So Much for That (29 page)

“Good for him,” said Shep. “How many more grilled cheese sandwiches is a man his age going to eat?”

“Man, the other thing that drives me nuts,” she continued, trying valiantly to draw him into filial cahoots, “is the paper. He still snips out all these articles—you know, about forgiveness of Third World debt, anything to do with Abu Ghraib, and obviously when anybody’s starving he gets excited. So I get to the paper and it looks like one of those lace snowflakes we used to make in school. I’ve told him, you know, if he wants an article we can print it from the website, but, no, he has to have the newspaper version. You’ve seen his office upstairs. It’s stacked with all these file folders full of ratty yellow articles. I don’t know; it’s a little sad. Like, what’s he going to do with that stuff, really?”

“Seems like a good thing that he still takes such an interest in the world,” Shep said staunchly. “Most folks at eighty wouldn’t even read the paper, much less clip it.”

Beryl didn’t take the hint that he wasn’t coming on board. “Do you realize he writes a letter to the editor practically every day? Sometimes to the
Sentinel
, but usually
The New York Times
or
The Washington Post.
They hardly ever see print. It’s like, every time something happens the whole world is waiting to find out what Gabriel Knacker thinks. Now,
that
is sad. I picture all these letters editors getting another envelope postmarked Berlin, New Hampshire, rolling their eyes, and tossing it unopened in the trash.”

Uneasy being apart from Glynis, Shep didn’t plan to stay up here long; a prolonged cringe-fest about their remaining parent could wait for another time. “So what’s the prognosis? Do you think he’ll be able to come back here?”

“That would mean hiring a nurse or something, since he’s likely to be bedridden for weeks. In fact, he could need round-the-clock care for, I don’t know, forever.”

“True…” Shep looked at his sister hard.

“And who knows what kind of person that would be. If she was some officious, bossy shrew, life around here could become unbearable.”

“From what I’ve read, full-time, live-in medical assistance can come to about a hundred grand a year.”

“I can’t believe that we’ve only talked about this, like, a minute, and you’re already talking about
money
.” Her smile tried to cast the goad as a joke, without success.

“Since he’s not here to tell us what he wants to do next, the only thing you and I can talk about is money.”

“Whatever it costs,” Beryl declared, “what matters is what’s best for Dad.”

“Don’t you expect that he’d rather come back home?”

“But I don’t think his living here is practical anymore,” said Beryl.

“It might even be dangerous; he could easily take another fall. Besides, it would just delay the inevitable. This is the perfect juncture to make a decisive move to some sort of facility, where he has doctors, and meals made for him, and the company of people his own age.”

“Leaving you in this house. Is that what you picture?”

“
Maybe
I’d stay here a while longer. What’s so terrible about that? Somebody’s got to hold down the fort.”

“‘e fort’ is Dad’s only asset. It’s all he’s got to help cover what’s likely to cost a hundred K a year, whatever he opts for—whether that’s home care, a nursing home, or assisted living.”

“Are you saying you’d sell this place out from under me? Where the fuck would I go?”

“Wherever grown-ups go when they don’t live with their parents.”

“This is ridiculous! What’s all that Medicare and Medi-whatsit for, then?”

“I tried to lay this out when my lasagna was making you ill.” He shot a pointed look at his plate. “Medicare doesn’t cover long-term care, period. You’re thinking of Medicaid.”

Beryl waved a bored hand. “I can never keep that stuff straight.”

“Medicaid’s requirements are stringent, and it would take a lot of pa
perwork just to get him on the rolls. It only covers the destitute. Dad will never qualify while he still owns this house and draws a regular pension. So we either sell off the property, use up the cash, and liquidate his pension fund, or we’re”—he paused at the pronoun, but decided it was good for his sister’s moral education to keep it—“or we’re stuck with the bill.”

“What about my inheritance?”

“What inheritance?”

“Half of this house will be mine, and I’m counting on the proceeds for a down payment on my own place!” she wailed. “How else will I ever have a home of my own?”

“I don’t own a house, Beryl.”

“That’s your choice. You could buy whatever you want, and you know it.” She crossed her arms, sulking. “Shit, there has to be a documentary in this. Dad working his whole life, and paying taxes, and then when he needs—”

“The depletion of assets for end-of-life care,” Shep cut her off, “hasn’t gone unobserved.”

