Roll with the Punches (6 page)

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Chirp. Chirp, chirp
. I covered my head with the pillow. Who let those noisy birds in my room? And why were they chirping in the dark?

Julie Bauer's voice blared out into the kitchen and down the hall, "Rhonda? Rhonda? Are you there? Please pick up the phone. We have a situation here."

3:35 a.m. "Hello?" I said.

"Uh, Rhonda?" It sounded like she was in a noisy bar. "We need you to come and pick your father up right now."

Uh-oh. "Is he sick? Did he fall? What happened?"

Music Man grabbed the phone and said tremulously, "Ethel? Is that you, Ethel? I'm sorry, Ethel.”

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Nineteen minutes later, after blasting through all the toll booths between Rancho Santa Margarita and Anaheim, I pushed open the big glass doors to the Ralston House lobby. Empty. I tiptoed past the desk in my fluffy slippers. A light shone out of an office down the hall on the left. I went to the door and peeked in.

There was Dad, the big, bad kid in the principal's office, snoozing in a chair, suitcases at his feet. His head was bent forward, his glasses falling off his nose.

I started toward him.

"Hey, dude, you come for Harold? You his daughter?" I jumped and saw a stocky guy in scrubs and a crew cut, blocking the doorway like a fire plug.

I cringed and nodded. "Do you know what this is about?"

"Dude, it was awesome," Fire Plug Guy grinned and rubbed a blocky hand across his fleshy lower lip. "Harold, er—Mr. Hamilton, there, he had us super busy tonight."

Julie Bauer blazed in and said in a sharp whisper, "Ms. Hamilton, we really aren't equipped to deal with patients with dementia here. Surely you read that in our brochure. You'll have to find somewhere else to place your father. What happened tonight was just too disruptive to our community.”

My eyes bugged out. "Dementia? He's not demented. He's seventy-nine years old, but as far as I know, he's very mentally acute."

A windy snore escaped Dad.

"Surely you've noticed a few changes in your father? In the past few months maybe?"

"Uh. I haven't—"
been home lately.
"Oh, did he get too loud? He's always been loud. His hearing's not good, so he kinda yells. You're not kicking him out for that, are you? Doesn't a person have a constitutional right to be loud in the United States?" Panic bloomed in my chest. If this place threw him out for something so small, would any other place take him?

"Wait." Julie hunted in her desk.

Fire Plug Guy crossed anchor-tattooed arms. "Hey, dude. You got any little kids at home?"

I shook my head no.

"Chuf, man." He grinned. "He thinks you do. He knocked on everybody's doors, yellin' at the top of his lungs for somebody to give him a ride home 'cause a bunch of kids and dogs were home alone. Young kids, like four or five years old. Dude. You got a sister named Nancy?"

I frowned, "No. He did. Why didn't you tell me this when you called? Are you sure he wasn't sleepwalking?" I approached the elephant in the room. "Dad?"

Julie handed me a pamphlet as Dad stirred, bleary-eyed and heaved himself up, picking up his trusty carryall, a small navy blue cloth bag holding Kleenex, sunglasses, glasses-cleaning kit, a crossword book, and contraband snacks. His beige pants clung wetly to his legs. A whiff of something rank reached my nose.

"Come on, Rhonda. Let's go," Dad said. "These people can go to hell for all I care. They wouldn't even let me come and check on you and Monica and Hanky and Jerry." He and I exchanged a puzzled look. "I mean Davey and Susie, of course. Monica's kids," he corrected himself.

"They're in Australia, Dad.”

He shoved his bag at me and latched onto my arm, propelling me toward the door. "Come on. These pants are cold."

I sucked in air, stumbling along in his grasp. "And wet?"

He scowled and steamed on toward the door, the cane furiously clanking in his other hand. "Damn legs are slow. Damn shoes are too heavy."

In the lobby, I turned back to Julie, embarrassed to my toenails. "Do you—um—ever refund deposits?"

Arms folded, Julie shook her head. "There’ll be carpet cleaning, maybe replacement, and tenants' property damage. I'll send a bill."

At the curb, Fire Plug Guy hefted Dad's bags into my trunk and cracked a grin. "Dude, these are heavy. Got a rhino in here?"

I closed Dad's car door.

