Brett was downstairs in the living room, smoking a cigarette. ‘Can’t do a goddam thing with him. He’s impenetrable.’
‘Well – now you see. You mean you talked about the rest home?’
‘I certainly did. I can imagine it’s quite nice, from what you wrote. He just stares at me and says he doesn’t want to go anywhere. How about getting someone in during the hours you’re away at work? And I’ll pay for it. That’s the least I can do. Matter of fact, George could afford it.’
Edith had thought of this. But who, these days? ‘I’m not sure I want just anybody prowling around my house five hours a day, Brett. Whom can you trust these days?’
‘Oh, listen —’
‘George has to have a bedpan a few times a week. If you think that’s any fun, Brett, if you think you’re going to get the average teen-aged babysitter to take care of that, you’re mistaken.’
‘Then we’ll get a nurse.’
‘That’ll cost a fortune.’ She laughed. ‘I can hear George balking at the price already!’
‘Too bad!’
‘Let’s have a drink at the Quickmans’ and we’ll talk about it later, all right?’
So they went next door to the Quickmans’, where Frances greeted them warmly. Ben came in from the garden, his hands too dirty just then for him to shake Brett’s hand, because he had been cleaning the power motor before putting it away for the winter.
‘Great to see you, Brett! How’s city life?’ Ben asked.
Edith had a bloody Mary. Then she heard Brett saying to the Quickmans that he had to catch a train around 5 p.m. at the latest to get back to New York.
‘My senior editor’s birthday,’ Brett said with a glance at Edith. ‘Dinner party, and I simply can’t miss it, much as I’d like to miss it.’
Edith felt a disappointment that she at once tried to conceal by a pleasant expression. After all, as far as the Quickmans were concerned, Brett might have told her earlier that he couldn’t stay the evening. Brett and the Quickmans talked local news, how was Stan the pharmacist, how was the Brandywine Inn doing under its new management. The conversation was rolling along, but because time was so short, Edith suggested that they go back to the house.
‘Cliffie’s due soon. I didn’t leave him a note about where we were,’ Edith said. She finished her second drink quickly, and thanked Frances and Ben.
It was 1.20 p.m. Cliffie was in the living room. He had made himself what looked like a scotch on the rocks.
‘Hi, Dad!’ Cliffie said.
‘Well, hello! Beard again. Or still,’ said Brett. ‘What’re you doing these days? Bartending? – which bar, this one?’ Brett laughed a little.
‘What d’y’mean? I work at the Chop House – off and on. I work,’ Cliffie said on a defensive note.
Edith went into the kitchen to serve the lunch – smoked salmon on toast, then a good camembert to follow, and fruit salad for dessert. Brett didn’t like a big meal at noon. Brett and Cliffie drifted in to offer help, and Edith handed Brett the white wine from the fridge to open.
‘You don’t look in prime physical condition – for your age,’ Brett remarked to Cliffie. ‘Plain they don’t work you very hard at these places.’ The cork popped, and Brett set the wine on a coaster on the table.
‘Why when oy was your age,’ Cliffie began facetiously. ‘What’s the matter with my muscles?’ He flexed an arm, and felt a bulky biceps through his sweater.
‘Is that muscle hanging around your stomach there?’
Brett was freer with Cliffie, but Edith sensed a detachment also. After all, Brett was leaving the scene in a couple of hours, wouldn’t see Cliffie for weeks or months. Cliffie didn’t care about going to New York, wasn’t even lured by porn films on 42nd Street.
With her first glass of wine, Edith felt a warm glow. She was aware that the time was racing away, and tried not to waste a minute, and at the same time not to appear hurried. ‘What do you say,’ she began, ‘if we bundle George into the car and show him Sunset Pines, Brett? Round trip would take hardly more than an hour.’
‘Just a pine at sun-set,’ Cliffie sang, a hand at his breast. ‘Cough-cough! I’m not long for this world!’
Edith and Brett ignored him smoothly, out of old habit.
Brett seemed to consider the idea for a moment, and suddenly Edith, feeling what she had drunk, exploded in laughter. ‘You know, I heard the most awful story – I forgot who from, Gert, I think. A couple took their mother-in-law to an old folks’ home on pretext of taking her to visit an old friend, and just dumped her and ran away. Isn’t that horrible!’ Edith was still laughing.
‘Ha-ha! Hah-hee-ee!’ Cliffie adored the story and nearly rolled off his chair. ‘I like that, I really do!’
Brett gave his son a preoccupied glance. He had smiled only slightly at the story.
Brett was miles away from the problem, Edith realized. He was going to say he hadn’t time to get George ready and go to Sunset Pines. He was going to leave in a couple of hours, go back to New York, to Carol, to party tonight, then to bed with Carol. The awful reality, the present, welled up in Edith again, the bedpans, the filthy handkerchiefs. She could have screamed at Brett suddenly, but she said only, ‘Honestly, I can’t go on like this.’
‘Nobody can!’ Cliffie contributed. ‘George is a mess. I’ve seen it!’
‘But you don’t do anything about it, do you?’ Edith put in. ‘No, that job’s for me.’
‘Edith,’ Brett said soothingly.
