The Forever Year

by Lou Aronica

  When I served it, the look of satisfaction on my father’s face made it clear to me that I’d succeeded. I could almost see him drifting back, if not to tables with white starched linens and equally starched waiters, at least to his own dining room. I wondered if traveling back in time twice in one day could be bad for his health.

  “You can cook like this?” he said.

  “On occasion. Since we’re having soy meatloaf with ancho peppers and dried bonito flakes tomorrow night, I thought I’d try something different.”

  He offered me an amused smirk and then returned to his plate. As much as he’d come to appreciate some of my cooking, I could see that he was comforted and relieved to have this dish in front of him. He practically hugged it to his chest.

  “You are kidding about the meatloaf thing, right?” he said after a few bites.

  “Yeah, of course. We’re out of bonito.”

  I had another bite of the fish. It really was good. At least as good as my mother made it. I could see how one could become enamored of food like this, especially if one chose to remain blissfully ignorant about nutrition.

  The thought of my mother’s cooking took me in an almost entirely different direction from where I’m sure my father’s mind was. I started to have little nostalgic pangs over seeing my mother laboring lovingly in the kitchen, which led me to the hundreds of after-school conversations we’d had there. My mother was smart, she was open, and she was quintessentially maternal. Other than a couple of months after I got my driver’s license and a short time during my insane Karen phase, I had never rebelled against her. To me, she was the safest person in the universe.

  However, she was not in any way like how my father described Gina. She wasn’t worldly or elegant or capable of clever banter, all of which the Great Love of my father’s life had been. My mother was caring and responsible and monumentally goodhearted, but these attributes obviously didn’t add up to Great Love status in my father’s eyes. I was surprised to realize in some way that they wouldn’t have in mine if I were still looking for that sort of thing.

  I suddenly felt a little disloyal to my mother for being so intrigued with my father’s story. I wanted to ask him a million questions, starting with how he could have moved from Gina to my mother, but I wasn’t sure how to ask them and I wasn’t entirely sure that I wanted the answer. Instead, I chose a ridiculously circuitous route.

  “So Dad, how come you didn’t decide to stay in the City after you and Mom got married?”

  My father dipped a bit of baguette in the butter sauce and looked up at me.

  “I was done with the City by then. Except for work, of course. And your mother really wanted to move out to the country.”

  The notion of the congested streets of Northern New Jersey ever being considered “the country” made me laugh, but I understood that it would have seemed that way back then, especially after Manhattan.

  “But you loved the City, didn’t you?”

  “I was okay doing whatever your mother wanted to do. There’s only so much of New York you can take, you know? She just didn’t think it was the best place to raise kids.”

  “So coming out here was all Mom’s idea?”

  “Pretty much, yeah.”

  “And you were fine with it?”

  He looked at me quizzically. “I trusted your mother. I believed she knew what was right for us.”

  Spoken like a true partner. The CEO leaving the operational work to the COO. I was getting the answers I had expected to get but not, I realized, the ones I was hoping to get. I wanted there to be some romance to the story. I’d always assumed that there had been some in their relationship somewhere along the line, and I really wanted to hear it. I feared, though, that if I asked directly my father might interpret this as meaning that the Gina story was disturbing to me in some way and he would stop telling me more. Again I felt as though I were betraying my mother in some way.

  Our dinner finished, my father uncharacteristically got up to take both of our plates to the sink.

  “So did you make chocolate mousse for dessert?” he said. Another of my mother’s regular dishes.

