One for the Money

I drop my coat and my briefcase right there in the foyer and stride toward the sounds.

My father stands in the middle of a disaster, arguing with a nurse about what he’ll eat. The nurse deals with him patiently and faintly pleading. This must have been going on for a while. A questionable splat of red on the wall is probably the remains of spaghetti sauce.

An onion is half chopped on the butcher block counter. A puddle of butter lounges in an empty skillet. Eggs roll, still complete in their shells, on the floor. Somehow they didn’t crack when they fell. A minor miracle.

My father loved to cook. I suppose that shouldn’t be in the past tense. He still loves to cook. And I would be happy to let him, if he could be trusted with knives and hot metal.

“Dad,” I say, coming to hold his shoulders. “What’s wrong?”

“She keeps giving me dinner. It’s breakfast time. I tried to tell her.”

We don’t argue with him about the time. It won’t convince him, and there’s no point. If he doesn’t want spaghetti, he doesn’t have to eat it. “What would you like to eat?”

“An omelet. I can make it. I can make it myself.” He tries to pull away, toward the half-chopped onion. “You have to tell that woman I can make an omelet, for God’s sake.”

Jennifer Brown has been one of his nurses for years. He can’t remember her name. Someday he won’t remember my name, either. She turns her back, wiping a perfectly clean counter from far away. She’s giving us privacy, but she’s also staying nearby in case I need help. For the most part I deal with my father when I’m home. Occasionally, if he fights long and hard, I have to stop him. It’s for his own safety.

“I can make you an omelet,” I say, my tone gentle.

We learned early about sundowning. It’s when an older person gets confused and argumentative at night. “You’re a good boy, but you could burn toast.”

My laugh is soft and soundless. It’s true that I’m not much of a cook. I’ve picked up a few basic skills in the years since I’ve been a boy, though. “Then Jennifer can make you an omelet. She does it the way you like, nice and fluffy.”

He gives her a suspicious look. “Why is she here? Where’s Geneva?”

A knot forms in my throat. He asks after her every day. There’s no good answer, but I’ve tried them all. “She’s out right now. A gala. Would you like Jennifer to make you an omelet? I see onions there. What else? Cheddar cheese? Spinach?”

“I can make it,” he insists.

“Dad.”

“Why doesn’t anyone trust me? I’m the master of my own home, aren’t I? I’m a grown man, aren’t I? How dare you tell me what to do. I ought to ground you for the week. If I were your father I’d turn you around and whip your bottom bloody.”

“Dad, stop.”

“Stop telling me what to do!”

He yanks away with sudden force, and I let him go. It’s always a struggle, how hard to hold him. It’s cruel to treat him as a prisoner, but it’s negligent to let him hurt himself.

The area between those is a large expanse of gray.

It seems to take him by surprise, the fact that he’s midflight.

He stumbles back. Crack. An egg turns to mush beneath his bare foot.

He looks down, confused. “Why are there eggs on the floor?”

Jennifer sweeps back in. My father allows her to guide him to the chair. She fusses over him, and he turns passive as she cleans the egg off his foot.

I grab a box of mix from the pantry. “Pancakes.”

My father blinks. “Pancakes?”

“I can make pancakes, at the very least. They won’t be too burned.”

“Geneva likes them that way.”

My mother does prefer pancakes well done. At least, she did before she stopped eating carbs. She loved when the butter turned crisp at the edges. Dad used to give her a hard time about it, but of course he’d cook them the way she liked.

He’d tease her about it, back when there was still laughter in this house.

The mix is the easy kind. I only need to add water. When the pan is hot, I pour the lumpy batter in the center and wait for little bubbles to rise to the top.

“What do you want to drink?” Jennifer asks.

There’s no frustration in her voice. She’s a wonderful caregiver. Skilled. Patient. And most important for this position, discreet. I don’t feel guilty because she’s paid a lot of money to do it. That, along with my recommendation, allowed her to purchase one of the smaller homes on the west end of Bishop’s Landing. Her salary put her two sons through Harvard.

Not bad for a single mom who went to night school to become a nurse.