Truth in Advertising Page 0,68

clapping for himself at his own birthday party. I asked them why. They said they had no idea. They thought it was absurd and pointless. But they told the client they did it because it was a metaphor for the celebration of life. The client loved it.

“No. I’m not. I’m not a good man.”

Phoebe says, “You showed up when it would have been easy not to. No one else did. That’s called being a good man. You’re touching your scar.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because I know you. Who are you going to kiss at midnight?”

“Myself. I’m going to make out with myself ferociously. Probably get to second. What about you?”

“No one.”

I start to say, “Okay, then,” but Phoebe starts to say, “If you were here,” only I don’t fully hear what she says.

I say, “What?”

She says, “Nothing.”

I say, “Okay.”

She says, “Wait. One beautiful thing.”

I say, “You go first.”

She says, “A one-legged man skiing.”

I say, “See, that sounds like a punch line.”

“Shut up. You should have seen it. It wasn’t like those commercials for people with disabilities where everyone’s an Olympian. This guy wasn’t good. He kept falling. But he was trying so hard.”

“Sounds like an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm.”

“What’s yours?” she asks.

I say, “It’s nothing. You’ll laugh.”

She says, “I won’t laugh. Okay, maybe I’ll laugh.”

“No.”

Phoebe says, “Tell me.”

I say, “This couple at the hospital. I was coming to see my father and I passed a room and I saw this old man sitting in a chair next to his wife’s bed and he was reading to her. Later, when I left, I walked by and she was asleep and he was still there, but he was holding her hand.”

I think the phone’s gone dead.

I say, “You’re not laughing.”

“No.”

Three, four seconds.

I say, “Okay, then. Go kiss someone.” I don’t know why I say it. I feel foolish for saying it.

Phoebe says, “I’d kiss you if you were here. On the cheek.”

“I’d let you,” I say.

• • •

The phone rings at 4:12 A.M. That’s how you know your father is dead.

I dress slowly, call a cab.

At the hospital, I am led into his room by two nurses and the doctor. He looks old and gray and dead and his mouth is slightly open and there is what appears to be white mucus around his mouth.

I reach out to touch his arm. I do it with my index finger, not really wanting to touch him, his deadness, but unable to stop myself. His arm is hard and dry and does not feel like skin. I did the same thing to my mother when she died, only I held her hand. This was when Eddie and Kevin and Maura and I were led into the room where my mother’s casket was. Now, I am convinced for a moment that he will react, pull away. I snort thinking about it, thinking it would be funny. The nurse mistakes this for crying and hands me a Kleenex.

I don’t know why but I imagine him atop my mother, having sex. I imagine him as a child. I imagine him as a seventeen-year-old who lied about his age to sign up for the war. I imagine him on the toilet. I imagine him driving a car and laughing. I imagine him opening a medicine cabinet, looking for aspirins, a razor, a Band-Aid. I imagine him opening an umbrella. I imagine him asleep. I imagine his parents looking at him as an infant, imagine what they themselves thought, felt. I see them smiling and cooing. I imagine him at twenty-five or thirty thinking that his entire life was ahead of him, excited, perhaps, by the possibility of it all, how wonderful it could be. I imagine him years later, somewhere in Florida, alone on Cape Cod, a stranger to his family, wondering how it had all come to be, impotent to change it, a constant refrain of sadness and regret. Where once time seemed to me to move slowly, languidly, now life seems to move so much faster, a speed that frightens me at times. One day, someone will stand over me like this and do the same.

Later, I sign several documents, all of which I am supposed to be given copies of but the copier is broken. The only thing I notice is the time of death: Friday, January 1, 3:42 A.M.

We’ve spoken very little, the nurses and I.

“Okay, then,” I say, unsure of what to do. I have no idea what happens to him now. Where