Raising the Dad Page 21

  Katie’s eyes began to water. “Mike…” Robin said protectively.

  He eased off on his niece. “You’re gonna be a grown-up someday, you know? And all this,” he said, referring to her costume and her pose, “is just gonna be a bunch of obnoxious shit you did with some skanky dumbfucks you don’t want to know anymore.

  “If you’re lucky, they’ll still be around, the both of ’em,” he said, pointing to her parents. “And you’ll like it. Maybe not like Walton’s Mountain, let’s hug it out over every stupid fucking thing. But it’ll be something you’ll be glad you got, even if you don’t show it all the time.” He met John’s eye guiltily for just a moment.

  “So, you know, you’re a kid,” Mike summed up gruffly. “Have a party, see what you can get away with—whatever. Just don’t be such a dick about it.”

  Forty-five

  By the time they slipped through the hidden door of the old hospital, the ironic detachment that Katie intended to drape herself in slipped away. The visiting party became four when Robin realized she had to be there for her daughter if this turned out to be an awful idea.

  As the flashlight beams led the way and the dust and rot began to make her feel like she was suffocating, Katie wished she had stayed home. But that thing her uncle said—about how much her father was hurting because of everything that happened—made her take the ride.

  She could tell he wanted her to come have a look at her grandfather. She could do that for him. But now here she was, whispering and creeping about in a deserted old hospital, feeling an impending sense of attack, like in one of the Saw movies.

  They finally gathered at the door into room 116.

  “It’s just like he’s asleep,” John said to Katie soothingly. “You’ll see.”

  He opened the door. But it wasn’t like that at all.

  Across the room, the shriveled, bone-thin old man writhed in anguish, his breath ragged and full of fluid. The familiar and calm lines on the vital signs monitor spiked wildly, the measures for heart rate, pulse, and oxygen all registering dire numbers as the unit blinked and beeped.

  The familiar silence of the room broken alarmingly, John and Mike rushed to their father’s side.

  “Jesus, he’s burning up,” John said as he felt Larry’s forehead. The old man’s mouth snapped open and closed sharply, fighting for air. His lungs gurgled with phlegm.

  “He’s … drowning,” Mike said with muted urgency. The involuntary contortions caused the old man’s eyes to open for scant seconds before slamming shut again. Katie couldn’t have known that parted eyelids—for even a moment—weren’t normal.

  * * *

  Gloria came within fifteen minutes. The Husteds stayed out of her way as she intensely but unhurriedly took Larry’s temperature and listened to his breathing. She had a log book that John wasn’t sure he had ever noticed before. It was filled with pages and pages of meticulous notes. She entered her new records and shook her head.

  John discussed her diagnosis in halting but sufficient Spanish that would have impressed his family any other time. They saw John’s spirit sag.

  “It’s an infection of some kind. She thinks he caught something,” he said. “His fever is nearly a hundred and three.”

  “Is this it?” Robin asked with stark sensitivity.

  They all watched as Gloria injected something into Larry’s IV line.

  “She said she could flood him with antibiotics, see if he can fight it off. I said go ahead, but…” he trailed off. “Yeah, I think we’re there.”

  “What about your mother?” asked Robin, impulsively but certain it needed to be asked.

  John and Mike looked to each other for an answer, then turned to their father’s bed. Gloria stood over him, gently brushing his matted hair with her fingers, holding his hand, and whispering something gentle in Spanish.

  Forty-six

  Alzheimer’s patients struggle with dream states, as the agitation of their waking hours are set loose to jostle their minds insanely while they sleep. And then upon waking, the surrealism of their dreams dissolves seamlessly into the disorientation of their days. It was common for Mike to have Rose emerge from her room first thing in the morning, ashen and agitated and begging to know what was real and what had been a dream.

  “Why would you boys do this?” she now asked her sons as she quivered, equal parts angry and scared when they sat her down a little past midnight. The shock of having them in her bedroom in the middle of the night, the craziness of what they told her—the funhouse mirrors of her mind were having their way with her.

