Heart of Palm (34 page)

And he
was
the same, in many ways. Those startling blue eyes, that sullen, set jaw. Dean reclined in his bed, wearing a black T-shirt, faded jeans, and a pair of white socks. Carson was glad he wasn’t wearing a hospital gown. He didn’t know if he could have handled that. Dean’s skin was an opaque leather. One hand gripped a TV remote; the other lay motionless at his side as he watched a TV mounted high on the opposite wall. He’d aged tremendously, of course, but there was something else, something completely different about the Dean reclining in this hospital bed and the Dean that had lived angrily in Carson’s memory all these years. He was smaller. That was it. Carson had remembered his father as a big man. But this leathery man in the bed—he was so small. It was confounding. Carson’s heart pounded. He felt angrier than he’d thought he would, but the anger was made more disturbing by the fact that it was tinged by something else, something unfamiliar, something that might have been pity. He hadn’t been expecting that. He didn’t have time for that.

Across the room, the other old man, a shriveled thing in a hospital gown, slept in a bed under a tall window. Dean looked up as Carson entered.

“Well, look who it isn’t,” Dean said. His voice was raspy, a smoker’s voice. He didn’t appear particularly surprised to see his oldest son after twenty years. The volume on the TV was too loud. “All grow’d up, aren’t you?”

Carson didn’t answer.

“Even got your hair cut off, didn’t you?” Dean grinned at him.

Carson had kept his hair stridently short for eighteen years now, ever since his first internship at Merrill Lynch, but he could see no point in mentioning this to Dean now.

“So, how are you doing?” he said. It was awkward, false, but he didn’t know where else to begin.

“Oh, shitty,” Dean said.

“Why? What’s wrong?”

“What’s wrong? I’m old, dummy. That’s what’s wrong.” Dean seemed at ease, speaking with Carson as though they’d just parted yesterday.

Carson pulled a heavy chair up to the edge of the bed and sat down.

“Well, I can’t help you with that one,” he said.

Carson stared at his father, whose eyes had returned to the TV. He tried to think about how to proceed. How many times had he imagined this moment, pictured a showdown with Dean, a reckoning, a chance to look his father in the eye and berate him, insult him, tell him what an ass he was, what a coward, what a fool. And yet his anger was held in check, somehow, today, borne back by both the agenda at hand and the unexpected frailness of his father there in the hospital bed. Carson felt disappointed, vaguely. He’d wanted to hold on to the anger, savor it, nurture it, let it continue to grow as it had done for the last twenty years. Now he felt like he’d been denied something satisfying. Something important.

“You ever seen this one?” Dean said. “This movie? This is a funny one.” On the screen, Gene Hackman was dressed in drag, climbing a short staircase to mount a stage in a nightclub. “Look at that asshole. He’s a pisser.”

Carson glanced at the movie, then cleared his throat. “So, Dad, what have you been up to?” he said.
Where the hell have you been for twenty years?
What the hell is wrong with you?
“They treating you okay in here?”

“He’s a crack-up, that son of a bitch. Look at the wig.”

“You feeling all right, Dad?”

“They don’t make them like this guy anymore. He still alive? What a pisser.”

Carson looked at his watch.

“Dad. I’m talking to you.”

Dean looked at him, finally, his eyes still that same shocking blue Carson remembered from so long ago. Will had had the same eyes. Carson swallowed hard. He could handle this. He started again, and he willed his voice to soften.

“Are you doing okay, Dad?”

“Been better,” Dean said quietly.

A nurse came into the room and approached the bed. “How are you today, Mr. Bravo?” she said.

Dean’s eyes lit up. “Oh, Jackie,” he said, smiling. “If my life gets any better, I’m going to have to hire someone to help me enjoy it.”

She smiled, and he shifted position in the bed, but then grimaced.

“No,” he said. “To tell you the truth, I feel like crap, Jackie.” He reached out and took her hand. “This here is Jackie. She’s an angel—just look at her.”

Carson looked. The woman was tall, with pale skin and red hair. She looked like Arla.

