The phone was ringing. I ran for it. Which is not something I do. It was only an hour and a few minutes after I’d called home, but when I heard Rose’s voice on the other end, I wasn’t surprised.
“David,” she said, “your father’s had a heart attack.”
I waited until eight in the evening and then called Jade at Keith’s, though I didn’t want to. Keith answered. He knew it was me but he didn’t show any particular reaction. “Just a minute,” he said with a sigh, as if the phone had been ringing for Jade all day. I told her about Arthur and she said she’d call me right back. A few minutes later she called and said the next bus to Stoughton left at ten forty-five the next morning. I’d already made a reservation on the 9 a.m. flight to Chicago, which left from Albany. She gave me some names to call, hoping I could borrow a car and drive to Keith’s and pick her up. But I couldn’t focus on that. I said I wanted to go to sleep early and set out for Albany by six in the morning—it was only an hour’s drive but I’d be hitching. We said goodbye. I said I’d be back in less than a week. Jade said if it looked like I’d have to stay longer, then she’d come to Chicago and be with me. We said goodbye; she couldn’t say she loved me above a whisper because her family was near.
I packed a small suitcase. Most of my clothes were new, and nothing, for some reason, quite fitted me. Then I searched for and found my old return ticket to Chicago. I had about thirty dollars besides that. I called home before I went to bed to tell when I’d be arriving at O’Hare. My mother’s friend Millicent Bell picked up the phone; she was taking care of the calls while Rose was at the hospital with Arthur.
It took a long time for me to fall asleep. I kept wondering if Jade was going to do something foolish. Specifically, I wondered if she would leave Keith’s and try to hitchhike back home, to see me before I left. I kept myself awake waiting for her and when I dozed off I felt her lips on me, kissing me awake. But that didn’t happen.
17
Rose met me at the airport, wearing dark blue high heels, dark nylons, and makeup, as if it were autumn. She hugged me briefly, with her face slightly averted.
“We have to hurry,” she said. “My car’s parked illegally and I don’t feel like getting a citation.” Her heels clicked across the hard gray floor, so loudly that a few people looked searchingly, curious about the noise.
I had to strain to keep up with her.
“How is he? “I asked.
“He’s waiting for you. He’s at Jackson Park Hospital. A terrible place. But…” she glanced at me: but that’s where his lover died.
“How is he?”
“He’s not a youngster. He’s been working double duty to help support that woman’s children. And you. Not just for the past few months, but for years. That woman played him for a sucker and this is the result. Not to mention…”
We pushed through the glass doors. The heat pounced on us, thick with gasoline and dust. Horns blaring. They were repaving part of the airport road and the smell of tar was violently present. The sun pulsated behind a bank of low clouds. The parking lot was a long walk away but Rose had left her car right across from the terminal exit, in a space reserved for buses. A cop, looking incongruously military on his little blue and white Vespa, pulled up and began writing out a ticket.
“Officer! Officer!” called Rose, running toward her car. “Help!”
The cop looked up, his face impassive. He had blond eyebrows and freckles.
Rose waved her hands over her head. “That’s my car,” she called. “Please don’t give me a citation.” She darted recklessly out into the traffic and was by his side.
“It’s too late,” the cop said, turning his ticket booklet toward Rose. “See? I’ve already got your plates down. Once I do that it’s out of my hands.”
“But you don’t understand,” cried Rose. “My son’s just gotten in from the East Coast. His father’s suffered a massive heart attack. We’re on the way to the hospital right now.” She opened up her purse and extracted a ring with at least twenty keys on it. She held one up for the cop to inspect. “Here. I was just about to start my car.”
“I’m sorry,” the cop said. “But you’re parked illegally. I’ve already started writing your ticket.” He glanced at the tip of his ballpoint pen and began to write.
“But didn’t you hear me!” said Rose. “This boy’s father is in the hospital.” She whirled around to look at me. I stood a few feet behind her, holding my suitcase and sweating. I thought of the cop looking at me and suddenly recognizing my face—did they have photo files of parole violators? But the cop didn’t look at me; he hurried through writing the ticket and handed it to Rose with a brief, formal nod. Rose stared at the ticket and then turned it over. “Five dollars,” she said. “I could have had valet parking for that.”
I opened the back door and threw my suitcase in. It bounced off the seat and landed on the floor. Rose was still studying her parking ticket. She seemed to be checking the license plate number he’d written down against the number on her plate, hoping an error might invalidate the whole thing. A car pulled up next to Rose and the driver shouted through the window, asking her if she was leaving her space.
“You better not park here,” she said to the man. “The police are giving out citations like there’s no tomorrow.” The man waved at Rose and drove off. Rose watched him go and then returned her attention to the parking ticket.
“Maybe we better set out,” I said.
Rose folded the ticket into thirds and slipped it into her purse. There were beads of perspiration on her forehead, exquisite little drops as delicate as lace. I walked around to the passenger side and got in; a moment later, Rose was at the wheel. The seat was pushed back too far and she could only reach the accelerator and the brake with the tips of her toes.
