I must have seemed to Hildie to be in a state of shock; instead of expressing anguish, or grief, I was smiling; my smile felt as if it had been stapled into my face. A remote, ironic voice sounded in my ears And I've come so far! Hildie was saying, matter-of-factly, "Your father has told me, dear: you remember him as he was. That is his hope. I'll take you to where he's lying, out on the back porch, during the day he likes the back porch, the TV's out there, too, it's a portable TV I can move real easy, and the porch is a comfortable place for him when he wakes up and doesn't know where he is, it's consoling. You know, your father did not have an easy life. Even before this, before the operations. When you're bad sick, and go a little out of your head, and your legs and sometimes even your arms don't feel like they belong to you, what you want most is to be consoled. So your father -wants me to bring you out back to where he is, dear, he's been waiting for you all day. But you'll have to close your eyes. Or I will hide your eyes somehow. So he can see you. Then you can maybe turn around, your back to him, or you can sit, dear, there's a nice chair I brought out for you, and I can help you talk to him, because he can't say words now, not words you would understand but I understand; but only for a few minutes because he gets so exhausted, this time of day he's usually asleep. He sleeps through a hot afternoon and I feed him around dusk, his special foods, then he sleeps. See, dear, I know this is a surprise, the way he is, but it's his wish, and it's for the best." Hildie paused, smiling. "For you, too, dear, it's for the best."
This was a warning. I understood. A dying man. Death. You don't want to see. You're too young.
I had in fact been envisioning my father as he'd appeared to me four years before. Middle-aged but still swaggering-young, in the way that men who work with their hands and their bodies out-of-doors seem somehow to remain young; except if you look too closely into their leathery, lined faces. I'd envisioned my father waiting for me here in Crescent, Utah, a little older, more ravaged, but eager to see me, and in a different setting: an airy, high-ceilinged bedroom with a window looking out upon mountains, and a cobalt-blue sky. Crescent, Utah. The West. But Railroad Street was a narrow, poorly paved street that intersected with the town's attenuated Main Street, and the peeling sparrow-colored clapboard bungalow with the grassless front yard was on a block of similar bungalows and trailer homes; the backyard ran into a raised railroad embankment of cinders and weeds. Straggly, diseased-looking cotton woods surrounded the house. Somewhere close by, a chain saw was being used. This might be Strykersville. Near the railroad tracks. And the town of Crescent! So ordinary. Only the name was beau-tiful as poetry. Looking for a motel, I'd been stunned at how small Crescent was, how diminished its communal life, a scattering of wood frame churches, a downtown of about two blocks, fake-brick facades of a few newer businesses but otherwise everything was old, decades old, older than Strykersville though it must have been settled far later; farther on, the state highway was a jumble of the usual gas stations and drive-in restaurants, sports equipment stores, a derelict A & P, Discount Carpets, a drive-in theater with a broken marquee, beer and liquor stores, taverns. To have come so far: Strykersville! Except the small upstate New York town of my girlhood had had a surprisingly good public library, and a YWCA where I could swim, and I could see that Crescent, Utah, was too small for such amenities. A few minutes beyond the town limits was open country, flat and treeless and ungiving; a harsh hot wind blew; even the mountain range, on my Esso map romantically called Roan Cliffs, were dull as eraser smudges in the heat haze.
I told Hildie yes, yes of course I would comply with my father's wishes, and with hers.
"I-I brought him a gift. I mean-both of you."