Fire Plug Guy went on. "He really went agro tonight. When one dude—er—resident, wouldn't take him home, your dad knocked him down with his cane, ran inside the guy's place, grabbed the guy's car keys off his countertop, ran outside and tried them on all the parked cars. The guy's wife called, and I found Harold swearing and hitting the cars with his cane. I thought he was gonna blow out his squeaker. Made some killer dents, though. Sweet."

"Uh." I slumped into the car. Dad's bad temper was legendary in our family. When I was little, I had run from it and hidden. Later, I had learned how to answer it with a giant door slam of my own.

Fire Plug Guy grinned into my open window. "You're kind of cute, dude. You like hockey? I got tickets for Saturday.”

"Sweet," I said. Then I slammed the door and drove away.

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As we cruised down Chapman Avenue, Dad fiddled in his carryall and produced his blue handicapped parking card, which he hung on my mirror. This card was several years out of date. Mom had custody of the current card somewhere, and they'd finally gotten handicapped plates on his car. But Dad would go nowhere without his navy blue bag and this horrid old card, which had suffered greatly with time. It was covered in Lakers and Looney Tunes stickers and it felt gummy from being handled. Some desperate reader had once cut the bottom corner off it for a bookmark. Well, that was just a private guess on my part, of course. A long family investigation into the crime had never uncovered the true criminal, though many had ventured ideas about how the tiny sliver of plastic could have been used: A toothpick? A lock pick? A poison dart? Obviously not having done it myself, I'd never voiced my bookmark theory.

I pulled the disgusting thing off my mirror. "I can't see around this, Dad."

Music Man snatched it from me and hung it back up with a growl.

I reached to pull it down again and found my hand intercepted with one made of iron. I gave up.

When I turned left on Chapman, he said, "Wrong way. You take me to the hospital. I gotta see Ethel." The iron hand reached over and grabbed the steering wheel and yanked.

"Ahhhh!" I screamed as the car made a 180-degree turn across two lanes and then hopped onto the island before I could even start to brake.

"Jesus Christ!" I panicked, stomping the brake pedal and shoving Dad's hand away. The car had its right wheels up on the island and its left ones in an oncoming lane, and was now reaming out its undercarriage as it bounced and scraped along the curb to a stop. Sparks flew behind us and cars came at us, swerving and honking.

"Rhonda, your language!" Dad said.

"What the hell?" I screeched as oncoming drivers yelled at me. With shaking hands and a heart doing the samba, I found a gap in the early morning traffic and slowly maneuvered the car back on even ground and turned it the right way.

"Jesus Christ, Dad!" We lumbered across three lanes to pull into a gas station, where I sat, gulping air.

"I want to see Ethel. And you should be more polite."

Sweaty hair clung to my forehead. "Damn it, Dad! Never do that again! I'm the driver here, and we're staying right here in this gas station until you promise to keep your hands to yourself."

He looked the other way, arms crossed. "I want to see Ethel."

I gritted my teeth. "Dad, it's four-frigging-thirty in the god-damn morning and your god-damn pants are all wet." I was afraid mine were, too. "We're going home."

He jutted his chin out. "Well, I don't know about you, but I can go see her any time because I'm her husband."

Pause.

"And that guy back there made me put my pants back on when they were still wet. I nearly decked him for it, too."

I put my head on the steering wheel.

Ten minutes later, as the car rattled timidly back onto the road, he said, "Damn. Ever since my prostate operation, I tell you. Hey, Rhonda, you remember this one?" He sang, "
Gloria Swanson had bladder trouble, and she found it very hard to pee."

"Dad—"

"So they gave her some Lydia Pinkham's."

"I'm not in the mood—"

"And now they have to tube her to the sea.
" He laughed and tugged at his waistband. "Just wish this belt wouldn't get so wet when I wash these pants in the sink." He started humming an old hymn.

I said, "Dad, the guy back there said you hit someone."

He shifted uneasily in his seat, making a squelchy noise. "He's a liar. I did not. I never hit anybody. Besides, no one would listen to me.”

This was Dad, whining about people not listening? As kids, we had never had any choice
but
to listen to him. He'd been the loudest guy in our neighborhood and probably in the city, maybe even in the whole world.

