“Hi,” he said.
She ran into his arms.
“You dope,” she said.
The roses kept arriving. The flow of roses didn’t stop till nine that night, when the florist closed and the money David had left with him ran out. By then, they were making love in Molly’s big bed in the bedroom with its windows facing east. They could hear the sound of tugboats on the river. There were roses all over the bedroom. She wore a rose in her hair and nothing else.
“I have an idea,” he whispered.
“Yes?” she whispered.
“Since we already have the flowers, why don’t we have a wedding?”
“When?” she said at once.
He woke up at three in the morning.
He blinked into the room. He could not remember when he’d fallen asleep. He was still wearing everything but his shirt. The window rectangle was illuminated with a soft glow. He could hear the ocean nudging the shore. He went to the window. In the distance, in the west, he could see the lighted walls of the hospital. He wondered if his father was sleeping. I’m scared to death, his father had said. So am I, David thought. He took off his shoes and socks, his pants and undershorts. He went to the drapes and closed them. He went back to the bed. Stretched out on the bed in the glow of the bedside lamp, he thought, If he dies tomorrow...
Well, don’t think about that.
But if he dies tomorrow, and if the old Like Father, Like Son adage applies, then I myself might be able to count on another thirty years at best. Like father, like son, he thought. Ike and Mike, we look alike. Except in the case of Stephen and — well, he didn’t want to think about that, either. There was no sense thinking about that. Nothing made sense about that, the unfairness of that!
The buck stops here, he thought. No more sons, Pop. This is the end of the line. Morris Weber will be closing his last business. Where was the sense of it? First Stephen (ah, Jesus, please don’t think about it) and then his mother. Well, she was almost seventy. Still, that was young. Is seventy all we can hope for? Phone call at two in the morning. Your mother is dead. Will all you men whose mothers are still living take one step forward? Not so fast, Seaman Shavorski! All the little jokes about death and dying. I’m scared to death. There’s nothing funny about death, he thought, nothing funny about the way Stephen — well, look, get off that, will you, please?
The tube in my father’s penis.
I wish Molly was here to suck my cock.
I should have told her to come down. Is that a pun? I can almost come sucking your big hard cock, do you know that? Molly Regen, circa 1958, 1959. I believe it, he thought. Used to believe it, anyway. What’s left to believe? Lies?
All the lies and all the lying, he thought. Is that another pun? Five long years of lies and lying. Fireworks against the nighttime sky. The phone ringing. Always on the goddamn telephone. David, it’s for you. Who knows me in East Hampton? Molly screaming. And everything stopping. All time stopping from that day forward. That memorable Fourth of July. That Glorious Fourth, the two-hundredth anniversary of our liberated nation. Molly in white. White dress and white scarf, Nurse Regen. Cocktail chatter, party voices, surrounded by strangers on the edge of the sea while their fifteen-year-old son was crashing a car into a—
He squeezed his eyes tightly shut.
He turned off the light and tried to sleep.
Thursday
His father’s room was empty.
He went immediately to the nurses’ station.
“Where’s my father?” he asked.
She was a nurse he had never seen before. Little redheaded thing sipping at a Coca-Cola.
“His name, please?” she said.
“Morris Weber.”
“I think he went up to surgery,” she said.
“What do you mean? This morning, do you mean?”
“Yes, sir. He was scheduled for nine o’clock surgery,” she said. She was consulting a clipboard now.
“Dr. Kaplan said this afternoon.”
“He went up at nine,” the nurse said.
“Is he still there?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
“Well, how do I find out?”
“If you’ll wait outside, sir, I’ll notify you as soon as I have any word.”
“Would he be in the Recovery Room yet?”
“You couldn’t go there in any event, sir.”
“Would you try to find out, please?”
“Yes, sir. If you’ll wait outside, sir...”
“Thank you,” he said.
The waiting room was empty of visitors. The television set was on. There were two pink ladies behind the desk. Both of them in their seventies, David guessed. He took a seat on one of the leatherette couches and lit a cigarette. He wondered where they all disappeared to during visiting hours, this waiting-room family of his. Through the door at the end of the hall and then into all the little warrens that sheltered their sick and dying. He did not know which visitor belonged to which patient. The patients in there were anonymous. It suddenly occurred to him that his father was anonymous, too. Except to David. And perhaps to him as well.
“Excuse me,” one of the pink ladies said. “Do you have a patient in Intensive Care, sir?”
“I do,” David said.
“His name, please?”
“Morris Weber,” David said.
She consulted a clipboard and said to the other pink lady, “You have to check their names on the sheet here. Otherwise, people try to come in who don’t have patients here.”
David wondered who might possibly want to go in if he didn’t have a patient here.
“I copy them from the sheet onto a separate piece of paper,” the woman said to the other pink lady. “I copy them in alphabetical order. It makes it easier to check up on them.” She was training the other lady, David realized. On-the-job training. She turned to David. “Are you a relative of Mr. Weber?” she asked.
“His son,” David said.
“You have to check if they’re relatives or not,” she said to the other woman. “Only relatives are allowed to visit.”
Where does that leave Bessie? David wondered.
“You can go in now if you like,” the woman said to him.
“He’s in surgery,” David said.
The woman nodded. She turned to the trainee. “Sometimes they try to go in before the hour. You just keep your eye on the clock. They’re not supposed to go in until eleven, two, four, and seven o’clock — sharp! Not a minute before. When the ten minutes are up, you go in and get them out. Otherwise, they’ll try to stay all day.”
“Ten minutes each time,” the trainee said. Her eyes were glued to the television screen. She seemed more interested in the soap than in the other woman’s instructions.
Bessie appeared in the doorway.
“I’m sorry I’m late,” she said, “the bus was late.”
“Excuse me,” the bossy pink lady said, “do you have a patient in Intensive Care?”
“Yes, Morris Weber,” Bessie said.
“Are you a relative?”
“I’m his sister,” Bessie said. “My name is Bessie Goldblum.”
She had learned the rules, David thought. Smart lady, Bessie.
“You can go in now,” the pink lady said by rote.
“He’s in surgery,” David said.
“What do you mean?” Bessie said. “They took him down this morning? I thought it was this afternoon.”
“They make their own rules,” David said.