With evident discipline, Beryl unfolded her arms and placed her hands calmly on either side of her plate. “Look. We could do it this way. You cover Dad’s nursing home, or assisted living, whatever. Give me two or three years here, and I can save up some capital. Then once Dad’s passed away and we sell the house, your share of the inheritance would cover your outlay.”

Shep sat back. He could only regard such audacity as rather magnificent. Nobody could claim that his sister wasn’t entertaining. “My share goes to some nursing home. And you keep yours?”

“Sure, why not? And then I’m off your back. No more knocking on your door for cups of sugar. I could move back to New York.”

“Leaving aside whether I’d buy your Brooklyn Bridge, just how much do you imagine this house is worth?”

“The property market has skyrocketed all over the country. Everything’s, like, tripled in value in, like, ten years. Everybody but
me
has been making money hand over fist. Five bedrooms, three baths…is place must be worth a fortune!”

“I repeat: how much, exactly, do you think this house is worth?”

“What…five hundred? Seven-fifty? With that big backyard, I don’t know, maybe even a million!”

Shep knew his sister loved this house, and to some degree for good reason. The dark interior woodwork was all original and had never been painted over. It was spacious, and it had funk. The place had further appreciated in her head for being where she grew up, and her memories were pleasant; she’d always been the favorite. He hated to burst her balloon, but Realtors were not so sentimental. “I did some nosing around on property websites. Houses this big in Berlin are going for under a hundred grand.”

“That’s impossible!”

“Fraser Paper is closing, and everybody knows it. Haven’t you noticed how many vacant and derelict houses there are in this neighborhood? There’s talk of building a big federal prison and an ATV park, but even if they happen you’re talking a few hundred jobs tops. After making
Reducing Paperwork
, you of all people should know that everybody’s moving out. Property values in this area are
falling.
”

“They’re not falling anywhere! This house is the best investment Dad ever made!”

“Beryl, think about it. Who wants to live here? Exiled New York documentary makers who lose their rent control. That’s about it. And that’s the real problem. Even if we put this place on the market tomorrow, it could sit there for months or even years, and meantime Medicaid won’t touch Dad’s nursing home fees with a barge pole. So don’t worry about its being ‘sold out from under you.’ The worry is it won’t be.”

“Well…we don’t know how long he’s going to last, right? I mean, I’ve always heard that for a lot of old people a broken bone is the beginning of the end.”

This was ugly stuff. “Yeah, if only he’d die right away, you could get your
inheritance
.” He gave the last word a final hiss.

“I don’t appreciate that insinuation! I was just saying—”

Shep collected the plates. He stood beside the stack, debating. He almost let the proposition go, but—maybe it was having Dad down for
the count at Androscoggin Valley—he was starting to feel less like Beryl’s brother than her father.

“The longer Dad is able to keep living at home,” said Shep, “the better it is for him, and the better it is for us. But live-in help would be expensive and, as you pointed out, intrusive. So I’m curious. There’s one possibility we haven’t talked about. What if he came back here and
you
took care of him?”

“No way!” she exclaimed. Clearly this option had never entered her head.

“You suggested Amelia’s old room in January—though that was before we told you that Glynis was sick. Back then, his living with you in Manhattan was out of the question, since you were about to lose your apartment. But now you’re ensconced here, and no one would be dislodged from their home, not you, and not Dad. You could make yourself useful.”

“I don’t have the qualifications! I’m no
nurse
.”

“I’m sure the hospital could provide physical therapy. But the main requirements will be cooking and shopping and keeping the house clean. Changing his linen, doing his laundry, keeping him company. Giving him sponge baths and helping with his bed pan. For all of which you’re qualified as anybody.”

“Dad would never be comfortable having his daughter wipe his ass. It would be totally embarrassing for both of us.”

“People change what they’re willing to accept when you change what you’re willing to give.” Shep smiled. The homily sounded so much like their mother.

“I can’t believe you’re asking me this! I don’t notice
you
volunteering to throw everything aside and take care of somebody else all day!”

“Oh, no?
Throw everything aside
and
take care of somebody else all day
—or all night—is exactly what I do for Glynis. While holding down a full-time job, which I loathe, and only keep to ensure that my wife has some kind of coverage.”

Any discomfiture her gaffe occasioned was short-lived. “You’re talking about my putting my whole life on hold, possibly for years! Well,
you only have a job, but I have a career! It happens to be a career that Dad himself believes in. He’d never want me to sacrifice my filmmaking about important social issues just for his fucking sponge baths! In fact, maybe I
will
do a documentary on end-of-life care. In which case I’d do a whole lot more old people a whole lot more good than I could ever do by hanging around here asking if a single elderly man needs a drink of water!”

