Joyce Oates - Sourland

Adelina chided: “You shouldn’t have come out today, darling. If you’re not really mended. I could have come to see you, we could have planned that. We could have met at a restaurant on the West Side.”

Briskly Adelina was signaling for another taxi, standing in the street. She was wearing her dark-tinted glasses now. Her manner was urgent, dramatic. A taxi braked to a stop, the driver was an older man, darker-skinned than the other driver, more deferential. Adelina opened the rear door, pushed me inside, leaned into the window to instruct the driver: “Please take my daughter home. She’ll tell you the address. She’s just thirteen, she has had major surgery and needs to get home, right away. Make sure she gets to the actual door, will you? You can wait in the street and watch her. Here” — thrusting a bill at the driver, which must have been a large bill for the man took it from Adelina’s fingers with a terse smile of thanks.

Awkwardly Adelina stooped to kiss my cheek. She was juggling her designer handbag and a freshly lit cigarette, breathing her flamy-sweet breath into my face. “Darling, goodbye! Take a nap when you get home. You look ghastly. I’ll call you. I’m here until Thursday. Au-voir!”

The taxi sprang forward. On the curb my mother stood blowing kisses after us. In the rearview mirror the driver’s narrowed eyes shifted to my face.

A jarring ride through the park! Now I was alone, unobserved. I wiped at my eyes. Through the smudged window beside me flowed a stream of strangers on the sidewalk — all that I knew in my life that would be permanent, and my own.

