Raising the Dad Page 8

  John sighed to hear Mike’s bullshit echoed back through their mother. Of all the concerns she should have for her eldest son, his chops were way down on the list.

  “He needs to find a real job,” John stressed. “He’s forty-five years old.”

  “He could be Vince O’Neil, any day now,” she said hopefully. John stared at her sadly—how much crap had she rationalized over the the past thirty years to accept the wreck of a life Mike brought upon himself?

  “Even if he could make money from this, which he can’t,” John said, “he’s going to be back in bars, hanging around drugs. It nearly killed him last time.”

  Rose shivered and withdrew, and John knew that he exposed her to blunt talk she was no longer able to process. As her thinking grew more scattered and her memories more elusive, he saw that she became easily upset at uncomfortable truths.

  Surely her mind retained bitter shards of Mike’s rock-and-roll crash. She watched as the Gravel Rash dream died so gruesomely, leaving Mike broke, uneducated, and in prison before he was twenty-five. But those dark recollections—along with the details of her husband’s death—were haphazardly filed in a drawer that dementia was fast welding shut. John saw that she could retrieve traces of memory, but the essential connections that make a memory vivid or even cohesive enough to understand were lost.

  Blurting out a biting reference to Mike’s downfall just sent her mind churning for details that she knew she should possess, but were never going to come. As a result, John found that talks with his mother most comfortably stayed rooted in formless chitchat: old family friends, local gossip, past Husted glories and minutia.

  The unfailing sameness nurtured her. Ordinarily, John was content with indulging whatever frivolous topics brought his mother solace, and that was the expectation when he had called her the week before to schedule lunch at their usual spot. Back before Larry came back.

  Rose loved Rocky’s. The older waitresses still doted on her as Lawrence Husted’s widow; even the younger ones knew her as a regular and treated her with cordial deference. Rose still expected respect for her standing in the community, even if it had faded over the years. At Rocky’s, it was as if Larry Husted never died. When Rose walked in, respect was paid.

  So there sat John, the hospital looming over his mother’s shoulder, her husband alive within. John ate nothing. His stomach roiled with acids and anxieties that scoured his insides.

  This was not remotely the time to tell Rose the secret. This was just a lunch date.

  The dark conversation about Mike quickly dissipated. Small talk loomed.

  “So what did Walt Bolger want to talk to you about?” she asked, picking at the cottage cheese beside her BLT.

  John froze; this she remembered.

  Then, for not the first time he went easily to hazying up the truth. Her condition sometimes demanded it, and conveniently made it easier to justify. Facts didn’t always stick, and John couldn’t count on the memories crucial to her full understanding. If the goal was to keep her calm—and the reality was that she might not remember what she was told anyway—sometimes a well-intentioned lie did the trick.

  Lying in bed at four that morning, dreading this lunch, John spun such rationalizations easily.

  “He wanted to tell me that he’s leaving town,” John said.

  She waved this away. “He’s been talking about leaving for years. He’s never going to let that hospital go. He’s got to be over seventy years old and I hear he’s still hanging around there.”

  “He means it this time. He wants to make sure you’re going to be okay.”

  “Tell him I’m fine. I’ve got you, and Mike. And, you know,” she said defensively, “all old people have problems remembering things. It’s not the end of the world.”

  He felt her shutting down this topic of conversation. It broached unpleasant realities.

  “Well,” he shrugged. “I think he’s just trying to be a good friend.”

  “I know,” she conceded with a tolerant sigh. “He’s just an old worrywart.”

  They said nothing for several moments as Rose searched for memories in the coffee shop, then she turned to catch John transfixed by the hospital across the street.

  “Penny for your thoughts,” she said.

  He squirmed. “Just thinking about Dad. Guess it was seeing Dr. Bolger the other day. He told me some stories.” John smiled at some of the tales Walt had shared.

  “I don’t think I want to know what those two got into when they were around each other,” she sighed with fond disapproval. “They could be like a couple of little boys. Walt Bolger really loved your father.”

  “Yeah,” John said. “I got that.”

  He stalled. He knew the question that needed to be asked, but here was the thing: This was a family that almost never opened up about deeply personal things. John and his mother were close enough; Mike was Mike. Rose and Robin got along fine. Katie was as close as any teenager to her grandmother, which was typically not close at all. On holidays, or for random reasons, they all came together and smiled and inquired about the inanities of each other’s lives.

  But the pain and the sorrow and the joy and the nagging anxieties that each experienced, which each continued to wrestle with, sometimes for exactly the same reason—do families really talk about such things?

  Still, on this day, John needed to know. He really needed to know.

  “Do you ever think about Dad?”

  Rose shifted awkwardly. A raw, naked emotion was unexpectedly spiked and demanding a response. This was why families stuck to talking about the weather and how the Packers were doing, John thought.

  “Of course,” she said with an edge. Was her answer true, John wondered, or was this the tone a widow takes when she is forced to admit that after thirty years the honest answer is, “Not really.”

