Assisted Loving (6 page)

“Before you go,” he says, “there's something I want to ask you.”

“Okay. What? I have to catch a train. Speak!”

“I wonder if you wouldn't mind calling the ads I've circled here.”

He places the newspaper in my hands. It is stained with tea.

“What? I don't understand.”

“I would do it myself, but it says here that you need a landline to get through to the 900 number that's listed, and I only have a cell phone.”

“You're kidding, right?”

“It's two dollars a minute, but I'll reimburse you.”

“I don't get it, Dad. You're not making any sense.”

“You're such a contemporary person,” he says. “You know the dating scene.”

“I know it's a nightmare, that's all I know.”

“I thought you could show me the ropes a little, get me started.”

“But, Dad, does it occur to you that these ads are called Personals for a reason? This is absolutely none of my business.”

“Okay,” he says, as he takes the newspaper away from me. “Just thought I'd ask.”

I stare at him a moment. He looks so anxious, so needy, as if he'd just been let down by the only person with the keys to the kingdom. I take off my jacket, throw it down on the couch, and sit back down. This cannot be happening. I grab the newspaper.

“Okay. All righty. I see you've circled some here.”

“Two in particular are alluring.”

With a little derision, I read aloud in a thick New York accent: “‘Attractive, youthful widow, slim and petite, incurable romantic, seeks active kindred soul, seventy to eighty, to share life's joys and whatever. Should be refined, intelligent, interesting, and secure.'

“‘Whatever,' Dad? What's that about?”

“Who knows, Bobby.”

“Dad, she says she's looking for refined. Is that you?”

He shrugs and says, “I can be refined when I have to be.”

“Okay, you circled this one, too,” I say, moving on. “Let's see what it says: ‘I most definitely do not snore! Amusing Jewish lady seeking nice Jewish lad fifty-seven to sixty-eight…' Dad, last I checked you were eighty.”

“People mistake me for seventy all the time. And I wouldn't mind a younger gal.”

I hand the newspaper back to him and stand up.

“Come on! Mom died, what, seven months ago? Okay, so you're not into mourning. But are you so incapable of being alone for a year? Look at me, I'm always alone, and I'm not lonely. I have lots of friends, and so do you. What is this desperate need you have to be in love?”

He shakes his head. “I don't know,” he says. “It just worked so beautifully with your mother for fifty years that I'd love to do it again.”

Do it again?
I'm thinking.
Do it again?
First of all, he's old. Hasn't he had enough? Second, was it really so great? Mom used to call herself a tennis widow and him a married bachelor. He was late for his own wedding because of a tennis game, and when he showed up he had forgotten his shoes. He was a barely manageable husband who poured low-cal maple syrup over Mom's labor-of-love noodle pudding and drove her around in a car that smelled from dirty socks and a long forgotten fish sandwich. He was moody, tardy, impossibly willful, and prone to explosions when crossed. “Damnit, Ethel” was his trademark eruption. It could be over the littlest thing—a wrong turn on the highway, a botched volley at net, a decision she made without him.

Of course there were times when he had reason to feel frustrated. She was a timid driver, just as she was timid in life, a woman who would cancel all plans if the rain was coming down too hard. That's why she was so often telling him no. On vacations he'd want to look up people they hardly knew, take leftover food off plates from empty restaurant tables, and start sing-alongs at big parties where
he didn't even know the hosts. She couldn't help being the naysayer in the relationship. But the thing is, he'd do whatever he wanted anyway, so why aggravate him by being negative? She put her foot down hard enough to make a difference only once, early on in their marriage, when he came in after midnight from a card game and found her in tears. He never did it again. He cared too much to upset her. Yes, he could have been around more for her when she was sick. But good-time Joe could take only so much of her infirmity. Well, maybe that was her fault for insisting she didn't want a health-care aide as much as we begged her to hire one. Her thrift made things hard for all of us in her last years. His didn't help either. “I'll be back before supper” is all he'd say as he left her alone in the house.

But
then
I think of the times he made her happy even at the end, shuttling her to concerts and parties with old friends and bringing her chocolate cake from the diner where he stopped after bridge. She loved the sweets he'd bring her, the cheesecakes and milk shakes she needed to keep her weight up, even as my brother and I nagged him to make sure she was eating greens and healthy foods, too. And there were all those times he made her laugh with his absurdly obscene jokes.

