~~~ fiction ~~~ not based on anything factual ~~~~
"You think so?" I asked. "Do you want me to adjust your pillows or get you another blanket?" I needed to do something. I hate hospital rooms. I didn't even like to see my sisters in law when they'd just delivered their babies. I was always afraid whoever I was visiting would die while I was there and I'd be blamed for time immemorial.
Why do all flowers in a hospital smell like death? Their sickeningly sweet smell is more pungent than the smell of funeral wreathes, twice as expensive, and half as long lived. Between the smell of the dying carnations and the pine disinfection(sp) cleaner, I couldn't wait to leave the place.
I found a course on the internet on how to become psychic in one month, only thirty minutes a day. I was never going to waste my money and sign up for it. I thought it was a lark and thought it might be something to talk to my dad about. From the time I was in junior high, we struggled to talk. It was hard if there wasn't a sports game on or one we could rehash together. We never talked of the past and we never talked about the future. Pretty much we limited our conversations to sports, animals, and the weather. All very vanilla subjects that wouldn't cause any miscommunications or hurt feelings.
"I know so," my dad said. "I wouldn't have tried if I had know how hard having you was going to be."
Me? I was the ultimate good girl. "I wasn't that bad, was I?" I asked. "I thought I was the easy one." I couldn't remember being any worse than any of my friends. Of all of us I didn't smoke, drink, or ever miss my curfew. My grades were mediocre if I wasn't interested in the subject, but strong enough for state college.
My brothers? They came home whenever they wanted. No one blinked an eye when they stayed out all night or when Grant got his first tattoo. My dad didn't bat an eye when George got his girlfriend pregnant and he wouldn't marry her; he passed out chocolate cigars to everyone he knew. After they broke up, he sued for visitation rights to see Melinda so she could have a strong sense of family. When Sandy was sixteen, he drove on a patch of black ice and totaled my mom's brand new SUV. There was never a word said.
He grimaced and I knew how much an actual smile cost him. My dad never smiled. Never looked to the sunny side of the street. Never thought things would work out in his favor. Ever. He knew the harder he worked the luckier he'd get. But he worked his way through all of his kids growing up, getting educations, moving away. Even starting our own families. Except for me. I owned two cats, just dumped my boyfriend of six months, and was looking into foreign adoption.
"You." He pointed his index finger into my chest. "You were the hardest of the lot. For me, you were the worst."
This was a blow. If I'd been standing, I would have fallen. As it was, this felt like a blow to my gut. It, however, confirmed my own self esteem issues and all of the fears I'd harbored ever since I could remember.
I wanted him to deny it or lie. But John Alexander believed in telling the truth all of the time and to never lie. Just this once it would have been nice for him to break the fucking rules. Just once and let me think that I was his favorite, maybe in the top three? For a few minutes he could have fed me the lie that I was the one he invested his hopes and dreams in. The one who made him proud. Instead I was the worst of the six kids. His only daughter and he apparently at the worst hated me, at best he resented me. Everything about me. Tolerated me at family gatherings, nothing more. Ignored me if I was the only other person in the room.
"Why was I so bad?" I asked. I always had good grades. I never got in trouble. I used to win citizenship awards at school. This had to be a joke, right? I spent my whole life looking for his approval, even if it was for something small.
If it had been a joke or someone with a camera came out to tell me it was all a lie, I might have laughed in another five or ten years. But this was a hospice for people who didn't have the resources to die at home, or who didn't want to. Though his room, such that it was, was private, there was no place for a camera to be hidden and Dad didn't have the resources to buy and install one of those little spy jobs.
"You aren't mine," he said. He turned his head to face the wall. He didn't meet my eyes. Maybe he couldn't.
"So you have hated me for over thirty years because your wife cheated on you?" I asked. "Hardly fair to punish a child for the sins of the adult."
"Who said Rebecca cheated on me?" The words were harsh, fierce even. When he invoked that tone, no one was ever allowed to cross him. Things hadn't changed. He now stared at the ceiling. "She never cheated on me. She loved me."
Unless there was a phone line to the Pearly Gates, I couldn't talk to my mother. She'd been in a ski accident three years before, broken her neck and died. Doubt that she worshiped him? Idolized him? No. I knew that was true. They always seemed to be very much in love.
"In that case you cheated and the fruits of your labor, as it were, came to live with you? Why didn't you leave your wife instead of have an affair?"
"Lindsey, you don't know what you're talking about. You're just spouting bullshit and we both know it."
"Do we? Really, Dad? Or is it John?"
