“We need an army of stormtroopers to rescue Dad.” Ben inclined his head to the man who slept between us under a blue blanket. My eyes hurt and there was a crick in the confines of my neck, which I massaged at intervals.
“Well, strictly speaking, I don’t think we’d want stormtroopers.” I offered him a superior expression and shook my head.
“Um, I am not turning away any help.” He waved his hand over Dad’s insensate form.
“Stormtroopers are part of the evil Empire, Ben.”
“Wait, what? I thought they were good.” His eyes widened.
“Stormtroopers were only ‘good’ when they were clones in the first two-and-a-half prequel trilogy movies.”
“Well, what happened in the second half of III?” He kicked off his shoes and placed his patterned socks on the end of the bed.
“Order 66 happened. They turned on the Jedi halfway through III.”
“So they were bad halfway through III until forever?”
“Yes. Do you not pay attention when you watch these movies every year?”
“Who says I watch them every year?”
“You know, May the 4th be with you? Revenge of the 5th?” He pushed his glasses toward his face. “Never mind. They were clones in I, II, and III. The clones were then replaced with recruits and conscripts of the Empire in the original trilogy. But in The Force Awakens an undisclosed number of stormtroopers are abducted as young children by the First Order.”
“Who?”
“The stormtroopers. Do you really not know this stuff?”
Ben put his hands on his head. “Use the Force, Reese,” he held my gaze, “because that’s what Dad really needs.” He rolled up his plaid sleeves, a giveaway he was getting serious.
“Ben, I don’t care. I’m suddenly exhausted.” Ben liked to show off his smarts on any given subject and now that I knew he’d been kidding, this wasn’t a hornet’s nest I wanted to disturb.
“Important it is, my young Padawan learner.”
“No, it’s not.”
“I’m just saying if we’re going to make a galaxy-wide plan for Dad, we’re going with mine.”
“Your what?”
“Come on, Reese. Stay with me. The Force. Dad needs The Force.”
“Hmm.” I rotated my neck back and forth.
“Yoda? Luke Skywalker? Obi Wan? The Force is a metaphysical and ubiquitous power.”
“Luke’s a twin.”
“Yeah, with Leia.”
“Luke and Leia Skywalker.”
“Not really.”
“Not really what?”
“Technically, Leia’s last name is Organa. And she is a princess.”
“Okay, I knew that. All hail Carrie Fisher.”
“RIP.” Ben doffed a pretend hat. “Leia is indomitable and later she becomes a general.”
“I can be indomitable.”
“She lost everything and was never once tempted by the Dark Side.”
“I can be indomitable.”
“Reese.” He leaned forward and patted me on the head. “You already are.”
We went to church when we were growing up; a fuzzy memory holding little beyond the story of Noah and his ark. But what I vividly recalled was Dad helping us get ready on Sunday mornings, until we grew tired of his assistance.
While Mom declared a coup on the parameters of their bedroom and bathroom on church mornings, Dad was in charge of making sure we wouldn’t be visiting God with dirty ears. So Dad made a game with us about getting ready and picking out clothes. He’d pick an item, then we’d pick an item until we had the entire ensemble in order, ready to march straight to heaven’s gate.
“Well, aren’t you three just pleased as punch,” Mom would say with a shake of her head and pink-lipsticked smile. She pursed her lips at our plaids and patterns, our bright colors and accessories, but she never intervened.
She always wore heels to church, a flowered dress, an extraneous squirt of hairspray to fortify her curls on high. She smelled differently on Sundays, and I melted into the sturdy comfort of Chanel N°5, week after week. The only other times she brought out the golden bottle was on special occasions, like holidays or in February on Ronald Reagan’s birthday.
Even after all these years, I would catch a poignant whiff of Chanel from a stranger on the street or at a restaurant and float back twenty years to a sense of love, security, and home.
