Assisted Loving (10 page)

“What's up, Dad?”

“This is a little hard to say. It's just that your mother and I have noticed you didn't have a girlfriend in school this year.”

I put down what I was packing. The record ended. The room went silent.

“Yeah,” I say. “No big deal.”

“But I want you to know that if you like men, it's okay. All I'd ask of you is to be careful, and keep all options open in life. You mother and I love you no matter what.”

I stood there, hair recently cropped short, Fire Island–style, then I resumed folding a black T-shirt with my heart pounding. Did he really just say that? Where was it coming from? I'd had a girlfriend my whole senior year of high school, so why would he suspect anything just a year later? It was the 1970s, years before the country would grow comfortable with the word
gay
. And yet, he was fine about it. He knew, and with this one conversation, this man I thought was so imperceptive made my life much easier.

I now had nothing to hide, and a burden that could have gone on for years was gone.

“I imagine it must not be easy, Bobby,” he said. “But I know you'll figure it out.”

“Thanks, Dad,” I whispered. “I appreciate it.”

Then he patted my shoulder and left my room, and my life as an adult began.

Years later, when I was a struggling freelancer and had to move back home because I couldn't afford rent in the city, instead of discouraging me, he told me he admired me for doing what I wanted to do with my life. There was nothing I did that didn't make him proud. He recorded every one of my junior-high band concerts and played them back as if they were the Boston Pops. In my late thirties, I found myself during lonely summers back on Long Island playing trombone in a little community band in Sag Harbor. My parents would drive over on Tuesday nights to hear me play. I grumbled to them my whole childhood about my music lessons, but as a middle-aged man in that silly little band, in a silly little uniform, I was giving something back to them after all the lessons they'd paid for—their beloved, old-time popular music.
We weren't a great band. In fact, at times we were close to awful. But my parents looked so proud as they listened. There were so many little things I did that made them happy. They always made it so easy.

So how, I wondered as my train pulled into Penn Station, did I grow up to be such a judgmental snob?

S
ummer rolls along. Dad's right hip, which he is planning to have replaced if he can get clearance from his heart specialist, bothers him, but that doesn't keep him from getting around, zipping from one diversion to the other like an antic blue jay in a neighborhood full of birdfeeders. He's too amusement-oriented to sit still, yet he isn't as happy as he sounded over the winter in Palm Beach. He plays bridge at Great Neck's pool and at the senior center. He comes up with new duplicate partners for old chums, and writes countless letters to friends and relatives (all carbon copied for his files) about his new life alone in assisted living and his desire to get back to Florida. Not that he's suffering on Long Island. Great Neck, it seems to me, is a place where seniors are such an
important demographic that they can be almost militant. They rule the library, the community center, and the aisles of Waldbaum's. You see them everywhere, waiting for buses and trains into the city. Loitering at magazine racks and at Starbucks, where they grill the staff about the confusing terminology of contemporary coffee. They are all over the
Great Neck Record
, posing with authors at local readings, and they are on the sidewalks, using their walkers as something like snowplows to clear the way. And why not? When I get to my cane-waving years, I'm going to take full advantage of the entitlement that comes with frailty. And I'm not going to have any problem with not working either. But Dad's still lonely. So I visit as much as I can stand it. We take scenic drives to Port Washington and Sands Point.

I keep trying to come up with activities that we both enjoy.

Sometimes, when I'm busy, I coax him into the city. One evening, he tries out the train, and I meet him at Penn Station to take him to dinner. I want him to enjoy himself, and to see how manageable the city is without a car. It starts out on a happy note, as I shepherd him onto the E train without a problem. Our subway car isn't crowded, and it's clean and well air-conditioned. And, thankfully, there aren't any panhandlers coming through to give him cause for one of his anti-city tirades. But then, when we get out at Fifty-third Street—holy hell—the escalator isn't working. This has never happened to me before. My heart seizes. I have no idea where an elevator is. How am I going to get my father out of this subway station? I stand in a crowd, as subways come and go past
us, their overwhelming roar only adding to the anxiety. I am as lost as I've ever been. Are we going to have to walk up the longest nonmoving staircase in the city?

“I'm sorry, I don't know what else to do, Dad. Can you make it?”

“Bobby, let me ask you—what choice do I have?”

So the long climb begins. On a mercilessly unmoving escalator full of people rushing past us, he places a slightly arthritic hand on the rubber banister, lowers his head, and puts one beige vinyl loafer in front of the other. From behind him I notice a few crumbs stuck to the back of his khaki trousers. After ten steps, he's doing okay. After twenty, he's slowing way down. In fact, he has started sagging. The remaining strands of his fine white hair hang in his disgusted eyes. Pedestrians are passing on the left, checking to see if he's okay. Besides his hip problem, his heart is a worry. He's on many medications.