  “Dream on. There’s some cantaloupe.”

  ~~~~~~~~

  I knew that my father was having more and more trouble with his knees. It also seemed to me that he was flexing his fingers more often, as though trying to improve the circulation. We’d gone to the doctor about the former and learned that there was little to do short of replacing the knees completely, which my father rejected. I knew that there would come a time when he was going to be less mobile, perhaps even requiring a walker or a wheelchair, but his thought processes were still crisp, as our multitudinous verbal exchanges confirmed. I had every reason to believe that he was as sharp-witted as he had ever been. Except for that morning when I returned home to find him disoriented. And then the night that followed the second Gina story.

  I tended to be a very deep sleeper, which explains why I didn’t hear my bedroom door open that night or why I probably missed the beginning of the episode.

  “Teddy . . . Ted,” I heard my father saying as he shook my shoulders. “Get up, will you? I’ve gotta talk to you.”

  I paddled up from sleep and slowly sat up in bed. My father kept one hand on my shoulder.

  “Dad . . ..”

  “Ted, I’m sorry to wake you, but you’re the only person I can talk to about this. I stayed out really late to make sure that Dad was asleep when I got home. He’s driving me crazy.”

  “Dad,” I repeated more firmly. He still was holding my shoulder and he was looking in my direction, but even in the dim light I could tell that he was looking past me.

  “He wants me to start working for him at the shop, Ted. You’re the only one I’ve ever told how much I hate that place. I don’t want to wind up there for the rest of my life. You gotta give me some advice.”

  I thought that perhaps he was sleepwalking, and tried to think of a way to get him back to his bed without waking him. I started to get out from under the sheets.

  “I know you’re the younger one, but you’re just so much better at talking to Dad than I am. What can I say to him?”

  “Dad, listen . . ..”

  “Yeah, ‘Dad, listen.’ Like that’s really gonna help.”

  That caught me by surprise. To the best of my knowledge sleepwalkers weren’t responsive to outside stimulus.

  “Dad, I’m not Teddy.”

  “You want me to tell him that I’m not you? He knows I’m not you. I’m not the muscle man. I’m not gonna be the big war hero. He wouldn’t ask you to do this.”

  I was flat-out frightened now, completely unprepared for this.

  “Do you want me to talk to him for you?” I said, wondering if it would be useful to play along.

  “He’ll think I’m chicken if you talk to him for me.”

  “I won’t let him know that you said anything to me. I’ll just ask him about what he’s planning to do with the store, and when he tells me I’ll tell him that I think it’s a bad idea.”

  “Do you think that would work?”

  “It could work. You know I’ve always had a way with Dad.”

  He hugged me then and looked directly into my eyes. I wondered if he could see the tears there.

  “I love ya, Ted. I don’t know what I’d do without you. You won’t let him know that we’ve talked right?”

  “I won’t say a word about it.”

  “And you think this will work?”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  He stood up walked toward the door. He turned back. “I don’t know what I’d do without you, Ted.” He was beaming.

  He left the room and I sat in the same position for what must have been a half-hour. My God, I thought, what if my father is losing his mind?

  Chapter Fifteen

  For obvious reasons, I didn’t sleep particularly well that night. The next morning I called Marina from my bedroom to tell her about my episode with my father. She talk
ed me through a number of possible reasons why it might have happened and tried to ease my mind, but she wasn’t nearly as successful this time as she usually was.

  By the time I got off the phone with her, I could hear my father moving around the house. I walked out to the kitchen, more hesitant than I had ever been in my own home. I half expected his hair to have grown wild overnight and for him to be spouting random proclamations like some street corner preacher. Instead, he looked relaxed at the table, drinking coffee and reading the paper.

  “Hey, Dad.”

  He looked up from the paper and made the same sharp, clear eye contact he’d made with me on every other day (except, of course, for those days when he wasn’t making eye contact with me at all).

  “Hey, Jess. Did you have a good night’s sleep?”

  “Not great, actually. How about you?”

  “Ah, you know me. I always sleep well until about 5:30 and then I just lie there until I decide to get up. If that’s a good night’s sleep, then I guess I had one.”

  There was nothing on his face that suggested he was hiding anything from me. He obviously had absolutely no memory of “talking” to my late uncle last night.

  I poured a cup of coffee and sat down next to him.

  “How are you feeling lately, Dad?”

  He put down the paper. “I’m not doing the knee replacement thing. Give it up.”

  I held up my hands defensively. “I’ll never mention it again. Is that the only thing that’s bothering you?”

  He cast his eyes downward, the universal language for I haven’t been entirely honest with you.

  I leaned closer. “What else?”

  He looked back up at me and flexed his right arm. “I don’t know what’s going on with my arm. Sometimes it tingles. Sometimes it just feels cold. Right now it’s perfectly fine.”

  No, he had absolutely no memory of the night before.

  “Want to ask Dr. Quigley about it?”

  “What’s he gonna do, recommend arm replacement surgery?”

  “You always liked Dr. Quigley, Dad. You know it is his responsibility to explain all the alternatives to you when he diagnoses a problem.”

  “And it’s my responsibility to tell him to go to hell if I don’t like his alternatives.”

  “Something like that.”

  He moved his arm again. “I don’t want to see Dr. Quigley. If the arm gets worse, we’ll go, but I’m okay right now.”

  He picked up the paper again. I made breakfast and observed him for signs of mental impairment. Other than his opinion about a standardized testing issue that was the subject of a front page article in the Times, I found none. Wanting to assure myself that he was going to be fine, I went to my office a half-hour later that morning. By the time I got there, I’d convinced myself that he was at least okay for now.

  I wasn’t expecting it to be a promising workday. I had an interview with a CPA for an article at 1:30, the anticipation of which was hardly releasing adrenaline. I couldn’t start on the piece until I spoke to him, and had decided to dedicate the morning to getting my office in order, doing a little filing, maybe running a Quicken report for the quarter, maybe calling a few editors for lunch dates. After all of that excitement, I figured I’d have no trouble getting a nap in before the accountant to make up for some of the sleep I’d lost the night before. Marina and I were going to a chamber concert that night, and I didn’t think she’d appreciate my snoring on her shoulder.

