“Let’s hope Dad gets better,” I said.
Herman nodded. “Right, first things first. Did you see the resident yet?”
“No.”
He scowled. “He shoulda been here. Or one of the fellows at least.”
“What fella?” Sal asked, looking up nervously at Herman.
Cam gave me a hug, the flowers went around my back. “Rita, honey. How you holdin’ up? We woulda been here before, but Herman wanted to get flowers. So stupid, flowers.” He stepped back and tossed the stiff bouquet onto the coffee table but it rolled off the edge and onto the rug.
“Camille, what are you doin’ throwin’ the flowers around?” Herman said. He bent over with a grunt and retrieved the bouquet.
“Since when you care so much about flowers?”
Herman brushed off the mums. “They’re Vito’s flowers, not yours. Don’t throw them on the ground.”
“Vito don’t even like flowers,” Cam said.
“Get outta here, look in the shop window.” Herman’s voice rose. “Vito, he’s got a plant, right there in the window. A green plant.”
“Where?”
“In the window, you seen it. Under the pig.”
“Which pig?”
“The pig, the pig—there’s only one pig.”
Cam stepped back. “Vito don’t have no plant in the window.”
“You wanna bet? He’s got a plant right there in the window.”
“What is it with you tonight? Flowers and plants. What is it with you?” Cam said, but I was coming to understand what was with them. If they were old women, they would have wept. But they were old men, so they bickered.
“Bet me, Camille,” Herman said. “I need the money. I wanna go to the Deauville this winter like my brother.” He turned to me. “Doesn’t he, Rita? Doesn’t your father keep a plant in the window?”
“I don’t remember.”
Herman stamped his orthopedic shoe. “You remember. The front window. Underneath the pig. With the tail goes like a curlicue.”
“No,” Uncle Sal said, sinking slowly into a chair. “No plant.”
“See? No plant!” Cam said.
Herman shook his head. “What’s Sal know? He don’t know.”
But I was watching my uncle, who was muttering to himself. Cam heard it, too, and we exchanged a look. “What’d you say, Sallie?” Cam asked, bending over and putting a knobby hand on Sal’s shoulder.
“No plant,” he said again.
Cam patted him. “Okay, Sal, we got it. No plant. If you say there’s no plant, there’s no plant.”
Uncle Sal didn’t seem to hear. “In the window Vito got a sign about the fresh sausage homemade daily,” he said, counting on spindly fingers. “Then he got a picture of Rita at her college graduation, then he got a little stand-up calendar from the insurance company, then he got a sign about WE ACCEPT FOOD STAMPS, then he got a donkey made out of straw with a hat on his head. The hat is straw, too.” He reached five fingers, then began knitting and reknitting his hands. “And there’s no flies in the window ‘cause Vito don’t like that, when they have flies in the windowsills. It shows it’s not a clean shop, Vito says.”
Cam sank slowly into the chair next to Sal and put his arm around him.
“Pop used to say the same thing,” Sal said. “No flies.”
I realized then that Uncle Sal would surely die if my father did, like a domino effect, starting with LeVonne. One after the other in tragic succession.
Only Herman had any heart left. “Still no resident? Who’s running this place, nuns?” He turned on his heel and locomoted to the receptionist in a wobbly beeline. The three of us watched numbly as he barked at her, then hustled back. “This place stinks,” he said, even before he reached us. “They don’t tell you nothing here. Now Hahnemann University, that’s a hospital. My nephew, Cheryl’s boy, he works there, in the OB. They shoulda brought him there.”
“It’s not the same thing,” Cam said, but Herman planted his hands on his black leather belt.
“I know that. You think I don’t know that?” Herman looked at me and clapped his rough hands together. “Now. Rita. Did you eat dinner?”
“I’m not hungry.”
“You should eat something. I could get you from the cafeteria.”
“No thanks. I’m not hungry.”
“They must have a cafeteria in this dump.” Herman squinted around him as if a cafeteria would materialize. “They should have a sign. Right here, where you need it. At Hahnemann, they got signs everywhere.”
