“Yeah,” I said. “There we go.”
Marcella closed the refrigerator. “Do you need some paper towels?”
I felt all at once a very particular sadness that I couldn’t quite identify until sometime later. For Leo my parents were in their third act. They were my parents. They were aging. They forgot things, were weaker in their bodies, didn’t always understand the rhythm of modern life.
They weren’t the nimble, athletic people I had known as a child. Dave didn’t run the beach anymore; Marcella didn’t plan spontaneous weekends away. They were set in their life, dug in, and I felt a pang of grief that Leo wouldn’t share my memories. That in twenty years I wouldn’t be able to roll over, look into his eyes, and say “Remember when Dad…”
There is a particular loneliness to being an only child. I never felt it as acutely as I did the day I decided to marry.
Leo wasn’t close with his family, and I knew for him that there was no inherent or assumed responsibility. He had left home quite young, so had his siblings, and had been on his own from that point onward. He was used to being a one-man show, and I wondered how he would deal with the fact that I wasn’t.
Now, I put my board away and hop in the shower. I’m supposed to go with Marcella to see Bonnie today, but Stone asked us to check in first on how she is. I’ve seen her only once in the month since my first visit, and it’s like she’s being erased before my eyes. Stone says he thinks the end is near, but she keeps holding on. I know how much Marcella wants to go today. I told Stone we’d call after eight.
I turn the water to a cold blast at the end and then step out, and as I’m toweling off I hear some commotion downstairs. I slip my robe around me and walk down to find Dad fumbling on the deck with his board. He’s trying to flip it over, but he’s having a hard time lifting it.
I watch him for a moment, caught between the desire to rush out and help him and the need to observe him to see what, exactly, age is doing to him. And as I watch him I have a feeling of perversion, something close to disgust, that creeps into the corners. Because he’s Dave Novak, lifelong surfer, bulldog of a dad. And right now, he can’t lift his board.
I am used to worrying about him, but I have very little practice with the worry being founded. It was all theoretical, wasn’t it? A hidden heart condition, a deadly crash—neither of which we could actually see. But now, here, his limitations are on display.
He spots me before I make myself known. I see it dawn on him, this witnessing, and then he sighs, and lifts his hand in a wave. I open the door and go outside.
“How long?” I ask him.
He exhales. “Don’t be so dramatic. Sometimes the old girl is heavier than she used to be.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
“What is there to say? I’m getting older.”
“Does Mom know?”
“That I’m seventy-three? Yes, I think she does.”
Dad smiles a big, goofy grin, and I feel my arms begin to slacken where they’re crossed. It’s funny how the first response to fear is often anger.
“Come on,” he says, “sit down with me.”
Dad gestures to the edge of the deck. I sit. So does he.
“I’ve started getting a little angina,” he says. Casually, so casually. Like he’s remarking on the surf conditions.
I turn to look at him but say nothing.
“Nothing significant. Just a little short of breath lately. I knew it would happen sooner or later.”
“How long has it been going on?”
“Oh, who knows. You get older, things present. Nothing is a big deal.”
“What does the doctor say?”
Dad exhales. “For a man my age, I’m doing great. Doctor says I could live another twenty years.”
Twenty years. It’s a long time. It isn’t enough.
“One of the bypasses closed,” he says quietly, almost so I can’t hear him. “But they don’t want to do anything about it. Not yet.”
I feel my stomach descend down into my feet. “Did you tell Mom?”
