False Memories

Again, I am walking through the arcade at our childhood vacation spot in South Carolina. It smells like cigarette smoke and the ocean. Wood balls clack in a Skee-Ball’s feeder. I want to play, but I am out of coins. I keep walking. Amber lights flash on the ceiling, followed by the ratcheting sound of a ticket dispenser. I head past the pinball machines to the ice cream counter, where a woman in a blue and white striped uniform dips a soft-serve cone into a bucket of red candy shell. A rainbow of other colors are lined up in what looks like paint cans beneath the glass counter. My dad is sitting at a table nearby. A man in an ice cream shop uniform sits across from him. They are holding hands, but when I get close, they pull their hands back. The man’s name tag says Mark. I ask my dad for some ice cream, but he says we have to leave.

~~~

I’m awake again, an adult again, back in my childhood bed in Chicago, where I’m staying with my dad after he fell loading the dishwasher the week before. There is a glass of water on my old nightstand where I used to keep my cigarettes in high school. I press my hand to my chest. My heart is pounding like it does whenever I have that dream.

“I’ve got to tell him,” I say to myself as I rub my temples. I take a sip of water. The room is stifling hot.

My dad is already awake in the living room. He’s looking at the TV, but it isn’t turned on. Morning light blazes through the windows. The thermostat says it’s eighty-two degrees. The room smells like plastic couch covers burning up in the sun. I turn on the air conditioning.

“Good morning,” I say. “How is your leg?”

Dad turns toward me with a frown. He reaches to his lip like he used to when he wore a mustache when I was a kid. But now he is clean-shaven—he has been for years. He doesn’t answer my question.

“Have you eaten breakfast?” I ask.

“I ate,” he says.

“Did you brush your teeth?”

His frown deepens.

“What’s with all the questions?”

“I just have to check it off the list, Dad, remember?” The list is a laminated weekly calendar from Dad’s doctor, which is stuck to the refrigerator with a magnet to help remind him to do the basic things his dementia makes him forget.

“Did you go to the bathroom?”

“Yes.”

I ask for the specifics.

“When did we start asking each other stuff like that?”

“The doctor will want to know.”

“He can go to hell.”

I make a mental note to add that to the other list the doctor gave me, the one to track Dad’s moods and memories. His anger is getting worse.

A key turns in the front door and my sister Bella walks in followed by her son, Sam. Sam is shuffling through a stack of baseball cards. He keeps his eyes on his cards and responds to my greeting with a mumbled, “Hello.”

I turn on the TV for my dad. He will watch whatever comes on until the Cubs game. Bella and I head into the kitchen and sit across from each other at the breakfast table, followed by Sam, who spreads his cards out in front of him and continues organizing them.

“I had the dream again,” I say. Bella nods and folds her hands in front of her.

“Are you going to talk to him about it?”

I shake my head. “I don’t know. I think it will just upset him. His temper is getting worse.”

“It might bring back a pleasant memory. You’ve seen how much better he is when Sam is around.”

Sam is the only one Dad consistently remembers. And when he knows he’s remembering something wrong, that’s when his temper flares up. The other day he confused my daughter, Sybill, for my wife. When I corrected him, he said, “I goddamn well know the difference.” He sat in his recliner the rest of the day, not getting up even to use the bathroom. At the end of the day he was passed out and reeked of a diaper full of hot piss.

“He can tell when he confuses people,” Bella continues. “It makes him worse. The real memories keep him grounded.”

“Or it might embarrass him. Last night he was asking where Mom was. He seems to be living in that era in his mind—before he came out.”

“I think you should do it. How long have you been having this dream?”

It is a rhetorical question, but I answer anyway: “Almost once a month for thirty years. And every night this past week.”

“So maybe it’s time. Before his memory gets even worse.”

“I don’t think it will help him any.”

“It might help you.”

My dad walks into the kitchen, limping on the side where he fell. He joins us at the table.

“Are the Cubs playing today or tonight?” Bella asks, changing the subject.

“The Cubs only play in the daytime,” Dad says.

“Pa, they’ve been playing night games for years.”

Bella walks over to the refrigerator, takes down the commemorative magnet, and shows it to my father. He adjusts his glasses and trombones his arm until he says, “Oh, right. How could I forget?” He puts the Wrigley-Field-shaped magnet in the center of the table. On it, the bulbs in the image of Wrigley’s famous red marquis spell, “Lights On at Wrigley: 8.8.88.”

“Do you want to tell Grandpa about your baseball game, Sam?”

Sam looks up from his cards, which are now separated into several piles. “I hit two homeruns.”

“Two homeruns! Well, that’s something. I’ve got a boy who is an ace at the plate too.”

“You mean Uncle Rick?” Sam asks, looking my way.

“That was a long time ago, Dad. I’m all grown up now.” I say.

“Oh, right,” Dad says.

A train horn blasts outside as the Union Pacific thunders by just beyond the backyard fence. Every day Bella and Sam have come over we’ve done something different in the backyard. One day, we pulled out the Slip ‘n Slide, and Sam barreled down it for hours. We’ve played lawn darts, badminton, and croquet with a set that is missing over half of the pieces.

“Grandpa, can we play horseshoes later?” Sam asks.

“Grandpa?” he asks as if the term were wrong. He pinches his brows.

“Sam is your grandson, Pa,” Bella says gently.

“I’ve only got one grandkid. Just Sybill.”

“Grandpa,” Sam says, “did you forget me?” Dad was always teasing Sam. Sam’s smile fades when he looks over to his mom who has her elbows on the table and her head in her hands.

“We can play horseshoes,” I say. “Dad? Can you set up the horseshoes in the back, please?”

Dad gets up from the table and goes out the back door.

“Mom? Did Grandpa forget me?” Sam asks.

Bella stands up and I can see that several teardrops have run down her arms onto the table. She wipes the table with her hand. She follows my Dad out the back door without answering Sam’s question.

Sam looks at me.

“Don’t take it personally, Sam. He is forgetting a lot. More and more every day.”

“Mom said I am the only one he hasn’t forgotten yet.”

“Yeah. That means it’s getting bad.”

Sam drops his head. I put my hand on his arm.

“The best thing is to keep coming over, just like you and your mom have been doing. Being around family and talking about memories are what help him the most.”

