They May Not Mean To, but They Do: A Novel (7 page)

He gave a short laugh. “You rob a bank?”

“I discovered it.”

She unsnapped the eyeglass case.

“Whatcha got there? New glasses?” he said.

She thought he was playing with her. She took out two of the sticky pennies and held them over her eyes, the case safely clutched in her armpit.

“Don’t do that,” her mother said sharply. She had appeared suddenly, the way she often did. “Stop.”

“Why?” Cora put the pennies back, her lower lip protruding, sullen. “I was just fooling around.”

“Because the Greeks put pennies on dead people’s eyes,” Ruby said. “To pay the ferryman.”

“Coco,” Joy said to her daughter-in-law, “your children know far too much about death rituals.”

Cora sat on Ruby’s lap. “But, Ruby, I’m not Greek,” she said. “And I’m not dead.”

“
Kaynahora
,” Ruby said, looking up from a picture of a skinny elderly couple inside an old-fashioned grocery store. “That means you shouldn’t get the evil eye.”

“In Greek?”

Now their mother laughed, said, “You two. Honestly,” and returned to the kitchen.

“So, Grandpa, you want to see my money?”

He gave another little snort of a laugh, just like the last one, then said, “You rob a bank?” He looked at the eyeglass case. “You wear eyeglasses now?” Then he began to sing: “
My eyes are dim, I cannot see, I have no-ot brought my specs with me-ee-ee…”

“Grandpa, who’s this?” Ruby held up a black-and-white photograph of a long-eared dog standing in front of a screened-in porch. She handed it to Aaron.

“That’s Prince,” he said. “That’s my dog Prince.”

He brought the photo closer to his face. Ruby thought he was looking at it more closely, but no, he did not bring it to his eyes. He whispered, “Prince. My dog Prince,” brought the photograph to his lips, and kissed it.

*   *   *

When Freddie arrived, Aaron recognized her, but he did not seem to remember her name.

“Look who the wind blew in!” he said.

Molly’s son, Ben, got there a few hours later.

“Look who the cat dragged in!” Aaron said.

Ben did look a little like a cat at that moment, a scraggly alley cat. He had gotten a ride from New Orleans with a friend and they’d driven all night. His hair, not very clean, stuck up at unexpected angles in unexpected places. His clothes were wrinkled, even his parka. He had grown a beard, which disconcerted Molly for a moment. She worried about Ben, down there in a violent city with a job that kept him out so late. She worried that he drank too much, that he wasn’t doing anything with his life. Sometimes she welcomed the concern about her parents as a distraction from her concern about Ben.

“You look handsome,” she said. Ben Harkavy, bartender and handsome alley cat, the kind that rubs against your leg, then hops a fence and disappears.

Ruby and Cora, who loved Ben in a way that reminded Molly of her feelings for her father when she was a child, a reverential physical ownership, threw themselves at him for a double piggyback. Molly gently pushed them aside so she could give Ben a hug. Her arms around his neck, her face on his coat still cold from the outside air, she felt herself relax. Ben was a good boy. Ben was healthy and dear and safe in her arms. And with Ben here as well as Freddie, at last she would be able to make some order in her parents’ lives.

“The cavalry,” she murmured. “Thank god.”

“You miss me?”

“God, yes.”

“Don’t make him feel guilty,” Joy said. “Your mother doesn’t like it that I miss her.”

Ben hugged his grandmother and said, “You can miss me, too. Instead of missing her. I don’t mind.”

“I miss you the most,” Cora said.

“You’re just his cousin,” said Ruby.

“So are you.”

Ben squatted down and pulled them to him, one in each arm, and the apartment was boisterous and gay. Coco and Molly had used the dessert plates for the salad, but Joy found she didn’t mind. The children were playing a game that involved pulling the tablecloth as hard as they could, but she didn’t mind that either.

“To Mom and Dad,” Daniel said, raising a glass of wine.

Aaron gave a bloodcurdling howl.

“Grandpa,” said Ben, jumping up, kneeling beside Aaron. “What happened?”

“What are you talking about?” Aaron said.

Molly saw Ben go white. He had not seen too much of his grandfather in the last year, and when he had, Aaron had always managed to simulate conversation.

“Grandpa forgets sometimes,” Ruby whispered to Ben.

He smiled at her. “Thank you.” But he was obviously shaken.