“It’s okay, I’m not hungry.”
“Everywhere you look, there’s signs. If you’re sittin’ in the waiting room and you decide you want a cup a’ coffee, you get up and go. For Essie’s gall bladder, we were in the cafeteria all the time.”
“She’s not hungry, Herm,” Cam said.
“The portions were big, too,” Herman continued. “They gave you a lot. This place is for the birds.” He took off toward the receptionist again.
Cam laughed softly. “She’s gonna kill him. Christ, I’m gonna kill him.”
I couldn’t laugh. I didn’t want to think about anybody killing anybody. I sat down on the other side of Uncle Sal and rubbed his back through his thin, short-sleeved shirt.
“Vito’s gonna be okay,” Sal said, still playing with his fingers. I watched him make a rickety church and steeple, then look inside.
“Hey, Rita, isn’t that your … boyfriend?” Cam asked.
“What?” I looked up. Standing at the reception desk was Paul, the last person I needed right now. He was shaking Herman’s hand, then Herman pointed at us. Paul turned and his eyes met mine behind his glasses. He looked upset, concerned, and guilty as hell. Good.
“Is that him?” Cam said again, standing up and hitching up his Sansabelts with a thumb. “I haven’t seen him in years. Full head of hair, still. He’s a good-lookin’ man.”
For a cheater. Paul walked toward us, wearing a striped dress shirt, a charcoal sports jacket, and loafers without socks. He’d evidently had time to change; I hoped he’d had time to move the fuck out.
“It’s Paul!” Sal said, rising to his feet unsteadily. He had only seen Paul a handful of times, but the tone of his voice told me he was grasping for all the family he had.
“Rita,” Paul said, “how are you? Dad and Mom send their love.” He grabbed me and hugged me, but I stepped out of his embrace stiffly.
“How did you know—”
“The police called the house. Your father had your name in his wallet for an emergency.”
“Hey, how you doin’!” Sal said, then practically threw himself at a somewhat startled Paul.
“Sal, it’s all right. Sal,” Cam said. He put his hand on Sal’s shoulder and gently pried him free.
“But he looks so good,” Sal said. “So good.”
Cam looped his arm around Sal’s shoulder, half in embrace, half in restraint. “That’s because he’s young, Sal. It’s easy to look good when you’re young. You can drive at night, the whole thing.”
“Good to see you, Cam,” Paul said, nodding at him. I was surprised that he knew his name. “Sorry we had to meet again under these circumstances.”
Herman walked over and he, Cam, and Paul began to make small talk. I felt myself withdraw. They batted around the crime rate and the judicial system; it reminded me of the conversation at wakes, where everyone lapses into group denial. I understood why it was happening now; there was nothing any of us could do for my father and we were all aching inside. Except for Paul. He didn’t belong here. I felt my anger rising, and before I could think about it I snatched a fistful of his jacket.
“Paul, could I speak to you alone?” I said. Without waiting for an answer, I yanked him out of the waiting room, past a surprised trio of my favorite senior citizens, and to the elevator. “Go,” I said, and punched the down button.
“Rita—”
“Get out. I don’t want you here.”
“But I
want to be here.”
“Bullshit. You don’t even know my father. You never bothered.”
“You never let me. There was never time.”
“Great. Here we go again.” The receptionist looked sideways at us and I lowered my voice. “Do you think this is helping me, to fight? Do you think I need this right now?”
“I think you need someone right now.”
“Maybe so, but not you. Now go.”
“Rita, let me stay.”
The elevator arrived and the doors slid open. “Your stuff is packed and out of the house, I assume.”
He sighed loudly. “Fine. You win. You’re right, I’m not doing you any good right now.”
“You catch on quick. Did you move out or not?”
He fished in his jacket pocket and handed me a piece of paper as he stepped into the elevator. “I checked in at the Wayne Hotel. This is the number. If you need anything, just call.”
