The Good Humor Man

by Andrew Fox

  I spread my trembling arms around them and lay my bruised cheek on my desk, then pull the cylinders tightly against my skull.

  Emily. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.

  I’m so terribly, terribly sorry…

  I’m awakened by a rustling outside my window, in the bushes.

  I remain very still, listening. There isn’t any wind. Maybe I didn’t hear it; maybe it was a product of this bump on my head?

  No. There it is again. The rustling lasts longer this time. Something is poking into my hedge, crawling beneath my window. Something large.

  I feel my palms begin to sweat. It’s a Mexican in my bushes, one of the cheese hoarders from Mex-Town, come to avenge the man I killed. Or maybe Muthukrishnan, come to steal the Elvis-in-a-Jar?

  Rustling again. I can’t take it anymore.

  “Is anyone out there?”

  I open the window a crack. “Is there anyone out there?”

  The only way I’ll know is to turn on the back floodlights and look out the clinic’s back door. At least, sneaking into the kitchen, I’m much steadier than I was a few hours ago. Opening the door, I smell something musky and frightened.

  It’s a deer. A terribly thin deer, haggard and weak as the two I passed on the road yesterday. It’s eating berries off my hedges.

  I wait for it to jump away from me and run off. It doesn’t. As soon as it sees I don’t have any food to offer, it returns to its meal of bush berries.

  I sit down on my back steps and watch it eat. While I’m trying to think what I might have in my pantry to feed it, my phone rings.

  The machine can answer it. It might be Brad or Mitch. They’re the last people on Earth I want to speak with right now. But the voice that leaves a message isn’t any voice I was expecting. It’s hesitant, befuddled by the series of beeps. My father’s voice.

  Oh, hell. I’m not together enough to deal with him right now. But a nagging sense of filial responsibility makes me pick up the phone.

  “— Louie? Louie, are you there? It’s late. You should be home. So pick up the phone, Louie, okay? Okay?”

  I click off the answering machine. “It’s okay, Dad. I’m here.”

  “Hello? Who is this?”

  “It’s me, Dad.”

  “Did I wake you? It’s late, right? It’s late where you are?”

  “It’s the same time for me as it is for you.” I check my watch. “It’s one-thirty in the morning. What are you doing up? Are you all right?”

  “I’m not all right, Louie. You have to come get me. They’re not doing right by me here.”

  He almost never complains about the home anymore. Why now? Has his dementia taken a turn for the worse?

  “What’s the matter, Dad? What’s going on?”

  “Come get me. Can you come get me, right now?”

  “No. Not right now, Dad. You have to tell me what’s the matter first.”

  “What’s the matter? What’s the matter? They’re starving me here, that’s what’s the matter.”

  “What?” I hear the deer outside. I feel the weight of hooves walking on my grave.

  “I said, they’re starving me here. Weren’t you listening?”

  The food. He’s complaining about the food. The most common, natural thing in the world is for rest home patients to complain about their food.

  “You don’t like the food there? They aren’t feeding you enough?”

  “No!”

  “I could talk to your doctor, get them to put more spices in your food —”

  “No! You aren’t listening! They feed me plenty. Three, four times a day. Soon as I finish one tray, they got another one waiting for me. But I’m always hungry, Louie. I never used to be hungry all the time like this.”

  My palms begin sweating again.

  “Louie, son, I can see my ribs.”

  CHAPTER 3

  The smell of disinfectant. The smell of old men, moldering in their narrow beds like piles of rags. The smell of my own fear.

  Someone’s let all the air out of my father. Looking around the room at his ward-mates, either sleeping or fixated on silent vid-9 screens… someone’s let the air out of them, too. I’m standing in the middle of a ward of starving men.

  A nursing aide enters the room with a stack of fresh sheets. In seconds I’ve backed her into a corner. “What the hell are you lunatics doing to the men here?”

  She drops her sheets. “What —?” She stares up at me with wide, terrified eyes, like I’m the lunatic. “Do — doing to them? What do you mean?”

  “Don’t you have eyes? These men — my father — they’re wasting away! I demand to see the physician in charge. Immediately!”

