Darling

When I come back the third day, George is still in bed — he never leaves it. His meals come to him on a tray. He wants nothing to do with the dining hall, the other residents, the common spaces.

But Dad lives with him — at least for now.

George is tall. Even lying down, under the blankets, you can see it in the long limbs, the lean bones, the big pretty face. A full head of thick white hair. All eyes, all hands — even now, even in the bed, his hands move constantly, framing photographs in the air. He worked for advertisers, for Vogue. They sent him everywhere — Paris, Rome, Milan, the Hamptons. He tells me about it the moment I walk in, not because I asked but because there is a body in the room and that is all he needs. The assignments. The faces. The lovers he names. He never stops talking.

His accent is New York twang with a touch of mid-Atlantic lockjaw — Katharine Hepburn, pure blueblood—and something scrappier underneath. He’d moved through very good rooms and knew how to belong in all of them.

When I walk in the room, “Oh my,” he says. “That bone structure!” Appraising, already composing. He shakes his head slowly. “Like Meryl Streep,” he says. “A soft quiet beauty that needs a camera to find it.” His hands lift, framing my face. “Lift your chin.”

I vamp, lift my chin, giggling. “Yes. There,” he says. A pause. “Oh, what I could do with that face if I had a camera in my hands.”

I can imagine him in his element — flirting, coaxing models, cajoling them into something they didn’t know they had. Turn this way. You’re laughing. You’re surprised. That’s it, darling. Gorgeous. Now look me straight in the eye. He’s a huge personality. Openly, flamboyantly, entirely himself — and had been, I gathered, all his life. A big life. A life that had taken him everywhere.

—

Across the room, Dad watches from his wheelchair. He’s wary. Already, Dad has seen the tide of George’s mood turn. Without warning, without transition. George’s mood darkens. The hands still. His eyes change.

Who are you. I don’t know you. They’re poisoning my food. I’m not like the other people here. I don’t trust them.

Sometimes George sobs. Great heaving sobs that shake his whole body — the Parkinson’s and the grief and the fear all moving through him at once.

Taryn, my friend at work, suggests he must be sundowning. A word I’ve never heard before. Her niece is a nurse. She says that people in institutional life — hospitals, nursing homes — often demonstrate mood changes, shifts in awareness as evening approaches. Dad takes George’s hand. Speaks to him calmly. Stays with him, offering presence as the tide moves through and George quiets.

They sit together. The television my sister ordered hasn’t arrived yet. They have only one another. When George gets antagonistic — hurling insults and accusations toward the person who just offered comfort — Dad rolls out of the room. Pushing himself along with one foot. He hasn’t qualified yet for a power wheelchair. He will. There are steps to take. We’ll get there.

“Two shaky old men, holding hands,” Dad says later, when we’re in the hallway.

—

The next day I should go back to Dad but Mom has the idea I said I would come to her new apartment.

—
This is a scene from The End of Men, a memoir I started years ago.
The previous chapter, Applesauce, is here. If you’re new to the project, read the first chapter here: Keys. The full list of scenes, in order, is here. Want to support the work? Leave a comment. Share a chapter with a friend. To receive the chapters by email, subscribe here. To support the writer (me) and the project, become a paid subscriber. Paid subscribers also get SOSI: The School of (Words and) Images.

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