Aloft (12 page)

who've gathered in the hallway to rubberneck. When they've all gone back to the party I tell my father I'm coming in. He grunts, and I click out the tumbler.

A L O F T 8 9

My father's on the floor, his pants around his ankles. He tells me to lock the door again. I do. And then I realize that everything
does
stink, something fierce, like surly death itself, or maybe worse.

"All those damn goat cheese toasts gave me the runs," he says.

Then more sheepishly, "I ran out of paper." The cabinet door to the vanity is ajar, a couple rolls of tissue spilled out onto the floor.

He's made a mess of himself, soiling the edge of the seat and basin. His nose is bleeding. I try to sit him up but he groans hard when I lift him. I'm afraid it's his leg, or worse, his hip. He shrugs me off. "Goddammit, Jerome, just help clean me up first."

The stuff is all over his undershorts and slacks, riding up on his lower back and side. It's no great leap for me to think of the days when Jack and Theresa were swaddled babes, to remember carefully pinning tight their cloth diapers, holding the ends of the dirty ones and flushing them in the toilet, but this job is on another scale entirely, like in middle school when the science teacher brought out models of the Earth and Jupiter. Who could have imagined the actual difference? I know Pop has been having some control difficulty recently, enough so that the case nurse at Ivy Acres has recommended that he wear incontinence pants all the time, to prevent accidents and "needless embarrassment." I didn't bring it up with him, because I know where he'd tell me to stick it, though I note to myself that I'll soon try.

After taking off his soiled clothes I'm lucky to find a wash-cloth in the vanity, but it's awkward to use the bar of soap to clean him properly, and instantly understanding this Pop points to the spray bottle of Fantastik beneath the sink basin. I tell him it might burn his skin and would undoubtedly be un-healthy in any case but he says, annoyed, "You think. I care about genetic damage or something? Go ahead."

90

C H A N G - R A E L E E

The act of which is very strange, spraying him down like he's some mildewed vinyl couch brought up from the cellar. I can tell that the foam isn't sitting too well with him, his tough olive skin beginning to glimmer pink, but he doesn't wince or say a word. He just lies with his big squared head down on the tiled floor, like a sick horse or mule, not looking at me, which is a great mercy for us both. The sharp industrial scent of the solvent is an unlikely balm, too, and I clean him as quickly and thoroughly as I can. When I sit him up there's a huge grapey bruise on his upper thigh just below his hip. His wrist and elbow still sting from the short fall off the toilet but he says he can get up. I tuck my shoulder beneath his armpit and we rise.

I feel the dense weight of his limbs, more of him now than there ever was, the last few years of sedentary living accruing to him like unpicked fruit, this useless bounty, and I think it's not only his body but his mind, ever cramming with unrequited notions and thoughts. As his clothes are ruined and I'm no doubt the closest in size, I take off my pants and give them to him, so he can get upstairs and shower off.

As I open the powder room door he says, "What the hell are you gonna do, walk around in your skivvies?"

"I'll get some sweatpants from Jack."

"Sounds like that's all that boy's going to be wearing, if things don't get better,"

"What are you talking about?"

"What do you think? Some of us still call over there every day, you know, even though we retired a thousand years ago."

"And?"

"Sal said they've been having cash flow problems. They barely made payroll the last two weeks."

A L O F T 9 1

Sal is the bookkeeper for Battle Brothers, and has been since I was a kid. "Jack hasn't said anything to me."

"You ever talk shop with him?"

I
don't offer an answer, and my father snorts knowingly. I still care about the business, though certainly not the way he does, and then never enough to shadow Jack all the time, nosing over his shoulder to armchair quarterback. In fact
I'd
say from the very beginning I tried not to mention Battle Brothers if I could help it, for just those reasons, and then partly in the hope that he would eventually pursue his own career. But
I
suppose such strategies are flawed and hubristic in the realm of family life and relations, that no matter what you do or don't do in the service of good intentions your aims will get turned about and around and furiously boomerang homeward. I don't doubt that one of the reasons Jack stayed on with Battle Brothers was that I exerted so little pressure on him, probably causing him to wonder why I wasn't bothering, and as a result eliciting in recent years his ever-redoubling efforts in expanding the enterprises of our family concern.

