Excerpt

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My
parents' Ford wagon hit a concrete divider on U.S. 95 outside
Biddeford, Maine, in August 1990. They'd driven that stretch of
highway for maybe thirty years, on the way to Long Lake. Some guy
who used to play baseball with Pop had these cabins by the lake and
had named them for his children. Jenny. Al. Tyler. Craig. Bugs.
Alice and Sam. We always got Alice for two weeks in August, because
it had the best waterfront, with a shallow, sandy beach, and Mom
and Pop could watch us while they sat in the green Adirondack
chairs.

We came up even after Bethany had gone, and after I had become a
man with a job. I'd go up and be a son, and then we'd all go back
to our places and be regular people.

Long Lake has bass and pickerel and really beautiful yellow perch.
You can't convince some people about yellow perch, because perch
have a thick, hard lip and are coarse to touch, but they are pretty
fish --- I think the prettiest --- and they taste like red snapper.
There are shallow coves all over the lake, where huge turtles live,
and at the swampy end, with its high reeds and grass, the bird
population is extraordinary. There are two pairs of loons, and one
pair always seems to have a baby paddling after it; ducks, too, and
Canada geese, and a single heron that stands on one leg and lets
people get very close to photograph it. The water is wonderful for
swimming, especially in the mornings, when the lake is like a
mirror. I used to take all my clothes off and jump in, but I don't
do that now.

In 1990 I weighed 279 pounds. My pop would say, "How's that weight,
son?" And I would say, "It's holding steady, Pop." I had a
forty-six-inch waist, but I was sort of vain and I never bought a
pair of pants over forty-two inches --- so, of course, I had a
terrific hang, with a real water-balloon push. Mom never mentioned
my weight, because she liked to cook casseroles, since they were
easily prepared ahead of time and were hearty. What she enjoyed
asking about was my friends and my girlfriends. Only in 1990 I was
a 279-pound forty-three-year-old supervisor at Goddard Toys who
spent entire days checking to see that the arms on the action
figure SEAL Sam were assembled palms in, and nights at the Tick-Tap
Lounge drinking beers and watching sports. I didn't have
girlfriends. Or, I suppose, friends, really. I did have drinking
friends. We drank hard in a kind of friendly way.

My mom had pictures set up on the piano in the home in East
Providence, Rhode Island. Me and Bethany mostly, although Mom's dad
was in one, and one had Pop in his Air Corps uniform. Bethany was
twenty-two in her big picture. She'd posed with her hands in prayer
and looked up at one of her amazing curls. Her pale eyes seemed
glossy. I stood in my frame like a stick. My army uniform seemed
like a sack, and I couldn't have had more than 125 pounds around
the bones. I didn't like to eat then. I didn't like to eat in the
army either, but later on, when I came home and Bethany was gone
and I moved out to my apartment near Goddard, I didn't have a whole
lot to do at night, so I ate, and later I had the beer and the
pickled eggs and, of course, the fat pretzels.

My parents pulled their wagon in front of cabin Alice, and I helped
load up. They were going to drive home to East Providence on the
last Friday of our two weeks, and I would leave on Saturday. That
way they could avoid all the Saturday traffic coming up to New
Hampshire and Maine. I could do the cleanup and return the rented
fishing boat. It was one of those good plans that just make sense.
Even Mom, who was worried about what I would eat, had to agree it
was a good plan. I told her I would be sure to have a nice sandwich
and maybe some soup. What I really was planning was two six-packs
of beer and a bag of those crispy Bavarian pretzels. Maybe some
different kinds of cheeses. And because I had been limiting my
smoking to maybe a pack a day, I planned to fire up a chain-smoke,
at least enough to keep the mosquitoes down, and think. Men of a
certain weight and certain habits think for a while with a clarity
intense and fleeting.

I was sitting in the Adirondack chair, drunk and talking to myself,
when a state trooper parked his cruiser next to my old Buick and
walked down to the waterfront. Black kid about twenty-six or
-seven, wearing the grays like the troopers do, fitted and all, and
I turned and stood when I heard him coming.

"Great, isn't it?"

"What?" he asked, like a bass drum.

I had leaned against the chair for support, and it wobbled under my
weight and his voice.

"The lake. The outside."

"I'm looking for a Smithson Ide."

"That would be me," I said, a drunk fighting to appear
straight.

"Why don't you sit down a second, Mr. Ide."

"I'm not drunk or anything, Officer ... Trooper.... I'm really fine
... not ..."

"Mr. Ide, there's been an accident, and your parents are seriously
injured. Outside of Portland. Mr. Ide was taken to the head-trauma
unit at Portland General, and Mrs. Ide is at the Biddeford
Hospital."

