by Delia Ephron
I was three blocks away when my legs gave out. They crumpled in the middle of Bramfield Road. Five cars stopped. I was on my knees in the fast lane, no shoes, no jacket, and my foot was bleeding, not from my overlapped toes, but because I’d stepped on my dad’s razor. He’d had a heart attack while he was shaving.
I was in the house two hours while my dad was dead in the bathroom and then I ran outside and left him there all alone.
2
I suppose we should talk about dead bodies.
If you’ve read Little Women, all about the sisters Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy, you know that Beth died. If you can figure out what she died of, you’ve got a different book from mine. I searched and searched, but all I found were poetic phrases about fading and weakening; eventually she slipped into the valley of the shadow. That didn’t satisfy me at all.
I want to gratify your curiosity. I’m sympathetic to the need, but here’s all I know. One of my dad’s legs was bent back and one was forward. There was fuzzy white stuff on his face. Could he have grown mold like old cheese, or had he been attacked by mold and that’s why he died? Impossible, right? So why was there mold on his face? I didn’t want to ask.
I haven’t been in his house since that day. Once, when my mom and I drove down Rosewood Avenue on our way to the dentist, I changed the station when we passed my dad’s so I’d be looking down and not out the window.
Maybe he didn’t die of a heart attack. It just seemed that way.
I guess the milk was out because he’d poured some into his coffee. When he went into the bathroom in the morning to shave, he always took his coffee cup with him. I know all his habits.
According to my mom, he wanted to be cremated. She claimed that once, when they were married, they’d discussed death. Aunt Patsy, my dad’s only sister, flew in from Chicago. She and my mom hadn’t spoken for ten years, since the divorce. When my mom opened the door, Patsy spied me in the dining room, charged past my mom, and put her arms around me. I was holding knives and forks at the time—it’s my job to set the table—and I tried not to stab her.
“He loved you so much.” She said that again and again. I thought I was going to start wailing, so I concentrated on not jabbing her with the utensils. If you think about something else hard enough, you can mostly control your feelings.
After dinner she lounged on the couch and drank scotch on the rocks. She wore a poncho that she’d designed herself out of fabric she’d bought in New Delhi. She’s artistic like Dad and sells her designs, although my mom said once, “She may sell them, but who buys them?” I think Mom is jealous of artists. Also Aunt Patsy drips jewelry—clunky silver chains and medallions. Whenever she waves her hand around, which she does for emphasis, they clang. She’s a walking wind chime. “I’m the only one left,” she moaned.
No one said anything. Then she added, “Except Frannie, of course.” She dunked one very dangly bracelet into her drink by accident, and it sprinkled scotch on her poncho. “Did he have a heart condition?” asked Patsy.
“Not that I know of, but that doesn’t mean anything,” said my mom, giving her a paper towel soaked in club soda to prevent the scotch from staining.
“Did he?” she asked me.
“I don’t know.”
“Sure he did,” said Mel. “You don’t have a heart attack at forty-five without a heart condition. The question is—did he know he had a heart condition?”
“I wish you’d get a stress test,” my mom told Mel.
“Why?” he asked.
“Just to be safe.”
“What does that have to do with Dad?”
“Nothing,” said Mom.
“Fine, honey, I’ll get a stress test.”
“Thanks, Booper.” She used her pet name for him (don’t ask me what it means, I have no idea) in the middle of grief. My mom may be the queen of inappropriate.
“What’s a stress test?” I asked.
“They put you on a treadmill and see how your heart reacts when they increase the speed,” said Aunt Patsy. “I wonder if Sean had a stress test.”
“Dad would have told me.”
“Not necessarily,” said Mel.
“Why are we talking about this?” said my mom. “Would anyone like some decaf?”
I think something scared him. Gave him a colossal jolt. His eyes were wide open, bulging even, and don’t forget the mold.
My dad was a loner. Artist slash loner. A/L. When I slept over at his place, every other weekend, we would always go out to dinner. Either for Thai food (coconut shrimp, mee krob, and chicken on skewers with peanut sauce) or Chinese (tofu in brown sauce, sautéed stringbeans, and spare ribs). After that, we hit the movies—we took turns choosing but usually ended up at a foreign film. We were totally into foreign films, and our all-time favorite is Il Postino, an utterly sad Italian movie about love. Afterward I would read or watch TV and he would disappear into the shed, his studio.
He made his sculptures out of wood—blocks, triangles, circles, and abstract geometric shapes interlocked together by an ancient art called Japanese joinery in which nails and screws are not allowed. The objects were amazing, small and intricate. Sometimes the parts moved, suggesting a person, an animal, or even a machine, but usually they didn’t look like anything you’d recognize in life.
After he died, lots of people came to our house for a week, mostly in the evenings. Mom’s friends. Strange. It wasn’t like Mom had lost someone. Mom said they were coming for me, but I didn’t want to see them. I stayed mostly in my room.
