Dad

by William Wharton

  I took my carefully saved Christmas money, and bought a genuine first baseman’s mitt. I practiced tagging and making all the combinations, day and night, for weeks. My left foot could stretch back the full length of my body. I could reach and grab with that glove like a lizard catching flies. It was the one place in the infield where I might make it.

  Only I wasn’t left-handed. A left-handed first-baseman has a tremendous advantage; his gloved hand’s to the infield so he has a bit more reach toward the ball. Also left-handers had an advantage on right-handed pitchers.

  So I still didn’t make it. I worked my way from foul-chasing to scorekeeper but I wanted to play more than one game a day.

  I decided to become a pitcher. In our neighborhood, pitching was the nonathlete’s job. I worked for hours pitching to Ziggenfuss or at a circle on a brick wall, and developed into a fairly accurate thrower with a reasonable slider. In those days we called it a drop or a hook. Today they call a hook a curve and what we called a curve, a screwball. Even baseball changes.

  Now here Billy and I are in this little Kansas town and two college teams are having a game. I’m excited; Billy says he’ll come but he’s not enthusiastic.

  We pass some motorcycles in the parking lot. The local thugs are racing each other fifty-yard sprints. I have a hard time getting Billy past this but we do get inside for the beginning of the game.

  There’s the smell of cigarettes being smoked outside, of wire, fresh paint and the overall odor of peanuts and hot dogs. This is an American baseball game complete with handles.

  But the quality of play isn’t so hot. We’ve probably all been spoiled with so much professional-level ball on TV.

  Billy’s bored out of his mind, anyway. I keep trying to explain what’s going on but it doesn’t mean anything to him. It’s no secret baseball’s a subtle strategy game. If you can’t go along with the minor shifting decisions, it can be a drag. If you don’t know how the infield should play with men on first and third, two out, actionwise, it’s only one guy throwing a ball past another with a stick.

  Billy sees it as really dumb.

  “Christ, look at that guy standing way out there, Dad!”

  He points to the right fielder.

  “Nobody’s hit one ball to him all night. He’s either standing, waiting for nothing, or running back and forth. And that fat one, squatting behind the guy with the club, is liable to find his left ear growing on the right side of his head.”

  I give up and enjoy the game. It’s too late, too many years in Europe. When the game’s over, we head back to the motel. I didn’t realize how tired I was. I lie there thinking about what different lives Billy and I have led. We’ve lived together most of his life but we haven’t actually shared much. It’s too damned bad.

  12

  That evening Billy shows up. I’m asleep and Mother’s still up watching the Johnny Carson show.

  It’s amazing she didn’t drop over dead. The first thing I know is the damned intercom beside my bed buzzes. It’s Mom, practically hysterical.

  “Jacky, come! COME! Billy’s here!”

  My brain’s spinning. “Billy here? Billy’s in Santa Cruz. He can’t be here.” I come staggering out in my sleeping ex-running suit, portrait of the lost athlete.

  But there he is. I haven’t seen Billy since he left Paris for school. It’s damned nice to see him. We give each other a semi-hug. My God, he smells like a whore’s shoes. I step back and he’s a sight! He looks undernourished, pimply. When Billy doesn’t eat right, he breaks out. His clothes are filthy, his shoes falling off his feet.

  Mother’s standing there, her hands in little fists over her mouth. I have to admit, he’s enough to make anybody cry. He looks like an overgrown edition of a drawing for a Boys’ Town Christmas seal.

  He tells us he got a letter from Vron saying Grandma’s sick. He asks her how she’s feeling, but she still can’t talk.

  I tell him Dad’s sick now and is in the hospital. I’m trying to maneuver Mom into a chair. I don’t know how much to tell Billy about Dad here in front of Mom.

  I’m figuring where to put him. The best is the garden room where I’ve been sleeping. Out there it’s less chance he’ll bug Mom. I’ll move up here to the side room. I’ll give him a key and tell him to keep that place locked up. The way he slops his stuff, beds unmade and all, it could be too much. I can see she’s already working up a scene.

  I’m somewhat disturbed myself. If he looks bad to me, he must look ten times worse to Mom. Before I know it, she’s dashed into the bathroom and started a bath. I drag her back to the chair. I ask her to go to bed but she doesn’t move.

