Roll with the Punches (7 page)

"Strep tonsillitis," I croaked, "with a touch of dengue fever," and hung up before my boss, Marla, could get on the line and call my bluff.

Then I went to the chin-up bar in my closet and did a couple dozen to stay in shape for future rock-climbing dates with James. But an acrid smell reached my nose at about the same time as the fire alarm went off.

Bing and I raced to the kitchen to find the big guy happily scrambling a skillet full of eggs and ham in some blackly smoking bacon grease with a green plastic spoon. A pile of burnt toast shared a plate with the well-done bacon.

Bing swooped in to suck up bacon bits off the floor.

"You can butter the toast, Rhonda. I know you like that job," Dad said.

I had liked that job when I was eight years old. Soon after, I had disdained most animal products. I had gone vegetarian in my early teens along with my whole nerdy cohort. Most of the girls had done it in a fleeting attempt to fit in with the popular clique, but my reasons were more literary. E. B. White's and Dick King-Smith's frolicking pigs and geese had still lived large in my head from childhood readings. Poor Wilbur and Babe would not die because of me.

I quickly switched on the stove fan and opened the kitchen window and door, but the alarm blared on. Looking around for a broomstick to hit the thing with, I noticed a pile of napkins whose curling brown edges sat an inch from the open range flame. I lunged for them and knocked Dad’s stack of toast onto the kitchen floor.

Bing gleefully got a piece. Music Man retrieved three, which he buttered for himself while I poked at the red smoke alarm button with the broomstick, missing several times and sending paint and plaster raining down all over.

Dad yelled over the noise, "Be glad I'm the cook today. Ethel's stingy with the bacon." He peered over bifocals covered with grease spatters and piled our plates high with barnyard proteins.

I finally stopped the alarm.

He glanced up. "I wish they wouldn't turn that thing on so often. Hurts my ears."

Huh? "
They
don't—wait, Dad, isn't your cholesterol about a million?" I tried to grab his plate, but he hung on.

A tug-of-war ensued.

Swatting at my hands, he puffed, "Rhonda, I did my Eagle Scout and got my good grades in college and landed my job with the health insurance and raised four crabby kids. At the age of seventy-nine, I'm not working for any more scores! I don't care how high a cholesterol number they want, they'll just have to take what they get.”

He won the contest by poking my stomach with a spoon under the plate.

"Hey! Unfair!" I let go, and food flew left and right, setting Bing's expert Frisbee-catching mouth into action. I sat down, snarling at the cluttered kitchen table, tossed Bing my bacon, and picked chunks of green plastic spoon out of my eggs. Shoot. Had Dr. Seuss had a dad like mine? I made more toast. Dad sat down and we ate in strained silence. Almost like old times.

In his heyday, Music Man had been a big reader, a dutiful teacher, and an avid volleyball coach, working long hours fulfilling his coaching duties. His time at home had been spent grading papers, writing tests, reading, or watching TV, mostly here in this room. And of course, eating. He and I had done our bonding in companionable silence over these activities, except when he got started with his jokes. Then the whole house had groaned. But the bad jokes were preferable to the times when one of my brothers had done something stupid and Dad blew a fuse. Then all of us cockroaches had run for cover.

He said, "I don't want you to worry about Mom, Rhonda. She'll be just fine as soon as they put her back together, you know, stuff all the straw back in. You know she's the Scarecrow, and I'm the Tin Man." He burst into song. "
If I only had a heart
.”

"No, Dad," I corrected him. "You were the Cowardly Lion, remember? Jerry was the Tin Man. Monica was Dorothy, and Hanky was Toto.”

"Who were you?" he said.

"The Wicked Witch." The lot of the youngest. "Those little red shoes don't fit anymore.”

Music Man loaded his toast with apricot jam and sang, "
We're off to see the wizard …
"

I needed Glenda's cell phone number. Quick.

As I rose from the table, he caught my hand, looking serious. "Listen, Rhonda. Ethel's a fighter. She'll be okay. Don't you worry. Just like my old dad used to say: You've got to roll with the punches." He flashed a half-hearted grin.

I had a fleeting image of me rescuing Mom from the operating table on my roller skates.

"But honey, you've got to promise me something." His grasp tightened. "My dad made me promise him, and now I'm asking you.”

