The Last Cadillac

by Nancy Nau Sullivan

  “You can punctuate a sentence better than anyone, Nancy. You sure don’t need a course in self-assertion.” Then Lucy pointed out, regularly, “Mom will just replace the mirror again, but think of all the bad luck you’re stacking up.”

  Lucy could make me stop in my tracks, but she also had a sense about when to back off. Confrontation was not a part of her makeup. She had a way of getting out of fights and confusion, which I admired greatly. I had no practice in the art. Lucy just didn’t want to engage in unpleasant talk if she could dance around it. But she found she couldn’t always do what she wanted—something she was not entirely happy about. It was evident in the way she ended her marriage. If there was one thing Lucy learned about being married, it wasn’t always good to avoid conflict. At least I had conflict well practiced, especially after twenty-three years with Hubby. On the other hand, Lucy had few fights during her eleven years with Adorable Couch Potato. The worst thing about the end of her marriage, Lucy said, was that they didn’t talk about the split. They never even yelled. They simply walked away from each other, leaving edges frayed and issues unresolved.

  Lucy taught me a lot by just being Lucy, and about the concept of conflict, which I kept practicing on everyone around me, and continually nurtured in myself. It fed me and pushed me, right on up to the edge until I was nearly, but not quite, ready to fall into a large hole of nothingness. Somehow, I always pulled myself up and got away. I was learning, in part, thanks to Lucy.

  Now, Lucy was determined to avoid the fight over Dad. I could read it in her expression, the slow sipping, the nonchalance, the waning of the tapping fingernails. She knew Dad might just go to Florida with me, and she had no intention of spouting off like Julia and Jack. It was not her style. I hoped, with time at least … that maybe, just maybe, I could get some support from her, that we could put our heads together and come up with a suitable situation, whatever happened with Dad.

  Lucy sighed and finished off her vodka tonic, while Jack and Julia gathered their resources to carry on the campaign to save Dad from Florida. And from me. They huddled around Dad and appeared to be advancing.

  “Stop. All of you,” said Dad. “Look-it. I want to go to Florida. It’s cold here, and it’s warm there. I want to be warm.” His grip remained firm. “I want to be warm, and I’m going with Nancy.”

  “Dad,” said Julia. She folded her arms. “Just look at this lovely little house that Mom put together so nicely for you.”

  “I don’t like the dollhouse,” he said flatly.

  “Come to think of it, he didn’t have a thing to do with this place,” I said.

  Their eyes, as one, burned into me then for my sacrilegious remark. Mom had poured the last of her strength into decorating the dollhouse—with the help of a pompous decorator who ran between the Chicago Merchandise Mart and my mother with every sample she could carry, huffing and puffing with chintzes and wallpaper. My mother loved the flattery and the shopping and writing checks. But Dad didn’t know a toile from a teapot. Everybody kept saying what Dad liked and didn’t like. Except Dad.

  “That’s just not true. Dad had a lot to do with this place,” Jack said. “Dad loves it here.”

  “No, I don’t. But she did,” said Dad, and with that, his shoulders shook in a burst of weeping.

  “It was all Mom,” I said. “I was glad she was picking out chairs and rugs and distracting herself from thinking about cancer. But why didn’t we talk about the important stuff, especially about how this would all end? Why didn’t we talk about Dad, and what to do when she was gone? Why didn’t she say something? Did she ever ask Dad about any of this?”

  They looked away, but Dad straightened up, the loss changing his expression. He nodded at me.

  Lucy spoke up. “Come on. They were a team. They did everything together.”

  “Well, they didn’t do this together,” I said. “We should have talked about it. All of us. Together.”

  The last year had been heart breaking, listening to Mom yell at Dad in the middle of the night. He got up and walked around, confused as a result of pills and grief, and Mom couldn’t get any sleep while dying. Balancing the present with the inevitable future had unfortunately tipped in favor of providing comfort, at all cost, to the present.

