he’s finding his own clothes, getting washed and generally taking care. He comes out for some ham and eggs. I give him his bearclaw, too. I turn on the music. He does the breakfast dishes and kitchen, using his card, while I do the sweeping and general picking up. With only the two of us there’s practically nothing to do. I scrub out the bathroom sink and tub with Ajax, then scour the toilet bowl.
I show Dad how to put his dirty underwear, shirts and socks in the bathroom hamper and where to hang his slacks. He even learns how to look in that bottom drawer for his sweaters.
The next trip to the hospital, he directs me all the way. He’s beginning to enjoy his newfound capacity to participate. He even asks questions about what it’s like living in Paris and how Jacky’s doing in school.
Mother’s groggy. I don’t know whether they’ve medicated her or if this is the normal aftermath of a heart attack. I have an appointment with her doctor, Dr Coe.
I leave Dad with Mom, and go downstairs to Coe’s office. He’s a young fellow, considerate and reasonable. He gives me a rundown on what’s happened to Mother; shows me cardiograms and points out significant details. Apparently an arteriosclerotic condition has caused an occlusion and insufficient blood is reaching her heart. It’s a question of how much damage was done and how well the heart can compensate. If it gets desperate, they might try a bypass, but at her age it isn’t recommended. He feels bed rest with a medical approach is best.
He reiterates how it’s all a dangerous and treacherous business.
I’m impressed with Coe but depressed about Mom’s condition. I go back to her room and she’s more awake. I tell her how I’ve talked to her doctor, seen all the cardiograms. She’s distinctly had a heart attack, there’s no way around it. I tell her she’ll be fine if she only follows the doctor’s advice. She just must relax, take it easy; she’s worked too hard all her life anyway.
Her eyes moisten; she’s working up her ‘fight back at all costs’ look.
‘But how can I relax, Jacky? How can I possibly take care of your father? You know how he is.’
‘Don’t worry. We’re working things out. Dad’ll be able to take over when you come home. He made his own bed this morning and washed the dishes. I’m teaching him to cook. He’s watering the garden and keeping the lawn up. It’ll all work out fine.’
Now she’s crying, crying mad.
‘Don’t tell me. You’ll go back to your beatnik life and Joan’s too busy with her own family. King Kong, the big-shot wop, will never let her come over more than once a week. He won’t even let her phone me, even though I pay so she can phone free. I know, don’t kid me!’
I wait it out. Dad leans forward. He’s suffering seeing Mother cry; she doesn’t cry all that much.
‘Honest, Bette, you’ll see. I’m really trying; I’ll get on top of this. Don’t you worry; we’ll make out OK.’
Pause for three seconds.
‘How long do you think it’ll be before you come home, Bette?’
It’s not so much the question as the plaintive note in his voice. Mother shoots me one of the looks through tears.
‘Don’t worry, Dad! It’ll be a while yet. The doctor will tell us when she’s ready. It costs over two hundred dollars a day keeping Mom in this intensive care unit and they don’t hold people here any longer than they need to. When her heart’s settled down and is working better, they’ll move her to another part of the hospital, then home. We’ll set up our own private little hospital for her right there in the side bedroom.’
Mother’s crying again.
‘I’d rather be dead than live like this. You mean all my life I’m going to be a cripple, a burden to everybody? It’s not fair. It’s not fair this should happen to me of all people. I’ve always taken care of myself, exercised, eaten a balanced diet with vitamins; everything, and all for nothing. It’s not fair.’
This is so true. It’s never been any fun eating at our house. As kids, when we sat down to eat there’d be three vegetables with each meal. Not only that, we had to drink the pot liquor from those vegetables. I dreaded meals: string-bean juice, spinach juice, pea juice, carrot juice; we’d sit down and they’d be there, each in a separate glass. No matter what you did: salt, pepper, catsup; it all tasted like dishwater. Mother’d savor these juices as if they were the elixir of life; she was a big fan of Bernarr Macfadden. Dad never touched the stuff, and when Grandpop or Uncle Harry lived with us, they got off, too; but Joan and I were stuck.
Then, every morning, we had to slug down cod-liver oil. I think if old Bernarr said cow pee was good for you, vitamin P, she’d run around behind cows with a cup. When we complained too much about the codliver oil, she got a brand with mint in it, like oily chewing gum. She’d hide it in orange juice, fat, minty globules of oil floating on top.
Also there was brewer’s yeast. We had to take a slug of that every morning; the taste of rotted leaves and mold. This was supposed to have some other kind of vitamins in it. Mother knew about vitamins before they invented them. She ran her life, and ours, along the ‘live forever’ line. She was years ahead of her time. Now, with all the health food stores and health freaks, she’s actually more a hippy than I’ll ever be.
She’s right, it isn’t fair. She’ll never accept. I know. Right now, in her mind, she’s figuring some way to lick this heart attack. And it doesn’t involve lying around in bed; that’s for damned sure. I can see her inventing some crazy exercise for the heart. It’s wonderful she has that kind of gumption but this time it can do her in.
Dad and I get home in time for the soap operas. I go into the garden back room and collapse; the strain’s catching up with me. When I wake, I make more detailed lists for Dad. I break down a few jobs like cleaning the bathroom and defrosting the refrigerator.
When the soaps are over, Dad takes me out to his greenhouse. He’s a great one for starting plants from tiny cuttings, especially plants that don’t flower. He has an enormous variety of fancy, many-colored leaf plants. He has Popsicle sticks stuck beside each one with the Latin name, the date and place he found it.
It’s a genuine jungle. Dad’s always pinching cuttings of leaves or twigs from every interesting bush or plant he gets near. In Hawaii he must’ve snitched a hundred bits and pieces. He packed them in his suitcase with wet towels. I’m sure Mother wasn’t too enthusiastic but there’s no stopping him here. Then, somehow, he manages to grow plants from these tiny snips, sometimes only a leaf or a bit of stem.
He’s rigged a unique sprinkler system in the greenhouse to give a fine spray. It’s tied into a humidity gauge so it turns on automatically, keeping the place jungle fresh. It even smells like a jungle; you almost expect to hear parrots or monkeys screeching in the top branches of his creeping vines. Dad spends a fair part of his free time in the greenhouse. He’s more at home there than in the house.
Staking tomato plants, spindly, soft-haired, long-legged, easily bent or broken. Heavy with dark leaves, blossms and new rounding fruit. The strong green pungent smell surrounds me. I carefully lift and catch each sprawling branch, turning it gently to the warming sun, a joining of earth to sky.
In the outside garden, Dad has avocado trees, three different varieties, so they almost always have avocados. There’s a lemon tree and what he calls his fruit-salad tree. This is a peach tree but he’s
