From Generation to Generation
L'Dor V'Dor

by Lloyd B. Abrams

Paulie visits me whenever he can, or so he says. But my son, who’s my only child, was never much good at lying.

Today, we spend our time together sitting on a bench next to the gazebo in the village green, a couple of blocks from the Harbor View Manor, where I’m currently residing. The green is surrounded by balconied apartment buildings, the town hall with its attached courthouse, the Our Lady of the Rosary Church, and several other adult care facilities, as the “addled care” places are called – the Glen at Sycamore Pointe (with an “e,” no less), the Golden Riverside, and Amber Gardens. I have often marveled how they came up with such pretentious names, for there is no harbor, there are no sycamores and the only river is the drainage ditch behind the courthouse. But amber, as a preservative for fossilized remains – now that name does make sense.

With Paulie, there’s never much to be said. We sit and watch the cars and buses, the mothers pushing strollers, the runners, the bicyclists, the kids on their way home from school, the aging and the aged passing by. Although Paulie tries to sit right beside me, I slide imperceptibly away. Paulie has been on kidney dialysis for five years, and I’m repelled by the foul combination of Betadyne and the sour odor of urine emanating from his body. My olfactory system has always been on high alert when he’s nearby and it seems that I’m the only one who is put off by his smell.

Paulie, my son, on dialysis: the thought makes me ill. Three evenings a week, confined to a chair and hooked up to a machine – essentially, on life support – would drive me up a wall. But he claims he has a wonderful time. “Wonderful?” I ask.

“Sure, Dad. I read or watch TV. Or I talk to the nurses and aides and other clients. We kid around and tell each other jokes. We have a great time together.”

Wonderful. Great. I want to point out that these words he uses sound so absolute, like terrific or exquisite, that they don’t ring true, and so I have trouble trusting what little he does say. I want to ask if a better word might be agreeable or acceptable, or maybe tolerable or endurable. But I don’t.“Leave me alone, Dad,” he’d say, in his tone accusing me of a parental inquisition. I don’t want to alienate him. He’s so defensive and always so unaccepting of such questioning.

The visiting psychologist, when he’s had the time to squeeze me in, has referred to my son’s behavior as “acting ‘as if’,” which he explained in Paulie’s case as outwardly behaving and speaking in an excited, upbeat manner, which then serves to inwardly fool himself into believing that everything is quite okay. I, myself, have been on a maintenance dosage of Zoloft, and I could probably stop taking the antidepressant, except that when I’d tapered off in the past, I felt raw and irritated. Then, I had become abrasive to others, as if my emotions were grating on me. Paulie, however, has suffered from major depression, including several hospitalizations. But he swears that he feels fantastic now – terrific – and he no longer needs his medication. Fantastic now. Terrific.

Paulie turns and asks, “So, how’re you doin’ for money?” It’s always a safe question for me because I always have the same answer – “You know ... I’m getting by” – but for Paulie, the question is fraught with anxiety. So far, my pension and social security have covered the obscenely high cost of the Harbor View Manor – a place far less luxurious than the French whorehouse-design of Sycamore Pointe – and I rarely have to tap into my savings, my mutual funds or my 403(b). I wonder if he’s worried that his inheritance will disappear if I live too long – and if he lives too long. “The money’s holding out okay,” I say. But I don’t add, “You don’t have to worry, Paulie. There’ll be money left over when I’m gone.”

I retired at just the right moment, in the fall of 1987, when I was teaching ninth- and tenth-grade mathematics in a Brooklyn high school. The stock market had plummeted and I knew that my funds in the Teacher’s Retirement System would reflect that drop. That very day, I submitted my retirement papers. I realized that my pension fund would be worth much less if I waited until the new unit value was calculated at the end of the month, with no guarantee of recovery by the end of the school year. I certainly had enough years in, and I had endured more than enough of the inherently dysfunctional school system. When the principal, instead of understanding my predicament and congratulating me and wishing me well, snapped, “What kind of example do you think you’re setting for your students, leaving in the middle of the term?” I answered that “Self-preservation is paramount, and that’s the statement I’m making.” He had nothing more to say.

