something is wacky-poo

We spend most of the evening listening to Frank McCourt’s “’Tis” on CD. Dad’s old CD player has died but I figure out how to play the audio CDs on his TV.

When he’s had enough for the night, we sit and talk. “I want to try out a restaurant near your house,” I say to Dad, “it’s on 53rd st.” “I keep saying I’m on 30th st and yet it’s 55,” says Dad. “How the hell did it get like that?” “You must have stayed on 30th st sometime in the past but it still sticks,” I tell him, “brains are funny things.” “Yes, every once in a while something is wacky-poo and you can’t get rid of it,” he agrees. “Did I ever live on 30th st?” he asks. “If you did, it was before I was born,” I tell him.

“I had fun and your mom just didn’t pay much attention to you. I paid more attention to you than she did,” Dad tells me. He’s struggling to remember the time we spent together when I was a child. “I wonder what it is that kills so much of the things I did?” he asks. “You remember all kinds of things I barely remember. I spent a lot of time with you, you know that, and your mom was doing what?” “Working,” I tell him. “Typing.” “And what happened to her?” Here we go again. “She got sick with cancer.” “Now I remember that,” he says, “just barely remember it. How old were you when she died?” “Just out of college.” Dad seems to be interviewing me. “Where did you go to high school?” he asks. “Stuyvesant.” “That was a really good high school and you went to college?” “Yes, Hampshire, three years.” “Yes, I remember that. ‘ three years’, I said ‘she’s really good.’ Had the disease struck you by then?” “I hadn’t been diagnosed yet.” “But you had the problem for years years years and nobody knew what it was. Did it have any effect on your mentality or anything?” “No, I don’t think so.”

Dad’s in a talkative mood. “Every week you do the cooking, and you enjoy it, you enjoy all kinds of things. I don’t know anyone who enjoys all kinds of things like you. You don’t have to do them, you really enjoy them because you like to do it. You like to do a lot of things that people don’t want to bother with and you never complain about anything. I have never heard you complain about anything. You say ‘oh, well I’ll do that, I’ll do that, I’ll do that’ and you do it without any bother. I don’t recall, I cannot recall any instance when you complained about anything. I don’t believe you complained about much.” It’s true that I’m not a big complainer, and I certainly wouldn’t complain about anything I do for Dad.

Dad’s having trouble remembering Kate S. I’m trying to explain that I want to wait for her to get better before we go try the new restaurant near his house, but he’s having trouble thinking of who she is. I tell him about our Sunday dinners, but it doesn’t help. “I must do a lot of things and just trash them apart,” he says. I get Kate S. on the phone. They start discussing her bad leg. “A little trick and bing all of this is following. I never heard of such a thing.” Dad is constantly amazed that she hurt herself so badly just by tripping. “I’d go bugs if I had a month to lie down.”

“She has a cat to keep her company,” I tell her. “You’ve never been without a cat,” he says to me. “Except in college when I couldn’t and I had a rabbit instead.” “Yeah,” he says “but your real address was still . . . “ Even though he’s lost in the sentence, I know what he means. “I still had cats at home,” I fill in. “Yes.”

“How often do you take a bath?” This sudden question makes me laugh. “That’s an odd question,” Dad acknowledges. “Some people say they do it once a day but I don’t see the point of it unless they work in a mine or some dirty place like that. Very often I went two weeks, even, but, of course, it depends a lot on what you do. If you work in a mine, every day you have to clean up. But I’ve never worked in a mine.” “I bet you had to clean up a lot when you were cutting fish,” I offer. “When was I cutting fish?” “On the docks in Gloucester during World War II after you got thrown out of the army.” “I got thrown out of the army right away.”

Dad’s watching me type. “Boy, you sure do know how to work those fingers! Do you think you can go any faster?” I make an effort to speed up. “You’re going goddamn fast, I can tell.” I speed up some more. “Jesus Christ, you’re going right out! Whoo-whee! God, you’re going about ten times as fast as I would go. Wow.” By now I’m laughing too hard at our little game to keep it up.

“Are you writing anything in particular?” Dad wants to know. “ I’m writing about you.” Having made the decision to be open with him about it, I stick to it, even if it’s sometimes awkward. “ I always write about you. I have 63 articles about you.” “WHAT! Wow!” “They’re not long.” I read Dad the “Star Trek” entry. “Wow, Wow, Wow,” he says. “Wow. I don’t know what to say.”

He goes silent and the silence feels heavy, so I direct his attention to his Easter basket and unwrap a couple of candies for him. “Some of these are plain and some of them have a whole lot of things in them,” he says. “Most of them have big nuts and it takes ten, fifteen, twenty hours for some of them to dissolve. It’s great work. I never had candy as good as that. Never.” He’s eating mini-Snickers at the moment. They should hire him for an ad campaign.