Truth in Advertising

HAPPY NEW YEAR


I walk down the hall in the ICU toward the nurses station, where four of them are huddled together. I hear one nurse say, “And the patient says, ‘What’s the bad news?’ And the doctor says, ‘I’ve been trying to reach you for twenty-four hours.’ ” They all laugh loudly.

One finally turns to me. Her expression suggests she’s annoyed to find me standing there.

“What’s the hardest part about rollerblading?” I say.

“Excuse me?”

The other three nurses have turned, the same mildly annoyed expressions.

“What’s the hardest part about rollerblading?” Expressions that suggest confusion now.

I say, “Telling your father you’re gay.”

They think on it for a moment and one laughs.

“I’m here to see Edward Dolan,” I say.

The one who laughs shows me to his room. I ask if Margaret is on duty, but the nurse—Beverly—tells me that Margaret doesn’t work the ICU. We look at my father, who has more machines around him that go beep and hiss. More tubes. There is a strip of white tape on either side of his mouth holding a tube in. There has to be a more dignified way to die.

“How bad is it?” I ask, thinking immediately that I sound like someone in a TV show.

“He’s not good.”

For some reason this annoys me. Give me facts. Give me data that I don’t fully understand. Give me something.

“I understand that, but is there a time or . . .”

“We couldn’t know that. I’m sorry. The doctor will be around later.”

The room is darker than the other room. Is it mood lighting, to suggest the severity of the situation? Is it to save money on the nearly dead? He looks helpless. He looks like a very old man. He looks like a baby. And just that fast, just that vividly, I remember the reject baseball glove.

My mother collected S&H Green Stamps, spending evenings after dinner and the dishes, a cup of tea, a Pall Mall, my father reading the Record American with the radio on—the Bruins game, the Red Sox—pasting in page after page of Green Stamps. Those rare times when it was good. I was starting Little League. She used the stamps to get me a glove. The model was called a Regent. Other kids had a Spalding or Wilson or Rawlings. Who’d ever heard of a Regent? I was only mildly disappointed, until Eddie Wyzbiki saw it and made fun of it. “Look at Dolan’s glove! It’s a Reeeee-ject!” He pulled it out of my hand, ran around. “Reject!” He was much bigger and I defended myself nicely by bursting into tears, red-faced, ears burning. I told my mother, who told my father. I was sitting in a chair at the kitchen table. I was terrified he’d scream, blame me for crying, being a little weasel. I was waiting for the explosion. In the evening he would shower and afterwards he smelled of Bay Rum.

He sat down opposite me.

“Look at me,” he said. My mother off to one side, biting a corner of her mouth.

I was trying hard not to cry. My ears ached.

He said, “People say foolish things.” He shook his head. “It means they don’t like themselves. It’s means they are afraid. That boy. He’s just afraid. Feel sorry for people who say mean things.”

Later, we drove for an ice cream, just me and him, my father humming to the radio.

• • •

I call Eddie from the cafeteria, hoping it will go directly to voice mail. He answers.

I say, “Hey. It’s Fin.”

“Yeah. Hey. What’s up?”

What’s up? Gee, not much. What’s up with you, a*shole?

I say, “They’ve transferred him to the ICU.”

I can hear children’s voices in the background.

Eddie says, “Has he said anything?”

Yes, Eddie. He said he’s sorry. He said he loves you. He said you’re a good person and he’s proud of you. No, Eddie. He hasn’t. He never said he’s sorry and he never said he loves us and he’s never going to.

You are always a certain age in your family. I am twelve forever. It’s annoying.

I say, “No. Not that I know of. I was here Christmas Eve, part of Christmas Day.”

“I have the kids. Tonight and tomorrow.”

“Okay.”

I’m running my thumbnail back and forth across a packet of sugar.

“Do you know if Maura has any intention of coming down?” The words are polite but the sound of my voice suggests a mild annoyance.

Eddie says, “You’d have to ask her that, Fin.” The subtitle would read “F*ck you, Fin.”

I say, “But she knows he’s in here, right?” The subtitle would read “Why am I the only one here, you selfish, sad prick?”

“Yeah.”

I say, “She knows he’s . . .”

But I stop. What more is there to say? Why fight it? Why let it get to me? But it does.

Eddie says, “Of course she knows, Fin. We all know. We’ve all made our choices. Just like he made his.” He turns from the phone and shouts. “Kara! Turn that down!”

I’m tempted to tell Eddie that he sounds exactly like our father. But I don’t.

• • •

Phoebe calls.

“Hi,” she says.

“Hi.”

I’m still at the hotel. No Knockwurst Night tonight. Not much of anything. I had a beer and two bites of a disgusting cheeseburger. I ordered another beer and took it back to my room. I’m watching The Shawshank Redemption. I’ve seen it maybe five times.

“Where are you?” I ask.

“Friends of the family. They have a party on New Year’s every year.”

“Sounds fun.”