While Mom was getting ready, I’d sit on the edge of her bed for an hour straight as she curled her hair with precision, adjusted her shoulder pads, applied her eye shadow in studied strokes. She didn’t talk to me, but I didn’t mind. I was mesmerized at how beautiful she was—art breathing, fragile and flawless.
Then I would be called back to my father, to start or to finish my preparations. Namely my thick brown hair, which fell in waves down my small back. On Sundays, it was up to Dad to tame the beast. Dad and I consulted on my hairstyle as well. I went one entire year demanding braids and he’d sit me down for a laborious half hour, swearing and sweating above my head as he commanded his hands to weave the sections of hair into something resembling a braid. The results were generally dismal, but by the time the verdict rolled in, it was too late to remedy the situation and Dad would quickly add another bow or three as Bernice shooed us out the door.
“Carl, we can’t let her go out in public like that,” she would whisper, but I’d hear her, shimmering above me.
“Bernice, it’s fine. She’s five. We can pay for her to go to counseling later, but for now, we can’t keep God waiting.”
“Well, fine then, maybe I can do something in the car.”
She spent the entire ride swatting at my hair with saliva-licked fingers. My mom always had soft hands with clean, manicured nails.
I pranced into church between Dad, Mom, and Ben, feeling loved, feeling pretty.
Through the years, I often wondered when those feelings of security dissipated. Was it one second at a time over the span of decades, or was it all at once in one moment of anger?
As I watched the lines of Dad’s heart machine, I told myself I may never know.
So I waited in the white and blue hospital room, holding his hand, saying little and wondering where this road would lead, praying the minutes we had left to fix us would be infinite, that they would guide us home.
I picked up Dad’s notebook and hesitated before opening it. He’d been writing in it every moment he was awake. I read his neat, boxed writing with the covers half closed, in case he woke up.
Some thoughts before it’s all too late—I find myself wanting to write, to immortalize this life I feel no control over keeping. A testament? A goodbye? Maybe I’ll figure it out as I go along.
When Robertson told me I had cancer, I didn’t believe him. I walked around for an entire week thinking I was in a dream or in a scene from someone else’s movie.
It was the first time in years I’d missed my midweek badminton and squash games. I didn’t want to talk to anyone or their mother, so I ordered take-out for days on end and sat on my couch with the curtains closed.
I didn’t tell the kids.
I’d always been fit. I was the star point guard on my basketball team in high school for Pete’s sake. I know my desk job as an architect has slowed me down over the years, but not this much. I knew I’d lost weight, had been more worn out over the last months, that when I gazed into the mirror, my eyes stared back at me pellucid and uninspired. I told myself I was getting old, that was it. But my yearly check-up confirmed what I hadn’t dared envision.
A week after the news, I showed up at Dr. Robertson’s office without an appointment and paced in his waiting room until he called me back to his office. He gave me five minutes.
I had to make a plan, had to know my options. I needed to know if I was going to die.
Dad’s handwriting became slanted, as if he’d fallen asleep while writing. Then it perked up again.
When my boy flew down the stairs, leaping past them two at a
time with his hands full of pill bottles, I considered denial. I listened to his torrent of questions and finally patted the couch beside me.
“You weren’t going to tell me, tell any of us, were you?”
I didn’t meet his look.
“Dad, why didn’t you reach out? I’m your family. Your son. You don’t have to do this alone.”
“So I should probably tell you I have cancer. I was diagnosed in June. I kept working, first full-time, then part-time as my chemo treatments intensified. My boss says I can return to full-time when I’m ready, and not a day before.”
He was silent for so long I thought the conversation was done. “Last June. Okay, we’ve got a long ways to go. But I saw you in November and then in December. How did you not tell me?”
“You have a busy life. I thought you might propose to Maya at Christmas; I didn’t want to get in the way.”
“You’re unbelievable, Dad. What are they saying, how many rounds of chemo do you have left? Let’s talk about our options.”
