Like Human
By Janet Goldberg
It was love at first sight, I’d been told—Jack and Chelsea, a chance encounter in The Palms a year or so ago, two oldsters each out on an early evening walk. After that, they’d met up for short dates, chaperoned by the English woman. There’d even been a few sleepovers during my father’s stints in the hospital. His condo shut up, the English woman would come get Jack, and Jack and Chelsea would sleep together at her house. And now there was talk of a permanent living arrangement, a kind of marriage, but the English woman wanted my permission first, and I certainly wasn’t going to give Jack away to just anyone, even though my mother had apparently known the English woman, had mentioned her to me once or twice, before she’d died. And, so, I’d flown in. The night I’d arrived, my father, his usual semi-conscious self, was too doped up to keep his eyes open long, only managing a slurred, “How was your flight,” before the lids came down. I didn’t bother waking him. What for? End stage MS had bedridden him for years, his legs and left hand shot, the right just agile enough to turn the TV remote on and off. His aides fed, bathed, and changed him, transfer from bed to commode no longer possible. That’s why I’d nixed the idea of weaning him off the painkillers, an opiate stupor more humane than reality. Jack though didn’t have that luxury; my mother, the one who loved him, dead a year now.
So, my second day in Florida, I set out to find the English woman. The problem was no one knew her name—my mother only mentioned she lived nearby. Which condo she lived in was a mystery, all of them one-story lookalikes. I doubt my father knew either. He couldn't even keep track of the date, and when conscious, often called me by my mother's name, and because I was trying to manage his care long distance, constantly hiring and firing his aides, most of them female, the English woman, I suppose, was just another woman who passed in and out of his house and his life.
Standing in front of my father’s condo now, I gazed across the street, the aide du jour standing beside me. “One of those, Miss,” she said, pointing with one hand and raising the other to her brow, shielding her eyes from the sun. Down my father's driveway I went, though I wasn’t exactly sure which one the aide had singled out. When I turned to ask, she’d already gone, the humidity so oppressive, stifling. I could hear all the air conditioners running. No one was out. The back of my neck damp, I knotted my hair into a bun. Then I looked over toward the clubhouse and the pool, thinking someone might be there, but sunbathing there yesterday, I’d gotten an earful about HOA rules, some oldster spotting my Coke can and cigarettes beside my chaise. So I turned back to the row of condos across the street, stucco boxes like my father’s if not for the landscaping, lots of palms, of course, and magenta bougainvillea, thick, green lawns—man-made Florida at its best. I stepped onto the sidewalk. A little gray lizard suddenly appeared by my foot and then zipped off. They were everywhere, the critters. I headed down the sidewalk a ways, thinking I should have waited till evening when it was cooler. But after-dinner knocking didn’t sound like such a good idea, anyone under 65, suspect, and saying I was so-and-so’s daughter wouldn’t help much either as I doubt anyone, except the English woman, knew my father. Even before MS, he was often reclusive and ill-tempered, a scientist by training, always concocting things, and a gambler, our family vacations at casinos. I wiped my forehead, could feel sweat trickle down my chest. I looked up at the afternoon sky, normally full of gathering thunderheads, but today the sky was ruthless, flat and clear. For months I’d put the trip off. I hated Florida, all the young bodies baking on the beach, the old ones in line at Kroger’s. But back where I lived, in California, my dead mother had been at me for months, hovering in the tree at night, scratching at my bedroom window. So I got on the plane.
I turned back to the row of condos, my eye landing on an open garage. Thinking I might get lucky, I crossed the street and walked up the driveway. “Hello! Anyone home?” I called out. Inside was the usual clutter, open boxes here and there and various oldster contraptions—wheelchair, commode, hospital bed, on it a lone torso, one of those armless, legless, headless mannequins with breasts you always see stowed in attics in horror movies. The male version always seemed to end up being resuscitated at CPR trainings. It was weird, the mannequin. I’d worked in retail once, and the storage room was full of them, naked men and women in full rigor all shoved together in a corner. Still, I kept calling out. “Hello? Anyone home?” Then, as I started to leave, I heard a noise, a box shift. A duck appeared, waddling out of the garage, one of those jumbo Muscovy with the shredded-up faces, dark eyes set in a circle of red curdled skin. I’d seen them before, of course, on past trips. Curious, they'd walk right up to you, all pigeon-toed, and, if you squatted down, they’d come in closer, take you in as if you were a thing to be studied, to be pitied. California didn't have this sort of duck, just your ordinary mallard, curious but wary. Squatting down now, I looked my friend square in the eye. I didn’t have many. Divorced, I just worked. Weekends I went to the gym, usually ate out alone, never lost weight. I couldn’t stand my neighbors.
