All This Could Be Yours

by Jami Attenberg

  “Twyla, pfft,” said her mother.

  “What’s that about?” said Alex. “Twyla’s been great to you.”

  “Twyla isn’t family.”

  “They’ve been married for fifteen years. I’d say she’s family by now.”

  “You know what I mean. Flesh and blood.”

  How to not talk about family with family, she wondered. Who could we talk about right now but each other? Alex turned on the radio. A DJ was detailing a list of shows playing that night. It would be inappropriate for her to go see some live music while her father was dying—she knew that, of course—but she allowed herself to fantasize about losing herself in a dark club among strangers who didn’t care who she was and needed nothing from her.

  “I know you don’t like him,” said her mother. “Your father has always been a complicated man.”

  “I’ll say,” said Alex.

  “But you’re complicated, too. And he loves you,” Barbra said. “He always thought you were smart and capable, and no one was prouder of you when you graduated from law school. He said, ‘She can get me out of jail someday.’”

  “I remember that,” said Alex. They both laughed, exhausted, weak, ancient laughs, as if they were on the verge of death themselves, until both sounds faded and were replaced by the noisy blast of the air conditioning.

  “The point is, we don’t know how he’s doing or what is going to happen next, and it is worth it for you to consider making your peace with him,” her mother said.

  “I don’t know if I can fake it,” said Alex.

  “I’ll tell you a secret. I didn’t like my father either.”

  “That’s not a secret, Mom. Try again.”

  Her mother continued, “I didn’t like my father and I never forgave him for many things. And it has eaten me up for years that I did not utter those words to him before he died. I have lived with it when I didn’t need to, because forgiveness is free. I could have said to him just once, ‘Thank you for putting food on the table when life was hard and you had your demons. Thank you at least for that.’”

  Alex’s grandfather had been a man of varying occupations and habits, acquired upon his arrival in America in 1943, and only a few of them were of any value to his family. Mostly he was a drinker, and not an affectionate one, and as time went on, he mastered the fine art of disappearing, although he did, as Alex’s mother mentioned, provide for his family now and then, leaving envelopes of cash under their front door, even if he didn’t sleep at home regularly anymore. Alex met him only a few times, and her memory was of an old, shrunken, thickly accented man in the corner of their living room, holding a highball glass, his hands shaking, his pores emanating liquor, his skin spotted with broken blood vessels. He had made Alex laugh, though. Once, after a funeral, he had whispered to her, “All the men your mother could have had, and she married a man with a schnoz like that?”

  In the car, Alex said to her mother, “You know, maybe you couldn’t tell him thank you because you couldn’t find him.”

  “You don’t want to be me thirty years from now, wishing you’d said it was OK and you understood and he was free to move on to the next place, knowing there was love in this world for him. You don’t want that, trust me.”

  Alex felt both empathetic and manipulated, two warring emotions existing within her, in full, raging bloom. The forgiveness, thought Alex, wouldn’t be for herself, no matter what her mother was saying. The words could come out of her mouth, but the forgiveness would be to make her mother feel better and no one else. Victor would never know, and even if he did, she wasn’t sure he’d care.

  “Let me be your mother for a second and give you that advice,” Barbra said.

  If I release her in this way, will she then please release me, too? “If I do it . . . ,” said Alex.

  “‘If I do it,’ what?”

  It seemed unfair for her to have to negotiate for honesty with her own parent.

  “If I do it, will you do something for me? Will you tell me the truth about Dad? You and Dad. All of it.”

  “Oh, Alex.” Her mother emitted one precious, diamond-like tear. “You’ve always been so smart and inquisitive, but you don’t need to know every little thing.”

  Suddenly a car stopped short ahead of them at a stoplight. Alex gasped and slammed on the brakes, reaching out toward her mother to keep her from jerking forward. At the same time, her mother reached out to Alex, to protect her. And they sat like that, at the light, both hands outstretched toward each other.

