Robin Black - Life Drawing

It was stunning how successfully he had cut us off from his past.

His face showed no more sign of the struggles of the night before than of the great conflict of sixty-five years earlier. I had been cautioned not to mention the incident. To the extent that he was shifting into a phase in which agitation might spur on violence, it was counterproductive to confront him, I had been told. And so I just sat there, relieved that for once I could visit and allow someone else to carry the conversational water. And Alison, for her part, turned out to be remarkably good at following the odd turns of his thoughts. She was perfectly content, it seemed, to play the part of a girl, resurrected, the long-lost love of a long-lost friend from a long-lost time.

As they chatted, it crossed my mind to ask him the questions I never had. What was it like going to war? What was it like being a Jew in Europe then? What was it like fearing death? Losing friends? Being so far away from home? But I couldn’t bear the prospect of discovering that the memories had all fallen through the holes in his brain.

“Betty!” A coughing fit followed my father’s proclamation. “That’s your name,” he said, his fist still up to his mouth, catching more sputters. “You’re Millie’s friend. Kenny’s girl. Betty.”

“I knew you’d remember!” Alison said. “You were always good like that. So clever!”

I had imagined they might find common ground as high school teachers. I had thought that was to be the surprise of the day: that she would be able to draw him out on those years when he taught, help me locate the father I could remember though he could not. I had thought briefly too that he might cast her as my mother; though the fantasy made me feel a flash of childlike shame. But no, she was to be Betty. Betty the British girl. Not some figure from my life with him, but flesh-and-blood evidence of a story that had nothing to do with me.

As if on cue, as though he had caught a whiff of my melancholy, he turned and asked, “Were you there too?” his eyes rheumy and full of concern.

“I wasn’t,” I said, standing up. “But how nice that the two of you can catch up.” I touched the back of his chair. “I just want to go speak to the … the …” I let it go unfinished, as I left the room.

At the nurses’ station, I peered over the counter, my head between the two enormous, unchanging displays of plastic flowers, and I asked if Lydia was available; but of course she’d gone home after working the night shift. I considered jotting something down, leaving her a message along the lines of: It isn’t you … don’t feel bad … it isn’t you; but what might be said casually in person felt clunky and presumptuous as a note.

“Would you please tell her that I thanked her for her care of my father?” I said. “I know he hasn’t been the easiest … I know she got the brunt of it last night.”

The duty nurse looked at me with genuine kindness. “Oh, we’re used to those things,” she said. “Your father’s a lamb. He can have a bad night once in a while. He’s no trouble at all.”

“You called me this morning, didn’t you?” I asked.

“That’s right,” she said. “We have to make the calls. But please don’t worry about us.”

Looking at her, I thought Laine would have liked to paint her face. She was maybe ten years older than I, bright strawberry blonde hair, unusually dark brown eyes. Clipped, combed eyebrows. And her nose was asymmetrical, one nostril round, the other pinched — defying definition, just as the depth and gravel of her voice argued with the chipper sentences she spoke. Her face seemed like a collection of features hurriedly thrown together, not a coordinated expressive instrument. I could never capture that. But Laine, I knew, excelled at just such challenges.

“He goes to lunch soon,” the nurse said. “Will you be staying? You and your friend?”

I looked up at the big clock behind her, identical to the clocks that had graced every classroom I had ever been in. Every classroom in which my father had ever taught. It was past noon. “No,” I said. “We’ll be heading out now.” I thanked her again, and made my way back down the hall.

My departure from my father’s room was barely a footnote to “Betty’s” farewell. He seemed so sad to see her leave that I feared another deluge of tears, but her repeated promise to return soothed him enough that we could extricate ourselves without a flood.

We were silent as we walked through the air-conditioned, fluorescently lit halls to the door, just murmuring a simultaneous thank-you to the guard who opened the door. We were silent as we stepped into a world that seemed to have been set on broil during our hours inside. It was only as we approached the car that Alison spoke.

“I can’t imagine how difficult that is for you,” she said. “If it were me … Honestly, it must just be impossible to manage … Though …” We had reached the car. “Though he seems to be a nice enough man.”

A nice enough man. Yes. That was what he had become — when he wasn’t throttling nurses or drowning in his own tears. “Well, he was pretty damn stern when I was a kid,” I said. “It’s hard to see now. He seems so mild, I know. But he was … he was very tough with us. We weren’t … we weren’t an affectionate kind of family. We were never … never soft, I suppose. Never tender.” I groaned as we slid into the stifling air. “Jesus Christ. And people leave their dogs in cars.”

“Only people who want to kill their dogs.” Alison pressed both buttons so our windows opened at once. “This sort of heat absolutely never happens in England. Not like this. Once in a century.” She began backing out of the space.

“That’s the most I’ve ever heard him talk about the war,” I said. “By a long shot. It was strange to think of him having this whole … this whole era of his life that he just erased. Or buried. And then it comes rolling back. When you’re old. And mad as a hatter.” I looked out the window. A long stretch of office buildings passed, low-lying, sand-colored. A regular rhythm of For Rent signs. “It’s a very funny business,” I said. “This whole life thing.”

“Well, that’s certainly true. There’s little doubt about that. When you were out of the room? He was talking. I don’t know if you know this, maybe you do. About some woman? When he was in England?” She stopped at a light; and I realized that her driving style had changed, had become almost stately by comparison.

“Betty?”

“No. Not her. I gather there was another girl? You probably know this.” But I could tell from her tone that she didn’t really think I did.

“A girl in England? No. I never heard about that. I barely even heard he’d been there.”

“Millicent,” she said. “Millie to her chums.”

“Oh.” I laughed. “Of course. An English girl named Millicent. What else would she be named?”

“Well, Fiona. Dorothea. Dotty. Gladys.”

“So, what about this girl named Millicent? Millie.”

“Oh, it just seemed … at one point he seemed to think I was her. I gather they were quite an item.”

“Is this where you reveal to me that I have an older brother living in England with Millie, his mum?”

Alison laughed. “No. I think at most it’s …”

“Did he say he was in love?”

She took a curve with the same notable care. “Not in so many words. He told me, well, he didn’t exactly tell me anything, since he thought I already knew. He was just talking over old times. Something about the pub and the walk home. And what a shrew Millie’s mother was. My mother, I suppose. I wouldn’t even have mentioned it …”