The Language of Men (25 page)

The meaning of the word "hump" was confusing. Did it mean what my friends and I thought it meant? Or did it mean to carry a weight? How could something we did in our parents' basements or on the beach have anything to do with men in green stomping through the mud?

Near the end of my first semester of college in Boston, I took a bus to Don's apartment for a party. He had recently moved to Brooklyn. Sometimes before I visited Don, my mother would tell me to keep any eye on him. I told her not to worry. I'd been watching my brother my whole life.

As the bus idled at a rest stop, my phone vibrated in my pocket and shocked me out of sleep.

"Hey, Ant, it's Mom." She always identified herself on the phone.

"I know, Mom, who else—"

My body felt like it was sliding down the seat, but I wasn't moving. She kept talking, but I only heard her each time she said "the man." She had started referring to her own father as "the man" when he went into the hospital. "The man is sick, doesn't anyone get that?" or "The man has cancer, okay?" or "The man's been through a lot." He used to bum Winstons off my father in between chemo treatments. I watched my father hand him one, filter-end first. My grandfather—who my father called "Duke" because he walked and talked like John Wayne—broke off the filter, squeezed the cigarette between his teeth. My father gave him his lighter. Within the smoke of his first exhale, I saw my grandfather transported out of his wheelchair and back to his home in New Jersey, my father helping him tie his boat to the dock. In hindsight, I judge them both, and myself, but in those moments, the ends far outweighed the means.

My mother said my father was doing well but I sensed she was convincing herself. She told me to go to the party, have a good time, and come see him in the morning.

"Did you tell Don?" I asked.

"No. Not yet." She paused. "Can you?"

"Sure," I said, surprised at how quickly I agreed.

I told her we'd be home early the next morning. I closed my phone and shifted in my seat, searching for a comfortable position that did not exist. I felt guilty for not saying more to my mother, not offering anything but a few prescribed words of encouragement.
I'm sure he'll be fine. At least they caught it early. He's a fighter.
I didn't really know any of this, could not be certain that my words were true or if I was conveying an accurate description of my father in the hospital. Though I had spent little time in either place, hospitals always reminded me of churches. The echoing halls, the scent of disinfectant, the equal capacity for life and death. Priests in their robes, doctors in their long coats. Hospitals were only a step closer to the grave. A rosary. A stethoscope. No guarantee.

The strangers on the bus crumpled their hamburger wrappers, slurped their sodas. I still had three hours before we reached New York.

When I arrived at my brother's apartment in the early evening, we went out for dinner. I could have mentioned it at any time but I didn't. I kept quiet. I was in possession of privileged information, and a part of me lingered in the moment.

In his kitchen, after everyone had stumbled home, I told him.

"Are you serious? What the hell, dude, why didn't you tell me earlier?"

"I don't know." I said. "There just wasn't a good time."

He walked into his room and dragged a pillow and a sheet down from the cabinet above his closet. I took them from him. I made up my bed and he stood in the doorway, staring at the floor, asking silent questions for which I had no answer.

The double-sided elevator chimed, revealing two frail doctors in oversized white coats. When we reached their floor, the doctors nodded as Don and I stepped aside. Alone, we rode up to the sixth floor. For some reason, it stopped on every floor and each time both sides opened to empty halls. By the time we made it to our floor, my mouth was sour with motion sickness.

Don bit his nails as we walked down the hall. I felt like we should be talking, but all I heard was the sound of our sneakers on the tile, screeching like school kids on their way to the principal's office. The sound drew stern looks from doctors, squinty glances from patients in their dimly-lit rooms.

First I saw my mother, sitting in a chair, rolling the back of her hand against her palm, talking to a shadow behind a curtain. She stood and smiled when we walked in. On the other side of the curtain was my father, sitting on the edge of the bed, twirling his silver dollar on the dinner tray.

"Yo! What up?" He stood and gave me a strong hug. I felt the bare skin of his back, exposed by the opening in his gown. I stepped aside so he could reach Don, and I couldn't remember the last time I saw them hug for that long. Maybe they had and I just never saw it. I gave my mother a kiss and walked around to the other side of the bed and leaned against the windows. He looked at me. Then at Don. Then back to me.

