“You know,” my father said, shifting me back to the here and now, “one of the strangest things about our marriage was that there were at least ten, fifteen, twenty moments when one of us said, ‘That’s it . . . I’ve had enough,’ and was on the verge of bailing out. We put each other through a lot of grief—in our own different ways.”
“So why didn’t either of you leave?”
“Well, it wasn’t as if we stayed together out of convenience, or because we were too scared to change. I guess, in the end, I couldn’t imagine a life without Dorothy. Just as she couldn’t imagine a life without me. It was as simple, and as complex, as that.”
“Forgiveness is a curious thing,” I said.
“If eighty-two years on this damn planet have taught me anything, it’s that forgiveness—and being forgiven—is the most crucial thing in life. We all endlessly mess things up for those closest to us.”
A small look of acknowledgment passed between us, and then we moved on to other things—only the second time in all these years we had almost mentioned the breach that came between us.
The phone on my dashboard started to ring. I hit the speaker button.
“Hannah?”
It was my father.
“Dad? What’s wrong?”
“Why should there be anything wrong? I was just calling to see where you are.”
“Just past St. Johnsbury.”
“Well, if you wouldn’t mind picking me up at the university, we can go to the Oasis for lunch,” he said, mentioning a little local place he ate at most days.
“No problem. I should be there in around seventy-five minutes,” I said.
“And we don’t have to spend too much time at the home this afternoon,” he added.
“Fine by me,” I said. Dad knew that I found these visits to Mom difficult.
“You don’t sound great,” Dad said.
“Sleepless night, that’s all.”
“Are you sure?”
Dad hated when I kept stuff from him. So I said, “Lizzie’s in a bad place.” When he asked to know more, I hesitated, not wanting to recount the entire sad saga on a cell phone speaker. So I promised to fill him in on everything over lunch.
Dad was standing outside the History Building when I pulled up. Though his shoulders were now a little bent and his hair had moved from silver to serious white, he still retained his patrician bearing—and was dressed, as always, in the uniform of his professional life: a green Irish tweed jacket with suede-patch sleeves, gray slacks, a blue button-down Oxford shirt, a knit tie, polished cordovan shoes. As I pulled up, he smiled—and I immediately looked at his eyes, making certain (as I now did when visiting him) that they were still acutely alert. Ever since Mom’s mind vanished, I’ve become extravigilant about Dad’s mental condition—monitoring every phone conversation we have for signs of verbal hesitancy and using these monthly visits to Burlington as a chance to be sure that he’s holding up. What continues to amaze me is that he is still so damn sharp, as if it has become a point of belligerent principle for him to defy the aging process. But as I returned his smile and leaned over to open the car door, I thought (as I frequently do now) that human biology is damnably inevitable, and I will lose him soon. Though I constantly try to accentuate the positive—telling myself how lucky I am that he’s lived this long, and has remained in such a robust state, and how he might live on for some years to come—I still can’t accept the fact that, one day before too long, he might not wake up.
Dad seemed to be reading my mind. After sliding next to me in the car and giving me a fast kiss on the cheek, he said, “If we were in Paris, I’d say you were gripped by existential doubt right now.”
“And since we’re in Vermont?”
“You probably just need a grilled cheese sandwich.”
“Ah, so it turns out that grilled cheese is the solution to life’s massive uncertainties.”
“If accompanied by dill pickles,” he said.
We drove over to the Oasis Diner—where we ordered Vermont cheddar grilled cheese sandwiches with extra dill pickles, washed down with proper iced tea (none of that powdered nonsense). As soon as we had ordered, Dad said, “Lizzie,” and I spent ten minutes telling him the whole story. After I finished, Dad swung into adviser mode—a role he’d loved to play since his teaching days.
“She needs to get this doctor out of her life now,” he said.
“You’re right about that. And I know that bastard would love to permanently excise Lizzie . . . especially as she’s now threatening to ruin his marriage, his career, his crappy television show, everything. Not that he doesn’t deserve it.”
