The Sleepy Hollow Family Almanac

by Kris D'Agostino

  I look forward to the next time Wally and I can take some pills and watch horror movies.

  << 11 >>

  I write about sleep:

  I go to sleep. I often sleep when there’s not much else to do. My bed is a mattress on the floor. I dream. I’ve been told only boring people talk about their dreams. I have a dream where I’m not strong enough. I need to fire a gun. I need to kill something. But in the dream, I’m not strong enough. It looks like a monster, this thing I have to kill. A mutant hybrid of monster and celebrity. I’m not sure which celebrity, some female pop star, tabloid queen, reality TV contestant. Someone famous for being rich. A globe-trotting heiress traveling the world in search of endless weekends. My dream assailant is enormous, so much bigger than I am, bearing down on me across moist earth. She lopes, shuffling her feet, slouched. A teenage jet-setting zombie supermodel with dyed blond hair. Veins and pulsing coils all fused and meshed together. A webbed lattice of innards beneath translucent, glowing skin. She closes in. A gun is always in my hand. I have to fire it to kill this thing and save myself. I level the gun and put my finger on the trigger. I’m not strong enough. I squeeze, struggling fruitlessly, gripping with both hands, squeezing and squeezing, but I’m too weak. And I wake up.

  MY FATHER AND Chip are sprawled on the couch in the TV room. They lie opposite one another, their legs entwined, all parallel lines. The two of them share a bizarre notion that family closeness translates to physicality. They are fond of hugging. Group hugs. Family hugs. They enjoy petting and back rubs.

  I take a seat on the sectional as far from them as possible.

  “I had the dream about human weakness again,” I say.

  “My life is a dream about weakness,” my father says.

  “Do you think I’m dreaming about my own weakness?” I ask. “My own physical weakness? Am I sick? Some neurological disease? Is there illness in my future?”

  “I’m dying,” my father says. “Maybe the dream is about me?”

  “You should hit the gym with me,” Chip suggests. “That’s how I stay so healthy.” I don’t look at him, but I’m sure he’s raised a flexed muscle.

  “I’m learning now to live without my dreams,” our father says. He runs a hand across his head, feels the stubble there. “How long till my hair comes back? That’s a question.”

  I look at him. He’s lost a lot of weight. Lost almost his entire potbelly. The undersides of his arms sag, making him look older than he actually is.

  “You need to cheer up,” I say.

  “They scheduled the transplant,” he says. “Ten days away. That’s a reality now, too.”

  “You should be glad to get it over with.”

  “Everyone will have to wear a mask and gloves when they come to see me in isolation. That’ll be fun. I have that to worry about.”

  “I’ll come every day,” Chip says, rubbing his feet against our father’s legs.

  “I’d like that,” the old man says.

  Elissa appears in the doorway, home from her various after-school activities. She rubs her head, twirling a finger in her hair. For a second I think she has come to break the bad news.

  “My little girl,” our father says. He smiles slightly, a faint twitch of lip and mustache. “Give us a hug.”

  Elissa falls onto the couch, into his arms. He envelops her with his blanket. Chip moves to join them. A group pile-on. A hug of epic proportions. They lie there, all wrapped arms.

  “I love you guys,” our father says, his voice muffled through layers of clothing and flesh and blanket.

  “Gross,” I say.

  “I love you, too,” he adds.

  MY GRANDMOTHER MAKES chicken salad sandwiches. I eat one at the kitchen table with her and my mother. Somewhere between the two of them arguing about the appropriate number of wedding guests a couple may invite without sacrificing elegance and sophistication, and a lengthy back-and-forth commentary on the economic state of the country (“It has something to do with all these illegals. I’m sure of it,” my grandmother says, waving a cautionary finger at the wall), I have a moment of weakness. I can’t take it anymore and decide on the spot to rent one of the apartments Pam showed me before the break. Not the loft in Port Chester—it’s too much of a financial impossibility—but the other one, the small studio in the microscopic hamlet of Montrose, a twenty-mile journey north of Sleepy Hollow. It has a price tag of $1,000 a month, totally out of my budget, but I’m not sure I can stand another minute with my family.