  I gave Dad a hug and walked around the table. We’d been talking for more than an hour, and we still hadn’t resolved a thing.

  The air around me was rare, like the suction in the middle of a tornado. I dropped into a chair, facing Dad.

  With finality, Julia said, “We can get a maid.”

  “Not that again,” I said. “Polish, Spanish, Irish, French? You’re in this with Jack?”

  “Well, yes, we’ve talked, and I think it would be a great idea,” said Julia. “And she could do it better than you could in Florida.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean? A maid would be better at caring for him than his own daughter?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “No, I do not.”

  “He has so much more support here,” said Julia. “Whatever are you talking about now, Julia? None of you are here.”

  “Stop, I tell ya. That’s all,” yelled Dad. “I’m going to Florida.” He squeezed my hand.

  I squeezed back and looked him in the eye. “OK, Dad.” Not knowing what I was talking about, I said, “We’ll go.” I was certainly not thinking about the future, only about getting away from my siblings.

  So, the issue was settled. Sort of.

  3

  THE CLEAN GOODBYE

  The kids went to camp that summer and then occasionally to their father’s house, which was actually his new wife’s. I stayed at the dollhouse and contemplated a checklist for our move. We were going to give this adventure a try, together. I was happy for the kids’ resilience and their laughter, but I never thought further than my nose about what all this divorcing, dying, and moving around was doing to them. I had too much to do that day, and the next, and the next. I would think about the consequences later.

  When my daughter, Little Sunshine, was at the dollhouse, she liked to curl up in the window seat of the spare bedroom with the pillows and her doll, Suzie Frugnut. I found her there one afternoon reading a chapter book to Suzie. My daughter was proud of herself that at the age of nine, she was working her way through the Laura Ingalls Wilder series. She was deep into Little House in the Big Woods. She looked up at me when I walked into the bedroom, and her blue-gray eyes followed me around the room.

  “This is my favorite book.”

  “Why?

  “Because they’re all happy and they get maple syrup out of the trees and make quilts and stuff.”

  That sounded very un-Florida-like to me.

  “That’s one way to be happy,” I said. I sat down and squeezed her foot in the red sock with black polka dots. She had red bows in her braids, and wisps fell on her forehead. She blew them out of her eyes. “Suzy looks happy,” I said. I couldn’t bring myself to ask her if she was happy, afraid of the answer.

  Little Sunshine patted the doll and looked out the window. She stuck out her lower lip, and I had a terrible feeling she wasn’t a baby anymore, that she was drifting off to a place I couldn’t quite reach. I wanted more than anything for her to be happy, always and ever. I hoped I was doing the right thing for all of them. And Suzy Frugnut.

  I grabbed both my daughter’s feet and clapped her polka dots together. “We’re going on an adventure! You know that? Want to know something else? I think Gampers might come and stay with us in Florida!”

  Her eyes opened wide. “Really?”

  “Would you like that?”

  “I’d love it,” she said. “I think I can really help Gampers a lot.”

  I kissed the top of her big toe and then hugged her. “I know you can.”

  Post-divorce, number one on the checklist had been to pack up my old house. Even if I’d wanted to stay in the lovely brick-and-timber Tudor house in Hammond, Indiana, I couldn’t afford to keep it up at $900
a month for gas and electric in the winter. Northern Indiana Public Service Company—an odd name for people who were averse to “service”—had loved us. We shoveled money at them. The seventy-year-old house was nearly impossible to insulate in summer, or in winter.

  It all had to go, inside and out, and I was in charge of the disposal, because it was all mine in the divorce. I put up most of the furniture for auction, but before it was all gone, I went into each room and picked out one piece that I would keep—the new eight-drawer walnut chest with brass fittings from the bedroom. The eight-foot oak trestle table from the family room. The white pine bookcase with glass doors purchased from an antique shop in Gay, Georgia. The Sheraton sofa with the down cushion, and the two chairs that matched—upholstered in crewel. I kept several Moroccan rugs my mother gave me, and my grandfather’s cedar chest. These were my treasures, and these would follow me out of storage and take up residence, I hoped, in a little dream house in Florida someday.

