Hoffman - Half the house: a memoir

Also by Richard Hoffman

Without Paradise , Cedar Hill Books

a memoir

Richard Hoffman

With a postscript to

the NRP Edition

A New Rivers

Press Book

ePublication 2012 by Richard Hoffman

Copyright 2005 by Richard Hoffman

Postscript 2005 by Richard Hoffman

Originally published by Harcourt Brace & Company, 1995

Epigraph from Savidis, George, ed. C.P.Cavafy: Collected Poems, rev. ed.

1975, 1992 by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard, transl. Reprinted by permission of Princeton University Press.

Many Americas Rediscovery Series

Library of Congress Control Number: 2005923131

ISBN: 978-0-89823-228-8

eISBN: 978-0-89823-276-9

Cover Design: Amanda Ketterling

Author photograph by Thom Harrigan

For academic permission please contact Frederick T. Courtright at 570-839-7477 or .

New Rivers Press is a nonprofit literary press associated with Minnesota State University Moorhead.

Alan Davis, Senior Editor and Co-Director

Suzzanne Kelley, Managing Editor and Co-Director

Thom Tammaro, Poetry Editor

Kevin Carollo, MVP Poetry Coordinator

Allen Sheets, Design Manager

Donna Carlson, Managing Editor

Honors Apprentice: Rosanne Pfenning

Editorial interns: Fauntel DeShayes, Tessa Dietz, Kacy Friddle, Diana Goble, Jill Haugen, Amber Langford, Jens Larson, Samantha Miller, Kurt Olerud, Tamera Parrish, Heather Steinmann, Melissa Sumas, Abbey Thompsen

Design interns: Katie Elenberger, Allison Garske, Amanda Ketterling, Jocie Salveson, Lindsay Staber, Amy Wilcox.

Printed in the United States of America.

For my family, living and dead,

but especially for my father

The author wishes to thank Tom DEvelyn, Linda McCarriston, and Martha Ramsey for their help. A special thanks is due to Dick Lourie for his sound editorial advice.

My deepest gratitude is reserved for my dearest friend, Kathleen Aguero, my wife, my colleague, my love, who brought her powerful insight, empathy, and wisdom to bear on every word in this book. In every way imaginable she is a blessing upon my life.

T HIS IS NOT a work of fiction.

It contains no composite characters,

no invented scenes. I have, in most instances,

altered the names of persons outside my family.

In one instance, on principle, I have not.

GROWING IN SPIRIT

He who hopes to grow in spirit

will have to transcend obedience and respect.

He will hold to some laws

but he will mostly violate

both law and custom, and go beyond

the established, inadequate norm.

Sensual pleasures will have much to teach him.

He will not be afraid of the destructive act:

half the house will have to come down.

This way he will grow virtuously into wisdom.

C. P. Cavafy

I T ALL DEPENDS how deep your brothers are buried, my father said. We were sitting at the kitchen table and he was taking papers from a gray steel box, removing fat red rubber bands, sorting things into piles. Somewhere I have a deed. The Sacred Heart allows double burial, at least thats what old Mary Becker told me years ago. But you have to go down seven feet with the first one. Wheres my glasses? Here. No, thats not it. Well have to see how deep your brothers Mike and Bob are buried.

Aunt Kitty, my fathers sister, came into the kitchen and went to the windowsill over the sink where we kept my mothers medications. You two ought to get some rest. Im all right with her for now. She was holding the vial of pills in one hand and adjusting her glasses with the other, peering at the label. Dare she have another one of these so soon I wonder.

Give it to her if she wants one, my father said. It dont make no difference now. Here, he said to me, sliding the metal box across the table, see if you can find anything from the Becker Funeral Home or the Sacred Heart Cemetery.

Wait, I said to my aunt; she was filling a glass with water at the sink. She cant take them like that. You have to crush them in sherbet.

Shit! My father reached for his wallet. Quick! he said, handing me a wad of bills. Run up to the corner and get some more sherbet. I took the money from him, saw it was about thirty dollars, and peeled off three singles. This is enough, I said. He was already walking away; he waved his hand. Who gives a shit. Buy ten. Buy twenty. Itll just go to the fuckin doctors anyway.

Aunt Kitty touched me on the back of the neck so I would know to say nothing. Dad went into the living room, where hed built a smaller room in the front by the window for my mother; like the one wed built years earlier for my brothers, it was made of two-by-fours and cheap panelling. There was a shower curtain over the narrow doorway. I saw him go in. I heard him say, quietly, Howre you feeling, sweetheart?

That small room where my mother died is gone now. The rented hospital bed faced the large front window; hanging plants obstructed the view of the street. The top of the window is leaded and stained glass, deep purples alternating with tulips of opaque swirled cream and frosted panels. Heavy drapes, closed at sunset, were opened each morning at the first rumor of dawn. Generally, during her last weeks, my mother slept little, and then only in the morning when she saw the window brighten again. Her bed was placed along one of the makeshift walls so that one of the two-by-fours served as a narrow shelf beside her for a box of tissues, her inhaler, a jar of Vaseline. Next to the gurgling oxygen compressor, her night table held her alarm clock and two pictures of her infant grandson, Robert, my son.

It is a mere accident of time that my mother began to die so soon after her first grandchild was born, but the irony of it produced such pain that it sometimes seemed to me that all of nature had conspired to torture us. During her last days, among the things my mother whispered to no one in particular was, Not now. Oh, please, not now.

I left to buy the sherbet, using the back door so I wouldnt disturb my parents. I could hear my mother crying, my father soothing her, my mother saying something in a hoarse whisper. By then I had learned not to intrude.

T HE CHRISTMAS BEFORE , my wife and I came across something in a card shop called Grandmas Book. The pages, illustrated like a childrens book, were headed with questions. What was your favorite subject in school? Where did you live when you were growing up? How did you meet my grandpa? Kathi made it easier for me by buying one for her mother too. The store had no Grandpas Book, so I bought two notebooks into which I copied all the questions, in different colored inks, and pasted in humorous pictures from magazines, an alligator next to Did you have any pets when you were a boy?, a log cabin next to What kind of house did you grow up in? All this effort was of course to keep from singling out my mother. All to keep her from thinking wed given up hope. We had. And she was never fooled. The book is blank.

A T THE FUNERAL parlor, Dad was dissatisfied. She never stuck out her jaw like that. Thats not right. He wanted me to share again in his outrage.