He didn't answer. He just squeezed his eyes closed and turned inward, a place he lived more than with anyone else. "Just leave. I'll not explain it to you."
Great. The man I thought of as my father, the one who picked me up from band practice, corrected my homework, taught me to drive, and gave me away when I got married wasn't going to talk to me.
My brothers had already made the pilgrimage to say good-bye to my father. He'd said whatever he needed to say to each of them, their wives, and their children. I was the last one to have a private audience. I was also the last one to be called; no one had breathed a word my direction that he was sick. If Keith hadn't called me to ask about coordinating my hotel with his, I don't think the facility would have notified me. I probably wouldn't have even known about the funeral until I saw it in the paper.
I couldn't let my parting shot be bitter. I didn't want to have regrets about my final words to him. I loved him my entire life. I had his work ethic and his sensibilities. The morning after I talked to Keith, I called the office and talked to my boss.
"Sheila, I know this is last minute, but I need to take some time off," I said. I twisted the phone cord around my index finger while I waited for her response.
"It's not a good time, Lindsey. You know that," she said. "I can't grant you time off right now."
I said nothing.
After about a minute she said, "Next month, I'll see about rearranging the work schedule and getting you a couple of days."
The tears I'd let build up began to fall. Slowly at first and then more and more quickly.
"That doesn't work for me," I said. "If you can't give me the time off, I'm afraid I'm going to have to quit."
Sheila laughed. "You can't be serious. Nothing is that important."
"This is. I'm sorry to leave you in a bind. I have to do this." I made sure I was taking deep breaths because hyperventilating right now wouldn't have done me any favors.
"What? You're going to quit, just like that? This job is too important to you."
"In the end, it's just a job, Sheila. I'm sorry. It is out of my control. When I get back, I'll pick up my things." I kept my voice as even as possible. I never let anyone see me in a weak moment, be sentimental, or let them get the upper hand. The Alexanders are made of stern stuff. Sterner than most of the rest of the world. "Or you can mail them to me."
"Did someone die?"
"I don't need to tell you that. If you can't respect me enough to understand just how important this is, well, you weren't the person I thought you were. I have to go. Good-bye, Sheila." I disconnected the call. In five years, the only time I took off was for my mother's funeral and then I was back to work in under a week because Sheila had an important client meeting and the project I was working on was vital to getting their business. I didn't even take time off for medical appointments. I performed a hit and run on my own life. Never there for anyone long enough for them to matter or make a difference. Just there long enough to move the business forward because that's what all of the Alexanders do, always did.
I had the presence of mind to change my work extension to go back to the main switchboard, and my work cellphone message went back to the company default. There was no reason to take it, I wouldn't be conducting any business for the foreseeable future anyway. In under ten minutes, I put my packed bag in the trunk of the car, locked my house up, and started the long drive to see my father.
My personal cellphone message indicated that calls wouldn't be returned and not to leave a message of any kind. It didn't stop my boss from calling it every ten minutes. Finally, I turned it off and tossed it into the bowels of my purse.
Six hours of silence, self talk, self doubt, and what if games later, I found the hotel. The only room available was next to the elevator and the vending machines on one side, the other was the hotel laundry. At least I wouldn't be kept up all night by headboards banging against the communal wall.
After I registered and unloaded my bag into the room, I fished my cellphone out of my purse. I called Keith, he and his family were at the other end of the hotel in a deluxe suite. You pays your money and you takes your chances. I could have tried to parlay my situation into a better room for the next day, but that would have taken energy I didn't have.
"Hey, Linds. How was the drive?" he said. "No, Lynn, you can't have a snack right now. You just had lunch. Sorry about that. How was the drive."
I may love my brother, but when he's distracted, he's distracted and there's no getting his attention back.
"Dinner?" I asked.
"We'll meet you in the lobby in three hours," he said. "No, Peter, you no crayons on the wall."
If we'd all been musical, or at least been able to hold a tune, we could have been our own band. There were enough of us to be our own basketball team; I was always the alternate. Relay races, depending on who was allowed to run, we did amazing things on the track. Conversations? Not a strong suit. It was a family thing.
There are no good conversations when sixteen people are involved. The table was a chaotic symphony of noise, avoidance, and partial conversation. If I was to ever find out what was going on, it wasn't going to happen during toddler time.
Sylvia reached across the table and squeezed my hand, "Lindsay, how are you holding up?"
That is one of the world's most loaded questions next to "How are you?" No one ever really wants to hear the answer. They want to hear the word fine so they can proceed with their own agenda.
