by Terry Fallis
“I beg your pardon.”
“I love saying that,” he said. “They gave me these two little black rubber balls. I got to spend all day squeezing them with my left hand.”
“Okay, got it. I was confused for a moment there … well, you know …”
“Yeah, well, I guess if I squeezed my own balls all day, they’d be black, too.”
“Thanks, Dad. That’s just the image I was hoping to have stuck in my head.” I paused, but not for long. “So, do you have your own room?”
“Yep, and it ain’t half bad. The bed’s kind of hard. You know, somewhere between old carpeting and three-quarter-inch plywood. But I got a TV on this funky boom gizmo so I can watch it in bed. Hell, I could yank it down and watch it under the bed if I wanted. And my physioperists are mostly hot. They’re always coming in and cooing in my ear, and rubbing my left arm and leg. A shame I can’t feel much there yet. But give me time. One day a guy came in to work on me, so that was a little weird and uncomfortable. But the rest are fine. Anyway, the women are all over me, you know? Three and four times a day. Who can blame them?”
“Physiotherapists.”
“What?”
“Dad, they’re called physiotherapists.”
“I know what they’re fucking called. I was just messing with you.”
“Dad, why did you wait so long to call?”
“I was just waiting to see how long it took you to call me,” he said.
“I’m coming down, Dad,” I said. “I’m moving down for a while. I’m going to help you walk it off. We’re going to do it together.”
“Hey, thanks, Ev. That would be nice. To see you, I mean, and talk a bit,” he started. “But, listen, rather than saying ‘We’re going to do it together,’ how about just saying ‘We’re going to get through it together.’ Okay, son?”
“Ah geez,” I said to no one in particular. “So have you gotten to know any of your fellow patients?”
“Well, I got my eye on a few of the women limping around the grounds. I think they’re a little older but I figure that just means they got more experience.”
“Dad, I wasn’t asking if you were cruising the patients, or scoring with them. I just wondered if you’d met any of them? You know, and had a normal, civilized conversation, the way people sometimes do.”
“Oh, I’m working on it, Ev. I think my gimpy left leg might be a turn-off. But I’m working on it.”
My father is nothing if not predictable. By the time I said goodbye, we were on pretty good terms, though it’s often hard to tell with my dad. But I think he was looking forward to spending some time with his only begotten son. I might even have been looking forward to spending some time with him.
Just before I headed to bed, I received an email notice of a bank transfer. I opened my online banking and accepted the transfer from my mother, moving it into my chequing account. Beforehand, there had been a grand total of $632.88 in the account. I wasn’t exactly flush. When I shut down my soon-to-be-replaced laptop a few minutes later, the bottom line in the account was $10,632.88, and I’d ordered my new MacBook Pro. Why thank you, Mom.
CHAPTER 2
My flight arrived in Orlando in the early evening. Visiting hours at the rehab hospital were flexible enough that I probably could have visited my dad right then. But it was too late in my mind. Or perhaps it was too soon, for I didn’t quite feel ready to see him yet. The concierge at Dad’s condo was expecting me and handed over a key. Dad’s unit was on the fifth floor overlooking a somewhat weedy golf course. The fairway was brown in spots, waterlogged in others, and cut too long. You can often judge an entire golf course by the condition of a single fairway.
I turned on the lights and surveyed my father’s rather confining unit. It could not have been more than six hundred square feet. I’m not sure how to describe the decor. Early American Frat House might be a start. Yes, it definitely had a kind of Tappa Kegga Beera vibe to it. I can’t say I was surprised. In fact, it was just about what I expected. Dad had been freed from the burden of Mom’s housekeeping eighteen years earlier, and his condo was, well, not in great shape. There were dust bunnies auditioning for tumbleweeds, and enough clutter to sustain several garage sales and a shot at an episode of Hoarders. Without Mom, Dad had regressed, which is saying something, given his starting point.
