What More Could You Wish For

by Samantha Hoffman

  “You okay?” he asked and I nodded. He cupped my head with his hand and I exhaled. “He’ll come out of this, Lib. He’s going to be fine.”

  His sureness settled around me like a safety net.

  Seventeen

  It’s not that I didn’t think about Patrick. I was certainly aware, somewhere in the recesses of my mind, that he’d left town with the impression I didn’t want to see him. But I couldn’t let myself consider him when my father had just had a stroke. As I sat by my father’s side I could only think that he might never again hear me tell him I loved him. I might never again feel his arms around me or hear his voice or see his smile. I stayed, holding his hand, talking to him when my mother was sleeping or had gone home to bathe and change clothes. Jill was there, too, in and out. She encouraged me to go home, get some rest. “There’s nothing you can do here,” she told me, but I thought my voice could wake him. I thought if anyone could bring him back, I could. So I kept talking.

  “Remember the time you took Jill and me to the Cubs game, Daddy? Remember the bobble-head dolls you bought us? I still have mine.” I did. It sat on a shelf in my workroom next to my favorite family photo, taken when Jill and I were just toddlers in little ruff led sunsuits.

  “How about that time I hit a grand slam when I was ten and we won the game and the league championship? Remember that? I know you do. You honked the horn all the way to Baskin-Robbins and bought the biggest sundae they made, with all my favorite flavors, and the four of us toasted me on every spoonful. Do you remember? It had butter pecan, chocolate chocolate chip, rocky road … what else? Did it have turtle ice cream, too? It had chocolate sauce, caramel sauce, raspberry. It had everything! And then it had mounds of whipped cream and a cherry on top. Do you remember that, Daddy? It was gross. And we ate the whole thing. I couldn’t look at ice cream for a year after that.”

  I watched closely for the slightest tremor, an acknowledgment that he heard. But there was nothing, no movement. He looked small and vacant lying there.

  I thought about what he’d said after Michael announced our engagement—about not having to worry about me anymore—so I told him how great Michael had been during this time, how he’d brought me clean clothes, homemade sandwiches, soup in a thermos.

  “He never tells me I should go home. He knows I need to be here. He comes and goes. Sometimes he sits with me and makes sure I eat something and then he kisses me and leaves and comes back again later. He’s been my rock, my anchor. You’re right, Dad, you won’t have to worry about me after Michael and I are married. He’s a good man.”

  I thought if only he would just wake up now, I’d marry Michael tomorrow and he would walk me down the aisle.

  Sophie and Tiffany came by. Sophie brought magazines and books, The Kite Runner and To Kill a Mockingbird, but I couldn’t concentrate enough to read. She went to my house and made macaroni and cheese and lasagna, and made sure Rufus’s litter box was scooped and that he had food and water. She checked my e-mail and responded to clients for me.

  “There was an e-mail from Patrick,” she said.

  “What did it say?” For a second I was back at the bar at the Palmer House, holding hands with him, giggling together, feeling something sweet and old–new in the pit of my stomach.

  “I didn’t read it,” she said.

  I laughed. “You did, too.”

  “No, truly, I didn’t. It just didn’t feel right. But I had Pete e-mail him later to tell him about your dad. I hope that’s okay.”

  “It’s fine,” I said. I wanted to read that e-mail. But I thought if I denied myself this pleasure my father might wake up.

  And on the third day my father did open his eyes. My mother was sitting in the chair by the window, leafing through an old issue of Better Homes and Gardens. I was sitting by his bed trying to read The Kite Runner. Out of the corner of my eye I saw his finger move and my head snapped up. He was looking at me, his blue eyes soft and confused. I thought he didn’t recognize me for a minute and a sharp pain grabbed my chest but then he said, “Hi, pumpkin,” and my eyes filled. Oh my god. He was alive. He knew me. He was going to come out of this.

  My mother rushed over and took his hand. I touched his arm, his face. Our tears fell on his blanket.

