The Last Cadillac

by Nancy Nau Sullivan

  The siren on top of the ambulance didn’t seem very loud from inside, but it must have burned a hole in the eardrum of the driver in front of us. At least I hoped it did.

  I would just ride out this nightmare, if I could. Actually, I had no choice. I would never wake up from it anyway, never forget the whole miserable day, and if I ever caught up with the driver of that yellow mustang, I would forgive myself for what I did to him. One beefy, hairy arm hung out the window and his fat head rose out of a blob of shoulders. I had murder in my heart. But the obstinate, pockmarked roof of the car ahead just stared back at me, as other cars parted the way and moved to the shoulder of the road.

  “Can’t you do something?” I shouted at the ambulance driver. I made a mental note to get the Mustang driver’s license plate number, which I promptly forgot.

  The young crew-cut driver next to me clenched his jaw and looked over the wheel before glancing at me briefly. He was cool and appropriately calm, all the while he had a crazy person in the shotgun seat. But there was not a thing I could do, and I was beside myself, because I couldn’t do anything to get rid of the jerk that lingered in our path to the hospital.

  “All right now, ma’am,” the driver said. “We’ll be there, yes, we will. You just stay peaceful-like.” It must have been part of the job training, and he was doing well. He had an immediate calming effect on me.

  But it didn’t last more than a second. I tried again, frantically. “Please. Can’t you rev up this siren or something? Do you have a gun?”

  He looked at me sideways. “Ma’am that will be puttin’ more trouble on top of your troubles.”

  “I’m sorry. I know. Does this happen often?”

  “Happens almost every day. World is full of jerks, except for the dead ones. Sorry, ma’am.” He turned red then.

  I stared forward, unthinking.

  “Ma’am, I’m sorry about this but there’s not much we can do.” He bounced the heel of his hand off the steering wheel for emphasis. “Never fails. But I’d sure like to get a-holt of one of these dopes. Just once. They’d need an ambulance they-selves.”

  “Why don’t you honk?”

  “Ma’am, he don’t pay ’tention to the siren. How he gonna hear that horn? Or give a hoot?”

  Someone was making sense. I wasn’t. But the jerk in the yellow Mustang still didn’t move.

  The ambulance driver gripped the steering wheel and pushed the cab forward a few more feet, so that he nearly rode up on the rusted bumper of the Mustang. He raised his elbows slightly, and I had the feeling we were going to fly over the yellow hunk of junk in front of us.

  The driver gritted his teeth. “Let’s make up some time now.”

  But in that moment, I knew we didn’t need time. Time was up.

  I had the sick feeling it didn’t matter anyway. We could have crawled to the hospital. My father was dead. I was sure of it, although they hadn’t pronounced him dead. The words could not be said over him in his bedroom, while he was lying on the floor and the technicians worked over him. That was for the doctor to pronounce, and that meant the never-ending trip to the emergency room.

  Marilyn had been part of the goodbye, and it was hard for her, although she’d had a lot of goodbyes in her time, she told me.

  “Oh, Miss, it’s hard sometimes, especially with ones like the Commando. But there aren’t many of those; I should say, there aren’t any.” Hiring her had been one of the sterling decisions of my life. She made Dad laugh, and she made him comfortable. She knew her job, and she did it well and with a sense of humor.

  She wasn’t there at the end. But, many times, she had gone the extra mile. She had told me firmly, stating the obvious, “You need help, Miss.” I knew that her administrator didn’t approve of the extra days Marilyn worked. So I always wanted to make sure she didn’t get into trouble. But that didn’t stand in the way. I never saw her in action at the agency, but I imagined tiny Marilyn facing her boss, giving it all-hell.

  “Oh, I’ll do what I want,” she said. “I’m too old not to.”

