Two by Two

"I'm worried he might have the cancer."

  My mom never said simply "cancer." It was always the cancer. And the idea of the cancer terrified her. It had taken the lives of her parents as well her two older siblings. Since then, the cancer had become a regular topic of conversation with my mom, a bogeyman waiting to strike when it was least expected.

  "Why would you think he has cancer?"

  "Because the cancer makes it hard to breathe. That's the same thing that happened to my brother. First, the cancer takes your breath, and then it takes the rest of you."

  "Your brother smoked two packs of cigarettes a day."

  "But your dad doesn't. And the other day, he had trouble catching his breath."

  For the first time, I noticed the natural pinkness in her cheeks had faded.

  "Why didn't you tell me? What happened?"

  "I'm telling you now," she said. She drew a long breath. "On Thursday, after work, he was on the back porch. I was cooking dinner, and even though it was blazing hot outside, your father got it in his head to move the planter with the Japanese maple in it from one end of porch to the other, so it wouldn't get so much sun."

  "By himself?" There wasn't a chance I could shift the thing an inch. It must have weighed a few hundred pounds. Maybe more.

  "Of course," she answered, as if I was dumb to even ask. "And after he'd moved it, it took him a few minutes to catch his breath. He had to sit down and everything."

  "It's no wonder. Anyone would breathe hard after that."

  "Not your father."

  She had a point, I admitted. "How was he afterward?"

  "I just told you."

  "How long did it take him to get back to normal?"

  "I don't know. A couple of minutes maybe."

  "Did he have to lie down on the couch or anything like that?"

  "No. He acted like nothing was wrong with him at all. Got himself a beer in fact and put on the ball game."

  "Well, if he seemed fine..."

  "He needs to go to the doctor."

  "You know he doesn't like doctors."

  "That's why you need to tell him. He won't listen to me anymore. He's as stubborn as a drain clogged with gizzards and bacon grease, and he hasn't been to the doctor in years."

  "He probably won't listen to me either. Did you tell Marge to ask him?"

  "She told me that it was your turn."

  Thanks, Marge. "I'll talk to him, okay?"

  She nodded but by her distracted expression, I knew she was still thinking about the cancer.

  "Where's Vivian? Isn't she coming?"

  "It's just London and me this afternoon. Viv's running some errands."

  "Oh," my mom said. She knew what running errands meant. "Your dad should still be in the garage."

  Thankfully, the garage offered shade, lowering the temperature to something barely tolerable for a man like me, who was used to an air-conditioned office. My dad, on the other hand, probably didn't even notice, or if he did, wouldn't complain. The garage was his sanctuary, and as I entered, I marveled at how organized and cluttered it was at exactly the same time. Tools hung along the wall, boxes of wires and assorted gizmos I couldn't name, and a homemade workbench with drawers full of every kind of nail, screw, and bolt in existence. Engine parts, extension cords, garden equipment; it all had a place in my dad's world. I've always believed that my dad would have been most comfortable in the 1950s, or even as a pioneer.

  My dad was a large man, with broad shoulders, muscular arms, and a mermaid tattoo on his forearm, a remnant from his stint in the navy. During my childhood, he'd loomed like a giant. Though he was a plumber who'd worked for the same company for almost thirty years, it seemed like he could repair anything. Leaking windows or roofs, lawnmower engines, televisions, heat pumps; it didn't matter to him; he had an innate knowledge of exactly the part he'd need to get whatever was broken working perfectly again. He knew everything there was to know about cars--as long as they were built before everything was computerized--and spent his weekend afternoons tinkering on the 1974 Ford Mustang he had restored twenty years ago and still drove to work. In addition to the workbench, he'd built numerous things around the house: the back deck, the storage shed, a vanity for my mother, and the cabinets in our kitchen. He wore jeans and work boots no matter what the weather, and had a colorful style of profanity that emphasized verbs, not adjectives. It went without saying that he cared little for pop culture and had never seen a single minute of anything that could be considered reality TV. He expected dinner on the table promptly at six, after which he'd put on a ball game in the family room. On the weekends, he worked in the garden or in the garage in addition to taking care of the lawn. He wasn't a hugger, either. My dad shook hands, even with me, and I was always conscious of the calluses and strength in his grip.