I read the numbers, in architect’s lettering, neat and boxy. I used to love his script. “Do me a favor. Hold your breath.”
He stepped into the elevator. “I love you, Rita.”
As the elevator doors rattled closed, I tossed the paper into the waste can and walked back to the waiting room. But before I walked in, I stopped without really knowing why. Herman was sitting uneasily next to Sal and Cam, and the three of them made a hunchy little row. They reminded me of a border of impatiens in autumn, clumped together and low-lying, petals curling and leaves cracking in the first cold snap. Their season was almost over. I felt a constriction in my chest.
I would lose them all, one by one. Lose their worn faces and their stuffy smells and their medical sagas. Their stories of stoopball and boxball, with spaldeens of pink rubber; their idolatry of Rita Hayworth and Stan Kenton; their wonder at the opening of Horn & Hardart’s automat downtown and their joy at the ending of the war on VJ Day. All the times they talked about at the card table—the times of their lives—vividly recalled and retold as the betting and the storytelling went round and round.
I’d spent a lifetime with these men. How could I lose them?
How could I lose my father?
15
By the next morning my father’s condition had a name: stable. An intern told us the news and Cam was so happy he group-hugged everybody with one arm, shoving Mickey awkwardly into Herman’s wife, Essie, and leaving Herman’s yarmulke hanging by a bobby pin. David Moscow and his lover embraced openly and only a hospital orderly looked askance. Sal wept for joy and so did I, reveling in the resonance of the word. In the assurance of it, the reliability. Stable.
I sent them all home to shower and breakfast, and as they shuffled down the hospital corridor, clapping each other on their thin backs, they looked like an old-timers’ baseball team that had just won a championship. I realized that I’d never seen them so happy in victory, though I had seen them win at cards many times. Then it struck me; a win at poker isn’t the same. A good night for you is a lousy night for your friends. It’d never occurred to me before.
I walked to the window that looked on to my father’s room in intensive care and watched his chest heave softly under the thin hospital blanket. He hadn’t come out of anesthesia, but he was breathing on his own. His face was a deathly white, his strong features oddly slack. A greenish tube ran underneath his nostrils, another one snaked under his bedclothes. Still, I counted his breaths, one shallow huff after another, twenty-seven so far, and thought the scene was the most beautiful I had ever seen. Except that his feet were uncovered again.
I checked my watch. Eight-fifteen. I would have to wait another forty-five minutes to go into his room under their stupid rules. “Tamika,” I called to the young black nurse at the desk.
“What?”
“Let me go in. It’s his feet.”
“Again?”
“Please. It’ll just take a minute. It’s cold in there.”
She shook her head. “We been through this, Rita.”
“Come on, I promise I won’t touch him or do anything that might speed up the healing process. Please?”
She sighed heavily. Tamika and I had dueled at dawn because she wouldn’t let me and Sal stay in my father’s room for more than the allotted fifteen minutes, and wouldn’t let Herman and Cam in at all because they weren’t immediate family. I’d threatened litigation against the hospital and Tamika had called me a bitch. You could see it had pained her to say this, she wore a thin gold crucifix and a frank expression that told me the truth: I was a bitch. So I had apologized, with the vague sense I was becoming a better person for it, despite my best efforts to the contrary.
“I’ll just take a minute,” I said to her in a conciliatory way. “I’ll cover his feet and go.”
Tamika got up. “I’ll go in.”
“Thanks a lot.” I was learning to compromise. I was so proud of me. “I really appreciate it.”
“Hmph,” she said, apparently not trusting the metamorphosis in my inner lawyer. She sailed by me into my father’s room, covered his feet efficiently, and walked out again. “Okay?”
I would have patted his foot, but never mind. “Terrific. Thanks a lot.”
She returned to her station without another word.
I returned to watching my father through the window and counting. I lost count at thirty-five, when I noticed his breathing growing deeper. His chest was going up higher in the air. At first I couldn’t believe it, but then I measured it by the windowsill behind him. His chest was going past the ledge when he inhaled. I called this to Tamika’s attention as politely as possible and she seemed pleased, though she declined to let me go into his room for confirmation. Equally politely.