“What’s going on?” Aaron said, looking around with wild eyes. He swatted Ben away with his enormous white hand. “Off your knees, soldier.” He caught Molly’s eye. “I’m fine,” he said. Then that awful sound, again.

By the time Molly brought out the apple pie, the sound had taken on an alarming volume and pitch.

“What do we do?” Molly said.

“Joy, what should we do?” Coco said.

“Mom, has he ever done this before?” said Daniel.

“Aaron,” Freddie was saying, “where does it hurt?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Aaron said.

Joy had not spoken. The room looked blank to her, as if it had emptied. The sounds were muffled. Except for Aaron’s. He was hazy beside her, enormous, ashen, opalescent. But the sounds he was making were not.

“Aaron, eat some pie,” she said. How stupid: Eat some pie. But it was all she could think of. She shoveled some pie onto a fork and held it to his mouth. “Delicious pie.”

Aaron opened his mouth and allowed her to tip the pie in. He chewed. He smiled. He swallowed. The noise stopped.

Joy looked up at her family and smiled, though she could hardly breathe.

“Pie,” she said.

Then the sound began again.

*   *   *

As Molly steered Aaron and his walker through the lobby, the doorman said
Pow! Pow!
, pretending to box. It was his favorite doorman, Ernie, but Aaron did not say
Pow! Pow!
back. Ernie looked solemnly at Molly as he opened the door, then he hailed a cab. Aaron’s long, lanky body, always so thin and flexible he seemed to be made of pipe cleaners, was now stiff and unyielding. He sat on the seat of the cab, his legs out, feet still on the pavement. The doorman went around to the other door and tried to pull him over by his shoulders, sliding Aaron across the seat. His legs stuck straight out the door now, feet in the air above the street.

The driver got out, and he and Joy tried to bend Aaron’s legs while Molly watched them as if she were witnessing a natural disaster, struck dumb, stuck in place.

“Well, hold my bags, at least,” Joy said.

Molly took the three heavy bags.

“No problem, no problem,” the taxi driver was saying. “Slowly, slowly.”

We are in a cab
, Molly texted Freddie.
The coffee is decaf, in case anyone asks.

Getting Aaron out of the taxi was even worse. The driver, a wisp of a man who said he was from Bangladesh and had a grandfather and knew how to respect the old, was holding him up beneath his armpits. Joy and Molly each took one arm, but Aaron began to sink to the ground, slowly, inexorably, the stiffness gone, as if he were melting.

“I can’t, I can’t,” Aaron said.

“Nice man, do not give up,” the taxi driver said. “For the sake of the nice ladies, do not give up.”

Aaron’s knees buckled, he was squatting, held up only by the two women and the determined driver. He sank lower and still lower, until Joy, shaking beneath the weight, was sure she would have to let him sink to the ground.

Just at that moment, two enormous arms wrapped themselves around Aaron, lifting him easily.

The two arms belonged to a security guard who was even taller than Aaron and far bigger, a muscular giant of a man. He held Aaron aloft, dangling him, Aaron’s feet just touching the ground.

“We forgot your shoes,” Joy said in horror. Aaron was wearing bedroom slippers. He was out on a cold rainy day in his bedroom slippers. “Your shoes, your shoes,” Joy said.

“Mom, it’s okay, he won’t need them, it’s the hospital…”

“Your shoes, Aaron. I’m so sorry.” It was all Joy could see, his large feet, clodhoppers he always called them, brushing the pavement in the wool cable-knit sock slippers with deerskin soles. He hated them, but they kept him warm and they weren’t slippery. “Oh, sweetheart, you hate these slippers. But why, Aaron? I ordered them from Hammacher Schlemmer…”

“He’ll be in bed, Mom. It’s okay.”

Another security guard came running out with a wheelchair and Aaron was folded awkwardly into it. He was so weak he was not even moaning now. But his feet in their warm slip-resistant slippers were off the sidewalk, placed on the footrests by the two security guards, one guard per foot. Seeing the men handling the big feet, seeing each foot on its footrest, made the slippers seem less out of place, and Joy recovered herself.

“There you are, Aaron,” she said, holding his hand. “There you are.” She ran her other hand along the arm of first one guard, then the second, as if she could gather strength from them, Molly thought. Or for good luck, the way people stroke a talisman.

“You came to our rescue,” Joy said. “And on Thanksgiving!” She looked around at the gathering, the first security guard an African-American, the second a giant as pale as Putin, clearly Russian, both towering over the Bangladeshi taxi driver and over her, a Jewish lady, and her daughter, a lesbian lady.

