There is a new bike path in Falmouth.
This bike path is gorgeous.
It bgins in East Falmouth and ends in Woods Hole. It winds through cranberry bogs (postcard worthy) - water inlets, and fragrant wooded areas that fill one with the hope and enthusiasm for (the end of the day ritual) of (wine on the deck) and seafood dinners.
I love it.
And having been suspicious of Falmouth (too close to Boston, too suburban, too many standard issue Cape Cod houses) I now (through this excellent bike path) have fallen for this part of the Cape.
This bike path cost 3.5 million dollars, courtesy of Ted Kennedy. Kennedy slipped it into some bill or package? What do you call those things? Those bridges (built for no good reason-that go no where) in the state of Alaska, paid for with Federal money?
Pork barrel!
(is what I think they call it)
This waste of federal money is a huge success! (to me)
"I wonder if Texas or New Mexico realize their tax dollars, their wages, have gone into sprucing up my summer community?" my mother digs.
I let her Federalist leanings hit me like a feather. I dig this bike path.
Thank you Ted Kennedy. (and all other 49 states)
I can bike directly to my father's hospital.
It is right on the path, as is the picturesque Chapaqoit Beach. It backs up to amateur tomato and flower stands. It backs up to a campground with Tee-pees and the smell of cedar-brush wood fires. It has bracing views of the harbor and easy access to main street Falmouth.
At noon I begin my ride.
I bike to Block Buster to return "He's Just Not that Into You" -(terrible)
My mother and I have been watching chick flicks all week. These films are enjoyably formulaic. "The Holiday" (preposterous) has been the best so far.
Next, I bike to Chappaqoit Beach.
It is 74 degrees and scarily sunny. I load my body with sunblock, "glue" as my mother calls it, and lie on a big rock. The ocean is sparkling and warm (I'd wager) but I don't go in. I don't go in because my legs aren't strong enough to walk my body out of the water. This is okay. I've had a policy
(for much of my life) that if I was near the water in swimmable conditions, I must go in.
(this is true)
So today I have no regrets.
I continue to the hospital.
As I pull up to the entrance, I spot my mother in her SUV.
"Mother!"
My mother makes a surprise face.
My mother rolls down all of the car windows at once, finding the driver's side window, last.
"What - are - you - doing?"
"I'm going to get USA TODAY for dad (a guilty pleasure for him) and go for a visit."
but cars have pulled up behind my mother forcing her to drive away without comment.
My dad has been at this hospital for two months. He has lost 20 pounds. He can't walk anymore.
We've never seen his doctors (really).
In order to get attention there, my mother is a shrew.
She is notorious (there). But in her defense, this place is lax and weird.
(Don't get sick in Cape Cod. Fly to New York, train to Boston, shuttle to Florida, but do NOT stay in Cape Cod. This is the lesson we have learned, have been taught)
My father's room is in the center of the hospital, down two long corridors with hand railings on each side. I don't use them. I decide to practice my walking. I remember (from Feldenchrist) the spine naturally twists as you walk. I practice this motion down the two long hallways.
My father's room is empty. I sit on the end of his bed and answer my I-phone.
It's Jackie, Jackie my (sitcom neighbor) from New York.
She is 72. She's lived in New York her whole life.
We see each other every day.
The sun pours in through the closed windows, the air conditioning hums, Chapaqoit Beach seems in a different state.
"Hi Jackie"
"Chawlie did you call me?"
"Yes I did. How are you?
"Chawlie I'm not doin' so good. Aroo (the cat) is good, he's fine, he slept on my lap for forty-five minutes today. But Chawlie, my fellow, that GUY called me again. He called me to tawk about his ex-wife, his ex-wife who wrote the lyrics to "Lollipop Lollipop" She's bein' given some award or somethin. She's getting a (three thousand dollar a month apartment) on 26th and Park! Chawlie! Why does he call me? and tawk about her? He never asks about me! I told him I have an audition for "Who Wants to be a Millionaire" and he didn't even ask me about it. He just kept tawkin about HER!
"Jackie! Why do you take his calls? You've got caller ID, don't you? Simply don't answer his calls.
"Chawlie, I don't seek these calls out. He calls ME. What am I supposed to do? What does it all mean?"
"Jackie, have you ever heard of the movie "He's Just Not That Into you"?
"I read the book Chawlie... I read the book, oh... last year, I think.
"Well I rented the movie last night, and it wasn't very good but..."
"Do you think it'd help Charlie?"
"yeah, I mean, its kind of stupid, but in a way, that stupid movie advice is really kind of true."
"okay Chawlie, I'll rent it. I'll rent the ..."
"Gotta go Jackie, my dad is being wheeled in. I'll call you later."