I checked my watch. Eight-fifty-five.
When I looked up, my father’s eyes were open.
The skin of his hand felt soft and papery, but his fingers closed around mine with a strength that was surprising. His eyes were drowsy slits of brown, and without his glasses to obstruct my view, I could see the gray at the edges of his irises, edging in like stormclouds. Cataracts. Just like his father.
“Dad, remember Grandpop?”
He nodded, his eyes closed.
“Remember what he called his cataracts?”
He smiled weakly.
“Cadillacs. He had Cadillacs in his eyes.” I laughed.
“My father, his English wasn’t that bad,” he said, his voice raspy, untested.
“Not that bad? Dad, come on, his English was nonexistent.”
“He knew Cinemascope.”
“True, he could say Cinemascope.” My grandfather had learned the word from watching old movies. The same word, in white letters that got blockier as they stretched to the edge of the screen. He’d marveled at the word, all the time on the TV, and therefore very important. “Cinemascope. It’s a good word. Not exactly a useful word, but a good word.”
He smiled with his eyes closed.
“How do you feel, Dad?”
“You asked me already.”
“So?”
“About fifty times.”
“Okay, so I won’t ask you anymore, Mr. Fresh.”
His smile faded and he squeezed my hand. He didn’t say anything for a long time, but the force of his grip showed me he hadn’t fallen back asleep. Finally, he said, his eyes still closed, “LeVonne.”
It cut inside. I didn’t know what to say, how to tell him. I decided to say the words. “He’s dead.”
He turned away. “I know. I was there.”
God. I didn’t say anything, just held on to his hand.
“He was at the counter. I was in back, in the kitchen. I heard shouting.”
“I know, Dad.”
“He tried to give him the money, but he killed him anyway. I always told him, give ’em the money. I thought that would save him.”
There had been twenty-seven dollars in the cash register, the police had said.
“So I called to him, I yelled, and I come out with the spatula. He yells out, tells m
e not to come, and then this white kid, he shoots him. One shot. Two shots. I’m out, but I got nuthin’ but the spatula.” His voice grew fainter, almost to a whisper. “A spatula, Rita. Then the kid, he shot me. Just like that.”
“I know, Dad. I know.” I rubbed his hand and arm.
He didn’t say anything for a minute and I knew he was trying not to cry. “LeVonne, he didn’t call me in. He wanted to save my life, Rita.”
“Dad, wait. You don’t know that.”
He turned and his watery gaze pierced into mine. “I know that boy. He didn’t call me in the front for a reason.”
“But what could you have done if he called you?”
His mouth opened slightly, his lips dry. It seemed to confound him. “I coulda done something. I coulda been there.”
“It’s all right, Dad.”
He raked a hand over his bald head and the IV tube rustled. He looked confused suddenly. Disoriented. “I couldn’t do anything for him. I wanted to help him. The blood. I couldn’t.”
“Nobody could, Dad. Nobody could save him.”
“I tried. I couldn’t do a goddamn thing. I got to him, I made it to him. Know what he called me, Rita?”
“What?”
His hand was atop his head like a madman. His eyes filled with tears. “Dad,” he said, his voice cracking. “He called me ‘Dad.’”
Then his sobs broke free.
16
I got out of the shower and answered the telephone dripping wet, because I was worried it was the hospital calling. It wasn’t.
“It’s Jake,” said the voice.
“Who?”
“Tobin? Remember? Your partner?”
“Oh, yeah. The ponytail.”
He laughed. “I hear you need me.”
“Why? I got my own ponytail.”
“You’re walking into a preliminary hearing, aren’t you?”
Christ. The furthest thing from my mind. I patted my face with a corner of my towel. “I guess.”
“Criminal homicide ring a bell?”
“Sounds familiar.”
“Murder of the first degree? Intentionally causing the death of another human being? And a total fox at that?”