Ever After: A Father's True Story

by William Wharton

  It’s Day’s first proper Christmas and she loves it. Mom and Dad fly from Paris and are there the day I come home with the baby. He has his video camera, calls me “mamma Mia,” and takes some beautiful pictures of Dayiel kissing Mia while she’s nursing and then of Dayiel trying to nurse herself on the other nipple. Mom distracts her with one of the Christmas gifts; it’s another book. Day’s already pointing, not just at the pictures, but at the words. She’ll be reading before she’s five.

  It’s the best Christmas I remember and we’ve had some great Christmases in our family. I feel I’ve made it as an adult. I have a wonderful husband and three children. Dad always said you know you’ve grown up when you’d rather have Christmas at your own home with your own kids, than go off to your parents’ house. That’s a bit sad, but I think he’s right. I feel grown up. I never have before.

  Just before Mia is born, Bert’s dad dies. He’s had a bad heart for a long time. And although he was in good enough shape to come to the wedding, he looked pale. He just drops dead. He’s sixty-four, only a few years older than my dad.

  Bert dashes off for the funeral, helps his mom settle things, and then gets back the week before Mia is born. But he is a wreck.

  I was surprised by Bert’s crying before. Now, he can’t mention his dad without breaking down. He continues working at school because he feels he needs to be doing something. But it’s hard for him and it’s hard for me because I can’t help him. Even if I were well, I probably couldn’t do much. It’s hard to understand why we humans don’t seem able to learn about death, the quiet simplicity of it all.

  We agree that Bert should quit the International School, and that we should move to Oregon for a year or two so he can be near his mom. Claire’s all alone now in a big house where she’s reared four kids, and doesn’t know what to do. Bert felt terrible leaving her.

  Oregon will be a good temporary solution. Besides, Danny wants Wills for one full school year, and if we’re in Oregon, I’ll be able to call him every evening. Danny’s wife Sally has delivered a boy they named Jonathan, and they’ve bought a nice duplex in Redondo Beach. I can’t really say so, but I’m not thrilled.

  In the meanwhile, having two babies at the same time is quite a job. I think poor Bert spends half his free time down in that basement filling and emptying washing-machines and hanging clothes, mostly diapers.

  Although I recuperate more quickly than I expected, all the muscles in my stomach seem to have turned to mush. It’s a month before I can do one sit-up. I look at my jogging shoes and think I’ll never jog again. It’s very depressing.

  But Mia is a love. She’s so different from Day. It seems she is smiling and trying to talk from the first moment I see her. I can look in her eyes and she’ll look right back at me and it’s magic somehow. I feel I’ve known her a long time, that she’s very wise and loves me deeply. I know this is considered kooky talk by most people but they just don’t know. I know now I was right.

  We need to put the apartment back in perfect condition or we’ll lose our deposit; three kids can really wreck a place. We scrub everything, then paint. To us it looks perfect but we know to a German eye it’s a pigsty. But Frau Zeidelman gives us back our money anyway.

  The goodbye parties seem to go on forever. It’s worse than three Christmases and New Years thrown together. But it’s wonderful. The washing-machine we give to Camille and her husband Sam. The VW “hulk” we pass on to Matt. We give away most of the furniture the same way it had been given to us. On the last night we have just the crib for Mia, our mattress on the floor with Day between us, and Wills on a pillow. Friends are going to pick those up the next day.

  In the dark, Bert turns toward me.

  “You know, Kate, I thought I’d never learn to like old Krautland, but if it weren’t for my mother being alone, and Wills going to live with Danny, and the fact we don’t have any furniture, I’d go right back to Stan and tell him I’m going to stay after all. These people here at the school are even nicer than Oregonians and that’s saying something.”

  Traveling with kids is never fun, and this trip starts out wrong. First, we need to wait six hours in Munich before the plane is allowed to take off. On the trip to Paris, strong winds make the plane dip and roll. The flight from Paris to New York is even worse. And then I get sick. I haven’t been sick on a plane since I was twelve years old, but I go into the tiny plastic restroom and vomit till I think I’m going to die. One of the attendants hears me, or maybe Bert sends her back, but she knocks and I manage to pull back the lever to let her in.

