C Hribal - The Company Car

Said our mother, “This should put the fear of God into him.” Then she turned her face away so we couldn’t see it crumple.

We stand around our father’s bed as he’s prepped for surgery. He’s fussing, though, and the nurse is having a hard time with the IV. Our mother is scared and so angry at him for refusing to seek treatment or even a diagnosis until it’s come to this that she explodes. “Look, Wally, if I can have all my insides taken out and not receive a word from you, comfort or otherwise, then the least you can do is sit still and let them make sure your heart keeps working, goddammit.” That seems to work. The anesthetic cocktail he finally downed probably helped, too. In his hospital gown he has the hunted-and-caught look of a man recently castrated.

So how you feeling, Dad?

Oh, okay. You know this puts hair between your toes.

Our mother is calmer now. It’s okay to be scared, Wally-Bear. I was scared. But I know, I just know, Wally-Bear, that you’re going to come through this all right.

I hope so, honey.

So, Dad, you picked a hell of a way to find out if we loved you.

Not my choice, kitten. His head flops over toward our mother. Well, Suse, I never thought you’d be sitting under the apple tree with anyone else but me.

I wouldn’t, Wally-Bear.

That’s my Pumpkin. (Pause.) I love you, Susie-Q.

I love you, too, Wally-Bear.

I never told you this, Susie-Q, but I’m very happy you agreed to marry me.

You tell me all the time, silly.

But I mean it, Suse. I’ve had a great life. I wouldn’t want anything to be different.

I know, Wally-Bear.

And, Suse?

We all lean in close. The nurses are checking their dials and things, tapping the bag that’s dripping stuff into his arm. He’s struggling to keep awake, to say this last thing before they wheel him away. Our mother finds his hand and squeezes.

Suse? he says. Sweetheart? I owe you.

Yes, says our mother with both more iron and more tenderness than I’d have thought possible. She’s patting our father’s hand; her eyes are filling with tears. Yes, Wally-Bear, you do.

“Emmie, are you okay?” Our mother’s face appears in the back bedroom window.

I’m on the deck. The deck railing, the furniture, the big clay plant pots—everything is covered with a fine rime of frost. The half-moon shines on the frosted ground, the stubble from the last cutting in the fall. You can see Cinderella’s footprints coming and going, then the horde of us coming back up, after the frost had settled. Her appearance pretty much ended the evening—odd, since we were waiting for her to arrive. But her news about our mother and father having figured things out gave us an out—we didn’t have to decide. Not yet we didn’t. Unless, of course, Mom and Dad’s plan is completely unworkable. So everyone went back to where they belonged except me, and I didn’t want to go into the house yet.

I want to answer her, No, Mom, I am not okay. My bookstores are failing, my seems to have lost interest in me and my marriage is in trouble. But I can’t tell her that. There’s a kind of rule in our family: When you can’t say what it is you are really thinking or feeling, ask about someone else. “Cinderella told us Mel’s thinking of getting back with his wife.”

“Yes, she told me that, too.”

“I didn’t even know he had a wife.”

“Everyone has their secrets, Emmie.”

“So, essentially, Mel’s cheating on Cinderella with his own wife.”

“I hadn’t thought of putting it that way, but yes, I suppose he is.”

“That’s a pretty big secret.”

“Yes,” says our mother, “yes, it is.”

“She had another one,” I say. “Something she told Mel that maybe prompted him on the wife thing. Something she didn’t tell us.”

“Maybe she didn’t want to tell you.”

“Maybe. Is it something she wants you to tell us?” That’s another informal rule in our family: if you want information conveyed to all the siblings, tell it to our mother. She’s the family information dissemination officer. This comes in handy when you have something awful to disclose, like a divorce or a separation; the next time you see everyone, they all know what’s up with you, and you haven’t had to say a word.

Our mother sighs. It’s not always clear whether she does the information dispersal thing because she likes it or because she feels she’s helping protect her children. It’s probably both. It must be lonely, being the icebreaker for the frozen seas in people’s hearts. “I suppose you’ll find out soon enough,” she says. “They found another lump. In her breast. They want to remove everything this time, just to be sure.”

“Jesus.”

“It’s going to be hard for her, and as a group you’ve not been particularly supportive.” She’s right, we haven’t, but I don’t say anything. Our mother says, “If there’s one thing your father and I have always wanted, Emmie, it’s for you children to pull together. To work together as a family.”

“I know, Mom, I know.”

“You know, Emmie, you can pay lip service to something and then go do the exact opposite. Or want to do the right thing and find yourself doing something else entirely.”

“Is that how you explained Dad’s behavior over the years?”

“Don’t bad-mouth your father, Emmie. He’s a good man, and he tries hard—”

“I know, Mom, I know.”

“It’s just sometimes he—”

“Mom, you don’t have to explain it to me.”

“I wasn’t going to, Emmie. There are things that happen in a marriage that you can’t explain to anyone, even to yourself.”

“You got that right.”

“What’s bothering you, Emmie? You’ve looked distracted ever since you got here.”

“I don’t know, Mom. I don’t know that I want to talk about it.”

Up in her bedroom window, speaking from behind her screen, our mother is in her role as priest confessor. This has always been a comfort for us: you can tell her things and she listens without judgment. But because what is happening between Dorie and me is just a feeling I have, not an announcement I want to make, I don’t want her knowing about it. Every once in a while our mother confuses her roles as confessor and publicist.

“That’s okay, Emmie,” she says. If this weren’t a screened window she’d reach out and cup my chin. “It’s late, Emmie. You should get some sleep. Me, too. Tomorrow is a big day. For all of us.”

“Cinderella told us you have things worked out, you and Dad. For after tomorrow, I mean. What have you and Dad figured out?”

“Your father and I—” Our mother starts, then stops. She has this kindly look on her face, like she knows I’m trying to cajole information out of her when I wouldn’t share mine with her. She smiles. “Everyone has their secrets, Emmie. You of all people should know that.”

After the light went out in our mother’s room, I was still at loose ends. I still didn’t want to go inside and lie down next to my wife. I’d have gone back to the tepee, but Ike was there, so I went back on the roof. The rungs of the aerial were ice cold, but it felt good climbing up. In our haste to get down earlier, we’d left the cooler. I counted this as good fortune. I grabbed a beer and sat near the roof’s peak, my back against the chimney. I’m here, I know, for the same reason we so often went to the rooftop in our teens: escape from ourselves. When the clutter and the craziness seemed too much for us to handle, when we needed to get away, when we needed to gather, we climbed the aerial to the roof, where we could talk, be ourselves. We could be anybody else we chose to be as well. And when our mother got tired of being the trouper and she was laying into our father, it was where we went to argue about whether it wouldn’t be best if they just called it a night on their marriage.