  “That was a close one,” said Alex.

  “Not close enough,” said her mother, and they both laughed, darkly, in that doomed Tuchman way.

  * * *

  The path to her father’s hospital room from the parking lot was intricate: multiple elevators, a march through a long, winding first-floor corridor that connected a series of buildings, airless, and dim in one hallway. Alex had felt so disconnected from reality for days, she barely noticed this new assault on her equilibrium. By the time they had arrived at the third elevator, her mother had wrapped herself in a sweater procured from her bag.

  “Here, honey, I brought one for you, too,” said Barbra. Alex was delighted and astonished with her mother for behaving as a mother should for once.

  “Too cold,” said Alex, shivering, as she pulled the cashmere sweater over her head.

  “I can never find the right temperature in this city,” said Barbra.

  They walked through another long hallway. “At least I’m getting my steps in,” said her mother.

  Her mother, with her steps. When had her fascination with them started? Was it five years now? She had always been a counter of things. Exact change at the checkout, the line behind her be damned, she would get rid of those pennies. Calories. Counting stars, a game they would play on the patio when Alex and her brother were young, only her mother would continue under her breath long after the children had tired of it. She couldn’t count all of them, of course; it had been a pointless act. Alex had sensed the futility of it early on. Nevertheless, her mother persisted.

  Now she had a new thing to count. These steps. It was all the rage, this counting. Everyone she knew wore those slender bracelets that tracked their movements. Barbra had gotten one each for Alex and Sadie for the holidays last year, and Sadie had slipped it on eagerly, claiming her three best friends also had their own, and now she, too, could keep up with them. Alex had tossed hers into her desk drawer. She didn’t want to gauge or assess her reality. What if it was just another failure to track?

  Ten thousand minimum a day, her mother said at the time. Ten thousand was for the peasants, though. Ten thousand was just how her mother knew her heart was still beating. Fifteen thousand was when she began to feel truly alive. Once, her mother phoned her and burst out excitedly, “Thirty-two thousand steps today!” and Alex had no choice but to congratulate her. Good job on walking.

  In the hospital elevator her mother tapped her bracelet, checked the count, and muttered to herself. On the final floor, the door opened on Twyla, her hand still on the button. She smiled at them, a beautiful, cracked smile. She still smelled like sunscreen and cigarettes. No one moved for a moment. Alex had seen her that morning at the pool; why was she here? Then she noticed Twyla was holding a Bible. Twyla waved it ruefully.

  “Every little bit helps,” she said.

  She was wearing a strapless terrycloth romper over her bikini. She had freckles everywhere, and breasts everywhere, too, and seemed nearly naked in the hospital lighting. “Figured I’d come since I was already on this side of the river.” She got into the elevator and turned to face them. “I’ll keep doing this,” she said, and tapped the Bible. The door closed.

  “See? She didn’t have to do that,” said Alex.

  “Is that how you dress for a hospital?” her mother said.

  “Are you just now realizing how Twyla dresses?” said Alex. Although it was possible this was the case. This past year was the most time her parents had spent wi
th Gary and Twyla since they had gotten married. Maybe her mother was recognizing for the first time that she didn’t like Twyla, just as Alex was recognizing for the first time that she did like her. When she had called her brother in Los Angeles after their father’s heart attack and told him she was going to New Orleans, Gary had said, “Twyla’s got this covered until I can find a flight home.” And when Alex really thought about it, Twyla had always been the most generous member of the family. She was the outsider who brought no baggage with her; she could be as kind to any of them as she liked, with no feelings attached other than genuine good spirits. Even after fifteen years with her brother, Twyla was still able to step outside the family and see what was the right thing to do. Like praying at a dying man’s bedside.

  Fine, Alex would forgive her father already. But she still wanted the truth from her mother.

