The Last Cadillac

by Nancy Nau Sullivan

  The doctor told Dad that he could adjust the dial on the remote to advance a tingling sensation and interrupt the pain, and for the life of him, Dad couldn’t understand how tingling had anything at all to do with the knifing and stabbing from the bottom of his feet up and down his whole leg. But Dad was willing to try it.

  My buzzer went off. I recalled another electronic moment with my parents that didn’t work. That was the experiment with an electronic gizmo from the fast-hearing franchise of hearing aids. It was supposed to correct the problem of Dad not hearing Mom, especially when they were in the car, and at most any other time, too. She plunked down the $200 deposit, and the device arrived, never to be inserted correctly, or permanently in my father’s left ear, which was all I could figure out through the yelling back and forth about the new ear. He couldn’t get used to it, because, he decided, he didn’t want it in his ear and he couldn’t use his left side very well after the stroke. The miracle didn’t fit or feel right, or work, no matter what they did. Without results there either, Mom wanted her money back.

  The ear device was not really for Dad. Actually, his hearing was pretty good. The audiologist said he had selective hearing. He simply turned the thing off when he felt like it. He heard every word of Elvis, Garth Brooks, and Reba.

  “Turn on my crazy music,” he’d say when we were driving along. Tick couldn’t stand it. He reached over the front seat of the Cadillac like a large swooping bird and switched to some nice heavy metal, while I avoided going into a ditch.

  “I hate that country stuff,” Tick said. “All they do is complain—‘I left my sweetheart at the country fair and she ran off with a two-headed dwarf.’”

  “Tick, this is American music. You should appreciate your great heritage.”

  So, Dad could hear the great heritage, and he could hear me from the passenger side of the car. But he hadn’t heard Mom. That drove her crazy. He wasn’t going to drive me crazy, though, no matter what. I didn’t think I was as strong as my mother in a lot of ways, but I was meaner. My dad acted like he couldn’t hear, and so I ignored him. I got tired of repeating myself, when, in fact, most of my remarks were chitchat and didn’t bear repeating. He wanted my full attention, and I gave him that when I could. That worked, without a miracle of any sort.

  I hadn’t been much involved in the ear experiment, but now I was willing to go along with the Spinal Cord Stimulator technology to correct the failing back and aching leg. I should have known better. Doctors often don’t listen to their patients. Instead, they act like mechanics working on old cars.

  We watched a video of people talking about their stimulators and how they were pain free and finally happy. Tick wanted to know if the Gampers would be in danger during a lightening strike, all wired up like that, and my daughter said Old Sunshine could learn to work the TV with a remote control for his back, as well. He was always losing the TV remote, and grew frantic when Jimmy Stewart and Gregory Peck were just about to close the deal. I didn’t think the video about the stimulator’s alleged benefits was too convincing. It looked like an ad. But were all these people in the video lying about their miraculous, pain free experiences? Could that be?

  Dad went to the hospital to have a temporary stimulator installed for a two-day trial run. If it worked, a permanent contraption would be hooked up to his spine several weeks later. He’d have a few wires sticking out of his back. What the devil was I thinking when the doctor told me that part?

  It took less than ten minutes for the neurologist to attach the thing, and then Dad went to a hospital bed for an overnight stay. He had to lie flat on his back for twenty-four hours, during which time he could play with the dial during this period. The real test was to come the next day when he stood on his knife-stabbed right leg.

  The next morning the neurologist called me at home and told me to get over to the hospital. “We tested the temporary stimulator and it’s great; it works. We’ll put in a permanent one in a week or so. You can pick him up and take him home,” he said. “But bring him back tomorrow and we’ll take out the temporary, so he can heal for the permanent procedure.”

  I tried to get all that, but he was gone. He was probably in a great hurry to insert another miracle spinal cord stimulator.

  I found my father sitting in a chair in his hospital room with a completely devastated tray of food in front of him. There was nothing wrong with his appetite.

  “How’s it going?” I said. “Gee, I feel like it’s Christmas and you got the brand new toy.”

