The stuff that grows

Dad wants to know where I was last night. He’s a little confused because I had to leave his house suddenly to deal with a situation at the shelter. “I was at home last night,” I tell him. “You have a home, oh, good,” he says. “How are things down at the old hatch?”

Dad is feeling around the table when he encounters the xylophone. “That’s the baby,” he says “isn’t that the baby?” “That’s the xylophone,” I tell him. “I thought it was something grossly important,” he says.

He stumbles across his red plaid hat on the table and trades it for the baseball cap he was wearing. Holding the baseball cap, he says “I don’t know where the rest of the caps are.” “In the bedroom,” I say. “My knowledge, my education, my everything is falling away by the wayside,” he says, heading back there.

“I forgot where my pants are,” says Dad, who is wearing pants and plucking at the corduroy covering his legs. It turns out that he means his elderly denim pants, which appear to be precursors to modern jeans. He had them on yesterday, so I find them easily on the floor by his bed. “I’m going to change my pants,” he announces. “Feeling too warm?” I ask. I certainly would in corduroy pants in this weather. “No,” he says, “they’re fresh. I was going to put them on for celebration, but we celebrated and that’s that.” Dad returns after a long time, wearing nothing put his underwear. “I thought you were going to put on your pants,” I say inquiringly. “I can’t find them,” he says. “They’re on your bed.” He goes back to try again, and is gone even longer. I think about going to see if he needs help, but I don’t hear any cursing, so I wait. When he finally emerges, it turns out he put them on three different times – the first time he thought they were backwards and reversed them, only to find that then they really were backwards.

Dad is thinking about his cat. “She’s easy to spot because she has spots.” I put her in his lap, with a pillow between her claws and his thin pants. He says, petting her, “I suppose I’m not really engineered to keep nice kitty going, I’m still kind of strange to it.”

Dad is a few forkfuls into his dinner, when he pauses “You know what’s good about this? The stuff that grows.” I survey his plate – we’re having deconstructed tacos, with the ingredients served in salad form instead of in difficult-to-handle shells, dressed with lime juice and cumin. ‘The stuff that grows’ must refer to the lettuce, I think. After he’s done, “You know what, that’s one of the nicest small sessions I’ve ever had. Usually they give you too much, but this was just right.”

We listen to another disc of the ‘Tis book. After we’re done, Dad says, “I’m beginning to suspect that when I talk to that Irishman that it takes away a certain amount of – of what? Of everything, of what I’m saying. After a couple of hours of talking to him, I can’t see as much, I can’t talk as much. Why does it take away so much? It’s weird. I can’t understand it.” I try not to laugh out loud at the way Dad phrases it, making it sounds like Frank McCourt has been here chatting away.

Dad is lost in a story and I can’t figure it out. He says, “He takes a lot of time because he had a . . . I don’t know what to say – I can’t think of a lot of things I used to think of 5, 10, 15 years ago. I can’t think of the words. I can think of all the wrong words, that’s the weirdest part of it.” “That must be annoying,” I sympathize. “Yes, it is,” he says emphatically.

It’s time for a distraction, so I put Kate S. on the phone with him. “Oh, it’s you,” he says to her. “I imagine you have a hard time finding things to do because you’re just lying there, lying there, lying there.” Later he tells her “I’m not doing anything, I’m just sloping blah, blah, blah. I used to do more, but I don’t do it now.” As he’s getting off the phone he tells her, “Good luck, good luck, good luck. Help your shoe, your foot, get as good as it was before.”

“I’m afraid I’m getting a little dotty,” Dad says, “but I suppose if you’re 85 you have to expect something a little bad.”

“You know what’s troubling me?” he asks. “What?” “I can’t tell the difference between you and the other girl that’s in the hospital.” (he means Kate S.) I’m at a loss as to how to respond to this. Finally, I say, “she’s bigger than I am.” “That’s right,” he says, apparently satisfied.

Dad is relaxing after his dessert, vanilla ice cream with strawberries cooked in simple syrup and whipped cream. He lights his cigar, and starts talking. “I had a period when I was in my 30s, I was going to be a great writer. I wrote all of these short stories and sent them off, and they all said ‘do this, that and the other’ and I said ‘to hell with it.’ Yes, and I had about ¾ of a novel, in fact, I finished the novel and that wasn’t very good either so I junked the whole thing. One guy said ‘if you had started between 15 and 20 you might have been a great writer, but you have to start early.’” Then he snaps out of it for a minute. “ I’m doing a lot of confessing, aren’t I?” he asks, self-consciously.

“I probably feel like moving in, but all those cats, I don’t know,” says Dad, out of the blue. “You know your way around here really well,” I remind him, “at my house you’d be lost.” “How would you feel if I moved down to your place?” he asks. “I’d be OK with it.” “You don’t think I’d squash the cats?” “They’d learn to get out of the way.” “It would be like out in the wilderness for me because I’ve been in midtown Manhattan for 60 years. I don’t know 110th st., I’ve been very limited.” A call from an upset client interrupts this conversation.

After I get off the phone, we talk about work a little, and then he asks “Are you going to give it up?” “In a way,” I reply. “ If you go on a long trip to South America . . .” says Dad, trailing off. “I’m not going on a long trip to South America, that’s what you would do,” I say, laughing. “I guess so,” he says. “In fact, you’ve been on long trips to South America!”