  John had admitted to Robin that his father had long ago faded from his mind. A photograph or one of the hoary family myths running in endless rotation brought Larry back just long enough to reburnish his vaguely recalled presence in John’s past. But little of Larry reached across the decades to coalesce into a meaningful memory.

  Still, Larry and Rose had history. They lost their lifetime together, but the time they did have, when their lives were young and their futures uncharted, had to have a left permanent mark on the spouse left behind.

  For John to presume otherwise would be to accept that if he vanished that day, Robin might think nothing of him thirty years on. Or that he could so easily stop thinking of her. A marriage had to count for more than that.

  But could Rose remember? She was beginning to have trouble remembering her granddaughter’s name; what thoughts remained of a marriage severed three decades ago? Without knowing what she still felt about Larry, how could John be sure that she would be able to cope with the unthinkable secret he was keeping from her? If he strung this out for another year, could he ever really know?

  On the other hand, if John walked her across the street right then, how could he ever undo the trauma he caused if it turned out he’d made a terrible mistake?

  These were the questions that gnawed at him.

  He looked past his mother to the hospital. He and Larry were alone in this. For how long, John had no idea.

  Nineteen

  “This is not acceptable,” Dean Durning said sternly from behind his desk, confronting John and Walt.

  It was the happiest day of his professional life when a few weeks earlier, Walt Bolger told him it was finally—finally!—time to initiate the endgame for Larry Husted. For two years, Durning’s stomach had roiled as he endured the situation on the other side of the B wing wall.

  His impulsive gesture to accommodate Walt for what he assumed would be a few weeks grew to mock him as Larry lived on and on. Walt’s way in through the dead hospital had so far provided perfect cover, and when the crafty old fucker started hiring an undocumented nurse to cover more and more of Larry’s treatments, Durning knew he had been conned.<
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  It would take mortality to finally draw this holy mess to a close, and it turned out to be Walt’s. When Walt told Durning about his terminal prognosis and his intent to leave Holt City to tend to what remained of his life, Durning was appropriately regretful but silently elated. He assumed that on his way out of town, Walt would tenderly let Larry go and take it up with God when the time came.

  Instead, the administrator protested mightily when Walt insisted on telling John Husted everything first. Durning knew nothing about John Husted, but he was very familiar with his older brother from school. The whole town knew that Mike Husted was in and out of jail for the past twenty-five years and a bum. There was no way he could be trusted with the truth.

  “John’s different,” Walt assured him. “I’ve known him since he was a boy. I trust him to help us bring this to the proper end. For all of us.”

  Once again, Walt Bolger was backing Durning to the wall and using mad logic to extract his compliance. Telling all to Larry Husted’s son came with incredible risks, but so did the threat of mutually assured destruction that Walt continued to blackmail the administrator with every time he suggested that Larry’s time on the B wing had to end.

  Over the past two years it galled Durning to believe so, but every damned decision the old doctor had made on behalf of his friend had been the right one. So he agreed to allow John Husted into the circle, and he prayed that Walt’s gamble would work. He shook John Husted’s hand on that day when Walt first brought John to the hospital to break the news about his father, and he trusted that it would all be over soon.

  Which was why he was apoplectic when after only a few days of contemplation, John called a meeting in Durning’s office to announce that he wasn’t going to take action any time soon. Larry was sticking around.

  “No!” Durning snapped. “No more!” He turned to Walt for support. “Tell him!”

  “John,” Walt said gently, leaning forward for emphasis. “I told you, we’re both prepared to be as patient as we can be as you work your way through this. We understand that we’ve placed you in an extraordinary position.”

  John snorted at the understatement.

  “But this does have to come to an end. The hospital cannot continue to keep Larry on here. And I am leaving.”

  John bore down grimly. He was not a forceful man, but the madness of the situation imbued him with a righteous sense of purpose.

  “I will not end my father’s life until I know for certain what I need to do about my mother,” he declared firmly. “I do not know when I will have an answer for that. It’s kind of complicated,” he sneered icily.…

  He met their eyes with simmering indignation. “For right now, you don’t need to worry about my brother. I’m not sure he won’t turn this into something we’re all hoping to avoid. But my opinion might change on that because that’s his fucking father lying there, and I’m not sure it’s my place to keep that from him.”

  He laid his glare into Walt. “Somehow, in ways I cannot begin to get my mind around, you have kept my father alive and kept him a secret for thirty years. If it takes another month, or another year, that’s the way it’s going to have to be.”

  Durning nearly jumped from his chair. “But—!”

  “Until that day comes, if anything happens to him, I will destroy the both of you and this hospital,” he said darkly. “My father put this place up, and I will not hesitate to bring it down.”

  * * *

  John shot from Durning’s office with an agitated head of steam and no place to go. He left the building, headed for his car, but just kept walking.

  He found himself at the edge of the hospital’s land, standing against a meager cornfield that still portrayed Holt City’s rural roots. He paced and ran scenarios and wished he had learned to smoke, because all the scenes he saw in movies in which the hero’s brain boiled at some desperate challenge always seemed to require a cigarette.

