Truth in Advertising (15 page)

It was strange after he left. We never spoke of it, but it hung in the air. His clothes remained in her closet, his coats on the hallway pegs. Until one day my mother gathered them up, with Maura's help, and drove them to Goodwill.

I thought she'd be happy with him gone. I thought things would get better. But they didn't. She changed. She spoke less, smiled rarely. I would walk in the back door and find her sitting at the kitchen table, looking out the window, a cigarette between her fingers, a long ash about to fall. As much as she wanted him to leave, something happened to her that day that I never fully understood. I didn't see what was so terrible. I didn't miss him. She died a little when he left. She went to church more. Maura and I would go with her on Sundays. But then she started going on weekdays, too, early morning masses. In the evening, after dinner, the occasional Pall Mall and an Irish coffee, she'd retreat into her room, close the door. But after she died, it was different.

My father showed up at the wake. He walked in, knelt at the casket, his face a few feet from his dead ex-wife, her powdered lips sewn shut, the fluids drained out of her, pumped full of formaldehyde, bearing little resemblance to a living, breathing human being. That's how I saw it, anyway. I simply didn't believe that it was her, lying there. I wondered then, and sometimes now, what went through his mind during those few moments when everyone in the room at the James Gormley & Sons Funeral Home in Charlestown, Massachusetts, watched him walk in, felt the air leave the room, the hush that came over the place, looked to Eddie, watched him flush, saw the anger in his eyes. We all watched him as he blessed himself again, after maybe a minute, then he stood up and walked over to us. I stopped watching him because I
turned to look at Eddie. And what I saw, as my father stood in front of his children, as we looked at him, was Kevin reach for Eddie's hand, palm open, as if to say,
Don't
.

He didn't speak for a time, and when he did, he spoke to a silent room. The booming, angry voice was gone.

“Your mother was a fine woman. She . . . she loved her children very much.”

He was looking down at a point on the carpet as he spoke.

“I'm terribly . . .”

The pants of his suit were too short. He didn't seem to know what to do with his hands. The four of us in a line. Eddie, Kevin, Maura, and me. I was looking at Maura and Maura was looking at the ceiling and Eddie was fast-breathing and I wondered if he was going to hit him.

The thing is that there were inconsistencies. That's what the police said. There was nothing wrong mechanically with her car, an old cream-colored Chevy Nova. No brake-line problem, no steering problem, none of the tires blew. A man from the life insurance company came to our house and asked if she'd been feeling depressed lately. That struck me as an odd question. Her husband walked out on her eighteen months earlier. It's a myth that time heals wounds. Not all wounds. Chemicals play a role. Then a nothing thing happens. You might look at, say, a Boston Bruins ashtray in the living room that he once used while watching the games. The sound of a lawn mower on a Saturday. The smell of aftershave on the man in front of you at the post office. A husband and wife in the distance laughing about something. The memories of the shouting recede. The early years return. One plans a life, writes a script, an outline at the very least. We will be different. We all think this. We shall deftly avoid the cancers and the premature death, the car accidents and job loss, the miscarriages and affairs. What was it like for her at night, late, alone, in bed?

I'd gotten home early from school. That day. April 14. Our class had taken a field trip to the aquarium. She was on her way out to the car. We were standing outside.

I said, “Where are you going?”

She looked at me for a time and then said, “You're not supposed to be home.”

“We got back early. They let us go.”

“Petersen's,” she said. “For milk. We need some things.” Petersen's Market. It was just down the street. Spring Street.

I turned to go into the house. She said, “Finny.”

I stopped and looked back.

She reached her hand out, touched my face, my cheek, smoothed my hair. She looked like she wanted to say something. She looked tired. I watched her get in her car and back out, drive up the street. And I saw my bike, this crappy green bike that I had, lying on the grass next to the back stairs. I thought about moving it to the shed out back in case it rained but I didn't.

