Chapter 27: Life

“I DON’T KNOW what Kat would do without me,” Dad said. “It’s not like I do that much for her, except love her as my daughter, but it’s your mother that worries me. Sometimes she gets a little too caught up in herself and her position in the community. She’s constantly worried about what people would think if they knew Kat was dating a girl, or that we were going to let her go off to Minnesota before she’s even eighteen. Your mother can be pretty absolute in her opinions and without me to help temper them and shield Kat from them, I just don’t know.”

“Dad, the doctors say it will all be fine. You’ll have a little snip and they’ll cut out the growth, then a couple of days later you’ll be eating like a normal person again,” I said. “There’s no need to borrow trouble from the future. It will be a long time before any of us need to worry about you not being here.”

“Oh, son. In our teens and twenties, we all think we are immortal. There comes a time when we realize how fragile life is. I might survive the surgery tomorrow. Probably. But there’s no guarantee that I’ll ever be able to hold up my end of the bargain again. You need to watch out for your sister. Calm your mother down when she’s ready to fly off the handle. Be ready to balance things if I’m not able to. Please, don’t run away like Naomi did. Stay part of the family.”

“Dad, you know I’m committed to the family. Not just you and Mom and Kat, but Naomi and Deborah, too. You have to know I also have my own family to take care of. Patricia and Toni, yes, but also Ronda and Anna. We’ll always be having to make compromises and there’s always a chance we can’t be where we’re needed at the moment,” I said. “Ronda and Anna are really upset that they can’t be here this week. It isn’t because they don’t want to be with the family. Naomi can’t be here because she’s in Germany. It isn’t because she doesn’t want to be with the family.”

“You and Naomi—you had different fathers. I don’t mean literally different biological fathers. I mean I became a different man before you were born. As much as I wanted to convince Naomi of that, I never could. Deborah, she accepted that I’m different, but she never forgot what I was. How could they? I just want to be a good father.”

“I think you’re the best, Dad. I also think that if that nurse comes by to shoo me out one more time, I’m likely to be banned from coming back. You get a good night’s rest. We’ll all be here in the morning.”

“Goodnight, son.”

Patricia and Kat stayed home with the three kids Tuesday morning while Mom, Deborah, and I went to the hospital. There wasn’t much we could do for Dad. He was already in prep for surgery when we got there. Mom got to see him before they put him out. Deb and I were mostly there to support Mom.

The surgeon came out about two hours later.

“The surgery was a success,” he said. “We were able to resection the bowel, so he won’t have a drainage bag. He’ll need to stay here a couple of days while we make sure things don’t come apart, and then he’ll be on limited activity and a soft diet for the next two weeks. We’ll check him again then and make sure everything is tight. Biggest danger in a surgery like this is peritonitis if there is any perforation. I’m pretty sure he’ll have a clean bill of health in a few days.”

“So, you got it all?” I asked. My vast knowledge of cancer was limited to hearing that it spreads.

“There’s a small spot on the liver, but it won’t be hurting anything. People live with that kind of thing for years all the time. We got the cancer we went after and that’s all that was necessary,” the doctor said. I didn’t much like him. He took Mom back to the recovery room and said Deb and I would be able to visit when he was moved to a room.

“Deb, was Dad really different when you were a child?” I asked. She looked at me as if debating what she was going to say for a minute.

“He mellowed out a lot after you were born. Maybe a little before. He was always good to me. Firstborn privilege, you know? Naomi had it harder.”

“He said something about that last night. Said he just wanted to be a good father,” I said.

“He keeps working on it,” Deb answered. “It doesn’t pay to think about it too much. Leave old pain behind. There’s plenty of new pain to deal with.”

“Are things okay?” I asked. “I mean with you and John?”

“Yeah. Hard. But okay. He keeps talking about signing up again as soon as he gets a degree. Go in as an officer. It’s ... um ... Nate, I’m so sorry your Tony didn’t make it back. But not all of John came back either. He sometimes wakes up in the middle of the night in tremors. Has even screamed and pushed me out of bed. ‘To protect me.’ It’s hard.”

