Assisted Loving (5 page)

We end up coming up with something far tamer for the party, and pull up only a few minutes before it's to start. He hobbles with me across the Hilton parking lot in a blue blazer a little tight in front. The guests rolling in, a kind of march of senior soldiers, are in raw silk pastels, plus sizes, and sensible heels. One lady has jewelry in the same pale blue as her hair. Another has salmon nails that match her shoes and bag. Some are air-kissing each other as if they were allergic to lips. Mwah! The men are tan, white-haired, and slightly hunched, but with fiercely strong grips when they shake my hand. “Bobby! How are you? How's the writing coming? What's the news?”

I race to the bar for a vodka on the rocks. I need it. I'm completely ill at ease. This crowd, their questions, the memory of my mother hanging over us. Am I really going to get up in front of these people to sing?

My aunt Sylvia arrives in a deep green sweater dress and pearls, very dignified, as always. She's with Edie, in a navy blue pantsuit, classy and understated. As the new girlfriend, she doesn't know many people in this crowd. I know most of them.

They come at me like slow-moving bumblebees.

“Bobby, I haven't seen you in years!” says a Rhoda. “Bobby! You got gray! How old are you now?” Before I can answer, a Joanie takes my hand. Her hair is yellow as lemon Jell-O. “So handsome! So when are you getting married, Bobby?” she asks.

“Oh, Mrs. Lipshitz,” I laugh, “I'm way too busy for that.”

Thankfully, my brother comes over to stand at my side. Even though nobody is asking him awkward questions, he doesn't look all that relaxed in the middle of all this. Jeff and I have not made a habit of getting to know these people too well. I get another drink with him at the bar. I'm starting to feel buzzed as we scan this room full of faces from the past. It's like something between a fever dream and a Hadassah benefit. As is typical, we make little cracks as if we were still sarcastic teenagers.

“Look at the nose on that one,” he says.

“I don't remember it being that size,” I reply.

“Did she try to kiss you on the mouth?” he asks of a lady with too much lipstick.

“Full on,” I say.

“You two are terrible,” mutters Janet, my brother's wife.

It's true. We are terrible. And we still don't quite understand how such nice parents could have put such cynical sons on this earth. But here we are, two paunchy, graying, not particularly attractive brothers, amusing ourselves the way we have for years, at the expense of others. In a moment, I will stumble back through the crowd, glass in hand, and greet people warmly. I'll also tell the pianist I hired to pick up the pace between numbers. It's wonderful to see that all these people appreciate our dad so much. We stand back another moment to watch the happy unfolding of this spectacle we planned to make him happy. He looks thrilled. We're not displeased.

“Is that a toupee on Mr. Epstein?” I ask.

“Why don't you go ask him,” Jeff says.

There are couples we recognize who loved both our parents. And there are others we don't know very well,
many of them the tennis and bridge buddies my father ran to in mom's last years. And then, right in the middle of it, unashamed and natural as can be, Dad is standing with his arm around Edie as if she were our mother. I put my arm around Jeff, to steady myself at the sight.

“Well, he looks happy,” he says.

“Hey, why not?” I say, as I suck down the rest of my drink and put the glass down on the bar. “Happiness is the goal here, right?”

“Right,” he says. “Happiness is the goal.”

The last time we had a big family party like this was their fiftieth wedding anniversary, just a year and a half ago at Sammy's Roumanian Steakhouse on the Lower East Side. It was a last-minute plan because Mom had become too weak to drive to the mountain resort my brother had booked. She could hardly get out of bed that day, let alone down the steps to the restaurant, where we'd gathered a small group. The traffic made everyone late. The food was cold. The music was way too loud, the band I hired not playing the klezmer music I had requested. But late in the evening, I looked up and saw them, dancing between tables, where there wasn't even a dance floor. Her arms were wrapped around his shoulders, his arms were wrapped around her waist. There was love in their eyes. They were dancing. And it was perfect.

Now my father is doing the same thing with Edie. Although there's no dance floor, he's moving her around while the pianist I hired plays “Begin the Beguine.”

