A Good Divorce (28 page)

Mom was tugging at my arm. “That's enough, Cyrus. He's too tired.”

“Let someone help you for a change, Dad. Get down on your knees and thank her for putting up with all your bluster. You're running out of chances.” I'd gone way out on a limb, and the oxygen was getting thin. I could feel Mom's arm around me.

“Get out!” he said. “Both of you, get out and let me die in peace. If I wanted a lecture, I would have called the chaplain.”

“He didn't mean any harm, Lee. I'll get you your silly cigarette.”

“No, Mom, don't.”

I wrapped my arm around her. She was crying, with one hand on the bed to steady herself. She didn't want another confrontation. She didn't want to end her purgatory with Dad on this kind of note. This isn't why she asked me to come over. I was always the son she could count on to be diplomatic, to hold his tongue and ride the rough waves with her.

That night, Mom and I shared a room at the Holiday Inn near the freeway. I ordered room service, including a glass of the house red for me, and we moved the coffee table over by the window so we'd have a view. The sun had dropped behind the Cascades, forming a kind of aurora borealis that backlit the service stations and fast food restaurants on the horizon. I could still make out the pattern of air conditioners and vents on the roof below us.

“I've never done this,” she said.

“Hospitalized Dad?”

“Ordered room service.”

“You're kidding. All those driving trips you took?”

“Lee always preferred to buy sandwich-makings at a grocery,” she said. “He liked to have something he could munch on during the Johnny Carson show. Johnny Carson was the only person who could make him laugh.”

I shook my head in amazement, both that my dad could laugh and that my mom could still revere him. “How have you done it, Mom?”

A piece of her peach started to slip off her spoon as she was ready to slide it into her mouth and she daintily guided it with her little finger back onto her spoon and into her mouth. She chewed and waited until she'd swallowed to dab the corners of her mouth with the maroon cloth napkin. “He's not always the bear he makes himself out to be with you boys. My mother told me marriage required faith, hope, and charity.” She read the skeptical look on my face. “Don't scoff.”

I stabbed another piece of prime rib and a green bean and wiped them both in the puddle of sour cream for my baked potato. I couldn't remember ever having a dinner with just Mom and I was enjoying it immensely. She was finally speaking. “I'm listening.”

“Hope and charity were easy because I could do those on my own.” She set her spoon down and folded her hands in her lap. “But faith has been the hardest.”

“I don't get it.”

“It's always just out of reach,” she said, extending her hand toward the giant galvanized hoods and exhaust vents on the roof below us. “And you never know whether it's real.”

“Isn't that the same as hope?”

“No.” She was adamant. “Hope is desire. Desires are easy. We all have desires. Faith is believing it will happen even when all the evidence says it won't.” She dabbed at the corners of her eyes, then straightened her posture and took a deep breath. “Oh, my, I'm sorry.”

I took a sip of wine to let her gain composure. “Don't stop.”

“I'm not a very good dinner conversationalist, am I?”

“You're perfect.” I reached over and rubbed the top of her hand.

“You must think I'm a simpleton.” She looked up at me and a trace of the gold light from the neon letters in the pole sign in the parking lot streaked her cheek. “You should have known your father back when he proposed to me on the Sausalito ferry.”

“He proposed on the ferry?”

“He'd just finished his training and I met him for a weekend furlough in San Francisco. We were next to the railing at the front of the boat. I can remember the wind beating against our faces.” She had a far-off look but her voice was strong. “We married in a little church in the Mission District before he shipped out.”

“I don't remember you ever telling us this.”

“We weren't always old, you know. We had dreams just like everyone else.” I tried to imagine Dad's Navy bell-bottoms fluttering on the deck and Mom without the worry lines that had worn into her face. “You boys are the most important thing in the world to him.”

I shook my head. “Now there's an act of faith.”

Her face drooped and she closed her eyes as if to say a silent prayer right there in the glow of the Holiday Inn sign.

“Sorry. I'm not trying to rag on him, Mom. It's just that we've always seemed like such an afterthought.”