  When I found him, he was half under the Mustang, with only his bottom half showing. Talking to my dad in the garage was often like talking to a poorly stored mannequin.

  "Hey, Dad."

  "Who's there?"

  In his midsixties, my dad had begun to lose his hearing.

  "It's me, Russ."

  "Russ? What the hell are you doing here?"

  "I thought I'd bring London over to say hi. She's inside with Mom and Marge and Liz."

  "Cute kid," he said. From my dad, that was about as gushy a compliment as he'd ever offer, even though he adored her. Truth was, he loved nothing better than to have London sit in his lap while he was watching a ball game.

  "Mom says you couldn't catch your breath the other day. She thinks you should see a doctor."

  "Your mom worries too much."

  "When was the last time you saw a doctor?"

  "I don't know. A year ago, maybe? He said I was fit as a fiddle."

  "Mom says it was longer than that."

  "Maybe it was..."

  I watched his hand pick through a series of wrenches by his hip and then vanish under the car. It was my cue to ease up, or at the very least change the subject. "What's up with the car?"

  "Small oil leak. Just trying to figure out why. I think the filter might be faulty."

  "You would know." I, on the other hand, wouldn't have been able to find the oil filter. We were different, my dad and me.

  "How's business?" he asked.

  "Slow," I admitted.

  "I figured it might be. Tough thing, starting your own business."

  "Do you have any advice?"

  "Nope. I'm still not even sure what it is that you do."

  "We've talked about this a hundred times. I come up with advertising campaigns, script commercials, and design print and digital ads."

  He finally rolled out from beneath the car, his hands and fingernails grease-stained.

  "Are you the one who does those car commercials? The ones where the guy is always yelling and screaming about the latest great deal?"

  "No." I'd answered this question before, too.

  "I hate those commercials. They're too loud. I use the mute button."

  It was one of the reasons I tried to talk dealership owners out of raising their voices--most viewers hit the mute button.

  "I know. You've told me."

  He slowly began to rise. Watching my dad get up was like watching a mountain forced upward by the collision of tectonic plates.

  "You said London was here?"

  "She's inside."

  "Vivian, too, I guess."

  "No. She had some things to do today."

  He continued to wipe his hands. "She doing women stuff?"

  I smiled. For my dad--an old-fashioned sexist at heart--women stuff described pretty much everything my mom did these days, from cooking and cleaning to clipping coupons and grocery shopping.

  "Yes. Women stuff."

  He nodded, thinking that made perfect sense, and I cleared my throat. "Did I tell you that Vivian's thinking of going back to work?"

  "Hmm."

  "It's not because we need the money. She's been talking about this for a while, you
know. With London starting school, I mean."

  "Hmm."

  "I think it will be good for her. Something easy, something part-time. She'd be bored otherwise."

  "Hmm."

  I hesitated. "What do you think?"

  "About what?"

  "Vivian thinking of going back to work. My new agency."

  He scratched at his ear, buying time. "Did you ever think that maybe you shouldn't have quit your job in the first place?"

  My dad, as much of a man's man that he was, wasn't a risk taker. For him, having a steady job and receiving a regular paycheck more than outweighed any potential reward of running his own business. Seven years ago, the former owner of the plumbing business had offered to let my dad buy it; my dad had passed on the offer, and the business was purchased by another, younger employee with entrepreneurial dreams.