  He wondered if it was too late to start smoking. And then he wondered if this was really what he should be wondering about.

  He finally turned and was not surprised to find Walt Bolger, waiting respectfully to continue the conversation.

  John did not look away; Walt took this as an invitation to come closer.

  “A lot of what I said in there was to throw a scare into that asshole,” John said tersely, nodding toward the hospital before looking the old man square in the eye. “But not all of it.”

  “I know,” Walt said.

  “I will do whatever I have to do.”

  “You’re going to do this your way, John. I knew that when I decided to bring you into this,” Walt said.

  “But I want you to remember one thing,” the old man continued. “This town needs this hospital. It helps a lot of people. It’s never been the success your father and I hoped it would be. It’s always struggled.”

  The old man swept his arm toward the building.

  “One by one, we’ve been shutting down whole patient wings as folks have left town or decided to go to Madison or Milwaukee for what they think is better care. But our neighbors, this is where they want to be.

  “If all this with Larry gets out, between the lawsuits and the bad publicity, it couldn’t survive.”

  John heard the regret in his voice.

  “Your anger is with me, where it should be,” Walt said. “But God’s in the process of taking me beyond your reach. Don’t punish others who had nothing to do with this.”

  A breeze blew across the cornfield. An ambulance gave a short, urgent blast of its siren as it rolled up to the hospital’s emergency room.

  “You can’t keep this going on your own,” the old man implored plainly.

  “I’m not talking about another thirty years,” John pleaded. “I’m talking about the time I need to make this okay. For my family.”

  Walt smiled wistfully at John’s determination. “Son,” he said firmly, “you have no idea the commitment your father requires.”

  “I’ll learn. And if I get it wrong, if it’s more than I can handle … At least I’ll have tried.”

  Walt studied him sadly. “This is why I was afraid to tell you.”

  “Well, you did. And now we’re here.”

  Walt saw John’s resolve back in Durning’s office, but he was getting in way over his head. John had to see that.

  “Meet me back here at three o’clock tomorrow morning,” Walt finally said, encouraged to see the surprised look on John’s face. “Park behind the Taco Bell. Stay away from the streetlights.”

  Twenty

  The dim light of Larry’s hospital room seemed even more cloak-like well past midnight. The silence was absolute, despite the fact that a life was being saved right before John’s eyes.

  He and Walt stood out of the way as a Hispanic woman dispassionately performed her job. She was compactly built, anywhere between forty and fifty-five years old depending on how much of her worn look came from hard living.

  She performed her duties wordlessly, gently dabbing lotion into Larry’s arms and then opening Larry’s diaper. John recoiled at the lack of dignity afforded his father and at the unexpected sight of his gray, withered penis. He stirred to protest as she began wiping him, but Walt silenced him with a stern glare. This was the raw, clinical reality that Walt and the nurse knew. If John was really going to take this on, he had to accept it.

  Before John could even bother to keep his eyes averted, the nurse slipped a new disposable diaper onto Larry with one seamless motion and began lotioning his ankles.

  “Over time, bodies in this state train themselves to eliminate waste on a kind of schedule,” Walt whispered. “The biggest concern is pressure sores. Moisture increases the risk. The diapering has to be dealt with immediately.”

  The nurse continued to apply lotion with firm but delicate motions, allowing the cream to absorb into the skin before carefully blotting away the excess. Larry’s skeletal frame offered no challenge for her as she lifted and cradled his body. There wa
s almost a ritual to it, an anointing of the sick. She paid special attention to Larry’s heels, ankles, and elbows.

  “Any bony area has to be watched closely—the back of the head, the base of the spine. Anywhere that is subjected to constant pressure,” Walt explained. “If the tissue does not get enough blood, it dies. Then infection sets in.”

  She lightly massaged every inch of Larry’s body, then she effortlessly moved him into a different position. She exposed the incision around the IV tube in Larry’s stomach. She wiped away a small amount of leakage, and then she changed the supply bag that hung on a hook at the side of the bed.

  “The only life support we supply is food and water,” Walt said. “He’s always managed to breathe on his own.

  “If he gets a fever, we bring it down. If there’s an infection, we cure it. Gloria recognizes every fluctuation and knows what to do.”

  John studied the nurse with fascination, then watched as she opened Larry’s mouth and held a small suction device in one hand while brushing his teeth with the other. The procedure struck John as even more invasive than the diapering process, and it made no sense. He turned to Walt uncomfortably.

  “You don’t want to know the disease that would penetrate through the gum line if you didn’t brush regularly,” Walt explained. “It would be lethal for Larry.”

  It was an arduous process; Gloria did the job with sullen precision. She then wiped Larry’s mouth and tucked in the corners of his sheets before neatly arranging her supplies. The used diaper went into her tattered handbag.

  The entire treatment took about five minutes. Not once did Gloria meet John’s eyes or deviate in the slightest from her duties. She was like a spirit, moving among John and Walt in a detached universe she shared only with her mute patient.

  As she went to make her exit, John impulsively met Gloria at the door.

  “Thank you,” he said softly. What he witnessed moved him powerfully.