Dad. William Wharton

fall asleep in the platform rocker and wake at first light. I haven’t even kicked off my shoes. That’s not like me. I take a shower. I make sure I get all those walls wiped and the tub is spotless. That’s how it is living around Mom. You spend your time making sure of everything. It’s the story of my childhood, constantly trying to stay one step ahead of recrimination.

      I work on Dad not to tell Mom about his operation; to let me break it gently, give her as much time as we can. Then we’ll only tell her Dad’s having a cyst removed, but not until just before he goes.

      When Mother comes home, I put her in the middle bedroom again. I’ve rented a special mattress attached to a pump; it’s to keep her from getting bedsores. I’ve rented an oxygen setup too, in case she needs it. This time we’re ready for anything. I have my cuff for her blood pressure and I can take her pulse or temperature. It’s not exactly an intensive care unit but it’s a homemade approximation. I quietly read the riot act to Mom about taking it easy. She seems willing to go along this time.

      One thing that’s haunting Mother is the notion of having a joint wedding anniversary celebration. I guess she cooked it up lying there in the hospital. My folks’ golden anniversary was three years ago, but Joan and Mario’s twenty-fifth was in January, while Vron and I will have been married twenty-five years in June. Mother is determined to put on some kind of event while I’m here, even though Vron is still in Paris. Joan thinks it might spark her up; it’s just Mom’s kind of thing. Joan made Mom a wedding dress for the fiftieth celebration. There was a mass, renewing of vows, the whole thing. I didn’t come; spending money that way seems stupid; so I’m feeling guilty and go along with it.

      Two days before Dad’s to go in for his operation, we get dressed up. Mario, Dad and I wear suits with white shirts, ties. Joan and Mother are in wedding dresses. Joan’s baked a three-layer cake and she still has the bride and groom dolls from the top of her original wedding cake. She also has the decorations from her wedding, silver collapsible bells and white crepe-paper streamers. We decorate the dining room.

      Mario and I take turns snapping pictures with a Polaroid camera. We take pictures stuffing cake into each other’s mouths. We keep faking it as if Vron’s there. Both Joan and Vron were married in the same dress. We were married five months after Joan and Mario, so Vron saved on a dress.

      Naturally, Joan still has it and that’s the dress she’s wearing. She stays out of the frame and shoves wedding cake in my mouth. Since it’s Polaroid, we see the pictures right away. It always seems like an accident Vron’s not there. One time, Mario takes a picture with my arm out as if I have it around Vron’s shoulders. He says he’ll frame it so nobody will know, but he doesn’t correct for parallax and it looks as if I have my arm around somebody invisible.

      We do this Tuesday night and Dad’s to be operated on Thursday. Looking back, it’s weird; maybe Mother has some kind of premonition. You’d never know we were virtually lifting Mom out of bed, snapping pictures, then lowering her, wedding dress and all, back into bed. I hate to think what Dr Coe would say.

      Over my objections, Dad and Mom sleep together that night in their own bed. Dad promises to behave himself; I’m almost ready to rig a bundling board. Of course, in the morning, Mom knows about Dad’s operation; he couldn’t keep his mouth shut. I imagine after more than fifty years’ confiding it’s impossible to hold back.

      She wants to know what it’s all about. I tell her he has a cyst, that some blood showed in his urine and I took him to the hospital. I tell her there’s nothing wrong except a cyst on his bladder they found in the cystoscopic examination.

      Mom sucks in her breath when I mention the cystoscopic; this is something she knows. She’s had trouble with her bladder since I was born. It’s something she’s never let me forget; ‘I ruined her insides.’ I remember as a kid feeling guilty, wishing I hadn’t done it. I’ve heard a hundred times about my ‘big head’. I’d look at myself in the mirror and was sure I had a head half again bigger than normal people. I do wear a size 7½ hat but I’m not exactly macrocephalic.

      As a result, Mother’s bladder dropped and had to be sewn up. It’s always been small and she’s constantly having it stretched, a painful process.

      My birth was such a trauma she came home and told my father she wouldn’t have any more children. One’s enough and she’s had it. He’s to leave her strictly alone. They’re rigid Catholics, so contraceptives are out of the question.

      At first Dad goes along; she’s scared the daylights out of him; they stay immaculate for six months or so. They’re sharing a single-row house with my Uncle Ed and Aunt Mary. I was born in early November and all through the winter, Mother’s hanging out diapers and having them freeze on the line, fighting diaper rash, and I have colic for the first three months.

      But Dad’s a normal guy with more than normal sex drive. This is something I’ve only recently realized. After six months, he comes home from work and hands something wrapped in a piece of paper to Mother. Inside, there’s a beautifully carved wooden clothespin, not the spring-clip type but the old squeeze kind. Dad’s good with a knife and he’s carved a small man from this clothespin. It has arms, hands, fingers, everything. Written on a slip of paper is ‘This is the kind of man you need. I’m not it.’

      Mom got the message. She’s carried that clothespin all her life and the note is in her cedar chest of valuable things, along with baby books, birth certificates, baby bonds, war bonds, defense bonds, savings bonds.

      But she’s still scared, so she worms a contraceptive remedy out of a Mrs Hunt down the street. Why this is going to be all right with the church and Dad wearing a rubber isn’t, I don’t know. But she’s only eighteen years old. She’s still nursing me, so she’s probably not going to get pregnant anyway.

      The remedy is to drink a teaspoonful of bleach every morning. After a few days of this, I start turning green and sickly; I don’t know how Mom feels. She rushes me to the doctor when I go into a convulsion. The doctor can’t figure the trouble. He asks what she’s been feeding me. She says she’s only been nursing and giving me a little baby food. He decides to check her milk. He asks what she’s been eating, if she’s been drinking heavily. She admits she’s been slugging down bleach. I’ll bet that doctor flipped.

      As soon as she stopped the bleach, I improved. I don’t know what they did after that. They didn’t get pregnant for three years, so they must have been doing something. If Dad put on a rubber before he went to bed, Mother could just pretend it wasn’t there.

      You read this kind of stuff in all the Irish-American novels but it keeps going on, over and over. Nobody seems to learn; humans must want to torture themselves in as many ways possible.

      But to go back. Mother does know a lot about cystoscopic examinations and isn’t nearly as panicked as I thought she’d be. But Dad is scared deep inside.

      That day I drive Dad to the hospital for tests and pre-op things, Mother gets weepy and Joan comes out to stay with her. At the hospital, I take Dad to his room and help store his clothes in the closet. I show him where the john is and assist him with getting dressed in the hospital gown. I speak to some of the nurses and try telling them how scared he is, but they’re mostly only professional. They listen but have their routines and are too busy to do much in the way of personal care.

      Dad’s embarrassed by the hospital gown and wants to wear his pajamas but they won’t let him. The gown is a long shirt with a neck-to-bottom opening in the back and no buttons.

      ‘Do I walk around in this, Johnny; with the back open and all these nurses here?’

      I want to reassure him but can’t; I don’t know why hospital gowns are made that way. It’s basically degrading. There must be another solution. They spend billions of dollars on hospital buildings and doctors. They charge hundreds of dollars a day, but they still use the same gown they used during the Civil War.

      I settle Dad in bed and show him how to work the TV. He finds a program he likes, and it all doesn’t seem so strange. I leave and tell him I’ll be back as soon as possible.