THESE ARE THE DAYS, a short story

“Penny for your thoughts?” he says, lying on his back. The room is warm and musty, his scent mixed up in the sourness, making it familiar.  

“You don’t have any pennies,” I say looking at my once-happy houseplant dying on his nightstand. I’m perched on the only chair, alongside his toiletries. A comb with a few of its teeth missing, two-in-one shampoo and a can of Yardley English Blazer that I bought at the chemist. I tested five deodorants before settling on that one, wondering the men’s isle in search of something I felt attached to.

“Is that dinner?” I ask, poking at two sorry slices of bread held together in Glad wrap.

“Sandwich Sunday. I told you the food here is terrible.”

“Offered to get you hot sauce,” I say, covering the sandwich with a handkerchief so I don’t have to look at it.

“I don’t want hot sauce,” he mutters, turning towards the TV. The picture is fuzzy and there’s only one working channel, but it adds movement to the stillness of his new life. “I want to come home.”

He can’t, not after walking out of the flat in his gown and disappearing for the night. I found him at the strip mall down the street, sitting in soiled slippers on a bench next to the flower seller. His face had looked taut, as if the wind had blown all his features as far away from his nose as they would go. I bought a bunch of tulips and shuffled Dad to the car, counting the number of times he asked where he was. Seven.

“You know you can visit me any time,” I say.

“It’s too much hassle. I have to sign all those papers before they let me out.” He lifts onto his elbows, falls back, tries again.

“No you don’t Dad. Those release forms are for the Dementia people.”

“Aren’t I demented?”

“No, not yet.”

He grins.

Dad was lucky to be assigned a private room in the Assisted Living ward after a government-assigned social worker spent two hours interviewing us in the foyer. The Dementia ward was behind the table where we sat and we could hear a patient screeching throughout the assessment. The social worker had looked embarrassed, but never suggested we move. Don’t worry, her slow blinking said, Dad’s not there yet.

He got the date almost right and cracked a few jokes, which she took as a good sign. The last question was to me: why couldn’t he stay where he was? I couldn’t tell the woman about his all-nighter and have him lumped in with the screecher so I lied. My boyfriend and I wanted to move in together so we could start a family. Dad almost fell out of his chair laughing. The social worker seemed to take that as another good sign.

“I’ve been trying to think about Jodi,” he says, still staring at the TV.

I want to sound normal, like I don’t mind that trying and thinking now go together. “Remember I got my period the same day she left? I don’t know what terrified you more, Jodi leaving or buying me pads.”

“Oh, I never remembered that day. But I kept all the days before it stored…” He pauses, as if searching for one of those days now, or perhaps just the end of his sentence. “They were my days.” He turns to me with eyes closed and starts sucking the insides of his mouth, chewing something that isn’t there.

“They’re still yours.”

“But they’re fading. Even the best ones are fading.” He stops chewing but his eyes remain closed, busy under the lids. I get up to fill a glass of water and see Jodi staring back at me from the mirror above the basin. I cut off all my hair to lessen the resemblance but I still look like her, only uglier.

“I have to go Dad,” I say, pouring water into the pot plant and watching it pool atop the hardened soil. “Or I’ll be late for my shift.”

 “Darling,” he says, looking at me now. “Who am I without my stories?”

            I think of the countless mornings I woke up after a week-long binge, not knowing where I’d been or with who. Sometimes I’d wonder if I’d met the man of my dreams, if I’d fallen in love and taken his number. I’d wonder if that love was still in me somewhere, if it existed at all without me remembering.

“You were never a good storyteller,” I say, poking his ribs as I kiss his forehead. “So consider this an upgrade.”

Chuckling, he pulls me into a hug and for a moment we are normal, making another day.

I wake up crawling for a gin and lie still for a few minutes, wait for it to pass. The home has been calling, wanting to know who Jodi is and why Dad keeps detailing her visits. I’ve stopped picking up and also stopped visiting. Individuals may confabulate, or make up, information they can’t remember, said Google about dementia. They are not lying but may actually believe their invented stories. Dad had always invented stories. Rambling explanations as to why he couldn’t take me to hockey games before teetering to the couch for a power nap. Despairing yarns about single-parent burnout affecting his ability to work, which is why he was fired and wasn’t it time I quit college and take over as breadwinner. I’m so happy it’s just you and me, Darling, except those weekends when his other darlings visited and I stopped being his woman of the house. Complaining about his knees so I would help him into the bath and please, while you’re there, would you mind washing my back.

            But this stuff with Jodi was different – conjuring her as he lay there forgetting her.  

There’s a power outage when I brave my next visit and I’m handed a lantern at reception.

“You sleeping?” I say, knocking on the door.

“Kind of. Where have you been?”

