Page 4 of After Happily Ever After
“Hi, Maggie. I know you’re here to see your dad, but can I ask a favor?”
“Of course,” I said.
“Mrs. Cryer needs someone to listen to her news report. Could you drop in on her?”
“No problem,” I said. I had become familiar with many of the residents. Mrs. Cryer was ninety-six and convinced she was Walter Cronkite. She liked to report the news every morning … the news from 1962.
Julia went back to work. As I walked down the long hall, the smell of bleach and cleanser permeated my nostrils. Dad had a private room at the end of the hall, with a hospital bed, a dresser, a well-worn navy club chair, and a side table. On the side table was a Victorian lamp, the one Mom kept bringing over to my house, even though I kept saying I didn’t want it. On the dresser were three pictures: one of Mom and Dad on their honeymoon, where Dad’s wearing a sombrero and Mom’s laughing hysterically; one of Jim and me and Gia in New York City; and one from my childhood of Jerry and me, where Jerry’s smirking at the camera. Mom thought she was only going to be able to have one child, so she told anyone who’d listen about her miracle baby boy. Jerry still smirks whenever you take a picture of him; he took that miracle thing too much to heart. Jerry and I were six years apart, and he was stubborn, meticulous, and a loner, which also explained why as an adult he could rarely maintain a relationship with a woman for more than a few months.
I kissed my fingers and touched the mezuzah that Mom had put up on Dad’s door. A mezuzah is a Jewish symbol that signifies God’s presence. Dad wasn’t religious, but he believed in traditions, so every home he’d lived in since he was born had one.
He was wearing charcoal gray sweatpants and a navy T-shirt that said,A GOOD LAWYER KNOWS THE LAW … A GREAT LAWYER KNOWS THE JUDGE. His silver hair was combed far enough back to reveal a very high forehead. A forehead I’d inherited, which was why I always wore bangs. Dad was sitting in his club chair intently focused on the television. Pat Sajak ofWheel of Fortunewas calling out letters, and a professorial-looking man was trying desperately to solve the puzzle. “A Blast from the Past,” I called out as I came up behind him, kissing him on the cheek.
“Show-off,” he said. When I was growing up, Dad and I watchedWheel of Fortunetogether almost every night. Mom nor Jerry ever tried to join us. Mom was usually in the back room sewing or reading a book, and Jerry was on his Atari. I’m not sure if that was their choice or ours. During the commercials, we’d talk about my classes, which boys I had crushes on, and whether Whitney Huston or Madonna had a better voice.
“How’s my favorite daughter?” he asked.
“I’m your only daughter.”
“That you know of.”
“Very funny.” He was slumped to one side of the chair, so I reached my hands behind his lower back and pulled him up so he sat straight. Or as straight as I could get him with him being dead weight. Dad had Parkinson’s disease, so sitting upright wasn’t easy. He gazed blankly into the distance while I pulled him up and didn’t say a word. I wondered if he was embarrassed that he couldn’t control his own body well.
“Hey, you want me to sneak you in a chili dog next time I come?” I asked. His face looked a little thinner than the last time I was here.
“Sure, but don’t tell your mother. She likes me to eat healthy.”
I promised to keep my mouth shut, which was easy because when I talked to my mother, she did most of the talking anyway. I told him that Julia had asked me to go see Mrs. Cryer for a few minutes.
“Mrs. Cryer’s loony,” Dad said. “In the dining room the other day, she told me the Boston Strangler was on the loose and headed for my room. I told her I’d just hit him with my walker, and she said I’d do more damage with an AK-47.” He laughed at his own joke, but the laugh caught in his throat, and he started coughing. I looked around the room for a cup of water, which I found on a side table, and held the straw up to his lips. In the last few months, his shaking had made it harder for him to hold a cup himself. I hated seeing my strong dad reduced to needing help with such a simple task.
Mom and Dad didn’t tell me at first that he’d been diagnosed with Parkinson’s, because they knew I’d worry. Then, a year ago, he started falling a lot, and one day when he fell in the kitchen, Mom couldn’t get him up by herself. She called Jerry, and Jerry called Jim and me. When we got to their house, they confessed how often Dad had been falling. We got them to agree that they needed help. I wanted them to hire someone to come into the house, but Dad refused. They couldn’t afford twenty-four-hour help, and Dad didn’t want my mother to be his caretaker. He saw what it had done to his own mother when she took care of his father for the last five years of his life. His mother ended up an angry, bitter woman who resented his father. Dad never wanted that for my mother, so we moved him into Brooklawn, and Mom spent almost every afternoon with him. I never asked her what it was like to sleep alone after all those years.