On the walls, I found a mix of golfing prints and Ford product publicity posters, with a clear bias toward the Mustang. I discovered an alarming number of empty beer cans and Doritos bags scattered about the place. A stack of porn mags sat on the floor beside a mucous-coloured recliner. My dad was kind of old school. I tapped the touchpad of the laptop on the kitchen counter, and a porn site awoke on the screen. Okay, perhaps my dad wasn’t completely old school. I was impressed that he had a laptop, porn site or not. I shut it down.
He had made some effort to put his own personal stamp on his home, I mean beyond the Coors empties and skin mags. On the living room wall was a flat-screen TV the size of a freeway billboard, with an array of speakers and subwoofers powerful enough to rattle windows all the way to Miami. Dad loved his TV sports. The kitchen was quite nice, though I was unable to picture my father turning on the front burner, let alone preparing a meal. The dishwasher was filled with plates and glasses. Some of them were even clean. As I suspected, I could find no trace of dishwasher detergent anywhere on the premises. As for the fridge, I cannot accurately describe what I found resting on a paper plate on the top shelf, but it seemed to be moving all on its own. (I was unable to determine if the movement was an attempt at locomotion or just respiration.)
The bedroom was in a similar state. The king-size bed was unmade, although “unmade” was a serious understatement. The chaos of the sheets, blankets, and pillows suggested the bed had never been made. Not once. There was another colossal television mounted on the bedroom wall to allow viewers the convenience of retinal damage in two different rooms.
I did find a high-end vacuum cleaner in the front hall closet. It might be that my father actually pushed it around the wall-to-wall broadloom on a regular basis. I made a mental note to remind him to try plugging it in next time. You know, just to change things up a bit. After slipping out to buy some dish soap, I spent a solid hour vacuuming, dusting, washing dishes, wiping counters, and generally tidying. With much of the clutter and garbage gone, it was easier to see just how badly Dad had decorated his home. Nothing, and I mean nothing, matched. The whole look, and you couldn’t call it a look, made me wonder if Dad might be colour blind. Exhausted from my efforts, I dug out a clean sheet I was amazed to find in Dad’s linen closet, and crashed on the living room couch.
The next morning, as we had arranged, a rather nicely turned-out realtor named Graeme Harris met me on the sidewalk outside a prospective apartment. He had that used-car-sales-guy swagger and a mouth that wouldn’t stop.
“Nice to meet you, Everett, my man. I’m telling you, you are going to like this baby. All your boxes are checked,” he soothed. “It’s close to the hospital. It should be quiet because there’s only one apartment. It’s quite new. It’s clean and mucho spacious. It’s just been painted. And you’ll get sun streaming in the afternoons. The rent is reasonable for the area. The wood floors are freakin’ awesome. The bus runs from the corner. And you can take it month to month if you want. Like I said, checkmarks everywhere.”
He paused to take a breath.
“Hi, Graeme. Nice to meet you, too.”
He blathered on about the unit for a few more minutes before I held up my hand.
“Graeme, I don’t want to interrupt, but how about we look at the apartment since we’re right here, rather than you just describing it.”
“I like your style, Everett,” he replied. “I was just setting the scene for you. Let’s have a look.”
“Thank you.”
There were two ways to get in. You could go through a door adjacent to the double glass doors of the vacant space on the first floor and then walk up the inside stairs
to the front door of the apartment. This was probably the route I would usually take. But there was construction going on downstairs and the door to the stairs was blocked off. So we had to climb the outside staircase, really a fire escape in the side alley, to the small second-floor veranda, and enter the apartment’s back door into the kitchen.
For all of Graeme’s frenetic hyperbole, I liked the apartment. I liked it a lot. It was in an okay part of town. Not too upscale, but not sketchy-ghetto either. It was big and airy, and as Graeme explained, over top of a restaurant that had closed down recently. It was the only apartment in the building, as Graeme had said. Hardwood floors all over, including in the large kitchen. It was open-concept layout with the living room, dining room, and kitchen all spilling into one another. This made it feel open and spacious. Built-in bookshelves ran the length of the living room wall, with a space for a TV in the middle. This would save me buying and trying to assemble an Ikea bookshelf. I had quite a few books that I just couldn’t leave in Toronto. In fact, they were en route. The bedroom was large and so was the bathroom. The fixtures and appliances all looked quite new, and the scent of fresh paint hung off the walls.