  I could only guess where she got her strength. She was one of those rare ones who has the built-in ability not to stop. Not to give up. She had wiry, blond hair and tobacco-stained teeth, and the most patience I’d seen since Mother Teresa. Marilyn continued to smoke, but she didn’t smoke with the Commando anymore, not after the hospital episode. Instead, she went out on the dock and puffed away and then hurried back, her polyester jacket with blue bears rustling as she pumped her arms to return quickly to duty. Dad told Marilyn that her place would be “higher in the kingdom of heaven” for all her help.

  “Well, I don’t know about any high place in heaven,” she said. “And frankly, I’d prefer a hillbilly heaven, don’cha know, if there ever is such a thing. Oh, just let me at that Billy Ray Cyrus.”

  I cringed at the thought. But there had to be a place in heaven for Marilyn. She certainly went through difficult times on earth, lugging around old people and cleaning up after them, all with a good dose of loving care. She was supposed to be giving me some time off, but I usually stuck around to make sure they came out all right in their travels from the bathroom, to the family room, and down for a movie. Marilyn had all the angles and holds and methods to maneuver Dad up and down, and around.

  One morning, not long before he died, she said, “Oh, lookee, now the Commando is bobbing away again. He gets so tired, don’t he? I believe it’s about time for that nap.”

  “Marilyn, he just got up.”

  “I know. I know. It don’t hurt to humor him. He sure likes that pillow.”

  The morning Dad died, he was sparkling clean, powdered and Old-Spiced, and freshly dressed up in new khakis. He was shining top-to-toe, and even his cheeks had a smooth pink glow about them. He carried his slouch hat with the pins from places he’d traveled and presidents he’d voted for (Republican). His hair was fluffy from his “head wash.” When he came lurching out of his bedroom on the walker, he stopped for me to appreciate the spectacle, and he gave me a cheek to sniff and peck at. I loved the smell of Old Spice, and he knew it.

  I fixed him a peanut butter-and-ham sandwich for breakfast. He had insisted. I reminded him that it was breakfast, and it was poached-egg day.

  “What the hell. It’s Saturday,” I said.

  I came to sit at the table with Dad in the sunny family room. All the windows were cranked out, letting in a perfect, early spring breeze. When he picked up the grilled sandwich, dripping with peanut butter, he told me again about his first date with his beautiful wife. I heard all about it, sitting at the table while he finished off the sandwich and glass of milk, afterward picking at a bowl of melon. I was planning to make sure Dad was clean and dry and wrapped into bed for his nap by 3:00 p.m.

  Dad was still hunched over his plate. All of a sudden, he looked so tired. I figured it was the ordeal of showering and getting dressed, especially putting the dress socks over his swollen feet and into his slip-on boat shoes. He loved the idea that he wore deck shoes, although he hadn’t commanded a deck in sixty years.

  Dad was eighty-one and one week. When I looked at him, I was struck at how much he’d aged—and just recently, it seemed. The effects of his refreshing shower had begun to sag, the skin hanging on his cheeks, and lately he’d had an unusual grey pallor.

  Leave it to my brother—not long before Dad died—to remind me that Dad was not looking well. It was around the holidays, and Jack made an appearance in a rented convertible.

  “He doesn’t look so hot,” my brother said.

  “I wonder how you’ll look when you’re eighty,” I said. My brother had no concept of ever being eighty. Life was one long round of tennis.

  As usual, the conversation took another unpleasant turn from there. We were in the kitchen, each of us leaning against our respective counters for support. He was wearing a cream, fine-cotton knit argyle with a V-neck.

  “New Irish sweater? From Glin or Dingle or some other playground?” I said.

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bsp; “Scotland,” he said. His lip stuck out. He was too old for pouting.

  He was drinking a glass of some French red wine he’d bought for fifty dollars at Island Liquors, which catered to the elite who didn’t buy at Publix. I didn’t drink it. Red wine gave me a headache. He said he wanted to talk. I fortified myself with a Publix pinot grigio and braced myself. It was no fun talking to any of them anymore.

  “I want to see all the bills from Dad’s charge accounts and other expenses,” he said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Yeah, you heard me.” He had a sort of light, offhand tone in his voice, like he was ordering the janitor to sweep his office.