  To be frank, I hadn't expected him to offer me much in the way of career advice. That, too, was outside my dad's comfort zone, but I didn't hold it against him. He and I had led different lives; where I'd gone to college, he'd graduated from high school and spent time on a destroyer in Vietnam. He'd married at nineteen and was a father by twenty-two; his parents had died in a car accident a year after that. He worked with his hands while I worked with my mind, and while his view of the world--black and white, good and bad--may have seemed simplistic to some, it also provided a road map for how a real man was supposed to lead his life. Get married. Love your wife and treat her with respect. Have children, and teach them the value of hard work. Do your job. Don't complain. Remember that family--unlike most of those people you might meet in life--will always be around. Fix what can be fixed or get rid of it. Be a good neighbor. Love your grandchildren. Do the right thing.

  Good rules. Actually, they were great rules and for the most part, they'd stayed intact throughout his life. One, however, had fallen by the wayside, and was no longer on his list. My dad had been raised Southern Baptist, and Marge and I had gone to services on both Wednesday evenings and Sundays throughout our youth. We'd gone to vacation Bible school every summer, and my parents never questioned whether or not to go to church. Like the other rules, it wasn't abandoned until soon after Marge told my parents that she was gay.

  I can only imagine how nervous Marge must have been. We'd been raised in a church that believed homosexuality was a sin, and my parents marched to the beat of that very same drummer; maybe even more so, because they were from a different generation. My dad ended up meeting with the pastor, a real fire-and-brimstone kind of guy. The pastor told my dad that Marge was choosing a life of sin if she surrendered to her nature, and that they should bring her in to pray, in the hope of finding God's grace.

  My dad was a lot of things--hard at times, gruff, profane--but he also loved his kids. He believed in his kids, and when Marge told him that she hadn't chosen a lifestyle--that she'd been born that way--he nodded once, told her that he loved her, and from that day onward, our family stopped attending services.

  There are a lot of people in the world, I think, who could learn a lot from my dad.

  "You look like crap," Marge said to me. We'd retreated to the back porch with a couple of cupcakes while Mom, Liz, and London continued to bake another batch. My dad was in the family room, enjoying the cupcakes while watching the Atlanta Braves, no doubt waiting for London to join him. She always called him Papa, which I thought was sort of cute.

  "You always know just what to say to make a guy feel great."

  "I'm being honest. You're pasty."

  "I'm tired."

  "Oh," she said. "My mistake. It's not like I know you, and can tell when you're lying. You're stressed."

  "A little."

  "New business not going well?"

  I shifted in my seat. "I guess I thought it would be a little easier to get clients. Or at least one client."

  "They'll come. You just need to give it time." When I didn't respond, she went on. "How's Vivian handling it?"

  "We don't really talk about it much."

  "Why not? She's your wife."

  "I don't want her to worry. I figure I'll talk to her when there's something good to tell her."

  "See? That's where you're wrong. Vivian should be the one person you can talk to about anything."

  "I guess."

  "You guess? You two really need to work on your communication skills. See a counselor or whatever."

  "Maybe we should schedule an appointment with Liz. Being that she's a therapist, I mean."

  "You couldn't afford her. You're not making any money."

  "That makes me feel a lot better."

  "Would you rather I blow smoke up the old back door?"

  "As delightful as that sounds, I'll pass."

  She laughed. "The point is, I've seen it happen over and over."

  "Seen what happen?"

  "The same mistakes people make when starting a business," she said, taking another bite. "Too much optimism on the revenue front and not enough pessimism when it comes to either business or household expenses. In your case, credit cards."

  "How would you know that?"

  "Hello? Vivian and her errands? The bill arriving in the middle of the month? This isn't the first time we've had this conversation."

  "The balance was a little high," I finally admitted.

  "Then take some advice from your sister with the CPA. Cancel it. Or at least put a limit on it."

  "I can't.

  "Why not?"

  "Because I told her that her life wasn't going to change."

  "Why on earth would you say something like that?"

  "Because there's no reason she should have to suffer."

  "You know how crazy that sounds, right? Shopping less is not equivalent to suffering. And besides, you're supposed to be partners, both of you on the same team, especially when things get tough."

  "We are on the same team. And I love her."

  "I know you love her. If anything, you love her too much."

