Sewanee groaned again. Loudly this time.
“Sewanee–”
“You want words? Fine. You really can’t afford to help her pay for this? Or are you just being vindictive?”
Henry laughed out loud. “Vindictive? You haven’t earned the right to analyze me, sweetheart. I don’t have a job. I don’t have a house to mortgage. The lawyers wiped out whatever savings I had, your mother gets half my pension, and I have my own life to worry about.” He snorted. “Maybe Marilyn’s Sugar Daddy can help.”
Sewanee took the phone away from her ear and almost threw it across the room. She brought it up to her mouth like a walkie-talkie. “Ask my mother’s boyfriend to pay for your mother’s care, that’s your solution?”
“It was sarcasm.” He had his condescending, professorial voice on. When he spoke again, he sounded impatient, done with this. “Look, this isn’t your responsibility. I’ll handle it from here.”
She didn’t like the sound of that, not one little bit. “What are you gonna do?”
“I know a place where she’ll be comfortable.”
Sewanee grew frantic. “Dad. No! She’s happy at Seasons, everyone knows her, cares about her. She has friends. She has to stay there.”
“People die, Swan. Decisions have to be made. It would be lovely if those decisions could be based on feelings but, unfortunately, they come down to money.” Henry apparently heard how callous he sounded, because he added, more gently, “You think I don’t care, but I do. I want you to know that. I wish you . . . these are hard things. Hell, I struggled over deciding what to do about Sarah.”
Sewanee paused. “Sarah? Our dog? What are you talking about? There was no deciding. She was hit by a car and died.”
“No, she was hit by a car and lived. But the surgery was going to cost ten grand, so we put her down.” A long silence. “I’m now remembering we agreed not to tell you that.”
“You killed Sarah?!”
“Noooo,” he exhaled, “the driver killed Sarah. I merely decided not to intervene. She was twelve years old.”
“So?!”
“So that’s a good run. Ninety-two is a good run. Look, I’m not pushing her out to sea on an ice floe. This is what happens to millions of people when there’s no money left. They go into the system.”
“But the system is bad! Those places are bad!”
“Stop being histrionic, they’re not the Dickensian hellscape you’re–”
“You don’t know that. You’ve hardly stepped foot inside Seasons let alone any other place. You’re not going to be the one checking up on her, I can’t even get you to go to Seasons for bingo night!”
“What does it matter if she doesn’t know where she is?”
Sewanee couldn’t exhale. “Dad.”
“Swan. Honestly. What difference does it make?”
All she could say was, “I’ll remind you of this conversation in twenty years.”
“You’re not hearing me. I’m trying to get you–”
“Goodnight.” She hung up.
Hours later, Sewanee lay in bed unable to sleep.
She wanted to fix this.
She wanted everyone to be happy.
She wanted to be back in Las Vegas.
Eventually, around 4 A.M., she got up, showered, dressed, made tea to go, navigated the sixty-four steps to her car, and texted Mark:
Tell the June French people I’m in.
She drove the empty freeways to West Los Angeles, to the eight-unit apartment building off Bundy, where she sat in the car until a reasonable hour–six o’clock–got out, went to her father’s door, and knocked.
Chapter Eight
“The Decision”
WHEN HENRY CHESTER WAS TWENTY-FIVE AND LIVING IN NEW YORK, his father’s body was discovered slumped over his typewriter by a housekeeper, two fingers of Old Smuggler Scotch in the tumbler beside the carriage, three cigarettes in the Paramount Pictures ashtray–one still smoldering–dead from a heart that had simply given up.
Marvin had been a screenwriter. And Sewanee remembered Henry telling her the rapid tapping of typewriter keys （so like the ticktock of a perfectly balanced pendulum clock） emanating from his father’s office had calmed a young Henry. It made him feel safe because his father was doing something, making something, being productive. But Barbara had been a performer, in the truest sense of that word. Onstage or off, she, herself, was always on. To Henry, she embodied the erratic unpredictability of an overwound clock.