Life Drawing (11 page)

As if on cue, as though he had caught a whiff of my melancholy, he turned and asked, “Were you there too?” his eyes rheumy and full of concern.

“I wasn’t,” I said, standing up. “But how nice that the two of you can catch up.” I touched the back of his chair. “I just want to go speak to the … the …” I let it go unfinished, as I left the room.

A
t the nurses’ station, I peered over the counter, my head between the two enormous, unchanging displays of plastic flowers, and I asked if Lydia was available; but of course she’d gone home after working the night shift. I considered jotting something down, leaving her a message along the lines of:
It isn’t you … don’t feel bad … it isn’t you;
but what might be said casually in person felt clunky and presumptuous as a note.

“Would you please tell her that I thanked her for her care of my father?” I said. “I know he hasn’t been the easiest … I know she got the brunt of it last night.”

The duty nurse looked at me with genuine kindness. “Oh, we’re used to those things,” she said. “Your father’s a lamb. He can have a bad night once in a while. He’s no trouble at all.”

“You called me this morning, didn’t you?” I asked.

“That’s right,” she said. “We have to make the calls. But please don’t worry about us.”

Looking at her, I thought Laine would have liked to paint her face. She was maybe ten years older than I, bright strawberry blonde hair, unusually dark brown eyes. Clipped, combed eyebrows. And her nose was asymmetrical, one nostril round, the other pinched—defying definition, just as the depth and gravel of her voice argued with the chipper sentences she spoke. Her face seemed like a collection of features hurriedly thrown together, not a coordinated expressive instrument. I could never capture that. But Laine, I knew, excelled at just such challenges.

“He goes to lunch soon,” the nurse said. “Will you be staying? You and your friend?”

I looked up at the big clock behind her, identical to the clocks that had graced every classroom I had ever been in. Every classroom in which my father had ever taught. It was past noon. “No,” I said. “We’ll be heading out now.” I thanked her again, and made my way back down the hall.

M
y departure from my father’s room was barely a footnote to “Betty’s” farewell. He seemed so sad to see her leave that I feared another deluge of tears, but her repeated promise to return soothed him enough that we could extricate ourselves without a flood.

We were silent as we walked through the air-conditioned, fluorescently lit halls to the door, just murmuring a simultaneous
thank-you
to the guard who opened the door. We were silent as we stepped into a world that seemed to have been set on broil during our hours inside. It was only as we approached the car that Alison spoke.

“I can’t imagine how difficult that is for you,” she said. “If it were me … Honestly, it must just be impossible to manage … Though …” We had reached the car. “Though he seems to be a nice enough man.”

A nice enough man. Yes. That was what he had become—when he wasn’t throttling nurses or drowning in his own tears. “Well, he was pretty damn stern when I was a kid,” I said. “It’s hard to see now. He seems so mild, I know. But he was … he was very tough with us. We weren’t … we weren’t an affectionate kind of family. We were never … never soft, I suppose. Never tender.” I groaned as we slid into the stifling air. “Jesus Christ. And people leave their dogs in cars.”

“Only people who want to kill their dogs.” Alison pressed both buttons so our windows opened at once. “This sort of heat absolutely never happens in England. Not like this. Once in a century.” She began backing out of the space.

“That’s the most I’ve ever heard him talk about the war,” I said. “By a long shot. It was strange to think of him having this whole … this whole era of his life that he just erased. Or buried. And then it comes rolling back. When you’re old. And mad as a hatter.” I looked out the window. A long stretch of office buildings
passed, low-lying, sand-colored. A regular rhythm of For Rent signs. “It’s a very funny business,” I said. “This whole life thing.”

“Well, that’s certainly true. There’s little doubt about that. When you were out of the room? He was talking. I don’t know if you know this, maybe you do. About some woman? When he was in England?” She stopped at a light; and I realized that her driving style had changed, had become almost stately by comparison.

“Betty?”

“No. Not her. I gather there was another girl? You probably know this.” But I could tell from her tone that she didn’t really think I did.

“A girl in England? No. I never heard about that. I barely even heard he’d been there.”

“Millicent,” she said. “Millie to her chums.”

“Oh.” I laughed. “Of course. An English girl named Millicent. What else would she be named?”

“Well, Fiona. Dorothea. Dotty. Gladys.”

“So, what about this girl named Millicent? Millie.”

“Oh, it just seemed … at one point he seemed to think I was her. I gather they were quite an item.”

“Is this where you reveal to me that I have an older brother living in England with Millie, his mum?”

Alison laughed. “No. I think at most it’s …”

“Did he say he was in love?”

She took a curve with the same notable care. “Not in so many words. He told me, well, he didn’t exactly tell me anything, since he thought I already knew. He was just talking over old times. Something about the pub and the walk home. And what a shrew Millie’s mother was. My mother, I suppose. I wouldn’t even have mentioned it …”

“No, I’m glad you did. That explains why he was so distraught when you left.”

“It just felt peculiar to me. Him telling me. And me not telling you.”

“Peculiar,” I said. “Yes. That would have been peculiar. For my father who thinks you are his girlfriend from 1945 to tell you a story and you not to tell me.” I looked at her. “What part of life isn’t peculiar, Alison? Seriously? At what point, really, do you stop and say, well,
this
is really strange?
This
part. Not
that
part. But
this
part.”