Our options. As if he were the one with the broken body, heaving through the night, taking a taxi to and from the hospital because he was too weak to drive himself.
“I’m actually on the uphill swing. I’ve gone through most of my treatments, and I’ll be dancing in no time.”
Ben could never leave well enough alone. Since he found out the news, we had four days together before Reese showed up and then another four before Bernice arrived behind her. I was surprised by the former, utterly unprepared for the latter.
It’s been ridiculous having them all here, which is why I didn’t tell any of them in the first place. The whole lot of them annoy me, stomping around, making noises, hovering about day and night. I have a variety of glares reserved for each of them in turn.
We are all grownups and know it doesn’t take three adults to nurse one man back to health. Yet here we are. My kids are Hamiltons through and through—we don’t do stuff in half measures. It’s all or nothing.
Except my sickness. I am only half sick.
I don’t know how long they plan to stay, but they seem single-minded for the first time in ages, united in their desire to nurse dear old Dad. It would be touching except this group gathering is the first of its kind in over a decade. The upside is that it has been years since someone cooked for me regularly, so I pretend they are my servants.
I am furious with Bernice, and while I wait for her daily attendance I imagine sitting her down and shouting through her long list of transgressions. The anger fuels me, gives me strength. Then I remember my own list.
But when she enters the room, my rage exits, or maybe it is my courage that leaves me without a trace. I wait for the inevitable moment when she will leave me again. She beams at me, pushing back her shoulders as if her charm and smile will mend the thousand misunderstandings between us. She is the optimist, living in a dream world of her own making. I am the realist, looking at the cruel, callous facts.
She left me once; she’ll leave
There was a page of doodling. I scrubbed wet out of the corner of my eyes and turned until I found a page with words.
The first time she left, I’d come home late from work. I’d finished up the drawings for one last building before I turned off my computer and drove home fast through the cold and windy spring night.
The house had been dark when I arrived, and I found Reese and Ben in their rooms, wrapped up in their teenage worlds, inattentive to the muted kitchen and the desolate rooms about them. I asked Reese and Ben if they’d seen her, but they shrugged in turn, oblivious to the panic escalating inside me.
Bernice never worked late without letting me know, and I got the answering machine when I called her office. I ordered pizza and told myself she’d be home with a collection of shopping bags and a laugh to explain her delayed arrival. I nursed a beer as I watched the clock and the door and listened to the sounds of my children far above me. As the minute hand crept soundlessly along the parameters of the clock, her non-appearance grew louder. Right when I was about to call the police, the Marines, spend the night scouring the streets, I found her note, scrawled in cursive across a pink card. It was on her half of our bed, as if her words could replace her very being.
“Carl, I’ve tried, but I can’t live like this. I need a night away by myself to think. Maybe three nights. I don’t know. I feel isolated, overwhelmed, desperate. I can’t do this right now.”
It was unsigned, as if the conversation was still open for discussion, as if it was an acceptable way to shred my heart into infinite fragments.
Only it wasn’t.
She looks at me now, as if we are in the middle of something. Something intimate. Like we made love this morning, had breakfast in bed, were hours into a cozy weekend morning in our home of domestic bliss.
Only we aren’t.
“What are you doing?” Dad rustled the sheets and looked at my hunched form suspiciously.
“Nothing.” I moved one hand to his head and slammed the notebook shut with my other.
“I’m tired,” he croaked.
“I know, Dad. I know.” Me too.
3
Bernice
As soon as Benjamin called to tell me Carl had cancer, I commenced making plans. A week later, Benjamin was showing me into the guest room of my old house. He said goodnight and I made Rocky a makeshift bed on one of the pillows, then waited until the quietude settled to tiptoe up to Carl’s room. I stood at the foot of Carl’s bed for a minute, or maybe a hundred. It was late, but I was awake as I’d ever been. He stirred and opened his eyes to give me a kind look. I shifted to hold his hand.
