Cleopatra and Frankenstein(115)

“When someone is sick like your father has been sick,” she says, “it’s a lot of responsibility. His family have never been much help, as you know, and I don’t think it’s fair for the burden to fall on you and Levi.”

“Wait a minute,” I say, casting around the room. “Has Levi been here this whole time? I must need a stronger pair of glasses.”

“Fine, it’s a lot for you.”

“I appreciate that,” I say. “But I’m fine, Ma, really.”

“People who feel the need to say ‘I’m fine’ are never fine, sweetheart,” she says.

*

My father can’t talk, can’t move, can’t read or write, but he can hear. I have read him half of Moby-Dick, skipping some of the longer sections about whale anatomy because who has the time? In fact, we do. Time moves so slowly in this hospital, it is like we are given a bonus day with every day. There is a line in Shakespeare, I forget which play, where a character is described as having “a face as long as Sunday.” That’s what it’s like here. Every day is Sunday.

*

Jacky comes to visit me. Since I live at the hospital now, there is nowhere to entertain her but the hallway by the vending machines. We sit on two plastic chairs and smile at one another. The machines emit a low hum beside us like they’re meditating.

“Here you go, hon.” She hands me a pita sandwich from my favorite falafel spot in the city. “Eat. So, how’s your pops doing? How are you doing?”

“I’m fine. He’s …” I shrug.

“Did you know my dad died when I was in college?”

“I didn’t. I’m sorry.”

I stare at the bag without opening it.

“Brain aneurysm. Just dropped dead one day. Only fifty years old, poor fucker.”

“Do you miss him?”

Jacky shook her head and smiled. “He wasn’t around enough to miss. That was what I found the hardest. I wasn’t close to my dad, and then he died. End of story. At least while he was alive, there was this hope that one day that could change. And then that hope was gone, you know? That’s what I grieved, I guess.”

I nod. We listen to the low hum of the vending machines some more.

“My father left my mother for a lesbian,” I say.

Jacky nods without judgment.

“Eat,” she says.

I unwrap the silver foil and take a bite. It tastes like Frank. This was our favorite spot. Jacky regards me with her usual perspicacity.

“They split up, you know,” she says. “She went to Italy on a painting fellowship.”

I choke a little on my mouthful of falafel.

“Not that it’s of any interest to you, right?”

I eat in silence until Jacky claps her hands in exasperation. “Just call him,” she says. “Stop this pining, both of you.”

“He’s not pining for me.”

“And how would you know?”

“It’s too late for all that.”

“Pssh. Nothing’s too late when you’re young.”

“I’m thirty-seven. And a half.”

“Hon, that’s young.”

Inexplicably, my face becomes wet. Jacky pulls a tissue from her sleeve and hands it to me. She rubs my back and makes gentle shhhing noises. I marvel, once again, at how prepared Jacky is for all situations, big and small.

*

Stacy and I are doing my father’s circulation exercises, bending each of his legs at the knee, rolling his ankles, flexing his arms, circling his wrists. I perform each task with gentle gusto. The most dreaded word I’ve heard in here is bedsores.

“Have you seen a lot of people die?” I ask.

“Mm-hm,” she says.

“And does it make you sad?”

“Mm-hm.”

“What do you do not to feel sad?” I ask.

“I let myself feel sad.”

*

What do you give to a man who has everything?

Antibiotics.

*

Another dinner for two, another night of washing dishes.

“How come you never remarried?” I ask my mother.

“You know, there’s a study that says widowed women are the happiest demographic.”

“You’re not widowed. Yet.”

“I wanted to try something new.”

“Being a divorcée?”

“I think I’d call it being my own person.”

“Okay. So is the study right? Did you get to be happy?”

“Well, I got to be the talk of the synagogue for a good few years until the rabbi’s son came out of the closet. That was something.”

“Fuck those people,” I say.

“Watch it,” says my mother. “Those are your people.”

“You’re my people.”

She squeezes my hand.

“Hang the dish towels out to dry, or they’ll smell,” she says.

*

I switch to reading my father poetry. I read from the books I found on his old bookshelf—Rudyard Kipling, W. H. Auden, Wallace Stevens. And, because those are all dead white men, I slip him some from my bookshelf—Anne Sexton, Terrance Hayes, Tracy K. Smith. It’s never too late to expand your horizons, I figure.