Dad always forgets his predictions by the time they are realized; I’m the only witness. But it occurs to me that Nina must have experienced this phenomenon as well, so the next time she calls, I ask, “Did you ever notice that Dad has a sixth sense? Like he can foresee things?”
“What kind of things?”
I tell her about the loons, the unexpected sun, theJeopardy!upset, the early blueberries.
“Those sound like coincidences to me,” she says, seeming distracted. I hear street noise and people twittering in Swedish in the background.
“So you never noticed this? You don’t think he’s even alittle bitpsychic?”
“Oh boy,” Nina says. “You might need to get out more.”
“I know they’re little things. It’s just that they don’t feel like coincidences. I mean, the loons? After years of no loons? Maybe he’s tuned into something.”
“Cricket, he’s not psychic; he’s confused. And your imagination is running a little wild.”
“Okay. Yeah. You’re right.” This is why I need Nina; she brings me back to earth. The summer solstice is almost upon us, and it must be making me loopy—I’m seeing prophecies where they don’t exist.
“Cricket, do you have anyone to hang out with other than Dad?”
“Carl has come by a few times,” I say, but this doesn’t satisfy her.
“What about your friend Chloe? I think she’s still around in the summer. Have you tried reaching out?”
I haven’t, and I’m not ready to.
“I will,” I fib. “That’s a good idea.”
Chapter 12
I’m not exactly sure what I expected, moving back here. In my more naive moments, I had probably hoped for a sense of renewal, if not an all-out catharsis. A sustained feeling of fulfillment. And of course, I had hoped for some kind of reconciliation with my father—or at least, a chance to apologize for the horrible way I acted as a grief-stricken teenager. But he doesn’t even know that I’m his daughter, so I’m not sure how I expected that to work. Maybe Nina was right: what I signed up for was caregiving, but what I sought was a miracle.
If you had told me a year ago that looking after my dad would soon be my day-to-day, I would have congratulated you on the great joke. And if you had asked my dad, fifteen years ago, who would be taking care of him in the twilight of his life, he likely would have suggested anyone but me. But here I am, doing it. We continually surprise each other. We even surprise ourselves.
For the first few weeks after Nina’s departure, I do my best to adhere to her instructions: I wake my father at 7:00A.M. He brushes his teeth. I give him his morning pills (Flomax, Aricept, baby aspirin). We select his outfit for the day. Physically, he can still do most of this on his own, but I need to be there to keep him on task. Otherwise, he gets derailed and wanders into the great room with no pants on. I’ve seen it happen.
But it isn’t long before the carefully conceived schedule that Nina left us falls by the wayside; and by the time July rolls around, I have all but discarded her timetables and spreadsheets. I just don’t see the point in waking my father up if he is tired, or putting him to bed ifhe isn’t. That doesn’t mean we are doing anything particularly wild, only that we might go to the dump on Tuesday rather than on Friday. We might hit the post office on Wednesday rather than on Saturday. We never have much to throw out, and we don’t receive much mail, but we enjoy the adventure of tossing our trash and the subtle drama of opening our P.O. box to see what might lurk inside.
Sometimes it occurs to me that I should at least attempt to cultivate a social life here, but the prospect is daunting. I’m worried about running into people I used to know, about having to recap the last decade. What is there to say? I haven’t been back, but I haven’t moved on.
I had set a goal to find a job by the end of June, but my search is proving trickier than I expected. I inquire at a few local businesses (the Locust Inn, Lorne’s All-Day Diner) about part-time positions, but most have already hired their summer staff, and the ones who still have openings would need me to work early mornings or late nights. I can’t manage that while also taking care of my father, who needs steady supervision, lest he decide to wander off or take the boat out. There are unending ways to get into trouble at Catwood Pond—I would know. My next thought is to try to find an at-home aide to stay with him while I work, but I quickly realize the cost of hiring someone would cancel out whatever I could make in a local service job. For a moment, I wonder ifIshould get a job as a home aide—it seems like a decent gig—and then I realize the nonsensicality of becoming a care worker so that I can hire a care worker, like a snake eating its own tail. The truth is, looking after my father is already a full-time job, albeit an unpaid one. I need something that allows maximum flexibility—and some degree of mental stimulation.
That leaves remote work, which I figure I could do from home while also keeping an adequate eye on my father. But as I search various job boards online, it’s clear that most of the roles that interest me require a college degree. Suddenly, I fear that I might be wholly unemployable, which is ironic given the diversity of gigs I’ve had in my life. I’ve managed to shapeshift from cleaning stalls on a ranch to waiting tables at a Michelin-starred restaurant. And although I’m stillwilling to do all manner of work, being my dad’s caregiver means I can’t be as flexible as I once was. I can feel my stress mounting, but I tell myself I have time. We have enough money for now.
One afternoon, my father and I are sitting on the porch. He used to spend hours with a book here, but reading has become tricky for him. He will pick up the newspaper or a magazine out of habit, but put it down before long, defeated. I know he still has the capacity to read—he sometimes recites a headline to me—but it seems he can no longer follow a narrative thread for long enough to get through a whole article, or a chapter, or even a paragraph. So we have a new afternoon tradition: I read poetry aloud to him, and he promptly falls asleep.
As I leaf through a heavy anthology, my dad looks at his watch and says, “Carl should be here soon.”
“I don’t think he’s coming today,” I say gently. I happen to know that Carl is out of town and isn’t expected back until next week. Letting my finger land on a random page, I commence reading Theodore Roethke’s “The Waking.” By the time I get to “We think by feeling. What is there to know?” my father is asleep—his mouth open and emitting jagged snores at uneven intervals.
From here, I can see across the pond to the far shore, a mile away. In my lifeguarding days, I could easily swim there and back, but I haven’t attempted it since the summer after Seth’s accident, when grief made me restless, and constant motion was the only thing that kept me from disintegrating. I had once heard that if a shark stops swimming, it dies. And maybe I feared the same would be true for me. Or worse—that stillness might mean aching like that forever. So I lived the next decade in a feverish effort to keep moving: new relationships, new experiences, new distractions.
This is the first time I’ve sat still in years.
Suddenly, I hear heavy footsteps on the stairs of the porch, and Carl appears in his summer uniform: brown work boots, navy pants, blue T-shirt.
“Hi there,” I say. “This is a nice surprise. I thought you were still out of town.”
“Came back a little early,” says Carl softly, not wanting to wake my dad. He hands me a basket of colorful heirloom tomatoes and a huge jar of honey with the comb half-submerged. “My friend up north keeps bees.”