“So what’s going in downstairs, and when?” I asked.
Graeme hesitated before answering.
“Well, to be honest, we don’t know yet. I know that sounds strange, but the building owner has been sworn to secrecy by the new tenant. I did see industrial kitchen equipment being unloaded earlier this week, so I’m assuming it’s another restaurant. Nothing to worry about. Renovations resume next week. So it might be noisy for a bit, but whatever’s going in is supposed to be up and running within the month. Then things should settle down.”
“Is it possible it’s a fish restaurant?” I asked. “I hate seafood and the stench that goes with it.”
“I asked them the same question and you’ll be pleased to hear the answer is no.”
Graeme showed me three more apartments in the next two hours, but for one reason or another, none of them matched the first one. Not even close. So back we went to do the deal with the landlord who’d agreed to meet us there. It didn’t take long. On the spot, I signed a month-to-month rental agreement, laid down first and last month’s rent, and held the keys in my hand ten minutes later. Other than the minor question of furniture, plates, cutlery, and a shower curtain, I could move in anytime. I’d been in Orlando for less than twenty-four hours and had already nailed down my accommodations. Though the thought of spending much longer at Château Billy Kane was great motivation to do the deal quickly.
Dad wasn’t in his room when I got there just after lunch. I knew he’d been tied up in physio all morning, hence my early afternoon arrival.
“Hi, I’m Everett Kane, Billy Kane’s son. Do you know where I can find him?” I asked the older black woman filing charts at the nurse’s station. Her name tag said Yolanda Robinson.
She wore a mint-green, um, nurse’s outfit, a pantsuit I guess you would call it, with Nike running shoes. Her gold-rimmed glasses rested up above her forehead as if assisting a second set of eyes nestled in her closely cropped black hair.
“Well, there you have it! The big man was telling the truth, after all,” she said, stepping back to give me the once-over and a big smile. “We had a little pool going on on the floor based completely on whether he’d been able to extend his unique line of DNA.”
It was clear to me she meant this in a nice way. For the uninitiated, this might have seemed an odd opening line. But remember, she was talking about Billy Kane.
“Did you win?” I asked.
“I surely did,” she replied. “I always try to see the best in people.”
“Well, you must have very good vision.”
She laughed.
“Well, sir, you have got quite a father there,” she said with just the slightest suggestion of an eye-roll.
I was still pretty sure her tone was good-natured, but a less discerning observer might have called it exasperated.
“Yes, I know, he’s a bit of a character,” I replied. “Sorry about that.”
“No apology needed,” she said. “I can see beneath his macho bluster, overt leering, and constant flirting. And there’s good stuff there, I know. I can see it.”
“Really. Well, I’m glad you can see it. He doesn’t always make it easy to find,” I said with a sigh. “So he hasn’t escaped, has he?”
“No, no, sorry, I should have mentioned, he’s out walking the grounds. He’s been very committed to his treatment, and he’s making pretty good progress, so far.”
“Will he get back to normal? I mean, his walking?” I asked.
“Everett, right?”
I nodded. She leaned her elbows on the counter top of the nurses’ station and leaned toward me.
“Everett, it’s hard to tell at this early stage. But if he does make a full recovery, it’ll be because he’s really worked hard at it. So far, he has.” She pointed down the hall. “If you take a right at the Exit sign and go out the doors, you’ll see the walkways crisscrossing the property. Don’t push him too hard. He’s teaching his leg to walk again. It’s hard, boring, exhausting, and it’s going to take time.”
I nodded.
“Thank you.”
I headed off toward the stairs.
“I hope we’ll be seeing you around these parts more often,” she said.
“For better or worse, that’s the plan, Yolanda,” I said.
“Trust me. It’ll be for the better.”