“I hope you’re not blaming yourself.”
“Of course I’m blaming myself. What’s eating me the most is the idea that, somewhere along the line, Dan and I did—or didn’t—do something that—”
“Created all this neediness, this desperate search for love?”
“Uh-huh.”
“You know that neither of you has been deficient in that department.”
“Then why is she so dangerously off the rails when it comes to love?”
“Because that’s how she is. Or that’s what she’s developed into. But you know what the real problem is here: Lizzie can’t stand what she does.”
“True, but she does like the money.”
“No she doesn’t—and we both know it. The money, the fancy apartment, the fancy car, the fancy vacations . . . she’s told me all about them, and what I’ve been hearing from her is Faustian bargain despair. And I know all about her ‘plan’—ten years in the money game, make a killing, retire, and do what she wants at thirty-five. But what she’s found out is that the money game sucks everyone dry. It’s social Darwinism writ large—and if you can’t play survival of the fittest . . .”
“The thing is, she plays it very well. She’s been promoted twice in the last eighteen months.”
“But it’s still corroding her. Because unlike the people who play that game for keeps, Lizzie is not shallow. On the contrary, she’s very self-aware, very conscious of her own place in the world and the limitations she’s put upon herself.”
“Like mother, like daughter.”
“Hannah, you might not like to admit it, but you are your own woman. Lizzie is also her own woman—who has managed to convince herself that earning all that money will set her free . . . which, in her private heart of hearts, she knows is complete BS. So the way I see it, this desperate search for love—this need to land her guy, even if he is a married fool—is a manifestation of the self-loathing she feels for carrying on in a financial world she hates. The moment she leaves the job and finds something she actually likes to do, she’ll cast off this manic behavior—which, to me, sounds like the onset of serious depression.”
I had to hand it to Dad. His analysis was spot-on—and brimming with the sort of penetrating cogency which so distinguished his work as a historian.
“Would you talk to her?” I asked.
“I have been talking to her.”
“What?” I said, sounding genuinely shocked.
“She’s been calling me two, three times a week.”
“Since when?”
“The last few weeks. She just called me late one evening—well after midnight—and started crying on the phone. We must have talked for around two hours.”
“But why did she call you?”
“You’d have to ask Lizzie that. The thing was, after we spoke that first time—and I essentially talked her down off the ledge, because this was right after the breakup and she sounded very shaky—she started phoning me most days. Then, after I helped find her a psychiatrist . . .”
“She’s seeing a psychiatrist?” I said.
“A very good man on the staff of Harvard Med School. Charles Thornton—the son of one of my Princeton classmates, and one of the leading specialists in obsessive-compulsive disorders . . .”
“I’m certain he’s a genius, Dad. You do only know the best. Wha
t flabbergasts me is that you haven’t just kept all this from me, but that you played along today as if you didn’t know anything.”
“You’re right to be angry with me. But Lizzie made me swear that I’d never tell you we were talking—and, like you, I always keep a confidence.”
I said nothing in reply to this—though I knew what he was talking about, and couldn’t help but wonder if family life wasn’t one long tangle of Don’t tell Mom/Dad . . . Keep this to yourself . . . He/She doesn’t need to know . . .
“Then why did you break that confidence today?”
“Because you broke yours to Lizzie.”
“But I only did that because—”
“I know. She’s on a knife-edge right now, and you knew I’d figure out something was eating at you, and you don’t like keeping stuff from me, because, unlike your father, you’ve never really had much talent for the clandestine.”
He met my eyes as he said that, and I didn’t know whether I should shout at him or admire his ongoing complexities—someone who seemed able to compartmentalize his life and live comfortably with his manifold contradictions. Such as his need to admit something only after he was found out—like my little discovery last summer that, in the two years since Mom had been living under “managed care” at the home, he’d been seeing a younger woman named Edith Jarvi. By younger, I mean she’s a mere sixty-seven years old (jailbait to an octogenarian like Dad). Like all of his women, past and present, she’s an intellectual class act (I wonder if he’s ever slept with someone who hasn’t subscribed to The New York Review of Books). She’s a recently retired professor of Russian who’s still married to the university’s former provost, but has been spending much of her time with Dad since . . .
