Assisted Loving (15 page)

I can't promise. I'm too afraid. And I don't want to extend myself only to be disappointed. And isn't there something to be said for not getting in deep with someone you are having doubts about? I don't want to hurt him when I run. God, this is so complicated. I don't do this! I have never known how to do this!

Christmas comes and goes, lonely and silent in the city. I know Ira's in town, but I don't call.

“It's just too much of a strain,” I tell my friend Gillian. “I should move on, let it go.”

“You've got to be kidding,” Gillian says.

“It's just too complicated. I don't want to jerk him around and hurt him.”

“He sounds like the person you've been searching for.”

“I haven't been searching.”

“Liar! You have so.”

“But I've never wanted someone like him. I don't feel comfortable.”

Gillian puts down her coffee cup and grabs my chin. She looks disgusted.

“You know something?” she says. “You have to stop thinking so much. And you have to stop being so critical. But mostly, you have to stop being afraid. You're afraid to return his affection. You're afraid to commit to really trying with someone who is actually right for you. You're afraid of everything, and it's ruining your life. Call him.”

“Call him? When? Right now? Why?”

“Because I'm telling you to, that's why,” she says.

“What am I supposed to say?”

“Tell him you're sorry you didn't return his calls and try to make another date.”

I know I should. But I can't. I don't know why, but I can't.

“You're making the biggest mistake of your life,” she says.

At the airport on my way to Florida the next day, I bump into a dog trainer I know. I don't know why, but I find myself telling her all about Byron, Ira's cairn terrier. She is shocked to hear about how he attacks from under the bed.

“But Ira says that cairns are cave dwellers,” I explain enthusiastically. “So lunging from under the bed is typical because it's a characteristic of the breed, right?”

She looks at me as if I'm out of my mind. “Um, I don't know what dog books he's been reading,” she says. “But bad behavior like that is not the breed. It's the dog.”

I don't know why I find this so hilarious. All I know is that I want to call Ira and tell him, tease him, and hear him come up with the perfect response. I start to dial his number. Then I stop. I don't want to reengage. I don't have time. I am going to Palm Beach to see my father, who is having problems with Fifth Avenue Florence. He
needs me, and I am hoping to forget my own emotional fiasco so I can focus on his. And then I'm hoping I'll have something to do, anything to do, when I get back for New Year's Eve.

T
he flight to Palm Beach is on time, and within a few hours, I'm in the pleasant Florida sunshine in a rental car, a white Sebring convertible, cruising to Dad along I-95. The wind in my face is starting to blow thoughts of Ira right out of my head. Traffic is moving well. I'm playing with the radio when Dad calls. It's hard to hear him with the top down. But I get the gist. He's not so good. He's happy I'm coming to see him, of course. He can use cheering up, some “moral support,” he says. He's thinking he has to end it with Fifth Avenue Florence. It just keeps getting worse.

“I can't believe it, Dad,” I tell him. “She's taking you to the Palm Beach Country Club all the time. You told me you're compatible at the bridge table.”

“But she's getting harder and harder to take, Bobby.”

“Everybody has their flaws, Dad. Don't be so sensitive.”

“Last night she suggested I was just filler until Mr. Right comes along.”

“Dad, come on! She was joking. That's what people do when they're just getting comfortable with each other. They joke. You can't take it seriously.”

“Then she told me I was only after her for her money.”

“Again, joking! Don't you know that? What would you want with her money?”

“I just don't know what to say to her. She makes me feel second-rate. Do you know that last night she introduced me at a party as her walker?”

Ouch. That's a little much. “A walker? Really? Oh boy.”

“At first I thought she meant someone to lean on, then I found out it's more like a gentleman you use as an accessory when you have to go out for the evening.”

“So what did people do when she called you her walker?”

“Oh, they laughed. But it hurt my feelings.”

“Look, I swear to you, Dad, she was just joking.”

“I'm not an extra man for her to drag around.”

“Of course you aren't, Dad. And she didn't mean anything by it.”

This is not good, and not at all what I had in mind for his new life. All the hard pimp work I've done on his behalf, all the effort I've made to find someone perfect for him who is also perfect for me, and it's come to this? No! I won't have it. I won't allow it! I'm speeding now past all the other cars on the highway, mind and rental car racing.

“Listen, Dad, I'm sure this is all just a misunderstand
ing. I know Florence likes you. Maybe we should go out to dinner tonight. I want to meet her anyway. Then if I decide she's wrong for you, you can break it off, okay?”

“So you'll be my second opinion?”

“Exactly. And make sure to reserve at a nice restaurant, okay?”

I arrive at his apartment just in time to get ready for dinner. Dad looks tired tonight, not his usual buoyant, boyish self, as he steps out of his bedroom in a nonstarter jacket and tie.

“Do you have any other pants, Dad?” I have to ask.

“Why? Are these dirty?”

