fine, thank you. How was the cruise?”
“It was very relaxing.”
I like talking to Madge because she always says the most obvious thing. If she were on Family Feud—“One hundred people surveyed, top five answers on the board”—Madge’s answer would always be the top one. (Why do people take cruises? Number-one response: To relax.)
“That’s nice, I’m glad to hear it.”
“The food was delicious. They had canapés with salmon and caviar every evening before dinner. Do you think we could have salmon and caviar?”
“I think so. I’ll price it out.”
“I ate way too much.” (What do people regret about cruises? Number-one response: Ate too much.)
“I was talking to the people at the Biltmore—”
“Eve.” She cuts me off. I hear nervousness.
“Yes.”
“Could we change the location? Wait, don’t say no. I know the invitations have gone out.”
“The party is only a month away.”
“I know, I know, but if you send me the RSVP list, I’ll take care of mailing the location change. I’ll organize a little group to make follow-up calls, I promise you. And I’ll get us out of our obligation to the Biltmore. You know, the Biltmore’s downtown and I hate downtown. Besides, I had the most brilliant idea and I had it right in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.”
“Well, great, what is it?”
“We should have our party at the Nixon Library.”
I don’t say, You’re kidding. I don’t say, In all the time we’ve worked together, I’ve never known you were a Republican. Part of my job is restraint, being careful where I put my foot. I try to be chummy, never frank. “They do parties there?” is all I say, mildly.
“Oh yes, it’s quite wonderful. It’s not really a library, it’s a museum. There are fountains and a reflecting pond. And they have the place he was born right on the premises in case people get bored and want to take a little walk. I have the name of a woman there.”
I write it down, get off with Madge, then phone Kim and ask her to set up an appointment for me with the woman at the library and to send the RSVP list to Madge immediately. I come banging down the stairs. “I’m going,” I call out. But I can’t leave without complaining. I detour into the breakfast room. “You know this party for four hundred fifty ear, nose, and throat doctors? Well, Madge Turner is changing the location to the Nixon Library.”
After a long beat, Joe looks up from his paper. “Who goes to that place? Probably the most white-bread group in the country.”
“I suppose you think it would be interesting to talk to them.”
He laughs. “‘What Nixon means to me.’ I bet you’ll have a great time.”
“I don’t think so. I’ll see you later.”
At five o’clock, I visit my father. I call Joe and tell him he does not have to come too. “I should hope not,” he says.
There’s one thing I like about doing something the second time, even when it’s unpleasant: I like knowing the ropes. The elevator is to the left, past the admissions office. Seventh floor, I don’t have to check the listing. After I ring the doorbell, I have to state my name in the intercom, my business (visiting my father), and the door will be unlocked from the inside. I will store this knowledge. It will comfort me. Maybe I can pass it on to someone. Maybe my friend Adrienne will have to commit her mother.
Also, the sights and sounds that I closed out the first time, that even scared me, become curiosities. Then familiar, even familial. I like this process.
The first thing I see is a woman sitting in a wheelchair facing the phone booth. She has the receiver in her hand. She has pulled it as far out of the booth as it will reach so she can talk. And she is screaming, “Come and get me.”
Her hair is white, there isn’t much of it, and it’s pulled back by a child’s barrette. She is little and her chin is pointed. I wonder who is on the other end of the phone. I wonder whose number she doesn’t forget.
I go past her to the cage. “I’m looking for my father, Lou Mozell.”
“Just in time,” says the nurse.
“For what?”
She leans forward so her mouth is almost against the grate, and whispers. “They get difficult now. We call it sun-downing.”
I nod in understanding. She points to the left. “His room is the third. Doris will show you.”
Doris, who has frizzy hair the color of straw and two very fat cheeks that scarcely leave room for her mouth, which runs like a straight road between them, comes out of the cage. I follow her down the hall. “So he’s being difficult?”
“He wants to leave.”
“Well, that’s understandable.” I state this loyally, in a tone that says, For God’s sake, what would you expect? Then I hear him.
“Goddamnit, you bitches, get in here.” He is shouting loud enough to be heard over the crowd at the Los Angeles Coliseum.
He sits in his wheelchair in the middle of the room, stranded—a passenger in a car that broke down on its way to nowhere. His pants aren’t fastened at the top, and there’s a rope around his waist holding them up. “Could you buy him some suspenders?” Doris asks.
“What’s wrong with his belt?”
“It doesn’t seem to work on all his pants.” She bends until her face is level with his. “Your daughter’s here.”
“I’m not blind,” says my father.
I sit down on the bed. “So how are you?”
“I’m hungry.” His face wrinkles up tight, as if someone took a screwdriver, put it in the center, and twisted it.
“I think you’re having dinner soon.”
“Order room service.”
I say as patiently as possible, “Dad, this isn’t a hotel.”
There is a pause. “Well, what is it?”
“It’s a hospital. They’re going to fix your medications.”
He thinks about this for a bit. “They don’t take Georgia’s magazine here,” he says petulantly.
“I’m not surprised.”
“What kind of a hotel doesn’t get Georgia?”
“Hotels don’t subscribe to Georgia. Anyway, this is a hospital and hospitals never subscribe to Georgia.” I am very bad at being patient.
“You put me here because of Jesse, didn’t you?”
“No. Listen, do you want some company? Do you want to go sit with the other—” I am about to say inmates, I realize, so I stop the sentence there.
“Sure, kiddo, let’s go for a walk.”
My father stands up and pitches forward, crashing onto the floor. It’s sort of beautiful—he’s straight all the way, as if he’s tracing the quadrant of a circle. The sound when he hits is a gigantic squish, air being punched out of a cushion.
“Help, help!” I shout. Is this it? Is he dead?
I am flat against the wall staring down when Doris runs in. My father lies there like a permanent fixture.
“Jocko!” Doris’s voice is so commanding she could be summoning troops. “Fortunately your father’s fat,” she says to me. “They fall better if they’re fat.”
I