by Andy Mozina
“George said he was actually hospitalized. I don’t remember that.”
“Well, you were too busy savanting with the piano. Yes, he got really sick.” She takes a breath and seems to do something away from the phone. I wait out the pause. “But what I remember are the paintings. For a while, Daddy was an amazing painter.”
“A painter?” I take a seat on the futon couch.
“I know, right? But he was. He’d paint when he couldn’t sleep, which was basically all the time, or when he was freaking out. He told Mom he was dying in his head—something like that.”
“Is this the whole ‘crisis of faith’ thing?”
“It was, kind of. I mean, there was that also. I remember for maybe six or eight months he wouldn’t go to church—oh, that blew Mom’s mind.”
“I can imagine.”
“It’s a total mess, Matt. Back then Mom was always confiding in me—all kinds of crap—and when I was fifteen, I didn’t want to be Mom’s best friend. We got into big arguments about it, and then she stopped telling me things, cold turkey.”
“Was he actually hospitalized?”
“Yes. He told Mom he was afraid he was going to hurt himself. Hard to believe he’d admit that to her, but that’s how bad off he must have been. They had fights about the paintings. Mom really didn’t like them.”
Feeling a little dizzy, I ask why and lie down on the couch.
“Well, they were very odd. He claimed that the large-scale integrated circuit was the most beautiful object ever made. He painted computer chips obsessively.”
“I don’t remember him painting at all.”
“He stopped. I’m not sure when. When he came back from the hospital after a couple of weeks, he was on medication and went back to church. Then he started screwing around with the appliances, but I think Mom actually liked that—because, you know, he fixed things for people. Neighbors, people from church were always bringing him things. And his medication kept him more or less in balance—though, as you know, not completely.”
He was nicer to me, easier to talk to, as I grew up, especially after I moved out, and I need to keep that in mind.
“Mom told us he was on ‘a trip,’ ” Mary Ellen adds. “You know Dad traveled a lot for the bridges. But I knew where he really went. And I think Bart had some idea, too. And maybe Bart told George something at some point. Honestly, it was scary, and when he came back and he was better, we all just didn’t want to rock the boat.”
—
“This is where she sleeps,” I say, going for matter-of-fact but not quite making it.
Ms. Grier sizes up the living room, notes the proximity of Audrey’s freshly made bed to the Aphrodite harp, to the TV. It’s no place for a bed.
“She will need her privacy,” she affirms. “Where are your cleaning products?”
These are high in a cabinet in the enclosed part of the back stairwell where the washer and dryer sit. I didn’t just move them there for her visit, but I fear if I make a point of telling her this, she will hear it as a confession that they’ve been in an accessible spot until today. She asks me to bring them down so she can check all their safety caps.
“Any mousetraps, rat poison?”
This could be a trick question.
“No,” I say.
“That’s a beautiful harp,” she says, looking back across the apartment. The Aphrodite is uncovered, while the 85P is shrouded.
“Thank you.”
“You play that?” She laughs a bit under her breath, giving me a sideways look.
“I do.”
“Good for you,” she decides.
She inspects my medicine cabinet, wanders through my kitchen, opening drawers, looking for knives, firecrackers, plutonium. She enters my bedroom, notes the paint colors, the bed on the floor. Her expression doesn’t change.
No firearms, drug paraphernalia, or signs of meth production.
She swabs for lead paint on the living room wall closest to Audrey’s bed.
“No lead,” she says. Her lips frown, as if she’s disappointed.
“Do you want to see the bedsheet?” I ask.
“No, I got that,” she says.
She takes some notes. Then she asks:
“And that’s the windowsill right there?”
“Yeah.”
“All right,” she says. “I’ve got what I need.”
She goes upstairs and talks to T.R. for about ten minutes and then she is gone.