I didn’t call Jenna. I heard my mom phone her mom to tell her what happened, and Jenna turned up that night. She knocked on the door. “Frannie, it’s me.”
I was lying on the floor trying to see if I could fit under the bed.
“What are you doing?”
“Nothing.”
I squeezed underneath with just my head poking out. “What do you want?”
“I brought you Sugarland Express.”
“Why in the world would I want to watch Sugarland Express?”
“I don’t know,” said Jenna. “I’ll take it home. I brought you this, too.” She handed me a large square white envelope. I had to pull myself out a little farther and prop myself up on my elbows to read the card. On the front, a tree covered with red berries appeared to float on a slick, shiny white background. Inside it, in fancy script, “My sincere condolences for your loss,” and a ton of signatures, including one from my history teacher, Everett Clarkson. Tracey Millan had drawn a heart next to her name with tears dripping off it.
“Is this a valentine?”
“No.”
“Then what’s this heart doing there?”
“I don’t know.”
“That’s a stupid thing to put.”
“Waldo kissed me.”
“What?”
“I can’t believe it.”
“How could you bring that up at a time like this?”
Jenna started chewing on her lower lip. She always does this when she’s about to cry. Then she wrinkles her nose—I’ve seen it a hundred times—sniffles, and gulps. Together they sound like one gigantic hiccup. After that, waterworks. All those things happened like clockwork, one after another.
“Why are you crying? I’m the one who’s supposed to be crying.”
I scooted under the bed. All the way under this time. I am a turtle and this is my shell. I am a lion and this is my den. I am a fox and this is my lair. I waited until I heard my bedroom door open and close before I came out again.
3
Regarding my fifteenth birthday. It seems pathetic to bring up such an unimportant thing, but maybe you’re wondering. I didn’t want to celebrate it. “No cake, nothing,” I told my mom as I poured some liquid Cascade into the dishwasher, closed and locked it.
“Oh, Frannie, come on, are you sure?”
I blocked her out by reading the back of the Cascade bottle. For best results: Fill both cups completely.
“How about just
the three of us go out for a nice dinner?”
I silently read some more. Helps keep your glasses looking like new.
“Maybe with Jenna?” my mom added.
I moved on to the smaller print. If swallowed or gets in mouth, rinse mouth, give a glassful of water or milk and call a Poison Control Center or doctor immediately.
This was the first time I realized the importance of small type and how aware of it you should be. “Mom, can you die from Cascade?”
My mom took the plastic bottle and read for herself. “Interesting,” she remarked.
Interesting? How about alarming?
Maybe Dad’s dishwasher hadn’t rinsed off the Cascade. Suppose his mug was actually coated with Cascade residue and, when he drank his coffee, he got poisoned? Maybe he knew he was having a detergent reaction, read the bottle, and took the milk out to counteract it. But he died anyway and that’s why the milk carton was still sitting there. Although I guess not, because Dad didn’t use his dishwasher. He kept his camera in it, don’t ask me why, and his binoculars, and several paperback books including one of his favorites: The Sibley Guide to Birds.
Consider this carefully. A liquid soap invented for the purpose of cleaning glasses, mugs, bowls, knives, forks, and spoons is potentially poisonous. I mean, what were they thinking? “I don’t want my dishes washed in the dishwasher,” I told Mom.
“Oh, Frannie, I don’t think there’s any danger.”
Like she’d know. Had she been expecting Dad to drop dead? No, probably she was expecting Sarah’s mom, Katrine, to die, like all the rest of us, but Katrine is fine. Her hair is growing back, and last month Katrine and Sarah went snowboarding.
From that day forth I’ve been using paper plates and cups, and plastic utensils. I bought them myself.
I thought I had thrown my mom off the birthday trail, but when I was in the bathroom investigating a new pimple, she knocked on the door. “Do you think your dad would want you to skip your birthday?”
It’s an extreme presumption to suggest what a dead person might want. If I had died, I wouldn’t want my dad to celebrate his birthday one week after.
4
For a week I stayed out of school. Then it was spring vacation, so that was one more week.
My school’s called Cobweb by everyone except my dad, who always asked, “How are things at Touchy Feely?” You’d think he’d like my school, because it’s into the arts. The brochure says, “We emphasize the arts,” and students get music appreciation and art every year, including pottery in the tenth grade, field trips to every museum in New York City, plus matinees at the ballet and the New York Philharmonic. But my dad said, “Your mom should dump you in public school, not namby-pamby land.”
“Dad doesn’t like Cobweb,” I once told her.
She didn’t answer but studied an order form. “‘If possible, lilacs.’ Where am I supposed to get lilacs in winter? Carmen,” she called to her assistant, “Did you tell them we’d send lilacs?” My mom owns a flower shop, and that’s where we were at the time. She started snipping rose stems. “Your father…”
Whenever she says, “your father,” as opposed to “your dad,” she’s having negative thoughts. Opinion, not fact, but opinion based on years of observation, which practically makes it fact. “He’s not paying for it,” she said at last.
