Then Again - Diane Keaton [65]
Outside the Royal Palace, I took Dad’s hand and walked with him to Arby’s for a roast beef sandwich. I helped him take off his jacket. It was hot. My hand brushed up against a label on the inside of the collar, hand-printed in black ink. “Jack Hall’s jacket. Return to 2625 Cove St., Corona del Mar, California.” Dad was a stickler about identifying personal items. Jack Hall’s robe, Jack Hall’s boxer shorts, Jack Hall’s pajama bottoms.
After we ate on plastic chairs drilled into the floor, we sauntered back to the Palace, a mid-sixties structure with a large neon sign welcoming travelers to its royal warmth. It looked harmless enough, but inside, it quickly revealed its true colors. Hairless men and gaunt women sat under the glare of the fluorescent-lit lobby. Defeat permeated the atmosphere. Everyone looked like boarders on borrowed time. Mom and Dad’s little suite didn’t make me feel better. I saw a pair of Dad’s loafers next to the bed. Jack Hall’s left shoe. Jack Hall’s right shoe.
The Big Machine
The next day Dad and I wandered through UCLA’s massive complex until we reached the radiation room. It was dark, maybe to soften the look of the afflicted. “Well, I guess it’s time for the guy who does the camera work down in the dungeon to take the big picture. If he keeps zapping me in the head, I’m going to look like Yul Brynner.” Sitting down, I looked over and saw Rocco Lampone, the button man, from The Godfather. What was he doing here? Tom Rosqui, aka Rocco Lampone, came over to say hello. He wanted to know about Godfather III. He was sorry he’d been killed off in II. When the loudspeaker called Jack Hall’s name, Tom suddenly clasped my hand. He was getting radiation too. As I steered Dad into the room with the big machine, Tom waved goodbye. He died the following year. Radiotherapy didn’t help him, not for very long; longer than Dad, but not long enough.
The X-ray machine, a sickly beige, was at least twenty years old. It looked like a massive appliance from the fifties—a sort of toaster, grill, and steamer room rolled into one. The attendant marked Dad’s head with green X’s, designating the areas to be radiated. The machine, exhausted after battling cancer for so long, seemed harmless. After Dad was strapped onto the gurney, I watched the shadow of his head move across a floor-to-ceiling photo mural of giant redwoods.
On the way back to the Royal Palace, Dad and I walked down Le Conte Avenue, past the old Bullock’s parking lot. He wasn’t in a hurry. Holding my hand in the midday heat, he stopped and looked at the ground for a while, then looked some more. Bending down, he picked up a plastic ring and gave it to me.
Dad had taken to contemplating the design of things like broken pencils, dents on tables, and even the configuration of drops of water in the kitchen sink. The boundaries of what was considered worthy of his curiosity had expanded, like the universe. As I put the Cracker Jack prize on my little finger, Dad wandered off to become friends with a giant sycamore tree’s temporary tenant, a robin redbreast.
That night we went to dinner at Plum West. Mom wore a black dress, topped off with a pair of Dad’s red plaid boxer shorts wrapped around her neck like a scarf. He was her man. She had his underwear on to prove it. Dad ate all his moo shu pork and drank his Johnnie Walker Red on the rocks. We were happy. It was as if we’d always be happy. Of course it wasn’t true, but what lasts longer—the truth, or the memory of a perception of happiness? I opened my fortune cookie. “Value what you have now, so as not to miss it when it’s gone.”
After two weeks of radiation, Dad said, “I feel like I’m brain-dead. It’s interesting, Di-annie; I don’t know where I am half the time. I feel pretty good except when they stick their fingers up my ass every day.” After two weeks Dad