“Why would he want to go back into the army after all that?”

“He really thrived on the structure. He always knew what he needed to do. He’s working at that amateur electronics store as a manager, but it seems like he’s lost most of the time. He’s not good at creating his own structure. He’s good at following orders.”

“I’m sorry to hear that, Deb. I hope he can find the right job and structure. He’s taking classes, right?”

“Yes. Night classes, which means he’s not home any more than he was when he was in the army. And then...” She just stopped. I waited a few seconds before I prompted her.

“And then what, Deb?”

“I discovered he was taking classes and talking about his degree, but the classes he took weren’t helping him get a degree. They were just random things that interested him at the moment. I had to sit down with him and ask him what degree he planned to get. Then I went through the school catalog and even visited a counselor there to find out what classes he should take. Me! Visiting a college counselor. I felt remarkably out of place. But eventually, I got an actual course program outlined for him and just told him what he had to enroll in each term. I have to ask him each day if he’s done his homework, and I even read what he’s written and correct it. I’m getting a glimpse of what it will be like when Cameron is in school. I’m acting as John’s mommy.”

“I’m so sorry, Deb. I guess nobody survives in that war.”

We rotated sitting with Dad the rest of the day until we were all told to go home at seven. We took shifts the next day so Kat and Patricia could see him, too. He was still pretty out of it, but by Thursday he was sitting up in bed and talking some. We played some cribbage, but he didn’t concentrate well enough to play well.

Nonetheless, they let him come home on Friday, but he wasn’t supposed to do anything more strenuous than move from bed to the bathroom for a week.

That was another problem. He said he always felt like he had to go poop, but the doctors told him that was a psychological thing because there was nothing in his bowels yet. Except gas. He passed some god-awful gas. Even Toni ran out of the room once yelling “Grampa’s stinky!”

Ronda and Anna were at the house on Friday to meet us when we got home. Deb had to take her two kids and head back to East St. Louis so she could take care of her husband. I told Dad we’d all come back for a night next weekend, then Sunday afternoon, my family drove back to Chicago. I was more exhausted than if I’d been in school and working all week.

At least I was ready for class Monday morning. I’d had plenty of time to read To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. I’d never seen the movie before. It was staggering. We were assigned to meet with our small group during the week and prepare a larger class discussion for the next Monday.

In our Media and Social Justice class on Tuesday, Professor Argento held up the newest issue of LOOK magazine. I bit my lip, knowing that I would be published in that magazine next month!

“We’ll have a look at LOOK today,” he quipped. “LOOK is one of the two great magazines of the past generation that we can credit for the beginning of photojournalism: LOOK and LIFE. The two magazines emerged from the Great Depression, LIFE in November 1936, just three months before LOOK in February 1937. Both magazines published photos of news and special interest with stories often told in captions. In today’s issue of LOOK, Allen Drury’s apology for Richard Nixon with photos by Fred Maroon, is not really the most significant thing about this issue. Nor is the article on the declining power of the Vatican. You might be more interested in the sometimes-amusing article about Tom Baker as Rasputin in the film Nicholas and Alexandra, or the photo essay about Peggy Lee. But what is most significant about this issue is Mike Cowles’ announcement that this is the final issue of the magazine.”

“What?” I shouted. “I ... but ... final?”

“I doubt the world will greet the news with such shocked consternation as you, Mr. Hart. But perhaps it should. You see this marks the demise of a significant medium that people have depended on for forty years. It and its counterpart LIFE, have brought the realities of social issues into people’s homes in a way they could not ignore” Argento continued.

“According to Cowles, the magazine has experienced falling revenue that is in direct proportion to the rise of television in our country. Nearly every home has a television and some today are even color! And they bring the evening news into people’s homes, not weekly, but nightly.”

I was still stuck back on the idea that this was the last issue of LOOK magazine—the magazine my photos were supposed to appear in next week. How could people ever trust the television more than print to bring them the news? What was going to happen to our drive to get Fran nominated for an award?

I barely made it through class, let alone meeting with Leslie, Leanne, Carrie, and Dora for our study group. I rushed home and went straight to the phone.