18
THE AUDITION IS now less than a month away. While being true to my pledge to practice extra in Cynthia’s absence, I listen for the buzz, hoping it will stay silent. Sometimes it seems to be there, sometimes not. On humid days, it seems maybe more there. Mostly, it slips below my awareness, like the ringing in your ears that’s only present when you consider it.
Cynthia and I talk regularly on the phone. She was moved by the Audrey saga, and it was good to have her to talk to about it as Milena turned to Steve. Things seem almost normal between us, as though a thousand miles apart is the right distance for us.
I don’t reach out to Milena. I figure that will be pointless until she’s ready to accept my apology, which won’t happen until she is through hunkering down with Audrey. It kills me to remember the flirtation in her voice before the call came from Rachel. Some stubborn hope survives there.
Adam sends me a disc of his first batch of breakup videos. He’s still editing them and hasn’t sent them around yet. They could be funnier, I think, but what makes them basically work, no matter how wild Adam’s associations or how unfunny the dialogue might be on paper, is that Adam and the actresses are absolutely committed to their lines. They seem not at all worried about whether they’re funny or not. I’m surprised by how steady my playing sounds.
At the hospice, Richard and I settle into something manly and almost affectionate. I usually see him without Erin or Malcolm around. One afternoon after I finish playing for him, Richard and I watch the Cubs on TV, and, in between bouts of coughing, he makes loaded observations about “the timelessness” of baseball. It’s “a game without a clock,” after all, and therefore, he seems to think, offers a wormhole into immortality, if we would only give ourselves over to its mysterious rhythms.
“It’s not our national pastime for nothing,” I say, trying to sound earnest.
I suspect he’s dabbling in some sort of delusion—the kind, I think with a kick of pride, my father would have never fallen for—but I play along because the first unwritten rule of hospice volunteering is a complete evacuation of your self—all your opinions, interests, and needs—until you’re as soft and air-filled as a pillow, offering pure comfort to the dying person.
When Richard gets tired or Erin shows up, I have more time to play for an impromptu client or two and to see Michael, who has become prone to window-gazing, or curling in the fetal position, or lying still with his eyes closed, sometimes with the back of his wrist to his forehead. I’ve never seen a family member in his room—only a chubby, bearded man, who left with a staring expression on his face when I came to the door.
One afternoon, between songs, Michael opens his eyes and asks me, “Do you live in the city?”
“Yeah,” I say. “Humboldt Park.”
“Ah, Puerto Rican boys,” he says smiling. He mumbles something playful that I can’t make out.
I smile back weakly. He appraises me with his heavy-lidded eyes.
“Where did you live?” I ask.
“All over. Before I moved in here—” He lifts his hand to take in the room. “Wicker Park. On Augusta.”
“Right by the Lava Lounge!”
But my sudden excitement seems to add another degree of fatigue to his expression. Of course, there’s no reason for me to be excited about the Lava Lounge, scene of many a failed pickup attempt.
“Guess so,” he says, in a way that suggests he’s never been there and would never think of going there. He looks out the window. Then he turns back to me.
> “You don’t know what it’s like, do you?” he says, in a quieter voice.
I look back at him, stymied for a second, in part because he could be referring to any number of things. But then my answer comes easily: “No,” I say, “I don’t.”
He closes his eyes. His face, in any paused state, appears alarmingly deanimated. I sit with him and watch his frozen face and what little I know of the person dying behind it. Then, with his eyes still closed, he says, “So you’re…straight as a whip…as my father used to say.”
“Yup,” I say.
“Is that a real expression?” He opens his eyes and smacks his lips awkwardly, moving his tongue slowly. “ ‘Straight as a whip’? Bizarre.”
“I don’t know,” I say, though I think I’ve heard “straight as a pin.” There’s a glass of water on his bedside table. “Do you want some water?”
He nods.
“Do you want to drink from the glass?”
He shakes his head.