  “I think we’ve had this conversation before.”

  “Well, we’re having it again.”

  “And since when do I need to answer to you?”

  “Since now, and I think I’m speaking for the other members of this family, as well.”

  “Really.”

  “Really.”

  “What is your point?”

  “Well, I want to see what you’re spending his money on. He has a pension, and credit cards. I want to know.”

  I looked around at the kitchen. What could he possibly be talking about? I’d bought a frying pan, some stainless steel flatware, and a bunch of linens to replace those Dad had burned a hole through, and wet the bed on every night. His diapers alone were approaching the weekly food ration.

  I stood up straight and stared at him. I wanted him to look at me, but he was studying the tip of one of his Cole Haans.

  “I think you are way out of line,” I said.

  “No, I am not. Where are those bills?” He looked toward the other room, as if to make off for every drawer in the house. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing and seeing from this spoiled brat of a millionaire, who played tennis and swilled fine wine and wore expensive sweaters from all over the world, and who had been to see his father twice this year. All I could think was: I made you chocolate chip cookies and sent them to you at camp. I felt cold inside, although it was eighty-six degrees outside.

  “He has one charge card. I closed all the rest, and you know that. I do not answer to you. I answer to Dad’s accountant and his lawyer, and it is none of your business how I run this household.”

  I put my glass on the counter with an authoritative clink and left him standing there, along with his insults hanging in the air.

  My brother had dutifully visited Dad for his birthday on March 24, making an appearance the day before and the day after, and then he’d disappeared to the Naples Country Club. He dropped in another holiday or two over the years, and I wondered how different it would have been had Dad stayed in the dollhouse up North.

  But my brother was right about one thing. It was true Dad didn’t look well. The doctor had made the prognosis that he would experience a sort of deterioration involving mini-strokes until a massive stroke ended his life, a condition that killed his mother. Dr. Parks said this as gently as possible when I asked about Dad’s health.

  “We don’t know much. We’re just looking at history and your father’s records to make an assumption.”

  He also reminded me that Dad’s condition was a genetic pre-disposition that affected alternating generations by gender, as he wagged a finger at me and told me to exercise and never take up smoking again. I gave my sisters the news, and they acted like it was my idea they’d all catch mini-strokes.

  The doctor said to keep Dad comfortable and on a schedule of sorts, including the physical therapy that was hardly exercise at all. He moved around as little as possible. He mostly sat and cooed and ogled the pretty home health aide who bent over him for forty-five minutes every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon. She made him lift an arm at a time, or a leg, while she asked him a few questions, and he usually commented on her lipstick or hair-do. He missed his nap for her visits. Whereas, normally, he barely had the energy to stay awake an entire afternoon.

  That last day, we headed toward the television for a brief look at the TCM channel before his nap. But he moved slowly, dragging his leg more than usual. He was barely able to stand upright.

  “Are you OK there?” I asked, knowing how perfectly useless that question was.

  “I have to lie down, oh, I’m so tired,” he said.

  Then, in the next instant, it happened. I held a plate in one hand and an empty glass in the other. I stood rooted to the tile floor as I watched my father slowly teeter sideways, like falling off a horse.

  In fact, it was odd, that decades before I had seen him do just that—on a bright Sunday afternoon, fall off that big, black, shiny horse named Pat, without a scratch.

  I moved quickly in front of him, trying to break his fall, and all I could think was that he would squash me. I didn’t know where to grab him. I dropped the plate and it shattered as the walker rolled away toward the front door like it wanted to leave. Dad hit the upholstered arm of the couch and glanced off the corner of the TV table before coming to rest on his side. He cut himself on the tray table. A small squiggle of blood appear on his forehead.

  “Oh, Oh, Oh.”

  It was the only sound after the thudding, the shattering. Somehow, I managed to hold onto him, and indeed, break his fall, or at least slow it down. I was no help at all, only adding to the confusion and the mess with broken glass all over the floor.

  I righted him, and now he was almost dead weight. But somehow, I got him in the bedroom.

