He began to sing in his once clear voice, now heavy and hoarse. “Tea for two, me for you…”
He sang pleasantly to himself while Joy fetched herself a cup of tea, and they sat looking out at the traffic’s red brake lights, something they’d both always found festive as the evening drew in.
2
Molly had been a daddy’s girl when she was very young. Her father was the only father she knew who had a beard, and the beard, a neatly combed beard that came almost to a point, was her pride and joy. He would carry her inside his coat, against his chest, like a kangaroo, and she would snuggle her face against his, against that extraordinary beard. Her father and his beard were so obviously superior to other fathers with their flabby pink cheeks. Her father was superior in height, as well. He was so tall that she and Daniel used him as a unit of measurement. How many Daddies high was that tree in the park? What about the elephants at the Museum of Natural History? It was Aaron who read to them when they were little. Push-me-pull-yous and the cat’s meat man; bump, bump, bump down the stairs — books that had been his, books he wished his father had read to him. He bundled up the children and led them to the roof to look at the constellations. He took them out to the park to climb the rocks and along the river to the boat basin to play pirates and launch paper boats that tipped and sank while they sang “Blow the Man Down.” It was Aaron who encouraged them, egged them on, when they begged for a dog, Aaron who went to the animal shelter with them to get a cat when Joy had expressly forbidden it. Aaron’s father had failed him when he was a child, too busy steering the business out of the Depression. Aaron would never do that to his children, he told Joy. True to his word, she would say later: it was the business he failed.
Aaron and Joy were so different from each other that Molly and Daniel had been able to recognize the distance even as young children, Aaron sentimental and unreliable and brimming with love and obvious charm, a man who made you feel you did not have to work too hard because good things were coming to you, from somewhere; Joy distracted, forgetful, thoughtful, brimming with love, too, and oddly inspiring, causing Molly and Daniel to want to work their hardest because working hard seemed such fun. Molly wasn’t sure why she compared them to each other like that, as if she had to make a choice, as if she could make a choice, because different as they were, there was no choice between them, no space between them. They were as one. They held hands when they walked down the street, they fed each other tidbits like lovebirds. It was embarrassing for the children, having such lovey-dovey parents. And reassuring. Like the trumpeters and singers in the Bible, they were as one.
3
“You’d better come home,” Joy said to Molly on the phone. “Daddy’s on the floor.”
“He fell?” Molly tried to calm herself. “Is he okay? Did you call 911?”
“He slid out of his chair. I never should have gotten it in leather. I gave him a cracker.”
“Mom!”
“The handyman’s coming in a minute. He’ll get Daddy up. Never a dull moment, right, Aaron?”
The phone was handed to Aaron. “Never a dull moment.”
“Daddy, are you all right?”
“Your mother gave me a cracker.”
“I’ll be home soon,” Molly said. She repeated it when her mother got back on the phone. “I’ll be home soon, Mom. I arranged an extra week off in November.”
“November?” A pause. “Oh.” Then, “Wonderful, Molly! And how are your students this semester?”
Molly heard the strain in her mother’s voice and hurried through a rundown of some of the more interesting students. “Anyway, nothing to write home about.”
“Daddy’s having a hard time, Molly. He gets confused sometimes.”
“I know. But he does have dementia.”
“Don’t be disrespectful.”
Joy didn’t like the word “dementia.” “Alzheimer’s” was worse.
“Sorry,” Molly said. “I just meant, you know, it’s natural that he’d be confused and forget things.”
“Well, he doesn’t like it. He doesn’t like it one bit. And he doesn’t admit it. Which is tiring for me, I can tell you.”
“Maybe—”
“We can’t afford it.”
“Well, what about—”
“Absolutely not.”
“Not a home, exactly—”
“He has a home,” Joy said. “His home is here.”
* * *
Molly poured herself two fingers of bourbon, just as her father had taught her. No bourbon for him these days, just Ensure, many fingers of Ensure.
“I should be home,” she said to Freddie. “I’m a horrible daughter. I might as well shoot myself.”
Freddie thought, You are home, Molly.
“How many times can the doorman scrape him off the floor? At least she tips them at Christmas. I really have to go back. This is … it’s…”
“What about your brother?”
“What about my brother?”
Now they would have a fight.
“I don’t want to have a fight,” Freddie said.
“Then don’t mention my brother.”
“Ever?”
“See? You do want to have a fight.”
She went out to the garden, and Freddie followed. It was six o’clock and still hot, which was unusual where they lived, near the beach on the west side of Los Angeles. It had been an unusually hot summer, though. Molly brushed miniature pink petals off the chaise before sitting.
“Autumn leaves,” she said, examining one blossom on the tip of her finger. She smiled. “What a place we live in, what an amazing place.” She patted the cushion, motioned Freddie to sit beside her. “My brother is perfect,” she said.
Freddie laughed. Molly’s brother was off-limits. Absolutely, completely, utterly off-limits. She knew that. It was like criticizing Stalin in Moscow in 1939. Except her brother wasn’t Stalin. More like a Dostoevsky innocent.
Molly’s entire family, in fact, was off-limits. They were like a cult, one that did not accept disciples or converts. They had been through a lot as a family, it had drawn them together, but what family hadn’t been through a lot? Well, every family has its myth, she supposed. The myth Freddie’s family told itself was one of freedom. Her sisters and brothers were scattered across the globe, all of them — with the exception of Freddie — too independent and too far away to notice that their father wrecked the car three times in six months, or at least too far away (one hoped not too independent) to do anything about it.
The Bergmans, on the other hand, were a clan, tight knit and suspicious of strangers. They were tribal and closed, bound by blood. They were one, the world the other. Freddie was used to them now, used to their insular ferocity. She didn’t often make the mistake of even implicit disapproval. There were worse things than loyalty and family love in this world. Sometimes she envied Molly her certainty, the way the atheist sometimes envies the believer.
“I know Daniel works very hard,” she said. “I know he’s incredibly busy. I love your brother, I think he’s wonderful to your parents, and to us. I didn’t mean anything, Molly. Really.”
She did mean something, that Daniel was a son not a daughter, and they both knew it, but it wasn’t his fault, and they both knew that, too.
“He can’t be there every second,” Molly said.
But neither could Molly, even if she was the daughter, Freddie thought, and the unspoken words hung between them.
“I could change my ticket, go to New York a week early. I could Skype my classes, right? I have to keep an eye on those two crazy old people. Check on their medications, clear up their bills, talk to the doctors, hire someone to come in, something. I have to do something.”