“It’s fine,” she said.
“Chuck Jones was a genius, Joanie,” he said, looking back at the TV. “I ever tell you what I told Walt when I met him?”
“Yes, Dad,” Anna said. She could not be bothered to correct him about calling her by her mother’s name. “Shall I put on the coffee?”
“Sure,” he said, continuing to row. “I said to him, I said, ‘Walt, even Pepé Le Pew could have kicked Mickey’s ass.’”
“I know, Dad,” she said, and headed down to the kitchen to start the day.
Frank White, Anna had to admit, was something else. Well into his eighties, he was in better shape than she was, at least physically. His arms were roped with muscle and, at 120 pounds, there wasn’t an ounce of fat on the man.
If only he were half as fit mentally.
His short-term memory was slipping away, but his recollections of years past, particularly those youthful ones he spent in California working as an animator at Warner Bros., were rich with detail. He’d retired from that world nearly thirty years ago, at which point Frank and Anna’s mother, Joan, returned to Connecticut.
They filled their first fifteen years back with gardening and travel and socializing, but then Joan’s health began to fail. It was a slow decline, ending in an extended period in a nursing home and finally a chronic care ward. She’d been dead three years now, and Frank had taken it hard.
Anna insisted her father move in with her.
It was not pure altruism on her part. She’d been on her own after she and her husband, Jack, split up two years before her mother’s death. She’d taken back her name and thrown herself into her work, but she’d soon found herself spread thin. Having her father around could actually make her life a lot easier.
During the last few years of Joan’s life, Frank had taken over the running of the household. Did the grocery shopping, made the meals, did the laundry, cleaned the house, kept track of the bills and the finances.
Anna made it clear to her father that taking him in was not some act of charity. He could look after her. She was so busy with her clients, local charitable causes, plus being on the Milford Arts Council, it would be a relief not to have to worry about domestic duties.
It was rocky at first. Even if Frank had not been grieving, it would have taken them a while to work into a groove. That took about six months. After that, things went great. Frank even had time to go back to golf, bought a rowing machine, renewed a long forgotten interest in gourmet cooking, all while Anna made a living for the two of them by counseling the confused, depressed, and troubled of the world. Well, of Milford and environs, anyway. Frank encouraged Anna to get back out into circulation, find herself a new husband, maybe even have kids — “It’s not too late! Almost, but not quite!” — and when she did, he promised her, he’d find a place of his own.
She wouldn’t hear of it. Anna liked her life. Maybe she didn’t care about a husband and kids. She had her career, she had her dad, she had her house.
It was a stable, safe life.
But then, sixteen months ago, things slowly started to unravel.
Frank had a minor fender bender that could have been much worse — he backed into a Ford Explorer at the Walmart in Stratford, narrowly missing a woman pushing a four-month-old in a stroller. He became confused behind the wheel. One day, at the Stamford Town Center, he spent four hours trying to find his car in the parking garage. He’d walked past it, Anna figured later, at least a dozen times. He confessed to her later that he’d been looking for the Dodge Charger he’d owned in the late 1960s.
He lost credit cards. One day, he headed out of the house without a shirt on.
More recently, he’d been calling her Joanie, and other times, when he realized who she really was, he asked to be taken to the nursing home to visit his wife. He’d get in the back of Anna’s car, expecting to be taken there. So now, Anna was not only back where she was before her father moved in — running a household as well as doing her job — but taking care of her dad as well.
“Such is life,” she’d say to herself.
And yet, in the midst of this, there could be moments of great clarity. Frank was often his best first thing in the morning. When he showed up in the kitchen, Anna put a mug of coffee in front of him as he sat down.
“That cartoon channel runs some of the best Warner Bros. stuff in the morning. They had so much more of an edge than that wholesome stuff Disney was doing back then. Wit and sophistication. Cartoons for adults.”
Frank reached over to the counter for a pen and notepad that sat by the phone. He did some doodling with one hand, drank from the mug with the other.
“Lots of customers today?” he asked her. He never called them clients or patients.
“It’s the weekend, Dad. But I wanted to talk to you about something.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s not a good idea for you to be chatting with the people who come to see me.”
Frank looked puzzled. “When do I do that?”
“Not often, it’s true. But the other day, you were talking to this one patient. Gavin?”
Frank struggled to remember. “Uh, maybe.”
“You were about to tie up your shoes?”
“If you say so, Joanie.”
“It’s just... he’s not the kind of person you want to become familiar with.”
“Why’s that?”
She had been giving a lot of thought to Gavin ever since she’d found her laptop closed. Maybe she was mistaken. Maybe she had closed it before he’d arrived for his appointment, but she hadn’t been wrong about seeing him behind her desk. Had he been looking in her computer and, when he’d heard her coming, closed it, out of reflex? And only remembered it had been open when it was too late to do anything about it?
She shook her head, ignoring her father’s question. “It’s just best if you do not engage with my clients.”
Still doodling, he said, “Speaking of engaged.”
“Dad.”
“Come on, sweetheart, we need to talk about this. I’m dragging you down. We can’t go on like this. I moved in to help you, and now you’re the one helping me.”
“Everything’s fine here.”
“Remember that cartoon where Bugs Bunny’s up against Blacque Jacque Shellacque?”
“Uh...”
“Anyway, Jacque wants Bugs’s bag of gold, but Bugs gives him a bag of gunpowder with a hole cut out of the bottom. The gunpowder leaves a trail, which Bugs lights, and blows up Jacque.”
“I don’t remember that one.”
“Well, it doesn’t matter. The thing is, my mind is that bag of gunpowder. A little leaking out every day. Pretty soon that bag’ll be empty. You need to find a place for me. You need to start looking.”
“Stop it, Dad.”
He tore off the sheet of paper he’d been doodling on and handed it to his daughter. “There you go.”
It was a poodle, done cartoon-style, with a face that looked remarkably like Anna’s. Frank smiled, waiting for her approval.
“That’s quite something,” she said. “But my tail doesn’t look like that.”
Frank stared out the window for several seconds, then turned back to look at her. “I think I might hit some balls around in the backyard.”
And we’re out, Anna thought.
But wait.
He patted her hand and smiled. “What point is there in keeping me around now?”
She felt a constriction in her throat. “Because I love you, Dad.”
“You need to get over that,” he said, pushing back his chair. He grabbed his mug and left the kitchen.
Anna sat there, picked up the drawing of her as a poodle, looked at it, then got up and went to the counter. She opened a drawer and tucked the sketch in with several hundred others.