Author’s note: The title, “Contrary States,” alludes to poet William Blake’s concept of innocence and experience, which he referred to as “two contrary states of the human soul.”

Sunday mornings with my father when I was a child were perfect. I sat on the bench seat of my dad’s red pickup, crumpled lunch bags, cellophane wrappers, and an opened pack of Lucky Strikes between us, looking forward to making our usual rounds: stopping by the newsstand for cigarettes, visiting Auntie Rena and Uncle Joe, and always ending with a visit to Abe’s. I liked the newsstand, its racks of magazines and paperbacks beckoning to me as my father made his purchase, and I could always count on Auntie Rena to offer me freshly baked cookies (oatmeal raisin, chocolate chip, peanut butter). But I especially looked forward to seeing Abe, who lived with his wife, Pauline, in a tidy ranch house a few miles past the city limits. I considered Abe, my father’s best friend, my friend too. At five and six years old, I couldn’t imagine a better way to spend a Sunday morning—being with two men who were important to me and who, I believed, would remain an unshakable presence in my life.

I don’t remember specific visits or conversations I had with Abe, but I have a sense that, like my father, he liked to tease me. Was I the “yapper” to him as I was to my father? Did he cajole me, a shy and quiet little girl, into joining the conversation? Did he tug on my braids as I sat beside him, my feet in red Keds dangling several inches above the floor, while he and my father drank coffee at his kitchen table, the smoke from their cigarettes lazily drifting upward?

Although trivial details are lost to me, what remains in my memory is Abe’s affection for me. He was happy to see my father; that was obvious, their mutual affection apparent even to me at my young age. But I always knew Abe was pleased to see me as well. He greeted me warmly every time I showed up with my father, enveloping me in a bone-crushing hug. I felt important when I was with my father and Abe, somehow a part of their friendship, not merely a witness to it.

But my part in their weekly Sunday visits did not last. When I turned seven, Dad, rather than taking me along on his Sunday morning excursions, dropped me off in front of St. Bernard’s parochial school, where I unhappily attended Sunday school. While my father carried on his Sunday morning routine without me, I sat in a stuffy classroom with worn hardwood floors and perfect rows of ancient desks, a small hole for holding an ink pot in the righthand corner of their scarred wooden tops. There I learned the difference between venial and mortal sin and dutifully recited answers (memorized the night before) to questions posed by the Baltimore Catechism.

I wasn’t seeing Abe as much as I had when I was younger, but he remained an important and beloved person in my life. And when I did see him (he and Pauline were regular Friday night visitors to our home), he still greeted me with enthusiasm and a warm hug and so I continued to feel important to him.

When Abe was diagnosed with lung cancer, I only understood that he was very sick. I was nine, and I believed he would get better, as I had after colds and even a tonsillectomy. Once, following a visit to Abe’s after he had returned home from a hospital stay, I asked my mother if we would have a party when Abe got better. I can’t remember how she responded, but I assume that she avoided the truth (as she often did). And so, I remained innocently ignorant of his impending and inevitable death.

Toward the end of Abe’s illness, my father spent a great deal of time at the hospital, giving Pauline and her daughters a break from their bedside vigil. One night he called from the hospital, and I answered the phone.

“Abe died,” my father said flatly. “Get your mother.”

I remember asking him over and over if it was true. Never a patient man, even at his best, he quickly became irritated.

“Yes, he’s dead,” my father spat. “Now get your mother.”

Abe’s funeral home viewing was a first for me. The funeral home, a white Victorian-era mansion, was imposing, its long driveway leading to a portico. Heavy, dark wood double doors opened into a deep green plush-carpeted foyer. A tall somber man in a dark suit stood there, quietly directing guests into a nearby room. The heavy fragrance of flowers permeated the air, and although people were gathered in small groups, the atmosphere seemed to me unnaturally quiet.

My mother took my hand and led me into the room, also carpeted in green. Dozens of floral arrangements lined the perimeter—some on pedestals, others in large urns on the floor. As in the foyer, clusters of people talked quietly, and I caught a glimpse of my father in one of these groups. Wearing a navy-blue suit and a white shirt with a navy-and-maroon-striped tie, he looked strange to me. I was accustomed to seeing him in the work clothes he wore as manager of Eastern Royalties Oil Company—khakis with matching khaki tan collared shirt, his feet in thick-soled brown work boots. Now I was looking at a different man, something I found vaguely unsettling. A line of visitors snaked to the front of the room. Pauline and her daughters stood off to the side of Abe’s coffin on its catafalque. My mother and I took our places in the line. As we approached the coffin, Mother let go of my hand and turned to speak to Pauline. I took a few steps forward, to the edge of Abe’s coffin.

I peered in at him. His waxy hands were folded over his barely-there midsection. His face, so thin and angular, was impossibly still. Once a burly man, his body was now emaciated, and his dark hair was a shock of white. He looked like a stranger, the robust, jovial Abe I had known transformed into an old man, a fragile and shrunken shell.

