I awoke to silence for a change. Liz was not yet home from call and Gee and DJ, our two children, remained fast asleep. The house was quiet on a Saturday morning. I flipped my pillow and enjoyed the coolness of the underside, resting peacefully in bed as I tuned in some birds in the yard. Gee and DJ were early risers so this sliver of quiet would not last. I wanted to enjoy it so I made my way downstairs to the kitchen and put on a pot of coffee, my last remaining drug of choice. As coffee brewed our cat Rifka purred against my leg. I rubbed the area between her ears, then worked my way down to the bridge of her nose. She arched her head up as we enjoyed each other’s company. I wondered if my mom was awake. I looked at the clock and figured I’d give her a few more minutes before I called.
Of the many unexpected pleasures surfacing during adulthood, the weekly phone conversations with my parents remained a constant. It was a rare weekend that did not include a good 15-30 minute call with mom or dad. Sometimes both of them grabbed an extension as we chatted away together in what my mom called our “party line.” Calls featuring both mom and dad tended towards a more light natured banter. One of the three members of our party line became the focal point, receiving a healthy dose of teasing or a tag team of persuasion as the majority of two cajoled the target into addressing a looming decision or issue.
Calls with mom offered a free flow of topics as we plumbed emotions, financial strategy, the state of affairs among siblings and discussed my two children; her first grandchildren. We always ended our calls chatting about Gee and DJ. It was a guaranteed high point as we shared a deep sense of love and commitment towards them. Calls with dad were about his work, questions about my work and the recent activities of the kids. His calls were about tactical things like tasks or events. There was no plumbing of emotions. Briefer than calls with mom, calls with dad usually ended with a story in which the recipient was invited to sit back in silence and enjoy a good yarn, many of which were repeated over the years. Still, they were our stories and they bound us together, spanning the distance between us.
With coffee made, I called New Jersey hoping to catch mom. She was an early riser and would likely be enjoying the morning as well. The phone cord was extra long and I stretched it out as I made my way to the rear kitchen window to look out over our small Somerville back yard. I leaned my face against the glass and felt the coolness of spring on my cheek. As the phone rang I surveyed scattered toys and checked the status of Mr. Bag, a wayward plastic grocery bag stuck high in our neighbor’s tree. Each morning Gee and DJ checked the status of Mr. Bag as he made it known to us which way the wind was blowing. At breakfast we nodded thoughtfully as he shared his insight with us. We suggested to each other guesses as to what he was thinking and his reaction to the recently departed Mrs. Bag, whose sudden leap from her branch caused quite a stir during one such breakfast.
I sipped my coffee as dad picked up. “Hello, Kinkade here.”
“Hey dad, it’s me, Beasley. I called you, ya know so I already know who you are. How ‘bout trying ‘Good morning’ when you answer. Huh?” He grunted as I continued, “Well what’s up with you? How you doing? How’s mom feeling?”
“Good. Good, Beasley. I, ah, I’m just getting ready to head to work. Mom’s good. She’s sleeping now. She had a treatment a couple of days ago and she said it hits her a few days afterwards. I’m downstairs in the kitchen making a fruit salad for her for when she wakes up. I want her to sleep. She needs the rest.”
“Did you go with her to chemo?” I asked.
“What? No, no. I was working. She goes first thing in the morning. And she, ah, she told me she likes to go alone and then come home and have tea before she gets that, what’s she call it; that metallic like taste in her mouth.”
I twisted the cord around my finger drawing it tighter as I slowly pushed my face harder against the cool glass. I measured my words. “What are you up to today, dad? Are you doing anything with mom or something like that?”
“Huh? No, ah, after I make breakfast, I’m heading to the city. We’ve got a training session running with the Fire Department and I want to be there during the debriefing session. Everyone’s coming in on a Saturday and…”
By now my phone cord was pulled taunt. I pushed harder against the glass, tilting my face to look down at a dead bug trapped in the windowsill, keeping my forehead on the glass. I jumped in and interrupted, “Dad, let someone else handle the debrief or whatever it is. Stay home with mom and hang out with her. She’s sick. She’d like it if you stayed with her.”
“No, no, I can’t Beasley, this is important. We have to get this down. We’ve got an exercise coming up with the city and I want my team to be up on protocol. We’ve…”
I lost it. “Dad, mom’s important too! Don’t you get that? Jesus H. Christ. Your god damn wife has cancer and you’re going in to work on a Saturday! Listen to yourself, dad. Just listen to yourself. Come on, she doesn’t deserve this shit.” He didn’t respond.
Boiling, I continued, “Mom has a fucking growth on her spine and it’s getting bigger, dad. Bigger. Don’t you get it? My god, how much time do you think you’ve got left with her, dad?”
I could feel my heart pounding. I felt my pulse against the window pane. “How much time, dad, huh? A year? Maybe two? Five, tops?”
