Getting my dad to come out with more than one sentence at a time these days is no easy task. Like “Silent Cal” Coolidge, president in the year of Gene’s birth, he speaks mostly when spoken to, and then just enough to get by. If pressed, he’ll say he has nothing to say, or that Jeannie talks enough for both of them. That too, is an understatement. Jeannie chirps randomly, canary-like, about whatever she sees in front of her or makes pointless observations regarding their neighbors in the mobile home park.
Once a month or so, I’ve arranged for some “quality time” alone with Gene, usually over hot chocolate from the in-store coffee bar. These are about the only times I can have anything remotely like a conversation with my dad, discussing old memories, which are far more vibrant than whatever happened yesterday.
Some of the stories are familiar; he’s told them to me before, but now I no longer interrupt him to say “Yes, you already told me that,” as I would have a few years ago. His life, the good and bad of it, is so much in the past that essentially there’s not much else to talk about. My father’s present is almost as bleak as his future, if not more so; at a certain point it makes sense to look back exclusively.
Gene’s emotions, never close to the surface, bubble up as he recalls events from over 75 years ago. Talking about his childhood dogs, for example (the German shepherd poisoned by a hateful neighbor, or the small, short-haired mix killed by a car while he was walking on a country road) brings fire and unusual animus to his eyes, his voice.
“That bitch, Vera Yampolsky. She was half blind, shouldn’t have been driving in the first place.” He mimics the specter of an old crone crouched over the wheel, squinting straight ahead. “I was walking on the shoulder of the road with Skippy, and she didn’t see us. She veered across the road toward us and I jumped out of the way just in time but she ran right over my dog. She barely missed me, and never even knew she’d hit anything.” He wipes his eyes quickly.
“I guess that’s something you can never forgive,” I say. Shaking his head: “No.”
I bring up another topic I know will animate him—the story of the two brothers who grew up together in the same town as my father, who farmed adjoining land and raised families next door to each other. At some point each brother realized he was in love with the other’s wife. After a while of pretending that nothing was going on, the families decided on a novel solution: the two brothers just swapped houses and the kids got to choose where they’d live. And who said the the sexual revolution was born in the '60s?
Sometimes I venture to ask about more intimate topics, things we never really discussed. I ask if he remembers his first girlfriend. He tells me her name, mentions that she was a nurse who lived in New York. Was that before or after the war? Before, he tells me.
He seems reticent, less willing to discuss these memories with me, and more comfortable recalling the world of his childhood; I accept his need for privacy, knowing there are some memories I, too, prefer to keep to myself. As long as the memories are kept somewhere, all is well.