  “Mom, it’s true,” John said softly, sitting on one side of her on the bed, holding her hand while Mike sat on the other. “Dad’s alive. Larry, your husband, is alive. And we’ll explain it all to you when we can, but right now we need you to come see him. He’s waiting for you.”

  “Your father died. A long time ago,” she said slowly and with grave solemnity. “You know this. Why are you doing this to me?”

  She focused all her attention on John. For so long, he was all she had. He was the one to make things right. And now she was pleading with him to stop breaking her heart.

  His eyes welled at her anguish. But before he could respond, Mike moved from beside her to kneel at her slippered feet. He took both her hands and looked in her eyes.

  “Mom,” he said softly, “we need you to trust us. Can you do that? Can you get dressed, and just come for a drive with us? We’ll bring you right back, and we’ll get you back into bed, and in the morning you’ll forget all about this. Okay?”

  Something long gone stirred inside her. This sensitivity, from her angry, unsettled son, was lovely. Even if this was only a dream, she was grateful to have him hold her hands and speak gently to her. She would follow him anywhere so long as he seemed to love her again.

  Forty-seven

  The work lights John had borrowed from his neighbor remained at the hospital, so before John and Mike left to get Rose he charged Robin and Katie with positioning them as best they could along the path to the room. Hampered by time and available electricity, the lights were stationed intermittently. They provided sufficient illumination, freeing John and Mike from having to guide their mother in by flashlight, but they cast jagged veins of shadows along the passageway. They had just finished when they heard them coming.

  John and Mike walked on either side of Rose, their hands lightly on her back and guiding her forward. Rose became silent in the car, and now she seemed to have withdrawn completely into herself as she shuffled slowly.

  “You okay, Mom?” John asked gently. “We could stop and sit for a moment, if you want.”

  She said nothing, just kept moving her feet in the direction she was pushed. John and Mike exchanged a look—there was no turning back.

  They rounded a corner, and there stood Robin and Katie standing outside a door. Faces emerged from shadows—faces of loved ones, turning up in the oddest places. Rose felt comforted to see them, but confused that they should be here. She looked to them imploringly as Katie fought back a tearful sigh. She gave her grandmother a hug.

  “Okay, Mom?” John said as Katie stepped back. “We’re going to go in now. We’re going to see Dad. Larry. He’s right inside. Are you ready?”

  She looked to her sons. What had gone wrong with them, that they would be part of this?

  But she nodded. Because they were her sons. Because she trusted them.

  Mike opened the door. John took her elbow and escorted her in. Robin and Katie stayed in the hallway as the door closed.

  Forty-eight

  John had asked Gloria to sedate Larry. In every scenario John spent the past several weeks imagining, all of them saw Rose reuniting with Larry as he lay peacefully, the moment soft and still. The agonized, disturbing struggle for breath that they unexpectedly found earlier that evening could not be the image that Rose would confront.

  The lights in the room were muted and warm. John and Mike laid the softest support at their mother’
s back as they continued to ease her forward. The dry shuffling of her sensible shoes were the only sounds in the room as she drew toward the bed.

  As they finally reached Larry’s side, John drew in a deep breath.

  “Mom. This is—”

  “Sssshhh!” she said sharply, her gaze fixed on the man sleeping in the bed.

  John and Mike met each other’s eyes. There was anger in her silencing, as if their overly solicitous care irritated her. As if it offended her for them to think that introductions were necessary.

  She took a step toward the bed, shaking off her sons. They stepped back to let her continue on her own.

  Her eyes grew curious but skeptical as she slowly traversed the foot of the bed and came around the other side, her stare never once broken from the man lying there.

  Returning to the head of the bed, she drew even closer. She stared at the drawn, depleted face looking back at her, the man’s eyes closed as if caught in the deepest of sleeps.