“I haven’t dreamed about you in so long. You look divine.” He smiled as I moved my thumb over the back of his hand. I couldn’t speak. “I prayed you’d come.” He sighed. “There are so many things I need to tell you.”
“Did you? I was terrified you’d throw me out on the street.” A stream of salty grief raced down my cheeks. It was cold, it was warm, it was a river.
“No, no, not you. Not ever.” A single rivulet glided down his face.
“Carl, I—”
“Bernice, it’s been so exhausting without you. I didn’t know how to go on. But then I had to anyway. I loved you, you know. Once upon a time you were my whole world, and now I don’t know where in the world you are. And it’s hard. It used to be devastating.”
“I loved you too, Carl.”
He turned over, went back to sleep. Maybe he’d been asleep the entire time. I brushed at my damp face and headed back downstairs to the guest room.
Wide awake for hours, I burned into the edges of my memory the interaction with Carl. When I woke the next morning, I kept my eyes closed for a long time. When I opened them, it was still early, but I heard Benjamin in Carl’s room so I shuffled up the stairs and stood outside in the hallway.
For long moments, I basked in the comforting sounds of their murmurs. Then, “I have a surprise for you Dad, it came last night. Let me go get it.” Benjamin rounded the corner and found me, waiting. When he motioned me into the room, I walked forward hesitantly, trembling, and blinking too fast.
“Hi, Carl. I popped in to see how you are.”
“Popped in. Why are you here?” He closed his eyes.
“This is quite a scare you’ve given,” I gulped, “the kids.”
“I need to take a nap.”
“That’s fine, Carl, I can wait to talk when you’re ready to wake up.”
“We don’t need to talk.”
“I think we do.”
He cleared his throat hard and fast. “Ben! Come here, come now. I need you, Ben.”
“Carl, I didn’t mean to upset you. I want to help. To make less work for you, to let you know…” I stayed at the end of his bed, twisting my hands.
“I’m fine. Thanks.”
“I’ll be downstairs if you need me.”
Carl ignored me, wrapped the fleece blanket around his shaking body, and I raced out of the room as if t
here was a band of horses chasing me.
I was the only one in the hospital room when Carl roused. He glanced over at me. “The offspring are fluttering around as if I’m going to expire and leave them $10 million apiece. Okay, kiddos, have you seen my bank account?”
“It’s okay, Carl, it’s okay.” I patted his hand, but he pulled it away.
“I’m not old, not that sick, only a bit tired. If you all would give me some space, let me get some actual rest into these bones, I’d probably start to get better. Reese acts like I’m dying.” He plucked at his hospital gown, his tone growing stern. “And you, you’re acting as if there wasn’t an explosion the size of Mount Pinatubo between us thirteen years ago, and we’ll go back to feeding each other bonbons in the nude at any second.”
“Carl.” I swallowed hard.
“The doctors act like I’m a medical mystery, inspecting me as if I’m a fossilized specimen, not a living, breathing human.”
We eyed each other. Since my arrival, we’d made no attempts to talk about my previous departure or my current presence: Carl’s sickness an easy excuse to let everything else stay under the rug for the time being.
“Carl.” I shifted in my seat and leaned forward, placing my face within inches of his.
“No.”
“Carl, we need to have this conversation.”
“Not here. Not now.” He turned his face to the ceiling.
“You know, you weren’t a saint either…” I couldn’t hold in a sniffle. “And what if—”
“What if what?” He rolled over and snapped his eyes shut. “Good grief.”
I fell asleep in the chair beside him and woke to Benjamin bustling about in the corner. I guessed he was on the phone with Maya from the way he said over and over, “Dad loved them. He was ecstatic, I promise,” as he assembled the pieces in front of him.
I peeked at Carl, who was glowering. It turned out Maya had sent him half a dozen essential oils and a contraption to diffuse their scent.
“Why the heck would I need oil? I’ve got a barrel of Canola in the kitchen, and a frying pan to go with it. This is the most ridiculous—”
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