He listened in silence, absorbing the salvo. This was not the way I talked to dad. Never.
I took a breadth and slowed down. During my rant I had pushed my head too hard against the glass and the window had cracked. “Dad, listen. In five years do you want to look back and wonder if you should have spent more time with mom before she died? Do you? And if you ever do ask yourself that, what do you want your answer to be, dad? ‘Oh, yeah, my wife had cancer but fortunately it didn’t impact my fucking work schedule.’ Is that what you want, dad?”
More silence.
“Well, is it? She is suffering in silence not because she wants to fight alone but because you leave her to fight alone. My god, what the fuck are you thinking?”
We both remained silent. I waited for a staccato defense or a simple click of his receiver. The only times I had ever yelled at him like this were during teenage brawls which usually ended with me being smacked or choked or thrown out the front door head over tea kettle as my dad called it.
His silence sliced into me and I responded with nukes, “You know, if she were an employee of yours you’d be at every god damn chemo session I can tell you that right now, dad. Every fucking one of them. Guaranteed. How ‘bout treating her as good as an employee, dad, huh?” I stopped. I could hear his breathing through the receiver.
“You’re right, Beasley. I know it. You’re right, god damn it. I just don’t know what to do. She says she’s all right but she’s not. I don’t know what to do.”
“Jesus Christ on a crutch, dad, give her what’s most precious to you. Give her some of your time. Just spend time with her.”
“Yea, I know…. You’re right, Beasley… That’s right.”
“Dad, look, I’m sorry I yelled and got all upset. But this is important. This is not some exercise where you get to debrief or whatever you call it when you’re finished. This is the real thing. When it’s over she’s gone. Look, I don’t know what else to say. I don’t want to start repeating myself. You get it. I gotta go, dad. If you see mom, tell her I called and said I love her. Good luck with your briefing.” I pulled away from the window to set the phone down.
“Beasley? You still there?”
“Yeah, dad, what?”
“Thank you, Beasley. Thank you.”
Click.
I put some tape over the crack in the window and made a second pot of coffee thinking that I was going to have to tell Liz I cracked the window with my fucking head. Great.
Morning slipped into another Saturday routine with Gee and DJ. With nothing special planned we once again managed to have fun together.
Mom called some time in the early afternoon with her weekly check in. Always too chipper, she jumped into our call. “Beasley, how are you? How are Gee and DJ? Tell me. What did you do today? Tell me all about it. I want to hear it all.”
As Gee and DJ napped I explained the kids’ fascination with Mr. Bag and the sudden departure of Mrs. Bag. She interrupted, “Mrs. Bag is like me, then, huh?” she asked.
Startled, I responded, “Jeeze, mom, I hope not. That means dad is Mr. Bag and there is no way he’ll know how to hang on if you bolt!” She cackled, “You got that one right, Beasley. Go on. I interrupted you. Tell me what the kids are thinking about.”
I shared this morning’s ride on the Red Line. Back and forth from Davis Square to Park Street back to Alewife and then to Davis on a trip to nowhere except the present.
“And, you mom, what are you up to?”
She beamed, “Your dad surprised me and made breakfast for us. He ended up skipping a big event in the city. We’re going to dinner and the movies tonight. On a date!”
She sounded like a school girl.
“Can you believe it? He agreed to see Moulin Rouge with me. Can you imagine your dad sitting through that?”
Unprepared, I covered the receiver so she couldn’t hear me.
“Beasley, are you OK? Are you choking or something? Where’d you go on me?”
I wiped my eyes and cleared my throat, “Huh, no mom, my coffee musta gone down the wrong tube.”
I faked a cough and chimed back in, “On a date, mom? That’s great. Hold out now, don’t be too promiscuous.” She laughed as I struggled to keep myself together, “Um, mom, DJ is fussing and I better go get him, OK? When they’re up I’ll call you and you can chat with them. Sound good? I love you, Mom. Have fun with dad.”
And she did just that. For the rest of their lives together my father and mother dated, as she reported during our ongoing phone calls.
My father and I never once spoke of our conversation. Sometimes I wonder if it ever really happened.
Mom filled me in. They went out to dinner on weeknights. They went on walks together and went away on weekend trips and walked in the sand and on weekends they laid in bed talking and held hands when they had nothing to say to each other. They called more frequently, more often than not with both of them on the phone. They lived in love.
Their renewed love lasted a total of just under three and a half months as dad went to work one Tuesday morning in September, responded to an incident, and did not return. He left mom with 100 days of love. 100 days. Mom talked about that time for her remaining five years as among the happiest, most enjoyable, of her 62 years.
Over a year after dad followed in the footsteps of Mrs. Bag mom explained during one of our calls that when she is alone in her house with no friends, or children or grandchildren, she simply makes a cup of tea, sits in the den, closes her eyes and releases her warmest memories to fill the silence with the living chapters she shared with dad, the last of which she liked to call 100 Days of Love.