  “Well, the pain in my leg …”

  “What? The doctor said it worked fine. What do you mean?”

  “Well, I can’t turn it on because every time I stand up the leg hurts.”

  “Dad, you’re supposed to turn it on when you stand up so the leg doesn’t hurt.”

  “Well, you see, it doesn’t work that way. I’m telling you, it hurts too much.”

  I sat down on the edge of the bed like someone pushed me. I was deflated, but at least we had the day to fiddle with the thing and maybe get Dad used to working with it.

  I took him home, and he lay in the bed, moping. He turned up the dial on the remote control attached to his belt and the leg twitched, unpleasantly. He wasn’t used to the sensation. He got up to go to the bathroom and was so shaky he almost fell down. Worse still, the tingling made him want to go to the bathroom more, which was already a tortuous walk. We turned down the remote so it didn’t tingle so much, and then his leg hurt.

  “I feel like I have St. Vitus Dance with the thing on,” he said. “And when it’s off, it’s like a knife. It’s stabbing me again.”

  I pulled up the back of his shirt. Under an enormous clear bandage, I saw a bloody gauze pad and wires plastered to his yellow back. My face burned with outrage. Then, I blamed myself. This was something we wanted. This was something I actually asked a doctor to do to my father.

  I didn’t want Dad to see it, or know what it looked like. It was bad enough he had to feel it. I tucked his shirt in. I didn’t say anything. Not just then.

  The next morning, Dad came out of his room, dragging the remote on its cord like a dead pet. He didn’t pay any attention as the thing skittered along the ceramic tile floor behind him. I could see by the hole in the case that the battery was gone again, after I’d stuck it back in there a couple times the day before. I felt like calling Frank in Minneapolis, whose card was attached to the remote, and telling him exactly what I thought of his instrument.

  We had an appointment with the neurologist, who had a smile on his face when he swept into the tiny freezing office where my father waited wearing a thin gown and I boiled for thirty-seven minutes.

  “Mike, hey, how are you?” said the doctor.

  “It didn’t work,” I said.

  “What’s that? It worked fine in the hospital,” the doctor said. “What happened?”

  My Dad bent his head over his chest, and his shoulders shook a little. I glared at the doctor.

  “Obviously we need some intelligence here to operate it,” he said.

  “Whose intelligence?” I said. “Yours? I don’t see any intelligence working here at all.”

  “It’s a very simple machine.”

  “For simple minds, or intelligent minds?” I said. “Which is it? My portable radio works better than this thing. The batteries kept falling out, so it didn’t work half the time if he wanted it to.”

  “Did you ever hear of Scotch tape?”

  “Scotch tape,” I said. “For a setup that probably cost $10,000?”

  “Eight thousand,” he said. Then he turned to Dad and shook his head. “I’m sorry, Mike.”

  In a blink, the curtain flapped, and the doctor was gone before I could get up and put myself in the county jail.

  Then a miracle happened. And as with most miracles that come along, this one was small and almost went unnoticed. Like a star shooting across the sky, or a violet pushing up under a tree, or a thousand-and-one things I could call miracles, but take
for granted. Since then, I’ve learned not to take any favor, insight—or miracle—for granted.

  I sat in the doctor’s office where I usually spent at least one or two afternoons a week with Dad. I was dejected, but probably not as much as Dad was. Then my ears perked up. The woman across from us was telling her companion about her stenosis in the spine—and her own miracle.

  “Nothing but this cheap little white pill,” she was saying. “But it changed my life. I have to watch out for some side effects, but I’m telling you, don’cha know, I can walk!”

  I leapt across the room and plopped down beside her, startling her.

  “A little white pill?” I said.

  She gave me the scoop.

  “Prednisone. About six dollars for a hundred,” she said. A corticosteroid used to treat arthritis. And it worked for her when nothing else did, except maybe Tylenol, which we agreed didn’t require a medical degree to figure out. “Arthritis,” she said. “It comes and goes, and Lordie, am I glad when it goes—but this pill has given me relief.”