“I really don't think I can make it, Bobby,” he moans. “It's too much for me. I don't know why I let you talk me into coming into the city. Never again.”

I force myself to be solicitous, even as my temper flares.

“Rest right here for a while,” I say. “We don't have to go farther until you're ready.”

Ten more steps and he's grunting in a basso profundo. And in a gesture suitable for the most tragic of scenes at the Metropolitan Opera, he has slumped himself over on the railing to catch his breath. People are stopping and staring as they tromp past, looking at me in an accusatory manner.
How dare you make such an infirm old man take these stairs? What kind of son are you? Why isn't he in a cab or ambulance? Shame!

I'm concerned for him. But also aware I have to
show
concern for him.

“Are you okay, Dad? Do you want me to get an ambulance?”

“No, no,” he moans. “Just let me try to get through this nightmare.”

Even now I find myself judging him for being ridiculous, then hating myself for thinking this way. I'm actually worried. Isn't it just so typical that the one night Dad has taken up my suggestion to use mass transit, this goddamn escalator stops running? What are the chances of that? It's like what my grandfather used to say in Yiddish:
Mann tracht, Gott lacht. Man plans and God laughs.
I wonder if there's a special god who oversees boomer children and elder parents? Perhaps there's a patron saint of parentalism—Saint Irwin or Sidney—who determines the weather between fathers and sons like us, one day fair and mild, the other tempestuous and hostile.

We are only halfway up this dead subway escalator on this hot summer night. There are dozens of steps still ahead of us. It is a stairway as much to heaven as hell, and a clear picture, I realize, of what's to come with my old man. When I look up at the distressingly long climb, I can't help imagining my father is ascending up into the beyond. “Just give me a minute to rest,” he is gasping.

“Take all the time you want, no hurry,” I reply.

People walk past us, offering helping hands, offering to call the police for us. Nobody is annoyed at us for slowing them down. This is another instance when New Yorkers show their humanity, not their bile. I used to see this with my mother all the time in her last years. One day I was taking her to a doctor near Fifth Avenue. The cab
had pulled over, and she struggled to get herself on her feet. Halfway up, she'd sink backward into the cab again. The driver waited patiently, even though we were holding up traffic. “Okay, I surrender,” she finally said. “Help me up.”

I leaned down—one, two, three—and lifted her up. She whimpered. I grunted. Then I gave her my arm to hold as she worked to step onto the sidewalk. A curb had never looked so daunting. She was prone to falling, and any fall could be lethal. She waited, panting, as I paid the driver, who looked to be from Africa, maybe Haiti.

As he took the money, he said to me, “The grace of God.”

“Excuse me?” I said.

He nodded toward my mother. “You will receive the grace of God for being a good son to your mother,” he said.

“Oh,” I said. “Thank you.”

He was gone before I could give him an extra tip.

That was the moment I first realized that taking care of a parent in need is as much an opportunity as a responsibility, a chance to give back to the people who gave you so much. But that was then. This is now, several years later, and I'm thinking, Maybe not. What kind of son would shame his elderly father into coming into the city in the heat of summer and make him take the subway? What kind of son would make him walk up all these steps? He hates exerting himself. And just like those days when my mother was so incapable of getting anywhere, I feel so isolated and alone with him here, now, in the middle of a world that's moving so fast.

Eventually he makes it to the top, where he pants and
teeters to a bench and sits down with a gale-force sigh. I run to get him a bottle of Snapple.

“Peach,” he has the energy to call after me. “Or raspberry! Diet!”

We have survived the ordeal.

Later, he tells me, “I hate the city because it gets you in its grip and decides things for you. On Long Island in the car, I'm the one in control of my life.”

“Is that why you made such a scene at the subway station, Dad?”

“It's important to know your enemies, and New York is mine,” he says. “When you hate something so much, you have to say so. It's too hard to hold back.”

Unsettling as it is to consider, I'm pretty much the same way.

After dinner that night, Dad declares an end to all forays into Manhattan. And that's fine. I can visit him where he lives. I drive back and forth past Great Neck to the Hamptons, and also right past the cemetery on the Southern State Parkway where Mom is buried. Sometimes I stop in. Other times I wave as I speed past. “Hi, Mom!” I call.

