The Last Cadillac

by Nancy Nau Sullivan

  Dad tasted the whiskey, then belted it down.

  “Drown the shamrock,” said John, chuckling, while he sipped his Guinness.

  “Slan abatable,” Mr. Gowan said. “Goodbye, safe home. And will ye have another, Mike, for a fare-thee-well?”

  Lord, he’ll have a stroke and die right here, and then we’ll be in a fine mess.

  But he didn’t have a stroke, and he didn’t have another whiskey. He lifted his Harp and took a long drink of it, setting it carefully and squarely on the coaster. He wore his Irish hat and the cane rested against the bar. He looked quite content, bellying up to the bar.

  “Thanks, John, for bringing us here,” Dad said.

  “Ah, but the thanks is to you and your lovely family for this grand visit. Thanks a million.” He turned and winked at me.

  “You’re a fine driver,” Dad said, tapping his glass of Harp gently on the coaster. He reached for me with his other hand. “And I have a great driver here, my Nancy. Let’s go. Let’s go home now.”

  25

  TICK IN THE FIGHT

  “Gamps, I gotta tell you something,” said Tick.

  I spied the two of them through the kitchen window, seated at the round table on the patio under the blue corrugated awning. The sun shining through the rippled cover cast a watery hue on their faces. Tick grimaced. Dad turned his head.

  “Lad?” My father leaned forward in his chair, and Tick fidgeted with his baseball cap.

  “I got in a fight at school.”

  “Well, how did you do?”

  I was about to go over the sink and right through the window, but my urge to eavesdrop glued me to the floor.

  “It wasn’t really much of a fight,” said Tick. “It was over pretty fast, with a lot of pushing going on.”

  Dad chuckled, tapped his cane a few times on the concrete. “Of course, of course. But you need to know how to hold your own. Guard yourself, don’t square off and open yourself up.” Dad lifted his dukes and shifted his shoulders.

  Great. Now this.

  “Keep your left up and jab with your right.”

  “Yeah.” Tick offered his grandfather a Marlboro, then lit it for him. Where was Tick getting cigarettes? And that made three that day so far for Dad.

  “What happened?” Dad asked. The tapping started up again and his head was cocked at Tick. “Why’d you get in a fight?”

  “I was acting too flamboyant.”

  “Well, what’s the matter with that?” Dad drew on the cigarette. His hat was pulled down, so I couldn’t see his smile, but I heard it in his voice. I saw it in the way he leaned into their conversation.

  “I guess nothing. But I’ve never been picked on,” said Tick. “I was always top dog in school, so I’m kind of used to being in the spotlight.”

  I closed my eyes and saw Tick at age four, standing on the piano bench in a navy coat and red bow tie, announcing that he was a “forty year old in a four-year-old body.” Tick had been president of the school in fifth grade—not just his grade, but the whole school, kindergarten through five. He was the lead Christmas tree in the school play and a star catcher at baseball, and now, after all that star power, I’d brought him here.

  I gripped the edge of the sink, straining to hear every word. It was all I could do to stay put. The fighting. And the cigarettes.

  “I thought I’d own the island,” Tick added. “There’s still time,” said Dad. “Just lay low. Let them all do the talking for a while, and keep your ear to the ground.”

  “Huh?”

  “That’s just an expression. Listen for the rumbling and then act on it.”

  Tick was silent while Dad pulled luxuriously on his cigarette and blew the smoke over his hat brim. “Remember when we rode the merry-go-round at Disney?” he said. “Used to be, you grabbed the brass ring and you were in luck then. They don’t do that anymore, but you can still grab the brass ring, so to speak.”

  “Gamps, did you always have good luck?”

  “I’m here with you, and your Mom and your sister, aren’t I? But really, don’t believe too much in luck. Make your own.”

  “Cool.”

  Tick didn’t talk much in the morning, but he was always in a good mood. His expression was never that of a “cow shite on a frosty morn,” which is the description his Irish great-grandmother reserved for the irascible members of the family. I appreciated this more than Tick could ever know, and I hardly every showed it. He never complained that he was sleeping in the old laundry room—while Little Sunshine got her own room, painted coral with a new rose-splashed bedspread to match.