  I asked the doctor about it that afternoon, and he agreed to put Dad on a trial run of a dose pack of Prednisone, 40 milligrams the first day, with descending amounts each day after that for a week.

  For the first time in months, The Leg was gone. If it returned at all, and briefly, it came with a dull knife that couldn’t quite get in there and slice its way up and down The Leg.

  The warning label stated that Dad might have “difficulty sleeping, encounter mood changes, nervousness, increased appetite or indigestion, swelling, black stools, vomit that looked like coffee grounds, nausea, changes in menstrual period, headache, muscle weakness, sore throat, cold or fever,” which was a pretty good rundown of all the side effects of the pills he’d been taking for years.

  Fortunately, he didn’t have those, or any bad or lasting side effects. He always ate a lot and was nervous from time to time, but that was pretty much his normal state anyway. The doctor kept an eye out for all the signs, because corticosteroids are hard on the organs. The only sign, though, was one of relief. He was better, and that was good. In fact, the Prednisone gave him complete relief for long periods. He was in a state of euphoria, and so was I.

  So, we decided to take advantage of the new freedom and get out on the road. Cueillez les roses de la vie, Lucy always said. “Gather the roses of life.” Today.

  So, with The Leg gone, we were free to move about Florida. I decided to plan a trip to Disney World. We ate smoked turkey legs, went on Dumbo and the Tea Cups, and took many turns on It’s a Small World After All (Dad’s favorite). Tick managed to hoist his grandfather up onto the horse on the merry-go-round. Dad was not satisfied to sit on the bench.

  “I want to go around one more time on that horse,” he said. And he did.

  22

  IRELAND. WHY NOT?

  Lucy worked as a manager at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Chicago, a fantastic job that had its ups and downs. She had to stand up all day—that was the downer—but she hung out with the stars. She was supposed to keep a professional distance from them, but this was difficult for Lucy. There was the afternoon she delivered cocktail napkins to the bar so she could get a peek at Mel Gibson kicking back with his brother over a few Heinekens in the Atrium. She made a point of standing near the elevator when Jerry Garcia, with his wild hair and weird entourage came swooping past. She watched Harrison Ford from the restaurant reservation stand, while he charmed the maître d’ and ordered a California pinot noir. Her snooping around about the comings and goings of the stars at the Ritz caused no end of trouble with her boss. Even walking around on duty was a source of agitation. More than once, a couple came up to Lucy and offered her a hundred dollars to leave them alone in a room for twenty minutes, so they could check the suitability of a suite for an office meeting. “Do I have ‘stupid’ written on my forehead?” Lucy asked the drunken duo who tottered over to her desk.

  Lucy generally maintained her decorum, even though a great number of the human beings she dealt with did not—including the CEO’s wife who threw a fit when Lucy accidentally ordered a white limo instead of a black one for a shopping trip. “Always and ever, ever and always,” the wife huffed at Lucy, biting off the words. “Black, I said blaaaaack, not white.” Lucy worked hard, but sometimes, she drew the line with a huff of her own.

  Lucy wasn’t crazy about the stress of the job, but there were the perks. She called me to say that she and her co-workers were planning a trip to Ireland on hotel business, which was sure to involve a great deal of eating and drinking. She asked if I’d like to go.

  Did I want to go? After a horrific year of losing our mother to cancer and my marriage to anger, along with the general chaos of moving, surviving a hurricane, repairing the cottage, and The Leg, yes, I thought—for a fraction of a second—yes, I’d love to go.

  But how?

  “I’ll bet Dad would really like the trip,” said Lucy. “Why don’t you ask him, too?”

  “What?”

  “He’d love to go to Ireland. It would be a blast.”

  I stared out my kitchen window at a squirrel (I hoped it was a squirrel) chewing on a mango, while Lucy no doubt was standing in her blue pumps in the sumptuous offices of the Ritz.

