THAT JANUARY IT GOT so cold you could see chunks1 of ice the size of cars floating down the Hudson River. On those midwinter nights, the homeless shelters filled up quickly. Mom and Dad hated the shelters. Human cesspools, Dad called them, goddamn vermin pits. Mom and Dad preferred to sleep on the pews of the churches that opened their doors to the homeless, but on some nights every pew in every church was taken. On those nights Dad would end up in a shelter, while Mom would show up at Lori's, Tinkle2 in tow. At times like that, her cheerful facade3 would crack, and she'd start crying and confess to Lori that life in the streets could be hard, just really hard.
For a while I considered dropping out of Barnard to help. It felt unbearably4 selfish, just downright wrong, to be indulging myself with an education in the liberal arts at a fancy private college while Mom and Dad were on the streets. But Lori convinced me that dropping out was a lamebrained idea. It wouldn't do any good, she said, and besides, dropping out would break Dad's heart. He was immensely proud that he had a daughter in college, and an Ivy5 League college at that. Every time he met someone new, he managed to work it into the first few minutes of conversation.
Mom and Dad, Brian pointed7 out, had options. They could move back to West Virginia or Phoenix8. Mom could work. And she was not destitute9. She had her collection of antique Indian jewelry10, which she kept in a self-storage locker11. There was the two-carat diamond ring that Brian and I had found under the rotten lumber12 back in Welch; she wore it even when sleeping on the street. She still owned property in Phoenix. And she had the land in Texas, the source of her oil-lease royalties13.
Brian was right. Mom did have options. I met her at a coffee shop to discuss them. First off, I suggested that she might think of finding an arrangement like mine: a room in someone's nice apartment in exchange for taking care of children or the elderly.
"I've spent my life taking care of other people," Mom said. "Now it's time to take care of me.""But you're not taking care of you.""Do we have to have this conversation?" Mom asked. "I've seen some good movies lately. Can't we talk about the movies?"I suggested to Mom that she sell her Indian jewelry. She wouldn't consider it. She loved that jewelry. Besides, they were heirlooms and had sentimental15 value.
I mentioned the land in Texas.
"That land's been in the family for generations," Mom said, "and it's staying in the family. You never sell land like that."I asked about the property in Phoenix.
"I'm saving that for a rainy day.""Mom, it's pouring.""This is just a drizzle," she said. "Monsoons16 could be ahead!" She sipped17 her tea. "Things usually work out in the end.""What if they don't?""That just means you haven't come to the end yet."She looked across the table and smiled at me with the smile you give people when you know you have the answers to all their questions. And so we talked about movies.
MOM AND DAD SURVIVED the winter, but every time I saw them, they looked a little worse for wear: dirtier, more bruised18, their hair more matted.
"Don't you fret19 a bit," Dad said. "Have you ever known your old man to get himself in a situation he couldn't handle?"I kept telling myself Dad was right, that they knew how to look after themselves and each other, but in the spring, Mom called me to say Dad had come down with tuberculosis20.
Dad almost never got sick. He was always getting banged up and then recovering almost immediately, as if nothing could truly hurt him. A part of me still believed all those childhood stories he'd told us about how invincible21 he was. Dad had asked that no one visit him, but Mom said she thought he'd be pretty pleased if I dropped by the hospital.
I waited at the nurse's station while an orderly went to tell him he had a visitor. I thought Dad might be under an oxygen tent or lying in a bed coughing up blood into a white handkerchief, but after a minute, he came hurrying down the hall. He was paler and more gaunt than usual, but despite all his years of hard living, he had aged6 very little. He still had all his hair, and it was still coal black, and his dark eyes twinkled above the paper surgical22 mask he was wearing.
He wouldn't let me hug him. "Whoa, Nelly, stay back," he said. "You're sure a sight for sore eyes, honey, but I don't want you catching23 this sonofabitch of a bug24."Dad escorted me back to the TB ward25 and introduced me to all of his friends. "Believe it or not, ol' Rex Walls did produce something worth bragging26 about, and here she is," he told them. Then he started coughing.
"Dad, are you going to be okay?" I asked.
"Ain't none of us getting out of this alive, honey," Dad said. It was an expression he used a lot, and now he seemed to find a special satisfaction in it.
Dad led me over to his cot. A neat pile of books was stacked next to it. He said his bout14 with TB had set him to pondering about mortality and the nature of the cosmos27. He'd been stone-cold sober since entering the hospital, and reading a lot more about chaos28 theory, particularly about the work of Mitchell Feigenbaum, a physicist29 at Los Alamos who had made a study of the transition between order and turbulence30. Dad said he was damned if Feigenbaum didn't make a persuasive31 case that turbulence was not in fact random32 but followed a sequential spectrum33 of varying frequencies. If every action in the universe that we thought was random actually conformed to a rational pattern, Dad said, that implied the existence of a divine creator, and he was beginning to rethink his atheistic34 creed35. "I'm not saying there's a bearded old geezer named Yahweh up in the clouds deciding which football team is going to win the Super Bowl," Dad said. "But if the physics梩he quantum physics梥uggests that God exists, I'm more than willing to entertain the notion."Dad showed me some of the calculations he'd been working on. He saw me looking at his trembling fingers and held them up. "Lack of liquor or fear of God梔on't know which is causing it," he said. "Maybe both.""Promise you'll stay here until you get better," I said. "I don't want you doing the skedaddle."Dad burst into laughter that ended in another fit of coughing.