  "There's no such thing."

  "Yeah, well... I'm just saying that she's not always the easiest person to be married to."

  "That's because she's a woman."

  "Do I have to remind you whom you're talking to?"

  I hesitated. "Do you think I made a mistake? By going out on my own?"

  "Don't start second-guessing yourself now. Unless you were willing to move halfway across the country, you didn't have a choice. And besides, I have the feeling that it's all going to work out for the better."

  It was exactly what I needed to hear. And yet as she said it, I couldn't help wishing that Vivian had said it, not my sister.

  "I take it the cooking classes are still going well?" I said to Liz half an hour later. For Christmas last year, I'd bought her a couple of classes at a place called the Chef's Dream, but she'd enjoyed it so much, she had continued on her own. By then, I was on my second cupcake. "These are great."

  "Those are more your mom's doing. We don't really do a lot of baking. Right now, we're learning French cuisine."

  "Like snails and frog legs?"

  "Among other things."

  "And you eat it?"

  "They're better than the cupcakes, believe it or not."

  "Have you talked Marge into going yet?"

  "No, but that's okay. And I enjoy having a bit of alone time. Besides, it's only one night a week. It's not that big of a deal."

  "Speaking of Marge, she thinks I'm a doormat."

  "She's just worried about you," Liz said. With long brown hair, oval eyes the color of coffee, and an easygoing demeanor, she was more the class secretary type than head cheerleader type, but I'd always thought that made her even more attractive. "She knows you're under a lot of pressure and she worries about you. How's Vivian these days?"

  "She's okay, but she's feeling the pressure, too. I just want her to be happy with me."

  "Hmmm."

  "That's it?"

  "What else am I supposed to say?'

  "I don't know. Challeng
e me? Give me advice?"

  "Why would I do that?"

  "Because, among other things, you're trained as a counselor."

  "You're not my patient. But even then, I'm not sure I could help."

  "Why not?"

  "Because counseling isn't about changing someone else. It's about trying to change yourself."

  On our way to the car, I held London's hand.

  "Don't tell Mommy I had two cupcakes, okay?"

  "Why?

  "Because it's not good for me and I don't want her to be sad."

  "Okay," she said. "I won't. I promise."

  "Thanks, sweetie."

  London and I returned at six to an empty house with a batch of vanilla cupcakes.

  When I texted Vivian, asking where she was, she replied Still have a couple of things to do--will be home in a little while. It felt annoyingly cryptic, but before I could text again, London was tugging on my sleeve and leading me toward the pink three-story Barbie Dreamhouse she'd stationed in the corner of the living room.

  London adored Barbie, was over the moon for Barbie. She had seven of them, two pink Barbie convertibles, and a plastic tub filled with more outfits than a fully stocked department store. That every doll had the same name seemed not to matter to London at all; what fascinated me even more was that every time Barbie moved from one room in the pink three-story Dreamhouse to another or changed activities, London believed that a wardrobe change was imperative. This occurred roughly every thirty-five seconds, and it went without saying was that the only thing that London enjoyed more than changing Barbie's wardrobe was having Dad do it for her.

  For the next hour and a half, I spent four full days changing Barbie's outfits, one right after the other.

  If that doesn't make sense, I have to admit that it didn't make much sense to me either. It probably has something to do with the theory of relativity--time being relative and all that--but London didn't seem to care whether I was bored or not as long as I kept the outfits a-changing. Nor did she seem to care whether I understood her reasoning as to the particular outfit she wanted. Somewhere around the three-day mark on that late afternoon, I remember reaching for a green pair of pants when London shook her head.

  "No, Daddy! I told you that she needs to wear yellow pants when she's in the kitchen."

  "Why?"

  "Because she's in the kitchen."

  Oh.

  Eventually, I heard Vivian's SUV pull into the drive. Unlike my Prius, it got horrible gas mileage, but it was large, safe, and Vivian had insisted she'd never drive a minivan, even though it was far more economical.