She didn’t say anything in response, and for a time we just drove on. Past first one strip mall to the left, then its twin to the right. And I thought about Millicent. A girl in England. Just an hour before, less than that, I had been theorizing that the war must have been blown from my father’s memory by my mother’s death, and thinking myself so insightful. Life and its walls, its before and after events. But maybe the war had always been a taboo subject—because of Millicent. Maybe he had promised my mother never to bring it up. Maybe his proposal to her had included a confession that there had been another love. “Her name was Millie and until I met you I never thought I’d love again.…” Maybe he’d been doing all those pull-ups all those years to be ready to reclaim his British rose once his daughters were all out of the house. But then she too had died. Or she’d run off with the greengrocer. Or they’d carried on in secret and he never told us, lest we feel our mother betrayed. Maybe dear old Millicent was the answer to the puzzle of why my father never settled with anyone else for all those many decades of widowerhood.

As we drove, it crossed my mind that if I’d ever had children and then became demented enough to blurt, they would be asking each other,
Who the hell was Bill?
on their drive home. Except the chronology was off. If I’d had children, there wouldn’t have been a Bill. For a moment, I thought that with great conviction—as I had for many years. If my sister had lived. If my uterus had filled with life. If everything had gone according to plan, then I wouldn’t have …

But who knew?

“It really is amazing,” I said, “how little we understand about anything.”

“Yes.” Alison raised both our windows. “Tell me if it gets too cold. I often think that about newborns, you know. That we’re always focused on how much knowledge they acquire. But then there’s also the business of learning how much cannot be known. Knowledge acquisition on the one hand and ignorance acceptance on the other.”

“I suppose that’s right.” I thought then of launching into a whole theory about the role of religion in providing a story one could tell oneself; but I didn’t want to be rude about Alison’s child, now officially due to visit over Labor Day. And truly, my tired, unsatisfied heart wasn’t in the project of pointing out how badly other people were managing their lives or what illusions they needed in order to get by.

“This is the best mall around,” I said, pointing. “If you run out of paints and need an emergency supply. There’s a craft store there. It’s not top-line stuff, but it’s okay if you’re desperate. Though I probably have anything you need. I tend to stock up for years at a time.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” she said, then she lightly touched my arm. “You look so tired, Gus. Why don’t you close your eyes. I promise not to drive like a lunatic. Why don’t you try and get some sleep.”

“Your daughter,” I said, “she really believes in it all? I mean, the heaven part? We’re all going to just keep on? A great big reunion one day.”

Alison sighed. “Something like that. I haven’t questioned her too closely on certain things. Like the afterlife. Heaven. Hell. It would be hard for me to know how to deal with her believing in hell, I think. Much harder than just telling myself to be glad she thinks we’re never really going to have to say goodbye.”

“Right,” I said. “I can see that. Never having to say goodbye.”
I thought of Charlotte. “It’s easy to scoff,” I said. “But I do understand the appeal. I would like to never say goodbye. Ever, I mean. Never again,” I said. “There have already been too many goodbyes,” I said, as I closed my eyes.

“Sweet dreams,” Alison said, with another pat on my arm. “Sweet dreams, Gus, and no more goodbyes.”

I had imagined Nora small. All through Alison’s chatter about her, I had assumed she would be shorter than her mother—for no good reason at all. Small, but with the same round lines, soft curves of Alison’s figure, face, hair, even her personality. And I had also imagined her mousy—an indescribable quality, but a distinctive one nonetheless—doubtless because the most interesting thing I knew about her was her religious belief and my mind ran too easily to some absurd stereotype. All of it was a far cry from the lanky young woman in shorts and a tank top who appeared with Alison at my kitchen door Friday afternoon of Labor Day weekend.

“This is Nora!” Alison said it as if she had pulled a rabbit out of her hat, rather than welcomed her daughter from Boston.
Ta-dah!

I said hello, and we shook hands. I ushered them in. “You had an okay drive?” I asked, noticing the gold cross, barely half an inch, on a near-invisible chain around her neck. “It’s a pretty day for it, anyway,” I said. “Long trip though.”

“It was good,” she said. “Just under six hours.” She shrugged in the way only young people do, as though her shoulders were first pulled by strings, then dropped. “We talked. It didn’t seem
too long.” I could hear a trace of her mother’s accent in and around her own Boston one.

“Her friend Heather drove her. They’ve known each other from diapers.”

“Heather has a boyfriend in Philadelphia,” Nora said. “So it’s pretty much on her way.”

“Well, it’s very nice to have you here. And I know your mother is excited. I hope she’ll share you with us a bit.” To my own ear, I sounded false, like a character on TV. Next, I would be talking about
us girls
going out to do a little shopping. “Would you like to sit, have a drink? It’s early but I always feel like on holiday weekends the rules don’t count. I could mix a pitcher of something light. Sangria?”

They exchanged a look. “Actually,” Alison said, “I promised Nora a dinner out, with a couple of detours along the way. We’re on our way now … I want to show her the area.”

“Oh,” I said. “Well, that sounds wonderful. Perfect. Another time then. Maybe tomorrow night. Why don’t we all have dinner here?” Alison said that they would, and I told them to have fun. I didn’t ask where they were going. I just smiled and waved goodbye at my door.

H
ow had it not occurred to me that I would feel left out?

I set to work right away, my go-to response to any such ache.

On the canvas, the chess game and my living room were vivid. It had been years since I’d painted a space in which I lived, and I was enjoying the process of re-creating my own home in miniature. At heart, I thought of myself as a miniaturist, though my paintings were often of vast landscapes, and even this canvas was three feet high by nearly four long. I had spent hours on the love-seat’s faded brocade, mixing shades so close to each other it was impossible to see any difference, until one became background
and the other the pattern woven in. Each stone of our fireplace was like a universe to me, those odd shadows, those irregular shapes.

To paint a thing had always been a way for me to love it. And I was deep into a love affair with my own home; but not yet with the boys whose occupation of that home, of those pictures, was still only sketchy, who were themselves just blocked-out figures, bare, human-shaped white emptiness.