  “What happened?” he whispered. “Where…”

  I pushed the button for the nurse while my mother told him what had happened. As she talked he closed his eyes and a knife of panic stabbed my heart, but when she stopped talking he opened them again. “Don’t cry,” he said to me, and then, “Tired…”

  A nurse came in and when she saw my father awake ran back out and called orders to the aides. Suddenly the room was alive with activity and we were asked to please wait in the lounge. I argued, not wanting to leave him, but the nurse gently led me to the door and asked that they be allowed to do their work.

  I called Jill and Michael while we waited. When I told Jill he was awake she let out a squeaky “Ooooohhhhh,” and I could hear her choking back tears. Michael said, “I’m so glad, Lib. I knew he’d be okay, I just felt it.” I was soothed by his words. He said he was rushing over. I called Sophie. I wanted them all: my sister, her husband, her kids, Michael, Sophie, Mark. I wanted everyone there with my mom and me when we saw my father again. I wanted him to know how much he was loved so he would fight to stay with us.

  We waited, talking quietly, all of us speculating whether Dad would need to go to rehab, what his condition would be, if he’d have any paralysis, if his brain had been affected.

  “We’ll hope for the best but prepare for the worst,” my mother said in her no-nonsense way. “We’ll manage whatever we need to manage.”

  “One of my clients is a physician who doesn’t practice anymore. Now he’s a medical consultant,” Michael said. “He specializes in elder care and I know he’ll be happy to help out. He knows everybody in the industry.” Michael smiled tenderly at my mother and she patted his hand with trembling fingers. I put my head on his shoulder and felt a rush of gratitude. Yes, I was grateful. Very, very grateful.

  Eighteen

  The year I went to college my dad drove me the two hundred miles, my clothes and books and stuffed animals (and my bed pillow) in bins in the backseat. Jill had a piano recital that weekend, so she and my mom stayed behind. I was anxious and a little teary, and aghast at having to travel solo with my dad. In my teenage years I lived in a fog of intolerance for this man I’d previously idolized. At some point (around fourteen or fifteen) I realized I’d grown smarter than him and wasn’t shy about updating him as to this new development. I was insufferable then, and didn’t see that clearly until I came out on the other side, somewhere in my twenties. Now I could only admire him for getting through that period without throttling me.

  Anyway, we didn’t have much to talk about on that trip—not his fault, he made the effort, asking me about the dorm and my classes and my new roommate, but it probably felt like riding a bike without the chain, so he let it go after a while and we rode without real conversation. If iPods had been invented back then, I surely would have been hooked up, but I managed to be tuned out just the same, immersed in the radio. We didn’t agree on music, of course, and he tolerated Jethro Tull and the Moody Blues far longer than was polite, but when Steven Tyler screamed out his lyrics my dad reached his limit.

  “Sorry, Libby, I need some quiet. This is giving me a headache.”

  I shot him a disdainful look and pouted out my window as he shut off the radio.

  “Have you decided on your major?” he finally asked, tired, I suppose, of the icy silence.

  “No.”

  “Well, it’s early. You’ve got plenty of time to figure that out. I don’t know how you’re supposed to decide that when you’re eighteen. How can you possibly know now what you want to do the rest of your life?”

  “I don’t,” I said.

  “I know.”

  What he said and his acceptance of my lack of direction surprised me. I saw no hope of figuring i
t out. It was the burning question, the one that labeled me as the major disappointment of the family. The major disappointment without a major. Here I was, off to college, and I didn’t even know what I wanted to be. Jill had known for years that she was going to nursing school and was already candy striping at the hospital on weekends.

  “When did you know you wanted to be a lawyer?” I asked.

  I could almost see his ears perk up, like a terrier, so unaccustomed was he to my asking him a personal question.

  “When my mother told me to,” he said.

  “You did it because your mother told you to?” I was incredulous.

  “Well, not exactly. But it was her dream that one of her children would be a lawyer. I’m not sure why, but she talked about it all the while we were growing up, so I guess I just always figured that’s what I would do since I was the oldest.”