And there was the singing. Often, as a kid, I'd look out my bedroom window and see them in the backyard, singing love songs to each other. They weren't therapized people. They weren't the cosmopolitan or mod parents of their era, having key parties and chardonnay spritzers in modern glass homes. They didn't have the language or the big ideas. But they had their songs, and two unusually lovely voices that wrapped around each other with
the ease of wisteria branches. Sometimes I'd sneak down the stairs in my pajamas and spy on them dancing to cha-cha records in the den and laughing into the night. They weren't stylish, but they were beautiful dancers. Dad was smooth enough on his feet to make Mom seem like a natural. “One, two, cha-cha-cha,” I'd hear her count carefully. And around she'd go, one hand in his, one held up in the air for balance. Whatever skill they lacked they made up with their joy. They were so happy, long after couples got bored with each other and took each other for granted. That was, I suppose, the benefit of a marriage with my father, an unpredictable man with a kind heart who insisted on romance. I was both attracted and repelled, watching the kick they got out of each other. Would I ever have that? Did I even want it, let alone need it? They were just so buoyant on those late nights in the house, floating in their suburban bubble, so young, so in love. More in love than I imagined, or perhaps feared I would ever be.

So how can he just go dismissing all of it now—all of that—after fifty years of marriage? Who knows? But the old man seems to need a mate again, and I guess, now that Mom is gone, the only question at hand is, Who would love a poorly dressed, irascible, but sweet and well-meaning suburban Republican like him? I don't know. But I guess I should try to help him out. Because if he's happy, then I don't have to worry about his being lonely, and then
I
can have some peace and be left alone to my life.

It's almost eleven
P.M
. The trains back to the city are running only once an hour from Great Neck station now. There's one in ten minutes. I bolt up from his couch.

“Okay, Dad, I'm going home. I'm sorry if you're a little
lonely. Give me those Personals. I'll make those calls if I have time.”

“That would be terrific, Bobby,” he says as he walks me to his door, where he tries to give me a big hug, but I dodge it and end up patting him on the shoulder instead.

“Oh, and do me a favor, Bobby,” he says. “When you give women my cell phone number, make sure you tell them to call me after nine
P.M
. Off-peak minutes.”

“Sure, Dad, why not?” Then, when I'm closing his door behind me, he calls out: “Don't you feel a little impish doing this?”

Pimpish is more like it.

A
ppalled as I am with Dad and his Personals page, he's right. I am familiar—unhappily familiar—with the dating scene. Most of those I meet on my online dating site can't even be bothered to reply to my e-mails. But then, I ignore my share, too.

Never mind the lure of romance, never mind the high of new love. These days, dating is nothing but a sport of procure, dodge, and discard. You have to know how to traffic lightly in disappointment. You have to be able to be both deft and cruel. It has become a kind of social warfare, and for my demographic of baby boomers, the comic narrative of our time. The worse the date is, the better the story value for later.

The weekend after Dad has thrust his personal ads at me, I end up with three dates in one night. Bumper crop
on a nice evening in May. I am meeting date number one for a drink at the trendy Bottino in Chelsea. I rush in late. He's looking at his watch, grim. And cute. Very cute. Soft honey brown hair that I loved in his online profile. And he is better built than I envisioned. Love the blue eyes and white button-down shirt. He doesn't dress to draw attention to himself, like I do. He knows he doesn't have to.

“Hi! So sorry I'm late! Been waiting long?”

“Fifteen minutes,” he says.

“I'm so sorry. I'm Bob.”

“John.”

We shake hands. I like him immediately. But even after a drink, I can't tell if he likes me (later I find out—because I never hear from him again). But hey, no time to dwell tonight. After a half hour I have to say good-bye so I can get uptown to date number two, a setup who is supposed to look like Pete Sampras. And he does. But not in a good way. I down a double Scotch. I'm free to behave poorly now. “Don't you just love Madison Avenue?” I spout as we pass terriers on leashes and trophy wives on diet pills. “I just find the people are so much better looking up here!” In Central Park, a line of cherry trees is blossoming so extravagantly that I shriek like a girl, “Better than the couture shows in Paris!” Then I have a sneezing fit that leaves me red-eyed, runny-nosed, and spewing obscenities at the trees, as if it were their fault for being in bloom.

A half hour later it's dinnertime, and I stumble back downtown (heart palpitating from my cocktail of Scotch and Sudafed) to meet bachelor number three. He looks promising there at the sushi bar. Love the rust-colored
hair. I walk up to him with real hope in my heart. But wait a minute. I'm not sure, but I think I see love handles beneath that sweater. Just because
I
have them doesn't mean anyone else can. No chemistry, no interest. In less than an hour, the date is over, and I'm out the door with nothing to show for all my trouble tonight.