“He's just hardest on the ones he loves. That's been his job. To teach you boys to be prepared for the worst.”

“Like a divorce.”

“He's sick about it.”

“I wasn't sure until today that he even knew about it,” I said.

“He always liked Jude, you know that.”

“They seem an unlikely match.”

“You need faith too, Cyrus.”

“Kind of late for that, I'm afraid.”

In the morning, the duty nurse said Dad was worse and I told Mom I'd wait outside his room so that I wouldn't get him riled up again.

“He'll want to see you.”

“Really, Mom, it's better.”

There was a big, cylindrical coffee pot in the waiting room with a stack of styrofoam cups, sugar cubes, and powdered creamer on the table. I fixed myself a cup, stirred it with a red plastic swizzle stick, and grabbed three or four magazines from the top of the pile. The best I could manage was to look at the picture ads for skin creams and booze. The same models seemed to pose for all of them, men with wavy hair and women with big eyes, long lashes, and slits up their skirts.

In the recesses of my brain, I'd always known this day would come. Even Dad couldn't defy the life expectancy tables. I also knew that when it happened I'd be grief-stricken and fly to his side and seek forgiveness for all the thoughtless, shabby things I'd done or thought. Now that the moment was upon me, I couldn't do it. I was too composed and on guard, too emotionally stunted, and I wished that my brothers had shown up. They were always so much better with Dad. They'd be able to console him. I tried to rationalize that his death, if that's what was happening, was a private thing, something between him and Mom, the same way their engagement and marriage was. They didn't need the aggravation of a son who hadn't sorted out his own affairs.

“He wants to see you.” Mom was clutching the remote control for the TV that she'd absent-mindedly carried out of the room.

“How is he?”

She choked. “Not so good.”

I took her in my arms and the elbows she'd pulled in front of herself as a shield poked me in the ribs. “Are you coming with me?”

“He wants you.”

I helped her to a seat as two young boys in jeans and collar shirts stared at us. Their own parent was probably down the same hall. Mom and I didn't offer them much hope. The news coming from that direction was bad.

I dreaded seeing him alone. One of those morning news shows, where the anchors sit around in soft chairs, was playing quietly on the TV overhead when I entered the room. Dad was flat on his back, motionless. Creases of light coming through the blinds made a bamboo curtain pattern on the sheets. When I was practically standing over him, our eyes met.

“Good morning, Dad.”

“We need to talk.” His voice was anemic but gruff, and I wanted to crank up the handle on his oxygen so he could feel the vigor of a full dose of air. “I know you think I'm a horse's ass”—he straightened his arms against his sides to raise himself up off the bed—“but I wanted to explain something before I kick off and go to the grave without you and I talking.” He closed his mouth and sucked in a deep breath through the tubes in his nostrils. “When we won the War, I thought the world owed me one. That's probably where I got the chip on my shoulder, but that was the way it was in those days.” His voice was a whisper, and I looked over at the gauges to see if anything was falling. “My objective was to make a good living for your mother.” He was putting too much energy into this and I was afraid he was going to strain himself. “I should have bought the store from Harold. I know that. Your mom and I could have taken one of those Hawaii vacations, maybe bought a Winnebago and toured the country.”

“You always wanted one of those rigs.”

“I'm worth more dead than alive right now.”

“That's not true. Mom would be devastated if you …”

“She'll be better off without me.” He pounded his chest with the palm of his hand the way he used to pound the top of the TV to straighten out the picture. “God damnit, listen to me.” He blinked his eyes and the strangest thing happened: tears started to puddle in his eye sockets. “I need you to do something.” He was trying to get rid of the tears, will them away. “That's why I called you in here. And I'm not asking 'cause you're a lawyer. It's 'cause your mom trusts you.” He rotated his head as if he were looking for something. “I don't want them to keep me alive with a bunch of tubes hangin' out of me. You understand? No miracles.”

“Have you talked to Mom about this?”

His eyes flared in the way I'd learned to recognize. “That's why I'm talking to you.”

