she had caught told her they were of a type: white, lean, hungry. What a crock of shit marriage was if you could live together for thirty years and never know each other. Unless, of course, her mother did know her father and accepted him anyway. And what did that unpleasant information tell her about her mother?
She gnawed on this during the forty-five minute drive south on the 5, the ugliest highway in southern California. Past the dying factories, the industrial areas zoned for smog, noise and waste.
What did that tell her about her mother? Nataly was nauseated. It was a combination of the drive, the diesel fumes, the traffic and the thought that her mother was a willing participant in this marriage now dead. She put her hand on the bottle of champagne. It was warming up in the sunlight coming in the front window. She moved it into the back seat under a serape while she kept her eye on the road.
Nataly parked in the driveway. Her 1967 VW bug dripped oil and grease. Her mother would just have to deal with it. She should just sell the damn house anyway. Hadn’t Celeste told them all that already? To cover all the debt her father had run up.
Nataly rang the doorbell. Her mother didn’t answer. Maybe she had gotten caught in the afternoon traffic. She let herself in, stepped into the entry, punched in the security code. The house felt still, cold and clammy without her mother in it. Nataly put the champagne into the refrigerator, one of those high-end, oversized glossy models that her mother would have to sell with the house. Nataly stepped over to the phone to check for messages when she heard footsteps overhead.
“Mom?” Nataly hung up the phone and went upstairs. “Hey, Mom, I rang the bell but you must have been in the bath—” Nataly stopped. It was not her mother upstairs. It was her dad. His hair dark and thick, his unlined face smooth and guileless. Strong chin, jaw, the same brown skin tone as her own. He was wearing a very expensive suit with a tailored shirt. Why was he dressed like that in her mother’s bedroom? Something was very wrong. The hair on the back of her neck stood up. Her lower intestines started gurgling.
“Sweetheart,” he said in that soothing maitre d’ voice, the voice he had used in restaurants for decades. “I didn’t know you’d be here. I was waiting for your mother.”
He’s stalking her! Nataly thought. She still wasn’t able to say anything, but found herself backing her way downstairs. She could smell the alcohol. She wondered if it were possible that bottles were still hidden around the house. His right hand was clenched around something. Oh my God, it’s got to be a weapon.
He staggered down the steps towards her. He said, “I was in La Verne, thinking about your mother, thinking of our lives together.” She continued back down the steps. “She doesn’t know what she means to me,” he said.
Nataly stood in the entryway by the front door. Her father fell onto a sofa in the living room. He put his feet on the coffee table.
“Get me a drink, sweetheart, would you? It’s up in our room. Your mother’s room. It was always her room even when I lived here.” She exhaled. He wasn’t here to stalk her mother. He was here to cry and wail and gnash his teeth.
She went upstairs and found the bedroom as neat and tidy as her mother would normally leave it. But it smelled of him. On the dresser was a bottle of vodka and glass filled with melting ice. She grabbed it all and was about to head back downstairs when something caught her eye.
Nataly sucked her breath in quick, then stepped into the bathroom. On the counter were ten empty pill bottles. One was aspirin. Nataly knew you could overdose on aspirin alone, and that it was slow and painful. She leaned closer. The first container label read Prozac, the second Valium. She stared in the mirror at the store brand bottle of vodka that she held and put it down.
She walked over to the phone in the bedroom and dialed 911. As she waited on the line, Nataly told herself she would not scream. She would not cry. She would get help. She would get help for her father. She heard him call up to her. “Do you remember when I drove the Mustang?”
Nataly gave the dispatch her name and the house’s phone number. She held on. She would not scream. The dispatch came back on the line and told her paramedics were on their way. She walked downstairs. There he lay, looking up at her as if she were a marvel.
“Do you remember all those Sunday brunches? You, your sisters, your mom coming after church. Every one of you, so different, so beautiful.”
“Dad, it’ll be okay. You’re gonna be okay. I promise.” Please God, agree.
“You know, it’s a beautiful life. I was happy the way this house was, but your mother wanted more. I was happy in our first home, where you three were so tiny, so sweet. She’s a hard woman, Nataly. Nothing was ever enough, ever. And then she turned you all against me. Where’s that drink?”
The room swirled black, gray and brown around her. Nataly promised herself she’d scream at the hospital after he was checked in. Not now. Her father closed his eyes and lay still. Christ, was he dead? Was she going to watch him die?
“Daddy?” she said.
He opened his eyes, focused them on her, then continued, “I love your mother. I thought she was gonna be here. What are you doing here? But I don’t regret anything. I’m just sorry she had to take it out on me the way she does—sounds like someone’s in trouble.”
The piercing screams of the ambulance announced that it had pulled up in front of her mother’s house. Nataly opened the door to two men in uniform and pointed at her father. The taller man asked her father questions. The third paramedic, a small Asian woman, pulled Nataly aside and said, “What do you think he took?” Nataly led the woman upstairs and pointed at the empty bottles.
“Did he tell you he took these?”
Nataly shook her head. She sped downstairs and watched the paramedics strap her father into the stretcher.
“Tell your mother she’s the only woman I ever loved.”
Nataly sat up front with the driver while the other three rode in the back with her father.
“Nice place,” the driver said. Nataly caught the appraising glance from behind his wire-framed glasses.
“That your husband back there?” he said. Nataly shook her head.
“Real nice area.” The driver swung onto the highway towards the hospital. “Boyfriend?” I will scream, Nataly thought.
The ambulance pulled up to the emergency entrance of Hogue Hospital. The noise of four people jerking open doors and shuttling her father from car to doorways jarred Nataly. She trailed the gurney, spoke to an abrupt and cross nurse while she checked her father in. He disappeared into the hospital.
Nataly found a bathroom and wept. She scooped water from the sink faucet and washed her face. Outside of the hospital, the air was clammy, misty, scented with salt. Nataly felt like she was encased in gray rust. So here we are, she thought. I have no idea where my mother is. And my father just washed down a shitload of pills with half a bottle of vodka.
People die everyday, she told herself. They die in car accidents, of long illnesses, at the hands of someone else. They die in their sleep. They die surrounded by their loved ones. They die alone. Oh God, was her father dying in there?
After twenty minutes alone, she realized she needed to find a phone. First she checked her messages. There was her mother’s voice, bright and cheerful, “Nat, I’m going to