“So that’s it. No? End of story?”

“Better believe it. Not negotiable, a nonstarter. Absolutely, positively no, out of the question, forget it, period.” She seemed frustrated to have run out of negatives.

When he sold Knack of All Trades, Shep had never expected to be treated with greater regard—to be provided preferential seating in restaurants, to have his small opinions accorded any extra weight—merely for having made some money. But damned if he’d expected to be punished for it.

“So that leaves me paying for the alternative—whether full-time home help or some sort of institution. As for your free ride in
my
old bedroom, you’re lucky, since I’m not going to put this house on the market so long as Dad thinks there’s a hope in hell he might come back home. But I’d like you to understand that covering the costs of his care is not going to be easy for me. I have huge costs associated with Glynis, and I’m no longer the moneybags you think.”

“I don’t understand,” said Beryl with genuine bafflement. “You said you had health insurance.”

Shep laughed. It wasn’t a very nice laugh, but it beat crying.

P
lenty of couples stopped having sex and were probably fine. Big deal, their libidos ebbed. There was still that cozy thing, if you shared the same bed, which he and Carol continued to do, but only because she’d not have wanted to upset the girls with even a fanciful explanation of why Daddy had been exiled to the couch. Exile writ small, the foot-wide moat of cold sheet between them was arguably more painful. She couldn’t bear the sight of him. Occasionally she turned toward him in sleep, but only from habit; stirring to find her cheek on his chest, she’d rebound with a harrumph to the far edge of the mattress. She reliably wrenched the bedding along with, leaving Jackson with nothing but boxers for cover. He’d come to detest sleeping in his underwear. The boxers had achieved the same shamefulness as his briefs in boyhood, when he’d been so mortified by the prospect of his mother spotting a brown smudge at the back that rather than toss them in the laundry he buried them in the trash.

Even if plenty of couples did cheerfully give up on sex, he had never expected Carol and Jackson Burdina to count among them. They may have got it on less often once Flicka was born, but ask Bobby Sands: there was a massive difference between a diet and a hunger strike. The loss created a sense of spoliation that spread far beyond sleep. For if he was not
in bed, he was dreading when he would be. That floating, limb-tangled languor between snooze alarms used to be his favorite part of the day.

During the whole of his marriage, Jackson had chafed over a subtle inability to possess his wife. She was elusive; she held herself apart. Although Carol’s repleteness had always awed him, he didn’t covet the same blithe, needless wholeness for himself. However female the image, a little interior absence, that small soft bottomless hole that endlessly cried out for filling, made Jackson a more desirous and therefore a more desirable man. Why, were he suddenly to metamorphose into a kindred creature—a discrete, self-sufficient organism who puttered about his business as she puttered about hers, asking for and expecting nothing, efficiently and tirelessly doing what was required, well—Carol would be goddamned desolate.

For in the past, his frustration with his inability to…not own her, exactly…to
have
her had supplied Jackson an invigorating sense of purpose, and them both an inexhaustible source of entertainment. She enjoyed keeping herself teasingly just out of reach; he enjoyed playing the hunter who, since he never bagged it, would never run short of prey. But now Carol’s tantalizing quality had hardened to flat-out unavailability, and it was no fun going on safari when there wasn’t a single would-be quarry in the game park.

Since what had begun as his own whimsical, sexually freshening mischief-making had darkened to disaster, his folly came with inbuilt punishment, and Carol needn’t have punished him twice over. Fair enough, he hadn’t been
consultative
—which was merely by way of saying that he’d wanted to do something devilish, something unexpectedly impish and naughty and for once nothing to do with the kids, because, by God, the poor woman had little enough pop up in her life that wasn’t just another bill or, surprise! a brand-new bacteria to invade Flicka’s corneas. And sure, maybe he hadn’t adhered to the general rule that in relation to any part of the body that’s even halfway functional you leave well enough alone. But otherwise, he didn’t see how the catastrophic fallout of this impetuous tomfoolery was his fault. Could he have predicted the infection, and hadn’t he taken the full course of antibiotics? Hadn’t he done plenty of research beforehand, and after his cousin Larry’s rave
testimonial how could he have known that the doctor was a hack? Was he to blame that the results of two exorbitant restorative plastic surgeries were disappointing, and his dick still looked like a lumpy, bun-crushed hotdog with a bite out of the middle? He was suffering plenty already, and Carol’s coldness was undeservedly cruel. Yet she had never revisited the conviction that he had vandalized not his own person but his wife’s. It turned out she really
did
think that his dick belonged to her—personally belonged to her, with the same simplicity and utterness with which she would own a spatula—and it was she who graciously lent it out from time to time, when he needed to piss.

