Pascal's Wager (19 page)

“What do you call it, then?” Hercules said. “I have it memorized, Jill. ‘I'm still praying for you, Dad.' ‘Just hear me out, Dad, because I know you're hurting.' Oh, and here's my favorite—”

“That's enough, Dad.”

Hercules grinned at me slyly.
“That's
not my favorite.”

“This is where I draw the line,” Sam said. “You can ride me about my financial status and my social life and anything else—but stay away from my spirituality. I mean it.”

Hercules gave him another long look, but this time he didn't shake his head or grunt in disgust. I could see him having to force the grin onto his face.

“I'm in trouble,” he said to me. “You think he'll ever speak to me again?”

“Not if he's smart,” I said.

He threw his head back and laughed. I didn't.

The evening went downhill from there. Sam diplomatically suggested that Hercules lighten up on the Scotch, so he switched to brandy. With relative aplomb, over the lamb shank and the paella, Sam kept further discussion away from things spiritual and navigated us through politics, sports, and social issues. When we finally got through dessert—which both Sam and I refused, but found ourselves presented with anyway—Sam borrowed my cell phone to call his dad a cab.

With Sam otherwise occupied, Hercules grabbed my hand, and I didn't try to pull away. It was too much like being stuck in one of those Mexican finger toys.

“You're a beautiful woman,” he said thickly.

“So you've said.”

“You're not churchy, huh?”

“‘Churchy? I'd have to say no, I'm not churchy.”

“Then it's a good thing you don't have your sights set on Sammy. He wants a church lady, you know.”

We hadn't exactly discussed Sam's preferences in women, but I nodded.

“He's told me that himself,” Hercules said. “It's a good thing you're not hearing wedding bells for you and Sammy, because he's definitely looking for a church lady.” Hercules gave me a pull, bringing me close enough to see every turn of the ever-reddening maze of capillaries in his eyes. “Now me on the other hand, I'm looking for—”

“Dad,” Sam said. He was standing behind him, hands on Hercules's shoulders. “The cab's on its way. Come on, I'll wait outside with you.”

Hercules, of course, had to have the last word. He pulled my hand to his lips and gave it a wet kiss. I waited until Sam had him
pointing in the other direction before I wiped it with my napkin.

“Wait for me, would you?” Sam said over his shoulder.

Only so I can get even
, I said with my eyes.

But when Sam came back, the look on his face melted my resolve to lay into him for putting me through that. It had obviously been a whole lot worse where he was sitting.

“Your father's quite the character,” I said.

Sam sank heavily into the chair next to mine. “I didn't know he was drinking that much now or I wouldn't have dragged you here. He's still obnoxious when he's sober, but he's not quite as sloppy about it.”

“Don't worry about it, Blaze,” I said. “I know why you had me come.”

His eyebrows went up. “Why?”

“So I could see that things could be worse for me. I thought I had the parent from Hades—at least, at one time I thought she was.”

Sam leaned back and toyed with his dessert fork.

“You handled it a lot better than I ever did,” I said. “And I didn't even have the alcohol to deal with. How do you sit there and let him rake you over the coals?”

“I feel sorry for him.”

“Why? He could get it together if he wanted to. He's obviously intelligent. He isn't unattractive. I mean, he looks just like you—”

Whoa. Had I said that? I longed for a delete button. Sam was looking at me oddly.

Here it comes
, I thought.
He's going to say, “Oh? You find me attractive?”

But he said, “You think we look alike?”

“Except for the age difference, you could be identical twins,” I said. “Until he opens his mouth and lets his personality out. No offense, Blaze, but the man borders on loathsome.”

“So we
look
alike, but we don't
act
alike.”

“Are you fishing for a compliment?”

He looked at me with genuine innocence. “No, I'm not. I really want to know.”

“You definitely don't act alike. In terms of behavior, it's hard to believe he sired you at all. Were you separated from him at birth or something?”

Sam laughed. “No.”

“It's like he's you—only you with some ingredient missing.”

“You're right about that. I was just like him until I added the ‘ingredient.'”

“No way,” I said.

“Yes way. I was going to follow in his footsteps—do the whole pull-yourself-out-of-the-blue-collar-pit, make-a-pile-of-money, take-charge-of-your-world thing.”

“And then?”

“And then I found God.”

“That's it?” I said.

“Well, God and a group of believers who help people shed their false skins.”

“Explain,” I said.