  He was lying on his back in bed. I called 911. “Get over here now. Yes, it’s an emergency … I think he’s dying.” I could barely speake, my voice shook so, as did the rest of me. I was cold all over. I focused on the phone in my hand.

  “What do I do?”

  “Is he breathing?” the assistant asked.

  “I don’t know. Yes, I think so.” His eyes were open but glazed, and more prominent than usual, almost as if the destruction going on in his head was reflected in his gaze. He made little puffing sounds, in and out through his lips, and I noticed some peanut butter in the corner of his mouth. He had not gotten sick, nor made a sound since telling me he was tired before the fall.

  “Give him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Now, until we get there. We’re on the way.”

  “But I don’t know how.” How stupid of me. I’d never taken a CPR course, and I had an elderly parent living with me for all that time. The thought of it annoyed me. I should know how to do this, but I didn’t. And I was so afraid.

  “I don’t know what I’m doing,” I said. “Will I hurt him?”

  “No, you won’t. There’s no such thing as a bad effort. It’s all good.”

  Then she told me to close off his nose and breathe in through his mouth in a regular pattern. She stayed on the phone while I tried it.

  I pinched his nose shut. He had no cartilage left from his days as a boxer, and it was like touching a fold of tough skin. I couldn’t remember ever touching his nose. I leaned closer and I could smell the peanut butter. His lips were dry and I breathed in slowly, then regularly. The puffing had stopped and I looked into his eyes. He didn’t see me at all when I called to him.

  Then he lifted his head and looked toward the corner of the room. He started talking.

  “Dad, who’s there? What are you saying?”

  He tried to tell me, but it was useless. He stared across the room, talking, talking, talking, like it was the most normal day of his life, like he had something to say, so deliberately, and he wouldn’t lie back until he said it, whatever it was. I couldn’t understand a word. Then he fell back on his pillow. His eyes were still open, seeing only what he could see, and his breathing was so shallow I could hardly sense it.

  I heard the truck, and then the metallic sound of doors slamming and men talking and yelling to hurry. Two technicians appeared in the bedroom with a stretcher. They dropped it to the floor and loaded Dad on to it in one sweep.

  They stretched him out on the bedroom floor to work him over. I finally had to ask the question I was dreading.
“Is he gone?”

  The technician was soft spoken, courteous, young, but so knowing for that age, as he handled the gear and pointed the way to get moving. “It’s not for us to say, ma’am,” he said. “We’ll meet the doctor in the emergency.”

  They did things I never thought to do. They loosened his shirt and his belt, and checked his mouth for obstruction, and took off his shoes. They tried to resuscitate him with paddles. And I didn’t have the presence of mind to tell them Dad had a DNR—Do Not Resuscitate—order in his medical records. All I could think about, all I could fear, was that he was already dead.

  He’d met someone in the corner of that room, someone standing in the sunshine, who helped him along. I hoped it was like that. He had to be with them.

  I didn’t care what these medical people said, because they didn’t know him and what my dad, the strongest man in the world, was capable of. But it didn’t seem he was with me anymore. I didn’t want to believe it, watching them load Dad into the back of the ambulance, chasing after them out the door, jumping into the front seat.

  Dad rode in the back of the ambulance, and I turned to look at him, clutching his toes in a grip, talking to him. But there was no response. His eyes were closed, and I didn’t know if he had closed them, or they had been closed for him. And what did it matter? His eyes were closed.

  They seemed to know that they couldn’t do anything further. He didn’t have an IV, like they do in the movies. It was clear to me that he wasn’t breathing anymore. Somewhere along the way, he had stopped doing the most automatic thing we do to stay on this earth. I never knew the exact second he stopped, but I know he had last words to say to someone standing in the corner of the bedroom. I had looked over that way, and I saw nothing. But he did.

  I didn’t want to admit he was gone. I was beyond crying and in another zone that made me numb. I wanted to go back, re-trace and figure out how I’d gotten to this place. But there was no going back, only forward.