This July Fourth weekend, I've been invited to stay at a friend's house in Bridgehampton. Another friend, a high-rolling Englishman, is giving a party in his cottage on an East Hampton dune. It's full of beautiful people. I talk to a famous actress and a famous actor, tell them about how I'm taking acting classes because I'm in a little show I've written. I shmooze an editor in chief. The party is full of desirable men my age. But I end up sitting alone in the dunes to watch the fireworks. “I don't care for all those colors,” I hear one self-appointed critic snipe. “Yeah, it's
a little much,” another sighs. “The champagne hues are more subtle.” Do I sound that tasteful and fussy? I hope not. In a head-spinning rush, I hit one party after the next—running sickness, I call it. And at the end of the weekend, I zip past Mom's cemetery, waving in her direction without slowing down. Then I pass right by Dad's Great Neck exit, feeling guilty, but wanting to get home. I have mail to open, calls to return, a column to start.

I'm not there long when my phone rings. I pick it up to hear a purring voice.

“Is this Bob Morris?”

“Speaking.”

“Hello, Bob. My name is Kitty Levin. I got your number from Joyce Lutz at the
Times
. She said to go ahead and call. I hope you don't mind.”

I don't actually know Joyce Lutz at the
Times
, but I know who she is. I'm just a freelance columnist after all, and she's a high-up executive married to a former top editor. If you get a call from a stranger dropping her name, you have to be polite.

“I'm a journalist, too,” Kitty Levin is telling me. “With the
East Side Gazette
. I cover society parties. I go to them all. I'm very persuasive at getting invitations. I have photos of myself with everyone from Dr. Ruth to Lena Horne.”

“That's great. Sounds like a fun gig,” I say.

Why is she calling me? I hope it's not what I think it is.

“Anyone who knows me, Bob, will tell you that I'm an extremely capable woman. Now I'll tell you the purpose of this call, and I hope you don't find this presumptuous, but I read that column you wrote on Father's Day about
your dad's dating life, and I wanted to know if he's still on the market. If he is, I would like his number.”

“Oh. So you're calling me to get to my dad?”

“That's right. I think we could be a match. I have a good sense of these things.”

“Just so I know, why do you think you'd be a match?”

“Well, I'm attractive, first of all, and amiable, and I really know how to
please
a man. I know how to make children love me, too. The only problem is I'm not young.”

I'm listening to this woman. She doesn't have a tacky accent. She sounds like she might even be attractive. She lives in the right zip code, and, although she's no prizewinning journalist, she sounds pretty clever. The problem is she sounds way too aggressive. The last thing I want is an overwhelming, high-strung personality with my father just as I'm starting to find him (shocking as it is) kind of amusing to be around.

“You know, it's nice you called,” I tell her. “But I think he's found someone.”

“What do you mean by ‘think'?”

“I mean, he's not actively dating anymore.”

“Are you sure? How do you know that?”

Oh, my God. Such desperation. What part of the word
no
does she not understand?

Then I take a moment to think about it. Maybe I'm being unsympathetic. I mean, the demographics are so cruelly stacked against her. The last Census reports 20.6 million women sixty-five and older and 14.4 million men. That's ten women for every seven men, odds more terrible than what my single female friends are facing in Manhattan. But whenever I hear the phrase “casserole widows”—referring to the kind of senior woman
who shows up at a man's doorstep right after a wife has died—I have to laugh. I shouldn't. One day I'm going to be an old man, too. Do I want people to call me a whiny old fruit or mutter behind my back if I'm moving too slowly at the airport? A study cited in the paper not long ago shows that one of the causes of frailty in the elderly is all the joking at their expense. It's not just the fault of the younger generation, who call lapses of memory “having a senior moment.” The elderly do it to each other. In a culture of political correctness, senior citizens are still a demographic wide open to every sort of ridicule.

The thing about this Kitty Levin on the phone is that she doesn't sound elderly at all. She sounds like a dynamo. Maybe that's the problem.

“So what do you say, Bob? Do you think your father could handle me?”

“Look,” I tell her. “Thanks for calling. Let me take your information.”

So she gives me her number, and I tell Dad about her, warning him she's pushy and doesn't sound right for him. But he goes and calls her anyway, and they have a nice chat. Then he calls me with a favor to ask. I'm right in the middle of a deadline.

“You want me to do
what
, Dad?”

“I want you to go meet her.”

“Why should I do that?”

“Because she tells me that she's drop-dead gorgeous, and I'd like to believe her, but as a lawyer I'm trained to be skeptical.”

“So now you want me to go on your dates
for
you?”

“Look, Bobby, she lives in the city, and I don't want to
drag her out to Great Neck if she's not up to snuff. I can't tell you how tired I am of taking duds to dinner.”

“So then forget about her, Dad, she's not worth it.”

“I suggested you could meet her Thursday morning at ten o'clock in front of that Gristedes at Eighty-sixth and Broadway. Will that work for you?”