“Christianity is supposed to help believers get rid of the false self we start forming the first time we do a no-no and have to deal with it. Like about age one. By the grace of God, I fell in with a group of Christians whose main goal was to get every member stripped down to the heart.”

“So you got stripped of everything on you that was your father. That's why you're different.”

“Not quite. You can't just empty out without filling up with something else.”

“You're going to say it was God, aren't you?”

“I'm going to say it was knowing God and discovering that Christ is the real center of me—not some self I created.”

“So your father is you, only without the God.”

Sam's mouth formed a smile. “You've got it.”

“Yeah, but I know people who are nice, decent human beings, and they don't necessarily have God in their belief system.”

“Like who?”

I pretended to have a sudden desire for my abandoned dessert so I could think of someone. That list was about the length of the one containing the people who
did
embrace God. Did I actually
know
anybody who was nice and decent?

“Max Ironto,” I said.

“Max is an atheist?” Sam said.

“No, he claims to believe in God.”

“But you're not buying it.”

“Okay, not Max. Nigel Frost. My advisor.”

“Nigel Frost?”

“You know him?”

Sam's grin got bigger, if that was possible. “He's in my men's group. We have a bimonthly prayer breakfast. I don't know a more godly man.”

“Nigel?” I said. “He's never said a word about God to me!”

“Nigel comes from a more genteel background. He doesn't bulldoze like I do, and since I'm sure
you
never broached the subject—”

“It doesn't come up that much in K-theory”.

“It could,” Sam said. His eyes were sparkling behind his glasses. That was something old Hercules's eyes had not done.

“We haven't completely proven the theory yet,” I said.

“We haven't disproven it, either.”

“So for now I'll concede that I have seen what you would be if you didn't have God.”

Sam leaned toward me. He didn't try to kiss me. He didn't touch me. But his voice wrapped itself around me and held me.

“Jill,” he said, “you
are
beautiful.”

He couldn't have sounded less like Hercules Bakalis if he'd tried.

T
he next day, I made an appointment to see the Hopewell Care Center on Saturday. Then I teetered on the edge of indecision for the next
three
days.

One minute I was certain I needed to just take Mother with me to the interview and check her in on the spot; the next minute I was picking up the phone to call and cancel. It was Mother herself, in a sense, who clinched it for me.

When I got home on Friday, Freda III was sitting in the foyer with her sweater on, purse in hand, looking like she was waiting for a bus. The instant I opened the door, she was on her feet, babbling out paragraphs she'd obviously been saving up for me all afternoon. It was such a muddle, I didn't understand a word she was saying.

“Wait. Time out,” I said. “Let me just put my stuff down, and we can sit down and talk—”

“I'm through sitting and I'm through talking,” Freda cut in. “After what happened today, I'm through with all of it.”

My heart started racing, and I dropped my bag on the bottom step. “What happened? Where is my mother?”

I hurried toward the living room, but Freda said, “She's in her room napping. I've been sitting here ever since she laid down, staring at that bedroom door, so unless she's climbed out the window, which wouldn't surprise me, she's still in there.”

I was inclined to go see for myself, but the way Freda III was heading for the front door, I didn't dare leave the foyer lest she
bolt and leave me clueless. As it was she was red-faced and breathing hard. The next thing I knew she'd be having a stroke.

“I've stayed on, Jill,” she said, “because I knew the fix you were in, but today takes the cake. I can't handle any more.”

“What—”

“I'm standing in the kitchen. She's at the table. I turn my back for no more than fifteen seconds, I turn around again, and she's gone.”

“Where?”

“After I nearly lost my mind looking for her, I found her out in the backyard.”

“I thought we agreed that she wasn't to leave the house without someone with her.”

Freda gave a grunt. “You and I agreed. We must have forgotten to tell
her
. I got out there, and there she was,
in
the pond, on her stomach, splashing all around.”

“You're not serious.”

“Hon, I am serious as a heart attack, and I had a devil of a time hauling her out of there, I can tell you that. It's a wonder we didn't both drown, but if
she
had, it would be my fault, and I can't take that kind of responsibility.”

“But that's what you do! You take responsibility for sick people.”

“Sick people who are in a bed—not ones I have to watch like a lifeguard.”

I could feel my eyes narrowing. “When I interviewed you, I asked you if you'd had experience with dementia patients, and you said yes.”

“Yes, with people who are talking out of their heads. She doesn't talk. She just goes!”

I pulled both hands through my hair. “All right, look, I'll call Burl and get him to come over and put some different bolts on the doors or something.”