My brother turns to look away from the sight, and then heads off to make conversation with a cousin from Ohio. I'm a little overwhelmed, and also tipsy enough to wonder if I'm going to make it through the song Dad and
I still have to sing. I get a glass of water and step outside for some air. The sky is full of giant tropical clouds in sorbet colors over the water. It's exactly the kind of sunset my mother loved so much. I raise my glass to the sky. “L'chaim, Mom,” I whisper. “To life.”

A few minutes later, Dad and I are finishing our song to thunderous applause.

We hug each other.

“Happy birthday, young man,” I say.

“I couldn't ask for more,” he replies.

I
t's a Friday night in May a couple months later. I am sitting in my chic and spare West Village apartment, staying in because I have no invitations to anything, and rationalizing that weekends are for amateurs in Manhattan. No dates, no parties. I've got my hotmail and glossy magazines to keep me busy—invitations and spam to delete and all those perfume ads to rip out and throw away—it can be very time-consuming, I find. With so many celebrity fragrances in your own living room, it's almost like they are right there with you. And when the magazines get tired, there's always TV. Plus, I still have to get to the gym.

I'm putting on my sneakers when my phone rings. Titillating. But it's only Dad. “Hi,” I say. “Is everything okay?” He's back on Long Island for the summer. After
selling the old house (with some help from his sons and a carting service) he has moved into a nice assisted-living facility in Great Neck. It's new and sunny and full of attractive people. So I'm pleased. Better zip code, better outfits.

“Have you made any friends, Dad?”

He's usually Mr. Happy Get-About. But there's a problem with the people he's seated with for his meals at this high-end facility, the Centra.

“They're vegetables,” Dad says. “Not one of them can keep up a conversation.”

To make matters worse, he had a fight with his regular bridge partner at the community center over his lateness for a game.

“I knew I was late, and I didn't care to be chastised,” he says.

Nothing new. He would erupt at my mother every time she tried to suggest he had done something wrong; and if I ever make the mistake of criticizing him, it always ends badly. His mood goes from sunny to black faster than you can say “bipolar.”

“So what are you going to do for bridge now?” I say, as I tie my sneakers while gripping the phone to my ear with my shoulder. “Got a new player in mind?”

“I've got some leads,” he says. “But it won't happen overnight. I'm so desperate that I even called my partner to apologize, but she wasn't having it.”

“Next time don't be so quick to pop off, Dad.”

“I could just kick myself for behaving that way.”

“Why don't you call a friend and go to a concert in that park you like so much?”

“The forecast is for rain tomorrow.”

“How about a movie?”

“Nothing I want to see right now,” he says.

“Hmmm,” I'm yawning. “Aren't there any ball games on TV?”

I feel my head racing to come up with a suggestion that'll keep him happy. After half a dozen years of worrying about my mother, I've been enjoying not having to think much about him. But the darker tone of this call is disturbing. All winter in Palm Beach he was so good at amusing himself with Edie. I don't know why Long Island is more of a challenge. He's lived there most of his life. He has friends all over Nassau County, and was a longtime member of a tennis and bridge club not that far from Great Neck. But times change. Snowbirds eventually morph into more sedentary species, and stop the migratory pattern of coming back up north every year for their summers. Most of Dad's pals are living in Florida full-time now. He's a little at a loss.

“And what are your plans, Bobby?” he asks. “Do you have any?”

“Of course,” I lie. “I'm fully booked this weekend. Why?”

“I was just thinking dinner would be nice tomorrow night,” he says.

“I just told you I have plans.”

“I know, and I don't expect you to change them.”

“I need some advance notice, Dad. How about next weekend?”

“If that's what you can do, I'll take it,” he says.

I have a pang of something. What is it? Remorse? Guilt? Half and half?

“Well, no, wait. Let me see if I can change things.”

A few minutes later, after an interval long enough for me to pretend I've made some calls to rearrange my schedule, I call back to say I'm coming out tomorrow night.

“Oh, that's wonderful news,” he says, “a dream come true.”

Penn Station is the usual mob scene. Why are the slowest people blocking your way always the ones in sneakers and tracksuits? “Come on, people,” I mutter as I weave through a crowd. “Move it!”

I make the train as the doors are closing, and spend the ride sweating and fuming at the inconvenience of this visit. Great Neck station is a half hour away. I step off and walk past flocks of young people heading into the city for Saturday night. Most of them are holding hands with dates, young, in love, or in what they think is love.

