The Guilty One (29 page)

His father's door was cracked a few inches. Ron pushed it open, cautiously. The faint smell of shit mixed with disinfectant assaulted him. A single light was on, in the bathroom, and the drapes were pulled shut, but his father was in his chair facing the window nonetheless. Some orderly's idea of humor? Or, more likely, simply the most expedient course for workers with too many charges on their hands, too few hours in the day to care for them.

His father's hair had grown too long, the silvery-gray strands clumping gummily together down to his neck, his pink scalp showing through. A shirt that Ron didn't recognize, wooly plaid in shades of gray, sat slackly on his bony shoulders. A blanket had been placed on his lap, fuzzy green cheap-looking acrylic. His father was worrying the blanket with his hands, folding and rubbing the fabric in his restless fingers. Ron had seen him do it before. It was common among Alzheimer's patients, apparently. Some do-gooder group made the blankets as a charitable project and sent them over. From this angle, seeing only his father's arm jerking and moving, it was possible to imagine that the old man was masturbating, a thought that curdled any remaining sense of filial trepidation that Ron had brought with him like the rime at the bottom of a bucket.

“Dad.”

The hand kept scrabbling at the blanket, but his father's head tilted to the right. He made a sound, a sibilant word like
since
.

Ron stepped forward, propelled by so many emotions it was impossible to know what he was hoping for from this deplorable errand. He put his hands on the handles of the chair and turned it, slowly, so that his father was facing the upholstered armchair in the corner of the room. He pushed open the drapes, blinking in the sun, and sat down in the chair. His father's knees were only a couple of feet from his own. The geri chair—a contraption that was like an ugly vinyl-upholstered rolling armchair, except for the straps and armrests to which trays or patients' arms could be fastened—had been outfitted with a plastic cover that presumably could be washed or disposed of. Someday—someday soon—his father would no longer occupy this holding cell; he'd be churned into the earth (Magnus had insisted for decades that he wanted to be cremated) and some other withered, doomed old person would inhabit this room, this chair.

“God, Dad.”

Magnus made several more attempts to speak, spittle spraying from his mouth. His hand rose from the blanket and pointed; Ron shrunk involuntarily from the trembling finger.

You're pathetic
, Ron wanted to say. Had practiced saying, even, at odd moments during the past year.
You're nothing now but a stinking sack of shit. You can't hurt me. I could hurt
you
. I could crush you with one hand.

All of these things were true, and yet somewhere—dormant in his bowels, the rusted detritus of his childhood—the fear was still there. The anticipation of the sucker punch, the slap to the face, the cruel twist of the wrist. Or worse: the invective, the insults, the denouncing. Magnus, in his prime, could look at you and know what your eleven- or thirteen- or fifteen-year-old self feared the most, what secret shame you carried. He could cut you down with a few casual words. “Out of your league, boy, and always will be,” he'd once said when they ran into Miss Tate—assistant middle school principal given to transparent blouses over tight camisoles—in town. How had he known, the ache in Ron's balls when she passed too close with her cloying perfume? Or, when Ron had been awarded (and no one was more surprised than he) the French Award at the end of eighth grade, Magnus had raised his eyebrow at the certificate and said “French is a faggot's language—that ought to serve you well.”

“Tay—tay—tay—” his father stammered, leaning against his straps.

“I haven't been here in a while,” Ron said. “I'm here because—”

“You're the one,” his father said, his voice suddenly, unexpectedly, clear. He pointed the same trembling finger at Ron, the gnarled yellow nail untrimmed and ragged.

Ron was taken aback. Clarity wasn't what he had anticipated.

“I'm—what, Dad?”

His father arched an eyebrow at him and his eyes shone with mischief, or triumph, or amused contempt—it was impossible to say. But for a few seconds he seemed both present and lucid, and that pointing finger—the same one that had underscored Ron's many failures, during any number of fights before Ron finally learned not to engage—seemed to pin him to the spot.