  Peach walls, white floors, tile, then carpeting, then tile again. They arrived at the hub of the floor unit, files, phones, nurses at work, real New Orleanians, people born and raised here, not like Alex’s family, interlopers, carpetbaggers, tourists for eternity, or until death do them part. She had eavesdropped on them at the nurses’ stations, their shorthand, their laughs. Sometimes she felt too northern to translate. In her life she was surrounded by overarticulators, every letter receiving a specific and agonized kind of treatment. The New Orleans accent was about words slipping and sliding, collapsing into each other, like schoolkids on a patch of ice. How nice it must be just to relax like that, she thought with a little envy.

  Alex’s phone buzzed, a text from her daughter. She paused at the nurses’ station. “Give me a minute,” she said.

  Barbra wandered down the hallway. “I’ll get some steps in,” she said. Fitness above all, or at least certainly above death.

  The text read, “Dad sucks. We’re still fighting. I want to go home.” A series of anxious emojis followed.

  All he had to do was not be terrible to his child for a day while my father dies, thought Alex.

  “Honey just hold on,” she texted back. “At hospital with grandpa.” Don’t apologize, is what she wanted to text. Her daughter sent her another batch of sad-face emojis. Her mother sped past her and rounded the corner again. She now wore a pair of headphones. Barbra was checked out for the time being.

  It was just Alex and that man in the hospital bed.

  It’s now or never, she thought. Could it be never?

  No, now.

  12

  Her daughter wanted to know the truth. Did she now.

  She checked her step count as a means of distraction from this particular issue in her life. Twelve thousand steps so far today, this day of mortality. And then that moment was over. Back to her daughter. The steps couldn’t save her from all this thinking and feeling that needed to be done.

  She thought: What good would it do you, Alex, to learn all of your father’s flaws, his crimes, his mistakes? What would be the point of it? To know anyone’s weaknesses had never helped Barbra in any way. To know their strengths, what they had to offer her, how they could surround her with things she desired, how they could shield her from the world—those were the things worth knowing about a person.

  She continued to walk the rectangular path of the hospital floor. Thin and pretty, pretty and thin, her mantra as she walked, one she’d repeated for decades. Where it came from, precisely, she was unsure, only that it had been there for so long it was too late to shake it now. All she knew was if she kept moving, perhaps she would arrive there, at that destination. Pretty and thin.

  Everybody was dying on this floor. One by one. That was what this floor was for; it was where people went to die. Her husband in the bed of a room she kept passing, but not entering, on the floor of this hospital, a place she thought she wouldn’t have had to be in for at least another ten years. But everything had caught up with him. All that booze, all those steak dinners, and those cigars. Over the years, he had refused the pills the doctors had prescribed to heal him in various ways, heart, cholesterol, blood pressure. Health problems bored him. Rules were for the weak, even if they pertained to your health. They were supposed to spend the rest of their lives together. Even if she didn’t love him like she used to, even if she didn’t love him at all some days, they were each other’s partner. Among myriad other feelings, Barbra was furious. It wasn’t supposed to end like this. They should have had more time together. Now she’d have to figure out a new path for herself, and she hadn’t the strength or the inclination.

  Pretty and thin. Barbra passed an old man in a wheelchair—he was old, right? Older than her? A frail man, black, his face stretched tight, not in a smile, lips determined, but purple, his skin lined and wrinkled, enormous moles, patches of vitiligo, as if his color had given out on him, a face of defeat, even if he was not prepared to admit it. As he thrust his weak, bony arms in an attempt at a circular motion, his hands kept slipping off the wheels of his chair, just a glancing blow toward movement. One side of his face seemed to have melted. A stroke, she thought. He nodded at her and she nodded at him and she pretended they were both fine, two people engaged in civil communication, but that was a lie. No one was fine on this floor.

  Poor old man, she thought. Was she old yet? She was sixty-eight. That was not young. She’d fought it for so long, oldness. She’d used every damn cream. She rarely drank. She never let the sun touch her skin. Food was irrelevant except to keep her functioning. She’d had a facelift five years ago, and she was holding steady. Tight and taut. A stringbean. She was the one who would remain eternal while that man, in that room, her husband, Victor, died.