Would Sylvia have understood if I told her I'd been blind sided for thirty-six hours? Didn't she understand that my mother was the glue that held us all together? That she bridged all the communication and distance gaps? That she was the one who made sure birthdays were remembered? She made sure letters and emails were forwarded? She was the hub and now that she was gone, there was no place for the spokes to be. The wheel that was our family was now irrevocably broken, in pieces by the side of the road.
I squeezed her hand back. "Fine. I'm doing fine." Emotionally it was a lie. Physically, I had my health and I had made the drive safely and in good time.
"If you ever want to talk," she said, "I'm always here for you."
Another lie. This one was hers. She might have physically been there, but she had no interest in me. I couldn't further her career, lived too far to watch her kids, and had never done anything prestigious she could brag about.
I nodded. "Thank you. The kids look good."
Now she had something she could talk about that interested her. She blathered on about Cathy and Raquel and how smart they were. I have no idea if any of it was true, but it didn't really matter. I attempted to make approving noises in appropriate places, and must have done a credible job because I didn't need her to repeat herself until we got to dessert.
"What?"
"I asked if you have funeral clothes with you?" she asked. "Or if you want to go shopping with me tomorrow."
He's not dead yet. He can't die right now. We have unfinished business. We have things to talk about. He doesn't know I want to adopt a baby. He has no idea I was going to go to France next summer and see their wine country. That I had taken immersion French lessons for two years so I wouldn't sound like a dumb American when I landed; it was something my mom and I planned to do before I turned forty and forty was right around the corner.
He didn't even tell me he was sick. I knew he had a prostate problem years ago, but I had no idea it had turned into cancer. How could I? The boys never emailed unless it was a generic Hallmark card at Christmas, and the only present we ever exchanged were donation cards to the local charity du jour. Presents were for kids and none of us needed anything.
"No one said he was that close." If a whisper gets more attention than a scream, they haven't had dinner with my clan.
"If I were smaller, I could lend you the extra black dress I brought," she said. She was making it sound like we were going to go some place fancy and it was a celebration. "But my stuff will bag on you."
"I'm more tired than I thought," I said. I scooted my chair away from the table and walked to the head where Jason was sitting. I handed him forty dollars to cover my portion of dinner and the tip.
"Lindsey, you don't need to do that," he said. "Keep the money. Are you really leaving now?"
"Yeah. I didn't get any sleep last night and it has been a long day."
"Breakfast here tomorrow?"
I smiled. "No." I don't do children under the age of sixteen without coffee and if I came to breakfast there wouldn't be enough coffee in the world to keep me civil.
"We'll call your room after we get back then," he said. "Night, kid."
I waved at the table. No one but Jason and Lindsey even realized I had gone.
I bypassed the hotel and returned to the hospice. I probably wouldn't have another chance to see the man I'd always thought of as my father alone ever again. What was worse, finding out he wasn't my father or that he was dying?
Definitely it was his dying. No matter what he told me, he was always my father. The most important man in my life, even though I didn't realize it until just now.
There was so much we hadn't said. So many things we could have shared. Very little of that was now possible now, if at all.
Dad's room was about two doors down from the nurses' station.
"Hi, I'm Lindsay Alexander. John's daughter," I said by way of introduction to the charge nurse. "Do you have a minute?"
"Shift change is in about thirty minutes, can you wait?" the redhead asked.
No. I want to get a status update right now and find out the actual truth about what is going on.
"Just tell me if he's in pain," I said. He always reminded me of the lion with the thorn in his paw, he suffered the little things poorly but rewarded the caregiver exorbitantly I kept an oversize over stocked first aid kit in my car to this day, because you never know when a bandage can make a difference to someone.
"Alexander?" She tapped several keys without meeting my eyes. "Why? Did he ask for medication?"
For true pain, he never did. The low grade stuff, aspirin was his cureall. "No. I just got here. I wanted to know what I might be walking into."
"Cisco just checked on him according to these notes, says he's sleeping."
"Maybe I should just come back then," I said.
"No. Go on back and sit with him. Talk to him. Even if he's asleep he can hear you."
I opened the door as quietly as I could and snuck into the room. In the shadows my father's shrunken profile looked peaceful and calm. The blankets were tucked in around his body and it looked unnaturally neat and tidy. All my life he was a loud snorer who thrashed. It was easier to change the sheets on his bed and start fresh than remake a bed he slept in since almost everything was in a tangle on the floor by morning.
There was a small chair near his chair, the kind all institutions specialize in: too small, flat cushions, highly uncomfortable. But it was that or sit on his bed. If I took the bed, it would jar him and he'd wake up. Better to sit in the side chair for a few minutes.
