Hanging Up. Delia Ephron
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I thought Mom moved out. Dad called last night. He said she left.”
Now she was crying. Gulping sobs. Big fat teenage tears. “Not Mom, dummy. Dad. Look, I’ll be at Isaac’s. He doesn’t have a phone. Bye.”
Dad? What was she talking about?
The door is unlocked from the inside, an orderly opens it, and Angie wheels my father in. This place is not old, really, just battered. The painted plaster walls have scrape marks on them, probably from wheelchairs. The wooden trim around the doorways and windows, that homey touch signifying extra care and concern, is gouged, and the walnut stain is scratched and thin. “UCLA Geriatric/Psychiatric”—the words are discreetly printed on a rectangular plastic plaque next to the door, which the orderly relocks after us.
The wheelchair squeaks on the linoleum as we go down the hall. We pass first an old-fashioned telephone booth built into the wall—it is nearly identical to the one in my college dorm years ago—then a room filled with rows of chairs. Assorted chairs in assorted colors, but mostly they have metal legs and metal arms, with cushioned vinyl seats and vinyl pads on the armrests. Old people are sitting in some of them. They are facing a television set, which is on. Straight ahead is something I will begin to call the cage. It’s an office that has a small opening fitted with a protective grate, like the kind in front of bank teller windows in dangerous neighborhoods. The nurses hang out here. There is glass on the sides so they can see out into the patient rooms that surround them.
My father twists around to look at Angie. It’s a strain for him to turn because he’s so fat. He takes up all the space in the chair, and when he turns, his shirt strains, almost to popping open. “What’s Claire doing here?” he growls.
“I’m not Claire, I’m Angie.”
“You know Angie,” I say. “She works at the Home, where you live. She’s helping me bring you here.”
Angie wheels him into a dining room. An older man in glasses and a woman, both in medical whites, come into the room, closing the door behind us.
The woman introduces herself. “I’m Dr. Kelly,” she says. She looks like a high school cheerleader. That young and wholesome. “This is Rob Bateson.”
“I’m the social worker,” he says cheerfully. “Why don’t we sit down?” He gestures toward the nearest Formica table.
Angie wheels my father to the table and then stands back, waiting for the rest of us.
“I’ll sit next to my father,” I announce. This is an unnecessary statement. In the almost twenty-five years since my mother left, my sisters and I have taken turns calling the doctor about him, putting him in loony bins, drying him out, buying him clothes. And when more than one of us are present, we even take turns sitting next to him. But today, at UCLA Geriatric/Psychiatric, my father’s final incarceration, there is no one here but me.
I hear a squeal as Dr. Kelly jumps, throws my father a dirty look, then catches herself. She smooths the back of her pants, where he obviously has just pinched, then takes a chair, sits, and smiles calmly.
I’ll be out of here in a half-hour, I comfort myself. This is a trick my son has taught me, the way he gets through classes he hates.
They start asking my father questions. Your name? “Lou Mozell.” Age? “Thirty-nine,” he says.
“Eighty-one,” I say, smiling.
Where were you born? “The Bronx.” College?
“Harvard,” says my father. “I graduated with honors.” They write all this down dutifully.
“What month is it?” My father has no idea. “What day of the week?” He looks up at the ceiling, studying it as if there were something to see.
“Look,” I say, “this is ridiculous. My father lives in a Home. Every day is the same. How does he know whether it’s Monday or Wednesday? And this is Los Angeles. The sky’s always blue. Even I don’t know what month it is half the time.”
“These questions have been tested,” Dr. Kelly says, an edge to her voice.
“Well, they don’t make any sense.”
Meanwhile my father is refusing to say anything.
“Will you write your name, Mr. Mozell?” She offers a pen and her clipboard.
He obliges.
“Would you write a sentence?”
He does that too. She shows me the clipboard.
He has written, “It’s too late.”
Oh, wow. I actually have this dumb high school reaction. Oh, wow. Heavy. And in my mind, I am already on the phone to my sisters.” ‘It’s too late.’ That’s what he wrote. Do you believe that?”
“Why don’t we show you to your room,” Dr. Kelly says to my father.
“Are you leaving me here?” he asks me. His hands, which have been lying listlessly in his lap, fly up and seize the arms of his wheelchair.
“You’re going to stay here for a week or two.” Maybe more, I don’t say. “You’re having memory problems, Dad. They’ll run some tests.”
“You bitch. You and Claire. You put me here before. You’re in cahoots.” My father flings a backslap at me but misses by a mile.
“That’s not Claire, that’s Angie, and you’ve never been here before.” I say this quietly, but I can feel my face flush.
Angie springs up. “I’ll take him.” She spins the wheelchair around. “I’m taking you to your room, Mr. Mozell,” she declares, as Rob Bateson jumps to open the door for them. “Bitch,” my father shouts as she steers him out, and Bateson closes the door behind them.
There is silence. A moment of respect for the departed.
“My father didn’t go to Harvard.”
Dr. Kelly laughs, then immediately crosses out the entry on her form. “Where did he go?”
“He went to, oh, what’s that school, you know, it’s in New York City, what is it, ohh—”
“Columbia?” says Bateson.
“No, no, downtown.”
Bateson and Kelly look at each other, stumped. Dr. Kelly actually winds some of her long sandy hair around her finger while she thinks. “New York University,” she offers tentatively.
“Right. He went to NYU. I can’t believe I didn’t remember that. I do know this is the month of May and it’s somewhere between the fourteenth and the twentieth, right?”
No one laughs. Bateson leans toward me across the table. “Are you close to your father?” he asks.
I hate this question. It’s none of their business. Their business is to find out what’s wrong with his brain this time. Their business is to adjust his medication so he functions. He just needs a new cocktail. He’s gone off his rocker before. He’s gone off many times. I will answer this question dispassionately. I will show that an inquiry about my feelings for my father triggers nothing. “I look out for my father but I am not close to him,” I say firmly. I smile to show that this cool answer is not only the truth, but easy.
“He wrote, ‘It’s too late.’ Do you believe that?”
“Really,” says Georgia.
It’s impossible to convey Georgia’s affection for the word “really.” She caresses it. She packs in multiple meanings: astonishment, disbelief, sometimes disgust, suspicion, pleasure, maybe even thrill, plus curiosity. All understated. She owns “really.” Also