John Is Dead

“John Is Dead”



John was a bastard. The suspicions were confirmed at the lawyer’s office. The estate attorney was silent for a moment at the end of the meeting. She cocked her head to one side and said, “You know, I have to tell you. You’re nothing like how your parents made you out to be.” My mother asked, “How so?” That is an interesting question: What do parents truly think of their children? John apparently thought that his youngest child was a thieving whore.

Everything was going to the older daughter. Maureen had never left them, she drove them to the doctor; she was the good child. Maureen had been alone in the house with them for eight years before Kate arrived; she had allowed herself to be absorbed into the plaster and fabric of the house. It seemed that her skin was sown into one of the dark green wingback chairs in Eleanor’s living room so that no school friend or colleague could rip her out. In exchange she was going to get the house. Kate could never quite pinpoint the exact reason why her parents had turned on her. Maybe she had gotten married too many times. Maybe it was because of that first year at the conservatory. She had slapped Eleanor across the face when she was 18 after her mother had hit her. Eleanor never touched Kate again.

John knew that he had made a mistake the night after the wedding. The new bride started a massive argument in the hotel room in New York. Eleanor went on about his sisters, what bitches they were, how she would never leave the Roman Church. She had never heard of Italian Baptists anyway. John’s sisters were bitches, but this was hardly in his realm of authority. John soon came to suspect that Eleanor had married him out of defiance of her future in-laws. Sixty-four years later, John confessed to his younger daughter about his error. He should have married Kate Boyd, the redhead from Maine. His sisters had scarred Kate off; not much scarred Eleanor.

John never defended himself. He didn’t say anything when his wife threw temper tantrums over the mention of one of the sisters-in-law. He didn’t defend his children when she would grab the younger daughter by the hair and kick her in the shins. John came home from the paper at night and was too tired to listen to his wife nag. “What are you going to do about your daughter John?” So he walked up to the kid and slapped her. Eleanor was quiet.

John had been nice to me. He let me wrap yards of newspaper all around him to turn him into a mummy. He called me “sweetheart.” I think he hoped that if he called me that enough times and pushed me on the swings it would make up for everything that happened with his own children. Not that John ever protected me from Eleanor either. Kate did that.

Eleanor always threatened to hit me, especially on the days when my father’s family came to town. Knowing that her competition was in proximity drove her to the edge, kicking me out of the room at random times or brushing my hair so that new tough strands came out by the roots. But Eleanor never hit me. She might have believed Kate when she had told her, “Touch the girl, you die.” Kate had not said it in anger or as a threat, just a statement of fact. After a fit of Eleanor’s, John would sometimes ask me if I wanted an ice cream. And he always called me “sweetheart”.

         It all ended in a hospital bed. He had gotten shingles and couldn’t move his pelvis. Eleanor had been making the gradual march towards senility for the past few months. This was nothing surprising; she was in her mid-80s. Maureen was more of a shock. Her brain had been shrinking inside her skull for the past year. Kate had thought that her sister was tipsy when she tried to cut her steak ribs across the bone that past Fourth of July. At the last visit to the house, Maureen couldn’t understand why there was water in the glass where there had been ice a few minutes before. The neurologist said that it was early on-set Alzheimer’s, probably exacerbated by stress. She and Eleanor was both committed to the city hospital when they forgot to eat. John made his confessions to his younger one lying in his single bed at the nursing home, staring up at the ceiling. “I can’t believe it all ended like this, Katie.” He told her that he prayed every night that he wouldn’t wake up in the morning. A week later, Eleanor and Maureen were ready to be transferred to the nursing home.

“John, your wife’s coming to live in the room with you,” the nurse said with a smile on her face.

That was the last thing he heard. It would be something to know the last thing that he thought. Perhaps it was something like, “Fuck it.” It was his cue to leave. Good for him.

         The nurse administrator called Kate in the car. “Your father isn’t doing too well,” the woman said in a calm voice.

         “Define ‘not well,” Kate said.

         “Well,” said the nurse. “We think he’s dead.”

         Four days later we were trying to pry open the safety box from the old bedroom. The army green dented tin was on the island in the kitchen. Kate stopped her work with the screwdriver and put it down.

“How much do you want to bet that there’s just a note inside that says Dear Kate, fuck you, love Dad.”?

I didn’t want to lie to her. I said, “Maybe.”

         The younger daughter planned the service. The priest said to her while they were sitting in his Church office writing the eulogy, “Did your father tell you about Kate Boyd?” She looked at him but didn’t respond. Father O’Neil went on, “Oh, I’ve been hearing about her for twenty years.”  Kate wondered what John had told the priest, what Miss Boyd had looked like other than her red hair, or where she had gone. She wondered briefly if he had noticed when she dropped the Mary and became a Kate herself. Not that it mattered, it was just one of those interesting questions that are fascinating because one will never know the answer.

         Kate and I had to clean out the house on Jamestown before we sold it for less than it was worth. It was an ugly house but it did have a view of the water. Kate didn’t say much except for short mutterings that I couldn’t quite make out. In the upstairs bedroom there were four tall nightstands. Each of the drawers was packed with old tax returns, health insurance forms; the sort of things that one feels nervous about throwing out before properly inspected. In the top drawer of the beige nightstand was a collection of cards. John had every card I had given him; faded pink and green ones that had the words “Christmas” and “birthday” spelt wrong, most of which I don’t remember making. John was a bastard and now he was dead; the bastard loved me.