His father chuckled, and the finger wagged twice before a fit of coughing overtook him. Magnus hacked and coughed, and a gobbet of yellow sputum flew out of his mouth and hung from a thread of drool, quivering inches below his chin.

“
What?
” Ron demanded. “No, you bastard, don't do this. Don't you go off and hide now. I came here to
talk
to you and I'm damn well going to talk.”

He'd dragged his chair closer, leaning forward and speaking in an ever more agitated voice. The rage was there, the urge to strike out, to crush and punish. Ron was sure he'd never hated his father more than in that moment, but already Magnus's mind had splintered once again into confused and unsalvageable shards.

“Is everything all right?”

The voice from the doorway stopped him cold. Ron realized he was leaning forward in the chair, and he made a conscious effort to sit back, averting his eyes so he didn't have to look at his father's slack face. He took a breath to steady himself and forced a smile onto his face before turning to face the person who had spoken.

A woman wearing duck-patterned scrubs, her hair pulled into a gray-blond ponytail and reading glasses dangling around her neck from a chain, was watching him with concern.

“Oh, I'm fine,” Ron said, the familiar pall of guilt and shame washing over him. “We're fine.”

“I just thought I heard voices . . .”

Raised voices, was what she meant. Here he was, a grown man, in the prime of his life, yelling at a frail, elderly man. From her perspective . . . hell, from any sane person's perspective, what Ron was doing was uncalled for, even abusive. Of course, she hadn't been forced to grow up with him, hadn't lived under his roof and under his iron fist.

“I wasn't sure if he heard me,” Ron said stonily. The lie was obvious, but what was she going to do about it?

“I know it can be hard,” the woman said. She took a couple of steps into the room and folded her arms over her chest. “Hello, Magnus. How nice that you have a visitor today.”

Magnus rolled his head at her, his features twisting into the same sly smirk. He lifted his finger and pointed again, but without the same insistence as he had a moment ago. Or was Ron imaging that?

Was he really going to drive himself crazy here, ascribing complex thoughts and emotions—psychic powers and prophecy, even—to a man whose brain no longer connected thoughts or processed memories?

“My . . . my. My show.”

“Your show? You want to watch your show on television, is that it?” The woman seemed unflappable. Dangling below the glasses on a lanyard was her staff ID. It showed her looking prettier, carefully made up. “But you have a visitor right now, Magnus. Is this your son?”

Magnus's smile didn't so much slip as simply drain away, and he twisted in his chair to stare at the window. He made a quiet humming sound and went back to twisting and folding the blanket in his lap.

“I'm his son,” Ron admitted bitterly. “Ron Isherwood.”

“Oh, of course. You were here before. Around New Year's? With your family?”

“My brother. And his daughter. Yes.”

“Well, I'll leave you to your visit then. Just . . . if you need anything, come and get me, all right?” She hesitated in the doorway. “You know, I do remember your father talking about you. When he was more verbal. You have a couple of brothers and sisters, right?”

“Just brothers, two of them. I'm the oldest.”

“Right. And you're his favorite.”

“Me?” Ron couldn't contain the bitter bark of laughter that escaped his lips. “Keith, probably. The youngest.”

“No, he always talked about you. Ron. He was very clear about that.” She gave him a smile. “He said he always knew you were special. You went to Sacramento State, right?”

“Uh . . . right.”

“And you had your own company. Quite the success, according to your father. You would think his friends would have gotten tired of hearing about it, the way Magnus went on—didn't you, Magnus?” The old man didn't appear to hear her. “But that's the good thing about a dementia ward—you can tell the same stories over and over again, and no one minds.”

“Well, thanks, yeah, I guess that's true,” Ron said, turning away from her, willing her gone.

His father continued to stare out the window. For a while the two of them sat in silence. The shouted obscenities came faintly down the hall. A burst of music came on somewhere and was quickly turned down.

“Dad.” Ron kept his voice low now, though he felt it more strongly than ever, the urge to communicate with his father, to reach him somehow. “Why would you say that? You were . . . you were a terrible father. A terrible parent. All you did was try to cut me down, to remind me I was worthless.”

