after they split I saw him every other year, on Christmas Eve. We broke that awkward tradition when I left for college.

“Hi. What's going on?” I ask.

We shake hands. We're clumsy strangers.

“Your mother called me, said that she was very ill and that she needed to see me,” Jim says. “Where is she? Is she still…”

“Alive? Yes, very much so. Come on in,” I say.

My mother continues cleaning windows as if she hasn't called her ex-husband, as if the doorman hadn't told her my father was there to see her, as if she hadn't just put on fresh lipstick!

“Joanie,” he says, sounding bereft when he notices her standing on the ladder. “What the hell are you doing? Shouldn't you be hospitalized?”

Yes! She should be hospitalized.

“Hello!” Mom says. “How nice of you to come. It's so important to be surrounded by those you loved at a time like this. I forgive you, and I want you to know that. That's really all I have to say.”

The words are supposed to sound cool and casual. Instead, she sounds like she's reading from a script that
she's just seeing for the first time. “Important to be surrounded by those you
loved
at a time like this?”

At no point does she make a move to step down from the ladder. She keeps cleaning and doesn't bother to look in his direction.

“I'm so sorry to hear your news,” Jim says. “If there's any way I can help, please let me know.”

“Well, there is this one spot, about six inches out of my reach,” Mom says, finally looking at him.

He makes a move toward the ladder, smiling.

“Wait, where's the camera?” I say.

“In the kitchen,” Mom says. “Near the silverware.”

“It was a joke,” I say.

“It's almost reassuring how nothing has changed,” Jim says.

He doesn't know either one of us well enough to know if nothing's changed.

She hands him the mop and proceeds to boss him around for twenty minutes or so. Then the doorbell rings again. Mr. Simone. Our neighbor from twenty years ago is here to say his good-byes. Mom apparently went through the Rolodex and is parading her past before her eyes. It explains the fresh manicure. The hair foils in the bathroom trash can. The shopping list on the counter:
Guest book. Linen napkins. Cotton gloves? Cigars for the men. New highball glasses
.

It's all so apropos for a girl who has chosen to live in the past.

Good-bye. Hello.

I WALK MY FATHER
downstairs. We shake hands again. I don't know a single other person on the planet who has this kind of warped relationship with a blood relative. Except my sister Marjorie.

“Well, I guess, maybe I'll see you around,” I say.

“Okay, I'll see you, then,” Jim says. Then he leans forward and kisses my head.

“Okay,” I say.

We're both being polite. But I'm not sure why. If I spoke the truth, what's the worst thing that could happen to me? He wouldn't speak to me? We're already not speaking.

“Perhaps we could have lunch sometime,” Jim says. “You could come to the office.”

“Sure. Sometime,” I say.

“How about Friday?” Jim says. “Come on Friday, around one o'clock.”

“Okay,” I say. “Friday. If Mom doesn't have any doctor appointments.”

I return to my mother's apartment. She's drinking tea and leafing through an address book from the gogo eighties. Mr. Simone is in the kitchen making her dinner.

“Why didn't you tell me you called Jim?” I ask.

“I'm a woman of mystery. I don't tell you everything,” Mom says.

And yet she rarely stops speaking. She talks, and talks, as a diversion. The fact is that she reveals almost nothing. How does she manage not to reveal more purely by accident?

“When did I stop calling Jim ‘Dad'?” I ask.

“It was early on,” Mom says. “Four, maybe five years old.”

“Why do you suppose that is?” I ask.

“I just assumed you saw him for what he was,” Mom says.

“And what is he?” I ask.

“A nice enough man who never really understood how to be a father,” Mom says. “Or a husband. Or, well, he wasn't much of a cook either. He thought he was. They all do. I could go on and on. Of course, he also has a very charming side.”

Red Wet-Look Boots

WHEN I WAS FOUR
or five, my father would slap Aqua Velva onto my cheeks after he shaved. He smacked it on so hard it stung my skin, but I still waited for it most mornings. Waited for that connection.

The only other memory I have from that time is very vivid. I am five, and I am standing out in front of our church after Sunday school. Everyone else has gone home;
I am the last one waiting. It was not unusual for me to be the afterthought.

My father arrives. I wave. He tells me to sit in the car. He has to run inside for something. His soul? It was suspicious.

