by Anne Panning
“Harry,” he said. Even before the accident he’d sometimes confused me and Harry, as if we were interchangeable. “Things get complicated. I mean, it doesn’t affect how I feel about you. You know that, right?”
“I’m not lying for you anymore,” I said. It was the closest I’d come to refuting or crossing him, ever. I looked down. I could hardly stand to look at the sad flap of his pants rolled up to his groin. His body was so ... brief, so ineffectual, so damaged. The few times we’d all gone out as a family, to the mall or to a restaurant, people had stared with pitying shock, a brave few gracing us with lean, hard smiles that looked more like grimaces. I got a sense it made them feel fortunate by the way they seemed to take deep breaths as they passed us, husbands throwing arms around their wives’ shoulders, children drawing up close to their parents’ pant legs, grateful not to be us, especially not to be him.
“It’s going to be okay,” my father said. “I think it’s part of the process.” Then, as if he realized he was still my father and should somehow soften the blow, he put a finger under my chin and lifted my face up to his. I had so rarely ever seen him at such close range. I saw his ingrown whiskers at the chin, the red puffy rim around his eyelids, how yellowed the whites of his eyes had become. His lips were chapped and flaking. “You have no idea,” he said, “how sorry I am.” He kept his finger under my chin, and my eyes roamed around, desperate for some distraction to interrupt us. “For all of this. Everything.” He let me go, and I slouched back in the chair as if it had all been my fault. But my father wasn’t done. “I hate myself for what I’ve done to your mother. That’s why I think I should leave for a while. Let her see what she wants to do. Let things settle themselves out.”
He shrugged his shoulders, waited for me to say something, then wheeled away.
And so it was that my father moved out. It was raining when he left in an unknown van. My mother made sure we were all out of the house with various errands and appointments, but I’d tricked her by skipping my dental exam. Instead, I’d stayed up in my room, camera in hand, and taken an entire roll of black-and-white through the window as my father was wheeled out and helped into the van by two large men I had never seen before. At one point, I thought my father looked up at the house, but the rain was coming down in wet misty sheets, and I doubted that he saw me. Nonetheless, I drew the curtains and rewound the film, holding the little canister in my hand like an amulet. The only thing I knew for certain was how tired I felt; I longed for the clarity of a clean print in my hands: black and white, positive and negative, light and dark. These were things I understood.
After my father moved out, my mother seemed to flourish, though it was in a slightly overboard, nervous way that to me suggested denial. Nonetheless, her new competence and independence was a surprise that everyone—coworkers, friends, neighbors, and mere acquaintances—instantly picked up on. Of course not everyone knew she was buoyed up by a small but potent pharmaceutical supply that involved antidepressants, Valium, and some kind of pain reliever I didn’t quite understand the need for. She was truly a poster child for the benefits of antidepressants, though; they instantly cheered her, made her a more bubbling, vivacious person, made her eager to talk and less likely to mope. Frankly, it startled me. There was something about the way her eyes flared every so often that read manic to me.
One Saturday morning in May I found her standing on the kitchen counter cleaning the tops of the cupboards with a blue feather duster that had always seemed like a comedic prop from a play set to me. I’d recently become interested in theater at the behest of my English teacher, Cal Corrigan, who said I had a flair for the dramatic after reading my required one-act play about an old couple arguing over who should be the one to die first; neither of them wanted to be the one left behind, but in their argument they’d forgotten about how sad they would be to lose the one person they truly loved. I’d received an A+ on it and was now being railroaded into trying out for the fall play, “The Fantastiks.” I had still not decided if I would.
“Nick, I hope you’re okay,” she said. She wore her old khakis that were stained dark green from when they’d painted the house a few years ago and a navy blue T-shirt I was pretty sure belonged to my father. “Because it’s all going to work out,” she said. “Somehow it is. Your father just needs a little adjustment period. It’s part of the grieving process for what he’s lost.”