DAD STAYED IN THE hospital for six weeks. By then he'd not only beaten back the TB, he'd been sober longer than any time since the Phoenix detox. He knew that if he went back to the streets, he'd start drinking again. One of the hospital administrators36 got him a job as a maintenance man at an upstate resort, room and board included. He tried to talk Mom into going with him, but she flatly refused. "Upstate's the sticks," she said.
So Dad went alone. He called me from time to time, and it sounded like he'd put together a life that worked for him. He had a one-room apartment over a garage, enjoyed doing the repairs and upkeep on the old lodge37, loved being back within walking distance of untamed country, and was staying sober. Dad worked at the resort through the summer and into the fall. As it began to turn cold again, Mom called him and mentioned how much easier it was for two people to stay warm during the winter, and how much Tinkle the dog missed him. In November, after the first hard frost, I got a call from Brian, who said that Mom had succeeded in persuading Dad to quit his job and return to the city.
"Do you think he'll stay sober?" I asked.
"He's already back on the booze," Brian said.
A few weeks after Dad got back, I saw him at Lori's. He was sitting on the sofa with an arm around Mom and a pint38 bottle in his hand. He laughed. "This crazy-ass39 mother of yours, can't live with her, can't live without her. And damned if she doesn't feel the same about me."* * *All of us kids had our own lives by then. I was in college, Lori had become an illustrator at a comic-book company, Maureen lived with Lori and went to high school, and Brian, who had wanted to be a cop ever since he'd had to call a policeman to our house in Phoenix to break up a fight between Mom and Dad, had become a warehouse40 foreman and was serving on the auxiliary41 force until he was old enough to take the police department's entrance exam. Mom suggested we all celebrate Christmas at Lori's apartment. I bought Mom an antique silver cross, but finding a gift for Dad was harder; he always said he never needed anything. Since it looked like it was going to be another hard winter, and since Dad wore nothing but his bomber42 jacket in even the coldest weather, I decided43 to get him some warm clothes. At an army-surplus store, I bought flannel44 shirts, thermal45 underwear, thick wool socks, the kind of blue work pants that auto46 mechanics wear, and a new pair of steel-toed boots.
Lori decorated her apartment with colored lights and pine boughs47 and paper angels; Brian made eggnog; and to demonstrate that he was on his best behavior, Dad went to great lengths to make sure there was no alcohol in it before he accepted a glass. Mom passed around their presents, each wrapped in newspaper and tied with butcher's twine48. Lori got a cracked lamp that might have been a Tiffany; Maureen, an antique porcelain49 doll that had lost most of her hair; Brian, a nineteenth-century book of poetry, missing the cover and the first few pages. My present was an orange crewneck sweater, slightly stained but made, Mom pointed out, of genuine Shetland wool.
When I passed Dad my stack of carefully wrapped boxes, he protested that he needed and wanted nothing. "Go ahead," I said. "Open them."I watched as he carefully removed the wrapping. He lifted the lids and stared at the folded clothes. His face took on that wounded expression he got whenever the world called his bluff50. "You must be mighty51 ashamed of your old man," he said.
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"You think I'm some sort of goddamn charity case."Dad stood up and put on his bomber jacket. He was avoiding all our eyes.
"Where are you going?" I asked.
Dad just turned up his collar and walked out of the apartment. I listened to the sound of his boots going down the stairs.
"What did I do?" I asked.
"Look at it from his perspective," Mom said. "You buy him all these nice new things, and all he has for you is junk from the street. He's the father. He's the one who's supposed to be taking care of you."The room was quiet for a while. "I guess you don't want your presents, either," I said to Mom.
"Oh, no," she said. "I love getting presents."BY THE FOLLOWING summer, Mom and Dad were heading into their third year on the streets. They'd figured out how to make it work for them, and I gradually came around to accepting the notion that whether I liked it or not, this was how it was going to be. "It's sort of the city's fault," Mom told me. "They make it too easy to be homeless. If it was really unbearable52, we'd do something different."In August, Dad called to go over my course selection for the fall semester. He also wanted to discuss some of the books on the reading lists. Since he'd come to New York, he'd been borrowing my assigned books from the public library. He read every single one, he said, so he could answer any questions I might have. Mom said it was his way of getting a college education along with me.
When he asked me what courses I had signed up for, I said, "I'm thinking of dropping out.""The hell you are," Dad said.
I told him that while most of my tuition was covered by grants and loans and scholarships, the school expected me to contribute two thousand dollars a year. But over the summer, I had been able to save only a thousand dollars. I needed another thousand and had no way to come up with it.
"Why didn't you tell me sooner?" Dad asked.
Dad called a week later and told me to meet him at Lori's. When he arrived with Mom, he was carrying a large plastic garbage bag and had a small brown paper bag tucked under his arm. I assumed it was a bottle of booze, but then he opened the paper bag and turned it upside down. Hundreds of dollar bills梠nes, fives, tens, twenties, all wrinkled and worn梥pilled into my lap.