  “Please, Mother. It’s late.”

  I know every minute she’s out here looking at Billy she’s digging her grave. I help her from the chair and lead her to the bedroom. I ease her into bed, get a glass of water and Valium. I put these on the nightstand.

  I dash back and tell Billy to get those clothes off, and take a bath.

  “Put the clothes you’re wearing and any clothes in your sack into the clothes hamper. I’ll wash them tomorrow. Here’s a bathrobe and a pair of Granddad’s pajamas.”

  I’m not waiting for Joan, I’ll take those things to the Laundromat myself; if they’re around the house too long, we’ll need to fumigate.

  “Bill, you take a good long bath, wash your hair and relax while I help Mother get to sleep. There’s some shampoo under the sink.”

  I go back to the bedroom. Mother’s having a fit. She hasn’t taken the Valium. Her head’s on the pillow but she keeps lifting it to talk. I sit on the edge of the bed and insist she take the Valium.

  “What’s the matter with him, Jacky? He looks sick. What’s he been eating? Is that the way they dress in college these days? He looks like a hippy. Does he take drugs, Jacky? Ask him, Jacky, you ask him! I won’t have any drug addicts in my house!”

  On and on.

  “He isn’t even’s clean as a hippy; he looks like a bum. I’m amazed the police let him walk the street like that.”

  I listen and wait for the Valium to take effect. Everything she says is vaguely true. That’s the way with Mother. She doesn’t actually invent so much as she grabs onto rag-tail ends of things and elaborates them into personal fantasies.

  Finally she settles down. I quietly sneak away. Billy has just finished his bath and comes out of the bathroom, dripping wet, wearing Dad’s second bathrobe. He comes into the living room, turns on the TV and plops into the platform rocker with his feet on the other chair. Billy’s expert at moving in, making himself at home.

  I go into the bathroom. Everything’s soaking wet and the tub’s still full of dirty water! I guess when you’re into taking showers, you don’t know how to handle a tub. I’m sure he wouldn’t leave it on purpose; he just doesn’t think. I wipe up the mess, throw his clothes in the hamper and clean the tub. I’m not going to say anything. Mostly, I want to find out what he’s doing here, why he isn’t at school.

  When I come back to the living room, I turn the TV down so it won’t wake Mom. Billy needs everything two decibels higher than I can take. At the station break, I get up and turn it off.

  “Billy, Grandmom isn’t in very good shape. She’s had two severe heart attacks and is barely holding on. Every day she gets under her belt now is to her advantage. She’s had what’s called an occlusion. She can’t have any shock or strenuous exercise.

  “But Grandma isn’t the real problem, bad as that is. Dad’s the one.”

  I tell him what’s happening and I can see his face turning white. All our kids love Dad. He has a knack for playing with little kids. He’d always have something new for them to play with, a new trick or a toy he’d made, or darts, Ping-Pong, a BB gun; something. This was part of Mom’s proof he wasn’t “quite right. That’s where Joan gets it; it’s part of that crazy Tremont streak.”

  Billy’s stopped rocking, and leans forward. I don’t want to make it hard, but I want him to know the problems.

&nb
sp; I tell how Dad doesn’t know us, can’t talk, has to be cleaned and fed. Billy wants to know what’s wrong. I tell him what Ethridge and Santana have told me, how it’s a sudden onslaught of senility.

  Then I let out my own feelings about the kind of care he’s been getting. It’s something I haven’t talked about to anybody, not even Joan. I express my doubts about both Dad’s treatment and the diagnosis. I’m feeling strongly it might be something truly physiological, more complex than simple senility. I’m also thinking in terms of some fault with the anesthetic or perhaps a blockage in the artery feeding his brain, perhaps a clot formed as a result of the operation. I’m only fishing; I know it; I don’t have enough knowledge.

  I reveal my doubts, my worries; I need to talk. I hadn’t realized before how, after Vron and Joan, he’s the next closest person to me. It snuck up.

  “I tell you, Bill. Dad’s shown less evidence of senility than most men his age. Sure, he isn’t fifty, but senile he isn’t.”