I shrugged, popped an English muffin in the toaster, waited for it to crisp up.
“A person in my position could mope around and be bitter,” she said, “or they could rise to the occasion and use the time for, you know, personal growth.” She was whipping the dust up into a frenzy, and I could see it dancing inside the bars of sunshine. Finally, the rain had retreated, and we’d had a string of beautiful days that seemed to nudge us closer to an early summer. All the appliances and dishes shone in the sunlight.
I spread strawberry cream cheese on my English muffin and stood eating it while she cleaned. It was my day to go over to my father’s new place, which was just across town in a newly constructed development of one-story townhouses; a couple of them had been made handicap accessible by state mandate, and my father had luckily been the first in line. Neither Harry nor my mother had been there yet, and I was beginning to feel like a secret liaison every time I ventured from place to place. I had become the unofficial messenger between both parties.
“Tell your father his social security papers are here,” she said.
“Should I just bring them over?” I asked.
“No,” she said. I knew that would have been too easy; despite her veneer of acceptance and her positive attitude, I could sense she still wanted to make things hard on him, as if they weren’t hard enough already. “I need to explain some things to him. It’s complicated.” She grabbed onto my shoulder and jumped down to the floor. “Have you ever seen Rose over there with him? Does she visit?” She clapped her hands free of dirt and wiped them on her pant legs.
“A couple times she’s come over to help.” My new policy of not covering for my father had its downfalls—namely, that I had to cause my mother further agony and watch her face settle with things she didn’t really want to hear.
“Well,” she said a little too brightly, “that’s good he’s got someone to help. She’s probably got a really flexible schedule.” She moved over and began putting away the toaster and wiping up my crumbs, things I would’ve done if she’d just given me a minute.
I wanted to tell her that Rose was someone she didn’t need to worry about, but frankly, I didn’t know if it was true. “So, I’m off,” I said. “I’ll tell him you said hi?” I reached for a ball cap Harry had handed down to me: navy blue Yankees with a frayed bill. I never wore it backwards like Harry did, though.
“Tell him I send my love,” she said. “And I’m here if he needs anything.” She crossed her arms and rubbed her hands up and down her skin. “Tell him he’s always welcome to come back, whenever he’s ready.” I thought I saw her bottom lip jut out just a little bit, but she didn’t let herself miss a beat. She waved me off enthusiastically and moved on to her next project: cleaning out the refrigerator. I left her on her knees with half-empty bottles of salad dressing and ancient cartons of yogurt spread out all around her.
I had to cross the Erie Canal to get to the new townhouses, and just as I was heading towards the bridge, the bells starting ringing and the draw gate went down to stop traffic while a boat passed. The old green bridge creaked and groaned on rusty sprockets you could hear turning with all their might underneath the crossing. Every year the canal was drained in late October and filled again in April. The whole town came out to watch each occasion, and even our family walked down for what had come to feel like a sort of seasonal rite of passage. Now the murky water looked overfull, and I watched as a big white leisure boat was careful to obey the no-wake zone the bridge master was notorious for enforcing militaristically. The boaters always waved to the local townsfolk as they did to me n
ow. I waved back and even saluted the captain until finally the bridge went back down. Local traffic tended to get antsy, but being on foot, I was more patient than most; I did not exactly look forward to reaching my destination.
My walk took me past Rebecca’s house, and while no one was outside, I saw through the screen door what looked to be Harry and Rebecca pulling up chairs at the dining room table. Ever since Harry’s punishment for the dui, he’d taken to staying overnight at Rebecca’s a couple times a week. I believe my mother thought it easier to let it happen than to try and raise interference.
I crossed the one busy highway that led out of Bellport and rushed through a green light since there were cars impatiently advancing to take their right turns. Bellport was infamous for its utter disregard for pedestrians. There were always petitions and movements afoot to make the village a more walkable place, but so far nothing had stuck.