Moreover, she pressed him into an introspection with which Jackson was impatient. It wasn’t that he didn’t “know himself” or some other claptrap; he just thought navel-gazing was girly and indulgent and pointless. What was done was done, right? So what was the use of an emotional autopsy? No matter how you cut it up, a corpse was a corpse.

Well, his dick was not exactly a corpse. It was worse than that. While deformed and slouching, it was still alive, which made it only more terrible. His dick reminded him of that story they’d read in Mrs. William’s eighth-grade English class called “The Monkey’s Paw”—the beloved son fatally mangled in an accident who was resurrected by evil magic and mooed, all cut to ribbons, behind the front door. Hell, at least in the story you were spared having to look at the thing with the merciful exercise of the please-God-make-it-go-away third wish. His dick was on its second wish—waving and mooing and wanting in.

A few weeks ago, Jackson had done his ever-loving best to try to explain why he did it, although as usual the elaboration seemed to make no difference, and he was left wondering why he’d bothered. “It was just for a kick,” he’d started out. “One of those kooky, jaunty ideas you get, like when you’ve always given chocolates and this year you want to come up with a more outrageous birthday present that for once your wife will remember. We’re surrounded by all these other folks getting piercings, or new noses, or liposuction—who treat their bodies like houses that you redecorate when you feel like it. I’m always fixing people’s houses, right? So I was playing, right? One little gesture, for fun. Jesus, other
wise I’m not getting my stomach banded, I’m not getting ‘man boob’ reduction; I don’t even have a tattoo.”

“You don’t mess around with that part of your body for ‘fun,’” she’d insisted. “I don’t buy it, Jackson. That the surgery was a ha-ha, a cutesy, off-the-cuff caprice.”

“I’ve said I’m sorry until I’m blue. But I don’t see the point in analyzing it to death. It’s like I went on an expedition, like up some mountain, and the idea for the expedition was just for an adventure, to fill a Saturday afternoon. Then suddenly the weather goes funny and what was a lighthearted lark suddenly turns life-threatening, with gales about to blow you off the cliff and half your party getting hypothermia. It happens, right? But when the helicopters swoop in for the rescue, the medics don’t give you the third degree about the deep, dark motivations behind your sick-fuck decision to go hiking on the weekend.”

“You’re making me tired, Jackson,” said Carol, lids at half-mast. “I don’t mind when you keep people at dinner parties at bay with a water cannon of crapola, but I don’t expect you to spout nonsense at me.”

He clapped his thighs, rose, and paced the bedroom—whose dimensions seemed to grow smaller by the day. He would have to throw her something meatier than the whimsy line. “Look. You want to know the truth?”

“That would be refreshing.”

“It’s awkward.”

“I can’t think of anything more awkward than present circumstances.”

“I…” Nuts, this was definitely, totally awkward. He stuck his head out the door to make sure one of the girls wasn’t up, pressed the knob until it clicked, pushed in the lock, and dropped his voice. “I came home once unexpectedly, since it turned out we had a job in the neighborhood. The girls were in school, so you must have felt…Well, you obviously figured you had the place to yourself. I came looking for you and you must not have heard me, ’cause you were…distracted. Turns out you were in here, and you’d left the door open.” He stopped, and hoped she could infer the rest of it and instead she crossed her arms and said, “So?” He would have to spell it out.

“I wasn’t spying on you, Carol. I was only going to ask if you wanted to have lunch together. But you were—well, you’d taken all your clothes off and it was the middle of the day, and that was a little weird. You were standing in front of the mirror, and your hands were covered in—I don’t know, something greasy and creamy—”

She laughed. “Hair conditioner. Suave, the cheap stuff. It has the perfect texture.”

“I’m sorry I violated your privacy, and I don’t want you to think I was offended or anything—”

“Why would you be offended?”

“I take that back, actually. I was a little offended.”

“I’m not allowed to masturbate? You should have told me that a long time ago.”

“That’s not what I mean. And
offended
is the wrong word. I was hurt.”

“
Hurt
? Jackson, I work incredibly hard, the sales work for IBM is tedious, and sometimes I have to blow off a little steam.”