  She’s nice and considerate, and puts me in one of the seats reserved for the crew, tips it back and gives me a pill. She asks if I’m pregnant. I point up the aisle toward Bert, Mia, Day, and Wills.

  “They’re mine.”

  I’m sure the stewardess thinks I’m either some kind of Arkansas hick or a fanatic Catholic. But she, like everyone else, is so kind. Different attendants help Bert and Wills with the babies during the whole trip.

  When we finally land at JFK, we’re six hours late.

  Mom is waiting at the airport, and has been for almost six hours. She’s come up from the beachhouse they have in New Jersey, where they’ve spent the last seven summers. It’s a really old-fashioned house in an old-fashioned town called Ocean Grove. I loved it when I visited them there about five years ago. But it would’ve cost 700 additional dollars to make the stopover this time, and we couldn’t afford it.

  I get off the plane dead white, Mia in my arms, Bert’s balancing Dayiel and our hand luggage. Wills is toting another bag. It’s a deep, low point. And there’s Mom, smiling as ever, as if she’d just met us on the street by accident. I cry. I don’t feel much like a grown-up. I feel like a little girl who’s gotten lost and just found her Mommy.

  When it all settles down, Bert is looking at our tickets.

  “Well, Babe, we’ve missed our connecting flight. Could I leave Dayiel with you while I go see what’s happening?”

  I can only nod. Mia is nursing. I’ll bet the milk she’s getting is sour. But it keeps her quiet. When Mia drops off to sleep, Mom takes her. She watches Wills watching Day, and I drop off, dead to the world.

  When I wake, Bert’s back and he’s all smiles.

  “They were going to put us up in a Hilton Hotel or something until tomorrow, but I told them we have a place to stay if they could just hold us over until the flight next week.

  “There was a whole bunch of palaver, but in the end we agreed, so if it’s OK with Rosemary, we’re on our way to Ocean Grove, in a car, yet. Think of that.”

  We arrive in Ocean Grove after midnight. Dad’s asleep. He jumps out of bed the way he does, stark naked. He says he’d held the place at the banquet they were supposed to be attending, until the lady took the food away. Then he came home, worried, checked at the airport, found the flight from Munich was delayed, then decided to grab some sleep and worry more in the morning. The idea of catastrophes happening in our family just never seems to come up. Somehow we’ve all lived in a kind of never-never land where nothing ever happens to us, only to other people.

  For twenty years, while Dad was supporting the family as a painter, we lived without life assurance, car insurance: we had no liability insurance of any kind, no social security, nothing but Dad’s little disability pension from when he was wounded in World War II. My parents were crazy, lucky, or dumb. Maybe it was crazy-dumb-luck, because we hardly ever even got sick. I don’t think that any of us four kids saw a doctor more than six or seven times in twenty years, and then it was mostly to get shots.

  Mom is a bit of a witch, a good witch. She has fixed up the whole upper floor of that big house in New Jersey just for us, with a crib for Dayiel, a bassinet for Mia, and separate beds (and rooms) for Wills and us. We aren’t even supposed to be coming. Could she have bewitched that plane? When I was a teenager, I used to think she had some special power, the way she’d always know things. Now I see it has nothing to do with witches. She j
ust has strong intuitions that she believes in and then acts on them. She’ll never believe what’s happened to us—that’s not the kind of witch she is. She’s a practical one.

  We sleep like dead people. It’s ten o’clock before I hear Bert rolling out of bed to get Mia. She’s slept through the night for the first time. Or maybe she did wake but we didn’t know it. He tucks her in beside me and she begins to nurse furiously. Bert climbs out of bed, and goes downstairs. Wills is still asleep.

  I know that Dad and Mom, even after being up late the night before, will have already played tennis, swum, gone for a bike ride, or maybe a little jog.

  Dad’s something of a fading jock, but Mom was always the most unathletic person I’ve known. Now, she’s out there, hitting a tennis ball two-handed, and hitting it hard. She runs her two miles every morning, slowly, but she does it. I wonder if, after the kids have grown some, I’ll ever get back in shape. I’m the same as Mom, no athlete, but I like feeling good.

