What does she want to hear? That all we did was talk? Or that Jack started bad-mouthing Dad, so I left? Or that he called Margo insane regarding our mothers? None of this is true, but I’d be willing to say any of these things if that will end it. Saying what people want to hear is my forte.
So here I am again, caught between pleasing others and asserting myself. And suddenly, what Margo wants me to say doesn’t matter. I can’t please others all the time. Last night proved that. There is a me inside that appears to have grown bigger than the me I was back then. If I am who I am now—if I am who I want to be—I have to act it.
“Last night,” I tell her, “was about my needing comfort and his being the one who could give it.”
She is quiet for several beats. Then, “I’m sorry.”
“For what?” I snap, still in assertive mode. “There’s nothing wrong with my needing Jack. He may be irreverent, but he is honest and smart. He understands what I’m about, and he cares. If you’re going to talk about how awful he was twenty years ago—”
“I’m not,” she interrupts. “What I meant was that I’m sorryIcouldn’t be there for you.”
Having been ready to argue, I’m suspended while the apology registers. Then I laugh in relief. “You covered for me with Joy. That was the best.”
“So,” she gives me a reprieve from Jack, “is Anne pregnant, and why did she call you the bastard daughter?”
“I can’t find my comb,” Dad says as he comes from the kitchen. Breathing heavily, he collapses to sit on the stairs. “Someone took my comb.”
“Who would take your comb?” Margo asks gently enough, but he is visibly struggling.
“I don’t know, but it isn’t there. I can’t find it.” Eyes clearing, he looks from Margo to me. This isn’t paranoia, I realize. It’s stark honesty. The words come out in a rush, as if he knows how brief his window of lucidity may be. “I can never find things. I don’t know where I am. I don’t know where I’m supposed to be. I can’t work. I can’t drive. I can’t finish my crossword puzzle.” Planting his feet apart on the lower tread for balance, he puts straight arms on his pajama knees, his cast barely breaking the cuff. “Listen to me,” he orders, the Tom Aldiss of old. “It’s clear. Right now. She says every old person is like this, but they’re not.”
“She?” Margo asks.
His brow tics as he searches. “Anne,” he finally says, and his blue eyes drill us again. “You’re both here now, so I’m telling you. I don’t want this. I want to end it. I tried to get pills, but my connections are gone. I’d drive over the bluff, but she hides the keys. So, I have a gun.”
We both gasp. I’m telling myself that suicides don’t announce their intentions as clearly as this, and that when they do it’s only a cry for help which we’re here to answer, when Margo says, “Well, you did have one, only we were worried about it being in the potting shed where anyone could get it, so we disposed of it.”
I prepare for an outburst. I’m thinking that he looks frail, that surely Margo and I can subdue him until help arrives. But his thoughts have snagged on something she said.
Incredibly, he smiles. “The potting shed,” he breathes. “That’swhere I put it. I forgot.” The smile fades. “See? I don’t remember things. It’s been a long time since I put it there.”
“Did you have it on the boat with you?” Margo asks. “That night?”
I’m thinking of ways to prevent suicide, who to call, how to talk down a man like Tom Aldiss. But Margo is right raising this. It’s an opportunity we can’t ignore.
“What night?” he asks.
“On the boat.”
He gives a quick headshake. “No gun on the boat.” He frowns. “Didn’t I say that?”
“How did you get a gun?” I try, to which he snorts.
“Any fool can get a gun.”
“When did you buy it?”
“Oh. I don’t know. Maybe last year?” His gaze moves to the dining room window, eyes distant again. “It’s self-protection.”
“Against what?” Margo cries. This is the first hint that she is as disturbed by the discussion as I am. “There are no intruders here.”
“The future,” he says. “When my mind goes, but my body stays. I don’t want to live that way.”
Crossing to him, I sit on the stairs. “That’s not the answer.”
“What else…” He shrugs, but it’s the look on his face that moves me. It is gentle in ways I’ve never known, gentle and apologetic and sad. Here is a humble Tom Aldiss wanting to end his life.
I grip his arm. “Don’t, Dad. Please. You have lots of good times. Can’t you still enjoy them?”
