The Fixer

52

Change of plans,” Rick told the cab driver. “I’d like to go to the Alfred Becker nursing home in Brookline.”

“Where?” The driver pulled over to the side and entered the Becker home in his smartphone’s GPS.

Rick felt his heartbeat slow as he watched the traffic, the buildings they passed, and everything seemed remote and miniature. He was lost in thought. Twenty minutes later, though it seemed to be two or three, the cab pulled up to the circular drive in front of the Alfred Becker.

He got out gingerly and limped to the entrance, pushed the glass doors open with his right hand. The woman sitting at the front desk ignored him, as she ignored everybody. He signed in and walked down the broad main corridor, past the elevator, everything slower and unreal, as if in a dream.

When he reached his father’s wing, he passed one of the nurses, Carolyn, who just looked at him with surprise as he passed. For a moment he forgot why, then he remembered what his face must look like. The beautiful Saint Lucian nurse, Jewel, with the fawnlike eyes, was lingering in front of the closed door to Lenny’s room. “What happened to you, Mr. Rick?”

“I was in an accident, but I’m okay.”

“It looks-very bad.”

“It’s not as bad as it looks.”

She touched his arm and said, “I’m sorry about your father.”

She opened the door. He was lying on his back. When Rick saw him, his stomach took a deep dive. He couldn’t stop himself from exclaiming, in a small strangled voice, “Oh.”

He hadn’t expected Lenny’s expression to be so serene, but it was. That angry expression seemed to have dissolved in death. His mouth gaped, just a little. His cataract-clouded eyes looked at nothing. Rick reached up with his good hand and pulled Lenny’s eyelids closed. The skin was pale and waxy, translucent, and it felt slightly cool to the touch.

“Dad,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

“He die in his sleep, your father,” Jewel said. “I come by and see him when my shift start, at midnight, and he was watching the TV. I come by again and ask him if he want to turn off the TV because it’s so late and he didn’t say nothin’ but he was alive. I turn off the TV and his lamp and tuck him in and everything. When I look in at three tirty, he gone.”

“He died in his sleep,” Rick echoed, just to say something. “That’s nice.”

“I pronounce and tell doctor by phone. But we wait till you get here to call funeral home. Do you have funeral home to call?”

“Funeral home? Oh. Yeah, no. What’s that big one, Orlonsky and Sons?” The big funeral home on Beacon Street in Brookline. He remembered driving past the Grecian columns, ORLONSKY & SONS MEMORIAL CHAPEL in black letters.

She nodded. “Orlonsky, yes, we call them. Your father-he was a very nice man, your father was.”

“He was. What was-the cause of death?”

“I think the doctor will say cardiac failure. Maybe he was leaving here too much.” It took him a while to understand what she meant. Finally he understood: Lenny’s traveling to Charlestown and back as often as he did must have been stressful for him.

When Jewel left, Rick sat in the chair beside the bed and thought for a moment. He felt heavy-limbed and achy. The pain had come back. It was time for another pain pill, but he needed to stay alert a while longer.

Then he took out his phone and stepped into the hallway. On the West Coast it was three hours earlier: one in the morning. She might still be awake, but more likely she was asleep.

The phone rang six times before she answered.

“Wendy,” he said. “How soon can you get back to Boston?”

Half an hour later-surprisingly quickly-someone from the funeral home came, a young guy in a dark crewneck sweater. He went to work at once, lowering the bed expertly, transferring the body to a rolling cot, covering the body with a quilt he had brought.

Rick didn’t cry.

He’d been meaning to tell his dad how much he admired him, but it was too late.