where's Obama?

Dad’s still stuck on the idea that Brianna is a cat. Kate S. says that on Wednesday he asked her how old Brianna was and when she told him 29, he protested, “but cats don’t live that long!”

Kate S and Brianna and I went to see the Star Trek movie today and then came to Dad’s house for our first Friday night dinner. We’ve finished and dessert – an orange marmalade tart – is cooling. Dad is impatient, but when he hears it’s just out of the oven, he says, “I wouldn’t want to burn my ass off!”

“What are you doing, Dad?” I ask. “Growling,” he says, and resumes growling. “Oh.” I say. That’s a conversation stopper.

I’m washing dishes and Kate S. is drying when Dad, who has been quiet, asks “Where’s Obama?” He’s looking around. Brianna is playing with the computer and answers him absently, “in Washington.”

I stayed after they left – lately I’ve been waiting until he’s asleep, since leaving him awake and alone makes me feel guilty. Dad sat down next to me on the couch – a big change since he never sat on the old one – and talked for a whole hour. “When I die, I won’t remember a damn thing,” he says.

“I’ve become very fond of you, somehow, I don’t know why,” Dad tells me. “That’s because I’m your kid.” I say. I tell him the story of my birth, how I was premature and unexpected, and he was teaching and had to be paged over the loudspeaker and got to the hospital too late to witness my actual birth. “When Mom brought me home, she brought me to this apartment,” I conclude. “Here?” he asks. “This apartment.” “But I didn’t live here?” I feel like I’m reading to a little kid who asks a lot of questions. “Yes, you lived here,” I tell him. “So I lived here, she lived here, you lived here and a baby lived here,” he concludes. “I WAS the baby,” I tell him.

“I’m a completely complicated character, I guess” says Dad. Then he asks me: “did you ever have kids?” “No, I’m only 33,” I tell him. “You could have had 15 kids by then if you wanted them,” he says. “I thought you were a busy chaser but keeping it all quiet.” I’m totally startled by this idea. “Who would I be chasing?” I ask him. “I don’t know, but some people just run around, they don’t care who they run around with,” he says.

“What would happen if we started going together, started fucking?” Dad asks me. I keep my voice as matter-of-fact as possible. “That would be a problem, because I’m your daughter,” I tell him. “You know,” he says, “sex isn’t anywhere near what we think it is, it’s make believe, phony.” He gazes into an empty space, “Hello, kitty cat,” he says. “I’m imagining kitty cat” he says to me.

At the end of the evening, as he grows tired, he begins to hallucinate more. First it was just some lights, but then he said, “do you know what I’m looking at? I’m looking at an imaginary four year old kid.” “A boy or a girl?” I asked, intrigued. “A girl,” he said, “and now it’s vanished. Do you have things like that?” “No,” I told him, “you have an active imagination.” Later, as he made his way across the room, he said it again, “You know what I see?” “What?” I asked, having no idea. “A whole lot of green fold up chairs.” Interestingly, he knows these things are not real, but he is not distressed about it. If I was seeing things I knew weren’t real, I’d be on Dr. Brunswick’s doorstep freaking out, but Dad just seems to think this is how it’s supposed to be.

On his way to bed, Dad hugs me goodnight. “You’re sweating,” he says. “It’s warm in here,” I tell him, not mentioning that the oven’s been on. “That’s why you’re wearing shorts.” Marie switched him to shorts after his bath this afternoon. “Where did these come from?” he wants to know. I’ve never seen them before, either. “I think Marie got them for you.” I tell him. “She wanted to see me in shorts,” he says, knowingly. It’s all I can do not to laugh out loud.