Traveling Dad

I am looking for a slice of pizza I left at Dad’s house yesterday. “Did Marie throw it out?” I ask Dad – maybe she cleaned the fridge in preparation for their trip. “I am not in the inner sanctum of her brain,” he says.

“It’s warm today,” I tell Dad. He agrees, “it’s very elegant weather.” Despite the weather, and despite Dad’s overheated apartment, with 80 degrees reading on the kitchen thermometer, I can’t get warm. This shivery feeling started in the hospital and just won’t go away.

He watches me stretch, trying to get my achy, post-hospital body moving. “More stretchy,” he says, “the more stretchy, the better, the better, the better.”

“I don’t like the tank,” Dad says, out of the blue. “The tank?” I ask, hoping for a clue. “There’s a lot of water in it and a lot of people, “ he elaborates. “The hot tub?” I ask. “Yes.” His mind is on the cruise tonight. Marie has bathed and shaved him. I don’t really like how he looks without a beard – something about it reminds me of a chicken – but she has left him with just a mustache. The green duffel is packed and the cat is eyeing it with trepidation, knowing she’s going to be left with a sitter.

“Where have I lived before midtown?” Dad asked yesterday. I ran through a list of the places I know about, “Astoria, the village, Brooklyn Heights.” “Brooklyn Heights?” “You lived there with some merchant marines. You took care of the place while they were at sea.” “You mean I was merchant marine addicted?” he asks. Kate and I burst out laughing.

Dad has gone to bed early, leaving me on the couch with the cat. He wants to be well-rested for the big adventure. I call Charlie, to make sure Dad has told him about the cruise, so he doesn’t call and panic at the lack of response. “When your mother found out you were expected, he was on the west coast of Mexico,” Charlie tells me, apropos of nothing, except maybe a general theme of traveling-Dad. “He swore me to secrecy, so I had to keep your mother calm, on the one hand, and keep updating him, on the other.”

This is a familiar story – I remember, as a child, one winter when the furnace broke and Dad was traveling in Latin America, and my mother needed his money to get it repaired. Charlie either really didn’t know his itinerary or was sworn to secrecy. Knowing his habit of staying in the colonial-era “grand hotels” wherever he went, my determined mother got on the phone, calling the grand hotels in cities across Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, seeking “Senor Bray,” often getting a frustrating “he checked out yesterday.” She finally did find him and I guess the furnace got repaired – the part that sticks in my mind is the search.