  Finally, I ask what he’s doing down here. He says he’s dropped out of school; it wasn’t meaning anything to him.

  I can live with that. If you don’t know what you want, school’s only another way to put in time. But Billy was always such a good student.

  I ask what his plans are: job or what. That’s when he mentions coming back to France.

  Now, Vron and I’d be happy having him near us, but if he isn’t going to school he’s got to work; he can’t hang around the house. Billy has his own life-style; and it doesn’t fit ours; no more than my ways fit here in California. He’s flown out of our nest.

  But we drop it there; neither of us is ready to go into it. We talk about Dad and then he goes out to the back bedroom. I go in the side room and I’m asleep faster than I thought possible; maybe just anything not to think.

  The next day Joan comes; she gives Billy a hug and a tug on his long hair. Billy and I throw his laundry in the car. Joan says she’ll clean house while we’re gone. She’s brought food and will cook supper for us, too.

  After the Laundromat, we drive to the hospital.

  Billy stares at Dad, lying flat out with his eyes open. Dad doesn’t recognize either of us, even when Billy gives him a hard hug and kiss. Billy’s so positive, so violent, he almost pulls off the IV. Dad stares at Billy, his head and neck stiff, his lips moving.

  He’s on catheter again. I peer under the covers and it’s indwelling. He’s becoming a living piece of meat. If he were anything except human, we’d let him die. He’s going fast and it seems there’s nothing to do; I don’t think he could’ve survived another day of my amateur care.

  Billy’s badly shaken. He goes out in the hall while I stay with Dad; I’m stroking his head, talking to him softly. Dad watches me passively, without emotion or interest. Billy comes back; he’s stopped crying but his light blue eyes are rimmed red. We go down in the elevator and out to the parking lot without saying much. The daylight is glaring out there. I take Dad’s sunglasses from the glove compartment and give them to Billy.

  “What’s happened, Dad? What could’ve happened to make him like that?”

  I go through it again. I tell him I don’t know and I’m not sure the doctors do either.

  We get the clothes at the Laundromat. Together, we fold Billy’s things, also the sheets and towels. We still aren’t talking.

  At home, I tell Joan it isn’t worth going; Dad won’t even know she’s there. She’s going anyway. I know how she feels. It tears you apart; but you have to.

  Mom wants to know what we all want to know.

  “What’s the matter with him, Jacky? Is he crazy?”

  I try convincing her he’s not crazy. Mom gives me what’s meant to be one of her long, penetrating looks.

  “He never was exactly right in the head, I know! I’ve lived with him over fifty years! He is not an ordinary man.”

  What floors me the next days is Billy with TV. Maybe all those years without it in our house is catching up with him.

  He spends hours watching. It doesn’t make any difference what’s on. I swear he doesn’t bother changing channels, he keeps staring right on through the commercials. He watches soap operas, talk shows, cowboy movies, the police series; he even watches a baseball game. He watches as if it’s an eyeball marathon.

  Mom’s happy having somebody to watch with her. She brings Billy up on what’s happened so far in the soap operas; who’s been sleeping with whom and who has an illegitimate baby by what and who’s trying to steal whose husband or wife. Billy stares straight on through it all.

  I know where I’ve stashed an old box of paints. I roust it out, clean the brushes in turpentine and go through the tubes. I might keep some sanity if I can paint. I hate to admit this, but there is a therapeutic aspect to my painting. It shouldn’t be that way for me, a professional, but it’s there.

  When I can control my private world, take things from out there and recast them the way I want, it heals me.

  I ask Billy to keep an eye on Mother; I go in back, find a pair of old-time white dungarees, a sweat shirt and cap. I’ll use the canvases I left for Dad.

  I have the box on my back and I’m on the motorcycle before I even think to ask what I’m going to paint. I’d completely forgotten where I was. One possibility would be to paint the insides of garages. But I want to be outside in the sunshine; I’ve had enough looking inside at people’s personal garbage. I want to see long distances.

  I don’t want to paint these rows of suburban houses either. I know it’s a big part of America, but I don’t want to paint it. I know from experience I only paint well things I want to paint. If the push doesn’t come from inside, it’s only work.