  It’s the seventeenth of the month. I go to my computer and check to see if the John W. Manley School’s direct deposit of my bimonthly paycheck installment has gone through. It has. I send off a loan payment and calculate about $145 can be moved into my savings account. I transfer the money and write the new figure in my notebook. I cross out “567.88” and write “712.88” in its place.

  Her business card is wedged within the pages. I dial the number.

  “Pam Kittredge,” she says. Her voice is bright and cheerful.

  “Hi, Pam,” I say. “This is Calvin Moretti here. You showed me some apartments a few weeks ago.”

  “A few weeks?” she says in the same indifferent, happy tone. “Okay.”

  “Ah, well, I was wondering about your finder’s fee.”

  “What exactly were you wondering?”

  “Well, see, I really want to take one of the apartments. I have the first month’s rent. And I can get the security. I can borrow it, I think, maybe, from my folks.”

  “You’ll need them to cosign as guarantors,” Pam points out.

  “Okay, yeah, sure,” I say. “I don’t think they’ll have a problem with that.” I just can’t seem to tell this woman anything but outright lies.

  “Good,” Pam says. “I’ll just need copies of your last four pay stubs, your social, and fifty dollars for our credit check.”

  “Yeah, well, I was wondering about the finder’s fee.”

  “What exactly were you wondering?”

  “I wanted to see if we could possibly work out some kind of payment plan. Maybe I could give part of it to you now and part of it to you later in the year or something?”

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” Pam says. “It doesn’t work like that.”

  “It doesn’t?” I ask.

  “What did you say your name was again?” she asks.

  “Calvin. Moretti,” I say.

  “Listen, Calvin,” Pam says, not unfriendly. “It seems to me like you might have to work out some finance issues before we can get you set up with a place. Why don’t you check back with me when you’ve got a little more money to work with.”

  “That may be never,” I say. “But thanks.”

  She hangs up. I hang up. I pace around my bedroom. I look at all the records on the shelves and wonder how much I could get if I sold them all. Who am I kidding? Some of those are first presses. Limited editions. Colored vinyl. Clear vinyl. Clear marble colored vinyl. Rare Japanese imports. Hard-to-find collector’s items. Far too sentimentally valuable to ever sell.

  BRIGITTE VISITS A final time before the transplant to make sure my father’s life energy is composed and ready to absorb everything coming his way. It is a special session, which both my parents attend. She ushers them upstairs into their bedroom and closes the door. I am not privy to what goes on in there.

  As my father prepares for the transplant, their mortgage crisis seems to be forgotten. Someone presses pause and we talk about nothing else but the impending procedure.

  An hour passes and Brigitte emerges again, a satisfied look on her face, her earrings shimmering. I watch her drift down the stairs. Her eyes are ringed in dark makeup. She moves with a floating grace, on soft slipper feet. Her clothing jingles.

  “Is he ready?” I ask.

  “He is,” she tells me. “Are you?”

  “I don’t have anything to get ready for.”

  “Don’t you?” she asks.

  “Not that I know of,” I say.

  “Remembe
r,” she says, “I’m here if you want to talk. I feel your energy. It’s good. I’m waiting.”

  And then she moves to the front door. I open it for her and she glides past.

  << 12 >>

  We take him to the hospital. All of us. I help my mother pack some things.

  “He got this in Saudi Arabia,” she says, about the small plastic alarm clock on the night table. We pack some paperbacks, airport fiction espionage stories about submarines and nuclear weapons—his favorite. We pack a toothbrush. His mustache comb. We pack underwear and T-shirts. A pair of khakis.

  “You’re wasting your time with those pants,” he tells us.

  He wears his trademark bathrobe in the car. None of us talk much. Even Chip is silent. Down through the Bronx, over the Triborough into Manhattan, and I look mostly at the buildings lining the FDR. We’ve been here many times over the past year. Exit at Seventy-Second. Head downtown. New York Presbyterian’s main entrance is off York Avenue, on Sixty-Eighth. When my grandmother’s appendix burst last Christmas, we took her here. When Chip, playing hockey, shattered his wrist so badly the bone was protruding, we took him here. This is where all my father’s doctors are.

