by Delia Ephron
“You mean an hour.” He closes the door.
“Sorry, Georgia. Anyway, I was feeling sorry for Dad, wheeling him down the hall, and he was being kind of charming. You know how Dad has charm.”
“Crazy-man charm, which is not to be confused with real charm,” says Georgia dryly.
“Right. So we got into the TV room and he announced, ‘Guess what, everyone?’—I swear to God, Georgia, he managed to get the attention of people who have no attention span—‘Guess what? My daughter is Georgia the magazine.’”
Georgia hoots in delight, which fuels me. “‘Wasn’t I brilliant to name her Georgia?’ He actually said that, as if the magazine wouldn’t be called whatever he named you.”
“Should I send a complimentary subscription?”
“To UCLA Geriatric/Psychiatric?”
“Why not?”
“You mean so Doris, the nurse, can read about the perfect vacation on Majorca?”
“We don’t run irrelevant articles like that, and you know it,” says Georgia. “So he can brag.”
“He does anyway. He’s fixated on you. He asked if I was jealous.” I do another imitation. “‘Are you jealous of your sister?’” I blast it the way he did.
“No!” Georgia is incredulous. This is satisfying. I feel as if I am landing the world’s biggest fish.
“Then he said, ‘This is her sister … what’s your name?’ I’m not kidding, he said that.”
I know Georgia is practically rolling on the floor. “That is hysterical. Don’t you think that’s hysterical? You know, Eve …” Her voice drops three octaves. Well, that’s a slight exaggeration, but Georgia has two voices: her low authoritative voice, which is her Georgia-the-magazine voice, and her normally pitched Georgia-the-human-being voice. Now she switches to her Georgia-the-magazine voice. “There is some evidence that withholding parents get more devotion from their children than giving parents do. We’re running an article about it. I hadn’t thought about this, but perhaps withholding children get more than giving ones. I’ve got to go. Putting out this tenth-anniversary edition is a complete nightmare—I can’t possibly convey what I’m going through.”
I go back into the bedroom and throw myself on the bed. Joe is finishing up, putting some magazines and papers in his briefcase. “So what’s the cake lady like?” I ask.
I’m going to pull myself together. I’m going to settle in and listen to Joe tell me a story. I’m going to watch him smile my favorite smile, the one that starts slowly, sneaking up, and then bursts out big and wide. “She stands on a stepladder and ices the cakes with a Ping-Pong paddle. ‘I buy ’em by the gross at Mel’s Sporting Goods ’cause when I ice ’em lime green, I just can’t wash it out.’” Joe imitates her gravelly, froggy voice. “‘I wear my rain slicker—’”
I start thinking about my father. His glee when everyone in the TV room was looking at him. That center-of-attention-in-second-grade look on an eighty-one-year-old man. His front teeth turning yellow, the tufts of hair coming out of his ears. He’s metamorphosing into some beast, something that walks on all fours and grins for no reason. But in a ludicrous tribute to the strength of his personality, the second-grader in him still dominates.
“You’re not listening to me,” says Joe agreeably.
“I’m sorry. I don’t want you to go.”
“Eve, I’ll be back soon. You sound like a child.”
Me and my dad. I roll over and off the bed. “I’m going to start dinner. Jesse must be starved.”
I start banging around the kitchen. Taking out olive oil, garlic, filling a pasta pot with water, turning on a burner. Don’t go, don’t go, don’t go. I’m beginning to sound like that little blonde actress in all those fifties movies. The one with the short pageboy. Not Deborah Kerr, shorter. Who was she? She never actually said, “Don’t go,” she was too docile. Her husbands went wherever they were going and you knew the plane would crash and it did, but there’s always the scene when she doesn’t know it. She’s innocently playing with her children. Or is it that she’s all dolled up and lighting candles on the dining room table for his welcome-home dinner? Anyway, then the phone rings. Surprise.
“Bye,” says Joe. He gives me a kiss.
“Who’s that fifties blonde actress, kind of bland?”
“Kim Novak?”
“No, not sexy. Square.”