“Of all the times to call,” she said, as she turned the ignition, “you had to pick the twelfth. Did you think we wouldn’t know it was the day of the fire? I struggle all my life for a decent existence and you change it all with one match.” She swung the car into traffic.
“Would you please tell me how he is?” I said. “Was it a bad attack?”
“I said he was all right.” She shook her head, as if my interest was somehow suspect. Did she resent my concern? Did she believe I’d care less if it were her in the hospital?
We drove in silence until we were out of O’Hare and on the Dan Ryan Expressway.
“I shouldn’t say this,” Rose said, “but you look nice.” She drove with her eyes straight ahead, breaking her intense concentration every minute or so with a glance in the rear-view mirror. “You look better than you have in a long while. Apparently your new life agrees with you.”
“I don’t have a new life,” I said with some vehemence.
Rose shrugged. “And you’re with…?”
“Yes.” As I said it I felt a wave of doubt—perhaps I shouldn’t have told the truth. And when the momentary panic subsided, I was left with a dense congestion of sadness. I could feel and identify all the parts of me that loved my mother, but all the passageways that connected what I felt about her to what I could express were in ruins, or had totally disappeared. My loyalty and instinctual affections crouched within me like ancient idols that preside over the thick silence of some tropical jungle. You can view them from the air but you cannot bring them forth.
“We knew you were,” said Rose. “We tried to contact the family but we couldn’t find any of them. Your father and I both looked through your apartment—you were evicted, by the way, for all you care—but we couldn’t find a thing that told us anything about them. Weren’t you in contact with any of them?”
“There were some letters, but I took them with me.”
“Knowing you wouldn’t be coming back.”
“No. I just took them. I didn’t think about why.”
“We could have dug up one or another of them if we’d pushed harder but we had to be careful.”
“I know. And I’m glad you were careful. I a
ppreciate it.”
“Well what did you expect? You’re my son. I’m not going to have you thrown in jail.”
We were silent again. My mother was driving slowly, and trucks and cars roared past us on either side. I looked at the speedometer; we were going exactly 40. I wanted to find out more about Arthur’s condition but Rose began to speak.
“I’ve done a little snooping around on my own—you might be interested in this. Following your lead, and Arthur’s too. You know who I’ve been looking for?”
“I don’t know.”
“Guess. Take a guess.”
“You’ve been looking for Carl Courtney.”
“And I found him. He’s in Cherry Hill. That happens to be a nice Philadelphia suburb, though it sounds like a place you’d put a bunch of whorehouses. He’s married to a gal from Chicago. They live in a six-room condo, brand new. One of those places with a laundry room on every floor and—well, it’s like a hotel. If you call and the person’s not in, the front desk picks up and takes a message. Someone comes in and changes the linens twice a week. They have their own medical staff. It’s for so- called senior citizens.”
“Like Grandpa’s place in Florida,” I said.
Rose shook her head and was a moment in answering. “Not really. I would imagine Carl’s is different.” She glanced in the rear-view mirror. “Though who knows? You never can tell. The only reason they got in is because Carl’s wife is over sixty-five. Carl’s just sixty himself. And pretty well tied to his wife’s apron strings. She’s a big Zionist. They were thinking of moving to Israel but they took the place in Cherry Hill instead.”
“Well, what was it like talking to him after so many years?” I asked.
Again, Rose was a while in answering. “Fine,” she said, with finality. But then she continued, “I think he was a little shocked to hear from me. And it was pretty late at night when I decided to call. I forgot the time difference, it being an hour later east. I woke him up. And you know how some people are when they get up, confused. Carl didn’t catch right on who it was. Though maybe he was pretending if he and his wife sleep in the same room and she was right next to him, maybe he was pretending so she wouldn’t make a scene. ‘Don’t faint,’ I said. ‘I’m just calling to say hello.’”
“You must have been nervous,” I said. “It took courage to call.”
“Not really. I had you and your father as examples. The point is you do whatever you want to and it’s all right if it’s for …love. I had no idea that life was so simple.” She let out a long sigh.
“Are you going to see him?”
“Carl? What would the point be? I loved him for his beauty and I’m sure that’s gone.” Rose laughed; the car drifted toward the lane to our right and a truck blew a long terrifying note of warning.
“You haven’t mentioned your father and I being back in the same house again,” Rose said, moments later. “I thought you’d have a lot to say about that.”
“To be honest with you, I’m surprised.”
“I knew it! I know what you think of your mother.”
“No, you don’t.”
“You’re surprised your father would come home?”
“No. I’m surprised you’d have him back.”
“The woman died. Her kids went to her sister and he was all alone. He called me five weeks ago, pretending he wanted to talk about you, we had dinner, he asked to come back, and I said it was all right with me. I didn’t have any reason to play hard to get or any other games. I don’t give a damn what people say. I’ve always been that way. An independent. When the welfare man used to come to my mother’s apartment, I used to spit right on his nice brown shoes. My mother was afraid I’d get us thrown off relief but I didn’t care. No one takes my dignity away, or my self-respect. That’s something no one can do. Not the welfare department, not the cops, or the FBI, or the Board of Education, not your father, and not you. No one!” She paused for a moment. “I like being with Arthur. He’s my best friend. He’s my husband. And I know you know how he used to love me. Worship me! Really, it was like worship. He used to follow me around the apartment with his hands out in front of him, like he was sleepwalking. But things got confused. They bogged down. I wasn’t as nice as I could have been. Resentments build up. It’s not so unusual. He used you against me and that made things worse. But that happens, too. Believe me, the Axelrods aren’t the only little family who’ve had a few failings. I think we’ve done better than most. At least your father and I have upheld our ideals. I’m proud of that, at least.”