  My mother knows the way but insists on programming the GPS. A bell sounds as we turn the corner.

  “Your destination is ahead,” a soft female robotic voice says from the dashboard.

  At the entrance he’s given a wheelchair and I push him into the main lobby.

  We’re stopped by security. There is a problem regarding the gun.

  “I don’t understand,” my father tells the guard.

  “What exactly don’t you understand?” the guard says, raising an eyebrow, his giant hands resting on his hips. He wears large sunglasses.

  “I might be dying,” my father says.

  “Patients aren’t allowed to carry firearms in the hospital, sir,” the guard says. He looks around at all of us.

  “Don’t look at me,” I say. “I told him not to bring it.”

  Elissa is behind me. Chip is holding the suitcase with my father’s things. My mother comes out of the café waving a brown paper bag.

  “I got bananas, an orange, and two bottles of water,” she proclaims.

  “Dad brought his gun,” Elissa says.

  Our mother lowers the bag.

  “Un-fucking-believable,” she says.

  A large nurse wearing blue scrubs, hair in a bun, waddles up to join us.

  “Is everything okay here?” she asks.

  “This guy thinks he’s coming in with a firearm.”

  “Don’t look at me,” I tell the nurse. We all look at my father.

  “It’s fully registered,” he says. “Completely legal.”

  “Sir,” the nurse says, an edge of impatience creeping into her voice. “I can’t admit you into the hospital with a weapon.”

  “In fact,” the security guard chimes in, “I’m gonna have to confiscate it.”

  “Oh, no,” my father says.

  “Oh, yes,” the security guard says. He nods. I see everyone in the reflection of his sunglasses. He steps aside to admit a group of people talking loudly in what sounds like Polish. “What I should do,” he adds, “is call the NYPD. Have them come down here, do a voucher check on the thing. But. Since I recognize you all and your wife always says hello to me, I’m doing you a favor.” Everyone waits.

  “Fine,” my father says. He reaches into the folds of his bathrobe and extracts the revolver. He caresses it softly, the way one would a puppy, and then places it gently in the outstretched hand of the security guard.

  “Wise move,” the guard says.

  “Very good,” the nurse says.

  “Can we go in now?” Chip says. The nurse nods, flashes her practiced smile.

  “If you’d all follow me, we can get you where you need to go,” she says. We follow her to the large information desk. She takes her place behind a computer and punches buttons.

  “Your name?” she asks.

  “James Moretti,” my mother says. The nurse types.

  “Okay, excellent,” she says. “You need to head to radiology. Take the G bank of elevators to the seventh floor, follow the signs.”

  Elissa says, “We know the way.”

  HE LUCKS OUT and gets a single overlooking the East River. I see a garbage barge floating down toward Buttermilk Channel, drifting under the arch of the Fifty-Ninth Street Bridge. I see the aerial tramway there, moving like a slug. Dusk is settling in. Lights are appearing.

  “I have to take a leak,” Chip says, dropping the suitcase on the bed.

  My mother begins to set up the room, unpacking the things she felt compelled to bring. She lines the windowsill with over a dozen framed pictures. She pauses next to me for a minute, takes in the scenery outside the window. Roosevelt Island in all its creepy solitude.

  “Beautiful night,” she says. The toilet flushes and Chip comes out of the bathroom, zipping up his fly. His hair looks freshly gelled.

  “This city is a dump,” he says. “I bet you can see trash floating by.” He joins us at the window. He points down into the dark water below. “Yup, look at that. There. See that shit? What is that?”

  “It’s the East River,” I say.

  “Total dump of a town,” Chip says. He shakes his head.

  “Can someone help me into bed?” our father asks. His wheelchair is parked near the nightstand. He sits slouched in it.

  Elissa goes to him. She puts her arms around him. Supporting under his shoulders, she hoists him gingerly onto the edge of the bed, where he sits, wincing in pain.