The townhouse development, Gray’s Landing, was tucked behind the Gas ’n’ Go, shielded by a stand of fluttery new poplars whose shiny leaves glowed silver from a distance. Each unit boasted a two-car garage, making it look more automobile oriented than residential. The buildings were all various gradations of muted browns: taupe, cappuccino, caramel, cocoa. My favorite touch was the little faux lighthouse that sat next to the timber-wood entrance gate. What it had to do with a suburban housing tract in the middle of nowhere I had no idea.
The weather was so nice my father was actually sitting outside on a small concrete patio in front of his unit surrounded by a border of pale yellow crocuses. I slowed my pace for a minute and watched him. He was having a cup of coffee and read the newspaper folded in quarters. He wore shorts and had some special white vascular stockings over his stumps so you couldn’t see the actual flesh. Still, it was the first time I’d really seen his legs, or lack of legs, without pants since the accident.
“Dad,” I said. He turned around as much as he could in his chair and smiled.
“Oh, hey, Harry,” he said warmly.
“Nick,” I said. “It’s Nick.”
“That’s what I meant,” he said. “Nick. You look good.”
I sat in a brightly colored lawn chair I’d never seen before. “So how’s it going?”
“Going,” he said. He now had a cup holder attached to his chair, and placed his coffee in it. “And you? Is your mom doing all right?” He wore a baseball hat, I realized with some embarrassment, just like mine, only his was on backwards.
I heard dishes clattering inside, and for a second my heart pounded, thinking it might be his aide, Julie, whom I hadn’t seen for weeks. “Mom’s cleaning the fridge today,” I said. Then, thinking that might’ve suggested too much unhappiness, I revised. “I mean, she’s doing really well. She’s, you know, getting things in order.”
“Yeah?” He itched his elbow. Lately he’d picked up a rash, which my mother told me was from inactivity and problems with his circulatory system. “I worry about her.”
“She’s really good,” I said. “She’s been busy.” I looked around and could see no one else out enjoying the near eighty-degree temperatures. There was a slight breeze, and the sun had that sharp, hard angle that suggested summer was imminent. You could smell freshly cut grass again and hear lawnmowers in the distance. Oddly, though, the place felt deserted. Despite its many units, it seemed more private than our house in the village.
“Well, I think she’s putting on a front,” he said, and pointed out a robin that had landed on a tree branch.
“For who?”
“I don’t know,” my father said. “Me? You and Harry? All of us?” He shook his head, as if chasing out a conflicting idea. “On the phone the other night,” he said, “she was crying.” He closed his eyes as if trying to stay focused. “I can’t remember what about,” he said. “Something ...”
“Doesn’t matter right now,” I said. “She’s doing fine. Let’s go inside.”
What I actually liked about his new place was its lack of furniture and clutter. Although I knew our big Victorian was a place to be envied, over the years my mother had accumulated so many things it felt claustrophobic and a little too precious to me. At a barn sale last year, my mother had found an old glass window with peeling red paint on its mullions and hung it, like some sort of ghostly portal, at the top of the stairs. Everywhere you turned there was some eclectic, primitive, or exotic item looking back at you. When the old elementary school integrated with the junior high, my mother had eagerly gone to the auction and come home with an old, musty pull-down map of the United States that now covered one whole dining room wall.
My father’s new place, on the other hand, was sparse and cool and airy. The walls were all white and the furniture, what little there was of it, seemed Asian in its spare lines and monochromatic colors. I didn’t know where he’d gotten it, but I liked it; it was easy to ignore my jumbled, bifurcated life when I sat on the cool blue couch with extremely low arms and tiny legs like thin little branches.
Rose came out of the bathroom, surprising me, and gave me a quick kiss on the cheek in greeting. There was something about her, against my better judgment, that pulled me in. Just standing in the living room talking quietly, she gave off a charismatic glow that made me want to do her favors, ask her questions, be near her, and be liked by her.
“Still taking photographs?” she said. I found it sexy the way she sat with her bare legs curled underneath her, and I clutched a couch pillow in front of me for cover.
