Some Assembly Required (17 page)

Then he sat down, phoned someone, and said calmly, “Linda, I have to cancel the presentation for March fourth. I’m comfortable, but in no position to present anything now—least of all myself.… No, I do not expect to be any better. In fact, a great deal worse. And that’s okay with me.”

He weighed at least ten pounds less than when I had left for India, and while his mind was funky, he was distinctly himself. He said that he was ready to go home and see my aunt Pat, and that he would give my love to my mother, Pat’s twin,
and to my father. He has always assured me that modern physics can prove that the soul survives death. My house is filled with books by scientists that he has foisted on me over the years—my dumb, blind, unscientific faith has always driven him crazy. Even today, he tried to pick a small fight about my lamb-to-the-slaughter beliefs, then kindly insisted that his beloved physics can prove the survival of the soul. Of course, he had been gobbling down Oxycontin, so that may have had something to do with it.

Sam, Amy, and Jax came for a visit, during which Sam and Amy did many loads of laundry and in all possible ways took advantage of my generous nature, but they left me with Jax while they stole off to take naps. I have become a pathetic old junkie, stoned with delight. Jax alternately jumped up and down on my leg as if he were in a Johnny Jump Up, and quietly explored the world: my eyes, nostrils, dreads, and Mary medallion, Lily’s ears, the kitty’s tail, which whipped back and forth above us from the top of the couch, like Indiana Jones’s whip. Then I gave him a bottle, and held it for him, although technically he could hold it by himself.

I told him, “I don’t know what is going to happen to you, and what your life will be like, but this is not in my hands. You have your own higher power.” He took this in gravely. Sam padded in from his nap and began chattering away instantly
with Jax, and snatched him away from me with gentle father hands.

Hmmph. I watched Sam and Jax gaze at each other while Jax sucked on the bottle. To have mothered this young father fills me with visceral feelings of awe, joy, and dread. Love, fierce pride, a new power, and faint anxiety flitted across Sam’s face: you love your kids way too much to ever feel safe again. I could see in his love that this baby had broken his turtle shell, the way Sam broke mine.

I got up early and went for a walk in the drizzle with the dogs and my friend Karen. We laughed our way along the trail behind the dogs: heaven. Then I went to see Millard, not knowing if he would be alive. He was, but even closer to death, wheezing more, yet his mind was sharp when he woke from his nap. Mozart’s Concerto for Flute and Harp wafted from his CD player. We talked about my father’s death, what a great way to go it was—morphine and music, your kids there to lean down and kiss you on the head and neck. My cousin Ricky came in to do that more than once when I was at Millard’s, as my brothers had done with Dad thirty years ago.

Millard was not quite to the end zone, not
quite
ready to spike the ball and do the chicken dance. But I wondered whether I’d see him again on this side.

After I got home, Amy and Jax, Stevo and Clara arrived for the afternoon. Stevo calls Jax “Manolito.” Clara calls him “Cuz,” and struggles to hold him now that he has become a wiggly bouncing sack of potatoes. It was easier when he was the size of a dinner loaf and moved only his hands and legs.

Now there are things he wants,
now
, and he fusses if denied. If you ask me, babies are already ruined by seven months old. Once you drive them off the lot, they lose fifty percent of the Blue Book value. Poor little guy, having to be here. I said to Karen that you’re instantly in a bind once you arrive here on earth, of need, self-will, a body and a separate personality, even before the crippling self-consciousness kicks in, even before seventh grade. Rashes, instinct, and cravings for the bottle, the breast. (Karen said that this would be a great name for a pub—The Bottle and Breast.)

She said that you’re fucked at cell division, that it’s all downhill from there. After that, it’s all survival, and trying to keep yourself either entertained or convinced that the things you’re obsessed with are of any importance at all in the big scheme.

My cousin Ricky left a message at five in the morning that Millard had died peacefully in his sleep. I went up to see his daughter, my cousin Kathy, at their house. She met me at the front door, stout and buxom and gorgeous, with short black
curls and a movie-star mouth; she is five years younger than I. Millard’s body had already been taken away. I knew they would not be sitting shiva—Millard had once said they were bagelly Jews—but I’d wanted to see his body, because seeing the body has always helped me say good-bye to loved ones.