“Olive green isn't good with a blue blazer. Khaki would be better.”

“You're right,” he says. “I don't know what I was thinking.”

With a sigh, he returns to his closet and struggles into another pair of pants. I can see that even though his hip surgery is behind him, he's still in convalescence. It makes him look older than I'd like to see, a little more worn out than I'd expected.

“And do me a favor—at dinner tonight,” I tell him as we're driving from his apartment building into the precious little city of Palm Beach, “don't make me recite all the things I've been doing for work lately. It makes me feel like I'm on display.”

Typically he'd argue with me, even erupt in anger at my being too critical of him, then tell me to go back to New York. Tonight, he just nods in agreement.

“Whatever you say,” he tells me.

He perks up when we get to the restaurant. It's a lively scene. Tabu, the in place for social snowbirds, is on Worth
Avenue, the town's window-shopping mecca. Every table is full, and everyone looks intent on getting a good meal for the money, their faces serious as they ask waiters to turn down the air-conditioning or bring them more bread. There's a pianist at a baby grand with a pinky ring and toupee. He's attacking the keys with abandon. I'm glad we got dressed up. It's a dressy kind of place, with little tasseled lamps on each table throwing off pools of flattering pink light that (along with the easily detectable plastic surgery in the room) erases years from every face.

Florence is already at our table. She extends a hand to say hello without getting up. Dad kisses her deferentially on the cheek, then retreats to his seat, as if he's just made a ceremonial bow before a queen. She's younger than I thought, not more than halfway through sixty, I'd guess. Not pretty exactly, put well put together. Auburn hair gently coiffed, face and lips done just so. She's in a charcoal cashmere twinset, with charcoal slacks to match. Ralph Lauren, probably. Or maybe Michael Kors. Very smart looking, far classier than anyone I'd imagine for my father. While they make chitchat about the bridge game she had just played that afternoon, I find myself fantasizing about her various homes in Palm Beach, Sun Valley, and Manhattan. Wouldn't it be nice to have holiday meals with her?

“How high is Sun Valley at?” Dad is asking.

“I'm not sure,” she says. “High enough.”

“Just wondering how the altitude is.”

Oh, Dad, I'm thinking. I wish he wouldn't talk with his mouth full of food. And he should have unbuttoned his blazer when he sat down. He looks so stiff, sitting there,
like a child cowed at a grown-ups' table. He orders linguine. A mistake. He has no idea how to eat it properly. The way he's using that fork, it might as well be a tennis racket. I gesture for him to wipe the red sauce from his chin. He doesn't notice.

“Any plans for New Year's Eve, Bob?” she asks.

I change the topic. Politics. The 2004 election. We're into the second year in Iraq and things aren't going well at all. It's starting to fray Dad's nerves, tried-and-true Republican that he is. So while a war is raging abroad, he is fighting his own war down here with Democrats all around him, going at him like green flies in June. It wouldn't be so bad if he didn't feel he had to make it his mission to straighten everyone out about the reason for the war. But every time anyone at any dinner party or bridge table says anything disparaging about the administration, he rips into them. Florence, I can tell, is tired of it. He has embarrassed her more than a few times in front of her friends.

“Your father's quite opinionated about all kinds of complicated things,” she tells me, as if he weren't sitting right here. “It can make for very heated conversations.”

“I know you're thinking I don't know what I'm talking about, but I do,” he says.

“You don't know what I'm thinking, Joe,” she says. “You're not enough of a listener.”

She's right about that. And I can't help admiring her for being well read, well dressed, and politically appropriate. For once my father is with someone plugged in and witty, and I'm feeling intoxicated with the refinement of her outfit. So instead of defending him, as a good son should, I gang up with her and shoot down everything he says.
And when he tries to get me to trade some of my lamb for his linguini by foisting his plate at me (something he does as a reflex at restaurants), I dismiss him.

“You know what I call trading each other's food like that?” I ask her.

“No, but your father does it all the time,” she says, with a roll of her eyes.

“Jewish Ping-Pong,” I say.

“Exactly! That's hilarious,” she replies.

Then we both start cackling. And between the two of us, he looks like a little Mel Tormé voodoo doll in dress-up clothes, strapped to his chair. I don't think I've ever seen him looking so helpless. He quietly excuses himself and hobbles off to the men's room. He looks wobbly on his feet, like a toddler just learning to walk on his new hip, and I suddenly feel tender for him. He is a man, after all, who means no harm to anyone. She leans in and takes my hand with hers, which I can't help noticing is very cold and kind of like a claw. Her red nails (they match her lipstick) are like talons, her nose a little beak.

“Your father's a real piece of work,” she says. “Isn't he?”