“Lots of cute boys. Ski instructors. Snowboarders. Why are boys who ski so hot?”

“I’ve been asking myself this question for years. You’ve had some wine, I think.”

“Maybe I have. Your date wasn’t good, huh?”

“How do you know I was on a date?”

“Ian told me. Is she there now? Is she hot? Are you guys in love?”

“We’re totally in love.” I pause. “I need to be younger and hotter and a skier, maybe.”

“You’re not that old.”

“Thank you.”

“And you’re not hideous.” She laughs.

“I’m so glad we talked.”

“What are you doing?”

I say, “I’m back up on Cape Cod.”

“What?” Her voice softens. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I got a call yesterday. There’s been a change in his condition.”

“I’m so sorry. God.”

I have no line. I don’t know what to say or feel or do. I’m simply watching myself, as if waiting to write my own dialogue.

I flip around the channels and see poor Dick Clark for the eleven seconds they let him speak before cutting to Ryan Seacrest. They keep saying it’s the greatest party in the world, while showing shots of people standing in the bitter cold of Times Square looking around, bored. There’s a clock in the corner. Twenty-one minutes until midnight.

I say, “It’s an awful thing to die alone. How does that sound, by the way, because I’m not sure I believe it. I want it to sound like an episode of ER.”

There’s a long silence before Phoebe says, “You’re a good man, Fin.”

It is strange the effect those words have on me. It’s something my mother used to say to Eddie. It is a thing I feel I have not remotely achieved, as if it may be beyond my reach. Fathers on their way to the park with their kids on Sunday morning, when I’m on my way to get coffee and the paper. These are good men. Men in meetings who look tired because they were up half the night comforting a colicky baby. These are good men. Men who know themselves, who commit to a thing greater than themselves: a wife, a family. These are good men. How does one get there?

I watch part of a commercial our agency did for a drug for type 2 diabetes that has an unusually high incidence of death. The creative team on it told me that during the fair balance—the reading of the long list of possible side effects—they had had a week’s worth of meetings about what shot to show when the voice-over says, “May cause death.” Ultimately they decided upon a man clapping for himself at his own birthday party. I asked them why. They said they had no idea. They thought it was absurd and pointless. But they told the client they did it because it was a metaphor for the celebration of life. The client loved it.

“No. I’m not. I’m not a good man.”

Phoebe says, “You showed up when it would have been easy not to. No one else did. That’s called being a good man. You’re touching your scar.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because I know you. Who are you going to kiss at midnight?”

“Myself. I’m going to make out with myself ferociously. Probably get to second. What about you?”

“No one.”

I start to say, “Okay, then,” but Phoebe starts to say, “If you were here,” only I don’t fully hear what she says.

I say, “What?”

She says, “Nothing.”

I say, “Okay.”

She says, “Wait. One beautiful thing.”

I say, “You go first.”

She says, “A one-legged man skiing.”

I say, “See, that sounds like a punch line.”

“Shut up. You should have seen it. It wasn’t like those commercials for people with disabilities where everyone’s an Olympian. This guy wasn’t good. He kept falling. But he was trying so hard.”

“Sounds like an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm.”

“What’s yours?” she asks.

I say, “It’s nothing. You’ll laugh.”

She says, “I won’t laugh. Okay, maybe I’ll laugh.”

“No.”

Phoebe says, “Tell me.”

I say, “This couple at the hospital. I was coming to see my father and I passed a room and I saw this old man sitting in a chair next to his wife’s bed and he was reading to her. Later, when I left, I walked by and she was asleep and he was still there, but he was holding her hand.”

I think the phone’s gone dead.

I say, “You’re not laughing.”

“No.”

Three, four seconds.

I say, “Okay, then. Go kiss someone.” I don’t know why I say it. I feel foolish for saying it.

Phoebe says, “I’d kiss you if you were here. On the cheek.”

“I’d let you,” I say.

• • •

The phone rings at 4:12 A.M. That’s how you know your father is dead.

I dress slowly, call a cab.

At the hospital, I am led into his room by two nurses and the doctor. He looks old and gray and dead and his mouth is slightly open and there is what appears to be white mucus around his mouth.

I reach out to touch his arm. I do it with my index finger, not really wanting to touch him, his deadness, but unable to stop myself. His arm is hard and dry and does not feel like skin. I did the same thing to my mother when she died, only I held her hand. This was when Eddie and Kevin and Maura and I were led into the room where my mother’s casket was. Now, I am convinced for a moment that he will react, pull away. I snort thinking about it, thinking it would be funny. The nurse mistakes this for crying and hands me a Kleenex.