“Adrienne! They’ve quit publishing LOOK!” I shouted when she picked up the phone.

“My poor master,” she said. “I heard. Our sponsor called me to talk to you. Our project is now closed, he said.”

“Well, can’t we submit the photo story to LIFE? They publish almost the same thing.”

“We don’t own the rights. This was essentially a work for hire. The magazine owns all rights, even though it isn’t publishing any longer. They might, one day, run the story in one of the company’s other publications, or it could just languish in their archives forever.”

“Can’t our sponsor do something? He could pay them to print another issue.”

“Nate, master, please. Even our sponsor realizes that he is rich, but he is not God. He discussed buying the magazine, but the business simply isn’t there. He’s setting aside the drive to get Fran nominated this year and will hope the next movie gives her the boost she needs in her career. But this is closed.”

“Damn it! I’m sorry, Adrienne. I know this isn’t your fault, but it is so damned frustrating. Does Fran know?” I asked.

“Honey, Fran doesn’t even know the photos were for the magazine. We did retain a certain number of the photos that we can use for promoting her and the movie, but they aren’t enough to launch a major article or campaign,” Adrienne said.

“Well, that’s all pretty disappointing, but I guess there’s nothing I can do about it. Is there anything else I should know about in LA?”

“The production company won’t be ready to start filming until spring. They might ask you to come out again before then, but the reports are that scripting is now progressing. If you would like me to come to Chicago so you can punish me for the loss of the LOOK assignment, I can be on the next plane.”

“Oh, my dear Fifi. I cannot punish you for things that are beyond your control. I will have to think up another reason!”

“Whatever would please you, master,” she said.

“It would very much please me, and your mistresses, to have you come to Chicago, but things are a little tense here at the moment. My dad had cancer surgery this past week and we’re headed back to visit again this weekend.”

“If you will be in town, I could come for a long weekend, say the first weekend of November. That would be clear of your family holiday on Thanksgiving,” she said. She sounded hopeful that I would ask her to visit. Or maybe it was my ears that were hopeful.

“Why don’t we plan on that, Fifi. I’ll need to talk to the family, but I’m sure it will work out.”

“I can call Miss Anna to work on details,” Fifi volunteered. Definitely hopeful!

“Why don’t you do that. Whatever she decides comes from me as well.”

“Oh, thank you, master.”

“Fifi, I want to hold you in my arms. It has already been too long.”

“How I long for you, master.”

I met with my Literature on Film breakout group on Thursday afternoon. We were agreed that the film did a reasonable job of converting the book to a different medium and started identifying things that we missed or that we thought were extraneous. There were five of us in the discussion group and we put together what we considered would be our contribution to the discussion the next Monday. I kept what Dr. Stewart had told me about staying involved, so I was careful to participate, even volunteering to keep the notes for the discussion. That way, I wasn’t dominating the conversation in my effort to participate.

When we were seniors in high school, Ronda took time to point out that she felt she and Christine controlled the conversation when we were all together and might have run over some of my opinions because they were excited about something. When we became five and then six in our family—seven when Toni was born—we realized it was even more important for us to make sure each person in the family had a voice. We’d actually had some practice sessions where we all had to participate equally.

Of course, then Christine left us and we all talked about our feelings and how it would affect the family. We were all unsure of whether we’d stay together as a family. Then when I broke up with Elizabeth—and we all realized that she was only my girlfriend and not a girlfriend of the other three—we had some additional conversations that proved to make the family stronger and to integrate our love for Adrienne.

I say all that to get around to the point of participating in a discussion without dominating it. And since my discussion group was four women and me, I felt responsible for both participating and not dominating. And not letting one or all of the women dominate the conversation. We discovered we had different perceptions of the characters in the movie and that included whether the main character was actually Scout or her father, Atticus. It was interesting that in the book it was a lot clearer than it was in the movie and I did manage to explain the predominantly male-dominated industry in California.

Friday morning, after Ronda’s last class, we headed back to Sage to visit my dad. He was feeling much better and was up and moving around. He was still on a diet of soft foods, about which he complained to anyone who would listen.

