Hanging Up. Delia Ephron

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ obliges.

      “Would you write a sentence?”

      He does that too. She shows me the clipboard.

      He has written, “It’s too late.”

      Oh, wow. I actually have this dumb high school reaction. Oh, wow. Heavy. And in my mind, I am already on the phone to my sisters.” ‘It’s too late.’ That’s what he wrote. Do you believe that?”

      “Why don’t we show you to your room,” Dr. Kelly says to my father.

      “Are you leaving me here?” he asks me. His hands, which have been lying listlessly in his lap, fly up and seize the arms of his wheelchair.

      “You’re going to stay here for a week or two.” Maybe more, I don’t say. “You’re having memory problems, Dad. They’ll run some tests.”

      “You bitch. You and Claire. You put me here before. You’re in cahoots.” My father flings a backslap at me but misses by a mile.

      “That’s not Claire, that’s Angie, and you’ve never been here before.” I say this quietly, but I can feel my face flush.

      Angie springs up. “I’ll take him.” She spins the wheelchair around. “I’m taking you to your room, Mr. Mozell,” she declares, as Rob Bateson jumps to open the door for them. “Bitch,” my father shouts as she steers him out, and Bateson closes the door behind them.

      There is silence. A moment of respect for the departed.

      “My father didn’t go to Harvard.”

      Dr. Kelly laughs, then immediately crosses out the entry on her form. “Where did he go?”

      “He went to, oh, what’s that school, you know, it’s in New York City, what is it, ohh—”

      “Columbia?” says Bateson.

      “No, no, downtown.”

      Bateson and Kelly look at each other, stumped. Dr. Kelly actually winds some of her long sandy hair around her finger while she thinks. “New York University,” she offers tentatively.

      “Right. He went to NYU. I can’t believe I didn’t remember that. I do know this is the month of May and it’s somewhere between the fourteenth and the twentieth, right?”

      No one laughs. Bateson leans toward me across the table. “Are you close to your father?” he asks.

      I hate this question. It’s none of their business. Their business is to find out what’s wrong with his brain this time. Their business is to adjust his medication so he functions. He just needs a new cocktail. He’s gone off his rocker before. He’s gone off many times. I will answer this question dispassionately. I will show that an inquiry about my feelings for my father triggers nothing. “I look out for my father but I am not close to him,” I say firmly. I smile to show that this cool answer is not only the truth, but easy.

      “He wrote, ‘It’s too late.’ Do you believe that?”

      “Really,” says Georgia.

      It’s impossible to convey Georgia’s affection for the word “really.” She caresses it. She packs in multiple meanings: astonishment, disbelief, sometimes disgust, suspicion, pleasure, maybe even thrill, plus curiosity. All understated. She owns “really.” Also “possibly,” just because she knows exactly how to emphasize it.

      “Do you think our father could possibly have meant what he wrote?” she asks me.

      “You mean, can you be brain-damaged and cosmic all at once? I think so.”

      “But what did he actually mean by it? Too late for what?”

      It occurs to me I don’t know what he meant. “I guess help. It’s too late for help, right? But then it could be too late for anything to change, or for anything to happen, or just, too late.”

      She says nothing. I assume she is mulling this over, but maybe she is just editing some copy on the computer while she talks to me on the phone. Sometimes Georgia switches off right in the middle of a conversation—she starts doing something else or thinking about something else. I have to work to get her back.

      “He pinched Dr. Kelly. On the tush.”

      “Really,” says Georgia.

      Maddy shrieks when I tell her about the pinching. “What a riot.”

      “It wasn’t a riot, believe me. You weren’t there.”

      “You told me I could go away. You said you’d take him to … what’s this place called?”

      “UCLA Geriatric/Psychiatric.”

      “Is it like a hospital?”

      “More like a loony bin really, sort of a cross. Anyway, I don’t care that you aren’t here.”

      “It’s my only vacation. We work ten hours a day, five days a week.”

      “Maddy, it’s okay.”

      But she’s on a roll. “We work fifty-two weeks a year, Eve. Fifty-two weeks!” I think about putting the receiver on the table. If you check out of a conversation with Maddy and then return several minutes later, you are usually in the same place. The identical thing happens if you watch the soap opera she’s on and then don’t see it again until two weeks later. “The only reason I can go on vacation now is that Juliana is supposed to be in the Bahamas so her boss can have an affair with the temp.”

      “Who’s Juliana?”

      “My character? Eve, don’t you even know that? God, don’t you ever watch the show?”

      “Of course I do. I just didn’t realize what you were saying, Maddy, it’s no big deal.”

      “You know it’s not easy to get to the phone here. It’s not easy to get to anything in Montana. You can drive forty-five minutes just to buy milk.”

      I call Georgia back. “Maddy says it’s a forty-five-minute drive to buy milk in Montana.”

      This is one of my favorite things—to serve as a conduit between my sisters. What is the joy in hearing something absurd from one if I can’t pass it on to the other? But this time I’m just using Maddy’s comment for an excuse, so I can unload more to Georgia.

      “Imagine Dad pinching that doctor. It’s so sad, repulsive, I don’t know. I think he winked too. Is that all that’s left to you when you’re old? Eating and flirting?”

      “He’s a pathetic old man,” says Georgia. I am certain I hear her shudder.

      “That’s for sure. Dr. Kelly looked like Doogie Howser’s younger sister.”

      “Well, Eve, she obviously wasn’t the doctor. Obviously, obviously. She’s a resident. What you have to do tomorrow is call and speak to the doctor. The real doctor. Find out who’s in charge of the whole place and insist that he or she speak СКАЧАТЬ