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….
