CHAPTER 4
DEANNA
“Hey, Mom? Can you give me a hand with these?” I grunt as I prop open the door to the house I grew up in, a row home unit in a relatively bad south Philly neighborhood. The hinges creak as I strain to shout over a radio blaring Steely Dan. “Mom? Hello?”
No answer and I’m not sure why I expected one. With a groan I manage to get the grocery bags into the house, pausing grimly to take in how pathetically empty they are. I do the math, planning meals in my head, but I know that’s futile. Mom’s going to make whatever she damn well pleases, no matter how many times I tell her we have to stretch everything.
“There you are, Deanna.” Mom’s in the kitchen like usual. The stove’s going and she’s got a pot of something cooking. It smells like her typical Friday evening gravy: red sauce, lots of garlic, whatever random leftovers are still good from the fridge. It was one of my favorites, growing up, and the nostalgia still gets me.
“Hi, Mom.” I kiss her cheek and start unloading the bags, but I stop a moment later when I hear a thump from upstairs. “What was that?”
Mom sighs, waving a spatula toward the stairs. “It’s only your father. He’s in one of his moods.” She looks at the ceiling and crosses herself, shaking her head like it’s the most annoying thing in the world.
Ice fills my guts. “Dad’s alone up there?”
“He’sfine, hun, you worry too much.”
“You know he’s not supposed to be alone. The nurse?—“
“Left an hour ago. Would you stop it? Pass me that cheese?—“
I hurry out of the kitchen. There’s another thump and an angry yell. I don’t have time to explain to my delusional mother the situation we’re in yet again. I take the steps two at a time and burst into my parent’s room, pausing to find my father lying on his side, kicking his legs feebly as he tries to pull on a pair of dress slacks.
“Daddy,” I say, rushing over. “Oh shit, are you okay? Daddy?”
He snarls at me, yanking at the waistband. “Don’t fit anymore. I got a interview in a hour and these don’t fit anymore. The hell you staring at me for, Rosa? Help me out!”
I clench my jaw and brush past the fact that he thinks I’m my mother again. “It’s okay, Daddy, the interview’s over already, you went to it earlier. You did great, did you know that?”
He frowns at me, clearly suspicious, but he lets me get him up onto the bed.
My father was a lion of a man growing up. In my memory he’s still the big, booming voice from the living room laughing and shouting at the TV, cracking jokes at Christmas, holding court at the dozens of parties my parents used to throw for their coworkers. We were never rich, but my father was the kind of guy with a million different friends, at least until he got sick. Then they began to disappear, until now they’re all gone, not that he’d notice.
Now he’s an old man in his seventies, his mane of dark hair turned to a white, wispy frizz, his stubble patchy and poorly shaved by the home aid this morning, his undershirt frayed and worn to the roots. It kills me, how thin he feels, the bones right under his papery skin. When I was a girl, he could throw me fifty feet across a pool and still somehow swim over to catch me.
“Hold on, let me help you.” Together we manage to dress him. I make sure he’s not hurt from the fall and mercifully he seems okay. He keeps muttering and thanking me and calling me by my mother’s name and asking when the hiring manager is going to call. I’m not sure what year he thinks it is but it doesn’t matter.
I’m furious with my mother as I help my father down into the kitchen. He seems calmer now that I’ve convinced him that he’s not late for the interview. Mom gives him an annoyed look as he sits down and absently fiddles with a stack of newspapers we keep for him. For whatever reason they seem to settle him.
“Don’t tell me you’re pulling that shit on Deanna, Vinnie. You have to snap out of it.”
I get closer to Mom, standing beside her at the stove. “He’s sick, you know that. Can you stop? You’re going to make it worse.”
“Sick people get better, hun, and your father’s got to get past this.”
“Mom—“
“Sick people get better.” It’s her mantra these days. The four words she clings to like a life raft in the middle of the sea. “He’s confused, that’s all. This morning he was talking about you, did I tell you that?”
I steel myself against the sudden flush of joy. Dad still recognizes us, but only in brief waves and never for long. “I don’t want to hear it.”
“He was saying how proud he is of your field hockey. Remember when you scored those three goals at the state championship?”
“Mom, that was like five years ago.”
“So what? He remembers. Taste this.”
I tell her dinner’s good and slink back to the table. Dad’s involved in his newspaper, an old one from the looks of it. I told Prime one time that Dad likes the vintage stuff and occasionally stacks of them appear on my desk at work without any comment. He never admits it, but I know Prime’s the one hunting it down, though I have no idea where he gets them from.
