The Fixer

4

The whiteboard sign mounted outside Leonard Hoffman’s room said, in big flowery purple letters:

A sign like that hung outside every resident’s room at the Alfred Becker Nursing and Rehabilitation Center. It was meant to remind the nursing staff that their charges were real people with real families and lives, give them something to chat about.

All the nurses and health care aides acted as if they liked Len a lot, probably because that was part of their job, to make visiting family members think that each Dad or Grandma was their very favorite. Which had a certain piquancy to it. Because if Leonard Hoffman did have the power of speech, they’d all love him for real.

He’d had what people called an outsize personality. He was endearing, funny, corny. He loved women, flirted with them in a way that was flattering, that didn’t seem at all icky, especially coming from an older guy. Women were always “girls” to him. They were “honey” and “sweetheart” and “doll.” If a massive stroke hadn’t robbed him of his ability to wheedle and charm, he’d have the nurses glowing around him, wagging their index fingers, mock chiding. He could never resist a pun or a groaner. Leonard, in full command of his speech, would have asked the squat dark-haired nurse Carolyn, with a wink, “You sure you’re not Greek? ’Cause you look like a goddess to me!” He would have told the sloe-eyed nurse Jewel, the Saint Lucian beauty, “You must be Jamaican-Jamaican me crazy!”

And they would have loved it.

He’d been something of a lady’s man, in his day. He was always a flamboyant dresser, favoring bold striped shirts and double-breasted pinstriped suits like Al Capone might have worn and bright ties with matching pocket squares.

Now he wore drawstring pants and a pajama top.

But life wasn’t like To Kill a Mockingbird. Lenny wasn’t exactly Atticus Finch, and Rick wasn’t Scout. There was nothing soft-focus about their relationship. It was tense, distant, frustrating.

“You haven’t touched your lunch,” Rick said.

The meat loaf was a revolting beige, the peas a hideous electric green. Len, pre-stroke, would have patted his food with his fingertips in response and said, “There, I’m touching it.”

But Len now just looked at Rick balefully. His expression rarely changed. He had a penetrating, almost horrified stare, as if he’d just glimpsed something blood-curdling. Rick visited his father almost every Sunday, had done so as often as possible since the stroke, but he still couldn’t get used to his father’s harrowed expression.

“Actually,” he said, “I don’t know how they expect you to eat that shit. But they’re not going to let me give you any ice cream if you don’t eat your meat loaf.”

His father turned his head toward the window and watched the Brookline traffic, a gob of spittle on the left side of his mouth. Rick took the napkin from his lunch tray and daubed the spit away.

It had been a bumpy ride since Len’s long-suffering, loyal secretary, Joan, had discovered him sprawled out on the floor in his office after lunch one day eighteen years ago. An ambulance had rushed him to Mass General, where they determined he’d had what they called a “left-side blowout.” His left internal carotid artery, stiffened and gummed up from seven decades of steaks and ice cream, had burst, cutting off blood flow to most of the left hemisphere of his brain. He had a huge lesion in the frontal, temporal, and parietal lobes.

They put him on a ventilator, explained that he was likely now a global aphasic-meaning he couldn’t speak, probably couldn’t read or write, and they didn’t know how much he understood of what was said to him. Rick figured his father would be a vegetable. Wendy, being younger, deferred to her brother on all decisions.

After a week, Leonard was shunted to a rehab facility, where he seemed to make progress for a while. An occupational therapist had taught him to walk again, which he did now in a frantic, staggering way, swinging his stiff right leg around in a circle. Most of the time he used a wheelchair. His right arm didn’t work anymore. The right side of his face drooped. A speech pathologist, a large black woman named Jocelyn, tried in vain to get him to communicate. It didn’t look good.

Then one day, Jocelyn grabbed Rick in the hall outside his father’s room and said, “He understands. I know he does.”

She pulled him into the room and demonstrated by putting some objects on the table in front of Len. A key ring, her watch, her glasses. “Leonard, would you please look at the watch?” she said.

Len moved his eyes to the right and stared, unmistakably, at her pink Fossil.

There was, Rick thought sadly, someone inside there.

But apart from that one parlor trick, Len seemed to make no progress, and a month later he was moved to the nursing home to sit in a wheelchair all day in front of the TV. Rick still had no idea how much his father understood when you talked to him.

He was unshaven this morning, or maybe just poorly shaven, clumps of gray beard scattered here and there like tumbleweed on his chin and his sunken cheeks. His fingernails were long and ridged and yellow, badly in need of clipping.