~~~

Bella and Sam have left. Dad and I are sitting at the kitchen table playing cards. It’s poker night and he wants to drink whiskey. I don’t have it in me to refuse, so I pour myself a glass too. Dad is keeping score on a scrap of paper, tallying up the exchanges of imaginary chips.

“Mom will be home soon,” he says, downing the last of the whiskey. He coughs and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand.

“Mom died, Dad. Remember? You guys separated when we were kids. She died a few years ago.”

His eyes are wet and red.

“So we did.”

“Dad, I want to ask you something.” I thumbed through the deck of cards in my hand and folded them back together into a single stack before laying them face down on the table.

“I have been having this dream. Over and over. Do you remember the Pavilion? The amusement park in South Carolina?”

“Sure,” he says. He swirls the last drops of whiskey around in his glass and sets it back down.

“You would sometimes take me to the arcade while Mom and Bella stayed back at the hotel. Remember you’d give me a roll of quarters and let me run loose?”

“I used to love that arcade,” Dad says.

“Do you remember Mark?”

Dad looks at me as if he didn’t hear.

“I saw you two holding hands one time. I didn’t know then what it meant, but I told Mom. I thought it was funny—you know, two men holding hands.”

“You told your mother about that?”

I blink the tears out of my eyes, and they run down the sides of my nose.

“Dad, I think I’m how Mom found out you were gay.”

Dad is looking at me with his red eyes. They are hard to see, as if they are covered with a plastic film. I don’t know if he’s drunk or living in a different time or just waiting for me to continue. But I’ve already started, so I keep going.

“I think—it’s my fault she found out. I think its’ my fault she left and I’ve wanted to tell you for so long but I couldn’t. And now that you are—” I trail off and cover my eyes with my hands.

Dad pushes back his chair and kneels next to me as though his leg isn’t bothering him at all. He puts his hand on my back and with the other hand, pulls my hands away from my face. He looks into my crying eyes. I stand up and we hug. I put my face onto his shoulder. He is so small I have to bend over to lean on him. But he holds me up.

“I am so sorry. I’ve been holding onto that for so long and I never thought I would be able to tell you that it was all my fault. Sometimes when I talk to you I feel like I’m talking to someone else’s dad, someone with different memories of a different life. I needed to tell you while you could still understand.”

My father wraps his arms around me, one hand on my head, the other on my back.

“Richard,” my Dad’s voice cracks. “Your mother always knew. She knew before we were married.” His hand strokes the back of my head and gently squeezes my neck.

“She did?”

“Yes,” he says. “That’s how it was done back then. She always knew.”

I stand up straight, and he lets go of me. We look into each other’s eyes. I can see him in there as clearly as ever.

~~~

I didn’t have the dream last night. I slept soundly. Dad is up. I can hear him brushing his teeth.

“Martha,” he calls for my mother.

From my childhood bedroom, I say, “Mom’s not here, Dad.”

“Rick, are you smoking in there?” Dad asks.

“No, Dad.” But I wish I had a cigarette. The smell always reminds me of the arcade at the Pavilion.