I cross the street and walk along Great Neck Road, under nice old trees, past purring luxury cars you'd never see where we used to live. It's only a block from the train to the Centra, a brand-new building with rococo pretensions and Marriott bones.

At the lower entrance, I sign a visitor's log under a security guard who is asleep, and step into the elevator. It ascends slowly and then stops on the main floor. A cross-looking white-haired woman in baby blue pantsuit thrusts her walker into the door. “That is not what I said,” she's telling someone in the foyer. “I simply said it could be perceived as anti-Semitic, not that it
was
anti-Semitic! You should be more discerning.” Done talking, she releases the elevator door to close. But it gets forced open again by an orange-haired woman wearing a sweatshirt with a sequined orange appliqué. She also takes her time
stepping in. Then, finally, the doors close, and we are ascending. Nobody says thank you for waiting. “How are you?” lady one asks lady two. “You settling in okay?”

“Not great, not great. I miss my house. I miss the life I had.”

“You'll get used to it. I did. But it takes some time.”

The elevator stops on her floor. She takes her time getting out. Then it's the same thing on the next floor with the other one. Getting up to Dad takes forever.

Outside his door, on a small shelf, he has created a display: one tennis ball, photos of us and Mom. Inside, he has managed in very little time to re-create the multilayered landfill of a mess that he had enjoyed at the old homestead.

He sold the old house so easily, without a moment's hesitation. Some children would find that difficult to take. Not me. Not my brother. We're happy to have it gone for good. His new apartment is nice. And it's filled with the furniture of my childhood. There's the oversize faux-Provincial lamp from our living room. There's the midcentury modern coffee table and the Chagall print from the dining room. So many memories from that old suburban house are all stuffed into this new apartment.

I sit on the same off-white couch where my brother and I sat on Mom's lap. The orange afghan she crocheted is draped over the back. You can never really leave the past behind, I guess, the aged gray poly trousers, for instance, that Dad is wearing tonight.

He looks sluggish. It could be the Lasix he's taking for blood pressure.

“So, Dad, how are you?” I say. “You ready to go out for dinner?”

“Oh, I don't know. Why don't we just order in?”

“But you asked me to come out here so you wouldn't have to dine out alone.”

“Please. My hip hurts, and I'd rather stay off my feet.”

This is not what I had in mind at all. This small apartment is no place for dinner. There isn't a surface that isn't occupied by statements from his myriad bank accounts, or magazine subscriptions, or carbon copies of his countless typewritten letters to friends and relatives. But I don't say anything. We order from a nearby Asian place, and Dad finds the shrimp fried rice delicious. His mood has been lightened by something simple, fresh, and un-kosher. “Thank you for changing your plans so you could visit,” he says.

“Sure,” I say. “No big deal. But what's up? Why the long face?”

“Well,” he says. “As you might know, Edie is in Philly for the summer.”

“So you're having a little hiatus before next winter. Isn't that good for romance?”

“Not when she hasn't been returning any of my phone calls. All last week I was trying to reach her to let her know there's a bridge tournament coming up not far from where she lives. I thought I'd drive down. But she never called me back.”

“Wow. Is she playing hard to get or something?”

“I wish it were so simple,” he says. “But yesterday I finally got a letter from her. And it turns out that she has not one but two other old boyfriends in Philly.”

“What? But she likes you. I saw her holding your hand in Florida.”

“It's a nonexclusive arrangement, Bobby. And defi
nitely restricted to Florida. I'm not welcome in her life up north, that much is clear.”

“So, Dad, this attractive woman you were so pleased to have at your eightieth birthday party—and shuttle around as if she were the new love of your life—is jerking you around while she goes out with two other men in Philly? What's that about?”

“I wish I could tell you,” he says. “But it was just a winter fling with us, I guess, like kids at summer camp.” Then he sighs—Eeyore in a cardigan. “It's disappointing.”

Okay, this is not good. He's not supposed to be worried about anything resembling romance yet.

After running his finger over the last morsels of his fried rice, he pulls a toothpick out of his shirt pocket and starts going at his molars while making sucking noises—a charming new habit. But, to lighten the mood, entertainment is on the way. He has taped a PBS Dinah Shore special.

“I hear she was a lesbian,” I say.

“Don't be ridiculous,” he says.

