CHAPTER ONE
RED DOOR / BLUE DOOR
BETH
April 24, 2007
Encinitas, California
My father raised me under a canopy of plumeria. There were the magenta ones with orange hearts that smelled of ginger. Delicate yellows with white tips that smelled of lemon. The deep reds that bore the unmistakable scent of grape Kool-Aid. Those had been my favorite as a kid. Dad fell in love with the towering trees with their riotous clusters of flowers on his travels to Hawaii in the ’50s and spent a good portion of his leisure time cultivating more than a dozen varietals on our almost-an-acre lot in Encinitas.
He created a tropical paradise so lush that we were never in want of shade on ruthless summer days. I was sure the new owners, whose primary fascination with the property had been the dense grove of tropical flowers, were taking good care of them. But no one would love them as Dad had. When I finally convinced Dad that his stenosis was bad enough that Mom couldn’t care for him at home, his sole stipulation was that he be allowed to bring a cutting of his Singapore plumeria to keep in his room. It laced his new bedroom with the scent of jasmine and memories of his happiest times with my mother.
I’d found him a small private-care home. I couldn’t bear the thought of putting him in some sterile institution with dozens of elderly people who all clamored for a few precious moments of the staff’s time. The home had only five residents, and the staff was as attentive as I could have ever hoped for. In truth, the cottage-like care home with its welcoming red door wasn’t unlike the house he’d loved for so long. It made it a little more bearable, somehow.
He left behind the white ranch house with the teal-blue door nine months ago, and though Mom had been set to join him once she’d sold the house and gotten everything in order, the cancer hit so hard and fast, she never had the chance. One second she was in the kitchen making babka, the next, she needed the round-the-clock care of a nursing home. The disease claimed her in three months. My only solace was that Dad never really saw any of it.
I walked through that red door, not needing to knock, with a cutting from an Aztec Gold plumeria balanced on my hip.
“Hey, girl,” Kimberly, the head caregiver, greeted me as she changed a dressing on Mr. Griffith’s bad ankle. I flashed her a smile. “Mr. Blumenthal’s in his room. Been expecting you for the past hour.”
She chuckled as I rolled my eyes dramatically. According to Dad, it took exactly thirty-five minutes to get from my office at UC San Diego to his care home in Encinitas. And he was right . . . if you left campus at ten thirty at night. At five p.m.? Count on an extra hour as you become part of the world’s slowest-slithering boa constrictor trying to wend its way north on I-5. A boa constrictor that spews gallons upon gallons of noxious fumes into the air and is equipped with several thousand car horns and is overly fond of using them. I could have stayed at work another hour or two and spent the time more profitably, but Dad would be too tired to enjoy the visit if I showed up that late.
“It’s about time, baby girl!” Dad said with a smile as he opened the door to the fifteen-by-fifteen-foot room that was now the nucleus of his universe. “I was beginning to think you’d been held up at gunpoint.”
“Traffic was murder, so your analogy isn’t completely off,” I said, kissing his cheek.
“What have you got there?” he said, inspecting the foliage of the cutting with the tip of a finger. The lush green leaves met with his approval.
“Gwen sent this for you,” I said, placing the cutting—already blooming—on the window shelf I’d fashioned for his small collection of plumerias and orchids. “Thanks to your advice, her trees are doing magnificently. She was worried for months about the one this cutting came from, but it pulled through. She thought you’d enjoy looking after this guy.”
“It’s a beaut,” Dad said, gripping his walker so he could lower himself to take in a proper sniff. “Smells good too.”
“My Prius smells like a crate of fresh peaches,” I agreed.
“Tell that sweet Gwen girl that I’m honored to give it a home,” he said. Gwen was a friend and colleague in the poli-sci department at UCSD who had more or less adopted my father as her own over the past ten years. No one else would dare call the tenured professor of feminist political theory “that sweet Gwen girl” and expect to live to talk about it.
“She’ll be glad to hear it,” I said. Dad had rarely offered cuttings from his own plumerias, except to his dearest of friends and family who’d shown a true affinity for horticulture. Those who’d stooped to calling them by their common name—frangipani—one too many times would never have been gifted a cutting. To give someone a piece of a thing you’ve spent years of your life nurturing is no small offering. You have to know you’re passing it off into the right hands. It’s not being snooty; it’s taking your responsibilities to heart.
“How are you feeling, Dad?” I asked as he fretted over the new plant’s placement on the window shelf.
“Ready to march in the Rose Parade,” he said, winking. “So long as they keep the parade running at a half mile per hour with plenty of time for breaks.”
“Very funny.” I opened his fridge, where Dad made sure there was always a case of my favorite seltzer, while he took his place at the little table he kept next to his kitchenette. It was just a bare-bones setup like you’d find in a business-style hotel, but he enjoyed the independence of making himself some eggs or coffee when the mood struck. The sink held a considerable pile of dishes, though, so I turned on the faucet to scrub them.
“Don’t fret about those, Bethie. I’ll get to them when you leave. Come visit.”
“I can visit and wash,” I said. “But it doesn’t look like you’ve been eating in the dining room much. Everything OK?”
“I just don’t feel like chatting these days. Except with you.”
“You know you can’t live on canned soup and microwave popcorn. It isn’t healthy for you. You’re a doctor, you know better.”
“Don’t you dare try to guilt me, Bethany Miriam Cohen. You’re in over your pay grade. I was a dentist. And I can give you my professional opinion that none of that is particularly detrimental to my teeth.”
“Very funny, Dad. You won’t say so when they all fall out due to malnutrition.”
“You sure you haven’t stashed a brood of kids at that apartment of yours? Your lecture doesn’t seem like the work of an amateur.”
“Low blow,” I said, averting my eyes a moment.
Dad shook his head. “Sorry, kiddo. I didn’t think.”
“Just let it go. It’s fine.”
“Let me make it up to you,” he said. “Dry your hands and let me take you to the finest restaurant my budget will cover.”
“The dining room ten feet from your door?”
“The very one,” he said, holding on to his walker with one hand and offering me his arm with the other, exaggerating for gallant effect. I kissed his cheek before placing the hand of his proffered arm back on the grip of his walker. His spine was stooped so badly from the years he spent leaning over a dentist chair that he needed both hands to navigate the hallway, no matter how much he might have wanted to walk without aid.