“When I get the chance,” I said. “Not as much as I’d like to.” I realized I sounded like a middle-aged man talking about his golf game. “I’ve been busy with school. You know, lots of things.”
“Sure,” she said. “Life conspires against us.” She laughed lightly and sipped at a tall glass of iced tea.
I thought it was an odd comment and waited for my father to participate in the conversation or at least to steer us towards something more meaningful. As pleasant as Rose was, I found it difficult to know how to behave around her. It was role conflict at its most extreme: was she like my father’s aide now? a friend? an aunt? a buddy?
“Nick’s going to be famous someday!” my father said. He wheeled over towards me and tapped my leg with the rolled up newspaper. “His pictures’ll be on the cover of Time or something. Big famous Nick Foster won’t even know us anymore, will you, Nick?”
I shrugged my shoulders and laughed. “Right,” I said. “You can all say you knew me back when.”
“Seriously,” my father said. His eyes were getting that bright wet look about them that alerted me to the fact that he was tiring. “Big famous Mr. Nick Foster won’t even know us anymore, will you, Nick?” He yawned and slumped back in his chair. “Nick. Nick. Nick.”
“Why don’t we all go for a walk?” Rose said. She pulled out her running shoes stuffed with socks from under the coffee table and put them on. I stood up and waited for her while looking at the photos magneted to the refrigerator. One showed me and Harry our last Christmas, preaccident, when we’d both received ski hats that looked like jester’s caps with long pointed ends in bright colors. Another picture showed a girl roughly my age riding a jet ski in her swimsuit on Lake Ontario. When I looked closer, I thought it looked like a girl from school who’d been killed a couple years earlier by a hit-andrun while walking along a busy street in broad daylight; I couldn’t remember her name. I’d never considered that Rose might be this girl’s mother, but now it hit me that she must have been. She’d been one year younger than me in school, and what I could remember of her (Wendy! Wendy was her name) had been her wavy red hair, which she always wore in one long braid. The story got a lot of attention because they never found the person who’d hit her, and the newscasts kept running her school picture for weeks. I wasn’t sure what her picture was doing up on my father’s refrigerator, though, and I didn’t ask. Some things were better left unknown.
I’d never really walked around town with my father since the accident and realized, as Rose and I helped him
outside and onto the main sidewalk, that I was battling some shame about it, which was quickly compounded by guilt. No matter how polite people tried to be, a wheelchair drew stares. People went out of their way to give us space on the sidewalk, and cars actually slowed down at the crosswalks to let us pass. My father, I noticed, made eye contact with no one.
There was a small grocery store at the edge of town, Jack & Jill Foods, that I’d always found sad for its hard-luck clientele, and it was there that we headed now under the auspices of buying ice cream for dessert later. The store was housed in a mini strip mall also inhabited by a cheap haircut franchise, a dollar store, a vfw bar painted battleship gray, and a credit union that I had never once seen open. As we crossed the freshly tarred parking lot towards the automatic doors, my mother came out the exit with a single brown paper bag in her arms. We were far enough away so that she might not have seen us, but we were close enough that she could, and did. We all stopped: me pushing my father in his chair, Rose standing by his side, my mother in front of us like a stranger, using the grocery bag, it seemed, like a shield.
Naturally we exchanged pleasantries, but after that there was quickly a deficit of things to talk about. The fact that I felt like a traitor ignited in me the urge to draw my mother into our triad in a way that I knew was inappropriate. “Just getting a little something for dessert,” I said. “You can join us for dinner later if you want.” I obviously hadn’t cleared this with my father but he seemed nonplussed by it all. I didn’t know if Rose was planning to stay or not.
“Harry won his soccer match,” my mother said, and adjusted her grocery bag. Harry had kept up with the game even after I’d abandoned it the season prior.
“That’s great,” Rose said. “He’s such a gifted athlete, isn’t he?”