I felt rooted to the spot, horrified but unable to turn away. My heart thumped in my chest, and I could feel my face becoming hot, yet my hands were cold and clammy. I began to quietly cry, eliciting the attention of my mother and others nearby. Mother led me away from the coffin, past the line of people waiting to pay their respects, to a settee. She sat down, and I leaned against her.

“Don’t cry,” she said. “You know that Abe was very sick. Now he’s in heaven.”

I couldn’t talk. I could only take in shaky breaths, so I couldn’t tell her that I wasn’t crying because I was sad. I was crying because I was frightened—by Abe’s appearance, yes, but even more frightened by a budding understanding of the nature of serious illness, its power to diminish someone beyond recognition. Could this happen to me? Could I get cancer, be ravaged by its ferocity, and die as Abe had?

A few of Mother’s friends approached us. Seeing my distress, they tried to placate me. They complimented me on my dress, its black velveteen skirt topped with a cream-colored bodice sprinkled with black velveteen polka dots.

Eventually, distracted by the attention, I began to compose myself. My breathing slowed, and I took deep breaths. I stopped crying. Mother left me to join a small group of people, and I sat alone on the settee, settling back into its plump cushions but carefully avoiding looking to the front of the room where Abe’s coffin was visible. Instead, I stared down at my legs, sticking straight out from the seat of the settee. The patent leather Mary Janes on my feet reflected the dim light of a nearby lamp.

***

Four years later, my father, after suffering for a few months with a persistent cough that cough drops and cough medicine could not assuage, was diagnosed with lung cancer. Now, at thirteen, I witnessed his gradual physical devastation: his normally ruddy complexion fading, his sturdy physique shrinking, his formerly boundless energy waning.

Although the effects that the cancer and its treatments were having on him were clear to me, I was not party to any discussions about his condition and prognosis. One morning, as I was passing by the bathroom on my way downstairs, I saw my father standing in front of the bathroom mirror. He was covering his chest with a large piece of gauze and a bandage. I’m not sure that he saw me, and I passed by without saying anything. What I didn’t understand at the time was that radiation treatments left a square the size of a dinner napkin on his chest. It resembled a second-degree burn, a type of wound to be regularly treated and protected. Later, I discovered how sick mustard gas—an early form of chemotherapy—made him when I heard my mother and older sisters taking about it.

As time passed, the father that I had once known—healthy, vigorous, barrel-chested and brawny—became a different man, a man I did not know, weakened and vulnerable. And with the physical changes came a change in personality. No more teasing. No more hearty, infectious laughter. As impatient as he had been when he was healthy, he now had a sharpened impatience that made me fearful of him. Diagnosed in the spring, Dad progressively became sicker throughout the summer months. He was hospitalized for the final time in early September.

I cannot remember the reason for my not being permitted to visit my father when he was hospitalized (Was I given a reason?), but this stricture was made clear to me. And as in the early days of his illness, no one—not my mother, not my brother, not my sisters—talked to me about him and what would inevitably happen. But even without their words, the truth, little by little, became clear to me. My father would not “beat” the disease as my younger self had believed Abe would. He would not get better.

Still, though, I craved some form of confirmation of the truth. One Sunday afternoon, shortly before my father died, I found my mother ironing in the kitchen. I asked if Dad would get better. Mother, crying softly, replied, “No. He’s going to die.”

She continued ironing, saying nothing more, and I walked away, feeling both sad and guilty for having asked the question.

A few days after that brief exchange with my mother, my sister delivered the news of my father’s death, awakening me late at night to tell me. Standing in the doorway of my bedroom, she said, “Dad died.” Then she turned to leave and quietly closed the door behind her.

I cried for a few minutes, but then I fell asleep again, perhaps relieved by the simplicity of the message and, by now, used to not being included in that inner circle that grappled with and understood the reality of my father’s terminal illness. Perhaps, too, at age thirteen, I couldn’t comprehend how my father’s death would affect me—not only in the present but in the future, as well. Could I have truly understood the loss?

The next morning, I sat at the table in the breakfast nook while my mother, quietly weeping, buttered my toast.

“Don’t cry, Mom,” I said, almost in a whisper, the very words she had said to me four years earlier. And just as I had said nothing to her then, she said nothing to me now.

My father’s viewing was held in the same funeral home as Abe’s had been. I followed my mother, brother, and sisters into the room where Dad’s coffin was, my feet sinking into that same plush green carpet. Once again, the room was bursting with floral arrangements, on pedestals and in urns, their sweet, heavy fragrance perfuming the air.

It was like seeing Abe again, but this time I was not afraid. Like Abe, my father had changed markedly—his robust physique shrunken, his thick brown hair now thin and white, his face, while composed, still showing signs of suffering, deep crevices around his mouth, his lips a thin line.

Dressed in an A-line skirt, blouse, and blazer and wearing “heels” befitting a thirteen-year-old, I stood next to my older siblings and greeted relatives and friends, thanking them for their condolences, and trying to smile when I was told that I looked “all grown up.”

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