“Why should he if he doesn’t like it?”
I’ve been going to Cobweb since kindergarten. Every week the school holds a meeting, its word for assembly, about world awareness. At the last one a doctor spoke about all the orphans in Africa who had lost their parents to AIDS. The purpose of these meetings is to raise more sensitive human beings, but all that sensitivity didn’t stop Sukie Jameson from bragging about her breasts or kids from staring at me when I returned to school.
I stared right back. What I don’t want is pity. What I don’t want is someone checking me out to see if I’m sad or to see what a person with no dad looks like. Perhaps they expected a mark on my forehead, like an outline of a man with a line through him, kind of like a traffic warning sign.
Jenna was late. I opened my locker and stashed away the books I didn’t need, and gave the glares to anyone who looked my way. I wished Jenna had been here early. I wished I wasn’t the one waiting. We always share an apple before class—we pass it back and forth—and play the game Where’s Waldo?
Waldo is James Albert Fromsky, DDS. We call him Waldo because we’re always wondering where he is. We added the DDS to his name because he has big front teeth. I know that doesn’t logically follow, but it happened in a fit of giggles at four in the morning after we’d licked an entire package of raw Jell-O off our fingers. Now that he’s kissed Jenna, I suppose she knows where he is because he probably calls her on her cell and tells her. I guess it’s new stuff all around. Correction: Now that he’s kissed Jenna, we both know where he is because, at that very second, he was walking with her to our lockers. They kept bumping into each other accidentally on purpose and laughing about it, until Jenna saw me.
“Frannie, hi.”
“Hey,” said James.
She took the apple from me, took a bite, and passed it to Waldo James. He sank his big front teeth into it.
“I’ll see you at lunch,” said James, returning the apple. He headed off down the hall. He has a very unusual way of ambulating. He lopes. His gait resembles that of a wild animal in Africa. Possibly a gazelle.
“Bye-ee,” Jenna called to James as she passed the apple to me.
I tossed it in a garbage can that was fortunately nearby.
“Why did you do that?”
I slammed my locker shut and split for class. Jenna may know where Waldo is now, but I intended to lose them both.
“You’re going the wrong way,” Jenna shouted.
She was right, but I wasn’t turning around, no way. I went up to the second floor, took a detour, and came down to the first floor again. As a result, I was late to history, and when I walked in, Denicia Hays, who had cried when the hamsters died in second grade, clapped as though my return to school was something to applaud and everyone else joined in. Dad was right about Cobweb. I should be in public school.
I spent lunch in the chemistry lab. It’s always empty during lunch, and if you want privacy, it’s the best place to hang. I could hear girls screaming—not like I screamed when I saw my dad, just random shrieks now and then, like a guy had popped a girl’s bra strap or put a spider on her neck. Baby stuff.
It was nice in the chemistry lab. It smelled safe, like disinfectant. I ate my tuna sandwich the way I used to, itty bitty bites of crust first, then the soft part after. I wondered what Saran wrap is made of. I decided to read the small type on the box when I got home.
Jenna called that afternoon. “Hi, it’s me, where were you?”
“When?”
“I texted you maybe fifty times. At lunch? After school?”
“Busy.”
“Oh. So…”
“So.”
“Frannie?”
“What?”
“Do you want to go to the movies on Saturday? There’s a bunch of us going.”
“Not really. But thanks anyway.” I tossed my cell phone into the back of my closet. Dad was right—cells are a pain. Instead of talking, you could be looking. Who knows what you’re missing? Besides, I didn’t need it because there was no one I wanted to talk to.
5
I develop a routine: arriving at school at the very last second, lunch in the chemistry lab, and then directly home, where I mostly lie on the floor and space out on the light, although a huge evergreen outside the window blocks most of it. When I say I’m spacing out on the light, I’m really lying on my back eating chips. No one bothers me, because my mom works her butt off and The Mel commutes to the State University at New Paltz, an hour away. (Sometimes I call him “The Mel” because it sounds beasty, sometimes simply “Beastoid.” With his hulky bod, bizarre hair wave, many freckles that I think of as spots, he definitely qual
ifies as part creature.)
Even at breakfast Mom is rarely present. At about five A.M. she drives to the flower markets in Poughkeepsie to buy what’s fresh. When I was little, I would go with her, and I became expert at predicting which rosebuds would open and which would stay tightly closed until their heads drooped and it was curtains. With roses, the trick isn’t cutting them and plunging them (Mom always says “plunge,” like it’s a submarine, not a stem) into hot water. There’s a second sense about whether a flower will blossom, and if you hang around enough of them, eventually you get the gift. Although once they open, there’s no telling when they’ll die. Sometimes they keep opening bigger and fuller and more and more gloriously. Sometimes a rose looks young and fresh and perky when you go to sleep, and the next morning the blossom flops like its neck’s been broken.