I kissed Dad on his cheek and told him I’d be back soon, although I didn’t get back to him as quickly as I wanted. After listening to Mrs. Cryer go on and on, I was cornered by another woman who needed help getting a knot out of her yarn so she could finish her great-granddaughter’s sweater. When I finally got the knot out, she pointed out another one. After twenty minutes of new knots popping up, I figured out that she was tangling them purposely so I would stay and talk to her. Finally, she fell asleep, and I snuck away. The number of forgotten seniors here made my heart ache and scared the hell out of me. Would I be left all alone in a facility someday? Would Gia ever come see me? When Dad moved to Brooklawn, I told Jim that if I got to the point of having to go into any type of nursing home, he should leave a large quantity of sleeping pills on the counter and go out for the day. He said if I could get to the counter by myself, I probably didn’t need a nursing home to begin with. I thanked him profusely for feeling my pain and knowing what I needed to hear.
When I finally got back to Dad’s room, a nurse was helping him steady himself on his walker so he could go to the dining room for lunch. I felt bad that I’d been away for so long, but Dad was happy to see me again and asked me to join him for lunch. He loved showing me off. I told the nurse I’d take over and made sure he was steady on his walker before we began a very slow progress toward the dining room. For every step I took, he shuffled two while I waited.
I spent an hour eating a lunch of baked cod amandine, sweet potatoes, and dry green beans and listening to a medley of the elderly telling me how adorable I was. Nothing lifts your spirits more than feeling as if you’re a teenager when you’re over forty. I settled Dad back in his room and told him I was going to head out.
“Your mom said you haven’t come by the house lately,” he said.
“I’ve been busy, but I’ll try to get over there.”
Dad was always the peacemaker with my mom and me, but he should’ve been more concerned about his relationship with Jerry. Dad had trouble connecting with him, so he put all his fatherly efforts into me, which didn’t help the situation. Mom felt bad, so she had tried to become both mother and father to Jerry.
A half hour later, I was turning down my block when I realized I didn’t want to go home. I didn’t want to do any more laundry. I didn’t want to wash any more dishes. Or walk the dog. Or cook dinner. Since Gia started her senior year, and would be leaving for college soon, I’d been struggling with how I was going to find a new purpose to my life. There were plenty of people who would’ve been happy tonothave to go to a job every day, but right now I wasn’t one of them. If I had a job, after she left, I’d have a place where I could still feel important. At forty-five, I was insecure, and I worried whether I’d ever get back into the work force, and at the same time, wondered if I really wanted to. My mixed-up thoughts depressed me. And then I remembered something that made my day even worse. I’d offered to volunteer at Gia’s school to set up for Winter Carnival. Oh, yay, I’d get to be with moms who lived to boss people around.
As I turned the car around and headed to her school, I drove past a Dunkin’ Donuts. If I were going to get through the rest of this day, I needed a sugar fix, and a donut would make me so much happier right now. Besides, I was already late, so what were a few more minutes? Ten minutes later, I walked out with a powdered sugar donut in my mouth and two glazed ones in a bag.
The first thing I saw when I walked into the gym was grown women standing in groups like high school cliques. In the center of the room were the high-powered moms who were doctors and lawyers. They were handing out clipboards to the rest of us peons. When Gia started kindergarten, I’d tried to make small talk with them, but they snubbed me when they found out I didn’t “work” for a living. They had no idea how hard I worked, and I resented them and felt inferior at the same time. The thought of spending the afternoon with these women made me so anxious that I was already sweating through my shirt.
My friend Heather was standing in a corner with her head bowed over her phone as if she were doing something very important. She hated these things as much as I did.
“Hey,” I said.
“Shh, I’ve been here ten minutes and they haven’t noticed me yet,” she said. I don’t know how they could have missed her. She had blond spiky hair and was wearing pink cowboy boots.
Amy, a five-foot-ten model-looking pediatrician, approached us. “Can you go help with the decorations?” she said to Heather, who shot me a look. Then she handed me a bunch of clipboards. “And you get to work on the silent auction.” She said this as if I’d won the lottery. As Heather and I went to do our slave labor, Amy returned to her friends to sip coffee.