So I go to the top drawer of his bedside table and pull out a small plastic package, with what looks like a little pink lollipop in it, but the head of the lollipop is a cube of sponge. I’ve seen the nurses use these sponges with him when his mouth is dry but he doesn’t want to swallow something. The bodies of these dying people are shutting down, closing off rooms, turning off lights. They need and want less and less, which makes dying seem like a sensible process. There’s a white residue on the inside of his drawn lips, like the stain salt leaves on pavement in the winter. I have no idea what it’s from.
I open the package, sit as weightlessly as I can on the edge of his bed, and dip the pink sponge in the glass and move it to his mouth. His eyes open halfway and watch me. He has bad eyebrow dandruff, like I sometimes get, and I want to brush it away for him. Black and gray whiskers stand up all over his gray face, with a longer cluster right under his nose, where whoever shaved him was probably wary of venturing. I touch the sponge to his lips, paint them with it, dissolving the chalky film, and then his lips take the sponge into his mouth and hold it there loosely. He rolls it in his mouth a little and closes his lips around the stick. Finally, he nods, and I take the sponge out of his mouth.
“More?” I ask.
He nods. And we do the same thing.
“Thanks,” he says.
I tip my head down.
“I drank too much, when I shouldn’t have drank at all,” he says softly, looking out the window. “That’s why I’m here. I couldn’t handle the side effects.”
“Of the drinking?” I say uncertainly.
He turns his head and looks at me. “Of the drugs that saved everyone else.”
“Oh,” I hear myself say.
I don’t feel equal to what he needs right now, and the sadness of that, and of the situation in general, pushes my chest backwards. Saliva jets from under my tongue and dizziness walks into my head, tilting my equilibrium wherever its weight presses.
“So what’re you doing here?” he asks. “This is women’s work, fag duty.” He doesn’t seem to have the energy to put scare quotes into his voice or inflect the right teasing tone—if that’s what he wants.
“I’m not sure,” I tell him, though this is not the nicest thing for a caregiver to say to a patient. It seems easier than mentioning my father or trying to care about someone besides myself or running at my fears. “I guess because they asked me.”
“Ah, just messing with you,” he says. He grins hideously, but I can see what his personality was like when he was healthy.
“Want to hear another song?” I say, though I really need to go.
“No,” he says. “Gotta sleep.”
19
ON THURSDAY I get a call from Ms. Grier telling me that the case against me for neglect has been declared “unfounded” and my custody rights have been restored. A report, including her recommendations, has been sent to me via email attachment.
“Thank you,” I say.
“Not a ‘thank you’ situation,” Ms. Grier says. “I know you mean well, Mr. Grzbc, but we’re all about doing over meaning to do.”
I’m barely able to read the report, since my heart is banging on my ribs like a man hitting his head against a wall. Still, a few sentences get through and lodge in my memory for all time:
Despite knowing that Audrey was an unusually anxious and precocious child, Mr. Grzbc did not take typical precautions to ensure the safety of her environment, resulting in extremely serious demonstrable harm….Mr. Grzbc’s willingness to have sexual intercourse with his ex-wife in his daughter’s playroom in the middle of the day suggests he puts his own desires ahead of his daughter’s emotional well-being.
Still, according to Ms. Grier, my actions did not rise to the level of a “blatant disregard” of my responsibilities as a parent, which is apparently the standard for neglect.
No matter how I mentally twist and turn, I cannot seem to escape these facts and judgments. They are true as far as they go, and what they’re missing may exist only in my own mind. These were accidents. I didn’t mean to hurt her. But I did.
Not surprisingly, Ms. Grier recommends therapy for Audrey, and as sad as this is, it’ll be a relief to have a professional on the case. She is not convinced by Audrey’s answer to the question of “Why so many?” and neither am I.
When I pick Audrey up from school on Friday afternoon, I lift her up in a big hug and, still clutching her to my chest, carry her to her locker, which makes her giggle. I make her a proper meal of baked chicken, corn, and rice, with a glass of ice-cold milk. Then we clear the dining room table for arts and crafts. She makes a plastic heart with Hama beads and incorporates it into a Mother’s Day card cut from construction paper. As she works intently, I remember when she was small enough for me to carry her around like a violin, my hand cupped under her neck, her little body tucked against me.