I waited, apprehensive at Dad's rare solemnity. His glasses needed cleaning. The stove needed cleaning. The whole kitchen needed cleaning. Tide spring scent rose from his shirt, and the mantel clock ticked past Bing's snores under the table. My stomach knotted itself twice.

"You got to promise me never, ever to put me in one of those 'senior' places again. I'd just die in one of those places. They're not cut out for folks in our family."

Except Granddad had died of a heart attack at age sixty-two after winning a bridge tournament. He'd never needed assisted living. And Dad had packed all that applesauce … "Uh, sure, Dad.”

Before I could uncross the fingers in my pocket, Mom called my cell phone, a quaver in her voice. "Rhonda, I'm having surgery at 1:30. Could you pick your dad up and bring him over here before you go to work? I want to see both of you. In case I don't make it."

"You'll make it, Mom. Trust me. But, uh, Dad's already here."

"Where are you?"

"At your house."

"Why? He didn't fall again, did he? I swear, that man has fallen more times lately. Says he's dizzy a lot. But he won't use a walker."

Not wanting to upset her before surgery, I thought fast. "He got lonely for home. And you."

She laughed, "That dickens. Well, in that case, don't let him stir the eggs with a plastic spoon, and don't let him have any bacon. He's already had some this week."

Too late. "The problem is, Mom, I called in sick today, but I really need to work tomorrow."

"Well, get a housekeeper—one that can cook low-fat and isn't too expensive and is honest and not too young. He's a bottom pincher."

Right. Super Martha, for five dollars an hour.

Music Man gathered up the plates, singing
Bringing in the Sheaves
in his wobbly baritone. At the sink, he changed to another hymn called
On the Cross
, with his own set of words:

"
In the bar, in the bar, where I bought my first cigar, and the nickels and the dimes rolled away
." He caught my eye and I joined in, scraping a plate. "
It was there by chance that I tore my Sunday pants. And now I have to wear them every day
." We were both grinning at the end.

Then he noticed that I was filling the large left-hand sink with soapy water.

"Rhonda. You can't do it that way. We always do it the other way. The soapy water goes over here." He shoved me aside and unplugged the big sink, and with a clatter, hurriedly shifted all the dishes into the tiny right-hand sink, built only for rinsing. Pans went crashing to the floor, making Bing scramble for cover.

I said, "We've never done it that way. The big pots and pans won't fit in there."

Doggedly, he kept going. A glass broke, but he continued to fill the little sink until it overflowed.

"Dad, let me get that broken glass out.”

He elbowed me away. "You're just like your mother, always wanting your own way, always wanting to change things. I always wash the dishes in the right-hand sink, and I'm not going to change now. Ethel knows how I do it. You just go outside. You just go to work." He hunched over the sink, his great bulk a fortress, protecting his odd behavior from view.

Standing back offended, I caught Bing cruising my jacket pockets for used Kleenex and candy.

"Stop that, you beast!" I swatted his nose and shooed him outside, then stomped down the hall to my room, fuming. How long had Dad been this way? Happy one minute, crabby the next, and about as logical as a fish? His temper hadn’t been this volatile since he'd retired from high school teaching a decade ago. The fewer teenagers there are in one's life, the better off one is, of course, so he'd perked right up at retirement.

I checked my email. Fifteen loan ads, twelve million-dollar spams from Africa, eight offers to lengthen my penis, three shoe sale coupons, and another of my interested agents, Mary Ellen Harrison, telling me never to darken her door again.

I considered calling my brothers, both dentists, about Dad. But it was Wednesday. They'd either be golfing or drawing up pre-nups for their second or third wives. Too cool for us, they'd both flown off at eighteen to the opposite coast, never to return. Occasionally they called on holidays. But that was it.

So I called Monica in Sydney. She'd know what to do. But I'd forgotten just how nasty an awakened Monica could be at 4:00 a.m. her time.

She said, "Come on, Rhonda. Get real. He's damn near eighty, and he's stressed out from Mom being in the hospital. It's not comfortable for old people to move. You should never have taken him to that Purina place."

"Ralston House. Look, it wasn't my idea. Mom told me to. And he's not old. Seventy-nine is not old. My father is
not old
.”