  She tilted her head to the right and then to the left, as if shifting her perspective might finally bring her husband into focus. But it didn’t seem to come. It appeared that she might reject this whole insane premise and demand that John and Mike return her to her bed.

  But then a clear shiver of clarity crossed her face as she looked closer. A very specific memory registered as she hesitated, and then slowly extended a finger to trace the scar beneath her husband’s left eye.

  As she made contact with his skin, a lifetime—both shared and denied them—infused her.

  In an instant she was determined to climb into the bed to lie beside him.

  “Whoa, hey. Mom,” John said in an urgent whisper, both he and Mike not at all prepared to react to this. Larry was as fragile as a china doll. The IV and feeding tube were at risk of being yanked out as John frantically came around the bed. “Hang on a minute.”

  Rose was tiny. The hospital bed was elevated, but she was not going to deny the driven, almost hungry need to restore herself to her husband’s side. She silently started climbing her way up.

  John tried to find a respectful spot on an arm or leg with which to ease her up, while Mike stood on the other side of the bed and pulled her forward with the same discretion. Rose did not utter a word as John and Mike did all they could to get her where she wanted to be.

  “Okay,” John sweated. “Just move this leg over here.… Watch your elbow. Good, now…”

  As Rose found a comfortable space beside her husband, she appeared perilously close to tumbling off the bed. As beautiful as the moment was, John and Mike were afraid to step away for fear she’d fall.

  “Mom…” Mike whispered with concern.

  “Ssshhhhh,” she said again, gently this time. Snuggling up next to Larry, she closed her eyes and gently laid her head on his chest.

  Here was his heart, still beating for her.

  She sighed and became completely still. As still as her husband. The image and the complete silence of the room riveted John and Mike as both blunted sobs that might break the spell.

  They watched for as many moments as they could allow themselves, then they silently left the room.

  John wept without restraint as he fell into the embrace of his wife and daughter waiting in the hall. Alone for just a moment, Mike gratefully stepped forward as the hug parted to accept him. The four of them held each other, their sobs and mutters of comfort echoing down the empty hallways.

  They sat through the night. John and Robin tried numerous times to take Katie home—it was a school night—but she begged to stay. The hall at night was cold. The four sat close to each other to stay warm. They napped and talked and imagined ghost stories about the souls who once roamed these corridors.

  * * *

  Discreet glimpses into Larry’s room confirmed that Rose had fallen asleep, but she would wake up soon. Between the confusion of remembering where she was and with whom, the chances of her falling from the bed as the realization hit her were great. They could not risk her waking up without them there.

  A little after six, John and Mike finally crept into the room.

  Rose woke up.

  Larry did not. Finally, forever.

  Forty-nine

  The tapping skittered through the cemetery with a volume amplified by the dead-of-night still. This mission, he hoped, would be the last.

  At Katie’s instruction, John crept into Eastlawn a few nights earlier to apply the plaster to Larry’s headstone, giving it time to set. Now, with sculpting tools borrowed from art class, Katie came back with him to chisel in 2015.

  The year of Larry’s death had been a lie. It was time to set things straight.

  “It’s vandalism,” Robin had protested.

  “It’s our headstone,” John replied. “We paid for it.”

  “Don’t you think it’s going to raise questions?”

  “How much time do you spend fact-checking other people’s graves?”

  “It’s going to look ridiculous!”

  “Yeah, well,” John shrugged. “Sometimes, so does my family.”

  It was not in Robin to back down. “What if you get caught?”

  “I really think you’re overthinking this.”

  * * *

  There was plenty of careful monitoring of Rose after Larry died. When she woke up that morning next to her husband, she wasn’t told that he was dead. And yet when she was led away from him she gave no indication that she expected to see him again. Disoriented and unable to focus, no one spoke as they returned her to her home. Mike stayed awake in the living room as she slept soundly until the next morning.