“You’re not getting it. The point is, you were high as a kite. You were doing something two-handed down there and obviously getting off on watching yourself, and this—so it was conditioner—well, it was all over the place. And you were gasping and talking dirty to yourself. Shit.”

“I obviously made quite an impression. But why on earth didn’t you join me?”

“I wasn’t a part of it. And you’re still not getting it. You were—you were getting off by yourself more than you do with me.” He looked down. There. He’d said it.

She reached for his hand with the tenderness for which he was starved. “So you saw me on my own. It’s a little different. Maybe it is a little more uninhibited without you there. I wish it weren’t, but it’s almost impossible to completely shed self-consciousness with another person, even if you love that person, and even if you are, more or less, relaxed with them. I still don’t see why this little session you walked in on has anything whatsoever to do with your getting botched penis enlargement surgery.”

He always winced when she had to say it plain like that. Since he had
his own private rituals whose frequency—that is, previous frequency—he was loath to admit, Jackson was reluctant to get into the fact that for the last couple of years the “session” he’d walked in on had been his touchstone for getting high as a kite himself. Even talking about it now had given him a hard-on. (Or what passed for one. Supposedly he was to be grateful that it roused even to this spongy level of enthusiasm, to which he was alerted mostly because it hurt; the scar tissue from the infection bound the shaft in the middle, like a cock ring stuck halfway up.) Thinking about Carol clutching herself all covered in goo in front of the mirror got him off like nobody’s business. But the home video also tormented him. God, you’d never know it to look at this woman, so composed, so…Well, other people probably thought of Carol as a little tight. He wasn’t about to repeat to her some of the things he’d overheard her say that day—her running commentary of smut would be too embarrassing for both of them, and at once such a turn-on that it would send his dick into agony—but she was a fucking animal! That afternoon, he’d felt so cheated, that he’d lived for years with a wildcat, a wildcat with big bountiful breasts and one hand shoved halfway up her own cunt and her face a contortion of twisted, gory pleasure, and meanwhile for years he’d been having sedate, conventional, well-behaved sex with a domesticated tabby.

“I wanted you to feel that way with me,” he said. “I wanted to introduce something that made you get as excited with me as you do by yourself. I didn’t realize until I saw you by accident that you were—that you were capable of getting that off your head.”

“Haven’t I seemed to enjoy myself with you? We’ve had a lovely sex life. If we hadn’t, why would I be so angry now that we don’t have one?”

“See?
Enjoy yourself
. A
lovely
sex life. That’s the kind of language you use when you go on a picnic. I don’t want you to
enjoy yourself
. I want you to go insane.”

“Congratulations, then. I am insane. Insanely disappointed and aggrieved. You could have talked about it with me, instead of carving yourself up like a rib roast. For pity’s sake, if all you wanted was a little more kink, I’d have caught the two-for-one sale on conditioner at CVS.”

In her humor he sensed a softening, and he sat beside her on the bed.
She’d started wearing a nightgown despite the close, thick summer air, but the door was already locked and nightgowns come off. He put a hand on her thigh. She looked at the hand, then in his eyes; her expression was skeptical but not, for once, hostile. It was a little early after the second plastic surgery—the scars were still red and sensitive—but like a job seeker during an economic downturn he would have to apply for the few openings that came along. When he kissed her she was passive, though she did not recoil. Yeah, as he got into the idea the Monkey’s-Paw mangle mooed again, but nothing could be more painful than this months-long freeze-out.

As Jackson slid his hand up under the nightgown, they were miles from some breakthrough erotic melee with Suave. He was super gentle and super careful, implicitly asking permission with every caress, as if she were still a virgin and had to be broken in nice and slow, rather than his wife and the mother of his children. Still he did finally coax the boring white cotton sack over her head—heaven forbid she’d wear a negligee—and slipped his hands onto those twin scoops of vanilla ice cream. Carol didn’t participate much, but she didn’t stop him. There was only one stage to go, tearing off the damned boxers, an unveiling that now filled him with dread; he should have switched off the light on Carol’s side of the bed when he’d had the chance. As he hastily dragged them off the elastic smarted; he could see her hating to look and yet having to look and so looking and then looking away. His erection was about as good as it got, meaning not very, and though this was hardly the time to entertain such thoughts he had to concede that if anything after all that snipping and pulling and chopping and patching the mutilated nubbin—which looked like some half-chewed chicken neck that had got stuck in a garbage disposal—was now even smaller than it had been to begin with.