"okay, bye Chawlie."
My father is wheeled into the room by two strapping young men who talk to my father like he is sweet and ancient and simple. My father allows this.
"Hi Dad"
"Hey Charlie"
"Where were you, PT?"
"Getting new x-rays which was an ordeal. They put me on a stretcher in an ambulance. But when they lie me down for the x-rays, there is some bone, some small bone in my back that protrudes. And when it hits the table, ... JEEZ does it hurt. It hurts like hell. I asked the doctor about it, it really hurt."
"Maybe it's because you lost all that weight, did you think about that? Maybe it's because you lost too much weight and so now your bones are sticking out."
"Well, that's right, that's probably right... I'll have to ask the doctor about it."
(pause)
"I brought you USA TODAY."
I have often (through the years) brought my father the New York Post. That paper smells of New York of the commuter world, of his old working life. (I often read it for Page Six and the theatre columns and Liz Smith) There weren't any Posts in Falmouth today so I brought him USA Today (instead).
"Well, look at that. Thank you... it's really shrunk."
"Yeah, everythings shrunk these days. Look at the New York Times Magazine. It's puny now!"
My dad opens USA Today and I read the Falmouth Enterprise.
We sit in matching vinyl recliners by the bay window.
I read an op-ed piece by a psychiatrist living in the area who urges his fellow Cape Cod citizens to wear helmets when they ride their bikes. This call for safety was prompted by the excellent new bike path. The psychiatrist tells a cautionary tale of (almost) being killed (had it not been for his helmet) "Most people, most ADULTS don't wear helmets, what is to be done about it?" he asks.
I don't use a helmet because as soon as I buy one I loose it, I leave it somewhere. And even when I have one, it never fits right, so that If i was in an accident, it really wouldn't help much.
Still, he convinces me.
It would be bad to have a fatal neurological disease AND brain damage.
My train of thought is interrupted.
My father laughs at something in USA Today. He doesn't share and I don't ask.
A nurse stops in and grins, "Well, I can see the resemblance, you two are identical!" and since my father looks like shit, I stare vacantly back at the nurse in the manner of Pugsley Adams.
Amother nurse, Dave, a male nurse, handsome and pudgy with a clean bald spot on the back of his head, offers ginger ale to both of us. Dave is my age, Irish and agile on his feet (I observe). His motor neurons render him sexy and heroic (to me).
As we sip our ginger ale, I tell my father that "I've been to the beach but I didn't go swimming because my legs are too weak to pull my body out of the water. My legs are not unlike your legs dad, in many ways, you and I are in the same boat."
and I add, I ask, I am compelled to ask because this is MY question, MY life preoccupation, this is my lot,
"but, I still look okay, right?
I still look fine?
I mean I don't look unhealthy?
(pause)
Do I?"
And my dad says,
"Why, I should say not." Like he's Robert F. Buckley or something.
I like that... "I should say not."
I check the wall clock, it's five o'clock.
"I need to go."
"Where you going?" he asks, he reacts. He clearly doesn't want me to go.
Just sitting and reading with your dad, a friend, anyone, is about the nicest thing you can do. (I realize)
"I have to go, I have to get back to Blockbuster.
And I need to buy red wine. So expensive at your local liquor store. Nothing under ten bucks. Really overpriced."
"Well... that's right it is."
It occurs to me later that I might be torturing my father with my talk of wine. He hasn't had a drink in months. He still (cheekily) asks the nurses if they've brought him his cocktail when they deliver his lunch of dinner.
"Well Dad, I'll say good bye."
"But I'll see you tomorrow."
"You'll see me tomorrow."
I zoom down the bike path homeward bound.
At Block Buster, I rent "The Duchess" (overwrought),
and at the over-priced liquor store, I buy some Malbec from Argentina for $13.99.
I go to the gym and work out (using only the ten pound weights).
I shower and blow dry my hair. I flatten it into submission.
It's a cool, sunny September night.
I decide to bike for a bit after my work-out. Not on the excellent bike path but around the Golf country club. I zoom past my parents condo and into mcmansion land. The houses are slightly unreal, like they've been created on a hollywood back-lot. They look like gaudy illustrations from a children's book, too many window-boxes, too many gables, too many roof lines. They look too tarted up (for my taste).
And I get lost.
The roads and houses seem identical.
I get VERY lost.
In the dusky light, I pull my bike off to the side of the road and call my mother.
"Where are you?"
"I'm lost."
"What street are you on?"
"Equestrian Lane?"
I hold my i-Phone to my ear as my mother guides me home, passing house after house, motoring through the eerie development. I pull into the garqage just as the Septenber sun slips away.
.
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