“I don’t know. I have to go. I love you.”
“I love you too.” I wonder if withholding wives get more devotion than giving ones. I hear Joe pick up his bag. I think I hear him swing it over his shoulder, but maybe I just know that comes next. Then the front door opens and quietly shuts.
As I reach over to get a potholder off the wall hook, my arm touches the edge of the pot, which is hot. I yelp.
There’s no one around to ask what happened.
I put my arm under cold water and wrap a dish towel around it. Holding it carefully, as if my arm is fragile, I go into the living room. I wander around, then I do what I always do, sit in my favorite armchair, which, if I curl up, fits me snugly. I sit there doing nothing. Trying to feel all right. Wishing Jesse were young again so I could have someone to cuddle.
The next morning, at seven-thirty, the phone rings. “He’s dead,” I say. Then I realize Joe isn’t there to hear me. “Hello?”
“May I speak please to Mrs. Mozell?”
“Ms. Mozell,” I say, irritated. This man has just made me married to my father. “Is this a political call?”
“Excuse me?”
“Nicaragua. El Salvador. Look, I don’t give money on the phone. And it’s the crack of dawn. Don’t you guys usually call at dinnertime?”
“This is Dr. Omar Kunundar.”
“Oh, Dr. Kunundar, I’m sorry, I’m so glad you called, thank you.” I’m falling all over myself, totally obsequious. I quickly swing my legs out of the bed. Wake up, get a grip. I have just assumed a man from the Middle East is from Latin America. In my nicest, chummiest voice, I say, “Please forgive me. I believe that my son, Jesse, opened his car door into your car.”
“Yes, I am on my way to the hospital.”
“Right now?”
“No, when your son opens his door. Like a wall, I hit it. I am very sorry too.”
“It’s his fault.”
“Yes, I know.”
“Well, my husband and I were wondering.… You know how insurance companies are these days?”
“No, I have not heard.”
“Well, they’re very hard on teenagers. They charge a lot of money to insure a sixteen-year-old. And if Jesse gets another accident on his record, his coverage will skyrocket, you know, go up.” Oh God, is that condescending? “So we were wondering, did you already notify your insurance company?”
“No. I am too busy yet.”
“Well, good. We would really appreciate it if you would not tell the company and we could pay you directly.”
“My lights are falling off,” says Dr. Kunundar.
“I’m sure they are. We’ll be happy to take care of it. If you just get some estimates—”
“I do not know if this is all right.”
“It’s fine, honestly, it’s fine, but of course, if you don’t feel comfortable …”
“I’m sitting down, thank you. I have three ears and a nose this morning, but I will call you back when I speak with your mother.”
“My mother? Why do you need my mother? I haven’t seen her in over twenty years. My sister Madeline talks to her. I haven’t a clue what my mother’s up to.” There is a long pause, unfortunately, and during this time I cannot believe I have said what I have said.
“This is very sad to hear. It is sad to be without a mother. But it is my accident.”
“Well, it was my son’s fault.”
“What I mean is …” He speaks very slowly, as if I were dense. “I mean that I have to speak to my mother. She is in Burbank. If this is illegal, I will have to call the authorities. She will tell me. Good-bye thank you.” No com
ma, all together.
“Good-bye.” I stare at the receiver. I actually do this before hanging up. Joe’s always pointing out when actors do this in movies: they get upsetting phone calls and take a beat to stare at the receiver before hanging up. This is completely fake, says Joe. No one confuses the person on the other end of the phone with the phone itself. But I just did.
The phone rings again. Two calls before eight. “Hello.” I say this politely. On my best behavior. Perhaps it’s Dr. Kunundar again.
“Nine-one-one, nine-one-one.”
“Dad?”
“They’re stealing my money.” And he howls. Like some animal being clubbed to death, whose sounds wake the jungle. It goes on and on and on.
“Dad, stop, please. Nurse! Nurse!” Now I am shouting.
“Yes?”
I recognize Doris’s voice. “I think my father needs a sedative.”
“He’s had enough for a horse,” says Doris.
