Dad. William Wharton

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      He comes out of the bathroom and starts toward the dining room.

      ‘Dad, why don’t you get dressed first? It’ll be a while yet before the eggs are ready.’

      He looks at me bare-eyed.

      ‘Where are your glasses, Dad?’

      ‘I couldn’t find them, Johnny.’

      I go back to the bedroom with him and they’re where he’d put them, on the bedside table, before he went to sleep. I should be glad he took them off, I guess. There’s a creamy haze on them, rim to rim. I take them to the bathroom and wash the lenses in warm water. I’m careless with glasses myself, but when things start to blur, I usually wipe the damned things off anyway.

      He stands beside the bed and fits them carefully several times over his ears. He’s always claimed glasses hurt his nose and ears, so he’s continually changing frames, from rimless to metal to plastic and back. He didn’t start wearing glasses until he was over fifty and has never adapted.

      The coffee’s getting cold. I know he’s waiting for me to find his clothes. I see yesterday’s clothes on the floor beside the bed where he dropped them. I pick these up and spread them on the bed.

      ‘Here, Dad. You can wear the clothes you wore yesterday. They’re not dirty.’

      He looks at me closely, tilts his head.

      ‘I never wear the same clothes two days in a row, Johnny. Your mother would kill me.’

      He’s not complaining, only stating a fact. To be honest, I’m not a clean-underwear-every-day man myself.

      I search around and find some underwear. Dad wears Dacron boxer shorts and the kind of undershirts they had before T-shirts were invented. These look like tops of old-fashioned bathing suits or jogger shirts; shoulder straps and big holes you stick your arms through. Pinned to the inside of his old undershirt is a scapular of The Sacred Heart. Dad slips on the new undershirt and feels around with his hand.

      ‘Where’s my scapular, John?’

      It’s as if he thinks he has a scapular built in on each undershirt. I unpin the old one and give it to him. He has one hell of a time pinning it on; you can tell he’s never done it before. He’s pinning it with concentration, bunching the underwear shirt into a ball, pinning, then smoothing out wrinkles. He pats the scapular three or four times and smiles. He’s proud he didn’t pin it to his skin, I guess. I give him a shirt and a pair of trousers from the closet; I put out clean socks.

      ‘Look, Dad, you have to learn where all these things are. Mother’s sick and can’t do this anymore.’

      He smiles a wide, eager smile.

      ‘You’re right there, Johnny. I’m going to learn all these things. You’ll see.’

      I go back to the kitchen and warm up the coffee. I cook some eggs. The pills are beside his plate. I wait and it takes forever for him to come out of the bedroom. What can be taking him so long?

       I lean close against Milly and wash her teats clean with warm water. The udder is heavy, the milk vein swollen. The fresh water streams from the turgid pink teats into the dim, new dawn light. I push the bucket in place, squat on the stool and start the singing rhythm of milk on metal. My fingers warm with every rolling squeeze.

      When Dad comes out, I serve the eggs with hash browns. Dad sits and looks at them as if they’re strange outer-space food.

      ‘Isn’t there any bearclaw?’

      ‘Sure, but let’s have some eggs first, then you can finish off the bearclaw.’

      ‘Johnny, I never eat so much in the morning.’

      ‘Try it this one time, Dad. It’ll give you a good start. Coffee and a roll isn’t enough, even with all the vitamin pills.’

      Hell, he ought to have some breakfast; at least orange juice, and an egg.

      He eats nimbly, not breaking the yolk till the white is eaten, then finishes by wiping his mouth with the napkin. He wipes as if he’s going to wear off his lips. And this must be a cloth napkin; cloth with every meal and clean. Joan reminded me but it’s something I remember.

      Dad sits back and drinks his cup of cooled-off coffee.

      ‘Right now, Johnny, Mother usually turns on the record player and we listen to music.’

      The player is there beside the table. It’s an old-fashioned, wood-cabinet Magnavox. There’s a sliding lid on top over the turntable. I find the right dials and turn it on. There’s a record already in place. I close the lid. Covered, it looks like a dish cabinet; the front is a woven, metallized cloth with jig-sawed wooden curlicues.

      Bing Crosby comes on singing ‘I Wonder What’s Become of Sally’. It’s a deep, wooden tone, blurry but nice. All the new stereo and high-fidelity sets are very clear, very precise, but I hear that gray, smoked, transparent plastic in the music. It’s so incredibly accurate, transistor-perfect. This murky, dark, wood sound of old Bing is comforting. I’m sure any serious stereo addict would curl up and die but it sounds OK to me. I sit and sip coffee with Dad.

      When the record’s finished, I clear the dishes. I start running hot water into the sink. Dad’s followed me into the kitchen. He leans over my shoulder as I squeeze soap into the hot water. I scrape plates and slip them into the suds.

      ‘You know, John, I think I could do that.’

      ‘Sure, Dad, nothing to it. You put hot water with soap on one side and rinse water on the other. You scrub the dishes on the hot, sudsy side, run them through the rinse and stack them in the dish rack.’

      He’s watching and following through with me. He insists I leave the kitchen and he’ll finish; his first housework, breakfast dishes for two.

      I start sweeping. There’s a vacuum cleaner but I prefer sweeping. I find a broom in the heater closet, and begin on the back bedroom. Mother’s an every-day-vacuum person. The rugs are going to have a slight change in treatment.

      I sweep everything into piles. When I have enough to make a pile, I concentrate it, then move on. This is a four-pile house. Our apartment in Paris in a three-pile place, the boat a two-piler. The mill’s a one-piler, or I can make it two, depending on how dirty things are. Everything gets dirtier down there but it’s earth dirt, not soot or grime the way it is in Paris. The dirt here is between the two, but definitely four piles.

      I look for Dad, expecting to find him out in the garden or greenhouse. But he’s still in the kitchen washing dishes, with intense, inner concentration. I wonder where his mind is.

       Down by the well, a small bird flits its tail and takes off with a dropping upturn as I lean, lowering my pail into the water.

      I sneak up and watch, he’s taking each dish and examining it minutely for dirt, then washing off a spot at a time. If he had a micrometer, a centrifuge and a sterilizer he’d be happier. He’s scraping away as if he’s trying to rub off the flower pattern. When he’s satisfied they’re clean, he dips them in and out of the rinse water at least ten times.

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