  “But — but Dr. Abramson is at a conference out of town —”

  “I don’t care if he’s gone to Mars. Get him for me. Or get me whoever’s in charge of this chamber of horrors.”

  I try to get my emotions under control while I wait for the attending physician. Feeding captive old men those goddamn diet foods… it’s so perverse and monstrous, I have a hard time believing they’ve actually done it.

  I haven’t seen my father in nearly four months. My list of excuses stretches as long as the road between my house and this rest home: I’ve been too busy; the three-hour round trip is too tiring; seeing my father depresses me; there’s nothing I can do for him. About a third of the time, he either thinks I’m his old medical partner, Isadore, or he fails to recognize me at all. He was never that good a father to begin with, and he was an even worse husband to my mother, and he wasn’t there for me after Emily died.

  All my excuses aren’t worth a pile of shit.

  My father was always a husky man. In his later years, prior to the onset of his dementia, he caught the national fever for exercise and diet regulation, and he managed to lose much of his spare tire. Yet even four months ago, when I last saw him, he was still a substantial man.

  Not now.

  I watch his rib cage rise and fall with the regular rhythm of sleep. He never had cheekbones before; the puffy flesh of his face had kept him looking younger than he was, almost boylike. Now he has the craggy cheeks of a mummified ballerina.

  Two people advance on me — a uniformed man, presumably a security guard, and a woman, an administrator or head nurse. She’s scowling like I’ve just taken a king-size bite out of her posterior and she’s eager to return the favor.

  “Can I see your visitor’s pass?” the guard asks. I yank the pass out of my pocket. Before I can launch into my tirade, the woman cuts me off. “Sir, if you persist in making wild accusations against my staff, I’ll have to ask you to leave. If you’d like to talk calmly about whatever’s disturbing you, do so.”

  “And you are —?”

  “I’m Anne Posely, nursing supervisor. I’m in charge while Dr. Abramson is off-campus. May I ask who you are?”

  “I’m Dr. Louis Shmalzberg. My father is Dr. Walter Shmalzberg. One of your patients.”

  “I see. May I ask what’s gotten you so upset?”

  I fight down an impulse to shake her like a rag doll. “Look at him. Just take… a look.”

  She walks to my father’s bedside and picks up his chart. “I see your father has been with us nearly four years now,” she says, trying to placate me with a calm, upbeat tone. “According to these notes, he’s been doing quite well. He was admitted with a diagnosis of McCrowley’s Dementia; there’s not much we can do for that, unfortunately. I see that he’s suffered from rheumatoid arthritis since he’s been here, but he’s responded very well to drug therapy, and he hasn’t complained of any joint pains for the last six months.”

  She hangs the chart by its cord on my father’s bedpost again. “Overall, Dr. Shmalzberg, aside from the dementia, it appears that your father is in remarkably good health, particularly for a man of his age.”

  In. Remarkably. Good. Health. I feel a chill at the base of my spine. “Nurse Posely, I don’t mean to question your professional judgment; but wouldn’t you have t
o agree that my father is suffering from… clinical malnutrition?”

  She looks at his chart again. “Hmmm… according to this, he has lost some weight over the past few months. But he’s still well within the limits of the recommended weight tables for his age and build. In fact, his weight loss should be considered a positive outcome. There’d be much more cause for concern if he’d started gaining —”

  I grab the chart from her. “According to this, my father has lost nineteen pounds in the past four months. And in the six months before that, he lost an additional ten. Do you consider that normal?”

  The security guard steps toward me, but the nurse waves him off. “It’s not necessarily abnormal. Some long-term-care patients’ weights are known to fluctuate. Generally, this isn’t a sign of ill health, unless the fluctuation is markedly upward —”

  I don’t know whether to laugh or scream. “Listen to me. You said ‘some’ long-term patients’ weights fluctuate. What does it mean when all of their weights are fluctuating, and all fluctuating downward? Check their charts! I know what these men looked like four months ago! Every single one of them is losing body mass at a frightening rate!”