It was a bitch. The summer was jinxed. Her father died on her birthday which was July 1. Then, things got worse. Though before that, things had not been exactly good. There were clouded memories. There had been a fear of entering the hospital. Her father had joked that hospitals are dangerous places, people die in hospitals. Her father had believed that hospitals are to be avoided at all costs. The air of hospitals is a petri dish of teeming microorganisms. Her father had rarely stepped into hospitals in his former life. Her father had had to be taken by ambulance to this hospital. Her father had not returned from the hospital. Her father had seemed to know he would not return from the hospital. Her father began to call her Poppy in the hospital. Each time she entered the hospital with dread. Each time she entered his room shivering with dread. Why are hospitals refrigerated? You don’t want to ask this question. Each time she entered his room, if he was awake, if he was awake and in his bed and able to see her, he would say Is that you, Poppy? He would squint and smile eagerly and say Is that you, Poppy? Her name was not Poppy. Poppy was not a name much like her actual name though it was rare, it had become rare, for anyone to call her by that name, either. She wondered if Poppy had been her baby name, and she’d forgotten. This thought frightened her so she tried not to think it. Nor could she ask her father Who is Poppy? Before the ambulance and the hospital and the elevator to the eighth floor which had become her life things had not been exactly good and yet not-good in a way of meaning not-bad, considering. You might have said not-good in the way of meaning pretty-good, considering. She wished now that that simple happy time would return but it wasn’t likely. She was visiting her father in the hospital because she was the daughter. The two of them were marooned alone together as in a lifeboat. Somehow, suddenly this had happened. There had been a family at one time, there were other relatives living now but the father did not wish to see anyone else. The father could not bear complications in his life. He had been an aggressive man in his former life but he had had to surrender his life as a man, now he would endure the life of the body. And so they were a father and a daughter alone together as in a lifeboat in the midst of the ocean. They had to shout at each other to be heard over the rushing winds and the slosh of six-foot waves. The hospital air was teeming with microorganisms poised to devour them. These were sharks too small to be detected by the human eye but obviously they were there. Disinfectant could keep them at bay but not for very long. The smell of disinfectant had seeped into her hair and could not be washed out. The smell of disinfectant had seeped into her clothing, her skin, even her fingernails. Beneath her fingernails, a sharp smell of disinfectant as if she’d been scratching her own skin, or scalp. No one would ever kiss her mouth again. No one would ever draw close to her again. What a joke! The summer was jinxed. The entire year would be jinxed. The preceding year, seen in retrospect, must have been jinxed. Though she had not known then, for she had believed that the not-so-good present was a “phase,” a “stage,” some sort of “transition.” Until the hospital, much can be interpreted as “transition.” She hadn’t known that her father had loved her. That was a surprise! She hadn’t known that her father had taken much notice of her. As a girl she had loved her father but eventually she’d given up, as we do when our love is not returned. Though possibly she’d been mistaken. Oh, it was a bitch! It was a bad joke. She was a bitch to think such thoughts at such a time. Though it was a comfort in this, that she was a bitch who deserved bad luck and not a nice person who deserved better. There had been a previous life involving her but in the hospital at her father’s bedside she could not recall this life very clearly. Perhaps it had involved someone else, in fact. Perhaps her family had been other people. Through a glass darkly came to her. She was envious of those other people she had not known. The nurses on the eighth floor knew her. Some of them, the nice ones, smiled encouragingly. Some of them smiled in pity. Some of them did not smile but glanced quickly away. Some of them ducked into supply closets. The attendants who spoke little English knew her. Everywhere were hospital workers who had no idea who she was yet knew her. Each time she entered the hospital with an eager dread. She shivered with an eager dread. The hospital was refrigerated in summer. You had to wear heavy clothing. You had to wear warm stockings. You had to clench your hands into fists and squeeze them beneath your armpits for warmth. She stepped out of the elevator on the eighth floor with her eager dread. She pushed through the doors of the cardiac unit with her eager dread. She was bringing flowers, or a basket of fruit. She was bringing the local newspaper which she would read to her father. Yet, she entered his room with her eager dread never knowing what she would encounter. For each time, her father was a smaller man in the ever-larger bed. Each time, her father’s eyes were sunk more deeply in their ever-larger sockets. Each time, something was missing from the room. Her father’s wristwatch that had been on the bedside table. Her father’s fuzzy bedroom slippers that had been neatly positioned on the floor beside the bed. Her father’s reading glasses were taken from him, who would want a dying old man’s reading glasses! Her father’s dentures were taken from him, who would want a dying old man’s dentures! Tears glistened on her father’s sunken cheeks. His collapsed mouth was frantic. She was his only hope. Her voice became excited. A nurse warned of calling security. You can’t accuse theft. You had better not accuse theft. You had better have evidence for theft. He was saying, You are my only hope. You will live on. I will live in you, my only hope. My beautiful daughter. Only you. She was terrified by such words. She began to tremble, such words. There was a roaring of wind, a terrible sloshing of waves. She wanted to scream at him, I’m not the one! Don’t count on me. No one had said she was beautiful in a long time. No one had kissed her mouth in a long time. Her father looked at her with love — but what is love, in a dying old man! What is love, in a deranged old man! On the eve of her father’s death, the missing dentures turned up. “Turned up” was the explanation. Yet her father died with a collapsed mouth, for it was too late for dentures. She was wakened from a stuporous sleep by a ringing phone. She who was his daughter who’d been claiming to be insomniac and sleep deprived yet she’d been wakened from a stuporous sleep to be informed by a woman’s voice that her father had passed away and she must come to the hospital as quickly as possible to make arrangements for the disposal of the body and to clear out the room. Now the summer stretched ahead like an asphalt parking lot to the horizon. Through a glass darkly rang in her head. She had no idea why. Though she’d been warned, there was the shock of entering an empty room. There was the shock of the stripped bed, the bare mattress. There was the shock of an overpowering smell of disinfectant. It was her task to clear this room of her father’s things. She was capable of this task, she thought. Her father’s dentures were given to her. Her father’s dentures had “turned up.” Later she might wonder if these dentures were in fact her father’s dentures but at the time she had not doubted that this was a happy ending. Later she would doubt for there was no way of knowing, really. She took care to wrap the dentures in tissue paper, though her hands were trembling. She was terrified of dropping the dentures onto the floor and breaking them. She was her father’s only hope. She believed that she was equal to the task except she was distracted by something murmurous. It sounded like an anxious Is that you, Poppy? But she couldn’t be sure.