When we'd hung up, I went to find Roberta, who had been listening in on another extension. "Was what she said true? Have I been such a lousy father all these years?"
"Not lousy, Scott, but tough and often removed. You were very hard on the girls for years. We've talked about this before: Gerald was born when Norah was twelve, remember. I'm sure that's what she was referring to."
Our three children – Norah, Freya, and Gerald. Norah illustrates medical textbooks and lives in Los Angeles. Freya is married with two children and lives in Chicago. Gerald is severely retarded and is institutionalized. We tried for years to keep him home with us, but if you know about care for the severely retarded, you know it is virtually impossible to live any kind of normal life around someone with this handicap. They are black holes of need for help and love. No matter what you give them, it is never enough or correct. You can ask for nothing in return, because they have nothing. Sure, you pray for them to show some sign of recognition or normal behavior. lust once. Just a flash of what in your greatest hopes might happen some magical day: they smile when you kiss them rather than scream as if they've been wounded. Or pick up a spoon and dip it in the soup instead of hitting themselves in the face with it or gouging at their eyes. Unknowingly, they take everything you have. When you are exhausted and resentful, guilt taps you on the shoulder and knocks you down another way. It is a terrible lesson and burden. I would not wish it on my worst enemy.
When Gerald was seven, Freya walked out of the kitchen one morning to answer the telephone, and her brother put his hand down on a lit kitchen burner. At the hospital, even Roberta, who had fought hardest to keep him home, agreed we could no longer care for him properly. After he recovered, we found a perfect school, and he has lived there since. He is both our sword of Damocles and our permanent reminder of how wonderful life can be if you are lucky.
"We all adjusted to him differently, Scott. I tried too hard to see him normal and gave him too much of the love I should have given the girls. You did what you could, but it was a terrible disappointment, and it ate you up. When it got too much, you retreated from all of us into your work. It makes sense. It's both of our personalities perfectly. I wanted everyone to be happy; you wanted everyone to be exceptional. Neither of us had a chance of succeeding so we both made big mistakes. But you know, we couldn't have been so bad, because the girls still love us. It's clear in whatever they do."
Yes, we'd had this discussion before, but having it again right after Norah's comment hit me a K.O. punch to the heart. Had I really been so bad and negligent? Worse, had I known that all along, but spent years hiding it from myself? I knew life was a progressively more sophisticated game of hide-and-seek with ourselves, but could we really be unaware of something this momentous?
Further, if it were true, why would I rate to replace Beenie Rushforth as one of the thirty-six? A man who treated his family with such arrogance and disrespect? In her inimitable way, she'd told me that 'it took all kinds,' but could such an appalling egoist be one of them?
So much at once. My life jumped, bounced, and floated like one of those astronauts walking in space. It had suddenly become almost weightless, because its own personal gravity had ceased to be. I tried repeatedly to call Beenie, but there was never an answer. Finally I realized she wanted me to think things over, and would answer my questions only when she came again to clean our house. How ridiculous yet correct that profession was for her. The ultimate cleaner. The ultimate bringer of order.
Needless to say, I galloped back and forth over the emotional gamut, waiting for her next visit. I canceled my class for that day, and bribed Roberta out of the house with a gift of lunch and an afternoon movie with her best friend. Ten minutes after she left, the empty and quiet house made me so nervous that I got out the vacuum cleaner and did the floor in the kitchen before the bell rang.
I opened the door, and there was Annette Tangwalder.
"Beenie couldn't come, so she sent me. I'm supposed to clean your house." She brushed by me into the hall, throwing this last line over her shoulder. "Wow, I never thought I would be in this house. Vacuum cleaner's all ready for me, eh? O.K."
I closed the door and looked at her. "Why didn't she come?"
"Because she told me to. I'm a good Putzfrau . Don't you remember the chapter in my book where the girl cleans houses in the summer for extra money? Don't worry, Professor, your place will look nice when I'm done." With that, she took off her coat, threw it on a chair, turned on the vacuum cleaner, and went right to work. I stood there feeling like a fool. She didn't look at me again.
What was going on? There was nothing to do but retreat to my study and try again to call Beenie at home. The phone there rang and rang. She had to have done this for some reason, but what? She must have known I'd have a million questions. Why wasn't she here to answer them? How could she drop this girl in my lap and walk away? Where the hell was she?
Luckily, there was a small television in my room. I switched it on to fill up some mental airspace. What was Annette doing out there? The idea of a dead woman cleaning the house was monstrous and monstrously funny. I couldn't help smiling. A peculiar thought crossed my mind: she was the second dead person to be in this house. Our poor son, for all intents and purposes dead, had spent years here.
The person on television was talking about Gorgonzola cheese. I had once lived in the same universe as Gorgonzola cheese. Now I lived in one where dead students vacuumed my house and God wouldn't answer Her phone.
I sat at my desk and pretended to work by pushing pencils and papers around, looking for nothing in an address book, reading a bank statement twice because even the numbers had no meaning.
I tiptoed to my door and put an ear to it. Only the 'hoooosh' of the machine. Was she really here only to clean? Both the expression on her face and the tone of her voice had been so haughty and dismissive. She knew she held all the best cards, and I could do nothing till she made a first play. All because of a badly written, sophomoric, heavy-breathing and pale copy of – There was a knock at the door. I forced myself not to run and open it. Count to five, rise slowly, turn the doorknob slowly. "Yes?"
"Sorry to interrupt, but I didn't know if you wanted this or not?' It was the same relic finding that Beenie had done each time she cleaned. Had she instructed Annette to do this, too? The girl held out a beat-up green spiral notebook with the word "Chargers" printed in thick black letters across the top. That was the nickname of the local high school. I assumed the book belonged to one of our girls.
"I'll take it. Thank you."
"You're welcome." She handed it to me and started to leave. "Annette? Why did you come today?"
Her face was only innocence. "To clean your house. Beenie asked me to take her place. I told you."
"Cleaning's not important. Wouldn't you rather talk about your –"
"No. She just told me to bring you things to see if you want them." She left.
I didn't know what to do. Follow her, grab her arm, sit her down and say, "Listen, dead person, you and I have to have it out. We have to talk about your bad novel." No, that wouldn't do.
I went back to my desk with the school notebook and, for want of anything better to do, opened it. "Hey, Turd Bird!"
I whipped my head aside to see who had said it, but a hand went over my mouth. Scared, I looked at whose hand. I didn't know the boy. I realized only then that we were face-to-face, very close. And I felt him. I felt him inside me down there.