  She frowns, finally taking me seriously. “What are you implying, Dr. Shmalzberg?”

  “I want to see my father’s menu charts. Complete with a list of ingredients used to prepare his foods. And I want to have a look in your kitchen and talk with your food preparation staff.”

  “May I ask why?”

  “It’s within my rights to see those things.”

  “I know it is. But again, I ask why?”

  My fingers tighten around my father’s chart. “Why? You’ve been pumping my father full of diet foods, that’s why. For some reason completely beyond me, you’ve been lacing your patients’ meals with that MannaSantos weight-loss crap.”

  Her eyes widen behind her glasses. “That’s an absurd allegation, Dr. Shmalzberg. Why on earth would we be feeding these men weight-reduction foods, unless they were dangerously overweight to begin with?”

  “You tell me. Is this Dr. Abramson of yours that eager to free up beds for new patients?”

  She gasps. “I have worked with Dr. Abramson for the past eighteen years, and no one — no one — is more dedicated to the well-being of these patients than he is. Come with me, Dr. Shmalzberg. I want to set your mind at ease. Let’s go take a look at the kitchens.”

  I spend the next ninety minutes searching for some speck of evidence that my suspicions are true. Nurse Posely takes me to all three of the large, institutional kitchens. She lets me question the cooks and other workers without her being present. I examine the kitchens’ menu plans. I search their pantries, refrigerators, and freezers for the MannaSantos-produced foodstuffs I’d been so certain of finding. The head dietician even shows me her food order invoices for the past year.

  The only tie to MannaSantos I find is a single order, eleven months old, for a small shipment of Leanie-Lean meats and breakfast products. The red flag I’m searching for just isn’t there. No one is hiding anything.

  When I return to my father’s bedside, he’s awake. He tries sitting up in bed, and I help him by rearranging his pillows. He squints as he struggles to focus. “Iz… Izzy? Am I in the hospital?” His voice is tremulous and hoarse.

  These first few minutes are always the worst. “No, Dad. You’re not in the hospital. You’re in the convalescent home. Pacific Vistas.”

  He stares at me with sudden surprise. “You’re… not Izzy.”

  “No, Dad. I’m Louis. I drove up from Rancho Bernardino this morning.”

  “Louie?” His eyes finally focus on my face. “What happened, you fall off your bicycle? Your mother seen that shiner yet? She’ll be worried as hell.”

  He reaches up and gently touches the puffed up tissues around my left eye. I realize what I must look like. “Don’t worry, Dad. I, uh, I slipped in the shower last night. It’s not as bad as it looks. I’ll be fine.”

  He relaxes. “Good. I wouldn’t want your mother getting all upset.” My mother’s been dead since my third year of medical school.

  I pull a chair to his bedside. “Dad, do you remember calling me last night?”

  I see the fright in his eyes, and it stabs me through the soul. “What, ah, what did we talk about?” Before I can think of how to answer, he grabs my hand and says, “No, wait, don’t tell me — I remember. You went over to your cousin’s, right? For Passover Seder. Your cousin Cindy. Buddy’s little girl. It was just like old times, right? The dinner, I mean. Matzoh balls. Potato kugel. Baked brisket with gravy. You were wondering where the hell she and her husband got the money to feed all those people that kind of food. See? I remember!”

  He does remember. But that Passover Seder was last spring. My father and I had this conversation more than six months ago.

  I pat his hand. “That’s right, Dad. I told you all about the seder at Cindy’s house. But that’s not what we talked about last night. You called to tell me you were hungry all the time. That you felt like you were starving.”

  “Well… I am hungry all the time. All the damn time. The food around here is shit! No taste at all! Say…” he says, his voice turning suddenly sly and whispery, “you bring me any of those, y’know, those candy bars you pick up?”

  Damn. No, Pop, they’re crushed into the dirt on some street in Mex-Town. “Uh, no, Dad. I forgot. They’re still at home.” Home. The question I’ve been dreading asking him all morning. “Last night you told me you wanted me to take you away from here. Away from Pacific Vistas. Do you want to come home with me?”