"My mom? My pop?" I asked stupidly.

"Why don't you come with me, and I'll get you up there."

"My car ..."

"You come with me, and we'll get you back, too. You won't have to
worry about your car."

"I won't have to worry. Okay. Good."

I changed into a clean pair of shorts and a T-shirt. The trooper
tried very hard not to look at me. I was glad, because people
tended to form quick opinions of me when I stood there fat and
drunk and cigarette-stained in front of them. Even reasonable
people go for an immediate response. Drunk. Fat. A smoky-burned
aroma.

The trooper, whose name was Alvin Anderson, stopped for two coffees
at the bake shop in Bridgton, then took Route 302 into Portland. We
didn't talk very much.

"I sure appreciate this."

"Yes, sir."

"Looks like rain."

"I don't know."

Pop had already been admitted when Alvin let me out at
Emergency.

"Take a cab over to Biddeford Hospital when you're done here. I'll
be by later on."

I watched him drive away. It was about five, and a rain began. A
cold rain. My sandals flopped on the blue floor, and I caught my
thick reflection stretched against the shorts and T-shirt. My face
was purple with beer. The lady at Information directed me to
Admitting, where an elderly volunteer directed me to the
second-floor trauma unit.

"It's named for L. L. Bean," he said. "Bugger had it, and he gave
it. That's the story."

A male nurse at the trauma reception asked me some questions to be
sure that this Ide was my Ide.

"White male?"

"Yes."

"Seventy?"

"I ..."

"About seventy?"

"Yes."

"Artificial valve?"

"Oh, yeah ... about ten years ago, see.... It really made him mad
because --- "

"Okay. Take this pass and stand on the blue line. That's where the
nurse assigned to your father will take you in. There are thirty
trauma cells, glass front, usually the curtains are drawn --- but
sometimes they're not. We ask you, when your nurse comes to take
you in, to promise not to look into any of the units other than
yours."

"I promise," I said solemnly.

I stood on the blue line and waited. I was still drunk. I wished I
had put on a baggy sweater and some sweatpants or something,
because fat guys are just aware of the way things ride up the
crotch, and they've got to always be pulling out the front part of
the T-shirt so little breasts don't show through.

The nurse was named Arleen, and she was as round as me. She had on
baggy surgical green slacks and an enormous green smock with
pockets everywhere. She led me to my pop's cubicle. I didn't look
into any of the other ones. I could hear a man saying, "Oh, God.
Oh, God," over and over, and crying, but mostly there was a hushed
tone, and when the nurses and doctors hurried about, they sounded
like leaves on the ground in the fall with kids walking through
them. I was very drunk.

Pop lay out on a tall, metal-framed bed. His head, chest, waist,
and ankles had heavy straps over them. Except for a sheet, folded
to reach from his belly button to his knees, he was naked. When the
nurse closed the door, leaving me alone, I remember thinking that
this was the quietest room I had ever been in.

I could hear my heart in my head. The bed had an engine that tilted
it very slowly. So slowly, really, that even though it moved Pop
from side to side, it didn't seem as if he was moving at all, even
though he was. I looked under the bed for the engine, but I
couldn't see it.

Pop had some bruises around his eyes and the bridge of his nose,
and a Band-Aid over a small hole in his forehead that the nurse
told me had been bored to relieve some kind of pressure. Pop used
to brag about not knowing what a headache felt like, since he'd
never had one, so I thought it was odd he needed that little
hole.

I put my hand on top of my pop's. It was a little silly, because
Pop was not a hand-holder. Pop was a slapper of backs and a shaker
of hands. But putting my hand on top of his seemed all right, and
felt strange and good. Later on, after I had some time to think
about it, I guessed that when these awful kinds of things happen to
you, it helps to find a lot of things to feel good about. They
don't have to be big-deal things, but more like the hand business
or combing Mom's hair, those kinds of things. They add up.

I'd been alone with my pop for twenty minutes when a doctor came
in. He was about my age, only trim and sober. He had thick red-gray
hair, and for some reason I used my fingers to comb my own thin and
shaggy head.

"Mr. Ide?"

"Yes, sir. Thank you."

"I'm Dr. Hoffman."

We shook hands. Then he moved close to Pop's head.

"I put this hole here to relieve the pressure."

"Thank you so much," I said sincerely.

I would have given my car to anyone, right there, if I could have
been sober.

"He kept himself pretty good, didn't he?" he said. His little
flashlight moved from eye to eye.

"My pop walked and stuff."

Pop swayed imperceptibly on his bed, to the left. The doctor was
right. Pop had a great body, and he had a routine to keep it that
way. Mom sometimes went up in weight and then got on some diet to
lose it, but Pop was really proud of how he kept the old weight at
180, his playing weight.