A long time passes; it's hot, and I'm tired of waiting in the car. So I go inside. It's quiet. There's no one in the rectory. I walk around, opening doors, searching. I smell church smells. I see a communion wafer on the counter, in the kitchen. Its surface feels like velvet. There is a cross in the center of it. I slip it into my pocket.

I walk by the empty Sunday-school classrooms. And then I get to my classroom, and I see him. My father. He's kissing Miss Murray, my Sunday-school teacher. So that's what he forgot! To kiss my teacher! He's pressed against her, near the sink where we wash out the paintbrushes. She has her arms around him. And he's unbuttoned the front of her shirt halfway. She's wearing red wet-look boots, yet manages to look wholesome. I covet those boots.

I knock at the door and run—black patent leather Mary Janes hitting linoleum—for the car, where I pretend to be asleep.

None of My Business

I'M IN MY
mother's bathtub eating a grape Popsicle that tastes kind of like frozen lamb chops. There was no expiration date on the wrapper. Frozen water with imitation
flavoring and colors never go bad, but they do start to absorb their surroundings—just like the rest of us.

Mom walks in. A careful, hopeful smile on her face. True joy in her eyes. Is it the doctor? Is he calling to say it's all a big mistake? He was reading someone else's films?

“Paul something or other,” Mom says, holding out the phone. Then covering the receiver, “Is he the one from the office?”

“I'm taking a bath,” I say.

“I see that. I could take a message, but he says he's returning your call,” Mom says, smiling some more.

I transfer the Popsicle to the other hand and take the phone.

“Should I close the door?” Mom asks.

“Please,” I say.

She closes the door reluctantly and not all the way. She's visibly excited at the prospect that this might be “the one from the office.” I'm sure she'd be much less excited to know that I called my shrink for an emergency session. So panicked was I by the prospect of another parent leaving me that I called him and left a rather hysterical message.

“Hi,” I say. “Thanks for calling back.”

“Finally got to speak to the famous Joanie,” Paul says.

“Very exciting stuff,” I say.

“Do you want to talk now, or would you like to come in tomorrow?” Paul says.

“Tomorrow,” I say. Hearing his voice is a relief. The Popsicle is running down my hand. “Because I'm pretty sure my mom is listening at the door.”

“Okay,” Paul says. “I have an opening at ten.”

“Great. Thanks,” I say. I hang up the phone.

I hear movement on the other side of the door.

“I just wondered if you needed a towel,” Mom says.

“There's one on the towel bar,” I say. “If you have a question, just ask.”

“Okay. Who's Paul?” Mom asks. Smiling some more.

“My shrink,” I say.

“Oh. Well, that's none of my business,” Mom says. “Is he any good? A lot of them have no idea what they're doing.”

Dreaming

I HAVE A DREAM
about Sam. I'm at his apartment making dinner. But I can't find anything that I need to prepare the meal. So he has to find everything. He finds the salt, the good knives, the spatula, the place mats—everything. All I do is cook. I feel lost in his house, but I don't want to leave.

Paul

I DON'T SIT DOWN
in the black pleather club chair; I fall down. I'm going to have to say this aloud, aren't I? It will be real and true. And then I start crying. Sobbing actually. I've never done this here. It takes me a while to get the courage to look at him.

“My mother is dying,” I say. “She has breast cancer.” I start crying at this part again, and the room's all blurry from my tears.

“Goodness. What have the doctors said about it?” Paul asks. “Is that what she said? She said she's dying?”

“Yes,” I say.

“In those words?” Paul asks.

“Yes,” I say. It's quintessential Mom.

“I hope that's not the case. But I think you should speak with her doctor, don't you? I think you should speak with her doctor and find out what her diagnosis is, and what her treatment will be like,” Paul says. “You can't be in control of her health, but knowing what comes next would be helpful. Cancer generally happens in stages. If it's caught early, she's very likely to live a long life.”

“You're right. I'll call her doctor. This only happened yesterday,” I say. “My sister is not helpful at all. She's pregnant and can't be bothered to get involved. She says my mother is strong and she'll get through it.”

“Okay, so your sister is either in denial or dislikes your
mother. We can focus only on you. How have
you
been coping?” Paul asks.

“Not well,” I say.

“Not well, how?” Paul says.

“I quit my job, walked out on Sam, and slept at my mom's house last night,” I say.

Long pause. I'm actually waiting for him to shake his head in disgust, or laugh hysterically. He does neither.