The next morning, I handed over my Delaney book, my marking book and my dog-eared lesson plans to a hurriedly-hired substitute. Other than a celebratory platter of bagels and cream cheese in the mathematics department office, which I brought in, there was no announcement on the loud speaker, no party in the bare-bones faculty lunchroom, no big deal, thankfully, made at all. The only mention of my sudden retirement was typed on an index card and tacked above the time clock.

A bearded man on a recumbent bicycle rides by. I wave and he waves back. “What the hell are you waving for?” Paulie asks. He stretches his hands out, gesturing what’s wrong with you? He has already seen me greet a few people as they’ve passed by. Maybe he thinks I’m going senile. Maybe he is ashamed of me, ashamed to be sitting next to me.

“Jesus Christ, Paulie. I know that guy,” I answer. I’m pissed off that I have to justify myself to my son. “He’s stopped before and we’ve talked a couple of times.” Then, to change the subject, I say, “That’s quite a bike, don’t you think?”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever. Just don’t turn into a nudje like grandpa. He was such an old fool.”

I wonder if he realizes how hurtful he is. Maybe he thinks I’m already a fool and probably doesn’t give a damn, except how it reflects on him. Paulie was never one for subtlety.

But the fistula sticking in Paulie’s arm is anything but subtle. I wonder why he doesn’t wear a long-sleeved shirt, but I have a good idea. Maybe he’s oblivious, but he’s probably being stubbornly “in-your-face” aggressive, knowing how I feel about having to see the buried apparatus and the puffed-out veins. In my tattered flannel shirt and my comfortable, worn-out jeans, I am certainly not the essence of fashion, but my son could surely afford to cover his goddamn arms.

As always, I hold my tongue. Why cause trouble? What good would it do, anyway? And maybe, just maybe, by keeping my mouth shut, I’m finally becoming wise in my old age.

Just then, a runner glides by, a lithe, pretty young lady in shorts and tank top who I usually see about this time. I start to wave, but I force my hand back down onto my lap.

I think back to the time when I was running marathons, and running five to eight miles every day – running for exercise, and running through my angst. That is, until my damaged left knee required arthroscopic surgery. Then, I gradually switched to less jarring activities like biking and walking and, for a while, swimming, until I couldn’t stand the effect of the chlorine on my nasal passages.

I break the silence: “Have you heard anything from Rachel?” I always had a soft spot for Paulie’s wife, until I realized how selfish and unforgiving she had become. She walked out on him when his agitation and his depression were again gaining on him and, exacerbated by his developing kidney problems, were turning him, as she put it, into a “miserable mother-fuckin’ monster.” She had discovered that she couldn’t live with him anymore. When times were good, Rachel stood alongside him, but “For better or for worse,” and not “in sickness and in health” was where Rachel drew the line.

“You always ask and it’s always the same.” The annoyance in Paulie’s voice is palpable. “She’s still living in Manhattan with that Barnard roommate of hers – Sheila something or other. I can’t believe they’d kept in contact so long.”

“What’s she doing with herself?”

“She always wanted a pied-a-terre in the city. You knew that. God knows we could never afford one. Now that’s she there, I guess she’s doing the whole city thing – going to museums, art galleries, concerts, off-off-off – far off-Broadway shows. And such and such.”

“And the kids?” Adam, his older child and, thus, my older grandchild, was doing quite well financially. An orthodontist, he was married and he and his wife were living in Boston with three young children. He made sure to keep his distance from Paulie, and, especially, far away from the conflict between his father and his mother. The younger one, my granddaughter Dara, had been living on the edge of her own making. Between her alternate life style, slipping and sliding through girlfriends and an occasional boyfriend for variety, and her need to experiment with the latest designer drug, she just couldn’t find a place to land, a place where she could be comfortable with and within herself. I had desperately wanted to help, but could never find a way.

“Menza-menz, you know. The same and the same,” Paulie answers. “Adam’s kids are great, though I don’t get to visit them all that much, with the dialysis and all.”