The man who'd never trusted me to mix the oil and gas for the power lawnmower was asking me to help him die. “Dad, you might still pull out of this.”

“There's no such thing as something for nothing … and I've run out of trading material.” He was retired, he was at that point in our lives we all worked for, when we could tip back and cash in our reserves. Nobody had worked harder than my dad for this reprieve. “Get me one of those papers to sign. That's all I want. Where it says I don't want to live hooked up to wires. There's a name for it. You know what I mean.”

“Most of these expenses will be covered by insurance. You're not going to bankrupt anyone, Dad.”

“Listen to me. This is all I've got left to give her.”

As if in a dream, my dad was finally saying something I understood, something I had an opinion on. There was a pressure building behind my eyes that I was trying to diffuse. It enraged Dad when I used to cry. I didn't want to disappoint him at the very moment he'd shown such confidence in me. “Dad, I'm sorry I sounded off on you yesterday.”

He waved me away with his hand. “Don't grovel. You were great.”

I turned my head away and scrambled to find my handkerchief. I could hide my eyes but I couldn't hide the shuddering. Then I felt my dad's finger tugging at my pocket like a kid trying to find a nickel for a piece of licorice.

19.

I'd entered the King County Courthouse hundreds of times in my life, to do battle over construction projects gone sour, property trespassed upon, a ship's anchor that severed a power cable, real estate transactions that cratered. I was sworn in as a member of the bar in this building. This was the palace of disputes, where every imaginable kind of civil and criminal wrong was laid bare. The people you rode the elevators with were the plaintiffs and defendants, their counsel, their witnesses, their supporters, their judges, and their jurors. I'd never entered the courthouse for a case in which any member of my own family was a party. And I was terrified.

I got off on the seventh floor and turned right to find our courtroom in the west wing. Just ahead of me was a man in orange overalls with his hands cuffed behind his back slouching toward his arraignment in the company of two corrections officers. The same judges who decided the custody of good kids presided over the felonies as well. The hallway near the courtroom was surprisingly crowded with people who I assumed were waiting for their cases to be called.

A man reached out of the crowd and grabbed my wrist. It was my old neighbor Mr. Sweet in a string tie with an imitation ivory slide over a blue plaid shirt. “We know what you're fighting, buddy. Me and the Mrs. here can testify for you.” How did he know about the hearing? He was either reading Jude's mail or Mr. Washington had told him. My eyes went to the discolorations where chewing tobacco had darkened the spaces between his teeth. The man who flossed his lawn edges had ignored his dental hygiene. “You got the whole neighborhood in your corner.”

I looked around and, sure enough, there were three ladies sitting on the bench next to him who looked like election poll watchers from the basement of St. Patrick's, and then I recognized some of the others standing there—parents of kids who used to babysit Derek and Justine, and the manager of Don's Grocery. Who would have thought that the first trial for the block watch group I once headed would be mine and Jude's? The neighbors wouldn't be allowed in the courtroom, unless they were witnesses or the parties had consented to their presence. There's no way Jude would have consented. Nor I for that matter. I was doing this for the kids, not for the mob.

As I entered the sour light of the courtroom, my eye immediately caught the purplish haze of Mrs. Leonard's bouffant hairdo, the lady from Child Protective Services. She was in the same row as Mrs. Perryvan, the school district's counselor, and Mr. Washington, who gave me a thumbs-up sign from behind the back of his pew.

I took my place at counsel table with Larry Delacord, who was wearing a good white shirt with no stains on the collar. The plan was to put on the investigators and experts first and finish with my testimony. Jude was sitting next to Gloria Monroe at her table and she turned to look at me as my chair shuddered into place. Her shoulders were stooped, her face washed-out, the swagger gone. She looked scared and I had to look away, back at the kids, who were in the front row next to a studious man with a bald spot resembling a monk's tonsure. He must have been one of Jude's experts. Justine was pensive, but I could tell that Derek wanted to wave so badly that his wrist hurt. Lill was absent. Gloria Monroe had probably advised her to stay home and bake cookies. She was going to make Jude pretend a little.