“Okay, friend,” I said, “now surely you must know where the English woman lives.”
The duck, raising itself up a bit, suddenly started bobbing up and down, chattering away.
I couldn’t help laughing. Taking it as a sign, I stood up and headed to the front door. Right after I knocked, a chorus of yappy barking greeted me from the other side, but no one opened the door. I knocked again and waited, glancing back at my friend, who at the foot of the driveway now, was watching me. Finally, the door opened, and there stood a woman behind a screen door, a small dog on either side, on their hind legs.
"Oh, you're Henry's daughter, aren’t you?” the woman said. “They told me, the aide, that you’d be visiting this week." She opened the door a little, gazing past me for a moment. "Poor soul. The way he suffers. Your father." Then she let me in, and both dogs, floppy-eared, long-haired with the round, sad eyes of the breed—whatever it was—jumped up on my legs. Kneeling, I petted both, Jack, the skinny guy, white with large black spots and crusty eyes, and his cinnamon gal, plump and lively.
"Now that's Chelsea," the English woman said, smiling.
“Hello, Chelsea,” I said.
“And of course you know Jack.” Peering down at him, she shook her head. “You’d never know it, how miserable he used to be. Those aides—most of them don’t care a thing for him. Anyway, I suppose you’ve heard they’re in love, my Chelsea and your Jack.” Softening, she smiled a little now.
I stood up, getting a better look at the English woman now, her white hair, cut page-boy style, shiny as a wig. She also wore heavy make-up—mascara, lipstick, foundation—fighting cancer or just time. We all were.
“You’ll have some tea, won’t you?” she said. “Then we can talk.” Down the hallway she went, through a small living room into a cramped kitchen where she rattled about. The place smelled a little of dog and was very warm, and I wondered why the English woman didn’t refrigerate herself the way the rest of Florida did. In the living room now, in front of the couch, I knelt down and petted the dogs again. A few minutes later, tea and cake arrived. The English woman sat opposite me and poured.
“Now don’t be a shy one,” she said. “Help yourself to some cake.”
I took a slice and put it on a plate. Then I sipped my tea, feeling a bit European.
The English woman peered down at the dogs, both settled at my feet. “Now I wonder if Jack remembers you.”
“Probably thinks I’m my mother.”
“Such a lovely person, your mother. Much too young to leave us. And your father, he must be thrilled to see you. Is he doing better? How long has it been—three months—that he’s stayed out of the hospital?"
"A little longer, I think. Somehow he always manages to pull through. He’s good at that, taking himself to the brink. On a roll.” I chuckled, then checked myself. Few people thought illness funny, and most people pitied my father, but before MS all he ever wanted to do, when he wasn’t working or gambling, was sleep or bully my mother. It was hard to feel sorry for a man who’d gotten what he’d wanted, but who could say that? Chelsea raised her head, and I reached down to pet it.
The English woman smiled. “Now Chelsea doesn't take to everyone, you know. You’ve got your mother’s touch."
"Her dogs were her legacy," I said, and then laughed again. It sounded so corny. My face suddenly felt warm, and, feeling a little loopy, I began to wonder if there was something in the tea. Or maybe it was just the heat. I felt myself sweating again.
“Are you all right?” the English woman said. “I can turn on the air conditioner.”
I looked across the room to a sliding glass door, slightly ajar. A thin curtain, partially drawn back, moved in the hot breeze. “I’m fine. Thank you.”
The English woman looked down at Jack. “Poor little guy. He’s seen so much illness.”
"He's lost everyone he loves," I said.
Jack raised his head a little and then let it sink again between his paws. He closed his eyes. Another hot breeze came through, and I looked over at the door again, to the grass sloping down, the canal somewhere below. "Do you get a lot of ducks out there?" I asked.
The English woman turned her head slightly.
"Now that's where my first baby died, out there, in the canal. Just a baby. Only four years old. She floated up, and I swam out and got her."
I leaned forward, trying to get a look at the water, but it was too far down.