"Do you know what blood thinners he took for the valve?" Dr.
Hoffman asked.

"No. Sorry. It pissed him --- He was mad about the heart operation.
He worked out, and one day the other doctor said, ‘You have
to get a new valve in your heart.' But it was because of something
that, you know, happened when he was a kid."

"Rheumatic fever."

"That's it. Is it bad? Did it break?"

Was I a huge alcoholic trying to be helpful?

"His heart is fine, and I think under normal circumstances your
father probably wouldn't be in bad shape right now, except the
blood thinners he took to ensure clot-free flow through the heart
chambers, and, of course, through the artificial valve, allowed the
blood to hemorrhage violently inside his head when he hit the
windshield."

"I see." I nodded again, stupidly.

"Blood is one of the most toxic entities known. When it gets out of
the old veins, well ..."

"I didn't realize that."

"Do you have anyone else in the immediate family I need to talk
to?"

"Bethany, but you can't talk to ... well, no ... me, I
guess."

"Well ..."

"He really looks good. Just those bruises. He does push-ups, too.
Walks and stuff."

"What let's do is this. Why don't we watch what happens tonight,
and I'll see you tomorrow, and we'll see."

"That's great, Doctor. And thank you. Thank you so much."

I said good-bye to Pop, went down to the main lobby of the
hospital, and took a cab to Mom's hospital in Biddeford. It was
about fifteen minutes away. A four-cigarette ride. It was pretty
cold by now. Usually I don't mind cold nights, but I did this
night, and for some reason my hair hurt.

The hospital in Biddeford was new. It was set in a little forest of
fir trees and looked nice, not all big and really nervous-making
like Portland General. You got a sense of something bad in
Portland. The way it smelled. The way you sounded in the crowded
corridors, and the way all those people whispered into the banks of
phones. Biddeford Hospital was different. There were plants in the
reception area, and the retired volunteers seemed happy to see you.
You got this good feeling that everything was going to be all
right.

Mom was in the third-floor trauma unit. It was small, and, again
unlike Portland, the walls were painted in a hopeful blue-sky
color. Portland was green. Old green. Reception had called that I
was on my way up, and this pretty black girl met me outside the
unit's door. She wore standard green pants bunched around her
ankles, and running shoes. Her blouse was white, with happy faces
on it.

"Hi," she called out.

"Hi," I said.

"Are you Jan's son?"

"Yes. I'm Smithy Ide."

"I'm Toni, I'm one of her nurses. C'mon."

She didn't tell me about not looking into the rooms, but she didn't
have to.

"Jan's in five. She's on a waterbed that tilts."

"My father is, too."

"How's he doing?"

"Well, he takes these blood thinners."

"Aren't you cold?" she asked as we walked.

"I wasn't cold a little while ago."

Mom was amazingly tiny on this big bed. She was tilted away from
me, and I walked over so she could see me. Her eyes were half
open.

"Hi, Mom," I said very quietly. "I'm here now, Mom."

"We don't think Jan can hear you. She's on a big morphine drip. But
we're not sure; maybe some things get through. You can keep talking
if you want. Dr. Rosa is Jan's attending physician, but I'm going
to give you the rundown, and maybe you can link up with the doctor
later."

"Thank you," I said. "Thank you so much."

I pulled the T-shirt away from my sticky breasts and kicked my leg
out to loosen my riding-up underwear. I needed a smoke, so I
fingered my Winstons.

"There's no smoking, of course," the pretty nurse said.

"Oh, I know that. Sure. It's important. I was just --- "

"At first we were going to keep both of your parents together here,
but Portland's head unit is state-of-the-art, and, frankly, we were
not comfortable moving Jan. Her lungs collapsed, which is why we
are inflating them artificially. Later on we'll wean her from the
machine. Both hips are broken, multiple crushed ribs, bruised
trachea, dislocated right shoulder. The good news is, no head
injury."

"That's great," I said.

"Dr. Rosa is Jan's physician."

"Great."

"I'll be at the desk if you need me."

As soon as she left the room, I adjusted my shorts. I sat for about
twenty minutes as Mom tilted, and then I got up.

"I'm going now, Mom. What I'm going to do is go back to the camp
and pack up the stuff and drive up and get a room or something. I
won't be gone long. You rest."

I waited in the lobby for Trooper Anderson, and after a while I
figured he was busy --- so I took a cab back to Bridgton. It cost
seventy-four dollars. My old Buick was already packed with our
summer stuff. The folding chairs, coolers, tackle boxes, et cetera.
I cleaned the cabin quickly, then paid Pop's friend who owned the
cabins, asked him to return the rented boat for me, and drove back
to Portland in the deepest Maine dark ever.

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