‘Me? Why I —’
‘Cliffie! That’s enough!’ Brett showed his teeth.
Cliffie was a bit drunk, and knew his parents knew it. ‘All right, I’ll push off.’ He got up and left the table, went into the living room, but not out of the house.
Finally Brett said, ‘I’ll try it again – with George.’
‘If we just put on his overcoat and muffler and shoes, we could show him this place, which isn’t —’
‘I haven’t got time today,’ Brett said.
Just then, Cliffie was entering George’s room, where George lay asleep. Cliffie smiled, then broke into a wild grin as he looked around at the customary disorder of medicine bottles, glass of water for his teeth – empty now, because he’d put the lowers in for lunch – soiled teaspoons on the napkin-covered bedtable, bedpan (clean just now) on the floor by the radiator, a couple of books on the bed. Christ, things hadn’t changed in years!
‘Customary disorder!’ Cliffie said aloud, confident that George wasn’t going to awaken. ‘But old boy, you’re headin’ for the laist round-up, yuh know? Gettin’ the boot, old fellow, and maybe today.’ Cliffie leaned closer and whispered, ‘Wake up! Before it’s too late!’
Then abruptly Cliffie was tired of the game, disgusted and somehow ashamed of the old guy in bed, the pain in the ass who took up a room in the house and crapped in the white, blue-trimmed bedpan, the crap which his mother had to poke down the john. ‘Christ!’ Cliffie whispered. ‘I hope the hell you fuck off today! Why not? Why not?’ Cliffie’s eyes bulged, and he spat the words out. He would have loved to give George a good solid kick in the ribs before departing, his right foot even raised itself a little from the floor, but Cliffie knew that would be going too far. Furthermore, he knew he’d better leave before his parents came up for Brett to say good-bye or some such muck, so Cliffie went out and down the stairs.
Cliffie turned right at the foot of the stairs into the hall which led back to his room, and almost at the same moment his parents came from the living room into the hall, talking, and started up the stairs. Cliffie followed them at a distance, and halfway up the stairs, stopped.
‘I knew he’d be asleep,’ Edith said. ‘George – Brett’s here!’
George came awake not in slight jerks as he usually did, but like a tired spirit hauling itself from another land.
‘Listen, George, I have to take off in about an hour,’ Brett said. ‘We’re talking again – still – about this residential apartment house not far
away from here.’
‘Oh, yes,’ said George.
‘You’ve got to see the situation from Edith’s point of view,’ Brett said. ‘And mine too. It’s not as if we were trying to stick you into some awful place where there’s no privacy and we’ll never come to see you. You’ll have an apartment of your own with your own things around you, like these pictures.’ Brett gestured to an oil landscape and a rather good English sporting print, which years ago they had taken from George’s possessions in storage in New York, at George’s request. ‘The place costs about two hundred dollars a week, but you can afford it.’
‘A week, did you say. Two – I haven’t got that.’ George was on one elbow now, and looked as if he intended to rally all his strength to stand up against Brett’s challenge.
On the stairway, Cliffie doubled up with mirth which he had to repress completely. Nothing less than a strait-jacket and a couple of strong men-in-white would get old George out! They should send for Bellevue! Cliffie was imagining regaling Mel with this. He and Mel broke up over the same things. Now his father was talking about seeing George’s accountant in New York.
‘Yes, Uncle George, I did go to see him. You mustn’t think I’m trying to cheat you – how could I? I just wanted to know how things stood, and he says you’re making money. If you paid two hundred dollars a week somewhere, you’d still be ahead of the game.’
‘Is that true?’ Edith said to Brett.
‘Dunno,’ Brett said, ‘but he sure as hell won’t feel any dent. He can’t take it with him, can he?’
‘I’ll pay more here, if that’s what it’s all about!’ George retorted with an air of affront, and he even looked near tears.
‘That is not what it’s all about, Uncle George!’ Brett went on. ‘It’s that Edith is going to take a part-time job. She won’t be here to make your lunch tray – or your tea or —’
Brett looked exhausted. His voice had gone hoarse.
‘Bye-bye, George,’ Brett said. And to Edith, ‘I’ve damned well got to shove off. I’ll write to him. Maybe that’ll help. Meanwhile get somebody —’ Brett was walking out of the room. ‘Get a real nurse. George can afford it. I’ll see that he pays it, and you can count on a real nurse not – not stealing stuff out of the house.’
The time had flown. It was ten past 4. They would have to hurry if they made the 5 o’clock train from Trenton, which Brett wanted to do, but Edith pulled him into her workroom for a minute to show him the last issue of the Bugle. It was a good issue, Edith had written an especially good editorial, she thought, on the habit of equating socialism with communism. Edith always sent Brett a copy of the Bugle, but somehow she had wanted him to hold this latest issue in his hands, if only for a moment. He hadn’t a minute to look at it, but he smiled and made a polite remark, and folded it to take with him.
‘Mind driving me to Trenton?’ Brett asked. ‘Otherwise I’ll take a taxi, for gosh sake.’
‘Of course I can drive you.’