  Ah, that’s where this is going, I thought. He’s going to decide my future.

  “So you think I should be a lawyer, is that what you’re saying?”

  Part of me wanted him to say yes, just to give me another bullet to load into his rifle of uselessness.

  He crooked his head at me. “Oh god, no,” he said, and after a moment, “unless that’s what you want. Do you? Is that what you’re considering?”

  I pictured myself striding back and forth in front of a jury in a conservative (but fashionably tight) navy blue suit and three-inch heels, waving a pair of horn-rimmed glasses.

  “No way,” I said, with no small measure of revulsion. “I just thought that’s what you were trying to tell me.”

  “Libby,” my dad said, “I want you to do what will make you happy. I want you to find something that gets you out of bed in the morning, something you can’t wait to get back to each day. I want you to find your passion.”

  I had a few friends who had real passions—Kim played the viola and practiced three hours every day, Janet had been studying ballet since she was four, Patrick lived and breathed cars and was working at a body shop—but most of my friends sort of fell into their careers. Pete was majoring in business and knew he’d go to work at his dad’s construction company after college, and since Sophie’s major was English she thought she’d end up teaching, but neither was what you’d call a passion; they were more like defaults. Most of us were just splashing around in the sea of our future.

  “How do I do that?” I asked.

  My dad said, “College is going to expose you to a lot of things you never even thought of. Take every course that sounds interesting and you’ll find your passion, you’ll see.” This sounded hopeful, and kind of fun, but I doubted the truth of it. “I know that being a real-estate attorney must seem very sexy and glamorous”— he looked at me to see if I’d gotten his little joke —“but I didn’t start out with that goal. I thought I was going to be a litigator. But then I found out I had no talent for the courtroom.” The idea that my father wasn’t competent in everything he ever did had never occurred to me, and it pleased me. “But a law degree opens up a whole world of possibilities. Not that I’m recommending law school for you, just college in general. You have no idea the doors it will open. You’re so smart and so talented—”

  I snorted. “Yeah, right,” I said.

  “Don’t do that, Libby. It’s true. You might not have any idea right now what you want to do, but you’ve got plenty of time to figure it out. And you will. This is just the beginning and there are all kinds of possibilities out there. You can do anything you set your mind to.”

  I was hoping to get through college having fun, making new friends, drinking a little beer and experimenting with the requisite amount of illegal substances, and if along the way I figured out how to fill the vista of blankness that was my career, well, that would be a bonus. I made a little package of the knowledge that my father hadn’t succeeded at the first thing he’d tried, and put it in a corner of my brain for safekeeping. It gave me a breather as we drove through small towns with hardware stores and mom-and-pop groceries on the way to my vast unknown.

  I switched majors twice that first year. I started in journalism, and my dad bought me a tape recorder and a 35mm camera to support my choice. When I changed to theater arts toward the end of my freshman year, I expected him to yank me out of school faster than the space shuttle launch, but instead he sent me An Actor Prepares and Building a Character by Konstantin Stanislavski. He was supportive when I switched to my final major, graphic arts, and when I left the corporate world to start my dressmaking business six years ago he replaced my twenty-five-year-old Singer with a computerized machine with thirty built-in stitches, an LED display and five styles of automatic buttonholes.

  Now, as I sat in the waiting room surrounded by the people who meant the most to me, I wondered if he knew the vastness of my appreciation for the father he was. I longed to be able to tell him again how much I appreciated his encouragement, and how remorseful I was for being so truculent on that first ride to college and throughout my teen years. I wanted him to know how his love was the fertilizer that made my life blossom.

  Nineteen

  I never saw my father alive again. It wasn’t long, maybe an hour or so after we’d all gathered, when the doctor entered the waiting room. All of our heads snapped to the doorway. The doctor hadn’t seen us yet and he paused for a moment, removed his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose, and then he scanned the room. When he located us he started forward. The skin under his eyes was thin as tissue, and pleated with wrinkles. He had a kind face but there was something in his gaze that pasted me to my seat. I gripped Michael’s knee and held my breath while my mother and Jill sprung up as one, standing hopefully in front of him.