  But he’s not paying attention to me anymore. He’s staring at the vid-9 set mounted in the corner. Hazy black-and-white images flicker past. Wayne Newton’s mustachioed face. Some kind of documentary on Vegas lounge singers…?

  “He looked great, didn’t he?” I turn back to my father. He has a tremendous grin on his face, just like when he’d brag to my mother about the latest Hollywood heiress who’d signed up for a “nip and tuck.” “Man oh man, didn’t he look great, when I was done with him?”

  “Who, Dad?”

  He frowns quickly at me. “Oh, you know who!”

  I remind myself to be patient. “No, I don’t.”

  He props himself up on his elbows and looks around to make sure no one else is listening. Only then does he tell me, in a stage whisper worthy of Lionel Barrymore. “Elvis!”

  Oh Lord, here we go again.

  “I wish to God that man was standing right here in front of me,” he exclaims, his wavering voice choked with emotion. “By God, I’d like to shake his hand! He made me, you know that? He made me who I am, the most successful plastic surgeon in Beverly Hills. He had more to do with it than all my professors combined. More even than Dr. Illouz, my mentor, the founder of the liposuction industry! Those last four weeks of his life, after my procedure, everybody who saw him said, ‘Doesn’t Elvis look wonderful? It’s as if someone’s taken twenty years off him.’ You’ve seen the photos. Didn’t he look great? Didn’t he look better than any time since his big 1968 comeback?”

  “Yes, Dad. He looked great. You did a fabulous job.”

  “Fabulous? That’s all? It was the first liposuction procedure performed by an American physician on American soil — I was a pioneer! Like — like the first man to land on the moon, or Columbus. Sure, there was that little post-surgical fuck-up… but hell, it was my first time. Didn’t NASA blow up a rocket or two on the way to sending Armstrong to the moon? Shit, if Elvis hadn’t been scarfing down a goddamn private pharmacy, he probably would’ve pulled through just fine. My job was to make that man look like a Greek god again, and by God, I did it! Nobody was supposed to know. But I made sure the right people knew what I had done. Pretty soon they were lining up! That’s right — lining up to have their bodies sculpted by the man who’d made Elvis look like Elvis again!”

  I pull a thermometer from my bag. “Open wide, Dad.”

  He eyes the thermometer suspiciou
sly. “You gonna stick that up my ass?”

  “Only if you want me to.” The days when he could make me curl up with embarrassment are gone. At least the excitement, the memories have made him more coherent; I might actually be able to have a real conversation with him now.

  “Okay, Dad, no more fooling around. Be a good patient, open wide, and lift up your tongue. Or I will put this in the other end.”

  He does as I say. But as soon as I get the thermometer beneath his tongue, he starts talking again.

  “Yu… yu shud tank him, too…”

  I reach out quickly to keep the thermometer from falling to the floor. “Dad! This’ll only take a minute. Just hold on to whatever you want to say.”

  I can see it’s a struggle for him to stay quiet; I realize how scared he must be to lose the thread of his conversation. But he holds on like a good soldier. After two minutes I remove the thermometer.

  “What I was saying before — you should thank him, too. Elvis, I mean. If it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t have had the stash to send you to medical school —”

  Ninety-nine point one. My father’s temperature is half a degree above normal, the slightest low-grade fever. To make absolutely sure, I stick the thermometer in his mouth again. The reading remains the same. A minuscule fever. What could be causing it? Some sort of minor infection? If it were chronic, that might help explain the weight loss… but his charts show that he’s been eating normally all along — ravenously, even; certainly not the typical response to an infection. And besides, he’s not the only one here who’s lost a considerable amount of weight. Are they all running elevated temperatures? What would Nurse Posely say if I popped this thermometer into another few mouths?

  I could ask her. Here she comes.

  “Well, Dr. Shmalzberg, are you satisfied now that we aren’t filling your father’s dinner tray with weight-loss foods?”

  “Yes… I’m satisfied. Thank you for giving me such full access to your staff and records. And I’d like to apologize for my tone earlier. I don’t know if you also have an elderly parent, but it’s very easy to become overprotective.”