BARBARA GRIZZUTI HARRISON
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bed , complaining about the food. "Why didn't you come to see me?"
he said, fixing his clouded eyes on Clara and her daughter.
"Oh, Daddy, we did."
"We did, Grandpa."
" You
did," he said to his son . "You're a good boy," he said to his
grandson .
His granddaughter turned her face away and cried. His grand–
son cried too. The Christmas he gave me fifty dollars he gave my
brother an Edsel, Clara thought; never mind.
"I never had a heart attack," the old man said.
"That's right, dear," Sadie said .
"How come 1 saw that machine with all the blips on it, Daddy?"
Clara said. When he was hooked to that machine he had called her
an angel of light. "Send the angel of darkness away," he'd said.
("Why do you think the angel of darkness was your mother?" Clara's
psychiatrist asked . "It's not what 1 think, it's what he thinks." "He
might have meant the angel of death?" "No.")
"I never had a heart attack. They have doctors back there twist-
ing dials behind the machine. Like a television set."
"So what did you have, Daddy?"
"Gas." He never remembered seeing Clara in the hospital.
"When am 1 going home?"
"Soon, Old Man," his son said.
"Be good, dear," his wife said.
"We love you, Grandpa," his granddaughter said.
"The food stinks ."
The next time Clara called him at the hospital, the old man
spoke to her in Italian, which she only dimly understood. He spoke
in a guttural whisper: "They want to kill me."
"Can't you tell me in English, Daddy?"
"They don't want me to leave here," he said. "They're
listening."
"They can't want to kill you if they want to keep you there
forever, Daddy," Clara said. But he had hung up.
"Pull the drapes," the old man said. He meant the hospital cur–
tains. "They're doing terrible things in here," he said. "That guy
there. Terrible." He nodded weakly in the direction of the man who
shared his room, rubbing his throat to his chin with his index finger,