  I reminded myself of Tick’s nature as I tapped him gently on the head, pulling back the covers from his shoulders to let the air conditioning nudge him from deep, cozy sleep. It was still dark out, and every school day I loathed the idea of waking him up so early. Sometimes I wanted to let him stay in bed because I knew how tired he was. The urge lasted a second and then lingered, because I knew he was having a hard time at school. Going to high school was tough no matter how you looked at it. The thought of it flashed like scenes from a miserable flaming purgatory. Tick had to be in his first class at 7:35, a barbaric time of day for kids to be “learning.” It’s probably why Tick told me years later he “just wasn’t into the whole high school thing.” He ended up spending a great deal of high school at the 7-Eleven, smoking and drinking Dr. Pepper with his friends.

  But I didn’t know that then.

  Each morning, Tick studied the half a kiwi before he scooped it out with a grapefruit spoon. He sniffed the black current tea loaded with sugar. I was long past trying to get him to eat an egg before leaving the house.

  “Tick.”

  “Yeah Mom?” It sounded like one word—the evolution of a response for the million times I called to him.

  “Is everything all right? At school, I mean?”

  “Sure. It’s cool.” He scooped the rest of the kiwi and plopped it into his mouth.

  “Don’t worry about me, Mom.” He grabbed his book bag, then stopped and kissed the top of my head and took me by the shoulders. “Really. I’m OK. You’ve got to stop worrying about me.” He looked me directly in the eye, and I couldn’t look away. But as surely as he held on to me, when he let go, I felt like something had broken. Maybe it was the strength of his fingers I couldn’t feel anymore, or the nearly imperceptible firm shake he gave me, this hard, brief stare from my son, no longer a baby, but far from being a man. I had to believe him, and I had to let him go, to school and to life, to his problems and to his way of fixing them.

  I would not bring up the cigarette issue, or the fighting, for now. I probably should have, but I would not. I would not meddle. The timing didn’t seem right. I had time. Besides, I could hear Lucy: “You’re right and the world’s all wrong.” Well, I would just have to jump on that world and like it for damn well once.

  I clamped my mouth shut and watched him stuff a notebook into his bag, check his hair in the mirror by the front door. “See ya.” The door slammed; there was never a soft click of an exit. He took long strides, finally leaping over the hedge—with the book bag—and he was gone. I was unwilling to interfere just now—afraid that would simply tear a hole, maybe only a small one, but one nevertheless, in the net that held our new, little family together. We needed to get along, and I had taken it for granted, rather blithely, that we would when I brought Dad to Florida to live with us. What if they hadn’t gotten along? We never would have gotten this far. I had to thank all of them for the bonds they were making that strengthened the walls of our house. Dad seemed to fill the place, taking up the living room with his old movies and his bellowing, but Tick and Little Sunshine were far more accepting of the unusual situation than I expected. They were busy with their own schedules, which also included their own private alliances with their grandfather.

  I sat on the sofa watching Storm Team Meteorologist, John Winter, tell his television audience about another glorious Florida day. And I thought of Tick going off o
n the bus, and for the rest of the day facing two thousand peers and a hundred teachers.

  Tick said not to worry. Of course, I would worry. None of what any of us did was easy, and the older we all got, the more I worried.

  26

  “HAIRS” TO OUR HAPPY HOME

  I hid out on the dock at the canal to think. It had been more than six months since we came back from Ireland, about a year since Dad came to Florida. We were doing all right, although some disasters—ranging from hurricanes to Dad’s health problems—always managed to mix things up. At least the new hurricane season was cooperating. So far. It was early fall, still in the high eighties, and the Gulf remained relatively calm.

