Douglas Kennedy: The Pursuit of Happiness

Fitzgibbon was the pharmaceuticals giant which had employed Charlie for the last twenty years. Charlie had started out as a San Fernando Valley sales rep, then gradually worked his way up to being Regional Sales Director for Orange County. And now...

'Exactly how bad are his problems?' I asked.

'Put it this way - he had to borrow money from a friend to buy the plane ticket back here'.

Jesus.

'And with two kids in college, financially speaking, things are hitting critical mass. He's in really grim shape'.

I suddenly felt a pang of guilt. The poor idiot. Nothing ever seemed to work out Charlie's way. He always had this unerring talent for making the wrong call.

'From what I gather, the marital front is also pretty choppy. Because Princess isn't exactly being the most supportive of spouses...'

Meg suddenly stopped talking and gave me a fast nudge with her elbow. Charlie had re-entered the room, his raincoat over his arm. I stood up.

'What's with the coat?' I asked.

'I've got to get back to the airport', he said.

'But you just arrived a couple of hours ago', I said.

'I've got a big meeting first thing tomorrow', he said sheepishly. 'A job interview. I'm, uh, kind of between things at the moment'.

I caught Meg's glance - imploring me not to let on that I knew about Charlie's unemployed status. Isn't it amazing how family life is an ever-widening web of petty confidences and 'please don't tell your brother I told you...'

'I'm sorry to hear that, Charlie', I said. 'And I'm sorry I boxed your ears before. It's a bad day and...'

Charlie silenced me by leaning forward and giving me a fast buzz on the cheek.

'Let's keep in touch, eh?' he said.

'That's really up to you, Charlie'.

My brother didn't respond to that comment. He simply shrugged sadly and headed to the front door. When he got there, he turned back towards me. A look passed between us. It only lasted a nanosecond, but it said it all: please forgive me.

In that sad nanosecond, I felt a surge of pity for my brother. He appeared so bloated and battered by life; as trapped and cornered as a deer staring straight into the oncoming headlights. Life had not worked out for him - and he now radiated disappointment. I could certainly sympathize with his sense of letdown. Because, with the serendipitous exception of my son, I was not exactly a walking advertisement for personal fulfilment.

'Goodbye, Katie', Charlie said. He opened the front door. I turned away from my brother and disappeared into the bathroom. When I came out two minutes later, I was relieved to see that he'd left.

Just as I was also relieved that the rest of the assembled mourners began to make their goodbyes. There were a couple of people from the building, and some old friends of Mom - increasingly frail women in their seventies, trying to make pleasant chit-chat, and appear reasonably spirited, and not think too much about the fact that, one by one, their contemporaries were vanishing.

By three, everyone had gone - except for Meg and Rozella, the large, cheerful, middle-aged Dominican woman I had hired, two years ago, to clean Mom's apartment twice a week. She ended up being a full-time nurse after Mom checked herself out of Sloan-Kettering.

'I'm not dying in some beige room with fluorescent lighting', she told me the morning her oncologist informed her the cancer was terminal.

I heard myself saying, 'You're not dying, Mom'.

She reached out from the bed and took my hand.

'You can't fight City Hall, dear'.

'The doctor said it could be months...'

Her voice remained calm, strangely serene.

'At the very outset. From where I'm sitting, I would say three weeks maximum. Which, quite frankly, is better than I expected...'

'Must you always, always look on the bright side, Mom?' Oh Christ, what am I saying here? I grasped her hand tighter. 'I didn't mean that. It's just...'

She stared at me critically.

'You've never really figured me out, have you?' she said.

Before I had a chance to offer up some weak refutation, she reached out and hit the call button by her hospital bed.

'I'm going to ask the nurse to get me dressed and help me pack up my things. So if you wouldn't mind giving me fifteen minutes

'I'll get you dressed, Mom'.

'No need, dear'.

'But I want to'.

'Go get yourself a cup of coffee, dear. The nurse will take care of everything'.

'Why won't you let me... ?' I suddenly sounded like a whiny fourteen-year-old. My mom simply smiled, knowing she'd checkmated me.

'You run along now, dear. But don't be longer than fifteen minutes - because if I'm not gone by noon, they charge another full day for the room'.

'So what?' I felt like yelling. 'Blue Cross is picking up the tab'. But I knew what her response would be.

It's still not fair to take advantage of a good, dependable company like Blue Cross.

And I would then wonder (for around the zillionth time) why I could never win an argument with her.

You've never really figured me out, have you?

Damn her for knowing me too well. As usual, she was right on the money. I never understood her. Never understood how she could be so equanimous in the face of so many disappointments, so many adversities. From the few hints that she had dropped (and from what Charlie told me when we used to talk), I sensed that her marriage hadn't exactly been happy. Her husband had died young. He'd left her no money. Her only son had estranged himself from the family. And her only daughter was Ms Discontented who couldn't understand why her mom refused to scream and shout about life's many letdowns. Or why, now, at the end of her life, she was so damn accepting, and would think it bad manners to rage against the dying of the light. But that was always her fortitudinous style. She never showed her hand, never articulated the inherent sadness which so clearly lurked behind her stoical veneer.

But she was certainly right about the timetable of her illness. She didn't last months. She lasted less than two weeks. I hired Rozella on a twenty-four-hour care basis - and felt guilty about not being with Mom full time. But I was under insane pressure at work with a big new account, and I had Ethan to look after (being pigheaded, I also didn't want to ask Matt for any favors). So I could only squeeze in three hours a day with her.

The end was fast. Rozella woke me at four a.m. last Tuesday, and simply said, 'You must come now'.

Fortunately I had already worked out an emergency plan for this exact moment with a newfound friend named Christine - who lived two floors above me in my building, and was a fellow member of the Divorced Moms Club. Though Ethan loudly objected, I managed to get him out of bed and delivered him to Christine, who immediately put him back to bed on her sofa, relieved me of his school clothes, and promised to deliver him to Allan-Stevenson that morning.

Then I raced downstairs, got the doorman to find me a cab, and told the driver that I'd tip him five bucks if he could make it across town to 84th and West End in fifteen minutes.

He did it in ten. Which was a good thing - as Mom went just five minutes after I walked through the door.

I found Rozella standing at the foot of her bed, sobbing quietly. She put her arms around me, and whispered, 'She's here, but not here'.

That was a nice way of saying she had slipped into a coma. Which, honestly, was something of a relief to me - because I was secretly terrified of this deathbed scene. Of saying the right, final thing. Because there is no right or final thing to say. Anyway she couldn't hear me now - so any melodramatic 'I love you, Mom!' proclamations would have been for my benefit alone. At a momentous moment like this one, words are less-than-cheap. And they couldn't assuage the guilt I was feeling.