Kathy came to the door eating a huge Dagwood sandwich. I said, “Are you okay, baby?” and she said, “I’m in the cold-cuts stage of grief.”

I wrote an obituary for our local paper on Millard’s computer. Kathy dug out all the relevant dates. He was born in San Francisco in 1923, a few months after my dad; he went to San Francisco State and got an advanced degree from UC Berkeley in history. He married his great love, my aunt Pat, my mom’s twin, in 1949 after serving in World War II on Graves Detail, which involved engineering cemeteries for the war dead. This immersion in mortality gave him a deep appreciation for beauty and life and great food. He loved his friends, and hiking, and Julia Child, who was always the other woman in his marriage. He pursued a profound lifelong study of history, physics, faith, and the recipe for the perfect cassoulet. He taught at the College of Marin for three decades. He had four children, Robby, Ricky, Kathy, and the youngest, David, three grandchildren, two living nephews (two had died), two nieces, two great-nephews, a great-niece, and one great-great-nephew, now almost seven months old.

I gave Sam and Amy tickets to an early movie and the promise of a home-cooked dinner for Valentine’s Day, and when they walked off into town, I took Jax to the park. We sat on a bench at the redwood grove with a sweet local guitar player. He played my favorite Beatles song, “In My Life,” and then Carole King’s “You’ve Got a Friend.” Jax was transfixed by the fingers on the steel strings, creating butterfly notes that burst off the wood and flew into our ears. The guitarist wasn’t wearing a wedding ring, and I idly wondered if he might be a good boyfriend: he could teach Jax to play guitar, and I could help him pay to get his teeth capped.

I caught myself right away, and wanted to hit myself over the head with his guitar, like Quick Draw McGraw— El Kabong!

Jax and I read, walked the dogs, played with the kitty’s tail, took naps, and then prepared dinner. Sam and Amy got back from
Avatar
in much less ecstatic moods than I had hoped. They were barely speaking, in fact. I had made Sam’s favorite foods—steak, Caesar salad, roast potatoes—and lit candles, and managed to do this all with a squirmy baby in my arms, and I had been in a kind of vicarious romantic fantasy for Sam and Amy. Oh, well.

Sam announced, upon entering the house, “I may be running
out of the Valentine’s Day mood about now.” My heart tumbled around. So I broke open the bubbly, Martinelli’s sparkling cider, and tried to subtly manipulate them into being cheerful. But they were unhappy with each other, while I had gone to so much trouble and expense. I thought about taking Sam aside, as I could when he was a kid, and saying something spiritual like “Shape the fuck up.” But he’s a man, a father. We sort of got through it all—getting through stuff, I guess, is eighty percent of grace—and I didn’t say anything about his bad character. I somehow held my tongue, while considering various appropriate forms of correction; I also focused on Jax, and breathed.

The three of them left at seven, thank God. I’m so in love with this baby, yet
dog
-tired every time he leaves. I don’t know where that leaves the dogs. At any rate, the dogs, the kitty, and I had to take a pre-bedtime nap on the couch.

After Sam, Amy, and Jax left, I finally realized that I don’t have the correction in me. Life is the correction. Life will correct Sam well, and unfortunately, it’ll correct me, too. Life corrects harshly. Failure is the conduit.

I so felt for them: Sam and Amy were exhausted, as always, and Sam was pressured to the max with school, Amy, and Jax, on top of the grotesqueries of Valentine’s Day. And even if they were both in free fall, I was not their parachute. God was. Gack. I hate that.

I called Sam after the Valentine’s Day debacle and had a victory.

I did not say that I was very disappointed, and that he needed to change.

I did not say, You are awful, and men are pigs.

I said it had made me feel miserable for them to be so cold to each other in front of me and Jax—to harsh each other, as the teenagers say. Wait: Sam was still a teenager six months ago. I asked if next time he could try to rise to the occasion. He didn’t say anything, but stayed on the phone.

I said I wasn’t willing to be in a situation where they were rude to each other. They got to have their relationship, and I got to say what I wouldn’t tolerate, but it was bad for Jax, and I didn’t want to set myself up again.