"There's nine hundred and fifty bucks," Dad said. He opened the plastic bag, and a fur coat tumbled out. "That there's mink53. You should be able to pawn54 it for fifty, at least."I stared at the loot. "Where did you get all this?" I finally asked.
"New York City is full of poker55 players who wouldn't know their ass from a hole in the ground.""Dad," I said. "you guys need this money more than I do.""It's yours," Dad said. "Since when is it wrong for a father to take care of his little girl?""But I can't." I looked at Mom.
She sat down next to me and patted my leg. "I've always believed in the value of a good education," she said.
So, when I enrolled56 for my final year at Barnard, I paid what I owed on my tuition with Dad's wadded, crumpled57 bills.
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chunks
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tinkle
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| vi.叮当作响；n.叮当声 | |
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facade
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| n.(建筑物的)正面，临街正面；外表 | |
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unbearably
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| adv.不能忍受地，无法容忍地；慌 | |
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ivy
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| n.常青藤，常春藤 | |
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aged
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| adj.年老的，陈年的 | |
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pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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phoenix
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| n.凤凰，长生(不死)鸟；引申为重生 | |
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destitute
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| adj.缺乏的；穷困的 | |
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jewelry
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| n.（jewllery）（总称）珠宝 | |
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locker
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| n.更衣箱，储物柜，冷藏室，上锁的人 | |
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lumber
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| n.木材，木料；v.以破旧东西堆满；伐木；笨重移动 | |
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royalties
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| 特许权使用费 | |
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bout
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| n.侵袭，发作；一次(阵，回)；拳击等比赛 | |
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sentimental
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| adj.多愁善感的，感伤的 | |
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monsoons
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| n.（南亚、尤指印度洋的）季风( monsoon的名词复数 )；（与季风相伴的）雨季；（南亚地区的）雨季 | |
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sipped
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| v.小口喝，呷，抿( sip的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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bruised
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| [医]青肿的，瘀紫的 | |
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fret
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| v.(使)烦恼；(使)焦急；(使)腐蚀，(使)磨损 | |
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tuberculosis
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| n.结核病，肺结核 | |
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invincible
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| adj.不可征服的，难以制服的 | |
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surgical
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| adj.外科的，外科医生的，手术上的 | |
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catching
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| adj.易传染的，有魅力的，迷人的，接住 | |
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bug
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| n.虫子；故障；窃听器；vt.纠缠；装窃听器 | |
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ward
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| n.守卫，监护，病房，行政区，由监护人或法院保护的人（尤指儿童）；vt.守护，躲开 | |
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bragging
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| v.自夸，吹嘘( brag的现在分词 )；大话 | |
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cosmos
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| n.宇宙；秩序，和谐 | |
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chaos
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| n.混乱，无秩序 | |
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physicist
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| n.物理学家，研究物理学的人 | |
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turbulence
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| n.喧嚣，狂暴，骚乱，湍流 | |
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persuasive
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| adj.有说服力的，能说得使人相信的 | |
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random
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| adj.随机的；任意的；n.偶然的(或随便的)行动 | |
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spectrum
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| n.谱，光谱，频谱；范围，幅度，系列 | |
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atheistic
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| adj.无神论者的 | |
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creed
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| n.信条；信念，纲领 | |
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administrators
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| n.管理者( administrator的名词复数 )；有管理（或行政）才能的人；（由遗嘱检验法庭指定的）遗产管理人；奉派暂管主教教区的牧师 | |
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lodge
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| v.临时住宿，寄宿，寄存，容纳；n.传达室，小旅馆 | |
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pint
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| n.品脱 | |
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ass
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| n.驴；傻瓜，蠢笨的人 | |
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warehouse
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| n.仓库；vt.存入仓库 | |
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auxiliary
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| adj.辅助的，备用的 | |
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bomber
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| n.轰炸机，投弹手，投掷炸弹者 | |
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decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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flannel
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| n.法兰绒；法兰绒衣服 | |
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thermal
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| adj.热的，由热造成的；保暖的 | |
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auto
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| n.(=automobile)(口语)汽车 | |
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boughs
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| 大树枝( bough的名词复数 ) | |
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twine
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| v.搓，织，编饰；（使）缠绕 | |
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porcelain
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| n.瓷；adj.瓷的，瓷制的 | |
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bluff
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| v.虚张声势，用假象骗人；n.虚张声势，欺骗 | |
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mighty
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| adj.强有力的；巨大的 | |
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unbearable
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| adj.不能容忍的；忍受不住的 | |
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mink
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| n.貂，貂皮 | |
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pawn
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| n.典当，抵押，小人物，走卒；v.典当，抵押 | |
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poker
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| n.扑克；vt.烙制 | |
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enrolled
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| adj.入学登记了的v.[亦作enrol]( enroll的过去式和过去分词 )；登记，招收，使入伍（或入会、入学等），参加，成为成员；记入名册；卷起，包起 | |
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crumpled
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| adj. 弯扭的, 变皱的 动词crumple的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
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