  “Oh God,” he moans. “My fucking back is killing me.”

  I move the suitcase onto the floor so he can lie down.

  “Look,” he says, pointing at the darkening sky. “Jets flying approaches into La Guardia.” We all look. A plane is coming in low just above the buildings beyond the bridge. Landing lights flash. The dull rumbling of its engines.

  “Boeing,” the old man says. “Seven Sixty-Seven. Two engines, under the wing. Big boy.”

  A nurse comes in carrying a neatly folded hospital gown and slippers.

  “Put these on, please, Mr. Moretti,” she says softly.

  He is pressing all the buttons on the remote control for the television, which is mounted to a metal frame on the wall.

  “The TV isn’t working,” he says.

  “You have to pay for it,” the nurse says.

  “We went through this last time, honey,” my mother reminds him.

  “Oh, yeah,” he says, letting the remote fall from his hand, so that it dangles off the wall, tethered by its plastic chord.

  “I’ll have it turned on,” the nurse says. “The doctor will be in to talk to you.”

  Nurses must work on their smiles at home.

  Once she leaves, Chip and Elissa help him change. They take off his sneakers. They take off his bathrobe. I unfold the gown while he lies in his underwear, his legs white and thin. He is made of wet paper. I hand the gown to Elissa. She covers him, wrapping the ends behind his back. She ties the strings together and eases him down, his face scrunching in and out of painful expressions.

  Our mother finishes erecting the shrine of pictures and busies herself arranging “get well soon” cards. She stacks the paperbacks.

  “I brought you a pad and pen,” she says, holding up a Moleskine notebook, just like mine. “You can write about what happens here. I think it would be good for you. Cathartic.”

  “I don’t want to,” my father says, waving a hand at her.

  “Suit yourself.” She puts the notebook down on the table next to the cards. She returns to the suitcase and takes out my father’s leather carryall. He’s had the same bag since I was a kid. He takes it with him whenever he flies. Navy blue with maroon trim. She dumps its contents into the drawer on the night table. She hangs his clothes in the closet.

  “I’m cold,” he says.

  Elissa takes the sheet out from under his body and drapes it o
ver him. She takes a chair and moves it to the bedside and sits with her feet propped up, her hand on his leg. Chip pushes a few pictures aside and seats himself on the windowsill, his head against the glass. We watch our mother move around the room, putting knickknacks in every available space.

  “Kathy,” my father says. “You didn’t need to bring all this shit.”

  “I want you to feel at home,” she says.

  “It’s a hospital, Mom,” I say.

  “Still,” she says. She pauses for a moment in midstride, considering the stuffed teddy bear in her hand. She looks at it for a second before placing it on a shelf in the closet.

  “Where’s the bag I packed?” he asks.

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” she says. “You don’t need a first-aid kit in a hospital. It’s embarrassing.”

  “It’s not a first aid kit,” he says. “It’s my binoculars and a blanket and some other stuff I want to have with me. Where is it?”

  “It’s right here,” she says, taking a small orange sack from one of the suitcases and placing it on the bedside table next to a framed picture of the Empire State Building.

  “Thank you,” he says. He caresses the bag. He tilts the picture frame over onto its face. My mother immediately stands it back up and slides it out of his reach.

  My father tries the TV again. This time it flickers to life. He turns to the Food Network.

  It is an hour before Dr. Nadoo arrives to brief us. He is a slight, spectacled Indian man with delicate features. His face is soft, experienced, and he has an air of wisdom about him. The kind of person you feel comfortable entrusting important health decisions to.

  “Hello. You’re all here. Very nice to see you,” he says when he comes in. “Nice to see you again, Kathleen,” he tells my mother. Elissa takes her feet off the bed and stands. Chip gets up. Everyone shakes hands. I don’t think any of us are sure where to be or what to do.

  “Hey, Doctor,” my father says.

  “How are you feeling?” Dr. Nadoo asks.

  “My back is killing me,” he says. “That’s nothing new.”

  Dr. Nadoo nods. He glances at his clipboard. He lifts the top page and checks something off with his pen.