All Happy Families by Jeanne McCulloch

Author:Jeanne McCulloch
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2018-08-13T16:00:00+00:00

Earlier that day, my mother had driven over to see my father, but had not told us at the time. I heard about her visit years later, from one of her friends. I had always wondered when she had said good-bye to him, when between the wedding details and the follow-up she had seen him.

Later that day, long after my siblings and I had returned from the hospital to the house, Dean had driven over to see him but had not told me until later either.

None of us were with him when, still later, he died.

My mother, visiting in the very early morning, had yelled. Evidently she had the impression, as many do, that if you yell loudly at a coma victim, you have a better chance of being heard.

Dean, when he visited, had matched my father’s labored breathing. In his studies in neurolinguistics, he had learned that if you match the breathing of someone in a coma, you have a better chance of being heard.

My mother yelled about remembering things. She yelled that she hoped he remembered how many times they had promised each other, if either was to be incapacitated beyond recovery, the other would sign the “Do Not Resuscitate” document that guaranteed no extreme measure would be taken.

Dean heaved as my father heaved, while behind him the nurses shuffled out and left him alone. All he had said at first to my father’s heaving body was, “Just stay in the moment.”

But what was “the moment,” exactly? The Jacksons had packed up, having hauled the green canoe, supposed to be the centerpiece of the festivities, off the top of the car. Vincent, the gardener, had helped them haul it into the garage, the ribbons still on. No one had bothered to untie them. There the canoe would stay out of sight as the scene changed from a wedding, a boat to paddle into the happy beginning of a new life, over to something that was, if not death, then something very close to the end of life.

Dean had taken long, steady breaths as he spoke to my father, matching his breathing, breath for breath, speaking in a calm, even voice. As his family was heading back across the Long Island Sound on the ferry to New England, and Pierre and I were stowing the wedding presents in the attic, and my mother was speaking on the pink princess phone in her bedroom to the lawyer—who guaranteed her he would be returning early from vacation on Cape Cod first thing in the morning to help her get things sorted out—Dean sat with my father in the hospital. He told him the score of the Yankees game. They were both fans, and he passed news to my father, often sending him postcards with the score on it when my father was traveling during baseball season. In July, when my father had been at the Carlton House and too drunk to leave his apartment, Dean would go over and watch the

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