They May Not Mean To, But They Do(3)

The phone was handed to Aaron. “Never a dull moment.”

“Daddy, are you all right?”

“Your mother gave me a cracker.”

“I’ll be home soon,” Molly said. She repeated it when her mother got back on the phone. “I’ll be home soon, Mom. I arranged an extra week off in November.”

“November?” A pause. “Oh.” Then, “Wonderful, Molly! And how are your students this semester?”

Molly heard the strain in her mother’s voice and hurried through a rundown of some of the more interesting students. “Anyway, nothing to write home about.”

“Daddy’s having a hard time, Molly. He gets confused sometimes.”

“I know. But he does have dementia.”

“Don’t be disrespectful.”

Joy didn’t like the word “dementia.” “Alzheimer’s” was worse.

“Sorry,” Molly said. “I just meant, you know, it’s natural that he’d be confused and forget things.”

“Well, he doesn’t like it. He doesn’t like it one bit. And he doesn’t admit it. Which is tiring for me, I can tell you.”

“Maybe—”

“We can’t afford it.”

“Well, what about—”

“Absolutely not.”

“Not a home, exactly—”

“He has a home,” Joy said. “His home is here.”

*

Molly poured herself two fingers of bourbon, just as her father had taught her. No bourbon for him these days, just Ensure, many fingers of Ensure.

“I should be home,” she said to Freddie. “I’m a horrible daughter. I might as well shoot myself.”

Freddie thought, You are home, Molly.

“How many times can the doorman scrape him off the floor? At least she tips them at Christmas. I really have to go back. This is … it’s…”

“What about your brother?”

“What about my brother?”

Now they would have a fight.

“I don’t want to have a fight,” Freddie said.

“Then don’t mention my brother.”

“Ever?”

“See? You do want to have a fight.”

She went out to the garden, and Freddie followed. It was six o’clock and still hot, which was unusual where they lived, near the beach on the west side of Los Angeles. It had been an unusually hot summer, though. Molly brushed miniature pink petals off the chaise before sitting.

“Autumn leaves,” she said, examining one blossom on the tip of her finger. She smiled. “What a place we live in, what an amazing place.” She patted the cushion, motioned Freddie to sit beside her. “My brother is perfect,” she said.

Freddie laughed. Molly’s brother was off-limits. Absolutely, completely, utterly off-limits. She knew that. It was like criticizing Stalin in Moscow in 1939. Except her brother wasn’t Stalin. More like a Dostoevsky innocent.

Molly’s entire family, in fact, was off-limits. They were like a cult, one that did not accept disciples or converts. They had been through a lot as a family, it had drawn them together, but what family hadn’t been through a lot? Well, every family has its myth, she supposed. The myth Freddie’s family told itself was one of freedom. Her sisters and brothers were scattered across the globe, all of them—with the exception of Freddie—too independent and too far away to notice that their father wrecked the car three times in six months, or at least too far away (one hoped not too independent) to do anything about it.

The Bergmans, on the other hand, were a clan, tight knit and suspicious of strangers. They were tribal and closed, bound by blood. They were one, the world the other. Freddie was used to them now, used to their insular ferocity. She didn’t often make the mistake of even implicit disapproval. There were worse things than loyalty and family love in this world. Sometimes she envied Molly her certainty, the way the atheist sometimes envies the believer.

“I know Daniel works very hard,” she said. “I know he’s incredibly busy. I love your brother, I think he’s wonderful to your parents, and to us. I didn’t mean anything, Molly. Really.”

She did mean something, that Daniel was a son not a daughter, and they both knew it, but it wasn’t his fault, and they both knew that, too.

“He can’t be there every second,” Molly said.

But neither could Molly, even if she was the daughter, Freddie thought, and the unspoken words hung between them.

“I could change my ticket, go to New York a week early. I could Skype my classes, right? I have to keep an eye on those two crazy old people. Check on their medications, clear up their bills, talk to the doctors, hire someone to come in, something. I have to do something.”

“They won’t let you hire anyone.”

“I know.”

“Maybe it’s really time to start thinking about—”

“I’m one hundred percent sure you’re not going to say what you’re about to say, because no one is sending my father anywhere, okay? He would hate it. He’d be so confused. So please don’t even mention it.”

“Okay.”

“Anyway, I already tried talking to Mom about it.”