"Fine. Tell his surgeon that. Besides, you know they're inseparable. Haven't you noticed he won't go anywhere without her anymore?"

"I don't like the
duh
in your tone of voice," I said.

"Look, he's the captain, she's the navigator. He's just feeling lost at sea." She sighed. "I've finally landed a decent part-time job and the kids love their school. But if you really can't handle it, I guess I could come home.”

The last thing I wanted was for Monica to show up in California, kids in tow, pissed off because she'd spent thousands of dollars for an emergency trip home just a month after leaving us. She'd take over like a drill sergeant, and no one would get any rest for weeks.

"Uh, never mind. I was just so—surprised that Music Man might have dementia."

"Believe me, Rhonda. It's not dementia. He's fine. He's just stressed out. Look, watch him for a couple days. Take him home with you. Get him some Prozac."

"From a doctor?"

Monica yawned. "I don't care if it's from a veterinarian or an astrologer. But deal with it. Keep him out of trouble, Ms. Librarian. It's your turn.”

Well, maybe it was. I picked up the Alzheimer's pamphlet from Julie Bauer and read it. Scary stuff. So I got on my mother's ancient purple laptop with the screen problem and typed in
dementia.
Scarier stuff. Of course, I'd researched memory loss for my book, but this was Dad. Whose memory wasn't that bad, except for some dream that he still had little kids at home. Yeah, it must have been a dream. Because if he truly had dementia, this article said he shouldn't be left home alone, ever. At all. Good grief.

One website said his symptoms might be caused by a drug interaction, depression, a vitamin deficiency, or a thyroid problem. Or alcohol. I needed a doctor to sort it out, but Mom's computer suddenly went all white screen. My laptop was at home, so I called Mom. I couldn't reach her at the hospital, so I searched her index card file for doctor cards and called some.

Funny. When the receptionists heard Dad's name, they got cagey and said they were booked up until Easter. It wasn't hard to imagine Dad pulling pranks in doctors' offices with Christian Scientist Mom egging him on, laughing at the ensuing office chaos. Finally, the doddering computer came back on and I surfed the Internet to find a local gerontologist and grabbed an available slot for the next day.

Then I prayed for Hagrid to ride up on a magic motorcycle to get us there.

By some miracle, my father was not cut by the broken glass in the dishwater that morning, although I was, when I let the dishwater out of the sink. On the way to see Mom before her surgery, Dad and I had another minor scuffle over his blue handicapped card, which he won as I swerved in traffic. When we arrived at UCI Medical Center in late morning, Mom, out of it on pre-surgery drugs, waved and dozed off again.

Dad settled down near her to wait.

I was antsy about Mom, but even more frustrated about being stuck here, unable to pursue my book problem. I needed to work with letters to calm me down and help me think. A new word scramble book sat on Mom's bedside table. Yummy.

I unscrambled
OYOILRSUT
to
riotously
. My brain started a mental list of possible book thieves. Marian. Jackie. George. No. They were my mentors, and occasional tormentors, but basically friends.

"Wow. How'd you get that so easy?" The little gray man was looking around the gold curtain over my shoulder.

"I'm a genius," I said. The word
SERANGO
unscrambled to
oranges
in milliseconds. More suspects popped up in my head: James? Harley? But they loved me, right? Hmm. I had also given my parents early drafts to read, but I’d changed the book a lot since then. They'd never sell me out, but had they given my manuscript to someone else—knowingly or unknowingly?

The little gray man poked my shoulder. "What’s your trick?"

I sighed. "See," I pointed. "It's black and white on the page, but for me, it’s like—colors. I see a silvery blue
S
, a green
E
, a red
R
, a violet
A
, a gold
N
, a gray
G
, and a white
O
. Makes it easy to—"

His eyes had gone wide. Oops. I'd said too much. I didn't tell him the colors had been assigned in my brain at birth to both letters and numbers by some really irritating power greater than me, one that enjoyed constant torture. The colors usually appeared stronger when I was upset, especially during life changes. Like now.

The man said, "Do a harder one."

"Sure." I flipped pages to
PUDENTITIE
and snorted. Racy sound, but boring colors: gray
U
's, white
I'
s and black
T's
with only spots of green, orange, blue, and gold. "Of course,
ineptitude
," I said. Like me taking care of Dad.