  “I’m so sorry, Mrs. Carson,” the doctor said.

  My mother stared. She put her hand to her face. Her mouth opened but no sound emerged.

  My stomach was a stone inside me. I looked at Michael in disbelief. I’d just seen my father and he’d looked like he would be all right. How could this be? Tears pooled behind my eyes. No. No. No. My breath caught in my throat. I needed to tell him how much I loved him.

  I buried my face in Michael’s shoulder. No. No. No. No. No.

  * * *

  I knew I was lucky to be fifty years old and never to have lost anyone this close to me before. I’d lost an aunt and two uncles and their deaths had left me saddened, but this was an annihilating loss that subsumed me. If my father had had a devastating illness or a long-term slide into senility, I would have at least had time to prepare, but seeing him so healthy and vibrant one day and dead the next left me stunned and reeling, with a liquid anguish running through my veins.

  I stayed at my mother’s house the days before the funeral, just going home to do the things that needed to be done: calling friends and family to let them know, making funeral arrangements, running errands, trying to keep up with my work. Michael called several of my clients to tell them I’d be unavailable for a while, but I somehow managed to finish all the alterations to Mrs. Rosatti’s cruise clothes. I wanted to submerge my mind in the work, but the realization that my father was gone was like a flotation device that kept pulling me up to the surface. More than once I found myself pressing a garment I’d just finished yet couldn’t remember doing the work. I did the best I could and simply prayed that everything would fit and be up to my usual quality. Michael delivered everything to Mrs. Rosatti just in time. She was profoundly touched and sent her heartfelt gratitude and condolences.

  While at my house I finally read the e-mail from Patrick.

  Lib,

  I’m so sorry to hear about your dad. I am praying for him to get well and I’m praying for you to be strong. If there’s anything I can do, please call me. I know that sounds ridiculous—what could I do after all?—but I do mean it, Lib. My thoughts are with you.

  Love,

  Patrick

  I couldn’t tell him my father was dead. I couldn’t even thank him for his kind words. I know it sounds silly—I know that now�
�but then it felt like a betrayal to even be reading the e-mail. It felt like a betrayal of my father, who believed in my relationship with Michael; it felt like a betrayal of Michael’s trust—his love and support. And it felt like a betrayal of who I was, or thought I should be.

  Michael drove me to my mom’s each evening and the three of us sat in the kitchen where Dad’s Boston fern hung over the sink, neglected, trickling leaves. Mom’s collection of Tuscan pottery paraded across the tops of the cabinets and countertops. I’d always found it odd and sweet that even though Dad hadn’t been a big fan of clutter, he’d had an affinity for that collection of pottery. Some years ago he’d painstakingly painted the chair rail and moldings until they perfectly matched the forest green in the leaves on the ceramic. It had taken three separate coats before he’d been satisfied with the color.

  On those evenings at Mom’s, she made steaming mugs of hot chocolate and we took them into the den and lit a fire, and she told us stories of when she and Dad were first married. Michael and I sat side by side on the couch sipping from sturdy green mugs, Dad’s La-Z-Boy mournfully vacant, the seat cushion lightly dished. I hungered to see him sitting there, just once more, looking up to smile when I walked in the room. Just once more was all I wanted.

  Then Michael would leave us for the night and Mom and I would go up to bed. I slept in my old bedroom, which still had lavender walls, the bookshelves Dad had installed and the primitive purple flowers he’d hand-painted on the ceiling.

  Night seemed hardest of all with its silence, and the sorrow that pulled at my body. I couldn’t imagine how it felt to my mother, lying solitary now in the bed they’d shared for decades, and I wept as much for her as for myself. In the morning I woke to this painful thing inside me, but there was a comfort in seeing my mom and facing the hollowness together.

  It didn’t feel like my real life while I stayed with her. It felt as if when I finally did return to my own bed in my own house in my normal day-to-day existence, my father might still be there, and I could just call him to grab a cup of coffee with me.