There was nothing I could think of that was worthy of saying this late in the game. Anything I said would just be babble and not comforting babble. Did I want someone cluttering my rest with their disjointed dissertations on piffle? Probably not, but I won't know for sure for a very long time.
The only sound in the room came from the monitors flashed numbers and charted things. If I needed to know, I could tell his blood pressure, his temperature, and heart beat. And that every few seconds there was a spike on a graph. Watching the monitors was trance inducing, mindless, and peaceful. Before I knew it, I was stiff and sore. According to my watch it was a little after midnight. Someone had covered me with a thin, blue blanket.
"Margie, I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry," my dad said.
"What?" His words startled me out of my lazy doze to attention.
"Margie, forgive me. Please? Please? God, forgive me."
"Dad, who is Margie?" I leaned over his bed to see if he was awake or dreaming.
"I didn't mean to. I didn't mean to do it. I'm so, sorry. Will you forgive me?" Tears leaked out the corner of his eyes.
Before I could engage my father in a conversation, an orderly walked in. His name badge announced that he must be Cisco. He stood next to me and whispered, "Tell him you forgive him and that you love him. Go with it."
I took my father's hand and kissed it, because it felt like the right thing to do. "Of course I forgive you. There's never been anything to forgive."
He took a deep breath and said, "I did my best, but it wasn't good enough. She would have been better off with you. Been happier. Blossomed the way you wanted her to. I failed all of us, especially her. And it was all my fault. Mine."
Who was he talking about now?
"I'm sure you did the best you could."
Cisco whispered, "You're doing just fine. He needs to unburden something and he wants to do it with you. He never talks to anyone for more than about two minutes. Whatever this is, it is important. Probably for both of you."
I looked for a tissue box. For what this place was going to cost, I wanted it to be the soft kind that absorbed tears. I knew it was going to be scratchy and leave my eyes and nose raw if I used more than one. Tomorrow I'd need to buy a box of better stuff to share with the rest of the family.
"I can't look at her without seeing you. She looks more and more like you every day. And because of that, I can't escape the reminders and I hate myself a little more every day. God, forgive me."
I never did get around to taking a drama class, but had plenty of drama in a couple of the realtionships I'd been in. Go with it? Ok. Here goes nothing. "There isn't anything to hate yourself about. I know you did the best you could and God has already forgiven you, John. Everything is as it should be. She did just fine. You did a great job. You know that. I'm proud of you."
"Really?"
"Really. I love you so much." Why is it that I wanted to say Daddy when I was almost forty and I didn't think he thought he was talking to a daughter anyway? I hadn't called him Daddy since I was about six or seven. Did the boys ever call him Daddy? Or is that just a little girl thing?
We held hands for two hours. Sporadically I ran my thumb over the top of his hand. If it comforted him, I don't know, I hoped it did. It soothed me. His tears had stopped. He didn't speak again. Talking about anything, even the weather, might have encouraged him to stay awake and he looked exhausted. Better that we both rest.
I smoothed his hair and kissed him on the forehead before I went to the bathroom. When I got back, he was gone. His face looked more peaceful than I'd ever seen it. When I saw it, I just knew.
They say, whoever they are, that most people choose when to die and with whom to die. People who die alone in the dark are lonely, afraid, or think they are unworthy. People who die with someone with them, in the daylight know how loved they are. If I hadn't left, would he still be alive? Had he been waiting for me to leave so he could make his exit?
"Oh, Dad." I dashed the tears out of my eyes with the back of my hand. There had been enough tears for one night. I had been trained from an early age not to cry; twice in one night was more than enough for any Alexander to exhibit. Keep the emotions bottled up inside where they couldn't hurt anyone. Someone should embroider that on a pillow since it is the family credo.
Cisco and the redheaded charge nurse knocked on the door frame.
"He's gone," I said. "He's gone and I wasn't here. I missed it. I missed his last words."
"You were here," Cisco said. "I turned the monitors off about half an hour ago so you wouldn't wake up."
That explained why it was so quiet. At least I hadn't abandoned him at the end. Maybe this meant he trust me or Margie enough to be with me/her when he passed.
"Do you need some more time with him?" the redhead asked.
About twenty more years would be nice. "No. I'll get going. I should probably sleep in a bed for at least an hour."
When they called the mortuary to pick him up I had no idea. Whether or not they called Justin, the eldest, as soon as they knew I didn't know. It didn't matter to me. I had come when called, done what was expected and needed, and would be home for the fallout, if there was any.
~~~
word count: 4255
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