  While I walked slowly from room to room, marking this for storage, that for auction, Little Sunshine was stuck to me like Velcro.

  “What about my stuff, Mom?” she said. “Do I have to throw everything away?”

  I’d almost forgotten she was there, she was such a natural attachment. “No, of course not!” I said, knowing full well we were getting rid of almost everything. I smoothed the top of her head and tugged lightly at one of her braids, where a hair ribbon was missing.

  She shrugged away and put her hands on her hips. “Well, I don’t need that, or that.” She pointed to the pink Barbie playhouse and tiny set of table and chairs. “I’m big now.”

  “We can take whatever you want.” I looked around the bedroom. She had her own bathroom, and the leaded glass windows in her room looked out on pine trees, lilac bushes, and a wide sloping lawn on the corner lot. I sat on the edge of her mahogany four-poster bed that had a pink and green chintz duvet, with curtains to match. This will go real well in Florida. Oh, what were we getting ourselves into? What was I getting myself into?

  Little Sunshine put one finger firmly in her cheek. “No, I don’t think we’ll take that big bed. But Tigger, Pooh, Eyore, and Peter Rabbit are all going to Florida.” She threw herself in the corner of some twenty furry creatures and nearly disappeared. I made a mental note to remind myself once again—it was never enough—that this was not just my move. It was also theirs—Dad, Little Sunshine, and Tick.

  Tick, my son, was traveling light. He’d already moved his special pile—a pillowcase full of Legos, and his Axis and Allies game—to the condo to wait out the transition.

  “Mom, this is how I roll,” he said.

  Wherever did he get such minimalist ideas? I was just glad, because he certainly was growing up in a family with baggage of all sorts.

  The auction house hauled off the Welsh sideboard and the buffet. Out went all the wedding gifts and things that reminded me of the marriage, including the Wedgwood with strawberries and vines, the federal-patterned sterling, all the crystal, china, ceramic mugs and pitchers from Germany, the paintings and the twelve-by-fourteen oriental rug that covered the parquet in the dining room. I got thousands for all of it, and it went into the bank for my move to Florida. I think I got ripped off, but I didn’t care. I just wanted to get on with it.

  Hubby didn’t get—nor did he ask for—the house or anything in it. The only items I returned to him were tied into a dirty sock—all the jewelry he’d given me: two diamond rings, aquamarines and amethysts, gold and silver, rings and chains and stuff I never wanted to see again, because all of it was payment for the pain he’d inflicted. I was especially glad to part with an amethyst and diamond ring that reminded me of a black eye. Mine.

  I didn’t care a whit about any of it, not even to this day—swear on a stack of bibles and on my grandmother’s grave. It was time to start over, clean.

  4

  SAIL ON

  I stood guard in front of the bottles of pills on the medicine shelf in the kitchen and made sure Julia didn’t try a fast one. She hadn’t gone to the doctor for more pills, and I was keeping Dad off medication for the time being, much to Julia’s professional consternation. The further Dad got from Amytriptiline and Melaril, the Prozac and the Paxil, the better off he seemed to be. After a clean spell off the pills and on a good diet, he was sleeping better. I didn’t know if it was the lack of medication, or the fact that he wasn’t staring at my dying mother all night in that hospital bed. It was hard to tell, and I didn’t ask because I didn’t want to upset him. He was content. That was all I cared about for now. We were still only weeks from her death, but I could see the regimen taking effect. His color was brighter, and we were all clearly looking forward to The Adventure.

