The State Journal Goes Underground

For a considerable time yesterday, I considered the improbable but apparently true idea that I was dealing with a newspaper with an unlisted number.

Nor was that the strangest part of the affair. The real question was why the death of Marvin Rabin had hit me so hard. I knew he was in his nineties, I knew that his hearing was bad, but nothing in the video I had seen looked like a man who could die. Is that silly? Yes, but there’s nothing logical about grief.

And so there I was, sobbing in the café, remembering the Saturday mornings, remembering the temper tantrums followed by impassioned appeals—we were better than that, we could play it better. Then I remembered the toilet bowl brush, and I lost it again.

I had house-sat for the Rabins, and everyone had warned me—Rhoda, Rabin’s wife, was neurotically attached to her house. In fact, Rabin had threatened more than once never to take Rhoda anywhere: she spent the whole vacation worrying about her house.

Más sabe el diablo por viejo que por diablo… runs an expression in Puerto Rico: translated loosely, it means the devil knows more due to old age than for being the devil. If true, I must have an old young man, because I knew what I had to do. And that was?

Well, I went out and bought a notebook, and arrived promptly at the door. And for the next two hours, I terrorized Rhoda. We started in the kitchen, where I instantly confronted her on the sea of medicines next to the stove. And where, I asked her, was her expiration medication log?

Rhoda’s eyes dilated.

I didn’t let up—I quizzed her on everything, we probed ever corner of the house. I took ceaseless notes, sighed frequently, frowned incessantly. I made a British nanny look like Santa Claus.

“I don’t imagine you’ll need to come in here,” said Rhoda, at the entrance to the master bedroom. But I was having none of that.

“I need to inspect every room of the house if I am to be responsible for it in your absence,” I told her, and so we spent ten minutes opening the curtains, making sure the closet doors were hung correctly, noting any stains on the walls and carpet.

And then we came to the bathroom, which of course was spotless. I decided to pounce.

“And where is your toilet bowl brush?” I couldn’t keep the acid out of my voice.

Rhoda blanched.

“I really don’t know,” she stammered, “Joyce—the cleaning lady—does…”

I had to interrupt.

“You don’t know how your staff cleans?”

Two days later, I got the report from Martha, the daughter. Rhoda had gone to bed for three hours after the inspection. And ten minutes after I started the housesitting, I ventured up to the bathroom.

Do I have to tell you?

I will tell you—if you are lucky enough not to know—that this is grief. Because there’s no middle, nothing except the extremes. Which is why I was sobbing, yes, but also laughing hysterically yesterday. Nor was I in any control, especially when I heard Ralph’s voice—sounding completely the same as his father’s. Oddly, he was doing better than I.

Not surprising—that’s another thing about grief. You often find yourself comforting people who are calling to comfort you. So what do you do? Well, it may sound heartless, but we took turns answering the phone, after Franny died.

What else happens? Well, for me, I get jittery, to the extent that I can’t type. So how, yesterday, was I going to do Bach and Beer? Could I play the cello—no, I decided, and then told Lady, the owner of the café, who had been hugging me and crying with me and who, like a good Sanjuanera  had come down the street to call up to me in my apartment to see if I was all right.

Why was I there? Because I wanted to be alone, and the moment I was, it wasn’t right., but I didn’t have the energy, somehow, to get up and go back to the café. But seeing her made me realize—I have to get out of the apartment.

Then I was hungry, and didn’t feel like asking for anything. Eventually I realized—the kids were eating pizza.

“Naïa, do you think some of that pizza wants to be eaten by me?”

“Ask it…”

Then I became obsessed—I had to call the paper. What kind of son of a newspaperman could forget to call the Wisconsin State Journal? I could feel Jack frowning down at me. At least I hope it’s down….

And here I confess—I couldn’t find the number anywhere. And today, when I was thinking better, I finally got it through switchboard.com. And why there? Because in all of Madison.com (the electronic version of the State Journal), I couldn’t locate one number, except for the individual reporters. Those were there, but where was the city desk, dammit?

“People forget you when you get older,” said Franny matter-of-factly. Not quite true—Facebook went wild, and my post on Rabin got 341 hits (a normal day is 100).

Nor is it the lack of a telephone number for the city desk, but doesn’t a city of over a quarter of a million have an arts editor? You know, somebody who goes to concerts and knows everyone artistically in town?

I spoke to somebody today—a nice Wisconsin person who cheerfully took my call and promised to follow through.

That stiff breeze, chilling you from the north? It’s my father—Jack—up there spinning….