toward her.
When a child turns out well, you often think that it’s just remarkably good luck, practically a miracle. So many things might have gone wrong and haven’t. At other times you take too much pride in having successfully launched a person separate from, yet somewhat like, yourself. A new and improved version: intense without the neurosis, self-confident without the solipsism. Ev and I have always been at peace with each other in Suzy’s company, perhaps because we were still so much in love when she was born. I felt safely flanked by the two of them as we rode up in the elevator to the Alzheimer’s unit.
Whenever I went there alone, the dread set in even before the ascent began. The place itself is attractive and well kept; my father was right, irrespective of his contempt, in calling it the “Cadillac” of nursing homes. Ev and I had looked into a few other facilities closer to our apartment before committing him there. They were all pretty shabby and drab in comparison, and that reek of urine and cafeteria cooking assailed us as soon as we walked in the front door. Yet the day we brought him to the Hebrew Home I was filled with misgiving. All I could think of was the distinguished person, the
personage,
my father had been in his prime, and how revolted he’d always been by the idea of institutional life.
Ev had put his arm around me and said, “Remember how you and Jer clung to each other the first day of preschool?” But I brushed off his embrace and the comparison; that was a beginning and this was an end. I tried to tell the nurse on duty about my father, while the aides undressed him and put him to bed, and she said, “Oh, honey, everyone here was somebody once.”
Despite the relative luxury of the Hebrew Home, and the comfort of having Ev and Suzy beside me, I felt that swooning aloneness as soon as the elevator doors opened onto my father’s floor and the noise reached my ears. There were fewer men than women in residence—we outlive them, a doubtful blessing—but their commanding baritones dominated the sopranos in that chorus of the damned. “Help!” they called. “Jesus!” “Shitfuck!” “Mama!” Or they simply let loose a yowling of misery beyond language, like the homeless man in Carl Schurz Park.
And I could always pick out my father’s voice, even from a distance. That day it was especially easy because he was shouting my name, over and over, and, feeling surprisingly lighthearted, I rushed ahead of Ev and Suzy to reach his room. He was in a wheelchair at the side of his tightly made bed, and he looked up sharply when I came in. “Alice!” he cried. “Where have you been?” The old impatience was evident, as if I were late for dinner again, and Faye was keeping the roast warm in the oven.
“Daddy,” I said breathlessly. “I’m sorry, the traffic, but here I am.”
His eyes were shiny from the drugs, but clear—he’d had cataract surgery on the left one a couple of months before—and I noticed that his hearing aid was in place. He tended to pull it out and toss it somewhere, under the bed or onto his lunch tray—it had already been retrieved from the kitchen twice. I didn’t blame him; I’d want to shut off the din of that unit, too. Now he tapped the device and it beeped, so I knew I didn’t have to check the battery. All of his senses were honed to receive the horror of his situation. And yet he seemed better, less frantic than the last time I was there. And he knew who I was.
Suzy and Ev came into the room, and she bent to kiss the top of his head, where the red hair had thinned and faded to a pinkish gray. “Hi, Poppy, darling,” she said. “How are you?” His face registered pleasure, and a low, humming sound came from his throat, something like purring. I didn’t know if he recognized her, or if he was merely enjoying the attentions of a fragrant young woman. Before I was born, he’d hoped for a son, preferably a son delivered with a stethoscope
When a child turns out well, you often think that it’s just remarkably good luck, practically a miracle. So many things might have gone wrong and haven’t. At other times you take too much pride in having successfully launched a person separate from, yet somewhat like, yourself. A new and improved version: intense without the neurosis, self-confident without the solipsism. Ev and I have always been at peace with each other in Suzy’s company, perhaps because we were still so much in love when she was born. I felt safely flanked by the two of them as we rode up in the elevator to the Alzheimer’s unit.
Whenever I went there alone, the dread set in even before the ascent began. The place itself is attractive and well kept; my father was right, irrespective of his contempt, in calling it the “Cadillac” of nursing homes. Ev and I had looked into a few other facilities closer to our apartment before committing him there. They were all pretty shabby and drab in comparison, and that reek of urine and cafeteria cooking assailed us as soon as we walked in the front door. Yet the day we brought him to the Hebrew Home I was filled with misgiving. All I could think of was the distinguished person, the
personage,
my father had been in his prime, and how revolted he’d always been by the idea of institutional life.
Ev had put his arm around me and said, “Remember how you and Jer clung to each other the first day of preschool?” But I brushed off his embrace and the comparison; that was a beginning and this was an end. I tried to tell the nurse on duty about my father, while the aides undressed him and put him to bed, and she said, “Oh, honey, everyone here was somebody once.”
Despite the relative luxury of the Hebrew Home, and the comfort of having Ev and Suzy beside me, I felt that swooning aloneness as soon as the elevator doors opened onto my father’s floor and the noise reached my ears. There were fewer men than women in residence—we outlive them, a doubtful blessing—but their commanding baritones dominated the sopranos in that chorus of the damned. “Help!” they called. “Jesus!” “Shitfuck!” “Mama!” Or they simply let loose a yowling of misery beyond language, like the homeless man in Carl Schurz Park.
And I could always pick out my father’s voice, even from a distance. That day it was especially easy because he was shouting my name, over and over, and, feeling surprisingly lighthearted, I rushed ahead of Ev and Suzy to reach his room. He was in a wheelchair at the side of his tightly made bed, and he looked up sharply when I came in. “Alice!” he cried. “Where have you been?” The old impatience was evident, as if I were late for dinner again, and Faye was keeping the roast warm in the oven.
“Daddy,” I said breathlessly. “I’m sorry, the traffic, but here I am.”
His eyes were shiny from the drugs, but clear—he’d had cataract surgery on the left one a couple of months before—and I noticed that his hearing aid was in place. He tended to pull it out and toss it somewhere, under the bed or onto his lunch tray—it had already been retrieved from the kitchen twice. I didn’t blame him; I’d want to shut off the din of that unit, too. Now he tapped the device and it beeped, so I knew I didn’t have to check the battery. All of his senses were honed to receive the horror of his situation. And yet he seemed better, less frantic than the last time I was there. And he knew who I was.
Suzy and Ev came into the room, and she bent to kiss the top of his head, where the red hair had thinned and faded to a pinkish gray. “Hi, Poppy, darling,” she said. “How are you?” His face registered pleasure, and a low, humming sound came from his throat, something like purring. I didn’t know if he recognized her, or if he was merely enjoying the attentions of a fragrant young woman. Before I was born, he’d hoped for a son, preferably a son delivered with a stethoscope
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