  My chair tipped back against a stand of mangroves. It was the lazy time of day for birds and fish feeding on the canal, the last of the sun, low and golden, at five o’clock. The surface of the water dazzled, reflecting pinpoints of light off the shiny fat leaves of the mangroves; more light shimmered like fire on the concrete sea wall rising above the water line and on the bottom of the blue boat that swayed above me on davits.

  The day didn’t quite want to give up to the dark just yet. I hoped no one would find me. I put my feet on the railing, trying not to tip over into the ropey jungle growing out of the water up the bank. Sometimes the chair’s plastic legs ended up sticking out of the roots of mangroves after a gale blew up the canal and swept every loose thing along with it. The wind had its way of picking up fishing poles and buckets and other chairs and leaving them bobbing in the backyard canal of my neighbors, whose stucco ranch houses leading to Bimini Bay were just like mine. But the Gulf wind was good. It swept away the cobwebs in my brain. On the dock, away from the turmoil in the house, I could think and plan. To keep writing. Dig into those notebooks full of half-written stories. Maybe earn some money, become a teacher. I’d called the board of education to find out about the certification procedure. It would take two years of night classes to get the education credits. I could hear Aunt Marian in my head, cheering me on, “Just take that one, and you’re done before you know it.”

  The gulls flew over, dipping in wide lazy loops, and the mullet broke the surface of the canal, making long, flat arches as they digested their food. The leaping fish left widening circles that shooed away two ducks skimming the rivulets. Only the cat grew restless, sitting under my chair with a taut neck and wide eyes fixed on the birds and fish. Her white-tipped black tail flicked back and forth on the boards of the dock with a light swick. Somehow all these creatures got along just fine, in this pattern of feeding, leaping, and swooping, even after the hurricanes came through and upset their nests.

  I couldn’t hide out there for long, with idle musings. None of my neighbors appeared, except for a woman across the canal. She was trying to get fruit out of a high limb with a long stick and a little net attached to the end of it. She couldn’t reach it, but she kept hopping up and down on stiff legs until she gave up and went in and left the canal to me.

  I wasn’t going to give up. It didn’t matter how much hopping I had to do.

  I stole a few more minutes, took another sip of wine, but then I got up and started walking back. It was feeding time inside the house. A casserole was bubbling in the oven, and there were pills and homework to dispense. I needed to make a trip to the drugstore, to the IGA for milk, and I had to deal with the dishes, the clothes, and answer the phone. I wanted harmony in the house, and sometimes, inevitably, I dealt with chaos. As I stepped on each of the pavers across the backyard, it dawned on me that some changes had to be made. I needed to think of my future. And now, I especially needed help in the house. These thoughts nagged at me. Despite moments of peace, I constantly felt the nagging in the back of mind, like I’d forgotten something and didn’t know where I put it.

  Dad sat in the rocker in the living room, and Little Sunshine stood behind him. The entire top of his head was covered in strange, little white knobs.

  “What’s going on?” I shrieked.

  My daughter and my father looked up at me, and they laughed. On the coffee table was an array of hairbrushes, hair bands, bobby pins, clips and sprays of all sorts.

  “Sunshine needs a hairdo,” said my daughter, pausing in midair with a comb and a fist full of hair bands.

  “The kid’s not bad,” Dad said. But he didn’t have a mirror. His fluffy white hair had been tamed into dozens of little bun-knots. I wondered how on earth I’d ever get them out, if I ever got them out. I stepped closer to see that no permanent damage had been done. I’d stayed out on the dock way too long, and this was payment.

  “Girl, how are we going to get those out?”

  “Why?”

  “Do you want your grandfather going around like that? He’ll get arrested; they’ll arrest me.” But I had to laugh. Dad’s pink scalp gleamed through the bumps, which were pulled so tight it nearly gave him a facelift. I made a mental note to try this myself. “Dad, doesn’t it bother you?”

  “No, not really. It feels good.” He loved to have his hair washed because of the scalp massage. Little Sunshine was hairdresser for a day.

  I put that on the list: Dad needs a haircut.

  I left the two of them finishing their hairdressing session and turned to the business of getting dinner on the table. The noodles and hamburger were done, the lettuce was chilled, and I was just about to slice into a tomato when I heard a scream.