  But there’s one thing that has turned me on; it’s those Venice beach-front stores and old houses. I roll down and park where Rose Avenue runs into the beach. I rock the bike up on its stand and stroll along in my dungarees, deep pockets for nails, small pockets in front for a folding rule and flat carpenter’s pencil. I lean forward with the box on my back. My insides are settling slowly like a glass of beer going flat.

  I stop at an old brick motel, a strange-looking building with an up-slanting courtyard. It’s got dark green faïence tile roofing with tiles missing. French doors close off the courtyard from the wind. The sun is trapped, held in that courtyard. It’s something to paint. It’s a California version of Mad Ludwig’s Neuschwanstein Castle in Bavaria; not some grotesque imitation like Disneyland but the same kind of mind, a romantic mind, a mind that didn’t want to build another ordinary motel.

  This is a fantasy in brick and tile. There’s even a tower in back with wooden stairs leading up to it. I’d love living in that room back there on top of that tower, and once I’m inside this painting I will.

  It’s amazing how fast painting comes back. It’s as if I’d put down the brushes yesterday. I’m right into it, no loss at all.

  I’m putting the last licks on the underpainting when I look up and the sunset is happening. I can’t believe it. Holy cow, they’ll think I’ve run out on them!

  I pack my box and jump on the bike. It feels like old times, smelling of turpentine, moving on a motorcycle with the box and a wet canvas flapping on my back. In Paris nobody pays much attention to me; I’m part of the scenery. But here I’m getting hoots and hollers from passing cars; I guess they think I’m another California clown. I pull over and turn the painting upside down on the holder.

  At home, they’re still glued to the TV. I go out back and change into my regular clothes. I use the garden hose and a brush to scrub the paint out of my hands. I start dinner and tell Billy he can eat with us or take off and do whatever he wants. I give him five bucks, the keys to my motorcycle.

  Dinner doesn’t go too badly. Billy stays and is on his best behavior. There’s no overt lip-smacking; no farting, not out loud anyway, no belching. He claims he gets stomachaches if he doesn’t fart and belch on schedule. Mom’s behaving, too. We get through the meal fine but I develop indigestion waiting for s
omething to happen.

  After dinner, Billy leaves. I wash dishes and sit with Mom in the living room. For some reason, the TV isn’t on. Maybe Billy’s maniac approach satiated even Mother. I want to talk about how it was when she and Dad were young, how they met, what they planned. I know I’ll never get it anything like straight. I know too, she won’t actually be lying either. Her fantasies, even more than with most people, get realer, truer, to her with time.

  I’m interested in listening. I’m beginning to realize I’ll soon be the oldest branch on the male end of our particular genealogical tree. With Dad gone, I’ll have no more direct access to tribal, family information. I should’ve talked more with my grandparents to find out what they were like, what they thought. I’m needing cementing. There’s something tenuous about being male, nothing in line, all so zigzag. I want some Mother glue to help stick myself together.

  It’s astounding what Mom doesn’t know. She doesn’t know how many brothers or sisters her mother had. She knows a bit about her father’s family, the black Protestants, but nothing about her mother’s. My God, we all disappear so quickly, so easily.

  She tells how she met Dad under an awning outside Wanamaker’s in Philadelphia. She was fifteen and it was raining. She’d snitched her older sister Maggie’s hat to look dressed up and older. The rain was ruining it and she was crying. Dad shared his umbrella with her.

  I can’t imagine Dad carrying an umbrella, especially at eighteen, but times change. For the greater part of his life, Dad wouldn’t even wear a hat in the rain; said it was good for his hair, made it curl. That all changed when he went bald.

  At this time, Mom is only a year out from under her nervous breakdown and working in a candy factory. According to Mother, from the beginning she knew Dad was the man for her. I wish I’d talked with Dad about what he remembers.

  Mother had been dating another fellow, “a very nice Jewish boy from a very well-off family,” to use Mom’s exact formula. I’ve heard of Sidney Parker often enough all my life. “He didn’t have a Jewish name, but he was Jewish.” Probably every woman has some man she brings up as the one she might have, should have, would have, married. Maybe men do this, too, and I just haven’t noticed it.