“Why don’t they consider donuts a soft food?” he complained. “What’s softer than cake? No. Not according to the doctor. It’s pudding and jello and baby food. I’m beginning to feel like a damned baby.”

When he was feeling that cantankerous, we all assumed he was definitely getting better. We had a good weekend and Toni pronounced Grampa to not be stinky anymore. We headed back to town on Sunday afternoon and promised to be back for Thanksgiving weekend.

Mom was given strict orders to call us if there were any changes in Dad’s condition. Then I had a quiet conversation with Kat to make sure she called me immediately if Mom didn’t.

Adrienne got to town on Thursday the fourth. I went straight from my Literature on Film discussion group to the hotel where I knew she’d be checked in. I found Anna already there and Adrienne naked on her knees—eating my girlfriend.

“Oh God! I needed that!” Anna screeched. I was just laughing at the two of them.

Then both of them attacked me and in a minute, I was naked and sprawled on the bed while Anna rode my face to another orgasm and Fifi got to bounce up and down on my cock.

That set the tempo for a weekend of debauchery as Anna, Ronda, Patricia, and I rotated in and out of Adrienne’s room and in and out of Adrienne. Saturday night, I found myself taking care of Toni as the four girls went out for a massive playdate. I was surprised, though, when I woke up with Toni in the morning and none of them were back home yet. They’d all collapsed on Adrienne’s bed and spent the night.

Oh, well. I got the rest of Sunday with our mistress and blessed whatever powers brought her into our lives when my cock sank into her warm and welcoming bottom. I just stayed with her for the night Sunday and after breakfast in the morning, I walked over to my Literature on Film class to watch Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? I remembered Mom and Dad going out with the district ministers to see the film soon after we moved to Tenbrook. It was a big discussion group thing for the ministers in counseling married couples.

I sincerely hoped that my girlfriends and I didn’t develop the kind of dangerous game-playing that went on in that movie. It was an interesting discussion, though, in that this was based on an Edward Albee play. Other than Shakespeare, I don’t think I’d ever read a play script before—except reading some lines for Elizabeth when she did Streetcar. The discussion focused on minor changes that were required by the MPAA. Elizabeth Taylor had said that saying “Screw you!” was considered too vulgar and the line was changed to “God damn you!” because that wasn’t as profane. We questioned whether control of this sort was a manipulation of social justice.

On Friday the twelfth, I had a most welcome client. Yvonne Renninger, my former business teacher Miss Sullivan, was at the studio at ten. I decided I could manage this session alone and didn’t have an assistant in the studio.

“Yvonne, it’s great to see you again,” I greeted her.

“You, too, Nate. I’m so glad they’ve begun giving teachers prep days four times a year. With no school today, I decided it was time to advance my portfolio,” she said. She welcomed my embrace and kissed me passionately.

“Wow! That is quite a greeting,” I said.

“And there’s much more where that came from,” she said seductively. “It is time to start working on my coming out photographs.”

“Coming out?” I asked.

“In less than a year, our five-year moratorium on releasing my photos will end. Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten that you can publish any photo you’ve taken of me next fall,” she said.

“Yvonne, you know I wouldn’t do anything to hurt you or your reputation. I’ll hold those photos forever if you want,” I said. She kissed me again.

“That’s very kind of you, Nate, but it isn’t what I want. I want you to release them. In fact, I intend to display them myself. This is my last year teaching.”

“Last year? Are you unhappy with your career?” I asked.

“No. But it isn’t my career. I’ve shown you many of my yoga poses. You know better than anyone what condition my body is in. I’ve just turned thirty years old, and I assure you my body is as tight and fit as it was in college. Probably more so. I hope you enjoy it,” she laughed.

She hadn’t moved away from our greeting hug and pulled one of my hands up to caress her breast as we kissed again.

“Teaching was never supposed to be my career. I got a degree in business in order to prepare myself for my own business. My second major was in physical training. I was quite an athlete in college, which may have contributed to my being a wild thing. Now it is time for me to leave the teaching and start my own business. I have amassed enough capital to open my own fitness studio here in Chicago. It will be for women only.”