There are things you should never write down. For example, I think that it is not a good idea, for anyone involved, to get a large manila envelope in the mail a month or so after your mother's funeral addressed to
The Dolan Children
from your mother's best friend, Mary Downey. I think it is a mistake for Mary to write a short note:
Your mother asked me to send this to you. I am so sorry. Mary.
And I think that it is dangerous to send a one-page letter to your children telling them how much you loved them, talking of the
hole
in your heart, the
joy
that had gone out of your life, the
mistakes
and
sins
and
guilt
, the
prayers
you had said for all of us, yet never saying the words
I am now going to drive my cream-colored Chevy Nova directly into the large elm tree at the bend in the road on Spring Street, the too-sharp bend, the site of so many accidents over the years, the tree just beyond the entrance to St. Joseph Cemetery.

Eddie had told us to come to the kitchen. He read the letter. I don't remember much of it. I do remember that Maura held a dishtowel in her balled-up fists, her eyes wide, as if she were going insane. Kevin sobbed and said, “Oh Jesus oh Jesus oh Jesus.” The muscles in Eddie's jaw moving, reading the letter with his teeth together, his voice cold and angry. As for myself, just as when my father left, I remember thinking that it wasn't real. I remember feeling as if it weren't happening to me. What I do remember very clearly is thinking this: What was going through her mind as she accelerated and turned the wheel
toward the tree? I wondered if she was crying or mildly excited about doing something so dangerous or if she was scared. Was she smoking, as she often did in the car? Was the radio on? I remember watching them, my sister and brothers, that day. There was a tree in the backyard, the long, thin branches of which would scrape against the window when it was windy. It drove my father nuts. It scraped now, in the wind. They seemed far away and sad. I watched them, all four of them, me included. How could I tell them that it was okay, that it would be fine, that it wasn't true. That it couldn't be true.

I know that Eddie made a copy of her letter and mailed it to my father. I wonder what it was like to receive that.

Standing in front of his children, at his wife's wake, my father finally looked up.

He said, “She deserved better than me. You all did.”

I stood closest to him. He seemed to be in so much pain. He seemed a stranger to me, a sad man in a bad suit.
Someone should help him
, I thought. I was going to say “Dad.” I was going to put my arm out, touch him. That's what I thought. I could see it in my mind. But then he turned and walked out.

In the evenings, long before, when it was good, he would sit with a cup of tea, alone, after dinner, and leaf through the Sears catalog, humming.

My cell phone rings. I don't recognize the number.

“Hello?”

“Mr. Dolan?” I realize that I'm toying with my father's IV tube, flicking it with my index finger, causing small bubbles to form, which I don't think is a good thing.

“Mr. Dolan, Dwayne Nevis from American Express. Great news about your account. You're now Executive Platinum. Would you have a moment to talk about the benefits?”

T
he woman behind the desk at the hotel says with a big grin, “Are you here for Knockwurst Night?”

“I'm not sure how to respond to that, but no, I don't think I am.”

“Oh, okay, then.” The grin remains intact.

“Just a room, if you have one.”

She chuckles. “Wide open tonight. Take your pick.”

“Something quiet, please.”

“You're on Cape Cod in the winter. Quiet is guaranteed. Let's see here. I'll put you in one of our nicest rooms, how about that?”

There's a hotel in Venice, Italy, called the Danieli that sits on the Grand Canal. There's a hotel in Bangkok called the Mandarin Oriental that serves high tea each afternoon. There's a hotel in Buenos Aires called the Alvear that has a butler on each floor. There's a hotel in Cape Cod where the room smells of mold and stale cigarette smoke and the TV is locked to the console, which is a pity because I was thinking of stealing it. The bedspread is a polyester paisley that looks like it's seen better days.

I dial Ian.

He says, “I hate you. What's the temperature?”

I say, “Eighty-one degrees. Sun's just set and I'm on my second ice-cold Dos Equis.”

Ian says, “You sound weird. You're lying. Where are you?”

“Cape Cod.”

“What? Why? What happened?”

“My father's dying.”

“Jesus. Fin. I'm sorry.” He pauses for a moment. “Wait. I thought your father was dead. You told me he died years ago.”