But what my father purports—and it is just that until proven true, given his mental state—deeply troubles me, as I've pon-dered how densely luxurious this house of Jack's has become, a veritable thicket of money-spending; I know for a fact that while there are still a handful of Eighth Wonder of the World jobs like Kit's, there aren't the ready scores of smaller, more modest projects that normally keep our manpower and machin-ery humming at near capacity. Jack is clearly a natural at broadening Battle Brothers' reach—unlike me, he's always been pretty fearless in exploring the unknown and untried, like the time when he was six or seven and without pause scrambled
92

C H A N G - R A E L E E

down a drainage pipe to retrieve a baseball I'd overthrown—

but it's uncertain how or even if he'll understand that he needs to pull back in slow times, quickly beat a retreat, and if I've bestowed anything on him I hope it's my quick trigger for cutting one's losses, in business always and maybe also in life.

With my help Pop limps through the kitchen to go up the back stairwell, Eunice and Jack and Rosario standing by, just in case.

Tyler, my sharp granddaughter of four, asks no one in particular why I'm wearing only my "panties," and why it stinks like poop.

"Your grandpa Jerome had an accident," Pop whispers to her, winking and paddling her behind. "But don't spread it around."

"Skanky," Tyler sneers, regarding me with what is already a distinctly teenage disdain. I note to myself that I must speak to Eunice about what the kids are watching all day and night.

"Help us upstairs," I say to Jack. He leans under Pop's other side and the three of us trudge upward trying to get our steps in sync. After we finally get Pop in the shower, Jack lends me a pair of Gore-Tex running pants, and we sit in the living area of the master bedroom, the double bathroom doors (of Jack's
toilette)
swept wide so we can keep an eye on Pop in the shower, who is the picture of old manhood as he lathers up behind the un-frosted safety glass: a hairy; saggy pear on legs. We offered to help but he growled, "You'll get plenty of me before I'm done,"

meaning not now but in the course of his remaining days. This is true, on many levels, though none I can really pause and think deeply about now All I know is that today's episode is merely the beginning of the beginning, like the first intemperate days of winter, which always seem like mildest tonic later on.

While we wait, Jack's grabbed a couple beers for us from the under-counter refrigerator in the kitchenette section of the bedroom. There's a short run of cabinets and a microwave and an A L O F T 9 3

electric stovetop and even a mini-dishwasher, the effect being of a studio apartment, or grad student housing, though of course a lot nicer than that. Basically, he and Eunice wanted to be able to have a snack or make a cup of coffee without having to trek downstairs and to the other end of the house where the kitchen is, which seems reasonable enough until you realize that this is the kind of lifestyle detail that brought down the railroad barons and junk bond kings and dot-commers and whoever else will next rocket up and flame out in miserable infamy.

"You're good to throw Theresa and Paul this party." I say.

"She seems pretty happy, don't you think?"

"For once in her life," Jack says.

"I suppose so," I reply, acknowledging the truth of his state-ment, but also caught off guard by its unexpected edge. "How's everything with you?"

"Couldn't be better."

"The house looks great."

"It's all good. It's all working."

"I guess business must have slowed down a bit."

Jack takes a long pull from his beer bottle. "Some."

"If you ever want me to come in it's no problem. I have all the time in the world."

"Okay."

"I'll ride along with the guys, if you want. Or I can even help Sal with the books."

Jack sits up. "You think Sal needs your help?"

"Why not? He's practically Pop's age. He's got to be making mistakes with that abacus of his. He's still using it, I bet."

"He does," Sack says. "But I check everything over, and everything's fine."

"I'm just saying, that's all."

94

C l I A N G - R A E L E E

"Sure you are."

"I am."

"Good, Dad. It's done. Really. It's all good."

There's nothing to counter with, mostly because Jack is a Battle and as a Battle is not unlike me, and thus endowed with a wide range of people-shedding skills, the foremost of which is how to curtail further talk when the talk gets most awkward, and so potentially perilous. Ask Rita, Kelly, maybe you could ask Daisy if she were here, ask Eunice about Jack, ask them all how difficult the footing becomes, how suddenly sheer the incline. Theresa, to be fair, manifests much of the same impassability; though her terrain features the periodic (and unaccidental) rock slide, an avalanche of obstructing analysis and critique and pure reason.