  Except for my siblings. Lucy, Julia, and Jack still came up with ideas to keep Dad from going with me. They looked into assisted living communities—there was only one decent one in the area, and the waiting list was a year long. They wanted him to take turns living with each of them. Jack was still looking for a Polish maid—to replace me. I let the idea of taking Dad to Florida simmer for a week or two. They never did ask me if I was happy about the idea of taking Dad to Florida, and I’m glad they didn’t, because I truly had mixed feelings. I was not going to bring it up, either, which only would start another row.

  I thought of explaining to Dad how difficult the adjustment would be, for all of us. But the thought paralyzed me. If I did that, it would sound like a straight-out rejection of my father after losing my mother. After all he’d gone through, it seemed that he should do what he wanted at the age of seventy-seven. I really felt I had to help him. The long-term consequences of our plan were furthest from my thoughts—how would it affect the family, all of us, and especially my kids, to have their grandfather living with us? He would be there when they came home every day. My father would be there for dinner, when they did their homework, invited their friends over. I’d be spending time driving him around and caring for him during the day, and during the night. How was this going to work out? I had no way of knowing until I tried, and I was willing to try.

  Dad and I talked. It would have helped if we’d all tried—and learned—to talk about it together. But we didn’t. We couldn’t, because we didn’t know how.

  Dad sat in the dining room waiting for Stan the therapist. Dad wore three layers of clothes, like his Irish mother, from whom he’d inherited poor circulation. As a consequence, he liked to bundle up, whatever the weather. He simply would not be talked out of it. Humidity went right to his bones, and Florida was going to be damp, hot or cold.

  I made another attempt to test him, while I was also testing myself.

  “Dad, it’s ninety-eight degrees in Tampa today, and it’s going to stay that way for at least three months. It’s hot and uncomfortable, and it’s humid down there.”

  “Good, I like hot weather; the hotter the better. What’s the temperature here?”

  “Well, it’s in the eighties, I guess.”

  “We could stand it a little warmer.”

  I decided to take a different tack with him. “Dad, don’t you think if you go to Florida that it should be a family decision? Shouldn’t we talk some more about this?”

  “Look-it. I’ve never consulted them before, and I’m not going to start now.”

  “You think this is a good thing, so soon after Mom’s death?”

  “I’m going with you.”

  “I know you love Florida.”

  “I love Florida,” he said. “And I love you. Whither thou goest, I go. We’re going to the cottage.”

  Yes, the cottage. The thought of it made me feel fine. I woke up from a dream and remembered in the night seeing my mother’s silhouette—and that of the Ex—both of them communing on the white beach under a blue-black sky full of stars in front of the cottage.

  “I want it all, and I want it now,” she yelled at the crashing waves.

  “And you have it,” said the Ex.

  She loved the Ex, loved manipula
ting him to do things for her that he didn’t mind doing in the first place, and then they laughed about it. They got a huge kick out of beating Dad and me at bridge, which they did regularly because Dad was an outrageous gambler who thought he could make no-trump with twenty points after all, with just those two aces. He never listened to his own mother, my grandmother, “No-Trump Liz,” who said the cards have no home. Dad and I didn’t win often, but we loved the game.

  My mother played by the book, as did the Ex—at least at bridge. He was a sad person, my mother told me, and insecure, like she was. She understood him, while I did not. That was the implication. I resented that, and, that she compared herself to him with affection. I resented that he left me and her as well.

  Now they were both gone, and everything had changed. Running around all day, I could forget, but not when the dreams came. It was different then.

  In my dream, at least my mother was there again, and she was healthy and full of life. Things were as they once had been. Her laugh was a gift, and her relentless zest was just like always. That’s what I missed, never seeing that again, never turning to ask her something that I just had to know. She’d know. And now, I could never do that again. The loss was unbearable after the dream, where she threw her arms wide over her head, her white curls shining in the moonlight, the wind billowing her skirt against the waves. I’d only ever see her there.

  She wanted me to go on an adventure.

  Sail on …

  I could hear it clearly, like the snapping of a sail under the moon.

  Like in a song I used to love.

  5

  THE DOLLHOUSE