Well, when I finally found out about it, he was rather cagey about how long they’d been together, which made me wonder if it had been going on before Mom’s Alzheimer’s had finally vanquished her mind. Even the way I’d discovered their affair was classic Dad. One evening last June, I rang his house just to say hello, and a woman picked up the phone.
“Is this Hannah?” she asked, throwing me a little off balance.
“Uh, yes it is. And to whom am I speaking?”
“I’m your father’s friend Edith. And I’m looking forward to meeting you the next time you’re visiting John.”
John.
When she turned the phone over to Dad, he sounded a little sheepish.
“So that was Edith,” he said.
“So she said. She’s your ‘friend.’”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“Just a ‘friend’?”
A pause. Then, “No, a little more than that.”
I had a near fit of the giggles.
“I am impressed, Dad. At your age, most men roll over and play dead in that department. Whereas you . . .”
“This only started after your mom . . .”
“Sure it did. Anyway, I don’t really care.”
“Then you’re not upset?”
“Well, it would have been nice if you had mentioned something before now.”
“It’s all rather new.”
God, why did he have to always stretch the truth? It was this inability to be completely straight with me that had sparked that rupture thirty years ago. And yet, just as I was about to explode into the phone, I stopped myself out of the knowledge that, at the age of eighty-two, my dad’s shortcomings in the truth department were not going to suddenly correct themselves. This is who—and what—he was. Take it or leave it.
“So when can I meet your friend?” I asked. When I came up to Burlington a few weeks later, a very civilized dinner chez Dad was organized by Edith Jarvi. She was, as I expected, a most cultivated woman. She had been brought up bilingual in New York by first-generation Latvian immigrants. She’d received a doctorate in Russian literature and language at Columbia, had been a professor at UVM for thirty years, and (yes!) was an occasional contributor on things Russian to The New York Review of Books. During the course of the evening, she dropped the fact that her husband—the retired provost—was now living half the time in Boston (no doubt, with some exotic Croatian mistress), and that they had a sort of open arrangement when it came to their marriage. I took this to mean that the provost didn’t mind the fact that his wife was sleeping with my father, which they almost certainly did on the night I visited them. I was a bit disturbed when, around ten, Dad and Edith excused themselves and went upstairs. I know it shouldn’t have upset me, as Mom’s condition meant that Dad was almost technically a widower, and I was of course aware that Dad hadn’t been a model of fidelity during his marriage. Maybe it was the idea of this woman sharing the bed that Dad once shared with Mom. Or maybe I just couldn’t handle the idea of being under the same roof while my dad was having sex with Edith (if, that is, they were having sex tonight). Or maybe it was just the casual presumption that I wouldn’t mind them sleeping together while I was visiting. Or maybe Dad was just treating me like a fiftysomething grown-up who shouldn’t be bothered by such things.
Anyway, when I woke in the morning, Edith was already up and insisted on making me breakfast. As she poured me a cup of very strong coffee, she studied my face and said, “May I be direct about something?”
“Uh . . . sure,” I said, tensing myself for the revelation to come (at least she couldn’t be pregnant).
“You don’t approve of me, do you?”
“Why would you think that?” I asked diplomatically.
“Hannah, I know how to read faces—and yours reads: thumbs-down.”
“I am very impressed with you, Edith.”
“Perhaps, but you still disapprove of our romance. And that’s what it is, Hannah: a romance . . . and a very providential one at that, for both of us.”
“Well then, I am pleased for you both,” I said, hearing the stiffness in my voice.
“I would like to believe that, Hannah. It’s rather futile to be Puritan about such things, n’est-ce pas?”