  We have a wonderful week. Dayiel’s in and out of the water, playing in the sand with her granddad, making castles, ball ramps, and running around on a beach that seems to have no limits.

  Bert is a regular water-bug and Wills even more so. They’re in and out of the ocean with Dad about twenty times a day. Wills has more friends than he can play with and disappears for long stretches. Both Bert and Dad are a lot more confident about the kids than I am and don’t seem to be watching them. Bert comes up to a shower that’s attached to the boardwalk, washing off Mia. After he’s changed her, I go over.

  “Aren’t you watching Wills? He’s out there in those high waves, riding on one of those boogie boards, and he could sink, or even float out of sight. You’re as bad as Dad. You never expect anything dangerous to happen.”

  Bert squints up at me into the sunlight.

  “Look, Kate. You see those guys sitting up on those white stands, wearing the red jackets? Those are lifeguards. They’re watching everybody, especially little kids, and they know this water like the back of their hands. I was talking to one, in fact the captain of the lifeguards, and do you know that, in the almost hundred years since they started having lifeguards here, nobody has ever drowned on this beach? This is probably the safest place in the world. So relax and enjoy.”

  I turn away. This is so like him. But he’s right. From then on I try to relax and enjoy. It’s like coming home.

  Mom and I share the cooking, and the boys take care of the little ones. Even Uncle Robert, my tall little brother, does his share. He likes Day, although generally he hates little kids. After watching her, he then has to explain to us, in his slow, methodical way, why she’s exceptional.

  Mom drives us to the plane. Everything is on schedule. If Mom is involved I have the feeling that everything will be fine.

  We arrive in Oregon, and Bert’s brother Steve picks us up. I have no idea what to expect. The road from the airport is so full of weird vehicles, RVs, cars pulling trailers, vans, caravans, all driving fast, really fast, and cutting in and out all the time, that I finally say something to Bert’s brother.

  “Steve, don’t they have any speed limits here? You’re doing seventy and almost everybody is passing you. I thought France or Germany was bad, but this makes their driving look almost sane.”

  “Everybody in Oregon is going somewhere in a hurry it seems, Kate. I don’t understand it myself. But if you go under seventy you’ll be run right over. You know, Oregon is one of the few states that went back to the sixty-five mile speed limit. This means they drive seventy-five without the cops doing anything. Maybe it’s the frontier spirit.”

  He looks over at Bert and laughs. We’re in a big American car with plenty of space for our luggage and us. The three kids are in back with me—without seat belts, so I have to hold onto Day and Mia, one in each arm, and I tell Wills to hold onto the armrest. In California and in Germany, I always drove using special seats with straps for the kids, which in turn were held down by seat belts. It’s the law in both those places, but I’d do it anyway. A little kid doesn’t have a chance, even if you only need to stop fast. Bert looks back at me from the front seat.

  “See, Kate. We’re in the wild west here. That fifty-five mile-an-hour speed limit saved more lives than any law that’s been passed in the United States, but in Oregon they’d rather be dead than safe. They don’t like anybody else telling them what to do.”

  I hold tight onto the kids till we come off the highway. It’s early evening and the countryside is beautiful, except there seems to be a terrible smog, worse than in Los Angeles.

  “What’s all the smoke, Bert? Do they have big industry up here?”

  “That smoke’s from field burning, Kate. One of the biggest crops in Oregon is grass seed. The farmers burn hundreds of thousands of acres of stubble from the fields after they harvest the grass seed. It’s been going on for almost forty years. Everybody tries to fight it but the seed growers are making hundreds of millions of dollars a year growing the stuff. It’s hard to stop them.

  “All kinds of organizations have tried, but nobody seems to get anywhere. The people in Oregon are paying for it. Their eyes sting, and there are darkened skies, constant smoke, and cancer-giving pollutants. All just so a few farmers can get rich. It isn’t really farming either, it’s agri-industry, a pall over Oregon.

  “I used to be head of a group at the university that fought them; in fact I was arrested once for picketing the governor’s mansion. Sometimes, it makes me ashamed to be an Oregonian.”