It was just another night that yielded nothing but lower back pain, indigestion, a little pang of loneliness, and then, eventually, as I stomp home with the overly purposeful footsteps of a man who's had too much to drink, a renewed commitment to being a thriving single person in the most sophisticated city in the world. Of course, it was a little easier being a thriving single person when all my friends were single, too. Now that so many of them are getting hitched and having children, I don't have as many playmates as I used to. People I know are actually finding meaning and love in their lives.

“How was the date?” Marisa asks later that night.

“You mean dates,” I say. “I don't know why I bother.”

“Yes, you do, Bob. You want to be in love, don't you?”

She doesn't wait for my reply. Her husband is calling on her other line.

I
wake up the next morning to a ringing phone. I have a hangover. By the third date last night I was on my fifth drink, and now I'm paying for it. The sun is too bright in my apartment. It's eleven
A.M
. “Hi, Bob!” It's Dad. “Just wondering what time to expect you.” Shit. I feel like crap, don't want to get on the train to Great Neck today. But it's been a couple weeks, and I owe him a visit. Add guilt to hangover and stir.

“Dad. Hi. How are you?”

“Could be worse. Keeping pretty busy.”

“Good. Did you find a new bridge partner?”

“Not yet. But I had a decent game the other day over at the town pool with a woman from California. Unfortunately, she went home today.”

I chug some orange juice from a carton, pop three aspirin, put on some coffee, look out the window, and see it's pouring. No, I don't want to go see him today.

“And how are you settling in there? How is the world of assisted living?”

“Not great. I still have these terrible, incommunicative people at my dinner table. They sit in silence for entire meals, and I can't get a conversation going.”

That's odd, I think, because getting conversation going is usually his specialty.

“I'm so discouraged,” he's saying, “that I'm eating upstairs in my apartment.”

This is exactly the kind of whiny call I'd make to him and my mother for the first thirty years of my life, when things weren't working out as I had expected. So I should be more attentive now. But I'm bored with this residential-living drama of his, just as I'm bored with his inability to settle in and enjoy Great Neck, which is a paradise for senior citizens—full of activities for them. I turn on the TV. It's a
Golden Girls
rerun. Those women had it figured out, living together so they weren't isolated, but still playing the field so they weren't out of the game. But that's TV, not real life.

“Maybe you could switch to another table, Dad. Do you want me to call the executive director there?”

“Please, no! Just stay out of it!”

“Don't raise your voice at me. I'm just trying to be helpful.”

There is, of course, nothing I'd rather do than stay out of it. But for what the place is charging, there's no reason he should be miserable for three meals a day. The whole point is that the Centra is
not
supposed to be like a nurs
ing home. I thought it was supposed to separate the invalids at meals from the ones like Dad who still have all their marbles. Other assisted-living facilities keep the invalids on a separate floor. It pisses me off. I was thinking he'd just settle in there, get with the Great Neck groove, and I wouldn't have to worry about him at all. I need him not to need me.

“So what else, Dad? Nothing nice to report?”

“I went to the movies the other night.”

“So you don't mind going to the movies alone? Me neither. It's easy, right?”

“Who says I went alone? I went with a lady named Honey.”

“A lady named Honey?”

“She's an administrator in my building, widowed, younger than me.”

As he tells me the story of her life in some detail, I can't help thinking about the time he met another Honey, a New York drag performer. I was reporting on the opening of a Broadway show ten years ago. Dad was my date. It was an evening full of high spirits and higher hair. During intermission I looked up to see him across the aisle in an animated conversation with a vision in a shimmering gown, flawless wig, and powerful makeup—my father's idea of ultimate ladylike glamour. He had no idea he was talking to a man, not a socialite. But here's the thing I'll never forget about that night: Lady Honey (or was it Lyp-sinka, another drag star?) looked entranced with him as he talked. Everyone—men, women, and those who are in between—finds my father charming.

So I shouldn't be surprised that a lady named Honey has hopped into his scene the minute Edie in Florida
hopped out. I am trying to get a picture of her in my mind. He says she's petite. Short blond hair. Perky. Okay, but would she be an attractive addition to our lives? And is she capable of making Dad happy so I won't have to worry about him anymore? “So, a movie date,” I say. “With benefits?”

“That was my plan, but not hers.”

I had been making a joke. Now I don't want to hear any more. Not about how he thought about inviting her up to his apartment after the movie, but could not because then someone in the building might see them together. I also don't want to hear about how he was angling to get invited over to her place, but with her daughter there it wasn't “conducive.” And I certainly don't want to hear how he wanted to do a lot more than hold hands with her in the car while parked in her driveway. He tells me anyway. “But she wasn't showing any interest at all,” he says. “And I was getting so frustrated that I finally just told her we had no future.”

