Robin Black - Life Drawing

“It’s possible no one told you about the first, in case it was a one-time event.”

I wondered if the young nurse, Lydia, guilty still about provoking his flood of tears, had spared me a report.

Inexperienced and filled with more rules than wisdom, the doctor then went into unnecessary detail about the policy itself — about how sometimes it turned out that the nature of a single episode might be enough to trigger a change and in other cases the three-strikes policy could be suspended and on and on, as Owen and I raised our eyebrows at one another and widened our eyes but managed somehow not to be rude while we brought the conversation back to my father and his care.

“Has he been told what’s going on?” I asked.

No. He hadn’t. They always preferred to have family there to help explain it all to the patient. “Though in my experience,” the doctor said, the notion of experience hanging around him like a too-large overcoat, “that can actually sometimes make things worse.”

“How reassuring,” I muttered to Owen as we trailed down the hall.

My father had always had a temper, but of a quiet, steady kind. It was part of what made him so effective as a teacher, I thought, that he knew when to be angry and allowed himself to be, but not in a dramatic way. And certainly not with any threat of violence. Clarity. That was one of his defining qualities. He would never yell and scream but he didn’t buy the idea of calling anger by euphemistic names. When Owen and I were still in Philadelphia, surrounded by young families, we would hear the same parental spiel over and over: I’m not angry, I’m just upset; I’m not angry, I’m just frustrated; I’m not angry, I was just worried about where you were .

“I am furious at you both,” my father would say if Charlotte and I came home late. And it meant a week of grounding or extra chores or both; and it also meant a day or so of palpable, lingering anger, detectable in a lack of interest in whatever we had to say, the failure to involve us in deciding what dinner would be for a while. We were ignored as he went into the backyard, lit a cigarette, and sat by himself, or disappeared into his bedroom — a couple of pull-ups on his way.

But what I saw in his eyes the day we walked into his little apartment was something new. A wild animal had slipped beneath his skin.

“Hi, Dad,” I said.

“Hi, Sam,” Owen said.

He didn’t know us. And he didn’t like us. I looked at the doctor for guidance and was surprised to find a transformed man. In this setting, he exuded authority. Later, in the car, I would tell Owen that should I ever be in a demented, disoriented rage, that was the doctor I wanted him to phone. He called my father Mr. Edelman, which alone seemed to soothe him — in a way that neither “Dad” nor his first name had. Here was a young fellow calling him Mr. Edelman. Could he feel himself becoming the teacher again?

“It seems like you’ve been having a tough time, Mr. Edelman.”

“This black woman …” My father gestured toward the door. I felt the blood rise to my cheeks. “She won’t let me go out.”

“Yes. That’s right. Those are my orders. I asked the nurses to make sure you stay put. We don’t allow our patients to do anything unsafe.”

“Ha!” My father looked at me. “Any time a Jew is locked up, you want to watch for that. Any time they start talking about their orders …”

“Your daughter …,” the doctor began; and my father frowned.

“That’s me,” I said. “Augusta.”

He shrugged a little, made a face, not arguing the point but not entirely accepting it either. “And this?” he asked, with a shift in gaze.

“My husband. Owen. You like him.”

He looked doubtful.

“You used to like him. I promise.”

The doctor cleared his throat. “We have to make a few changes, Mr. Edelman. Starting with your room. We’re moving you to a different part of the facility. You’ll have some of the same nurses there with you, at least for a while, so it won’t be all new.”

“And I can visit you much more. If you want.”

“In general, you’ll be getting a more steady level of care …”

The unfamiliar rage in my father’s eyes had been replaced by a look I did recognize: utter bewilderment, filmed over with an attempt to hide it. He nodded, as if comprehending, while clearly not comprehending. The doctor explained that though he would be moving that day, we’d have a little while to move his belongings. “Your daughter will make sure you have the things that matter most to you.”

“And the rest, I’ll keep just at my house,” I said — for all the world as though the second half of the sentence were: … so someday you can have it all back .

When we emerged from the home, the sky had opened up, a perfect rumbling thunderstorm. We were drenched as we ran to the car. Owen drove, and any possible conversation was lost to the attention he had to pay as the windshield wipers struggled against the deluge.

Jan would be back from Nova Scotia in three days and the place had agreed to let us wait to clean everything out together. I had picked half a dozen items to go with him, transition objects, like little children use. I wavered over my own painting as if it were some sort of symbolically important decision, and then put it with the other things on his bed. That painting. A picture of me, Charlotte, and Jan in our teen years, all looking like he had told us to stand up straight and think about brussels sprouts. That was my one smile as I packed: that this sourpuss lineup was his favorite shot of us. I tried to include a porcelain figurine of a dog that had belonged to his mother, but was told that nothing that could be thrown, broken, or in any way rendered sharp could go with him, so I wrapped it in a washcloth and put it in my own bag.

When we got home, I ran through the rain, but got soaked again anyway. Upstairs, I stripped everything off, put on a bathrobe, lay down in bed and soon fell asleep — as though the events of the day were like a fever that had left me weak. I woke to find Owen sitting beside me. “I didn’t think you’d want to sleep all afternoon and then be up all night.” His hand was on my shoulder. I turned over, away from him, knowing he would rub my back.

“I feel like someone dropped an anvil on me,” I said. “Me and Wile E. Coyote.”

“Life dropped an anvil on you.”

As he kneaded my shoulder, I closed my eyes. “It’ll be better when Jan gets home. She’s so competent. She makes everything feel manageable.”

Neither of us spoke for a minute or so and then he said, “We’ve been invited for dinner — by the neighbors. The daughter leaves tomorrow. But only if you’re up to it. I told Alison I wasn’t sure, that you might just want to hunker down tonight.”

“That actually sounds fine,” I said. “I can’t just lie here in the dark all night.”

“You can do anything you want.”

I stretched out some more, arching my back. “Right there,” I said. “Right next to my spine. That’s what I want.”

At Alison’s we ate in the living room, Owen and I on her couch, each of the others on a chair. She’d made chili and rice. It was all very simple and should also have been comforting. But the shift in dynamics since our dinner just two nights before unnerved me. During the day when I’d absented myself working, and maybe also during my sleeping hours that afternoon, Owen and Nora had moved well beyond the polite talk of strangers. Somehow. It was as though a thin pane of glass had shattered between them — but stayed intact just enough to keep me on the other side.

Alison was solicitous, offering every imaginable kind of help. She would drive me to visit my father. She would make us dinners. She would be a shoulder. “You deserve some coddling right now,” she said.