The grounds were quite lovely–well-manicured lawns, lots of trees and gardens, all interspersed with paved paths about ten feet wide. The paths were coded with little splashes of colour every fifty feet or so. A legend of sorts at the entrance to the grounds gave the length of each winding walkway. Blue was a quarter mile. Green was an eighth of a mile. Red was just a sixteenth of a mile. Yellow was only a hundred feet or so. Half a dozen patients, of varying ambulatory competence, were out on the paths. Many of them were accompanied by family, friends, or orderlies. It was a warm and sunny afternoon. It was Florida, after all.
An older man sat almost motionless in a wheelchair parked just outside the doors at the start of the Blue path, the brim of a battered Corvette Stingray ball cap shielding his eyes. He wore a frayed Chevy Malibu T-shirt that should have been retired long ago. His inert left arm curled in his lap, his hand closed in a fist. His right arm was resting on right wheel of his chair. His legs hadn’t moved in the time I’d been standing next to him. With some effort, he leaned forward a bit and looked down the path.
I spied Dad from a distance, shuffling along the Yellow path wearing hospital-issue shorts, a loud, fluorescent green Ford Mustang T-shirt, and sturdy-looking New Balance running shoes. I just watched him for a while, his crew cut bobbing up and down as he kind of undulated along the path, a youngish orderly next to him. It was a far cry from walking. Calling it a limp would be lily-gilding in the extreme. He was pushing one of those walkers you see in seniors’ residences. It was odd to see my father using one. He’d push the light metal frame a foot or so along the path on its two front wheels. Then he’d step forward with his good leg, before dragging his left leg up to join it. And I do mean dragging it. His left knee didn’t really bend. And he had to lean to his right to reduce the friction of his left foot on the ground enough to move it. When he pushed the walker ahead again, I noticed that only his right hand was gripping it and doing most of the work. His left hand, the one affected by the stroke, seemed to be resting limply on the top rail of the walker, making only a slight contribution. I could see we had our work cut out for us.
I noticed that the older man next to me in the wheelchair was craning his neck so he could look at me.
“Hello,” I said. “Are you trying to get someplace? Could I push you somewhere along the path?”
“What I’d like is for you to leave me alone and go and stand next to someone else for a while.”
His voice was a little high-pitched and breathy.
“Oh, I see. Gee I’m sorry,” I said. “Was I blocking your sun?”
“You’re too short to block the sun. You’re just standing too goddamn close to me.”
“Sorry, I didn’t realize I was crowding you here. I’m on my way. Sorry about that. That’s my dad just over there. He had a stroke on the golf …”
“Hey, how about you stop talking and start walking.”
“Right. Sorry.”
Five-foot-nine and a half is not that short. In fact, it’s exactly the average height of the Canadian male. I know. I’ve checked – often. That means I’m the same height as most other men in Canada. I’m right in the fat part of the curve. Would I rather be six-one or six-two? Who wouldn’t? Yes, I know. I doth protest too much. But I’m fine with five-nine and a half. Just fine. Plus, I have good hair – and nice-looking hands. People tell me that all the time.
I moved down the path a little farther and sat down on a bench I hoped was far enough away from the cranky guy in the wheelchair. You never know, but I might be in a bad mood, too, if I were stuck in rehab hospital with my left side feeling like it belonged to somebody else.
I followed Dad’s progress until he reached a bench about fifty feet down the path from mine. It had taken him nearly ten minutes. He sat down on the bench to rest. I heard the orderly tell Dad to sit tight and that he’d be back in a few minutes. Dad nodded, leaned back, and closed his eyes to the sun. I got up and walked over.
“Dad,” I said as I approached. He looked up, blinking.
“Ev! You’re here!” Dad said as he started to get up.
“Don’t get up. Don’t get up.” I sat down beside him. “I’ll join you.”
“Come here,” Dad said, as he wrapped his good arm around me. “It’s great to see you. Thanks for coming.”
I hugged back. We hadn’t hugged for a very long time. In fact, I couldn’t remember the last time.
“I was watching you,” I said. “You look like you’ll be running marathons in no time.”