I don’t know why but I imagine him atop my mother, having sex. I imagine him as a child. I imagine him as a seventeen-year-old who lied about his age to sign up for the war. I imagine him on the toilet. I imagine him driving a car and laughing. I imagine him opening a medicine cabinet, looking for aspirins, a razor, a Band-Aid. I imagine him opening an umbrella. I imagine him asleep. I imagine his parents looking at him as an infant, imagine what they themselves thought, felt. I see them smiling and cooing. I imagine him at twenty-five or thirty thinking that his entire life was ahead of him, excited, perhaps, by the possibility of it all, how wonderful it could be. I imagine him years later, somewhere in Florida, alone on Cape Cod, a stranger to his family, wondering how it had all come to be, impotent to change it, a constant refrain of sadness and regret. Where once time seemed to me to move slowly, languidly, now life seems to move so much faster, a speed that frightens me at times. One day, someone will stand over me like this and do the same.

Later, I sign several documents, all of which I am supposed to be given copies of but the copier is broken. The only thing I notice is the time of death: Friday, January 1, 3:42 A.M.

We’ve spoken very little, the nurses and I.

“Okay, then,” I say, unsure of what to do. I have no idea what happens to him now. Where does he go? Has anyone made arrangements for a funeral?

“I’m sorry,” I say to the nurse. “What happens now?”

“Your father wished to be cremated. It’s on the admitting form.”

“Then what?” I ask.

“I don’t know. That would be in his will, if he left one.”

Another nurse comes over—SIMONE, it says on her nametag—and puts a clear plastic bag on the counter of the nurses station where we are standing.

“This is for you,” she says. “Your father’s things. His . . . personal effects.” She wants to sound professional. “Clothes, wallet.” She pauses. She can’t think of any more nouns. “Shoes.” Except his shoes aren’t in the bag.

In the plastic bag I see his wallet and an opened pack of Lucky Strikes. The logo used to be green, he told me when I was little, but during the war the army needed the dye for everything and so they switched to red. Lucky Strike went to war, the ads said. In movies where the art director does his or her homework, he said, you can see that the logo is green. And an old silver cigarette lighter, heavy, with his initials engraved on one side and on the other these names: DUTCH HARBOR, ATTU, PEARL HARBOR, MIDWAY, ADMIRALTY ISLAND, BRISBANE, SYDNEY, BIAK, ESPIRITU SANTO. I put it to my nose and smell it. The hint of lighter fluid. He always smelled of cigarettes. And there are brown corduroy pants with the belt still in the loops and black socks that I imagine smell bad and a handkerchief. Who carries a handkerchief anymore? And a plaid flannel shirt and a pilly dark green sweater. I reach in for the wallet, open it, and find $41. A twenty, four fives, and a one. Bills arranged front to back, high to low.

Margaret appears, fresh-faced, clear-eyed, starting her shift. We look at each other for a time and I think how wonderful it must be to share a life with her.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” my mother would say when someone told her something interesting, something mildly surprising. Oh, for heaven’s sake. Is that right? She loved him and held him and planned a life. I have their wedding album in my closet in my apartment on a shelf underneath a couple of old boxes. For a time, on occasion, usually late, a glass of wine in hand, I would bring it down and leaf through it. On page after page, her pretty dress, her lovely hair, the tiny flowers, baby’s breath, long white gloves, her broad smile. And him, smiling, too, closed-mouthed, forever embarrassed of his bad teeth. So much possibility. So much hope. We will have children. We will laugh. We will build a life and a family, fill it with rich memories, and nothing, nothing, so help us God, will ever pull us apart. What do we really get in life besides family, besides people whose job it is to look out for us? Whose blood oath is that they must never forget that? I would look at the pictures and think, They knew nothing of what was to come. I stopped looking after a while because it was like knowing an accident was going to happen but not being able to do anything to stop it.

How does it come to this? Not death, but this . . . this empty, nothing thing. A wallet, a bag of clothes. A half-empty pack of cigarettes. A Social Security card in laminate and a pension card for the Boston Police Department and a pick-up slip for a dry cleaner’s dated two years ago and there, tattered at the edges, almost stuck to the leather, is a photo, in black and white, of Eddie and Kevin and Maura and me, sitting in a row, in matching sweaters, me a fat-faced three-year-old and on the back the date and the imprint SEARS ROEBUCK & CO. PHOTO LAB. MAKE THE MEMORIES LAST.

Oh, for heaven’s sake.

Margaret says, “Mr. Dolan?”

I look up and smile at her.

“I’m fine, Margaret. Honestly.”

I put the wallet back into the bag.

“We’re so sorry,” Simone says suddenly.

“Thank you,” I say, nodding. “Thank you.”

Milky light outside. New Year’s Day.

“Happy New Year,” I say.

They force a smile. It’s time to go. Except I don’t move. And Margaret, sweet Margaret, knower of secrets, of the right way to live, early morning walker, maker of homemade soups, understands far sooner than I the simple truth that however far you drift from your family, however much pain they’ve caused you, however hard you try to run, at some point, perhaps without knowing it, you end up running back. Even if it’s too late. Which is why she comes over and puts her arms around me, a light embrace, gently patting my back.

I pick up the plastic bag, what is left of my father, and walk out into the blue-gray dawn. I need to call my family.