"So," I started, "how are you feeling?"

"I feel good. You know, a little tired but not too bad." He told us about the previous day, waking up, looking at his lip in the mirror, going to work. I detected a lisp in his speech, as if he were speaking with an ice cube in his mouth.

"But uh, the doc says I'm lucky. Just gotta take a pill, lay off the smokes."

"That's right," my mother said. "He's quitting; we both are."

"Yeah, I'm done." He looked out the window; my mother nodded at the floor.

"So how was that bus ride, boy?"

Fine, I said. Long.

"Oh, yeah? Any traffic?"

"No. Not really. A little when we hit the city but other than that-"

"Good, good."

"So why didn't you go to the hospital right away? What were you waiting for?" Don asked.

Sometimes my brother speaks over me, through me. Occasionally, his words ring at that common octave, the familiar twist and blend of our parents' vocal cords, and I hear his speech expressing my thoughts. At the time, I didn't like the accusatory tone of his questions, but I was thinking the same thing. Why didn't you go to the hospital right away? What were you waiting for? Is work more important than your life?

My father tapped his upper lip with his middle finger. "I don't know. Never dawned on me. Tell ya, though, my lip feels friggin' weird." He poked at it. "Doc says all the feeling will come back over time. Same with my tongue."

"You sound much better now than you did before," my mother said.

He moved his jaw like a horse. "Just feels awkward, you know. But it's coming back."

We talked about blood tests and CT scans and hospital food. Then we watched a little bit of
King Kong
on my father's bedside television. The scene where Kong is captured, strapped to a massive wooden gurney.

"Holy shit," I said. "That's Jeff Bridges?"

"I know, right?" my father said. "He's young in this."

"Was this before or after
Starman?'

My brother looked at me. "Dude. Way before. Are you kidding?"

I glanced at my mother beside me, and she smiled as if waiting to be called on. She rubbed my knee and asked me about college. In the middle of my response, a woman holding a big basket of fruit wrapped in orange cellophane entered the room.

"Oh, poor baby! How are you?" She gasped and leaned over to kiss my father's cheek. I looked at my brother. He was still watching
King Kong.

"Hey, Rosie, what's shakin'?"

"Nothing, Don, nothing. Can you believe him?" she said, turning to us. "Can you believe this man? In the hospital and he's asking about me."

My mother smiled. I smiled, too.

"I just wanted to stop by and see you and let you know we're all thinking about you. When I saw you, pale as a frickin' ghost, my god." She held her breast.

My father grinned. "Then you two-timed me and called the fuzz."

"Oh, please," Rosie said. She shook her head at my mother. My mother shook her head, too.

"They saved your life," my mother said.

"How'd you guys make out today? Jesus bang in sick again?"

"We're fine, Don. We're fine. Don't worry about Jesus."

Rosie sounded like she smoked unfiltered cigarettes. She was decorated in large, plastic jewelry, each piece a different primary color. Her bracelets clacked together as she talked. I couldn't tell if my mother had met this woman before. She didn't know me or my brother, but somehow she scooted into my father's room as if she were continuing an old conversation.

"I'll let you get back to your family now. But you get better soon, you hear me?" She laughed and leaned in to kiss him goodbye. "He loves the way I smell. Remember you said you could always know when I was coming in the store?"

I stood there watching as if this were a soap opera, a corny hospital scene where the romantic lead is on his death bed. My mother smiled so wide her eyes disappeared. My brother glanced at the basket, then returned to
King Kong.

"Bye-bye," she said. "Enjoy the fruit!" I heard her clack down the hall.

"Well," my mother said. "That was nice of her." She looked at me, then at Don.

My father picked up the fruit basket, peeling off a sticker that read
Edible Arrangements.
He slid out a slice of honeydew melon. "Gimme a little volume on this, Don."

The nurse came in to tell us visiting hours were over. We thanked her.

"Shit," my father said. "Hey, I'll walk you guys out. My ass is getting flat." He hopped off the bed and untangled his wires. I let him go ahead of me. He held the IV stand like a pitch fork. His gown was too big for him, and as he stepped, I glimpsed the pale skin of his ass.