Holding out to the hunched-over little doll-woman in white a garishly wrapped wicker basket of fruit whose cellophane wrapper crinkled noisily. This absurd gift for a dying man I'd purchased at a food store in Grand Junction, Colorado; I hadn't known what the precise nature of my father's cancer was; I'd been assuming lung cancer. Could the poor man eat fruit? Apples, oranges, mangoes, kiwi, bananas? Was such a gift a cruel, unthinking joke? What had I been thinking? Hildie murmured thank you and took the basket from me briskly, and set it aside. She asked if, before she took me to visit with my father, I would like a glass of water; eagerly I said yes; my throat was parched, I'd been having trouble speaking. Sand and grit seemed to coat my mouth. Hildie led me farther into the house, into a cramped little kitchen with an old-fashioned humming Frigidaire and a gas stove and worn linoleum; the kitchen held an oatmeal-yeasty smell. Through its single window I saw the foreshortened view of the weedy railroad embankment about thirty yards away. What a roaring there must be, when a train came through! My poor father. Like a nurse, though not smiling, Hildie took time to run water from a faucet at the sink until, testing it with a forefinger, she judged it cold enough to drink; she filled a glass for me; I thanked her, taking it from her with shaky fingers, and before drinking pressed it against my warm forehead. It was a hot summer afternoon: in the nineties: a dry, scintillating heat, a sun-glaring-blinding heat, not humid as in upstate New York. I'm afraid. So afraid. Help me. Hildie Pomeroy was watching me closely. In that mixture of extreme femininity and steely resolve she reminded me of certain of my school classmates in Strykersville, girls who hadn't gone on to college but had remained behind to be beauticians, dental assistants, nurses, nurse's aides. Almost, observing my pale, strained face, Hildie had an impulse to touch me; to console me; I wanted her to touch me, and to console me; I was terrified of my father's dying; I did not know what I would say to him. "This is kind of you," I said, licking my lips. "This is"-my voice faltered, I hadn't any idea what I was trying to say-"so strange to me. Thank you." Hildie Pomeroy frowned. I saw that my first impression of her had been incomplete. She was a sturdy little troll of a woman, in her rayon-white costume; she might've been as young as thirty, or as old as fifty; she had short, muscled legs and thick ankles, strong shoulders and forearms; a clearly defined, shapely bust that strained at the rayon shirt; her hair so bizarrely dyed, crow-black and lustreless, and her painted doll's face, and those beautiful moist brown eyes! My father's lover! His wife? I tried to recall Ida's face and could not. I was too far away from home. Staring at Hildie Pomeroy I could not have said if she was an unnervingly attractive woman, despite her disfigured back, or ghastly; if her painted face, meant to suggest feminine sweetness, and subjugation, and a desire to please, made me want to smile in sympathy, or turn away in contempt.
Hildie saw my indecision. My fear. She touched my wrist, lightly. On her fingers were glittery inexpensive rings; her nails were small talons, painted a lurid bright crimson to match her lips. "You drove such a long distance, dear. By yourself?" She shook her head doubtfully. "It's dangerous. For a woman. How on earth will you get back? On the map, it's so far."
In my fear I seemed to be plucking at, with childish fingers, a consolation of philosophy. Nietzsche's affirmation of eternal occurrence. We have lived this life, and this hour, many times; we have not yet been defeated; we are strong enough to endure; we must only say Yes. As Hildie led me to the porch at the back of the house, to be brought into my father's presence.
She'd checked him and, yes, he was awake-"Not awake like you and me, dear, but, for him, awake." He could see me for a few minutes, no more. Gently Hildie took my hand, her warm dry fingers gripping my clammy-damp fingers, and urged me out onto the porch, positioning me where my father could see me but, my back to him, I couldn't see him. "H-Hello, Daddy? Hello. It's-" uttering my name as if my father might not know it; daring to call him "Daddy," as if that had been my name for him when I'd been a child. My knees were shaking, my eyes stared blindly into space. It was dusk; the wooden porch was shaded from what would have been a bright, pitiless sunshine by day, by an immense gnarled vine that might have been grape, or wisteria, but had neither fruit nor blossoms, only a tangle of insect-stippled leaves; and by an inexpensive screen nailed into place between the railing and the roof. The screen was a reproduction of a Japanese watercolor of foliage and butterflies, badly faded, but exquisite in design. Hildie had made up a daytime bed for my father a few yards away, on a sofa with creaking springs. I could sense his presence immediately, though I didn't turn my head so much as a fraction of an inch; I knew that he was staring at me; his vision was weakened from his illness, but he was staring greedily at me. I heard a low straining guttural Uh-uh-uhhh which Hildie quickly translated-" 'Hello!' your father says. He's so happy you are here." I said, wiping at my eyes, "Oh, Daddy, I'm so happy to be here, too. I only wish-" Hildie poked me in warning, for what was I going to say; what are the words one utters to a dying man, that require being said aloud? My father squirmed in his bed saying Uh-uhhh and breathing harshly, and Hildie translated, "He asks you to shut your eyes and turn to him so he can see your face. But you must shut your eyes tight for if you look at him, you won't like what you see. And he won't like you to see it." I shut my eyelids, which were trembling badly, and Hildie turned me to face the man in the bed; the man I believed was my father; the man who was Death, and yet my father. "Don't be afraid, dear," Hildie said, gently, aiding me by pressing the palms of her hands lightly over my eyes, in such a way that most of my face was exposed. Hildie said to my father, enunciating her words as if my father would have had difficulty hearing otherwise, "Isn't she a brave girl, to drive alone to see you, so many miles! I would love her best, too." My father must have been staring at me in wonderment for he was silent; he didn't try to speak again. His breathing had become more labored; you listened with anxious fascination waiting for such breathing to cease. It was a terrible sound to live with intimately and yet I thought This is the sound of life for Hildie Pomeroy, so long as it continues.