“You can do that, but don't do it on my account.” Her face
was fading to a merely flustered pink, and she reached over and patted my arm. “It's not like I'm leaving you high and dry. You were going to put her in a home anyway.”

“I'm considering it.”

Freda III hiked her purse strap over her shoulder and set her face. “Well, then, hon, maybe now you'll just
have
to do it.”

Lady
, I wanted to tell her,
I don't have to do anything!

But I couldn't say it, because I didn't believe it. It did seem as if all decisions were being moved just beyond my reach. Other people, on the other hand, were making choices right and left.

Freda III left, and Max arrived shortly thereafter. Over dinner, I filled him in on the afternoon's events.

“I guess we'll just have to take Mother with us tomorrow,” I said. “She should be okay as long as we keep an eye on her so she doesn't wander into somebody's shuffleboard game. Can you be here at 9:15 so we can get to Hopewell by 9:30?”

Max didn't answer. He appeared to be studying his mortadella.

“You
do
support me on this, right?” I said. “You're the one who talked me into it.”

“God help me, I did,” Max said, but he still wouldn't look at me. “It's the right thing to do. I know it.”

“Then what's wrong? Just say it, Max.”

He set down his fork. “I can't go with you tomorrow. I can't go to that place and know that that's where we could be abandoning Liz.”

“We aren't abandoning her. In the first place, we're just going to go look at it.”

“I can't. I know I'm a coward, but I just can't. I'll break down.”

He was about to break down already. What was I supposed to do—slap him and tell him to snap out of it?

I put my hand on top of his. “Okay, Max. You stay here with Mother, and I'll go alone.”

He smothered both our hands with his other one, so that we
now had a large pile of fingers and palms on the tabletop.

“God bless you for that, Jill. I'll do anything else that you want me to do, so help me I will. But not that. You understand?”

“Yeah,” I said. “There's Kleenex over there on the counter.”

He untangled the hand pile and crossed the kitchen to blow his nose.

“I want to ask you something, Max,” I said.

“Anything. You want more mortadella?”

“No. You've mentioned God a couple of times in this conversation. Have you always done that and I've just missed it, or is that a new development?”

Max stuffed the used Kleenex into the trash can. “He's in here.” He tapped his forehead. “Lately He's in there more and more. I'm asking Him: What are you doing up there, huh? I mean, excuse me, but we got problems down here. What's going on?”

“Do you get any answers?” I said.

He came over and stood, hands pressed on the table. One lock of dark hair was falling over his forehead as usual, and his big chest was heaving under the silk shirt. He was like a character in a Brontë novel—and yet he was all too real.

“You are my answer,” he said.

“Me,” I said.

“You are the answer to almost every prayer I have prayed. You moved in with your mother like I wanted. You're taking care of her like I prayed for. The only thing you haven't done is take this whole nightmare away. You haven't done that yet.”

“I don't think that's going to happen, Max,” I said.

I didn't have the heart to tell him I hadn't been the answer to the rest of his prayers either and that, in fact, it had all been blind luck because I had no idea what I was doing.

That was blatantly obvious the next day when I went to see the Hopewell Care Center. I walked in, dressed in a black suit with
my hair up, list of questions on a legal pad in hand so they would know I wasn't the type to be hoodwinked by appearances and promises. I had to pass through a large entry area to get to the office, which I did with an observant eye, hawkish in an effort to spot anything I didn't like.

On the left was an aquarium, which an old man was peering into, muttering under his breath and gesticulating wildly for the fish.

On the right were two women leaning on their respective walkers, white heads bent together as they talked, as if they'd just been lifted from the back fence and placed there in mid-conversation. Gossip was apparently what, in their opinion, women were born to do.

Straight ahead was a man of about thirty-five in a high-tech wheelchair whose face and body were so contorted that I had to look away to avoid staring at him.

I glanced down at my list of questions. I might as well scratch them all out and ask just one:
Does my mother really belong here?

A blond woman poked her head out of a door farther down. “Are you Jill McGavock?” she called.

Only because I smelled coffee and thought she might offer me some did I say, “Yes. Are you Monique?”

Contrary to the message that her name—Monique l'Orange—suggested, Monique at least appeared to be sensible. I didn't see any crystals dangling from the ceiling, and she did not attempt to squeeze or pat any part of my anatomy. A few sips into a cup of coffee, I was describing my mother's behavior to her and asking her point blank: “Is this the place for her?”

