Somehow, by having taken Dad’s blood pressure I’ve threatened this schmuck. Then he comes on with the next thing.
‘And do you have the right to prescribe medication, Mr Tremont?’
I figure now’s the time to do a little lying. In fact, I don’t even think it out, I just do it.
‘Dr Tremont, Dr Ethridge. Yes, I do have the right to prescribe. It’s well within the range of my prerogatives as a member of APA. And I do not like your attitude, Dr Ethridge, it is distinctly unethical and inappropriate in a moment of emergency.’
Actually, I haven’t been a member of APA for over twenty years. It’s one of the little luxuries I let slide. There’s a pause. I give him his chance but he doesn’t say anything.
‘All I want from you right now, Dr Ethridge, and as quickly as possible, is a recommendation as to what we should do to compensate for the results of the Elavil you prescribed over the phone.’
I know I’ve got him. There’s another long pause. I swear if he hangs up we’re going to have a shoot-out.
‘Well, Mr Tremont, I don’t like your attitude either. For the moment, with your father, perhaps you should wait until he calms down or shows further signs of depression before you give him any more Elavil. The Valium you’ve given him should calm him but he’s liable to become depressed again. Experiment till you find a balance. If that doesn’t work, bring him in.’
I say thank you and hang up. It’s best to get off the phone before I say what I’m thinking.
It takes a while, but Dad slowly unwinds. Joan and I sit and talk with him or with each other. We recognize we can’t go on like this. With Mom acting crazy at her place and Dad not getting any better, we’re stymied. It’s not only that Dad hasn’t shown any signs of improving, but he’s physically and mentally deteriorating. I can’t get him to stand straight on the scale in the bathroom to weigh him, but he’s wasting away. His elbows and knees are like ball-bearing sockets and his muscles are stringy.
We decide we’ll take him back to the hospital. I call and tell them we’re coming in.
But first we want to get him clean. Even with all my care, he definitely smells. He smells the way my grandparents used to smell when I was a kid and we went to visit them in Philadelphia. It’s the smell of age: old sweat, constipation and dried urine. Maybe it isn’t bad as that with Dad, but Joan and I have a compulsive mother so we need to clean him before we take him into the hospital. We’re embarrassed because he smells.
We slide the plastic cover from the bed and spread it on the living-room floor. We take his clothes off and turn the heat up. He lies back, watching us, not resisting in any way. Joan takes one arm and rubs all along it with a washcloth, soap and warm water; then she does the other; he lets her do it, not helping, not resisting or even watching. Joan washes his hands, rubs between his fingers and cleans his fingernails. Then she cuts them.
I’m doing the same things with the bottom parts. I’m cleaning his toes and between his toes, the bottoms of his feet. I cut his toenails with the big toenail clippers from the bedside table. I clean out his crotch, wipe him and pull the foreskin back to clean his penis. I’m lifting his legs up and down as I do these things, exactly the way you would with a baby. It’s so hard putting this together with Dad.
We dress him in a clean pair of pajamas and his terry-cloth bathrobe. It takes the two of us getting pajamas on him. He’s disintegrated to a point where he can’t help. He can’t walk, either. He won’t put one foot in front of another. He stands and rocks.
Joan makes up the bed in her V W camper. I scoop him up and carry him out there. Joan gets in front and I stay back with Dad, sitting on the edge of the bed and trying to comfort him. Through all this he’s anxious, chattering his lips, fixing us in a helpless way with his eyes or staring at whatever happens to be in front of him.
When we get to the hospital, I run around trying to get a wheelchair but when they come out and see the condition Dad’s in, they bring a stretcher. We roll him into the emergency ward. Two doctors and a nurse begin working him up right away. I explain the situation while they’re working. They put him on IV immediately. The doctor is a concerned young guy. It turns out Dad’s BUN is up; blood tests don’t look good; he’s definitely dehydrating. The BUN, he explains, is the amount of nitrogen and urea in his blood.
They say Dad needs to stay in the hospital. We sign all the forms. By now, Dad’s been given a sedative and looks more relaxed. We stay with him till they roll him upstairs. We kiss him goodbye but he’s asleep.
When we get home, Joan and I eat the dinner she’s cooked. Then I drive over to the Valley, following Joan in Mother’s car. We tell Mom that Dad took a bad turn so we brought him back to the hospital.
This springs off a whole scene. It would all’ve been fine if we’d only let her look after him. It’s her he’s missing.
‘After all, it’s my husband! You kids have no idea what a tender man he is; he can’t do without me. Now look what’s happened.’
Joan and I nod, agree; we don’t need another heart attack. It doesn’t take much to talk Mom into going home with me. You’d think staying with Joan was some kind of penance she’s having to pay for the heart attacks: five Our Fathers, ten Hail Marys and a week at your daughter’s.
Thank God, Mario isn’t there; he takes an awful beating. I think Mario’s gotten more or less inured to it all but you can’t ask anybody to put up with this kind of nonsense.
I feel sorry for Joan. I’m sure it hurts. I know from bitter, personal experience it hurts. I know also how that kind of poison does get into good relationships; you can’t completely wipe it out. Mom’s just a smart enough amateur psychologist to pick up minor dissatisfactions, vulnerabilities and lean on them. But she’d better be careful; better yet, I’d best get her out of there.
I drive her home. It’s getting late and she still hasn’t eaten. I don’t feel like cooking and I don’t want Mother in the kitchen, so I take her to one of her favorite restaurants, a crappy place called the Williamsburg Inn. I can always eat a second dinner, especially when I’m anxious and feeling pressed or depressed.
This Williamsburg Inn is a phony colonial-style place on the corner of National and Sawtelle in West Los Angeles. It has a red-brick façade with colonial white woodwork and thin, fake, wooden columns across a narrow porch. It even has one of those intolerable little statues of a black boy in a red suit with knickers where you’re supposed to tie your horse. Hell, there isn’t a horse within twenty miles, but there are a lot of blacks.
Then there’s all the superpatriotic business with flags draped over everything. Fake copies of the Declaration of Independence blown up fifty times are on the walls along with about twenty copies of Stuart’s George Washington. It’s awful. The waitresses are dressed in Martha Washington-style costumes with a deep decolleté. They must hire these girls by bra size. Also, the whole place is pervaded with a vague, antiblack feeling, very superpatriot, very Virginian.
They probably have several not so subtle ways to discourage any black who might walk in by mistake, little things you can’t quite put your finger on: smaller portions, overseasoning, slow service – that kind of stuff.
Normally, this is a restaurant Mother loves. She says things like ‘Such a nice type of people eat there,’ or, ‘It’s so “refined”.’
But now she’s into complaining. Nothing is any good. Nothing is good as it used to be. Jews must have bought the place. The drink before dinner is no good; they didn’t put any alcohol in it, just fancy ice, water and fruit. So what else is new? That’s why the cocktail was invented; people can think they’re drinking without using much alcohol.
Then it’s the service. That poor girl with her boobs falling into our plates can’t do anything right for Mother.
The food is mediocre at best, and expensive. I listen to Mother gripe through each course. I let