They set out. Brett had taken two more books from the living room shelves. Edith found it hard to talk and drive, and they hardly talked at all until she saw the lights of Trenton, and entered the road to the railway station.
‘I have the feeling sometimes that something’s – sort of cracking in me,’ Edith said.
‘I’m sorry, really sorry. Believe me, my dear, if it’s money – I don’t want to see you even taking a part-time job. I can see you through. It’s my responsibility.’
‘Oh, a job might be good for me. It’s not money.’
‘Then it’s Cliffie.’
‘Oh, he hasn’t changed. Probably never will. And – as I’ve said, he kicks in fifteen or twenty dollars a week.’
‘Big deal.’
Edith negotiated a difficult crossing, and wished she had brought her cigarettes. They had arrived. Brett got out, and said he would buy his ticket on the train. There wasn’t time for Edith to park and then go with Brett to the train. She asked him for a cigarette. He gave her three. The car had a cigarette lighter.
‘What do you mean by cracking?’ Brett asked.
‘Mentally. Oh, there’s no time to talk now. Run.’
‘You have inner fortitude. Even you’ve said that. You have more than I have.’ His hand was hardly touching the car’s window-sill, and suddenly he dashed away. ‘I’ll write! Thanks, Edith!’
16
When Edith got home from Trenton that afternoon, she prepared George’s tea tray and took it in to him (he was asleep with a book in his hands, but wakened easily, and Edith fled), made instant coffee for herself, as they had drunk the whole pot at lunch, then went to her workroom and opened her diary. Cliffie was out somewhere. She wrote after the October date:
Quite a nice afternoon, visit from B. and drinks chez the Quickmans. C. home but not Debbie. C. looks with disapproval on his father’s personal life these days. ‘A man abandoning his wife,’ and all that. Considers B. selfish. One can see that B. is a bit ashamed of himself also. C. shows signs of being stronger in every way than B. He and D. are to be married Christmas week. Her parents
Here Edith paused for a moment’s thought. Debbie Bowden’s parents lived in a suburb of Princeton, and Edith pictured them in a house she had once visited near Princeton, a big two- or three-story house on generous grounds with garages, green-houses, handsome trees, an estate that had a gate with stone pillars. She was trying to see the parents more clearly (he might be a professor on sabbatical), when she heard a call from George.
It was a familiar muffled ‘Whomp! Whah! Uh – Edith!’ which sounded like remote thunder or maybe a faraway car in trouble. He needed the bedpan.
‘One minute, George!’ Edith got it from the floor by the side window.
‘All this up and down stuff today sort of – got me in the back again,’ George said.
Edith assumed he meant up and down on his elbow.
‘I said the bottle – please,’ George said on seeing the bedpan.
‘You said nothing,’ Edith said, setting the bedpan down again and getting from underneath the bed the gadget known as a male urinal which Cliffie was always suggesting that they use as a wine carafe on the table. This, Edith recalled, as she handed it to George and tactfully left the room, she had tried leaving on the bedtable shelf within George’s reach, but twice he’d split it, full, which was a hell of a lot more annoying than having to hand it to him and take it away again. ‘Finished?’ Edith called.
He wasn’t.
When she had at last flushed this away and rinsed the urinal and brought it back, she was nowhere near being able to imagine Debbie’s parents properly, so she left the sentence unfinished and put her diary away.
On the next Tuesday Edith received a letter from Brett dated Sunday. In the envelope besides Brett’s letter was a carbon copy of his letter to George, which had come in the same post and which Edith had delivered to George before opening her own. Brett’s letter to George eloquently pled for him to see his and Edith’s point of view. It made more sense, Brett said, for George to go to Sunset Pines than for them to get a five-hour-a-day nurse in to look after him.
While Edith was reading Brett’s letters in the living room, Cliffie came in. He had been out all night, and he looked tired and in need of a bath. Edith’s first thought was that the police might have picked him up for something – he’d had his car – but she said calmly, ‘Well, Cliffie. Where’ve you been?’
‘Mel’s. We were playing cards pretty late, so I thought I’d sleep there.’
Edith was relieved. ‘What’re your plans for today?’
‘Going to have a bath and sleep some more.’ Cliffie crossed the living room, coat over one shoulder, and disappeared into the dining room.
Edith heard the fridge door. She went up the stairs to speak with George. She was sure he had read the letter, because he had been awake when she brought it. She rapped on the partly open door. ‘George?’
‘Come in, Edith.’
‘I had a letter from Br
ett too,’ she said loudly and clearly. ‘So I know what he wrote to you.’
‘I don’t want to go to any blasted nursing home!’ George said. He had evidently gathered himself for a battle upon reading the letter. ‘If it comes to a nurse living here, I’ll pay for it!’
‘Living here? Where?’ Edith’s face was suddenly warm. ‘In my guestroom? I think not!’
‘All right, a part-time nurse. Afternoons.’
‘Quite frankly, I don’t want any stranger prowling around my house!’ Edith hated having to talk so loudly. She shut the door. ‘Just for instance, the Zylstras are coming Thanksgiving weekend. Do you think I want people standing over each other in the —’ She had been going to say the single bathroom they had. Granted there was a john downstairs. She seized the doorknob and opened the door.