Truth in Advertising Page 0,41

somehow survived the superheated flames. I want to do for advertising what Brando did for theater. Wake people up. Make them feel again. And, to a great extent, horrify them. There’s no sound in the commercial. But then, a voice-over. Alan Rickman, maybe. English. Americans love the English. ‘No one can guarantee your safety when you step onto an aircraft. But at Boeing, we’re working harder than ever to make sure that you’re as safe as you can be.’ Something like that. We can tweak it. Herb? Your thoughts?”

Six weeks later we lost the account. I never mentioned the conversation to anyone.

• • •

Margaret returns with a doctor and another nurse.

“This is Dr. Benjamin, your father’s doctor.”

He shakes my hand and winks at me.

“Mr. Dolan,” he says. “I’m sorry I was unable to speak with you yesterday.”

“I didn’t call yesterday,” I say, looking at Margaret and the other nurse for some reason. The other nurse is perhaps twenty-five and strikingly beautiful.

The doctor says, “Your father is in what we call serious but stable condition.” Which makes me wonder if others call it something else. “He’s had a myocardial infarction.” He winks at me again. He enunciates these last two words, saying them slowly.

“Is that a real word?”

“Is what a real word?”

“Infarction,” I say.

“In common parlance, it means a heart attack,” Dr. Wink says. Double wink. Which is when I realize that it’s not a wink, it’s a tic. It’s a tic that makes it difficult to concentrate on what he is saying about my dying father because it’s like a video game, where you’re waiting for the next wink. I have an expression on my face that suggests I am listening intently. I watch myself act intense. I think my look is the right one for this situation.

“. . . motor skills and speech,” he continues. Wink. I want to react, to pre-guess when the winks are going to come.

I nod slowly, as if understanding. Heather. The other nurse’s name, according to her tag.

“So we wait,” he says. “We watch.” Wink, wink. “So often medicine is a matter of waiting for the body to heal itself.”

“Yes,” I say.

“You might want to try reading to him,” he says, and I look to Margaret, who smiles. “It’s been known to help.”

“Thank you,” I say.

He nods, with crisp, military precision, then winks twice and walks away.

Margaret, Heather, and I smile at one another and then they turn to leave.

I stand there looking at him. The change from what I remember is extraordinary and disturbing. He is smaller. His cheeks are hollowed and the skin appears thin, blue veins visible underneath. Were he to shave, blood would burst forth from his face. He is an old man.

But then, he was always old to me. He waited to get married. Perhaps it was a sign. Perhaps he never really wanted any of it. Who waited to get married back then, home from the war, aged by what they had done and seen? They were eager to get on with life, to marry and start a family. Not him. He waited almost ten years. And then they had trouble having children, my mother suffering two miscarriages before finally having Eddie in 1960. Kevin followed two years later. Maura four years after that. And that’s how it was supposed to stay. Except I happened. The little mistake, he once called me. He was forty-four, an older dad back then.

There were times, after he left, when I would find my mother standing at the kitchen sink, water running, staring at a dish or the wall or the faucet. I wondered what she was thinking about in those long moments. Sometimes she’d be crying. People leave. People die. The secret no one tells us is that we don’t get over it, ever.

When Kevin was sixteen and obviously gay, some neighborhood children caught him and another boy kissing in the woods near our home. My father heard the story—everyone in the neighborhood did—and he walked into Kevin’s room that evening, the room Kevin shared with Eddie, and began beating him. My mother ran up from the kitchen, wondering what had crashed to the floor. Which is when she saw her husband beating her child, her sweet, kind son who helped her in the kitchen and with laundry and who liked to cook. I’d never heard her scream like that before. Kevin cowered on the floor. I don’t know where Eddie came from—I just remember thinking he was moving very fast.