“I am.”
“Your father has attempted suicide.”
“He drinks on a temperate day six or seven strong martinis. In my opinion he has been trying to commit suicide most days for the past thirty or forty years.” I feel so still and cold inside. I feel like I could rip this man’s lungs out if I tried, and you can hear it in my voice. Goddamn my fucking father for doing this now.
He scrawls something at the bottom of the white page on his clipboard and rubs his face.
“I specifically asked if there was alcohol abuse because of the blood tests I saw, and his doctor assured me absolutely not.”
“His doctor is one of his oldest drinking buddies. Not a reliable narrator.”
He nods, makes crosshatches in the top corner of his sheet of paper. “Are you familiar with the term intervention?”
I laugh. Hard. “Let’s see. His second wife just left him, his son claims never to want to see him alive again, his parents are dead, he has no siblings, and his friends should all be in rehab themselves. That would leave me and him in a room. I’d have a better chance in the Coliseum with a bunch of lions.”
“There’s no one who could support you in this?”
“This is not a man who can change.”
“Anyone can change, given the right tools.”
“I challenge you to this one. You take him on and call me when he’s all fixed.”
“California can wait a week or so. Your father needs you.”
“California cannot wait a week or so. I am a full-time professor and my job starts a week from Wednesday.”
“Where?”
“Berkeley.”
“Nice.” He puts down his pen. He is suddenly seeing me as a compatriot. I am in his league now. And I am a woman, I see him also realize. “What department are you in?”
“Anthropology. I’m going to go in and say goodbye to my father now.”
I move down the hallway, blue under the fluorescent lighting. I feel stiff. You’re worse than your mother, you little bitch. Seven aspirin, for fuck’s sake. He had everyone jumping around for seven aspirin. I hope he’s asleep.
But he is not. He lies there with the sheets tucked up to his chin, his eyes wide and staring at the door before I come through it. I stand several feet from the bed, keep my hands in my pockets.
“I’m not doing so well, elf.” He bunches the sheet up in his fists. His face turns a raw red and he begins to cry. “I’m not doing well at all.”
I really don’t know where he should begin. The man needs so much. I squeeze the car keys in my pocket. I have to go. This is a sick man. This is a sick man whose problems I cannot remedy.
“I’m not doing well at all,” he whimpers again.
“You’re not, Dad. You need help.”
“I do need help.”
“But not my help.”
“Yes, I need your help.”
“No, you need professional help. You’re sick.”
“I’m just… I’m just… I don’t know what I am.” The crying turns to sobs. His chest pumps up and down and his mouth opens crookedly. His teeth are yellow and gray.
“Dad, let’s get you some doctors who can help you.”
“What can doctors do? Perry? Perry can’t help me.”
“Not Perry. You need to go somewhere where people are going to take care of you and help you get better.”
“Where?”
“Some beautiful place. Maybe Colorado or Arizona.”
“No.”
“Maybe nearby. Vermont.”
“You’re talking about that place Buzz Shipley went to.”
“Maybe someplace like that.”
“That guy came back a fairy. He went in a perfectly nice guy and came out a fairy.”
“You need to stop drinking. You won’t be able to see anything clearly before you do.” I wait for him to lash out.
“Okay,” he says quietly. “But I won’t go anywhere.”
“Dad, you can’t do it on your own. No one can. A program is the best way. You go away and you get a lot of support and therapy.”
“Therapy? You mean a shrink?”
“Someone who can help you figure out—”
“No shrink. No way. That stays on your medical record for the rest of your life. It ruins people. Remember that wing nut McGovern picked for vice president? Never. I will not give her the satisfaction.”
“What do you mean?”
“I won’t have anyone talking about me the way they talked about Buzz.”
“No one’s going to talk—”
“Oh yes they will. You don’t know how this town talks.”
“We can say you’re coming to California with me. No one will have to know.”
“I’m staying in my house. If I leave she’ll come and take everything from me. Everything.”
“What about AA?” Julie’s uncle is in AA. He hasn’t had a drink in over twelve years. “I bet there are meetings nearby. Will you do that?”
He nods.
“Every day?”
“Yes,” he says.
“Dad, I know you’re not going to do this.”
“I am. I need to. I know I need to.” He is not convincing.
“I’ll leave and you’ll just go back to your old patterns.”
“So stay and watch me.”
“I can’t.”
A nurse comes in. She pads across the room like a child pretending to be a nurse. Her hands move efficiently, though, changing the IV bag, making a ripping sound with Velcro, sealing everything back up.
“Let me show you how the bed works, Mr. Amory.” She taps the blue and red buttons on a remote with a long fingernail. “This will sit you up and this will make you lie back down. Would you like to sit up a bit now with your daughter?”
“Yes, thank you. Ah, that’s much better. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome, Mr. Amory.”
“You’ll come back before one and show me how the tube works, right? The Sox are in Cleveland this afternoon.”
“Oh I know just where they are. And Clemens’s ankle’s worse, and they’ll probably start Ryan, Lord help us all.”
“Oh, c’mon. Six-point-five’s not good enough for you?”
“Not by a long shot.”
My father laughs. She pulls the door shut and then he looks back at me and seems to remember he’s supposed to be suicidally depressed.
“I know you need to go. I’m proud of you. I really am. I know this is no way to show it but I am, Daley.”
“Thanks.”
“You know what I keep thinking about is that time we went to get your mother a painting in Wellesley. Do you remember that day?”
“No.”
“You weren’t more than four or five. We snuck out of the house early so we didn’t have to tell her where we were going. You’d gotten yourself dressed in a little pink dress and you’d put some sort of bow in your hair all crooked, and we went to a gallery where there was this painting of the swan boats that your mother liked and we walked in, and the man there said hello and you lifted your dress up all the way and you weren’t wearing anything underneath. You should have seen the man’s face!
“You know, the saddest day in my life was the day your mother drove off. Saddest day of my life. I never thought she’d do something like that. And take you with her. Take you away from me. I know it was tough on you, but it was tough on me, too. My daughter was gone. I kind of went off the track then, you know. I shouldn’t have hooked up with Catherine so quickly. It wasn’t right. It was never right. She wanted me to be someone else. They always want you to be someone else. Even you want me to be someone else.”
“No, Dad. I want you to get sober and then see what things look like from there.” It’s slightly hallucinatory, the whole idea of him being sober, becoming self-aware.
“Oh Jesus, you sound like that girl Garvey brought home one time. What was her name? Lynnette? Lianne?”