  I was piling papers over various open spaces on the floor when Aline Dixon called. Aline was a senior editor at Food and Living and we’d hooked up on a few pieces over the years, though not nearly as many as I would have liked. I loved writing for the magazine as both food and living were things that interested me, but I was definitely on the taxi squad with them. I’d never been able to establish myself as a “foodie,” and found that the work was tough to come by when you weren’t in the inner circle. Every now and then, Aline would throw me an article after she’d exhausted the A-list. (“I’m not sure why the readers want another article on cheddar cheese, but they seem to. Do you think you could bang out 3,500 words?”) As with Tapestry and any other magazine I would have liked to be working with more often, I always took these tidbits very seriously, always delivered ahead of deadline, and always gave the subjects way more attention than they deserved.

  “What do you know about Grant Hayward?” she said.

  “The rock and roll winemaker?”

  She laughed at my use of the nickname the media had given him. “The very same.”

  “I know that he started in Sonoma something like twenty years ago making some good boutique wines and that he somehow became the hot thing among West Coast celebrities. I know that when he got into the business he was around two hundred and fifty pounds and that when he began hanging with pop stars he went on this intense diet and started wearing Versace. Then he organized that summer concert series and I think he’s in TMZ as often as he’s in your pages. The wine is still good, though, and I’ve always heard he was a solid guy.”

  “He’s been very nice the few times I’ve met him,” Aline said, “and the wine, in my opinion, is better than it ever was. You’re right about the media attention, though. I think sometimes that gets in the way of how people perceive what he does. Have you heard about the New Collective?”

  “Got me there. Is this a hot band he’s discovered?”

  “Maybe, but not of the musical variety. It’s pretty amazing. As I’m sure you know, the change in the economy has been rough on the little California wine guys. A lot of small vintners have either gone out of business or had to sell to much bigger wineries. Hayward has pulled a group of these guys together, subsidized their operations, essentially taken care of all of their financial concerns, and has them all working together to craft the next generation of great wines.”

  “Really? I can’t believe this hasn’t been reported on every celebrity show in America.”

  “That’s the most interesting thing about it. Hayward is shunning publicity on this. He doesn’t want reporters getting in the way of the art. It took us six months to convince him to let us send someone there to do a piece.”

  “Wow.”

  “Yeah. The same Grant Hayward. So, do you want the gig?”

  I literally started sweating when she said it. Editors didn’t call me with offers like this.

  “Me?”

  “Hayward asked for you.”

  “He asked for me?”

  “It was because of that ‘Pancake Quest’ piece you did for us last year.”

  “I loved writing that piece.”

  “Well, he loved reading it. He liked the way you talked about the dedication of the great pancake makers. He tore it out.”

  I couldn’t believe I was hearing this. The very fact that someone like Grant Hayward had even read one of my articles was flattering. That he had torn it out and was now asking for me to write about him was borderline inconceivable.

  “Yeah, I think I’d like to do it.”

  “Great. Our idea is that you would spend a week with him and the Collective to get into the true day-to-day of it. We want you to talk about Hayward, of course, but the other vintners are as much of the story as he is. This is a big coup that Hayward is giving us this access and we’re going to promote the hell out of it, so we want the story to have as much depth as possible.”

  “When?”

  “This is ridiculously short notice, but he’s willing to have someone come out there next week.”

  My first thought was, Next week? No problem. I’ll be out there next flight if he wants.

  Then I had my next thought. My father. I certainly couldn’t leave him alone for a week.

  “Is that a problem?” Aline said.

  “No, no, I’ll work it out. I have some stuff I have to deal with, but I’ll get it done. Let me call you back this afternoon and we’ll figure out the details.”

  I got off the phone, wiped my brow, and conside
red the options. Saying no to this assignment was not one of them. This would be the highest-profile piece of my career, the kind of thing that could lead to more big-time assignments, including more from the editorial team at Food and Living. I called Denise at the office and, in a break with tradition, she was available for my call.

  “I’ve gotten a huge writing assignment,” I said when she got on the line.

  “Hey, good for you,” she said with a trace of enthusiasm.

  “The thing is that the job is in Northern California and I’m going to be gone for a week.”

  “How are you going to do that with Dad?”

  “Hence my call.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Do you think you could give me a hand with this?”

  “How could I give you a hand?” I was sure she wasn’t being intentionally dense. She had no idea how she could help.

  “Like maybe let Dad stay at your place while I’m away?”

  “Oh, that would be a terrible idea.”

  “What’s so terrible about it? He loves you and he’ll do anything you say. You talk to him about a stock or a merger or two and he’ll think he’s on vacation. Other than that, you just need to give him a place to sleep and eat.”

  “Do you have any idea what my life is like?”

  “Of course I do, Denise. You tell me every time I see you.”

  “Well, then how could I possibly fit taking care of Dad into it? I can’t believe you’re even suggesting it.”

  “Never mind. I’ll figure something else out.”

  “Hey Jess, this was part of the deal. You know, if you’d agreed with the rest of us to have him put in one of those assisted living homes you wouldn’t be having this problem right now. I’m surprised you didn’t realize that.”

  “Thanks for the valuable advice, Denise. I’ll let you go. I’m sure you have more important things to do.”

  I got off the line and called Matty, but the message was the same. He had too much going on to drop everything and fly in from Chicago (at least there was something reasonable about that), and this was exactly the kind of thing he was worried about when I said I wanted my father to live with me.