During the past few years, I’ve probably seen them more than he has. I want to scream, “So get on the goddamn train. The Acela takes less than four hours to Boston. You can be back in the evening.” But, of course, he wouldn’t want to hear that.

I say, softly, “My three great grandchildren. They’re so sweet.”

“Yeah. They’re good kids.”

Period. Hard stop. I want more from him but it’s the end of his paragraph, the end of his thought. It’s his way of saying, “Turn the page, Dad. There’s nothing more you can get out of me.” And I certainly don’t want to pry, because I know how much he would resist. Always with Paulie, I have to walk on eggshells.

It was the same with my wife, Gloria.

We loved each other and we had our chemistry, that’s for damn sure, though it was sometimes like sodium and water. But I often felt wrapped around her little finger, inexorably inter-linked and relentlessly manipulated. Her slightest pout, and I would feel like crap. She’d smile, and I would soar. The depth and breadth of her emotions were startling. She could go from uncontrollable sobbing to hysterical screaming without a perceptible segue. I often urged her to try acting; she could have been a star if she could have bottled it all up for the right moment. Our marriage was her stage, and I, her captivated audience.

Gloria ... Glo ... and glow she did, until moments of forgetfulness, which we joked about at first, became more evident and more ominous. And then she began to forget to brush her teeth in the morning, or wash her face, or comb her hair. Little things were dismissible, and possible symptoms were deniable. But she would sometimes walk outside in her underwear to pick up the newspaper, unaware that it was winter, oblivious to the cold, oblivious to embarrassment. Once, she showed up at a neighbor’s house with the Sunday New York Times. And then it got worse, all too quickly. She began to have trouble speaking and understanding, reading and writing, finding her way home and caring for her basic needs. She alternated between anxiety and aggression, sometimes with the same uncontrollable intensity as thirty years before. And I ached when she didn’t know who I was.

As her special glow began to dim and flicker, though at times, to flare back up ... as my wife began to fade away and suddenly explode and then just as quickly subside, there were many times that I just couldn’t take it. I was told that all of it was to be expected. But the worse it got, the more I retreated, the more I fled. I hired minimum-wage Haitians and Hispanics to watch over her and then got on my bicycle and rode, or laced up my walking shoes to pile up the miles. I also got back into the pool, despite my ever-present running nose. Between my chronic asthma and being around Gloria, I could never suck in enough air to feel alive. I was choking, gasping for oxygen, grasping for life. I, too, was dying inside.

Mercifully, for both of us, she went quickly. After all, she could have coasted along or careened downhill for many more years. But now, I am weighed down with a sense of guilt so leaden that it cannot be assuaged. I can neither purge it nor chip it away.

“You know,” I say, “I miss your mom sometimes. The good times, but not the bad.”

“Me, too, Dad.”

Period. Another hard stop. And then there is that silence again – yet another thing he doesn’t want to get into.

After a while, Paulie says, “Listen, Dad. I’ve got to get going. I have dialysis tonight.” Even though his regular appointment is later that evening, he always claims that he needs time to get ready. I never ask, “Get ready, exactly, for what?”

Paulie’s in a rush today. It’s likely that his agitation is refusing to be mollified, refusing to be as-if’ed. I also know he wants to see me safely returned to the Harbor View Manor, although I would rather sit by myself for a while. Probably it’s his need for closure, his need for everything and everyone to be back in place. I tell him that he doesn’t have to walk me back, yet he insists. And then I find it hard to keep up, because he’s pushing the pace.

Paulie is already a couple of steps ahead. I cross in front of a car that is waiting to exit from a driveway. The driver opens her window, sticks her head out and shouts, “It’s okay, sir. Take your time!”

I raise my hand to thank her and said, “Madame, all I have is time.”

But all I don’t have ... is time.

Rev 20 / Nov. 22, 2006 .. Rev 21 / Oct. 18, 2007 .. Rev 22 / May 18, 2011

Up to the beginning of the story

May 2011…Copyright © 2011, Lloyd B. Abrams

-- Appeared in Grassroot Reflections Number 43, August 2017