What’s the matter with dad?

 

Liza lifted the handset to the phone that had just been installed in an apartment she could not afford.

The war was over; she was attending college and on her own for the first time, finding out just how difficult it was even in the supposed flush times of the post war economy.

This was her first call – made to her father to ask if he could lend her the money she needed to pay the rent. She had just spent her last $15 for the deposit on the phone, and the landlord had warned her that if she didn’t pay the already overdue rent by the following day, he would put her out.

Perhaps the landlord thought Liza had money because she was a college student.

She didn’t, and neither did most of the friends with whom she went to college. Everybody was as broke as she was.

She always thought of her father in situations like this, knowing just how impractical her mother was.

Perhaps Liza was a little ashamed to admit her personal failings before a mother who had done so much for so long on her own, a woman so thoroughly radical that ordinary social functions had no place in her life. Her mother rebelled against all authority, chaining herself as a young woman to protest women’s inability to vote, stripping off her clothing when the war for women’s equality was won, turning to more radical combat when capitalistic excess created Hoovervilles of poor people who could not get back their lives after the stock market crash in 1929. As a young girl, Liza remembered the Hoovervilles as her parents worked with other communists to overthrow the capitalistic system.

Why her mother ever consented to marriage, Liza didn’t know. She didn’t want marriage at first, perhaps giving in on this one concession in order that Liza might not grow up in social shame.

Even as Liza’s forefinger dialed the upstate number of her parents’ house, she knew it would be her father who answered. Her mother would be off somewhere, doing her radical thing, if not here in the US, then in some remote places like North Africa or South America. Wherever there was a new fight to be fought against Fascism, that’s where her mother went, often leaving her father to continue to the daily grind at City College where he was a professor of inorganic chemistry.

“My father was a melancholy man,” she recalled later. “He taught me that there is no such thing as a bigger half.”

He was the always the more stable of her two parents, the fisherman, photographer, lover of land, freedom fighter, protector of humanity, but quiet. He was the one who kept a steady job and earned respect – if not quite at the same level as Liza’s Uncle Leo, who also taught at the City College.

Her father was even a hero.

Liza remembered a story from before she was born when her father had just started teaching at City College.

A chemical reaction during an experiment splashed a student in the face and Alex, seeing what had happened, rushed over and splashed handfuls of water from the faucet in the student’s eyes before the acid could do more damage, after which he rushed the student to the Hygiene Building for additional treatment. The quick reaction has saved the boy’s eyes sight.

Liza didn’t call her father often – sometimes not for weeks at a time. So he wasn’t always sure who was on the phone when she did.

“Hello, Dad,” she said.

“Who’s that?”

“It’s me, Liz.”

“Liz? Oh, Liz Where are you?”

“I’m calling from home, Dad – I mean my place. I got a phone today so I thought I’d call you. How are you?”

“I’m not so good, Liz,” he said. “Not good. My back hurts, and there’s something wrong with the car.”

“That’s too bad, Dad,” Liza said. “I hoped you would come see my place.”

“My back’s been giving me a lot of trouble, Liz,” he said, vaguely, confusing one issue with another. “With the pain, I can’t sleep too good and the rattle under the fender has me worried especially going up hills.”

“I like this place, Dad,” Liza said, trying to keep her father focused. “The rent is low. One of the reasons I called was that I thought maybe you’d lend me the rent, just for a few weeks, Dad. It’s only $35.”

“I ought to take it in to be fixed,” her father said, as if her words had not registered. “I think it’s the cylinders, but I don’t know where to take it. I don’t know who to ask that wouldn’t rob me blind.”

Then, he went on about his aches and pains.

“The right leg is beginning to swell and throb a little especially when I have been sitting for a long time,” he said. “Maybe it is pressing on a nerve in the spine.”

Liza tried again.

“I thought you might lend me the money for a couple of weeks, Dad,” she said. “Just until I get paid for that lettering job I did. I’d give it back as soon as I got paid.”

But her father wasn’t listening and went on about the car again.

“I think you mother let it run out of water,” he said, then reverted to his aches and pains. “I put a board under the mattress but it doesn’t help at all, though I read where a board often straightens out the trouble.”

In the confusion, he seemed to forget Liza’s mother’s name.

“Your mother said it’s too hard for her to sleep on,” he said. “Should I keep the board anyway, Liz? Do you think it would help?”

“Sure, Dad, sure if it helps to sleep on a board,” Liza said, but started to panic, thinking, “If you don’t help me, I’m going to be sleeping on the streets.”

Her father goes on about the car.

“The clutch slips when I put it into third. I keep worrying about it,” he said, and then back to his pains. “My foot keeps going to sleep.”

Liza wanted to tell him about how scared she was, and about the nightmares she was having over her inability to make it on her own. She tried to reach him again.

“Listen, Dad, listen. Please lend me the money for rent,” Liza said. “I have to pay it by noon tomorrow, please, Dad.”

“Yes, well, Liz, I’m glad you called,” her father said. “Call me again, later in the week. Maybe I have to get the car fixed. There’s a rattle in the fender. Maybe it’s axle, though I have had the oiled changed every 4,000 miles. It was only last Tuesday or was it Saturday – yes, it was Saturday when I drove your aunt to Greatneck and I said I should have it checked. It’s only six years old. You mother insisted o pale blue though I told her blue fades the fastest. Don’t get a blue car, Liz. Blue is chemically unstable, makes it hard to resell. They get you coming and going these days.”

“Okay, Dad, OK,” Liza said with a sigh. “I’ll call you later. I hope you feel better soon.”

“Thanks Liz,” her father said. “Don’t worry. It’s not serious I’m sure, something minor, probably only the piston rings.”

Liza hung up.

Then she called her friend Joan, who came over at 3 a.m. with her car – starting a pattern of behavior Liza would later repeat again and again, even as late as when she did an early morning clearing out of her office at Island Records in the early 1970s after she’d been fired.

Joan drove up to Liza’s parents place, and helped her store her things in her father’s garage, along side the pale blue car her mother had insisted they buy. Then, Liza moved in with Joan for a couple of months until she could find another place of her own.

She didn’t blame her father. He had every reason to be scattered. He was one of the targets of one of the biggest witch hunts in American history as New York State attempted to get rid of the communists out of City College. Neither she nor her father knew it would only get worse with Sen. Joseph McCarthy just over the horizon.