“This is my son,” Dean said to Jackie. “One of ’em.” Jackie smiled at Carson.

“Mr. Bravo, they said you want another nicotine patch, is that so?” she said.

“Oh, you know that’s right. Jesus, put those things all over me, would you darlin’?”

She laughed. “I’ll get you
one,
Mr. Bravo, how about that?”

“I’ll show you where to put it,” he said. He still held her hand. With her free hand, she placed a chart on the bed and flipped through a few pages.

“What day is it, Mr. Bravo?” she said.

Dean puffed his cheeks, exhaled. “Oh, Jesus, Jackie, you ask me that all the time. How do I know?”

“Come on, Mr. Bravo. Give it a try.”

“Sunday?”

Carson blinked.

“It’s Wednesday,” Jackie said. “What month is it?”

Dean looked away from them, stared across the room, embarrassed. “Jesus,” he said. “It’s April, I guess. I don’t know.”

“It’s August,” Jackie said gently.

“Well, Jackie,” Dean said. “It’s no wonder I’m forgetting things. I’m old. That’s why I don’t know crap.”

She smiled, extracted her hand from his, and patted his arm. “You know plenty,” she said.

“I don’t know crap,” he said again. He grunted, shifted position, slid his hands down beneath his lower back. “Jesus,” he said, and his voice had become very small. Jackie reached into the pocket of her smock and drew out a nicotine patch. She opened it and placed it on his arm.

“Thank you, darlin’,” he said, and Jackie winked at him and left the room.

Under the window, the sleeping man made a small, wet noise. He was attached to a series of machines from which an unsettling series of beeps punctured the atmosphere in the room. Dean had turned back to the TV.

“I really want to know if this son of a bitch is still alive,” he said, squinting at the screen. Hackman wore a bright white wig and was performing some sort of a burlesque. “He’s old, right? Older than me?”

“You’re not that old.”

“Oh, yeah? Tell that to my liver.”

A cluster of quiet movement appeared in the doorway. Carson shuffled his chair closer to Dean’s bed as a small group of people filed past him: a short man about his own age, a mousy woman who could have been the man’s wife, and a papery old lady, thin as a wafer, with fat rubber shoes and an enormous chain of heavy plastic beads around her neck. They nodded at Dean, and the man raised a quick hand at Carson. “Don’t let us disturb you,” he stage-whispered, flapping his hands in Carson’s direction. He was clearly the cheery sort, even in this setting. “We’re just here to sit with Poppa.” He waited until the two women had taken a few steps past him, then leaned in closer to Carson. “My wife’s father,” he murmured conspiratorially. “His name is Edward.” Carson did not reply.

The cheery man pulled three straight-backed chairs up to the side of the sleeping man’s bed, and they all sat down expectantly, as if for a matinee.

Carson stood abruptly, scratched his head, sat down again. He pursed his lips and straightened his back.
All right
.
Get this done
.

“So,” he began. “Dad. We have an offer on the house in Utina.”

Dean leveled the remote at the TV and pushed a button. “God-damn,” he said. “I can’t hear what he’s saying.” He banged the remote against the metal rail on the side of his bed. “God-damn batteries. Lean over into that cabinet, get me some new ones, would you?”

Carson hesitated, then opened the drawer in the cabinet behind him.

“Yep. No, not the drawer. The shelf. On the right,” Dean said.

Across the room, the cheery man chuckled. He leaned forward and adjusted a limp strand of hair on Edward’s forehead. The old woman sighed with what might have been grief. Or resignation. Or boredom.

“They’re just waiting,” Dean said, gesturing to Edward’s family and making no effort to lower his voice. “They come every day. It’s going to be any day now. Shit, maybe any
minute
. That’s what you do, you get to the end. You’re just waiting.”

Carson buried his head in the cabinet, pretending not to hear.

“Think of all the waiting you do in your life,” Dean said. “You’re waiting on lines, right? You’re waiting in traffic. You’re waiting on doctors. You’re waiting on
women
. Jesus, am I right? And then one day you’re just waiting. Period. Just waiting. Waiting for nothing.”