“You should be,” I said. “It’s hard to be a socialist in this country.”
“You’re damned right it is!” said my mother, with a surge. “And no one says thank you. That woman’s children? The boy is going into the Army but he wants to go to college for a couple of years so he’ll be made an officer. He wants to go to Asia and burn yellow people to death. And the daughter wants to be a clothes model. This is what you get from the Negro people. I don’t know what their mother believed in, but it certainly wasn’t justice or progress.”
We turned off the expressway and drove through ghetto streets. Some of the buildings were still boarded up or in ruins, as they had been since Martin Luther King’s assassination. It made you think that most would never be rebuilt; trapped between past and future, we lived with our own archaeology.
“Look at this,” Rose said. “In the richest country in the world. Is your door locked? Poverty…” her voice faded; she speeded up to make a green light. “People take their own feelings so seriously,” she said. “I try not to. People exaggerate their feelings, and I try not to do that either. Arthur is a man I’ve known for more than thirty years and when he came to me with tears in his eyes and asked to come home, well, I could have said yes and I could have said no, but I said yes. And it was fine. And getting better. I think we may have even been falling in love. Again, I mean. But then you called…I’m not trying to blame you, David. I’m glad you got in touch with us. I only wish it had been sooner. But then you called, finally, and Arthur had a heart attack. I don’t blame you. I hope you don’t blame yourself, either. Maybe he was just waiting for a time when you’d be able to know before he let himself collapse. Maybe he was holding out until then. Maybe he would have held out forever if you hadn’t called. How could you know that? And I’m glad you called. It should have been earlier, but at least you called. And he’s doing all right, as I told you. There’s been no brain damage. He still has his functions. Only a very minor bit of tissue damage in his heart. He looks fine. Better than he did before the attack. Just one night’s sleep and staying in bed. It’s amazing. I was so frightened last night. It was a relief seeing him this morning—I stopped to visit before coming to get you. But now I’m scared again. That’s why I’ve been driving so slow and going a little out of my way. I know a shortcut that could have knocked fifteen minutes off this trip but I’m a little afraid to bring you to see your father. I have this terrible feeling that seeing you is going to make him worse, maybe even give him another attack. Will you at least promise me one thing? If he seems to be getting weak, or if I give you a signal, because I could see something that you’d miss, then will you just pick yourself up and get the hell out of his room no questions asked? Will you promise me that?”
“Look for yourself, I’m fit and healthy as a horse,” said Arthur, as we took our seats next to his bed. He was propped up, with the Sun Times resting on his lunch tray. His thin gray hair was mussed and his eyes were disconcertingly bright—he looked merry, impish, even slightly drunk. His loose-fitting hospital gown was open to the top of his belly and the hair on his chest glistened: someone hadn’t wiped all the petroleum jelly off after his last EKG. He held my hand, clumsily but with strength. The letters on his plastic identification bracelet were dark violet and smeary. “Dr. Pokorny threatens to kick me the hell out of here unless I agree to look a little sicker. He says it’s bad for the image of the hospital.” Arthur smiled, broadly this time, rev
ealing the soft blackness at the back of his mouth where his dentures had been removed.
“Are you in any pain?” I asked.
“Nah,” he said.
“You don’t have to be brave,” Rose said. “He asked: tell him.”
“It’s nothing. At first it was like getting kicked by a mule, but when I think of what some people have to suffer…this is nothing.” He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and gestured across the room, where a white curtain had been drawn around the room’s second bed. Then, slowly and sadly, he shook his head.
No mention was made of my absence, no joy was expressed at my return. Reflexively, we spoke as if the room was bugged by enemies, as if the police had learned of Arthur’s attack and now waited for me to be drawn into their net. Once in a while, Arthur would squeeze my hand and say my name under his breath, but he never used my name in a conversational tone and this, too, was deliberate. We didn’t discuss what I’d been doing the past months, nor did he or Rose express any curiosity over what my future might hold. We spoke of Arthur’s health—how good it had always been; we spoke of the weather—the remorseless sunless heat.
We talked as best we could, and we said nothing. We were tense, formal, and bewildered. The floor was not clean. My mother kept clearing her throat. My father asked me to crank up his bed so he could sit up but the crank was broken and I lowered him a few inches instead.
I said I wanted to go to the bathroom and went out to find Dr. Pokorny, an ex-comrade who was looking after Arthur. I found the head nurse and she told me Pokorny was at Michael Reese Hospital—that morning his wife had accidentally slammed their car door on Pokorny’s fingers and they were being set at Michael Reese. “Who’s going to take care of my father?” I asked. It seemed utterly calamitous; I couldn’t understand how something so unlucky had happened.
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