“Let me show you something,” she said.

What she led me to was a separate section of Hopewell, where no one was confined to a wheelchair or wandering aimlessly. This, Monique told me, was the assisted-living section, as opposed to the nursing home area I'd entered through.

The rooms had a relatively homey look. In the recreational
area ping-pong matches, card games, and communal TV watching were going on simultaneously. The crowd around the television was actually watching
Moonstruck
and nodding appreciatively every time Olympia Dukakis came on the screen.

“We don't park them there for the day,” Monique told me. “We limit their TV watching and try to divert them into more stimulating activities.”

I found myself wondering if my mother could actually be stimulated by a rousing hand of canasta. As we continued on toward the dining room, I said to Monique, “I've described my mother's condition to you, and I think I've made it clear that she's deteriorating rapidly.”

“You have.”

“So, do you think she can handle this atmosphere? I mean, these people all seem to be in their right minds—relative to her, anyway.”

Monique stopped in the doorway to the dining area. “I know what you're saying, but I think when you see your mother with other people whose behaviors are similar to hers, she won't seem so strange to you.”

I scanned the dining room. It was a cozy collection of tables, each one set with cloth tablecloth and napkins and a Christmas centerpiece.

“Wow,” I said. “Did Thanksgiving already happen? I was only half kidding about that.”

Monique smiled. “You're about to get your life back,” she said.

I grasped at that like it was the last rope hanging. “When can you get her in?”

There was the rub. They had a room available in assisted living, but the paperwork was going to take at least five working days.

“It isn't like checking into a hospital or a hotel,” Monique said. “You are basically turning all responsibility for your mother's care over to us.”

“Five days?” I said. “I can handle that.”

How, though, I hadn't a clue.

That day and Sunday were fine. Max and I took turns keeping what felt like surveillance, and Mother was cooperative except on Sunday afternoon when Burl came over to drain the koi pond and transfer Mother's fish to a neighbor's pond three doors down.

“You could sell these and get a good price for them,” Burl told me as he cornered one with his net behind a rock.

“You're kidding,” I said. “I thought they were just overgrown goldfish.”

Burl shook his head and nodded toward the house. “She knows what I'm doing, too, and she doesn't like it. She's fixin' to have a hissy fit.”

I looked at the house. My mother was indeed standing at the guest room window, overseeing the whole operation. Even as I watched, she brought up a hand and tapped sharply on the glass.

Burl turned toward the house. “I know, Doc,” he said. “But you're gonna be movin' on and there won't be anybody here to take care of them the way you did. I got it covered—trust me.”

Was it sheer coincidence, I wondered, that she then moved away from the window?

The next five days presented another set of problems, but I got them somewhat worked out. Burl, of all people, agreed to stay with Mother while I was teaching class. I tried to convince Nigel to let me do office hours at night, but he was concerned about my safety and suggested instead that I forget them for the week and just give my students an e-mail address and a phone number where I could be reached at certain times. He assured me he would handle it all with Dr. Ferguson.

My students took the news about my office hours with only mild interest. Except for Tabitha. She got a panicked look on her face, which remained there through the entire class.

I actually felt sorry for her. When she approached me after class, I said, “Look, I'll draw you a map. You can come over to my mother's place for your tutoring session.”

“Are you sure?” she said.

“Yeah,” I said. “Just don't wear the skates, okay?”

With all of that in place it was, to say the least, an interesting week.

Burl arrived Monday, Wednesday, and Friday precisely at 10:30
A.M
. wearing his tool belt as if he hadn't been to bed yet. While I was gone, he trimmed the oleanders, fixed a couple of shutters that were threatening to separate themselves from the house, and unclogged the downstairs toilet.

“I didn't even know it was stopped up,” I said when he told me.

“It wasn't till she tried to flush a pair of pantyhose down it.” He gave a soft grunt. “That's one place I don't follow her.”

Max came over every evening to watch Mother so I could run with Sam on the Loop and then get some work done. Every night Max cooked a dinner more elaborate than the one before it. I guessed that was to assuage his guilt, but I didn't mention it. I hadn't eaten that well, that consistently, in years.

Even though I didn't normally tutor Tabitha on a daily basis, she came every afternoon that week. The first day, I was lucky enough to get Mother down for a nap before she arrived, and then I whisked Tabitha into the study so fast that she didn't have a chance to ask where my “ill” parent was. We almost got through the entire session before I heard Mother get up and start rattling things around in the kitchen.