Sam said, “Well, then don’t.” He added that he was sorry, and he heard me.

After a moment, I said I appreciated that we could have this difficult conversation, and that I was grateful he was sticking it out with me, letting me tell my truth, and that we hadn’t hung up self-righteously. To lighten the mood, I said that I actually must have done something right.

There was a pause, and he said, “No. Not really. Not that
I
can think of.” Oh, Sam. We laughed, and that is baby prog ress, healing, a grace note.

Jax will be seven months old in four days. The speed of this makes a mockery of all life. So I bought a cake. Stevo, Clara, and Neshama came to tea to celebrate, early, along with Amy and Jax. Jax’s baby wobble was gone, the gyroscopic tremor like Katharine Hepburn at the end. Now he was focused and unwavering. His eyes still seemed enormous, even though his head is bigger and his face has filled out. He’s still a little man, but not that wizened old man of infancy, who looked like medieval paintings of babies. Stevo said he looks like someone who might have a wallet, or back pockets. “Manolito,” he pleaded, “lend me a sawbuck.” Jax thought it over before declining. His gestures are slow and deliberate.
He’s
the one deciding whom to look at, where his gaze is going to land. Before, people would try charming him, making funny faces and sounds to get his attention, but now he’s not having any of it. Now
he’s
choosing. You know, mostly.

Two major new developments: First, he has clapped a number of times, which is thrilling for him and for us, because it takes so much for hands to come together perfectly flat. There are so many moving parts, and many obstacles that could get in the way—your nose, for instance. Just weeks ago, before I left for India, it was still spaz and flail, herky-jerk.

And second, his raspberry is more mature, less spitty and spluttery, less Chris Matthews, more Artie Shaw. It’s a
dry, intentional, buzzing vibration, and he is transfixed by this ability, and looks primed to capitalize on it, as if he might just pick up a clarinet and play “Begin the Beguine,” with a hat on the ground at his feet for tips.

On the day of my favorite St. Andrew church service, when Amy asked if I could babysit Jax, it was all I could do to turn her down. I had seen them the day before, and then two days before that at St. Andrew. When I was teaching Sunday school, Jax was crawling around while Amy got the crafts projects and the food together for the big kids, and all of a sudden he emerged from her purse, having opened up a little container of baby-junk-food sweet-potato bits, which he was shoving into his mouth; he had so much drool on his hands that they were sticking to him, and he looked like a wino.

I thought, Boy, is that my grandson or what?

Every time I manage to say no to Amy or Sam about babysitting Jax, someone should give me money, or the fish you use to train seals. It is hard to pass up any chance to be with him, but Ash Wednesday is more important to me than Christmas, or even Easter. It is such a poignant night of hymns, laments, Scripture, and testimony from the altar about ways in which we are desperate to change. We rend a strip of cloth, daub our foreheads with ashes. There are never more than fifteen people, and usually fewer.

I usually mention my tiny control issues at the altar. Also, my vanity and self-loathing.

Yet even though I have not missed this service in twenty years, I was really bushed by dinnertime, and almost didn’t go. Then, at the last minute, I forcibly roused myself, all but holding a gun to my head, and drove to Marin City. When I arrived, there were eight women and my pastor, Veronica, who explained that the people in the Wednesday-night Bible study group had written their own psalms, and would share them tonight. Afterward, in an hour or so, we would have the ash service.

But, but, but—she’d
said
, during Sunday worship, that we would be having our annual Ash Wednesday celebration.
This
was some sort of Build-A-Bear Workshop. I did not want to hear homemade psalms. I wanted real psalms, from the Old Testament, and my damn ashes.

So I left.

I was so disappointed and confused that I started crying in the parking lot, and my mind was a pinball machine of exasperation with myself, and all of life. In addition, I decided briefly that I would leave St. Andrew entirely and take my very spiritually evolved self—and my money—to another church, where they did things properly.

But then I heard the voice of God. It said gently: Stop. Go back in. Surrender your will.

Instead, I headed to the Clinique counter at Macy’s.

After I parked, I heard the voice again: Honey, go back.

I really
wanted
to want to do this: the Day of Ashes is about seeing how crazy and lonely we are, when left to our own devices. But I wasn’t done with my best efforts yet.