While she is playing a game on her Nintendo DS, I get an email from Milena. She says she is glad I have custody again. She tells me she is “thinking about everything.” And then she writes: “All right. Gotta go now,” as if pressing business calls. She signs off with just her name.
I wait until Audrey is asleep before giving Cynthia a call in Denver. It’s good to report that I’m in the clear from the State of Illinois’s point of view.
“I’m used to being suspect but not actually a suspect,” I add.
“Oh, it’s a short trip, believe me,” she says.
“Really?”
“Yeah, I’ve been walking around feeling like a criminal lately.”
“Why is that?” I ask.
“Oh, I don’t know, when I’m feeling down in the dumps, I think of myself as a criminal. It’s just something I’ve always done.”
“Dang, Cynthia, what’s going on with you?”
“Documents are going on with me. My mind is going on with me. I need all kinds of sleep and I need you when I get back.”
“Why down in the dumps?”
“Whitaker is weighing. In case you haven’t heard, being an associate at a corporate law firm is sometimes a very, very bad job for a human being to have.”
“It’s a lot of work.”
“A lot of soul-crushing work. And there you have it, Matt.”
“Which is making you feel like a criminal?”
“Oh, it’s more than lawyering. Lawyering is just a whipping boy for my free-floating feelings of worthlessness.”
“What about ‘no worrying’?”
“That’s my role in this relationship—truth-teller.”
“Are you kind of drinking?”
“Not this instant. But before and likely immediately after, yes.”
“Oh, Cynthia.”
“I agree. I’ll be sure to tell her. Until I see you again, which I’m glad will be very soon, you have yourself a good night.”
—
On Sunday, I perform at the Mother of All Brunches: Mother’s Day at the Marriott. There are a lot more song requests than usual to pay tribute to the moms,
including some oddball choices: “You’re So Vain,” which I have, and “House of the Rising Sun,” which I don’t.
After brunch, I tool up to my parents’ house. Normally, Mary Ellen hosts Mother’s Day at her place in Greendale, but they’re remodeling and people have decided it would be fun to “bring the party to Mom” this year. Everyone who lives in town is at the ancestral suburban split-level, drinking beer and soda and eating burgers and brats on the deck.
Mom seems both more animated and more sad. Widowhood has given her a wistful, showy air, almost like that of a retired movie star. My father is not around to contend with, and she’s surrounded by her children, whose attention she deserves and gets. Everything has its compensations, I guess, though she hasn’t given up on the belief that she murdered him. “There are some things I wish I’d never done—at the end,” she says when Mary Ellen asks if she wants another glass of wine.
I’m my usual quiet self around my family and their spouses and kids. People ask about Audrey, but I can tell they’ve moved on. George has brought a plastic wheel of shrimp and eaten about half of it. Mary Ellen drinks a little bit too much and grows bemused when Christine, Luke’s wife, tells an elaborate story about a clash among parents at one of her daughter’s out-of-town volleyball tournaments. Bart and his wife use the communal conversation to snipe at each other, but no one says anything. The food is great and I don’t have to be anyone in particular right now—it feels like a holiday before Cynthia comes back tomorrow.
I have half a mind to call Milena and wish her happy Mother’s Day, something I didn’t do last year with the divorce papers freshly filed. I haven’t spoken to her directly since the hospital, but maybe the Family Services decision has put her on the road to forgiveness, and maybe calling on Mother’s Day is a way of reminding her that though I screwed up, we’re together in whatever happens to Audrey.
I take a cordless handset to my old upstairs bedroom, which is still furnished with a bunk bed my father made. I lie down on the bottom bunk, looking up at the U-curves of the metal spring overhead as I did hour by aimless hour as a youngster.