I down the rest of my merlot and nod. I suddenly feel hot inside. What gives her the right to call my father a piece of work? His quirkiness is his charm. Or part of it anyway. How dare she tease him about being her walker? How dare she toy with him, trot him around in front of her friends without having any feeling for him at all? And is there a man in all the Palm Beaches more eligible? I doubt it. He looks ten years younger than he is, and he's utterly self-sufficient and economically secure.

But I can see now that she is so not right for him. From
the hauteur of her hairdo down to the tasteful clasp on her Hermès bag and the bow on her Belgian loafer, it's clear this is no match. I don't know what I was thinking, pushing her on him. She makes him look so small, like a wriggling insect in her beak. It makes me grateful for the comfort he had with my mother, despite the tension, despite his urge to be away from the nest so much. Maybe she wasn't sophisticated, but she had grace and ease, and they had something lovely as a couple, even as he would rage, then apologize sweetly to her later. It was a good-enough marriage. Not easy, but worthy. And there was an acceptance between them that had to do with sharing a life together—kids, songs, the thrill of tulips and Passover macaroons. Best of all, Mom found his quirkiness funny and charming. Her laugh was a trill. Everything they did, even when she was unwell, had a Steve and Edie quality (sauntering across the suburban stage of life) that made them blend in harmony. This Florence, with all the wit and taste, has none of that.

When he comes back from the men's room (with the sauce wiped off his chin, thank goodness), he suggests we all go to a movie after dinner at the discount theater west of Lake Worth. There's a light comedy he wants to see.

“Isn't that a little lowbrow?” she asks.

“What would you recommend instead?” he asks.

“Well,” she says as she gets up, “you'll have to forgive me. I'm a little tired. I'm going to call it a day. Thank you for a lovely dinner.”

“Are you sure, Florence?” Dad says. “The night is young.”

I want to nudge him under the table, tell him, Let her go, Dad. I was wrong. She's no good for you. You have to
want who wants you, who gets you, revels in you. But who am I to give anyone advice about love? I stand up, pull his chair out. He struggles to his feet, using the table and me for balance.

“So then,” she says, “good night.”

Then she turns and leaves us there, with the bill to pay.

A half hour later we are sitting in the living room of his very white apartment in a very black mood. It's chilly out. He wants the sliding doors closed. I want them open but defer to his will. We're both a bit stunned, breathing hard like two wildebeests that just escaped the claws of a lioness. Bereft, alone, and feeling over the hill.

I've never felt so close to him, so wrapped up in his life. And I've got my own love mess, too, making me spin. Love is a minefield, a war. And we're two buddies in this disaster movie. Or maybe it's a Comedy of Eros. How did it come to this?

“My God, Dad. You were right! She's no good for you.”

“That's what I was trying to tell you, Bobby.”

“Why did you put up with her so long?”

“Because you told me to. I thought you might know something I don't know about all this.”

“Me? What the hell do I know about any of this? I know nothing about love. I need a drink. You got anything?”

“Check the cabinet by the kitchen.”

I race across his living room. I wish I could fix things for both of us, but I feel so helpless. I open a mirrored cabinet. You never know what you'll find in my father's liquor cabinet. While growing up, I discovered all kinds of bottles, as if it were a laboratory rather than a bar. Bottles full of brightly colored liqueurs that only Jews
would have instead of hard booze. Lime green, sunny yellow. Sabra, which is a chocolate-and-orange Israeli liqueur in an “I Dream of Jeannie” bottle, consumed by Zionists and pre-diabetics. Adult parties in our home when I was a kid were never about drinking. They were about bridge. Sometimes charades. I have a photograph of my mother taken in the 1970s. She's in a psychedelic maxi skirt and purple blouse, on her knees, hands in the air, acting out a title of some book or movie. Her hair is unusually soft looking, the color just right. A Jewish Dinah Shore. Although she isn't young, she is exuberant and beautiful, the buoyant suburban sweetheart, laughing. She drank only the sweetest concoctions, crazy combinations for nondrinkers that my father mixed for her. Grand Marnier and ginger ale. Loganberry wine and apple juice.

“What's this?” I say as I pull out a bottle of calcified Irish Cream that leaves a sticky residue on my palm. “My God, how old is this?”

“I don't know, but it doesn't go bad,” Dad says. “The alcohol acts as a preservative. I use it on my yogurt all the time.”

“Ech!”

I wipe my hands on a cocktail napkin as if I've just touched battery acid. Then I pull out some Manischewitz, also unpleasantly sticky. There's something scrawled across the label of the half-empty bottle in his illegible handwriting.

“What's this, Dad? What's in here? I can't read this. What does it say?”

“Concord grape vodka.”

“You're kidding, right?”

“It's a little experiment. Try some. And pour one for me while you're at it.”

“Certainly!” I say. “Coming right up!”

I pull a couple glasses from his tiny lemon yellow kitchen and pour us drinks on the rocks. He sips his slowly. I slam mine down. Kosher cough syrup. I pour another.