For his part, Dad never asked me what I thought of Edith—though, after I got over my initial uneasiness (I guess I really am a Puritan about such things), I did approve of her, and came to quickly see this romance as a good thing in my father’s life . . . because, among all its other obvious benefits for him, it also meant that there was someone looking after him at home.
“Try not to be upset,” he said, bringing me back to the Oasis Diner and the untouched grilled cheese sandwich still in front of me.
“I’m not upset. I’m just completely thrown by Lizzie’s behavior, and the fact that she was telling you not to say anything to me, and telling me that I couldn’t even tell her father what was going on.”
“She’s irrational—and therefore will spin her own web of intrigue to augment the melodrama she’s creating for herself. Does Dan know now?”
“Of course—and he was very good about the fact that I’d kept it from him. Did she tell you about sleeping in her car outside the doctor’s house?”
“Oh yes—and the good news is that, last night, she did stay at home and did manage to get six hours’ sleep—which for Lizzie isn’t bad right now.”
“How did you know that?” I asked.
“She called me first thing this morning.”
“How did she sound?”
“Desperately optimistic, which might be an oxymoron, but in Lizzie’s case seems an accurate assessment of her state of mind. The one good thing is that she’s managed to get an emergency appointment with Dr. Thornton this afternoon. That’s something, I guess.”
“I said I’d phone her tonight.”
“And she said she’d phone me tonight,” Dad added. “Does she know you’re visiting me in Burlington?”
“No, I hadn’t mentioned that.”
“Then you call her first—and I’ll await her call.”
Dad was right: Lizzie was on a knife-edge, and until we heard from her again, there was nothing either of us could do about it.
So we moved on to the n
ext difficult bit of family business: Mom.
The home was located in a quiet residential area around a mile from the university. It occupied a functional modern building. The staff were highly professional and caring in a fixed-smile sort of way. And Mom’s private room was tastefully done in a Holiday-Inn-Meets-Ralph-Lauren-Meets-Geriatric-Facility style. Despite its cozy attributes, I could only take about thirty minutes within its walls. Not that Mom minded the brevity of my visit. When we came into her room, she was seated in an armchair, staring off into the distance. I sat down next to her.
“Mom, it’s Hannah,” I said.
She looked at me, but didn’t register my presence. Then she turned away, gazing at a nearby wall.
I took her hand. Though warm, it was limp within mine. In the past, I had tried talking to her—bringing her up to speed on her grandkids’ work and activities, giving her news of Dan’s career and of my life as a teacher. I stopped this after around a month—it was so clear that I wasn’t getting through to her and was therefore doing this for my own benefit. But since I wasn’t benefiting at all from these banal monologues (which only seemed to accentuate the awfulness of the situation), I cut them out. Since then, I looked upon these visits as my opportunity to support my dad, as the strain upon him was enormous. He worked very hard not to show it—maintaining a stoic calm as he sat opposite her. He put one of her hands between his, and simply maintained physical contact with her for around ten minutes. Then he carefully drew his hands away, stood up, leaned down, lifted up her chin with his forefinger, and kissed her softly on the lips. No reaction from Mom. As soon as my father removed his forefinger, her chin dipped down to her chest and stayed there. Dad blinked and strangled a sob, then turned away from me for a moment until he calmed himself. Reaching into the pocket of his trousers, he brought out a handkerchief, dabbed his eyes, took a deep, steadying breath, and turned back to me. Though I wanted to go over and hold him while he was crying, I knew from experience that Dad needed to be left alone at moments like this. He didn’t cry during every visit, but when he did lose his composure, he didn’t want to be consoled. Dad had never been the most tactile of men (the old WASP training), and he considered crying in public to be awkward, if not a little demeaning. So I let him be, taking his place in the chair opposite Mom, holding her hand again until Dad cleared his throat, turned back to me, and said, “Um . . . shall we?”
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