Part 5 (1/2)

”How's it going?”

”Can't complain.”

”Okay. Good. Everything good with Beate?” What did I think? She would rob him and he would know and report it to me, in due time? She would, at not quite five feet tall and as big around, and sixty-five if she was a day, hurt him or seduce him?

”It's okay.” Sometimes he would tell me that Beate listened to the radio too loud or used too much ammonia on the kitchen floor or he'd found the lamb a little tough, and I would mention these things to her very delicately and she'd say, ”I take care of it.” No complaint was ever repeated. Andy referred to her as Mother Beate and he made a lot of jokes about the number of old men she had buried and their grateful children. (”That's how she got that Porsche and that house in Cap-Ferrat,” he said. ”G.o.d bless her.”) After about a year with Beate: ”Alvin,” I said.

”Alison. Alibaloo.”

”Dad? Are you all right?”

”Never better. Bea-how am I?”

I heard Beate talking in the background and my father chuckled and he said, ”There you go. I'm-how old am I, Bea?-there you go, I'm eighty-eight and holding my own. No pun intended.”

Beate got on the phone and told me that her own mother was dying in Poland and she had to fly home.

”Just for a week. I be back for Mr. Lovald. I go on a Sat.u.r.day, I be back on a Sunday.”

I asked if Beate had any thoughts about who would keep my father company, make his meals, drive him on his errands, do his laundry. ”Forget the laundry,” I said. ”It can pile up for a week. Who will do the other things,” I asked Beate, and there was a long, flat Polish silence.

”Fine,” I said. ”I'll be there Sat.u.r.day and we can do the ... handoff.”

Beate understood well enough what I meant and her voice brightened as we went back to her plans, which included dry-cleaning her raincoat, buying a pair of good boots, laying in a supply of frozen lamb chops and clean boxers for my father for a week, and bringing peanut b.u.t.ter to Ruda Slaska.

”Janek will take me to airport,” she said. ”Newark.”

My cab pulled up in front of the house at four o'clock. Beate showed me the eggs, the sliced American cheese, the rye bread, and the fourteen frozen lamb chops. She handed me the keys. She gestured toward my parents' bedroom.

”He naps,” she said. ”I see him Sunday. Seven days.” She held up seven fingers and then she picked up her suitcase and waved good-bye. As she stepped onto the porch, a car appeared, and my guess was that her cousin had parked up the street and was just waiting for my cab to leave.

Beate was out the door, and it would be just me and Alvin for the next seven days, unless I killed him, in which case I would spend at least half the week in jail. The house looked, somehow, more like my childhood home than it had for the last twenty years. Beate had found my mother's old spring slipcovers and covered the cigar-burned navy couch with pink and yellow chintz and she'd even found the yellow chintz pillows and the yellow-and-white-striped slipcover that went on my father's armchair. It was all aggressively and hopelessly cheerful, and I expected my mother to walk out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on a clean ap.r.o.n, and saying either, ”Who wants quiche?” which was a good day or, ”There's no reason to upset him,” which was not.

”Bea? Bea?” My father was yelling, pretty loudly.

I opened the door a crack. I had no wish to be in my parents' bedroom with my father, where he still slept on his side of the bed and where there was still, on my mother's nightstand, a box of tissues and a paperback.

”It's me, Dad. It's Alison. Beate'll be back in a week. I'm here in the meantime.”

”What?” he said and he sat up, patting his nightstand all over for his gla.s.ses, which were lying on the floor. I handed him his gla.s.ses.

”Thank you. You're a good kid,” he said.

His hair was going in four different directions and there were little scabs on his chest and the backs of his hands. He scratched a scab until it bled and he pressed his bleeding wrist against the sheet.

”Where's Bea?”

”She's gone to see her mother. In Poland. Her mother's not well,” I said, and I was trying not to yell because I knew that yelling did not help people understand you better.

”That's a shame,” he said. ”My mother died when I was nineteen and my father, I don't think he got over it. He became an old man overnight. You know what I mean?” I did know what he meant, of course, but since I had never heard my father mention his mother or his father or the emotional state of any living being, I was speechless.

”An old man overnight, Alison,” he said.

”I know what you mean,” I said. ”You want some lunch?”

I made two grilled cheese sandwiches and I wondered whether I should offer my father a beer, since on one hand, I had no idea who he was and in his altered state, alcohol might be bad for him, and on the other hand, what the h.e.l.l. My father and I had our sandwiches. (”Burn it,” he said. ”That's what they used to say in the diner. Put a farmer on the raft and burn it.” ”What diner?” I said, and my father said, not unkindly, ”Well, you're no Julia Child.”) And we drank our beers.

”Salud, amor, y dinero,” he said and clinked my bottle. ”Is everybody okay?”

”Sure,” I said. I didn't know who everybody was. He called Andy Fatso, he called Michael The Faigele, he called Jay Babe, the Blue Ox, and my mother had been dead for two years.

”I'll take a grilled cheese sandwich,” he said.

”Another? Okay.” Was this good? It could be good, an appet.i.te for life or something like that, or it could be that he didn't know if he'd eaten or not.

”Can't I get some lunch?” he said, and I made the sandwich, which he nibbled and then he said, ”I'm gonna take a little nap.” He stood up and waited for me to stand up.

I walked him to the bedroom and to his bed and he used my arm to swing himself into bed.

”Good kid,” he said, patting my face.

I called Jay and he said, ”You are too Julia Child,” and we exchanged I love yous and he said, ”Hurry home,” and I said I would.

I called my brother and told him that he might not want to miss the Second Coming of Alvin Lowald, in which our father had been s.n.a.t.c.hed by pod people who'd sent us a nice old man who thanked me and called me a good kid.

”Is this permanent?” Andy asked.

”I don't know. Maybe he'll be back to normal tomorrow.”

”Great. Back to the crypt. Does it seem like he's dying-is this pre-death niceness?”

I swore to him that our father did not seem to be dying, that he had done a good job on one and a half grilled cheese sandwiches and all of a Heineken and was now snoring loudly in his bed. Andy swore back that he would get on the redeye Thursday night, as soon as they were done casting a police drama in which none of the criminals or women could be more than five feet five, which was the height of this particular TV detective.

”Does he know you?” Andy said.

”I don't know. He looks glad to see me, so no. But he called me Alison, so yes.”

”See you Friday, unless he completely recovers, in which case you won't see me at all.”

”You better get me those earrings,” I said, and we hung up. I read my father's magazines until I fell asleep.

In my dream, it is pouring rain and I am driving our old Dodge Dart. My father's standing patiently on the steps of the old library, without a coat or an umbrella. He gets into the car and I have to help him with his seat belt. He clasps his wet hands in his lap. I want to drive him to his new apartment in the a.s.sisted living place, but he doesn't know the address and neither do I.

I'll just pop out here for directions, Daddy, I say, hoping that the two women I see standing under the green awning of a pretty restaurant will be knowledgeable and helpful and guide us to the a.s.sisted living place. They're not and they don't. One of the women says, Is that your father in the car? And I say, yes, that's why we're looking for his apartment, and she says she certainly never drove her father all over kingdom come in a G.o.dd.a.m.ned monsoon without even an address, and the other one says, What a harebrained scheme, and they sound, together, exactly like my father, as I've known him. I get back into the car and my father looks at me with hope and just a little anxiety.

Is everybody okay? he says.