In the hallway, our sneakers screeched; my father's bare, callused feet shuffled over the floor as if his soles were made of sandpaper. I put my arm on his shoulder, felt his bones move beneath the gown. When we reached the elevators, we hugged and said goodbye. My mother wanted to stay over, so she kissed us and gave us money for a pizza. As we waited for the elevator, we watched my mother and my father walk down the white hallway, the bottom of my father's gown dragging behind him, the shoulder pads of my mother's blazer shifting with each step. Several elevators arrived and a succession of chimes echoed down the hall. My mother leaned close to my father's ear and whispered. He nodded. A doctor waited for them at the end of the hall holding a clipboard against his chest. He smiled, and guided them back to my father's dimly-lit room.

The cold wind screamed in my ear. I felt like I had just woken up from a long, unexpected nap. Yellow street lamps spotlighted the near-empty parking lot. Don and I walked to the car in silence. I lifted the handle of the locked passenger door, triggering the interior light.

"Hang on," Don said.

He unlocked it and we both got in. We sat there, the pressure of the quiet car swirling in our ears. I tried to coax a yawn, but nothing worked. The pressure would not go away.

"You think he'll be okay?" Don asked.

"Yeah I think so. The speech thing was a little noticeable but they said it should go away."

"It was totally noticeable. I told Mom. I told her months ago Dad wasn't looking so good, that he should get checked out."

"You were right."

"I know I was right. Fucking lucky he's not a vegetable. How many chances does he think he's got?"

He lit a Camel Ultra Light and rolled down the window. I lit one, too. The cold air pushed the smoke in, then quickly sucked it out.

"What was up with that woman?" I asked.

"What? What about her?"

"I don't know," I said. "Seemed kinda weird."

Don exhaled. "Whatever. Dad's a flirty dude, you know that."

We stopped at Taco Bell and ate it when we got home, while we watched the rest of
King Kong.

Months went by, the snow melted, the sun shone longer. My father came home from the hospital, took his pill, laid off the smokes. His tongue began to thaw and his warm, throaty voice returned.

I wrote to Vanessa and told her what had happened. There was an unspoken competition between us to see who could write the longest e-mail. We saved all of them and while many of our lines were sentimental pillow talk, there were dozens and dozens of questions. Sometimes we made lists of questions that covered all kinds of topics, from favorite foods and colors to whether or not she'd still date me if I always wore pants filled with cottage cheese. We asked each other when we had lost our virginity, how many people we'd slept with, what our fantasies were—all the things we would have avoided in our first month of dating. Perhaps longer.

She wrote about her father—his drinking, his temper, his death. She wrote about the winter night he locked her and her mother out of the house. They stood in the street, watching his shadow move from room to room. She told me she remembered things that her sister didn't, and how odd it felt to hear conflicting stories about the same man. But what bothered her most was that their last conversation was a fight, and she'd hung up the phone without telling him she loved him.

She was glad my father was doing okay, but more importantly, that I didn't wait too long to see him.

In July, my father and I fished off the coast of Montauk on Bobby Haggemeyer's boat, one of the lucky vessels to survive Hurricane Gloria. My father told Bobby he should change the name of his boat from "Reelin' in the Years," a Steely Dan song, to Van Morrison's "Gloria."

"He even spells it out for you, Hag," my father said, popping a piece of gum into his mouth.

"Smart guy, right. That's not his, though. Who did it?"

"Shit, a lot of people covered that tune. The Doors did. Animals?"

"Nope," Bobby said, patting his pockets for a cigarette.

"Wait. Hold the phone, Hag. It
is
Van Morrison."

Bobby clenched the brown filter between his teeth, eyes widening.

"Fuckin' kiddin' me, right?"

"I'm tellin' ya. Wasn't a solo thing. It was when he was with Them. Think it was a B-side."

Bobby sparked his lighter several times, but couldn't get a flame. They often went back and forth over who did what, what song was a cover, what was original. Bobby started to talk around his unlit cigarette, then got impatient and ripped it from his mouth.