"You see, I knew there was something wrong when she started acting strange, running in circles, but I couldn't get a diagnosis. They said she was fine. But she kept getting worse and worse. I could see she was suffering. A brain tumor, I was certain. Tumors run in my family. And then one day my nephew was visiting, and by accident he left the sliding door open and she got out. She was terrified of the water, you know. She would never go near it, so we searched everywhere but there, and then when we couldn't find her and days had passed, I was sitting just where you are, gazing out toward the water, wondering if I would ever see her again, the idea came to me that she'd committed suicide, right there in the backyard, and for two more days, I sat at the edge of the water day and night—my husband thought I'd lost my mind—and watched and then on the third day I saw her come up, like a star, and there she lay, floating on her belly, her legs all spread out, her long hair, and I swam out there and brought her back."
I put my tea down, a strange feeling coming over me as I sat there, my mind replaying the image—a star rising to the surface.
“My beautiful little girl. White as snow. My Lhasa Sophie.” The English woman wiped away a few tears, her mascara running a little. Then she stood up. "Oh look at me. I'm so sorry. I hadn't meant to talk about this, to keep you so long. And your father—he must be wondering what happened to you."
"I doubt he knows I'm gone."
"I'm sure he does," she said. “He’s probably more aware than you think. You’ll take some cake for him, won’t you?” She went over to the kitchen and brought back a small paper bag. Then she walked me back down the hallway, the dogs scrambling to their feet. At the door, I knelt one last time to pet them. “They’re getting on, aren’t they?” I said.
Chelsea’s thirteen, and Jack’s twelve, I think, but they do just fine.”
“I didn’t know Jack was into older women.” I chuckled and stood up.
“You’ll be back, won’t you?” the English woman asked. “It’s been twenty years since my Sophie…”
I saw her tearing up again. “Maybe it was just an accident,” I said, though I’d heard of horses doing it—committing suicide. I opened the screen door and stepped outside. Back on the sidewalk, I looked up at the sky. Large, billowy clouds had moved in, the sun shining between them. Still, it didn’t seem as hot, or not as hot as the English woman’s condo, so I decided to take a short walk before going back to my father's. Heading toward the exit of The Palms, I paused at a grassy area where the residents picked up their mail, peering at the wall of metal boxes, all keyed, a miniature mausoleum, what it always reminded me of. Then, as I started to circle back, I heard a screen door slam, ahead a little boy sprinting across his front lawn. Barefoot, wearing nothing but white shorts, he ran across the street, flailing his arms and screaming, planting himself on the neighbor’s lawn, clinging to a palm tree. A woman, following him out, started running after him but then stopped short; looking at me, she shrugged, smiling sheepishly. As I kept walking, passing the boy, he stuck his tongue out and started giggling like a monkey, and it was then that I realized he was older—eight or nine—and he wasn't wearing shorts but a diaper. I rubbed my eyes and kept walking. Back at my father's, I stepped into cool air.
"And how was it?" the aide asked, coming out of the kitchen. “The English woman—did you get her name?”
I followed the aide back into the kitchen. I put the bag on the table. “Cake for my father.” She started loading the dishwasher. It was still odd seeing her there, the house always full of strange women with accents, most of the aides Jamaican. “Is he asleep?” I motioned toward my father’s room and then went in, over to his bed where the oxygen tank hummed, clear plastic tubing going up his nose, snaking beneath the sheet. As my eyes traveled down his body, from the fleshy arms to the mound of his gut under the sheet, I gasped—the bottom half of the sheet pulled back to his knees, I saw his withered shins, pale white sticks. When had that happened?
"Do you need some help, Miss?" The aide came up behind me.
I pulled the sheet back down and then turned to her, young and pretty, one of the more pleasant ones. Whispering, I started asking her name, but she just laughed. "Don’t worry. You can’t wake him, you know. Like a dead person he sleeps. Sometimes with eyes open. Like zombie. So did you have a nice visit with the English woman?"
"Yes. Very nice," I said.
"And the dog? Is it okay? Your father said you were worried."
"The dog’s fine," I said.
"That's good," she said, walking over to the nightstand and opening pill bottles, "to be taken care of."
"I don't understand it.” I looked at my father’s face. Pale and puffy, it hadn't seen sunlight in years. I went over to the sliding glass door and started to open the blinds, but the aide, turning toward me, said, "Oh, your father doesn't like it. The light and those ducks."
"The Muscovy, you mean?"
"The ugly ones. That's what he calls them. They come to the glass and look in. I shoo them, but they don't go. I don’t like them. The way they look at you. Like human." Turning back to the pills, she started dropping them in the pill box, the tiny plastic chambers, closing the lids, snapping them shut.
Janet Goldberg’s (she/her) novel, The Proprietor's Song, will be published by Regal House next summer. She also serves as the fiction editor for Deep Wild, a journal that focuses on wilderness experiences.