“Working. The restaurant’s been busy.”

“You still going to those meetings?” He turns to face me and his pupils shrink against the light of my lantern. I place it on the floor.

“Once a week,” I say, kneeling next to the bed.

“Don’t know why you spend your off-time sitting with a bunch of strangers. I managed to stop without that cult stuff. And I was drinking a lot longer than you, Darling.”

            “Must be that I enjoy sad stories.”

He wouldn’t have stopped if I hadn’t stopped. I took two weeks off to keep an eye on him: vomiting after every meal, the not-so-gradual shrinking of his neck and tummy, trembling hands and bad dreams. Some nights he woke up screaming and sweating so much I had to change the sheets. I read that cold towels wrapped around the ankles and wrists would help so I did that, then lay at the foot of his bed with the cat until he fell asleep. I don’t remember what stopping felt like for me.

            “I can see myself disappearing,” he says, taking me by surprise. I didn’t think he could see himself from above.

            “What do you mean, disappear?”

“I know you haven’t been here for a while, but I don’t actually remember your last visit. I don’t know if I ate lunch today. And for the life of me I can’t remember the last time I brushed my teeth. Does my breath smell?” He breathes hard in my direction and I shake my head, swallowing the foul odour.

“At least you won’t get bored,” I quip, trying to de-agitate him.

“Darling,” he says, calmer but – unbearably – sadder. “If my memories get lost and I can’t make new ones…” tears fill his eyes and I have to look away. “At what point do I stop being alive?”

  “Want me to sit next to you for a while?” I ask, wanting to fill his gaps. He shuffles over to the sound of his diaper and I pat down the bed for dampness before climbing in next to him. He’s thinner than me now, hips and wrists reduced to bones.

“I still remember when you were born,” he says. “I remember thinking you would die if I didn’t stay awake to watch you breathe.”

At some point we both fall asleep and I wake up to Dad’s hand wandering across the exposed bit of skin between my jeans and t-shirt. His fingers are ice cold and I take a moment before realising what they are. My mouth opens but nothing comes out.

“Jodi,” he murmurs as I roll stiffly out of bed and onto the floor. “Jodi, come back.”

I’m up and running but take a wrong turn, reaching an unfamiliar dead-end. Someone groans in a room close to me. I turn in the opposite direction and start to make out the disinfected-death smell of the frail care unit. I can hear laughter now, distant but audible. I move in its direction until I see light and the soft outline of a woman in a doorway.

“Looks like you’ve seen a ghost. Come in here and sit down.” Sister Elizabeth ushers me into the nurse’s station and pulls out a chair.

 “I think I want him to die,” I say, feeling like a collection of uncontained parts.

“That’s normal. But in my experience, diseased minds take the longest to go.” My eyes are hot and as the tears come, I start to laugh. Sister pats my shoulder and sits down next to me. “Don’t try to get Dad back into your world,” she says as if my world was where he’d been living. “It’s easier for everyone if you get into his.”

I know madness from my years before meetings. Days all the same, bleeding into each other. Lonely days. Every night falling asleep believing I’d wake up different, wake up the person I was before I started forgetting. “I don’t think I can do that,” I say, shrinking away from the hand still resting on my shoulder.

“Oh but you can,” she says, standing up and smoothing her pinafore. “You are the only one who can.”

It’s starting to cool when I visit again. A month has passed, maybe two. Some feelings came and went. I practiced being Jodi, imagining myself as her. I looked through photos of their wedding day, the colours faded from Dad’s fingers running over the smiling faces. I try to remember her the way he does, the ease of her laugh, the way she held her cigarette, as if death wouldn’t dare touch her. I try to be her the way Dad remembers. I put on makeup, and go to the hairdresser. I buy a flowing white dress embroidered with flowers and feel sufficiently made up to try Sister’s suggestion.

A pigeon has flown in through a window on Dad’s floor and I follow it for a while, avoiding number thirty-five. Nurses greet me cheerfully, nodding at my new look with approval. They make no mention of my absence, or the pigeon wondering their halls. His door is ajar and I step inside, catching my mother’s reflection in the mirror above the sink.

            “Jodi, is that you?” His voice is small and sweet.

            “Yes Darling, it’s me.”

            “I’ve been waiting for you.”

            I sit on the chair of toiletries. He turns to me and smiles. “Penny for your thoughts?”

            “I was just wondering why I left.”

            “To be yourself, of course.”

            “And you – did you get to be yourself?”

            “No, but I got Lily. Where is she, our daughter?”

In the muted light of the drawn curtains he looks like a once-fine oil painting left out in the sun too long. I move to the bed and sit at his feet.

            “She’s just outside Darling,” I say in a whisper. “Getting things ready for you to come home.”