The Complete Collection. William Wharton
I go back to the bedroom. Mother’s having a fit. She hasn’t taken the Valium. Her head’s on the pillow but she keeps lifting it to talk. I sit on the edge of the bed and insist she take the Valium.
‘What’s the matter with him, Jacky? He looks sick. What’s he been eating? Is that the way they dress in college these days? He looks like a hippy. Does he take drugs, Jacky? Ask him, Jacky, you ask him! I won’t have any drug addicts in my house!’
On and on.
‘He isn’t even’s clean as a hippy; he looks like a bum. I’m amazed the police let him walk the street like that.’
I listen and wait for the Valium to take effect. Everything she says is vaguely true. That’s the way with Mother. She doesn’t actually invent so much as she grabs onto rag-tail ends of things and elaborates them into personal fantasies.
Finally she settles down. I quietly sneak away. Billy has just finished his bath and comes out of the bathroom, dripping wet, wearing Dad’s second bathrobe. He comes into the living room, turns on the TV and plops into the platform rocker with his feet on the other chair. Billy’s expert at moving in, making himself at home.
I go into the bathroom. Everything’s soaking wet and the tub’s still full of dirty water! I guess when you’re into taking showers, you don’t know how to handle a tub. I’m sure he wouldn’t leave it on purpose; he just doesn’t think. I wipe up the mess, throw his clothes in the hamper and clean the tub. I’m not going to say anything. Mostly, I want to find out what he’s doing here, why he isn’t at school.
When I come back to the living room, I turn the TV down so it won’t wake Mom. Billy needs everything two decibels higher than I can take. At the station break, I get up and turn it off.
‘Billy, Grandmom isn’t in very good shape. She’s had two severe heart attacks and is barely holding on. Every day she gets under her belt now is to her advantage. She’s had what’s called an occlusion. She can’t have any shock or strenuous exercise.
‘But Grandma isn’t the real problem, bad as that is. Dad’s the one.’
I tell him what’s happening and I can see his face turning white. All our kids love Dad. He has a knack for playing with little kids. He’d always have something new for them to play with, a new trick or a toy he’d made, or darts, Ping-Pong, a BB gun; something. This was part of Mom’s proof he wasn’t ‘quite right. That’s where Joan gets it; it’s part of that crazy Tremont streak.’
Billy’s stopped rocking, and leans forward. I don’t want to make it hard, but I want him to know the problems.
I tell how Dad doesn’t know us, can’t talk, has to be cleaned and fed. Billy wants to know what’s wrong. I tell him what Ethridge and Santana have told me, how it’s a sudden onslaught of senility.
Then I let out my own feelings about the kind of care he’s been getting. It’s something I haven’t talked about to anybody, not even Joan. I express my doubts about both Dad’s treatment and the diagnosis. I’m feeling strongly it might be something truly physiological, more complex than simple senility. I’m also thinking in terms of some fault with the anesthetic or perhaps a blockage in the artery feeding his brain, perhaps a clot formed as a result of the operation. I’m only fishing; I know it; I don’t have enough knowledge.
I reveal my doubts, my worries; I need to talk. I hadn’t realized before how, after Vron and Joan, he’s the next closest person to me. It snuck up.
‘I tell you, Bill. Dad’s shown less evidence of senility than most men his age. Sure, he isn’t fifty, but senile he isn’t.’
Finally, I ask what he’s doing down here. He says he’s dropped out of school; it wasn’t meaning anything to him.
I can live with that. If you don’t know what you want, school’s only another way to put in time. But Billy was always such a good student.
I ask what his plans are: job or what. That’s when he mentions coming back to France.
Now, Vron and I’d be happy having him near us, but if he isn’t going to school he’s got to work; he can’t hang around the house. Billy has his own lifestyle; and it doesn’t fit ours; no more than my ways fit here in California. He’s flown out of our nest.
But we drop it there; neither of us is ready to go into it. We talk about Dad and then he goes out to the back bedroom. I go in the side room and I’m asleep faster than I thought possible; maybe just anything not to think.
The next day Joan comes; she gives Billy a hug and a tug on his long hair. Billy and I throw his laundry in the car. Joan says she’ll clean house while we’re gone. She’s brought food and will cook supper for us, too.
After the Laundromat, we drive to the hospital.
Billy stares at Dad, lying flat out with his eyes open. Dad doesn’t recognize either of us, even when Billy gives him a hard hug and kiss. Billy’s so positive, so violent, he almost pulls off the IV. Dad stares at Billy, his head and neck stiff, his lips moving.
He’s on catheter again. I peer under the covers and it’s indwelling. He’s becoming a living piece of meat. If he were anything except human, we’d let him die. He’s going fast and it seems there’s nothing to do; I don’t think he could’ve survived another day of my amateur care.
Billy’s badly shaken. He goes out in the hall while I stay with Dad; I’m stroking his head, talking to him softly. Dad watches me passively, without emotion or interest. Billy comes back; he’s stopped crying but his light blue eyes are rimmed red. We go down in the elevator and out to the parking lot without saying much. The daylight is glaring out there. I take Dad’s sunglasses from the glove compartment and give them to Billy.
‘What’s happened, Dad? What could’ve happened to make him like that?’
I go through it again. I tell him I don’t know and I’m not sure the doctors do either.
We get the clothes at the Laundromat. Together, we fold Billy’s things, also the sheets and towels. We still aren’t talking.
At home, I tell Joan it isn’t worth going; Dad won’t even know she’s there. She’s going anyway. I know how she feels. It tears you apart; but you have to.
Mom wants to know what we all want to know.
‘What’s the matter with him, Jacky? Is he crazy?’
I try convincing her he’s not crazy. Mom gives me what’s meant to be one of her long, penetrating looks.
‘He never was exactly right in the head, I know! I’ve lived with him over fifty years! He is not an ordinary man.’
What floors me the next days is Billy with TV. Maybe all those years without it in our house is catching up with him.
He spends hours watching. It doesn’t make any difference what’s on. I swear he doesn’t bother changing channels, he keeps staring right on through the commercials. He watches soap operas, talk shows, cowboy movies, the police series; he even watches a baseball game. He watches as if it’s an eyeball marathon.
Mom’s happy having somebody to watch with her. She brings Billy up on what’s happened so far in the soap operas; who’s been sleeping with whom and who has an illegitimate baby by what and who’s trying to steal whose husband or wife. Billy stares straight on through it all.
I know where I’ve stashed an old box of paints. I roust it out, clean the brushes in turpentine and go through the tubes. I might keep some sanity if I can paint. I hate to admit this, but there is a therapeutic aspect to my painting. It shouldn’t be that way for me, a professional, but it’s there.
When I can control my private world, take things from out there and recast them the way I want, it heals me.
I ask Billy to keep an eye on Mother; I go in back, find a pair of old-time white dungarees, a sweat shirt and cap. I’ll