Day 2 of no food. It's painful, yes, but only at times. And I'm thinking about the millions of people in the world who suffer this emptiness, this growing dizziness, every single day.
It also occurs to me that I'm practicing an old religious custom, of fasting during Ramadan, for one's sins, I suppose. I don't believe in God, or religion, or original sin. But I do guess I feel that I've got plenty to atone for.
Fasting is a kind of cleansing, after all.
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
The last time I saw him, December 2006
The guard at the gate said "the Mrs." didn’t want any one to come in while they were gone, but that they had just gotten home. So she let us in and we drove up through olive trees and mansions, the night darkening around us. There were two mercedes aging in the driveway, the others inside the garage. And blocking the way, a big white a van, loaded with suitcases and shopping bags, what looked like a month’s luggage They had been gone a night. She appeared in a green fur, Christmas-tree shaped, and something red was blinking on her lapel. The Female Elvis. With the broad band of hot pink in her hair, diamonds weighing down her chest and arms and ears. She complained about her neck hurting a lot and was continually draping a grimy pad that she heated up in the microwave around it. Wouldn’t take the necklaces off, though. Hi, I called drearily as I climbed out of the car. She started in immediately. “O we had so much trouble getting home! It took us two hours to leave the spa; we had to sit in the van, and the traffic was a nightmare, and your father is so slow and difficult, you know, and wouldn’t cooperate, and we thought you were coming earlier: your father said you were coming for brunch and he sat there and waited all morning. I said, they’d call the room. But you never did. And then it took us so long to get out of there. And I’ve bought Christmas presents and your father is so much work....” Well, we’re here now,” I interrupted. You have to interrupt her because she doesn’t stop on her own. She never asks questions. She only responds to ones she imagines you’ve asked, endlessly. Drives my father crazy. The dogs were barking furiously when we came in, as usual. My father was lying on the couch, watching t.v., as usual. He was grumpy and tired. “I thought you were coming for brunch.” “We were waiting for you to come home.” We’d been waiting all afternoon, in fact, because he had given me the impression that she didn’t want us to barge in on their “Christmas weekend.” She doesn’t like me. Hasn’t, ever.
In the beginning, after the stroke, when we thought he was dying and we thought she was going to take everything, I was the one who took away her credit cards. Probably an overreaction. I see that now, but the lawyers said to and we didn’t know her. She was so strange. And later, when he realized he’d made a mistake, I was the one who discovered that she’d been embezzling. Over 100,000 stashed in private accounts. He started divorce proceedings; I drove him to the lawyers. It was going to be hard to make peace with her after that. The irony, of course, is that he ended up staying married while my husband and I split up. The weekend I ended up having to go down to Santa Barbara because he “needed me” and was fed up with her was the same weekend that M. and I had taken to try to rediscover the roots of our love for one another in Berkeley. They ran deep, those roots; they ran right out of sight down in the dark ground. We couldn’t see them. I abandoned my husband and child and flew to my father’s rescue. I drove him to the lawyer, helped him put new locks on the house, endured her screaming. We went out to lunch near his old office and talked about who he could date, which was no one. He was an invalid now, unable to walk without a cane or drive or see or think clearly. Half his face had fallen into a permanent frown. The rest of it fell afterwards. He was no longer the handsome 57-year old successful surgeon with a yacht and a ski lodge in a flashy resort, the man he had been when she came along. When asked why he married her, he said he didn’t know that she talked so much. How could he not have noticed? They were married six months and then he was struck. My mother had been dead not two years.
But this was all long ago. It was night and I was arriving at my father’s house with yet another man I loved but couldn’t hold onto. “You remember C.,” I said, putting him between her and me, like a shield. “O yes!” I think she smiled her prettiest smile, her princess smile. “I have presents for you,” I said. The driver had finished carrying in the last of the bags. C. escaped to move the car. My father hauled himself onto his good leg and the lame leg and made his slow and painful way across the room. He didn’t look at me. I turned to her and said, again, “I brought you Christmas presents.” She disappeared into the kitchen. My father passed into his study and closed the door. The dogs, who bite, yelped and pawed at the door of the bedroom. I stood in the hallway, uncertainly holding the big pink boxes I had brought, waiting. I stood there for a long time, it seemed. Finally I put the boxes down on the ground, near the long line of bags that had been brought in, and knocked on my father’s office door.
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Thursday, December 14, 2006
Santa Barbara
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In the beginning, after the stroke, when we thought he was dying and we thought she was going to take everything, I was the one who took away her credit cards. Probably an overreaction. I see that now, but the lawyers said to and we didn’t know her. She was so strange. And later, when he realized he’d made a mistake, I was the one who discovered that she’d been embezzling. Over 100,000 stashed in private accounts. He started divorce proceedings; I drove him to the lawyers. It was going to be hard to make peace with her after that. The irony, of course, is that he ended up staying married while my husband and I split up. The weekend I ended up having to go down to Santa Barbara because he “needed me” and was fed up with her was the same weekend that M. and I had taken to try to rediscover the roots of our love for one another in Berkeley. They ran deep, those roots; they ran right out of sight down in the dark ground. We couldn’t see them. I abandoned my husband and child and flew to my father’s rescue. I drove him to the lawyer, helped him put new locks on the house, endured her screaming. We went out to lunch near his old office and talked about who he could date, which was no one. He was an invalid now, unable to walk without a cane or drive or see or think clearly. Half his face had fallen into a permanent frown. The rest of it fell afterwards. He was no longer the handsome 57-year old successful surgeon with a yacht and a ski lodge in a flashy resort, the man he had been when she came along. When asked why he married her, he said he didn’t know that she talked so much. How could he not have noticed? They were married six months and then he was struck. My mother had been dead not two years.
But this was all long ago. It was night and I was arriving at my father’s house with yet another man I loved but couldn’t hold onto. “You remember C.,” I said, putting him between her and me, like a shield. “O yes!” I think she smiled her prettiest smile, her princess smile. “I have presents for you,” I said. The driver had finished carrying in the last of the bags. C. escaped to move the car. My father hauled himself onto his good leg and the lame leg and made his slow and painful way across the room. He didn’t look at me. I turned to her and said, again, “I brought you Christmas presents.” She disappeared into the kitchen. My father passed into his study and closed the door. The dogs, who bite, yelped and pawed at the door of the bedroom. I stood in the hallway, uncertainly holding the big pink boxes I had brought, waiting. I stood there for a long time, it seemed. Finally I put the boxes down on the ground, near the long line of bags that had been brought in, and knocked on my father’s office door.
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Thursday, December 14, 2006
Santa Barbara
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