We finally chugged up to 3478 Acorn Street, the house where I'd spent my formative years, from ages ten to twenty-seven. Okay. I'd been slow leaving the nest, but everyone else had taken off so early that this place had been my own little paradise, with my own built-in hostess: Mom. This nice old ranch house was built in the sixties, at a time when developers doled out both front and back yards big enough to play ball in and the difference between a four-bedroom house and a five-bedroom house was about three thousand dollars. With the growth of large, spreading shade trees up and down each block, the neighborhood now felt complete, mature, and safe. Unless you were pulling crazy Harry from the car near dawn.

As the old coot made his way up the walk, wagging the battered blue card, I picked up a suitcase. Oomph. It really did weigh a ton. I unzipped it and found twenty-two jars of applesauce and a
Reader's Digest
. The other bag yielded a dozen rolls of toilet paper, a ton of dried fruit, and a few dozen Snickers wrappers. I lugged everything into the house in time to catch my father shedding his wet pants onto the linoleum kitchen floor, exposing enormous tree stump legs which I hadn't seen for years. The view had not improved.

"Dad, there's only applesauce in this bag." I said.

He just sang like a five-year-old, "You're my kid, I'm your boss. Let me have my applesauce." He laughed and shuffled down the hall, wheezing, cane clacking.

Once his pants were safely swishing in the washing machine, I found some Motrin and took a fistful.

He reappeared in pajamas, looking worried. "Just between you and me, Rhonda, I took a little extra food to that joint, in case they didn't feed me enough. But don't tell your mother, okay? She only lets me have two jars of applesauce and one bag of dried fruit a day.”

Oh, man. The plumbing—and global warming—implications of this boggled the mind. "But you've packed for traveled before, Dad. There weren't any clothes in your bags.”

He stopped humming. "No, your mother always does that. I do wish I'd brought another pair of pants, though. It sure was windy last night, knocking on all those doors in the altogether."

Harold Hamilton, aka Paul Bunyan of the Blackboard Jungle, ran, naked legs pumping, shirt tails flapping, down the middle of Pacific Coast Highway toward the setting sun. He was singing a wild Irish drinking ditty. I goosed my skateboard velocity to catch up as his bark-covered tree stump legs and strange root-like feet neared a gazebo which sat atop a little lookout point jutting out over the rocks in the swirling ocean below. This was a romantic spot where brides from all over SoCal came for those riding-into-the-sunset wedding pictures with unsuspecting Hubbie Number One. Dad neared the cliff railing. Ahhh! I sped up, but the skateboard hit a rock and propelled me through the air backwards. I bounced and scrambled back up, unscathed but frantic. But he was nowhere to be seen. I raced up and looked over the railing, only to glimpse a huge splash in the rocky waters below.

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I woke up sweating and gasping, half off the extra-long twin bed I'd used all through high school and college, and then some. My parents' golden retriever, Bing Cosby, had draped himself over the faded blue Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote comforter at my feet, smelling quite strong and licking old dog parts.

Ugh. This house reminded me of endless homework, loud parental bridge parties, and horrific blind dates. Mom's matchmaking efforts here had been legion. Dinner after dinner, party after party, some church friends' son, neighbors' nephew, or book club member's grandson had ogled my boobs. But either I wasn't religious enough or the cherubic grandsons were hoodlums, gamblers, or couch pumpkins with no visible means of support. Mr. Right had not materialized despite Mom’s schemes.

Then at the age of twenty-seven, I had finally left my parents on their own to move twenty-five miles away to my own condo in Rancho Santa Margarita. The separation had taken so long to achieve that I rarely came home anymore. Which didn’t seem to bother them, since Monica, their good daughter, had been living close by with two angelic grandchildren. Entertainment galore. Who needed me?

Well, today, I'd have to scurry around and get Music Man settled somewhere until my mother came home. And then I'd pray for Mom to miraculously mend in time to catch that plane to Australia next week and take Dad with her.

The clock said 8:34 as I patted Bing's head. Wow. Three hours sleep. At least I didn't have to—Agghh! I found a phone and dialed the library. Wednesday was my day off, but I'd promised to sub for Jerome while he took out-of-town guests to Disneyland. Every sub job made me both money and brownie points toward getting my full-time job back. Which was a must now that my book was a total washout.

Sarah, a dim library volunteer, took my call.