  She crossed paths with a nurse holding a clipboard, looking efficient and important, with her brisk walk and lined lips and neat, tight coif of honey-colored hair. The nurse’s nails were also impeccable: painted the color of a damp, pink bougainvillea, an array of rhinestones embedded in each. A woman at work. Barbra moved out of her path. This floor needed to function precisely. Barbra knew better than to stand in her way.

  A skill of Barbra’s, letting people do what they do best. She had spent her life watching other people do their work. Before her father had become a particular kind of failure and disappeared from her life, he had been ambitious and a hard worker, and she had observed him. He was always around their home, working upstairs and downstairs, building plans for the future, strategizing at the kitchen table with his buddies, drinking coffee all day, switching to vodka at night, until Barbra’s mother swept all his friends away and sent them home, while Barbra was tucked safely in her small room over the stairs, a lovely, tiny, sweet-faced girl with eyes like a kitten, long-lashed and dewy. Mordechai was a salesman of many things, to whoever would buy them, a mover of objects from one place to the next, one set of hands to another. You need this? I get this for you. If he didn’t have it, he could find it. There was a cousin, Josef, who could help with that. Trucks pulled up to the house and drove away again, leaving boxes on their doorstep. The attic, the basement, the garage, all stacked with objects, their value hazy to Barbra, but if there were so many of them, they must be worth a lot, although Mordechai never seemed to make much money. (“It’s garbage, these things you sell,” she heard her mother say once to her father. “Eh, they know what they’re getting,” he replied.) Everything was in motion, all was for sale, nothing was set in stone, and he’d tell you he liked it that way if you ever asked. Before he had arrived in America, his family had seen their possessions burned before them, and they just kept moving, to keep living. Objects had meaning, and also meant nothing if you were dead. The real goal of the game was to keep hustling, to be occupied, give those feet somewhere to go, because trust me, no one wanted to see what happened if he stopped. “It’s good to be a busy man,” he said. “A busy man is a happy man. This I know.”

  Even the furniture in their home was for sale. Every week, new families would come to the house and walk through their living room and examine the couch and the chair, the lamp and the coffee table, the rug and the
ottoman, all of which Barbra had been instructed to steer clear of lest she damage the objects in some way. Instead she watched from the top of the stairs, as some other child bounced himself on the couch cushions with enthusiasm, as some other mother spread her hand along the fabric, a handshake between the men, and then hours later another man, another truck, appeared to take it away. Was this any way to live?, Barbra’s mother, Anya, asked anyone who would listen, sad kitten eyes, too, long hair braided around her head, a beautiful, mournful, questioning head. Any way at all?

  Eventually Mordechai opened a storefront—“Enough with the boxes already,” he said—where he sold everything at once, the furniture, the radios, the socks, the shoes, the pots and the pans. But the store was a mess. He had no idea how to display his wares. Here were more boxes, things stacked in the corner, sale signs in scribbled handwriting that no one could read, fast talking that no one could understand, bad lighting, bad angles, bad choices. No one wanted to spend time there. It never stopped feeling like he was selling out of the back of a truck. Even with the good deals he was offering, for they were not the best deals anymore. His customers thought: Why can’t they just find another truck? Her father pacing the length of his store, empty, empty. Anya trying to soothe him while Barbra sat, at last, on one of her father’s couches.

  * * *

  Ahead of her on the hospital floor, Barbra saw a painting of some gulls floating above bent, ancient oaks, all of it rendered in soothing greens and yellows. She checked her numbers, checked herself: she was hollow inside, as if her stomach were carved out and empty. She was in pain, surely, but she could not quite grasp it.

  The story of the past is nearly irrelevant, is what she would like to tell her daughter. What good does it do you to look back? And also, it hurts.

  And yet she continued to look anyway. One thousand, two thousand steps. Away we go.