The Complete Collection. William Wharton

this is cruel. Dad’s believing me. He’s glad Mother’s well, but he’s crushed she’s going to Palm Springs without him. Joan pushes past me and looks down the street.

      ‘Jack, you’re impossible! The car’s right down there, Dad. You have a real screwball for a son.’

      It gets us past the hard point anyway. I have some time to pull myself together.

      The TV’s on and I settle onto the gold chair, Mom’s chair. They’re watching a game between the Angels and Oakland. Oakland’s winning, of course. Dad realizes I’ve been to the hospital and he’s trying not to make a big thing of it.

      ‘How’s she look to you, Johnny? Does she seem all right?’

      Then, with hardly a pause.

      ‘When’s she coming home?’

      ‘She’s fine, Dad, but she’ll be in the hospital for a while. She said to say hello and sends you a big kiss.’

      He doesn’t ask what’s the matter with her. I don’t think he wants to know. I look over at Joan on the couch and she puts her finger to her lips.

      We watch silently. Oakland’s ahead by five.

      Joan stands quietly, points to the first back bedroom and leaves. I think it’s called a back bedroom because it’s behind the living room, kitchen and bath; she means the side bedroom.

      There’s another bedroom further back; the real back bedroom. This house is built in an L, the bottom part facing the street. This is the living-and-dining room. The long part of the L extends on the left toward the rear, with a patio on the right. Along this are the kitchen and bathroom, back to back; the middle, or first ‘back’ bedroom, then the real back bedroom at the end of the hall. Actually, there’s another bedroom in the garden; this is sometimes called the back bedroom, too. My folks’ house has three back bedrooms, no other kind.

      Joan’s waiting for me. With men on first and third, one out for the Angels, I leave as if I’m going to the bathroom; Dad and Mario don’t look up. I go in and close the bedroom door quietly. Joan’s stretched out on the bed, I sit on the floor.

      As children, Joan and I developed our own world, fighting what I now call the poverty mind. This poverty mind constantly suspects anything out of the ordinary, anything not known or accepted; also if it isn’t practical, it isn’t good.

      Now Joan has five children. She’s a natural mother, one of the incredible women who truly play with their children. And I don’t mean only when they’re babies; she plays with them all the time. She has a twenty-four-year-old son, Yale graduate cum laude, and she still plays with him. You might find them out in the yard playing marbles or shooting a BB gun.

      Mother calls Joan the ‘simp’ when she does this. ‘Look at the simp playing on the floor with her grown kids.’

      ‘Simp’ in Mom’s lexicon is short for simpleton, I think. I’ve never asked her. Whenever anyone does anything she doesn’t agree with, they’re automatically classified as ‘simp’. She snorts through her nose when she says it. Joan is a ‘simp’ (snort) because she plays with her children; ‘They’ll never have any respect for her. Honest to God, they think she’s only another kid.’

      Joan and I still play together. Here I’m fifty-two and she’s in her late forties, but when we get together, it’s playtime. Our play is based on deep confidence. What’s hide-and-seek if you peek? Can you relax and have fun on a seesaw with someone you don’t trust?

      ‘How’d Mom look to you, Jack?’

      She laughs when I tell her Mother’s first line. I admit she didn’t look so hot.

      ‘The doctor says we just have to wait and see what damage was done.’

      She pauses.

      ‘I’m worried about Dad. I could move him out to our place but he’s better off here where he can putter around his garden and greenhouse.’

      I nod.

      ‘How long can you stay?’

      ‘The ticket’s for twenty-one to forty-five days.’

      ‘That should be enough, I hope.’

      She rolls onto her side, slips off her shoes.

      ‘Don’t worry, Joan. I’ll stay with Dad. It’ll work out. At home, I’m a newfangled house husband.’

      She shoots me one of her ‘straight on’ looks.

      ‘Are you sure? You know he’s practically a baby.’

      ‘Don’t worry. He’s my father too, you know.’

      ‘That’d be great.’

      Joan gives me a rundown on a typical day here. She says the main thing is keeping everything on an even keel. She explains how Mother has a schedule and their whole life is essentially one long routine.

      ‘First, Mom gets up early and does her exercises. For her, it’s the best time of day; she has the whole house to herself. At about ten she takes a cup of coffee in to Dad, gives him his blood-pressure pills, vitamin pills and any other pills she’s into. The morning coffee is real coffee, not decaffeinated.

      ‘You know, Jack, Dad has somehow managed over the past eight years to keep alive the feeling he’s on an extended vacation; that sooner or later he must go back to work. He lives each day as if it might be his last.’

      She tells me the pills Dad takes. I recognize some and he’s heavily medicated. I think maybe I’ll try getting him into meditation or even yoga. I hold my own pressure down that way. I’ve brought my cuff with me, so I’ll check him when I do myself. That reserpine he’s on is deadly stuff; it’s basically poison.

      Joan reels off the rest of this daily routine, including mandatory soap operas. I tell her I’ll try sticking it out; but my mind is spinning, figuring ways to sharpen life up. I can’t leave other people’s lives alone. I especially want to wean him from those three hours of ‘soaps’ in the middle of the day. What a waste, to be living in California with all the sunshine out there, sitting inside staring at moving colored lines. My God, the ocean’s less than ten minutes away.

      ‘Another thing, Jack, Dad works a bit in his shop but he doesn’t have his old coordination; this drives him crazy. You know how he could fix almost anything? Now he has trouble keeping his own electric razor running.’

      Her eyes fill and she looks down.

      ‘He’s beginning to think I’m a mechanical genius because I can fix his razor; clean it, replace the blade, things like that.’

      ‘But you are a mechanical genius!’

      When we were kids, she was roller-skating at four when I was seven and I couldn’t even stand up on the damned things. She rode a two-wheeler before I did. I got the Erector set for Christmas and she played with it. That’s the way it was.

      ‘Try going along with him, Jack; help without making him feel inept. He’s fine as long as he doesn’t get flustered.’

      She gets up from the bed, slips on her shoes.

      ‘We’d better get out there before they think we’ve flown the coop.’

      The game’s still on. Oakland’s running away with it. We come in just after Rollie Fingers hits a bases-loaded homer. We watch the replay.

      Joan and Mario leave after the home run. I’m alone with Dad. I can’t remember when I was last alone with him. As we watch the end of the game, I go over in my mind the things Joan told me. I’m a fair-to-middling cook and housekeeper but it scares me trying to fill in for Mother.

      Before she left, Joan fixed dinner, so, at about six-thirty, I go in the kitchen and heat it up. I set the table for two. Dad’s in his regular place at the end of the table and I take my usual place to his left. I don’t take Mom’s place