“Prostate,” Mom answers.
“I’m so sorry, Dutch.” Gram takes my father’s arm. “What does the doctor say?”
“They caught it early. So, I’m weighing my options. I think I’m going to go with the seeds implanted in the nuts scenario.”
“Dad, do you have to call them…nuts?” Big tears roll down Jaclyn’s face.
“I didn’t want to say scrotum in front of your grandmother.”
“It’s better than nuts,” Mom says.
“Anyway, evidently about seventy-five percent of men who reach my age have prostrate issues.”
“Prostate, honey.” From the tone of my mother’s voice, I can tell she’s been correcting Dad’s phonics since the diagnosis.
“Prostate, prostrate, what’s the damn difference? I’m sixty-eight years old and something’s gonna get me. If it isn’t a shit ticker,” Dad says, thumping his chest, “it’s gonna be cancer. That’s the truth. I wanted you, my progeny, to know what I’m up against. And I wanted to tell you all in person, without spouses or the kids, so you could ingest the information firsthand. Naturally, I was also worried I’d scare the kids talking about my private areas. How the hell could I tell them that Grandpop has a problem in his pee-pee? It didn’t seem right.”
“No, it wouldn’t be right,” I whisper. I look at my father, who is the funniest person I know but doesn’t have any idea he’s funny. He’s worked all his life as head of the parks department here in Forest Hills, until he retired three years ago and went to work for my mother as the family gardener/dustman. He scrimped and saved and put us all through college. He’s been a willing costar to my mother, the lead, in the movie of their marriage. I never imagined anything bad happening to him because he was so stable. He wasn’t a saint, but he was solid.
My mother puts her hands in the First Communion position. “Look. We are facing this as a family, and we will beat it as a family.” The expression on her face is pure Joanna Kerns in the climax of My Husband, My Life, a TV weeper running in the repeat cycle on Lifetime. Mom takes a breath, hands still in the prayer position. She continues, “The doctor tells us it’s stage two…”
“…on a sliding scale of four,” Dad adds.
Mom continues, “…which is very good news. It means at his age, your father could easily outlive the cancer.”
I have no idea what my mother’s explanation means, and neither does anyone else, but she forges on.
“I am galvanized. He is equally galvanized. And thank God for Alfred, who is on top of getting Daddy the top medical care in the country. Alfred is going to call his friend at Sloan-Kettering to get your father the A team.”
Alfred nods that he will make the call.
“We have magnificent children…grandchildren”-Mom waves her arms around-“a lovely state-of-the-art home, and a beautiful life.” She breaks down and weeps. “We’re young and we’re gonna beat this thing. And that’s that.”
“Good deal, Mike.” Dad claps his hands together. “Who wants French toast?”
I drank way too much of the autumn-blend hazelnut coffee Mom served in the ornate sterling-silver urn with the spigot shaped like a bird’s head. (Heirloom, anyone?) There’s something about Mom’s delicate Spode teacups and the bottomless urn that tricks you into believing you’re consuming less caffeine than you really are. Or maybe I drank so much coffee because I was looking for an excuse to get up from the table from time to time, so I wouldn’t cry in front of my father.
We managed to keep the patter light through breakfast, but occasional silences descended on us as our thoughts wandered back to Dad’s terrible news. Conversation did not flow, it ricocheted around the room, exhausting us. Attempting to be chipper in the face of my father’s illness, a man who has never been sick a day in his life, is a tall order even for Funnyone.
The girls have cleared the brunch dishes from the table and are now sorting through the wedding pictures. Dad and Alfred are watching a football game in the den. The male bonding is evidently necessary after viewing wedding photos.
I’ve escaped to the backyard for air, but it’s actually claustrophobic because the only open space is on the stone footpath that leads to an outdoor living suite of English cottage furniture. And that’s not all. Artfully placed amid the dense landscaping is a clutter of traditional lawn ornaments including a sundial, a birdbath, and statuary of three Renaissance angels playing flutes. The reflection of my face in the blue medicine ball on a pedestal looks like a Modigliani, long and horsey and sad.
“Hey, kid,” Dad says from behind me.
“Why does Mom overdecorate everything?” I ask. “Does she think if she keeps landscaping in the English style, Colin Firth is going to come over that wall and take a dip in the birdbath?”
I sit down on the love seat. Dad squeezes in next to me. We are sharing rear-end space the size of a single subway seat. “This is the original Agony in the Garden.”
Dad laughs and puts his arm around me. “I don’t want you to worry about me.”
“I’m sorry, Dad, but I do.”
“I’ve been very blessed, Valentine. Besides, the big C ain’t what it used to be. People walk around with cancer like good bridgework. It becomes a part of you, the doctors tell me. Remission can last until you’re dead, for God’s sake.”
“Well, I’m glad to see you have a positive attitude.”
“Besides, I haven’t been a saint, Val. I probably had this coming.”
“What?” I turn and face my father, which, on this Barbie dream house of a love seat is not easy.
“Mezzo-mezzo.” He makes his hand into a flat wing and tips it. “I mean I’ve tried to be a good father and a decent husband. But I’m human and sometimes I failed.”
“You’re a good man, Dad. You failed very little.”
“Ah…enough for the marker to come due.”
“You didn’t get cancer because you made mistakes in your life.”
“Of course I did. Look at the evidence. I didn’t get lung cancer because God was mad I smoked. I get the cancer down below because I…you know.”
The mention of you know leaves us to our separate silences and memories. My dad remembers 1986 one way, and I remember it as a time when the very core of our family was shaken by my father’s midlife crisis, and my mother’s ability to negotiate it.
“I don’t believe in a vengeful God,” I tell him.
“I do. I’m an old-fashioned Catholic. I believed everything the nuns taught me. They said that God was watching me every second of every day, and that I’d better examine my conscience and beg God to forgive my sins before I went to sleep because if I accidentally suffocated during the night, without cleansing my soul, I’d go straight to hell. Then, when I became a teenager, they told me if I was even going to think about sex, I’d better marry her. And I did. But somewhere along the way, I started to think about God, and who He really is, and I came to the conclusion that He wasn’t watching me, day in and day out, like the nuns said.”
“So what was He doing?”
“I figured He gave me life and then waved sayonara, saying, ‘You’re on your own, Dutch.’ The rest was up to me. It was my job to live a good life and do the right thing. A soul is like an Etch A Sketch. When you screw up, it’s like you’re writing on it. But you have a chance to say you’re sorry, turn it over, and shake it until the bad thing disappears. That’s the notion of confession in a nutshell. The trick is to hit the finish line without a mark on your soul. I mean, you could say cancer is a good thing because it’s giving me a chance to prepare. At least I’m being given the gift of a set time period. Most people get a lot less.”
My eyes fill with tears. “I never want you to die, Dad.”
“But I’m gonna.”
“But not now. It’s too soon.”