Magnus folded and rubbed the fabric. A bit of spittle bubbled on his lips and then formed a dribble down his chin. It was tempting, watching him, to imagine all kinds of thoughts going through his head. But that wasn't possible, was it? There was nothing in there. Gone were the memories of the past, the people Magnus had known, his deeds and misdeeds.

At some point, had he known his mind was slipping away? Had his father ever had a moment of clarity amid the confusion, when the disease had eaten away his denial, but illuminated what remained?

Magnus had told a stranger (well, to be fair, the woman was hardly a stranger to Magnus; she'd spent far more time with him than his own family, particularly Ron, who lived in the same state) that he was proud of his son, something Ron was absolutely certain Magnus had never said when he was well. Not to him, to his mother, to Magnus's friends. So the disease had taken the meanness—that was one possible interpretation, anyway. Could it be that the pride, and perhaps even love, had existed all along? That it was the cruel put-downs, the insults and snubs, that had been lies?

“
Dad
.” Ron said it again, more urgently. He leaned forward and closed his hand on his father's thin, bony wrist. Magnus stared at Ron's hand with consternation, his frantic worrying of the fabric temporarily interrupted. “I'm what you made me. You don't get to . . . to act like none of it happened. Like you were father of the year, like you . . .”

He was trying to have a conversation with a mute, with a mind as blank as a block of wood. It was pointless. Ron squeezed his father's wrist; he could feel the bones beneath the skin. They felt as fragile as chicken bones, the skin papery and greasy.

He squeezed harder. And harder still. Magnus murmured and sagged in the chair, but he didn't try to tug back his hand. Ron continued to squeeze. Enough to hurt . . . if he kept it up, if he used two hands, he was sure he could break his father's wrist. It wouldn't even be a down payment on vengeance for the thousand taunts and injuries Magnus had visited on him, but it would be the first time Ron had ever stood up to him.

Instead, Ron dropped his father's arm, and the old man went immediately back to worrying his blanket. Ron shook his head—in disgust at himself, at the pointlessness of this whole exercise.

What had he thought he would find—answers? Absolution? Someone else to blame?

“You never even had to know,” he said softly, as he stood up. Maybe that was the only conclusion to be drawn here. By the time Karl had gone to jail, Magnus—who still remembered Ron from time to time—had lost all memories of his sons' spouses and children. “You lucky bastard.”

Ron left the room, not looking back. Maybe that was the only conclusion that he'd ever be able to draw: it wasn't poison that seeped down the family tree, generation after generation, only misfortune. Some were lucky and some were cursed.

He saw the nurse or therapist or whatever she was, in the activities room, kneeling next to an elderly woman who held a large yellow plastic ring in her gnarled hands.

The woman looked up. “It was so nice to see you again, Mr. Isherwood. Your father certainly enjoys your visits.”

BY THURSDAY AFTERNOON,
Maris was nearly finished with the sorting and organizing of Norris's guest room. It had take all day yesterday and most of today, but the trash had been hauled to the Dumpster, the giveaway pile boxed and delivered to Goodwill.

She'd found a coin dealer in San Leandro who'd bought the whole lot for three hundred dollars, which she'd left in an envelope on Norris's kitchen counter. She boxed up the mementos of Norris's daughters, labeled it Keyna & Kayla, and left the box between the twin beds where he was sure to see it. The banker's boxes containing his mother's papers were neatly labeled and stacked in the closet. Her last errand was a trip to the Home Consignment Center to drop off the Hummels and the jewelry, and by three she was heading back to the house with a receipt in her purse.

George had called three times—twice yesterday and once today. Each time she let it go to voice mail, then obsessively replayed the message. This last one sounded wounded, and Maris didn't blame him. The night that they'd spent together had been so much fun, right until the moment when he'd delivered her home at 6 a.m. yesterday morning, on his way to check on his rental properties in East Oakland.

He made the first call from a doughnut shop near the Coliseum. “I've got to bring you here, Mary, this is seriously the best Boston cream doughnut you'll ever eat.”