“I might have said that. He's not, though. Not yet.”

My room looks out on the parking lot. A car pulls in and I watch as five men dressed as Santa get out of a car. They're laughing and talking loudly. They seem drunk. I lean my face against the window and exhale from my nose, watch the condensation form on the window, see that my left nostril is the one with the most air. I read once that it switches throughout the day, that it's never even.

I say, “My brother called. Someone from the hospital called him. No one was going to come down. I just thought . . .” I don't know what I'd thought.

I say, “You wouldn't think it was so hard to take a vacation, ya know?”

“How is he?”

“Not good. Heart attack. A thousand years old. Smoker. Drinker. Ate red meat like M&Ms. They say it's a matter of time.”

“You want me to fly up? I'll come up in the morning. I'll bring Scott. We'll drive to P-Town, have dinner. We'll make a thing of it. I'm serious.”

I lean back from the window and I can just make out, as if I'm almost not there, my own reflection. I can see that I have a slight smile on my face. Ian's got ten people coming to his apartment tomorrow and he would cancel it and get on a plane to be here with me. He is more like family to me than my family.

I say, “You're a selfish prick, ya know that?”

“Seriously.”

“I'm fine. To be honest it's really not that different from the Yucatán Peninsula. Gorgeous, dark-skinned people, a very relaxed attitude.”

“Call me, okay?”

“I just saw five drunk Santas.”

“Is that a band?”

I'm about to hang up when I say, “I don't know what I'm even doing here. I mean, I haven't seen him since I was twelve.”

“You're doing what you're supposed to do. He's your father.”

“In theory.”

Later, I turn on my computer, check e-mail, and for a moment consider working on Snugglies. But suddenly I am a camera on a crane outside this hotel looking through this window at me on my laptop on Christmas Eve. Alone. Time to go to a commercial break.

•   •   •

Sadly, I never spot the drunk Santas again. I sit at the bar and drink a beer and enjoy a knockwurst (as you do on Christmas Eve) and the musical stylings of Surf 'n' Sand, a seventy-ish-year-old couple, he on piano, she holding a microphone and making noise into it with her mouth. Some might call it singing.

Surf (Sand?) plays “Moonlight in Vermont.”

I look over to see two women looking back at me. They look over and smile. Nothing good will come of this. And so I decide to say nothing. Which is when I open my mouth. “Hi.”

“Hi,” they say, all smiles.

“Mind if we join you?” one of them asks.

“Please do.”

“You look lonesome over here all by your onesies,” one of them says. I have made a horrible mistake.

“Fin,” I say, extending my hand.

“Hi, Fin. That's Marta and I'm Janie.”

We shake hands, sit, and smile at one another for what seems like forty-five minutes.

“Are you staying at the hotel, Fin?” It's Marta.

“I am, Marta. Do I detect a slight accent?”

“You have good ears.”

“Marta, I'm going to guess Holland.”

“Germany.”

“That was my next guess.” I laugh out loud. They laugh with me. Marta points and raises her eyebrows as if to say, “Good one!” I have glasses for distance, though I rarely wear them. Closer, I see that Marta and Janie are fifty if they are a day. Indeed, they may be closer to fifty-five. And yet, in their own way, in their St. John outfits,
the hem of Janie's skirt a bit too high, Marta's black slacks a size too small, the blouses knowingly too snug, too revealing, they are remarkably well-preserved. Though, at some point, a grown woman should stop calling herself Janie.

“What brings you to Cape Cod on Christmas Eve?” I ask.

“Divorce and rotten kids,” Janie says, smiling. Marta laughs.

“Ha,” I say.

“No, really,” Janie says. “We needed some me time. Some us time. Some time, I guess is what I mean.”

“I think that sounds great,” I say.

“We're driving to Provincetown tomorrow and staying at an inn.”

That doesn't sound sad at all.

“You know who he looks like,” Janie says to me, but I have to assume she is talking to Marta. “He's the spitting image of a young Tommy Lee Jones.”