“Am I going dead?”
“No.”
“I still have to say good-bye.”
“You don’t, you certainly don’t,” he said, and saw that Violet was turning the car’s wheels to the right. There was a bump as she went up onto the curb. The car was left aslant on the sidewalk.
Warmth pressed into Albert’s side: Klondi was back, and nodding in the direction of a terraced house, whose front door stood open. She gripped Fred beneath the arms: “Let’s go!”
Panting and taking many tiny steps, they carried Fred to the house’s entryway. Albert had slung Fred’s right arm over his shoulders, his thigh muscles were shaking. Klondi’s breath rattled. Violet tried to help her but couldn’t get a firm grip on Fred.
Fred said that he was dirty.
Just before they reached the threshold, a man stepped out of the house to meet them. He wore jeans and a plain white T-shirt that contrasted sharply with a salon tan. Klondi and Albert wanted to carry Fred farther, but he struggled and slipped loose, and hit the ground. More blood ran from his nose; he wiped it with the sleeve of his shirt. “Not in there!”
“Why not?” asked Klondi.
“That’s a stranger!”
Klondi, who was leaning against the wall of the house with one arm and struggling for breath, shot Albert a questioning look.
“What’s your problem?” said the man, and planted himself in front of Fred, who repeated: “That’s a stranger!”
Violet laughed the way one laughs to defuse a situation; she stepped over to the man and whispered something in his ear. He looked at Fred, Violet, back at Fred, and his furrowed brow smoothed itself, and he squatted and extended his hand. A yellow-toothed smile: “My name is Clemens.”
Fred shook his head in slow motion.
“Give him your hand,” ordered Albert. “Now.”
To Albert’s amazement, Fred complied. “I am Frederick Arkadiusz Driajes!”
“What are you so afraid of?”
Fred snorted. “I’m never afraid!”
With a welcoming gesture, Clemens pointed to the doorway: “Well, come on, then.”
Everything’s Okay
Clemens, Klondi, Violet, and Albert drank lemon tea at an oval plastic table. The kitchen reminded Albert of illustrations from a furniture catalog — it was too coherent, too tidy. No coffee stains, no personal snapshots of weddings or office parties pinned to the walls, no chipped edges or notepads lying around or, for that matter, windows with Zorro-esque initials. Even Albert, with his impoverished past, would have been able to breathe more warmth into a kitchen than this one had.
“Do you live alone?” asked Albert.
Clemens slurped at his tea louder than necessary. “Is it so obvious?”
Behind the door to the living room — a sofa-, book-, and plant-free zone, remarkably bare, even for a bachelor’s house — Fred was sleeping on two air mattresses set end-to-end, since Clemens’s bed had turned out to be too short for him. The recommendation of the local doctor — a man in his early fifties whose beard, and the heavy bags beneath his eyes, made him look like a man in his late sixties — had sounded to Albert like the result of a self-diagnosis: rest. Shouldn’t they at least take Fred to the hospital? Shouldn’t they hook him up to an IV and inject him with vitamins? Monitor his pulse? The doctor’s answer: “You could do that.” Albert had never heard anyone put such an emphasis on the word but without actually pronouncing it. His memory supplied scraps of dialogue from the prime-time hospital TV shows that Violet’s father had produced: But don’t get your hopes up. — But enjoy the time you have left with him. — But just look at him. — But try to keep calm. — But make arrangements. — But tell him the things you’ve always wanted to say. — But accept that things are going to run their course.
Clemens gestured toward the living room: “If you don’t mind my asking: what do you call what he has?”
Albert answered the way he always answered this sort of question: “Fred is simply Fred.”
“Has he always been like this?”
“Yes,” said Albert, annoyed, “yes,” and, setting his cup down, splashed some tea on the table.
“It was only a question,” mumbled Clemens.
Klondi suggested stepping out for a smoke, and Albert, who’d been longing for a cigarette, declined, while Violet, the nonsmoker, eagerly accompanied her.
Clemens slipped both hands around his teacup. “Please don’t imagine I haven’t noticed how completely stressed out you all are. Are you related to him?”
“He’s my father.” Even in his irritation Albert registered how uncommonly easily the words passed through his lips.
“I’m sorry,” said Clemens.
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why are you sorry? Why does everyone always say that?”
Clemens leaned back, holding the teacup defensively in front of his chest. “Because it certainly can’t be easy.”
“And why should anyone be sorry about that? It isn’t your fault, right? You have nothing to do with it, you have no sense of what it’s like — easy or hard or whatever. You don’t have the faintest idea.”
Albert was thinking — and not for the first time — that people said that they were sorry only because they were glad. They were expressing how goddamn happy they were not to be dealing with the same shit. People like Clemens, who lived all alone in their awful terraced houses and wanted only to fit in, to dress their little girls in pink and their little boys in sky-blue, and sort screws on the weekends in their very own garages, just like everybody else; Clemens, all of them, were so goddamn glad that they’d finally found someone whose life was even shittier than their own, and that’s what they were celebrating with their stupid I’m sorries.
“My father’s sick, too,” said Clemens. “Parkinson’s.”
Albert shut his eyes and let his head droop. “Now you must really think I’m an idiot.”
Clemens set his cup down and turned it slightly counterclockwise. “Right. But I understand. Someone you love is dying.”
And with that Clemens left the kitchen. There was something shockingly clear in his bluntness. Because Fred was dying, Albert was feeling bad. It was as simple as that.
It wasn’t long before Violet came back in.
“Hey,” she said.
“Hey,” he replied.
“Everything okay?”
Albert nodded, and, feeling tears in his eyes, looked quickly into his teacup. “Yes.”
A soft hand touched his neck, and Albert slowly turned to her. They hugged. Albert held her tight, he’d never held anyone so tight before, and he couldn’t remember the last time something had felt so good, and he wept and made noises he couldn’t recognize, they were flowing out of him, frightening him, and he held Violet even tighter.
Where To?
In the twilight even the Beetle’s solar yellow was merely bright gray. Fred sat huddled in the backseat, wrapped up in wool blankets that Clemens had given them, his head propped on Klondi’s shoulder, while she hummed him a lullaby. Violet stood by the open driver’s-side door, looking over the top of the car as Albert gave Clemens a good-bye handshake. “Thanks for everything.”
“Take good care of him.”
Albert cast around for a decently worded valediction, but couldn’t come up with anything better than “Sure.”
Clemens pointed to Fred. “Your mother must be proud of the way you look after him.”
Again Albert rummaged his head for a suitable answer — and again had to settle for “Sure.” From the corner of his eye he saw Violet signaling him to break it off: snipping her middle and index fingers like a pair of scissors.