Pop curses from the shower, and we both nearly jump, though it's just him turning the handle the wrong way for a long second and getting all hot water instead of none. He's okay, if a bit scalded, and Jack gingerly helps him towel off, a splash of pink on one of his shoulders and upper chest. Pop tells us he's tired and wants to take a nap. Jack gives him a T-shirt and we walk him to the bed, tuck him in. Is this what growing old is about: another small though dangerous moment, somehow survived?

Downstairs the kitchen is crowded with people, as it appears everyone has come in from the deck, and Eunice, now seeing me and Jack, gently rings her Champagne glass with a spoon.

The murmur and chatter subside. Rosario and Nidia are quickly going about offering fresh flutes and refilling others.

"We're so thrilled to welcome Theresa and Paul back home.

And we are especially happy on this, the wonderful occasion of their wedding engagement." Eunice beams at Theresa and Paul, who seem tickled enough but also a shade uneasy, as acadA L O F T

95

ernes and other intellectualized types sometimes are in real-life situations not squarely cast to be ironic.

"I'd like to propose a toast on the recent announcement of their nuptials, as well as offer our home as the place where Theresa and Paul and their guests can rendezvous whenever next year they'd like to celebrate the wedding. As all of us old married folks know, the time up through the wedding and honeymoon is the sweetest of all. Sad but true! So may you savor it!

Cheers!"

A call of "Cheers!" goes around, and while everyone bottoms-up I notice that Theresa and Paul are more conferencing than celebrating, Paul shaking his head to whatever Theresa is insisting upon, which is what I imagine anyone dealing regularly and intimately with my daughter must learn to do. Theresa tries to get everyone's attention and Eunice, now seeing that she wants to speak, tinkles her glass again. Theresa nods.

"Paul and I want to thank my sister-in-law for the always luxurious party," Theresa says, her voice low, almost somber.

"We thank Rosario and Nidia for their time and patience. And of course we thank Jack, too, for giving all three complete and total control." This elicits a laugh, and Jack, who's next to me, glumly raises his beer bottle.

"Paul and I wanted to let all of you know, too, that we're not going to get married next year. Don't worry. We're getting married this fall, probably in October."

"That's too soon!" Eunice cries. She's obviously been counting on producing the whole affair, as she does with everything having to do with our clan. (I should quickly note that Eunice is the only child of two very successful and prickly Bostonian parents, which for me is explanation enough for why she's such a zealous and tyrannical arranger.)

C H A N G - R A E L E E

Theresa says, "On the plane we decided we didn't want to wait, and while we were never going to have a big wedding it'll be a very small ceremony now. But if I can take up Eunice's generous offer right here on the spot, I hope she'll have all of us back in a few months, for a little celebration."

"Certainly you can," Eunice says, doing her best not to sound curt. "We'd be thrilled."

Now Alice and Jadie and the rest of Theresa's friends pinch in on her and Paul for a new round of congratulatory hugs, and when I murmur to Jack about Theresa maybe being pregnant he responds with a blithe "Who knows?," which wouldn't normally bother me but does now with an unexpected sharpness. I shoot him a look but he's already drifted off, to help Nidia gather some used glasses and plates. Jack is considerate and generous like this and always has been, but if I have to tell the truth about him I would have to say he's never demonstrated the same feeling for me or Theresa that he does for his club buddies and employees or even strangers at the mall. And while I can try to accept our relationship as less than ideal (because of the usual father-son issues of superdefended masculinity and cycles of expectation/resentment and then the one of his mother suddenly dying when he was young, for which he squarely and silently blames yours truly), it pains me to the core to see how meager his expressions are for his younger sister, how bloodless and standard, as if she's merely a person jammed next to him in the middle seat on a plane, a reality and mild inconvenience to be affably addressed and elbow-jockeyed from time to time. Of course I'd always hoped and maybe too quickly assumed that they would cling for dear life to each other after what happened to their mother, but really just the opposite occurred, even as A L O F T