“Hey, Dad, I’m having some work done to the house.”

Len turned and looked in his direction. His expression was hostile, disdainful, the way he constantly looked these days.

Talking to his father felt like talking to himself, except that Rick kept some topics-Holly and all that, the flaming wreck of his career-carefully off-limits.

“You remember Jeff Hollenbeck next door? He’s a contractor now, and he’s going to give me a good price.”

Len stared, blinked a few times.

“Remember I said we’re going to sell the old place, now that no one’s living there anymore?” He sidestepped the fact that he was sleeping on Len’s couch. That was too depressing to talk about; Len didn’t need to know.

“So I wanted to ask you something.” He watched Len’s eyes. “I found something inside… inside the house.” He waited a beat, glanced back at the door, then back at his father. “Inside the walls. Next to your study.”

“I thought it was Rick!” a loud female voice exclaimed. Rick turned, saw the aide he liked the most out of all of them, a heavyset blonde named Brenda, swoop into the room. She was probably fifty and wore her thick glossy hair in a pageboy. She wore baby-blue scrubs and had rhinestone-speckled harlequin glasses, which seemed to be an artsy affectation. The rhinestones glittered in the light from the ceiling. She smiled her big gummy smile. “Wait, it’s not Sunday, is it?”

“Nah, decided to shake things up a bit.”

“Phew, I guess I’m not losing it after all.”

“My dad treating you okay?”

“Your dad’s a sweetie,” she said. “We all love Leonard.” They both knew that Brenda had no idea what Len was like, whether he was a sweetie or an ogre. The man didn’t talk, didn’t even react. But Rick appreciated her saying it just the same.

She glanced at her watch. “It’s almost time for Judge Judy, and I know he doesn’t like to miss that.”

“Dad and I are going to talk just a little more.” His father had never watched Judge Judy or any other court show, back when he was able to voice his opinion; he doubted Len liked it now. And if he did, he had no way of letting anybody know.

“Leonard, what about your lunch, honey?” she said. “Not hungry today?”

“I don’t think he’s a big meat loaf fan.”

As Brenda began to leave, Rick asked, “Do you have a pair of nail clippers?”

“Of course.” She swiveled to one side and plucked a pair of clippers out of a dresser drawer, handing them to Rick with a flourish.

“Let’s see your hands, Dad.” He took hold of Len’s left hand and began to clip his father’s thick, grooved nails, and Brenda drifted out of the room.

Rick clipped slowly. His father held out each hand, one at a time. It felt oddly intimate. It was like taking care of a small child. He thought about how everything sooner or later comes back around. He realized with a jolt that his eyes had teared up.

He stopped clipping. “Jeff and I were doing some exploratory demolition,” he said quietly, “and we opened up the wall next to your study, at the back of the closet.” Len’s mouth was frozen in that haughty expression, but his watery eyes seemed anxious. They followed Rick’s. “There was money back there. A huge amount of money. Millions of dollars. How did it get there, any idea?” Rick swallowed, waited. “Is it yours?”

Len’s restless eyes came to a stop, looked directly into Rick’s.

“Is it?”

The old man’s eyes bore into his. Then he began to blink rapidly, three or four times. Nervously, maybe.

“Are you signaling me, Dad?” His father was able, at times, to blink: once for yes, twice for no. But not always, and not consistently. Did he sometimes lose the ability; did it wax and wane? Or did he grow weary of trying? Rick had no idea.

The blinks stopped, then resumed after a few seconds.

“How about you blink once for yes and twice for no. This cash I found-is it yours? Once for yes, twice for no.”

Len looked straight, unblinking, into Rick’s eyes, held his gaze for a few seconds.

Then blinked twice.

“No,” Rick said. “It’s not yours, correct?”

Nothing. Then one blink.

Yes.

“Okay, we’re getting somewhere.” Rick’s heart rate began to accelerate. “Do you-do you know whose cash it is?”

Nothing. Five, ten seconds went by, and Len didn’t blink. He looked away, then blinked a few times, but it didn’t seem to mean anything.

“Dad, who does it belong to?” Rick asked, before remembering he couldn’t ask a question that didn’t have a yes or no answer. “Let me try again: Do you know whose cash it is?”

Now Len blinked rapidly, not just once or twice. Many times, too many to count.

It was hard to tell, but he looked frightened.