a big, big, big ass

Dad is trying to wipe the counter clean with his used napkin, just creating more of a mess. I hand him a damp paper towel. “Is this a new stunt? Half wet and half dry?” he asks.

On the phone, Kate S. tells him that she’s taking Kristen-the-cat to the vet tomorrow. The cat has been shaking her head too much and the veins inside her ear are bulging. When Kate S. tells Dad she might have to have surgery, he says “they’ll probably knock her out with the sauce.” He seems relieved to hear that it’s only her ear. He doesn’t admit it much, but he’s actually quite attached to the cat. When he first got her, he spent hours observing her and then calling me to report on her behavior, all of which was pretty routine cat activity.

Lately, Dad’s having trouble with his cigars. Since he has no depth perception, he has trouble lighting them - he holds the match half an inch or so too far from the end of the cigar. He gets them lit eventually, sometimes with my help. He has to light them more than usual, too, because his concentration isn’t good and he’ll get distracted by something and let the cigar go out in the ashtray. Today, he decided to smoke a second cigar, but somehow as he was taking off the cellophane, he wound up unpeeling the actual wrapper of the cigar and the whole thing fell apart in his hands. “It’s punishing me,” he said, meaning that this mishap was a consequence for having two cigars in one day. He’s smoking more than usual, just like he’s eating and drinking more than usual, because he doesn’t remember that he ate an hour before or smoked the day before.

Dad is studying my feet and ankles, which are propped up. Since my feet are very pale, they make a good contrast with their surroundings, and Dad can often see them, though he doesn’t always know what they are – he sometimes mistakes my feet for his white cat. Anyway, today he says, “Right now, it looks like a huge ass. A big, big, big ass. Bent way over and sticking up.”

Dad is pondering gender again. “Girls never have beards, do they?” he asks me. I’m not about to get into a complicated explanation of the circumstances under which some women grow facial hair, so I just give him a simple answer – “No, they don’t.”