“New York is so cosmopolitan,” she said as they wheeled Aaron in after more effusive thank-you’s. “Isn’t it, Aaron? We’ve always liked that. Aaron, do you want to be near the window while we wait? We can people-watch.”

10

Daniel went to the hospital at lunchtime. He ate a sandwich, a very old-fashioned sandwich, he noticed—bright white bread, a few slices of pink boiled ham, a slice of orange cheese, a piece of pale iceberg lettuce, mustard the vivid yellow of newborn baby poop. The sandwich was a little stale, but comforting, and he wanted to be comforted. His father, the man who sang sea shanties in stormy weather, the tall, skinny father who’d swung his son onto his shoulders as if he’d been a scarf, this man of his childhood was lying in a hospital bed looking like another man entirely. Except for the beard. But even that was uncharacteristically shaggy.

Daniel finished the sandwich in four enormous bites, then answered emails while his father slept. Monday, a workday after the Thanksgiving weekend, so much to catch up on at the office, but his boss said he should stay at the hospital all afternoon if he needed to, working from his phone. If his mother came in, he’d have to put the phone away. She had an aversion to his phone, he wasn’t sure why. He hoped she wouldn’t come to the hospital, and not just because of his cell phone. He had noticed for some time, months, how tired she was, and this episode with Aaron had really knocked her off her pins. He looked at his father, at the gray beard and disheveled gray hair, the big hawk nose. He turned off his phone.

“Dad,” he whispered.

His father twitched, but didn’t wake up. His breathing was loud. Sinister red lights blinked above him accompanied by beeps like strangled birdcalls. It was too familiar, the beeping and blinking and labored breathing. Daniel stood up quickly, ready to make for the door.

Aaron opened his eyes.

“You’ll be fine, Daniel,” he said, reaching out a stringy arm and taking Daniel’s hand.

“Me?” Daniel smiled and sat down. “How about you?”

“Where the hell am I?”

“Hospital.”

“Don’t worry, now. You’ll be out of here in no time.” Aaron heard the word “hospital,” saw Daniel, and put the two together. They had, after all, been a pair, an intimate pair, Daniel and hospital.

“Thank you, Dad. Thank you for worrying about me. But I’m okay. That was thirty-five years ago. Remember that? Bad times.”

Aaron nodded. “Terrible.”

You were not much help, Daniel thought, in spite of himself. He’d convinced himself he’d put it all behind him, the worst year of his life, the year he was eighteen and developed osteonecrosis out of the blue, a year of searing pain, conflicting diagnoses, the year he couldn’t walk, the year he spent in the hospital. His mother had practically moved into his hospital room to look after him. His father had not visited much. He was preoccupied, planning another business, squandering whatever was left of his own father’s money. And he didn’t like hospitals.

No one likes hospitals, Daniel thought now.

Maybe, Daniel’s mother had said, maybe it’s just too painful for him to visit. You mean he’s too weak? Daniel answered. Yes, said his mother. Yes, I guess that is what I mean. But someone weak can love you, and he does.

“That was a long time ago,” Daniel said. “This time, it’s you we have to look after. Are you comfortable, Dad?”

“Who knows.”

“Well, you, presumably.”

“Don’t believe everything they tell you,” Aaron said.

For a weak man, he was physically strong. His hand still held Daniel’s, and Daniel felt the grip tighten.

“Dad?”

Aaron moaned.

“Pain?”

Aaron moaned again. He couldn’t speak. He looked pleadingly at his son.

When the nurse arrived, she tipped a pill into Aaron’s mouth from a small, pleated paper cup. “Now drink up,” she said, handing him a plastic cup of water.

Aaron looked at her with wide-open eyes—eyes full of fright. Did she notice? Daniel wondered.

“It will help the pain,” Daniel said.

The moans got louder, a crescendo of misery. Daniel thought he had never heard anyone in such misery.

His father’s face seemed to shrink with the pain, his eyes growing wider, fearful, his ears standing out from his head like little elbows.

“Dad, I wish I could do something for you.”

The moaning stopped. “You got a stick of gum?”

Daniel put his head in his hands. He waited a few seconds, breathing deeply. “Dad,” he said when he looked up, “how is the pain now?”

“Nobody tells me anything,” his father muttered, then drifted off into a robust, drugged sleep, snoring deeply.

*   *   *