  When she finally came to the breakfast table, John and Mike waited anxiously. John brought her favorite blueberry muffins and a big pot of coffee simmered. They watched her intently as she shuffled sleepily into the room, brightening as she found her two boys and a tray of goodies waiting for her.

  “I could have slept the day away,” she said sighed contentedly as she tucked into her first muffin.

  “It’s good to see you sleeping so well,” John said warily, studying her closely.

  “Shouldn’t you be at work?” she asked John, and then appeared to confuse her two sons. “You have a job. Don’t you?”

  “Sure. And Mike, he’s looking. Something will turn up,” John said. “But, today, it just seemed like we should … You know. Hang out. If you wanted to talk.”

  John and Mike resolved to not bring up Larry unless Rose did. It was cowardice, but it was also out of respect for the delicate state of her mind.

  They did what they charged themselves with doing; they brought Rose the news of her husband. It seemed inconceivable that it hadn’t stuck, but if she had to cope by folding the night before into the shifting sands of her everyday grip on reality, that’s what they would allow her.

  Hearing she had both sons to herself, Rose beamed as she laid her hands on their arms. “How did I get so lucky?”

  They sat together all day, Rose intermittently slipping away to nap. Over lunch they watched Days of Our Lives. At some point in this ritual that Mike and Rose had come to share, Mike took on the job of making the soup and grilled cheese sandwiches. The bread was browned perfectly, the cheese melted just so.

  “Is she the one trying to get Serena to leave town?” Rose asked as they settled in before the soap opera.

  “No. That’s Nicole. This one,” Mike said, pointing to the TV, “is Paige. Remember? She’s JJ’s girlfriend, but JJ also slept with Eve, Paige’s mom. Eve’s trying to get Cole to set up JJ to get him arrested for drugs, but Dr. Jonas might rat out Eve first ’cause he just figured out that she slept with JJ. So … It’s some crazy shit.”

  “Language,” Rose scolded Mike, as John smiled fondly at the two of them.

  * * *

  When by the next day Rose still hadn’t mentioned Larry, John knew it could not be avoided. They had to make arrangements.

  There could be no funeral. The empty casket planted in the ground in 1985 could not n
ow be replaced by an occupied one without spilling the secret wide open. As instructed by Walt Bolger before he left town, John warily called on Todd Stanton at the funeral home. As he nervously ushered John into his office, Todd—a few years older than John and now the prosperous owner of his father’s mortuary—was wary now that the mysterious burden his father bequeathed to him decades earlier was finally coming due.

  Todd explained to John that his father gave him no details, just that if the day came that he received a call concerning Larry Husted he was to open the doors to the business to him and perform his duties with the utmost decorum and secrecy. Todd spent years wondering what the hell his father did.

  John told Todd the whole story; here was one of the very few people who could be trusted with the secret. When John finished, Todd was pale.

  “Holy shit,” he said in awe.

  “Tell me about it,” John smiled.

  “I mean…” Todd said, struggling to figure out what his obligation was here. “I’m sorry, about my father. If by going along with this he caused your family…” He trailed off, completely at a loss to make sense of it.

  “It’s okay,” John said generously. “It turned out okay.”

  Todd chuckled with relief, shaking his head in wonder. “Those crazy fuckers.”

  Todd found a memory. “Your father treated me once, when I was eight. I broke my arm,” he said fondly. “He was a really nice guy. I was scared and it hurt like hell, but he made me laugh.”

  John smiled gratefully.

  “It will be an honor to see to this for your family,” Todd said earnestly.

  * * *

  John called Dean Durning as soon as they got Rose settled back home. Durning had the good sense to receive the news respectfully and without betraying a whiff of the incredible relief he felt.

  John wanted Larry tended to immediately; his body would not lie in that rotted building until the cover of night returned. Durning pointed out that sending the funeral home’s van in the daylight, even around to the hidden back door, would be too big a risk. They agreed that Durning would drive his family’s van and that he and Todd Stanton would remove the body.