  I dropped the tomato and raced to the living room. Little Sunshine had a pair of scissors in her hand and fluffs of white hair were piled up like feathers all around Dad’s chair.

  “Sunshine, it’s a little uneven on this side, so I’ll just take some off here,” she said. “At your ear.”

  “Nooooooo.”

  I could have heard the shrieking if I were standing in Tampa.

  “Good lord,” I said. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m cutting his hair. Don’t you think I can cut it better than Virginia?”

  Virginia, formerly of Rhode Island, and owner of Cut And Color Without A Care Creations in the Sand Dollar Plaza was a buxom bleach-blond who wielded the scissors like a machete, and I reluctantly took Dad to her for a trim once a month. She fussed over him, and he adored it, even though he looked like a pruned poodle when he left there. Every time, I sadly thought, It’ll grow back. I loved my Dad’s white hair that curled slightly at the neck, like it did when I was six and his hair was black. The Florida humidity gave it extra volume that he liked to tame by plopping a khaki hat on top of that cloud.

  Little Sunshine had managed to get the knobs under control, unfortunately, by cutting some of them off. The haircut, though lopsided, wasn’t much better than Virginia’s, I had to admit. But enough was enough.

  “Give her something. She needs something,” Dad said.

  “I know what I’d like to give her,” I scolded, hands on my hips. My daughter opened and closed the scissors and nudged a pile of the white fluff with her toe.

  Little Sunshine’s playful nature was just short of some serious teasing. She put the scissors carefully on the table and flounced on to the couch. “Well, all right. Next time I’ll get it wet and comb it first.”

  “No, I don’t think so. There isn’t going to be a next time,” I said. “Look, I know you want to help, but this was not a good idea.”

  She sat there with her arms crossed and her lip out. “Are you teasing Gampy?”

  “Yes,” she said, and grinned. “But he said I could.”

  “Could what? Tease him? Make him look like that?” We both looked at Dad, who looked back at us, all too calmly, I thought. He liked attention of any sort. He sat quietly with his hands folded, waiting to be rescued. It was a good thing he loved his khaki hat.

  “You shouldn’t get him upset,” I said. Her grin remained in place, but she wouldn’t look at me. “Do you want him to get sick? He’s old. We’re all going to be old. How would you like someone to do that to you?”

  She was thinking now.

  “Do you want him to hav
e another stroke?” That did it. The grin flopped, and a light went on behind those freckles.

  “No!” She jumped up and threw her arms around her grandfather and kissed his cheek. “Gamps, I’m sorry if you don’t like it.”

  “I think Virginia’s job is safe,” he said, looking up at me, patting Little Sunshine’s arm. Then he chuckled.

  Virginia had her work cut out for her the next day.

  27

  THANK HEAVEN FOR GUARDIAN ANGELS

  Carol Sebastian, my good, true Indiana friend, called me once every week or so to check on me. She told me to watch my health and eat regularly. She was all about eating, and that was how we forged our friendship, especially after my divorce. We’d been part-timers together at the Calumet Press where one of my duties was writing up restaurant reviews. Carol and I went out once a week to eat our way through a six-page menu under the ferns, in dark wood restaurants with stained glass windows and booths, which all had pretty much the same offering throughout our Northwest Indiana beat. We dipped into tomato sauce, and gravy, and chocolate sauce, and scarfed down burgers and chops and chicken of every sort. The food landscape was pretty boring, but we managed to spice it up with some laughs and a little gossip. We were a satisfying diversion for each other.

  Carol was a real food pusher. “Eat, eat. Try the artichoke dip. It has mayo and Parmesan, and I think BACON. Divine,” she said. “Put something on those bones of yours.” We ate and ate, or at least she did. The food didn’t interest me much. Nothing did right after the divorce, but Carol did her best to try and snap me out of it. She wouldn’t leave me alone, with her jokes and eating and everlasting goodwill until I came around, which I finally did, thanks in large part to Carol.