  I wonder how the smoke is going to affect Wills and me. We’re both terribly allergic. But then, next week, Wills will be flying down to Los Angeles. In all the fuss, I almost forget I won’t be seeing him much during the next year. He has been my best friend and closest companion. I’m going to miss him. But as Bert says, he’s Danny’s child, too. In many ways, in the way he is inside, he’s more Danny’s child than mine.

  I know something about Bert’s family. His father was a butcher who had his own shop in Falls City, a small town with only 600 people. His father expanded the shop to sell other goods so people wouldn’t need to go all the way to the next town to buy the little things they’ve forgotten.

  He made a reasonable living. Bert and the other kids in his family all worked in the store. I also know that his dad bought some land just outside town and built a house there on seventeen acres. He tried to grow holly bushes to sell at Christmas, but it didn’t work out.

  When we drive into the Woodman place I’m enchanted. I have no idea that the house would be so personal, so handmade. It’s a bit run-down, mostly needing some nails, a hammer, and a coat of paint, but it’s beautiful and fits right into the countryside. It’s surrounded by horse fences, and there are two ponies. Wills goes wild.

  Claire—that’s what she insists I call her—seems happy to see me and especially the two little girls. She’s only had one other grandchild, by her youngest son. The little girls take to her immediately. She has a very grandmotherly, soft, loving way about her. But there’s also a deep sadness. She was married to that same man, Bert’s dad, forty years, and has lived most of those years in this house, raising her kids. Now he’s gone and the kids are making their own lives.

  Both our little ones are happy in her lap and fall asleep. She’s fixed up Bert’s old room for us to sleep in. She carries Mia, while Bert takes Dayiel. We don’t even undress them, just pull the covers up and turn out the lights. Claire tells me how both the crib and bassinet are the same ones Bert and all her other three kids used.

  The house has a good feeling about it, like the feeling we had in Germany, living in Seeshaupt, where we would eat at hundred-year-old tables that had been in the same family the whole time, generation after generation. I like to think of time as something that glues one part of a family to the next as each takes its turn. Now I know it isn’t quite like that. It’s actually much more complicated.

  Bert is hot to fix up the house and get it painted. He has long talks with Claire
as to whether she should sell it and move into a small apartment in the next town or stay out here. She hates to leave, but is lonesome. Also, it’s a big house for a woman in her sixties to care for. I know Bert and the other kids hope she’ll stay on, but I think that’s mostly for selfish reasons. They want to think the old homestead is still in the family. They also want to think of it as a place they can come visit.

  None of them, except Bert, is more than twenty miles away. And for the next year or two at least, Bert and I won’t be that far away either, probably down in Eugene. We’re still undecided. It all depends on how much I like Oregon; also, on how much Bert likes it. He’s been away a long time.

  Whatever his decision, Bert is determined to paint the house and he’s going to organize everybody to help, including his old basketball buddies. I dread seeing those clowns with paint-brushes. I can just imagine the result.

  Bert buys four twenty-five gallon cans of white paint. Then he keeps adding different colors. He wants a color that will fit in with the surroundings and at the same time stand out as something different. He asks me to decide. I settle on a color that’s like the cedar chips all over the ground, a mix of raw sienna, burnt sienna, burnt umber, and red oxide. We keep mixing and painting strips on the house until it dries just right.

  Somehow I’ve become the expert. After going with me to a few museums in Munich and Paris, Bert is convinced I’m a real art connoisseur. He’s apparently spread the word around. In our family, all of us were dragged from one museum to the other since we could walk. Either Mom or Dad would talk about the paintings and sculpture we saw so we all had the equivalent of a university art course by the time we were twelve years old.

  Bert sets brushes and ladders out for everyone, with pans and rollers, and a whole vat of turpentine. It’s a mob scene with everybody swinging a brush or pushing a roller and getting covered with paint. And while it’s not as big a mess as I expected, it isn’t neat either. I must say those basketball players really work when they want to, if they don’t get too drunk. We have barbecues to feed the painters in the evenings, and picnics galore for lunch.