Hearing this, this lady named Honey became distressed, then agitated.

“But, Joey, I have feelings for you, and I thought you had them for me,” she said.

He told her that it was never his plan to get serious, and that she was making too much of his intentions. “And frankly, I was hoping for something more physical with you from the start,” he said. “But I guess that's not in the cards.” She didn't know what to say. Awkwardness ensued in his Avalon. The porch light was on at her Tudor house off Great Neck Road. He turned on some easy listening for a more soothing and romantic ambience. He tried to take her hand. She pulled it away. Frank Sinatra was
singing “Strangers in the Night” on the radio. He waited it out a few minutes, thinking she'd succumb. Then he couldn't wait anymore. Nature was suddenly calling, and since she wouldn't invite him in, he had to bum-rush her out of his car.

“Side effect of the Lasix,” he said. “Gotta go! Sorry!”

She slammed the door and disappeared into her house.

“She's too high-strung,” he tells me. “Kind of like a Chihuahua.”

So why go out with her? Why get involved at all? Because she offered to treat? He never says no to anyone. He likes to complicate life, not simplify it.

“So now, what time can I expect you today?”

My foot suddenly starts tapping. I tell him I've got a cold.

“Oh. That's a shame. I was hoping to go for a ride.”

Silence for a second, a void I can't cross. He's probably waiting for me to change my mind. I don't want to be one of those kids who has contact with his parents only by phone. On the other hand I could never be the son who calls every day and visits every weekend. Technically, I guess I could. I do have the time. But I just don't have the patience. What he has to offer isn't fun. I wish I knew how to make it fun.

“Let's try for next weekend, okay, Dad?”

“Sure. But, before we say good-bye, I want to ask you something.”

“What's that?”

“Did you ever call the ladies in those personal ads I showed you?”

I had completely forgotten about it.

“Sorry. I haven't gotten around to it. Is it really so hard? Don't you think you can just meet someone at one of your bridge games?”

“Bridge women are so difficult. The ones I'm meeting in Great Neck are especially demanding and spoiled. Mom was the opposite.”

“Right. She
never
got her way. What about the women in your building?”

“Not for me. I can tell.”

“What are you looking for anyway?”

“I just need someone with a good figure who doesn't smoke. Preferably Jewish. Republican a plus. I'm going to hold you to your promise to make those calls for me.”

We say good-bye, and I hang up the phone. What is going on here? Am I really going to be pimping for my father? A few minutes later I dig out the Personals page with the ads he circled and place it at distance from me at my desk, like something unappetizing. Tripe, perhaps. Or liver. Then I take a deep breath and pick up the phone and dial the first number he's circled. My heart pounds, brain races. A machine picks up, and I get a recorded voice that sounds like a honking horn.

“Hello! This is Shelly Shapiro. I'm
saw-ry
I can't take your
cawl
, but please leave your name and
numbah
twice, and I'll get back to you. Have a
mah-velous
day.”

Beep!
I hang up without leaving a message. I can't stand that accent. My mother wasn't a sophisticate, but she grew up upstate and had no accent. My dad doesn't have one either. I'm not used to harsh voices in my family and don't want any now. I look at the other ad he circled, call the number, and get another machine.

“Hi, it's Seal, let's make a deal, leave me a message, don't be a shlemiel.”

Absolutely not! I hang up. What kind of women did he pick?

My imagination starts projecting a borscht-belt lineup of unpalatable ladies, anxiously waiting in the wings to step out and make a mess of his new life.

I look at other listings on the page:
Attractive Youthful Widow! Fine Leading Lady! Outgoing Brooklyn Beauty! Sabbath Observing Honey! Classy Energetic Yenta! Compassionate Pianist! Don't Passover Me! Eat My Kugel and Go Straight to Heaven!
They're all pretty much alike, stipulating callers be “secure” and “a gentleman.” I guess that means they have to have money and manners. Wait. Here's a decent listing that's also geographically suitable. It's for a Roz from Roslyn. College-educated. Slim. Lively. She sounds okay. So I call her, find that the voice on her answering machine sounds acceptable, and leave her a message. Then I leave one for a Minna from Manhasset—very good zip code right next door to Great Neck—who sounds okay, too.

I put down the Personals page and the phone and find that I'm smiling deviously.

And thus begins my father's year of dating dangerously.