Before We Were Yours(2)

Daddy stares out the window, his head leaning to one side. He has relegated his aides and Leslie to another car.

“You feeling all right?” I reach across to brush a long blond hair—mine—off the seat so it won’t cling to his trousers when he gets out. If my mother were here, she’d whip out a mini lint brush, but she’s home, preparing for our second event of the day—a family Christmas photo that must be taken months early…just in case Daddy’s prognosis worsens.

He sits a bit straighter, lifts his head. Static makes his thick gray hair stick straight out. I want to smooth it down for him, but I don’t. It would be a breach of protocol.

If my mother is intimately involved in the micro aspects of our lives, such as fretting over lint and planning for the family Christmas photo in July, my father is the opposite. He is distant—an island of staunch maleness in a household of women. I know he cares deeply about my mother, my two sisters, and me, but he seldom voices the sentiment out loud. I also know that I’m his favorite but the one who confuses him most. He is a product of an era when women went to college to secure the requisite MRS degree. He’s not quite sure what to do with a thirty-year-old daughter who graduated top of her class from Columbia Law and actually enjoys the gritty world of a U.S. attorney’s office.

Whatever the reason—perhaps just because the positions of perfectionist daughter and sweet daughter were already taken in our family—I have always been brainiac daughter. I loved school and it was the unspoken conclusion that I would be the family torchbearer, the son replacement, the one to succeed my father. Somehow, I always imagined that I’d be older when it happened and that I would be ready.

Now I look at my dad and think, How can you not want it, Avery? This is what he’s worked for all his life. What generations of Staffords have labored for since the Revolutionary War, for heaven’s sake. Our family has always held fast to the guiding rope of public service. Daddy is no exception. Since graduating from West Point and serving as an army aviator before I was born, he has upheld the family name with dignity and determination.

Of course you want this, I tell myself. You’ve always wanted this. You just didn’t expect it to happen yet, and not this way. That’s all.

Secretly, I’m clinging by all ten fingernails to the best-case scenario. The enemies will be vanquished on both fronts—political and medical. My father will be cured by the combination of the surgery that brought him home from the summer congressional session early and the chemo pump he must wear strapped to his leg every three weeks. My move home to Aiken will be temporary.

Cancer will no longer be a part of our lives.

It can be beaten. Other people have done it, and if anyone can, Senator Wells Stafford can.

There is not, anywhere, a stronger man or better man than my dad.

“Ready?” he asks, straightening his suit. It’s a relief when he swipes down the rooster tail in his hair. I’m not prepared to cross the line from daughter to caretaker.

“Right behind you.” I’d do anything for him, but I hope it’s many more years before we’re forced to reverse the roles of parent and child. I’ve learned how hard that is while watching my father struggle to make decisions for his mother.

My once quick-witted, fun-loving Grandma Judy is now a ghost of her former self. As painful as that is, Daddy can’t talk to anyone about it. If the media gets clued in to the fact that we’ve moved her to a facility, especially an upscale one on a lovely estate not ten miles from here, it’ll be a lose-lose situation, politically speaking. Given the burgeoning scandal over a series of wrongful death and abuse cases involving corporate-owned eldercare facilities in our state, Daddy’s political enemies would either point out that only those with money can afford premium care or they’d accuse my father of warehousing his mom because he is a coldhearted lout who cares nothing for the elderly. They’d say that he’ll happily turn a blind eye toward the needs of the helpless if it profits his friends and campaign contributors.

The reality is that his decisions for Grandma Judy are in no way political. We’re just like other families. Every available avenue is paved with guilt, lined with pain, and pockmarked with shame. We’re embarrassed for Grandma Judy. We’re afraid for her. We’re heartsick about where this cruel descent into dementia might end. Before we moved her to the nursing home, my grandmother escaped from her caretaker and her household staff. She called a cab and vanished for an entire day only to finally be found wandering at a business complex that was once her favorite shopping mall. How she managed this when she can’t remember our names is a mystery.

I’m wearing one of her favorite pieces of jewelry this morning. I’m dimly aware of it on my wrist as I slide out the limo door. I pretend I’ve selected the dragonfly bracelet in her honor, but really it’s there as a silent reminder that Stafford women do what must be done, even when they don’t want to. The location of this morning’s event makes me uncomfortable. I’ve never liked nursing homes.

It’s just a meet-and-greet, I tell myself. The press is here to cover the event, not to ask questions. We’ll shake hands, tour the building, join the residents for the birthday celebration of a woman who is turning one hundred. Her husband is ninety-nine. Quite a feat.

Inside, the corridor smells as if someone has turned my sister’s triplets loose with cans of spray sanitizer. The scent of artificial jasmine fills the air. Leslie sniffs, then offers a nod of approval as she, a photographer, and several interns and aides flank us. We’re without bodyguards for this appearance. No doubt they’ve gone ahead to prepare for this afternoon’s town hall forum. Over the years, my father has received death threats from fringe groups and minutemen militias, as well as any number of crackpots claiming to be snipers, bioterrorists, and kidnappers. He seldom takes these threats seriously, but his security people do.