“Ask Dr. Kelly to call me, please.”
“I surely will.”
“Thank you.”
I drop back on the bed and pull the covers up to my nose.
“Mom?”
“What? Honey?” I say this muffled through the sheets.
Jesse sticks his head in. His hair is wet from his shower and he looks so fresh. “I’m out of here.”
“Did you eat? You should always eat something in the morning.”
“Everyone says that, but it’s not true.”
“Fine, I believe you, forget I said it, have a really nice day, Jesse.”
“I’m taking Dad’s car.”
“Fine. We’ll take your car to the … not the mechanic. What do you call those places where they rebuild cars?”
“Body shops?”
“Right. We’ll go after school.”
“Cool.” He closes the door.
I don’t move while I listen to him go down the stairs and out.
The phone rings again. I should let it ring, but I can’t. I probably need a twelve-step program to break the phone-answering habit. I pick up the receiver and listen, but there’s no more of that air-in-a-tunnel. A person can’t anticipate long-distance anymore; besides, we’re in the same city. “Hello?”
“This is not your father.”
“Oh, Adrienne, hi.” What a relief. “Adrienne, who’s that short actress with a pageboy in all those old movies?”
“Teresa Wright?”
“No.”
“What about that other one? Whose last name’s a guy’s name, but what is it? She’s funny.”
“This one wasn’t funny.”
“Oh.”
There is going to be a quiz show for Adrienne and me where all the contestants are over forty. It’ll be called “Name That Person You Already Know.”
Thirty minutes later, we are still on the phone. I am in my bed, and I suspect that Adrienne is, well, not in bed, since she is calling from New York, where the time is three hours later, but on it. Until she married Paul nine years ago, she shared her king-sized bed with her belongings: her sketch pad, her dental floss, several books and magazines, Kleenex, the TV remote, her telephone, her Rolodex, a bag of cinnamon cookies from Leroy’s Bakery. Now these things are piled on her night table, a little mountain of necessities, leaving room for her husband. But during the day, while Paul covers sports for the Daily News, she is still parked on the bed, where she gets most of her ideas just lying there. As she sketches her cartoons, her beloved TV, which sits on an old pine blanket box, is never off. Adrienne loves the television as much as I love the phone.
“I think my father is dying.” I have said this out loud twice now. I am placing myself inside the circle. Everyone’s parents die. Everyone dies, even Y-O-U. There ought to be a way out. Once I went skiing with Joe, and I fell on purpose so I wouldn’t fall by accident, but that approach wouldn’t work here, would it?
“Did Dr. Kelly say he’s dying?” asks Adrienne.
“No.”
“You sound upset.”
“I’m not. Why should I be? I don’t love him. Are you scared of death?”
Adrienne doesn’t even think it over. “No.”
I should have expected this. Adrienne’s hair turned gray and she didn’t dye it. “Why? Why not?” This isn’t a question, it’s a plea. Save me from this. Save me from the boy with the fist in his eye.
“I suppose because I saw my father die.” I can hear Adrienne munching a cinnamon cookie. “He was lying there, and he was in so much pain he shuddered.”
“You mean like a death rattle?” That’s a term I’ve heard forever. What is it, and will I recognize it when I hear it?
“No. Just every few seconds, his body would tense up and shake. God, it was creepy. Then he died. And you know how in yoga they say relax your feet, then your ankles, and they work their way up until your whole body is limp? That’s what happened to him.”
“Are you saying that death is the ultimate in relaxation?”
“I guess so.”
“I never relax. If you relax, that’s when it happens.”
“What?”
“Whatever.”
“Eve, I don’t think your father’s dying. But I think the thought of it is producing anxiety.”
“I’m not anxious about my father. Jesse had a car accident—he’s fine—but now I have this terrible mess with the insurance.”
“Your agitation is all about insurance?” She says this evenly, to underscore her disbelief, and that makes me counter aggressively.
“Do you know how much it costs to insure teenagers?”
“Eve, I can hear you.”
