“What happened, Dad?” I sit in the chair beside him.
He looks at me with that absent gaze of his that I wish would clear one day. It breaks my heart every time I visit—he survived the stroke, but his life seeped out of him regardless.
He turns to my sister. “How are the kids? And how is that handsome husband of yours?”
Tessa walks around, tracing her finger along a shelf. “Everybody is all right. You really need to make sure they come to clean your room every day, Dad. We pay them to do that.”
“Dad, tell me what happened.” I try to get him focused.
I know this emergency is probably as fictional as any other we’ve had over the years, but still, let’s not just chit-chat.
I find my blood boiling as usual when the three of us are in the same room. Tessa ignores Dad, he ignores me, and at the end of the visit I somehow end up feeling like a failure.
“Have you been drinking?” He raises his eyebrows.
“I had a glass of wine at an event earlier.” I search my purse and pop a mint. “What happened, Dad?”
“Well, you remember how you put the bank on my phone?”
His slurring is always more pronounced when he’s frustrated. I cover his hand with mine, trying to comfort him.
With his other hand, he clutches his smartphone to his chest, protecting it. I bought it for him so he could video call his grandchildren.
He seemed to have enjoyed the technology, so I installed a few other features to make his life easier. Including a banking app. What was I thinking?
I was happy that he took to the phone so well, and now plays solitaire and Candy Crush like a pro.
Not yet sixty-five, my dad doesn’t belong in a long-term care home. But as he never fully recovered from my mother’s betrayal, and after he suffered his stroke, we had no other options.
“I thought you enjoyed using the app.” Okay, this robbery makes less and less sense.
“Yes, but someone stole my money.” He holds his phone even closer, as if to protect what’s left in his bank account. Which wasn’t much to begin with.
“What do you mean, someone stole your money?” Tessa joins the conversation. “This place is a state-of-the-art facility. Who would steal here? We need to report this.” She opens Dad’s drawers and closes them again, nonsensically.
“Not from here. From my bank.” Dad hesitantly hands me his phone. “I should never have trusted the stupid ape.”
“App, as in application, Dad.” I sigh.
I look at the screen, swipe a few times, and don’t see the icon, so I use the search and find it quickly. I hand the phone back to him. “Type in your code.”
I’m regretting that I exposed him, not just to convenience and entertainment, but also to the perils of cybercrime.
Dad takes the phone, his lips pressed tightly together. “Where was it?”
I lean over, and Tessa jumps closer, craning her neck. The initial password page is still on the screen.
“Dad, you need to put in the password first,” Tessa urges, as if speaking to one of her teenagers.
Dad stares at the screen and grumbles, “It wasn’t here.”
“Dad, check if the money is there now.” I smile at him to reassure him while my mind is racing. What is happening?
“The ape wasn’t there,” he says as he types in the password, and then turns off the screen and looks at us with a smile. “Well, I’m glad this unfortunate misunderstanding at least brought you two to visit me.”
“I don’t understand.” Tessa stares at me.
I smile at Dad and take the phone to show him howto find an app if he accidentally removes it from the home screen.