  “Lucy, Dad has trouble getting to the bathroom.” But as soon as I said it, I thought about how much Dad loved Ireland. “OK, I’ll ask him, but I don’t know what he’ll say. He’s different every day.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Since Mom died, he’s acting goofier than ever. It was terrible for him, Lucy.”

  “Well, don’t you think I know that?!” she snapped. “Yes, we both know that.”

  “Yes. Lord.”

  We were both thinking about the awful Year of the Doll-house, and about how we wanted to forget the whole thing.

  “Look,” she said, “you know him, so talk to him.”

  “I will. He might just take to the idea. Some days, he seems to be doing fine, but there are the little surprises.”

  “Like?”

  “He just has a lot of issues … aches and pains. You know, it’s a bitch to get old.”

  “Before we’re old bitches, let’s go. Let’s do this,” she said. “You ask him.”

  I agreed. On my way to the living room to talk with him, my eyes strayed to the pile of medical forms and nutrition charts, exercise routines for the elderly and insurance guidelines for this and that. Getting old was certainly one enormous pain. Staying young wasn’t easy, either. I picked up the applications for the kids’ soccer tryouts, bills for gymnastics and guitar lessons. Certain shoes, shirts, and shorts. Places to be—and on time. It had to get done. My plans for a teaching career were on hold; I was “the caregiver” in the sandwich between Dad and the kids.

  In the meantime, a trip to Ireland seemed like a fine diversion.

  Dad sat in his rocker watching John Wayne ride up on a trio of varmints. The television was turned up all the way. When Ted Turner came up with the continuous offering of old movies on Turner Classics, he had my Dad in mind. Dad could have eaten, slept, and lived in that chair with Barbara Stanwyck and Joel McCrae to keep him company, and it would have suited him fine. He was normally not a demanding person. He just wanted to have his television programs, his martini with Tom Brokaw (and me), and his two or three cigarettes. He also needed to be warm, and today, he’d chosen his outfit accordingly—several layers of shirts and a sweater, a jacket, and his tweed cap to ward off a possible, though improbable, chill.

  “Oh, look at that.” He slapped the arm of his chair and offered me his cheek for a kiss, not missing the posse gallop over the hill. “Always thought he should run for president. John Wayne would have made a fine president.”

  “Dad, Hollywood is not the practice field for becoming president of the United States.” I often took this schoolmarm tone with him, and I was beginning to annoy myself.

  “Well, look what happened with that fine Ronald Reagan. Great Irishman
to boot.”

  “You’re the great one,” I said. I flopped onto the couch and checked out the tube. My Dad was a great Irishman, a business leader, and the life of the party. His mother was a Murninghan from County Cork, and his father was a German from the Alsace Lorraine. This mix of ancestry and his attitude adjustment throughout the day had prompted my mother to say that Dad woke up a German and went to bed an Irishman.

  I waited until the film credits rolled. It was no use trying to get his “good ear” when John Wayne had his attention.

  “Dad.”

  “Yeees?”

  His voice dipped and rose, and then his blue eyes were on me. I grabbed the opportunity to get my hands on the remote control and turn down the volume.

  “Dad, how would you like to go to Ireland?”

  That got his attention. He grinned and his eyebrows shot up, flashing a glimpse of a younger Dad. He’d been to Ireland many times with Mom, and in the summer of 1981, they rented a castle in Glin for a month and invited us all over there to live it up on the banks of the Shannon with the knight, Desmond Fitzgerald. Lounging in the garden, we sipped cocktails, surrounded by manicured topiary and a straight lane of pebbles bordered with pruned hedges. One evening a cow wandered onto the wide lawn, the knight dropped his gin and tonic and chased her back to the pasture. One very early morning, she escaped again and gave birth to a black-and-white calf under my bedroom window.

  Dad and I, sitting in that Florida living room, were thinking the same thing: Ireland. The days at the castle began with Irish breakfasts of sausage and eggs and breads served on silver trays and blue china in the royal-red dining room. Oona, the housekeeper, stood by my mother, who was seated at the long table in a carved armchair under the paintings of old knights.