“No, seriously, there's a Dinah Shore golf classic in Palm Springs every year that's a big lesbian event. How do you explain that if she wasn't?”

“Foolishness,” he says. “You don't have your facts straight. No pun intended.”

He's not at all homophobic. But don't go messing with one of his icons. Dinah Shore, in her prime, was his ultimate goddess. The show he taped is a retrospective of her series from the 1960s, and it's called
Mwah
because that's the sound she made when she threw kisses. It's a mix of easy, breezy musical numbers suggesting that life is a bowl of cherries, or perhaps a can of fruit cocktail in heavy syrup. It's so upbeat and white bread—totally
Dad in its gestalt—that I find the kitsch quasi-compelling. How could anybody give off such relentless optimism? She knew how to blend with a man, too, show him off rather than outshine him. When she sings duets with Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby, looking totally enamored in her pearls and impeccable poofy dresses, with bottle-blond hair so coiffed, I can't help but see my mother at her loveliest. She was a woman who knew how to let others shine, too. We watch the show together for an hour. The ease, the patter, the tuxedos and chiffon, it's all so soothing that it takes the edge off our night. Then it's over and time for me to go home. I put on my windbreaker.

“Why are you leaving?” Dad asks. “Spend the night! I've got an extra room.”

I tell him that I can't and that I have to get home, even though I don't. I don't have anyone to go home to. I haven't had a date all spring.

“I could really use the company,” he says.

Now I'm irked. First of all, the last thing I want is to wake up to him shuffling around in his pajamas in the morning, blowing his nose and pouring orange juice over his cornflakes. And the presumption is a little painful. I mean, why does he think that just because I don't have a wife and family that I'm at his beck and call, free to spend the night in this building of sclerotic seniors?

“I do have a life, Dad, you know.”

“I know you do, Bobby.”

“Just because I don't have a day job, family, two homes, and tennis habit, like some people we know, it doesn't mean that I don't have things to do with my life.”

“So I guess my idea won't intrigue you.”

“What's that?”

“Getting a house where we could live together.”

“Huh? Where?”

“Somewhere that appeals to you, like the Hamptons.”

“What's wrong with this place for you?”

“It's for old people,” he says. “I'm not ready for this yet.”

Living with my father, I know, is both a nice idea and a terrible one. Just imagining what the kitchen would look like makes me queasy. And when I'd have the occasional date, would he need to know about it? Would I be cooking for him? Washing his underwear? Of course, in an abstract sense, I admire all the cultures that revere elders enough to keep them close. Plenty of Americans take their parents into their homes, too, some for economic reasons, others because of compassion. When my mother's father was unable to live alone upstate in Utica in the 1980s, he moved to our Long Island house. He was a crusty old guy, a handball player and amateur boxer, who had a tendency to tease the cat and bend your ear with banalities. He was my only living grandparent, but—call me picky—not the kind I would have selected for myself had I been given a catalogue. He spent hours loitering at our kitchen table, tapping his fingers, with nothing to do but talk. I wasn't as nice as I could have been. But my father treated him with nothing but warmth and respect.

For a moment I envision my father and me living together in a house in the Hamptons—the sacred and elite area I can only visit as a renter or houseguest. But then I see him slurping his tea at breakfast and dumping salad dressing over our pasta at dinner. I see myself rushing past him to get to the phone before he answers it and proceeds to have inappropriate conversations with any one of my dates, friends, colleagues, or harried editors.
The fights, the odors, messes to clean up! Pills overhead and underfoot. Never!

“Thanks, but I don't think so, Dad. I'll live my own life, if you don't mind.”

It sounds harsh. But neither of us has ever been much good at protecting the other from our feelings. So why can't I just tell him that I want to go home, back to the city, right now? Instead, I take a deep breath and sit back down, and we play Scrabble. He wins. Then, while I scoot around trying to clean up the monumental mess he has made of his apartment, he turns on a ball game. I have been trying to teach myself not to feel so anxious around him. But I can't help it. I'm just so bored here, and for a moment I find myself dreading all the relentless years—plodding, dutiful, strained—of this ahead of me. I don't want to be here another minute. It's ten
P.M
. I've done my time. But just as I'm about to say good night for real, he pulls out a copy of
Jewish Week
and thrusts it at me. It's opened to the Personals page.