I lower my voice. “Adrienne, if I can’t persuade this doctor Jesse hit to let us pay him directly for the accident, the cost of our coverage will be astronomical. We could lose it altogether. And you haven’t talked to this guy. He’s a nose doctor who’s a total headache. But basically, everything’s under control. I’m sure if I can get him back on the phone, I can handle him.”
“And that’s all you’re worried about?” asks Adrienne.
“Yes.”
Five
I graduated from college in 1973 but left before the ceremonies to avoid having my father there. My mother’s presence wasn’t an issue. I’d refused to see or speak to her ever since my trip to Big Bear. When Maddy tried to report some hike they’d all taken or relay an invitation to visit, I wouldn’t listen.
My father was still drinking, but aside from his overdose while I was studying for my Great American Plays final, he hadn’t tried anything drastic. I kept to a policy of going home only for an odd week now and then. I decided to move to New York City; this put me near Georgia and a safe three thousand miles away from him.
I met Adrienne through a classified ad she had placed in The Village Voice, requesting “one female roommate who is sane and has never attended est.” We shared the top floor of a five-flight walk-up. The two bedrooms were each the size of a shoe box. Our living room couch was a single bed with pillows piled against the wall on the long side. We had one asparagus plant. It sat on the air conditioner, its lacy stems vibrating because the air conditioner was always on; we ran it year-round to block out the roar from Sixth Avenue. I had a coffee table, of which I was proud. It had once been a display case for, I fear, nothing too attractive. Still, it was glass on all sides with pretty pine trim, and the back had sliding doors. We put Adrienne’s salt and pepper shaker collection inside.
Thanks to Georgia’s husband, who knew the deputy parks commissioner, I went to work at the New York City Parks Department, planning special events: concerts, Bicycle Day, the opening of the new seal pond in Central Park. Adrienne sat in the apartment all summer, watching the Senate Watergate hearings until her money ran out. Then I helped her get a job at Parks too, in the Graphic Design Department, where she designed our posters.
At first Adrienne and I shared a phone number. But after a few weeks she began saying, “It’s probably your dad,” whenever the phone rang.
Soon after that, she got a number of her own.
“Hey, kid, I’m thinking of moving to New York.” My father called right in the middle of Nixon’s 1974 State of the Union address, just as he was saying, “One year of Watergate is enough.”
“Dad, that’s a terrible idea.”
“This town is dead.”
“Well, maybe, but you wouldn’t like New York anymore. It’s so dangerous, I mean there are”—I racked my brain for something scary—“Chinese street gangs. Muggers galore, I am not kidding.”
With that, Adrienne turned off the TV and made no pretense of not listening to my conversation.
“Let’s face it, kid, those network bastards don’t want what I do. They’re into reality now. Mary Martin Moore.”
“You mean Mary Tyler Moore?”
“Yeah. Who cares, I don’t care. I shoot the breeze. I shot it yesterday. I guess I’ll shoot it tomorrow.”
I quickly dialed Georgia. “This is such a nightmare. You won’t believe what a nightmare this is. Dad wants to move here.”
“Well, I’m sure he won’t.”
“Georgia, there’s nothing keeping him in Los Angeles. He’s divorced, his series is canceled.”
“You take everything he says much too seriously. Did you ever consider that you enjoy getting upset?”
“I don’t enjoy getting upset.”
“Have it your way,” Georgia said, in a tone that indicated she was humoring me.
“Georgia, I don’t enjoy getting upset.” I looked at Adrienne, who was nodding indignantly in agreement.
“Fine. Are we meeting for lunch next Monday?”
“Sure.”
“You pick the restaurant.”
“No, you pick it.”
“Eve, I don’t care.”
“Okay, The Hare and the Tortoise.”
“Is that a serious place? Does it have tablecloths? I hope it doesn’t have spider plants drooping over the tables.”
“I don’t remember. Yes, it has tablecloths. Look, if you don’t like it, you pick the place.”
“No, that’s fine, where is it?”
“Fifty-fourth between Park and Lex. What time is good, Georgia?”
“It’s up to you.”