The cheery man nodded his head, tapped his knees. Dean leaned his head back on the pillow and closed his eyes.

“Poor dumb shit,” Dean said, and though there was no telling whether he was referring to Edward or the cheery man, or even to Carson, the man nodded again, then giggled and leaned over to say something to his wife. Carson straightened, held up his empty hands.

“There’s no batteries,” he said.

“I said the drawer, dummy,” Dean said. “Triple As.”

“You didn’t say the drawer. You said the shelf.”

“Are you arguing with me?”

“No.”

“Yes, you are. Look in the drawer, dummy.”

My God!
Carson retrieved the batteries from the drawer and handed them to his father. Dean wrestled them into the remote with more than a little fanfare, then punched the volume button until the wall mount on the TV shuddered with the intensity of the sound.

“Dad. Dad.
Dad,
”
Carson said. The cheery man laughed again, and the old woman turned a baleful face toward them both. The cheery man’s wife appeared not to notice anything. Now Gene Hackman was dancing out of the nightclub and toward a waiting limo. The street where the limo was parked was packed with revelers; they reached toward Hackman as he stumbled toward the limo, his face a comic mask of confusion. Sister Sledge sang “We Are Family.”

“Ah, shit, it’s over now,” Dean said. He turned off the TV. “Where’s your wife? Where’s Elizabeth?” he said suddenly.

Carson was surprised. He hadn’t known his father was even aware that he and Elizabeth were married. When Dean left they’d all still been teenagers. Clearly Dean had stayed in touch with someone from Utina. But who?

“Home,” Carson said. The sound of his wife’s name was jarring, like a tap from behind on your bumper from a car coming up too fast.

“Whose home?” Dean said. “Your home?” He turned to face Carson. “She hasn’t left you yet?”

The cheery man coughed. Carson felt a strange salty sensation in the back of his own throat, and he closed his eyes and thought for a second about how many years it had been since he had cried. Twenty? Twenty-five? What would it feel like? He wondered if this would be a good time. He remembered crying once when he was fifteen, a few years before Will died, when he’d had a cat named Violet who had crawled up into the warm carburetor of Dean’s truck on a cold January night and was bludgeoned with the fan when Dean started it up in the morning. Carson had crouched barefoot on the cold pine straw in the driveway, staring at Violet, her small paws pristine but one side of her head dented in a very unnatural way. He’d sobbed like a baby, even when Dean walked past and smacked him on the back of the head and told him to stop being such a pussy. Dean had paused, had chuckled at the pun before going to get a shovel and a plastic bag. Carson opened his eyes, shook his head, tried to clear his brain.
Don’t be a pussy
.

Dean’s feet were crossed at the ankles. His socks were threadbare.

“So what’s wrong with you?” Carson said. “Are you sick? Injured? What?” The sudden silence left by the darkened TV was unsettling. Edward’s family said nothing. Carson had the feeling they were listening to him. His voice had an unfamiliar solicitousness.

“Aw, I got into a little scrap,” Dean said. He laughed. “With a woman. Can you beat that shit?”

“A
woman
?”

“Yeah. Sandy Vanderhorn. She laid me out. Took me to the ground. We were at this bar, right? We were having some drinks. She’s a big woman, too. Two hundred pounds, I’d guess. Dumber than a box of hammers, too, but that’s not the point, I guess. She got mad on the way out, and she took me to the curb. You ever been laid out by a two-hundred-pound woman, Carson?”

Carson shook his head. Was he serious?

“Well, don’t. She broke my cheek.” Carson stared at him. “No, not that cheek,” Dean said, pointing to his face. “The other cheek.” He patted his buttocks. “The right one. Right here.”

“You can’t break that kind of cheek, Dad.”

“Well
I
did. Don’t tell me it ain’t broke. My damn ass is broke and you’re telling me it ain’t? Sandy Vanderhorn took me to the curb and came down on top of me. Holy shit, it hurts like hell, too.”