ONE
My father, a physician, started showing early signs of dementia while he was still practicing medicine. He was a proud man, so his colleagues took great care when they informed him they had begun to notice changes in him.
Not changes so profound they resulted in any patient harm, but enough change that it could no longer be ignored. With sadness, my father decided to retire after nearly 35 years of clinical practice.
Once retired, my father’s mental decline accelerated. He kept busy, played golf, had a fairly active social calendar and never missed a crossword or jumble, but nonetheless the deterioration continued unabated. One day his short-term memory, which had been flagging for some time, was effectively gone.
Then my mother had an accident. She had fallen down our basement steps breaking numerous bones and hitting her head. She died in her sleep a few weeks later.
At this stage my father’s memory, in totality, disappeared. No memory of the long or short term. He spoke less and less frequently. Then, after a time, he stopped speaking altogether.
I am an only child and my career was really taking off at the time. As much as I wanted to dedicate myself to my father, I knew I would be forgoing opportunities to do so. Opportunities that might not present themselves again. Furthermore, my father needed a full-time caretaker, and I was hardly up to the job.
I interviewed dozens of candidates. Finally, I settled on Marta, a sturdy woman with kind eyes who didn’t suffer fools or tolerate nonsense of any kind. If my father was still well enough to comprehend what she was like, I imagine he would have been quite fond of her. Marta had a little terrier name Chi-Chi. She was a quiet well-tempered dog, altogether unlike most terriers I have seen.
Marta cared for my father for months without incident. I spent a lot of time with my father on weekends. Most of the time him in bed and me by his side. He was an avid reader, one upon a time. I read him many of the books he had read to me as a child. Huck Finn, The Old Man and the Sea, Catcher in the Rye. I never registered any reaction, pleasure or anything else, from my readings but I like to think he heard the words, and maybe understood me sometimes.
One day Marta revealed something startling to me. My father had been, for almost the entire time she was employed by me, speaking to her. Just to reiterate, I last heard my father speak many months before I hired Marta. I pressed her for details. Incidentally, when I was not around, my father was quite the talker. He shared basic details about his life with Marta regularly. She conceded his short-term memory was very poor – that part I had right.
I asked her what she made of his silence every time I would go to his room. She explained that she was not an eavesdropper, and she wouldn’t presume to know what our relationship had been like before his mental decline. It seemed a reasonable response and I was satisfied.
Yet, I desperately wanted my father to talk to me. I had become preoccupied with this idea that there was much I didn’t know about him. I thought the opportunity to know him better was lost forever. Now there was hope.
I had a little tape recorder. I wanted to sit down with my father and start at the beginning. As far back as he could remember and get as much down as I could. I tried getting him to talk for some time without any luck. I would sit next to his bed, hold his hand, and ask him questions. Just basic things like “do you hear me?” and “do you know who I am?”. Sometimes he would look at me with a strained look on his face, like he was really trying to get the words out, but nothing came. So after a few weeks I gave up.
I was spending a lot more time with my dad at this stage. I was around the house a lot and slept over regularly. It was during COVID and my job allowed for a work-from-home setup. Even though he wasn’t speaking and barely moving around, it was just nice to be near him.
One evening, I was walking down the stairs from my father’s room to the ground floor of the house. He had fallen asleep and I wanted to grab some water before I went back up to go to bed myself. After I filled a glass with water I walked back towards the stairs, and as I approached the first step I looked up and saw something surprising. My father was awake. He was pacing back and forth on the second floor landing, holding and stroking Marta’s dog, Chi-Chi. She often left Chi-Chi at the house overnight. She thought my dad would appreciate the companionship and the dog was no trouble.
Now you have to understand, my father didn’t move unless instructed. We would regularly walk him to the bathroom to relieve himself or to bathe because he wasn’t going to do it on his own initiative. But there was something even more surprising to me about the sight of him. He was walking like a young man. My dad had a bad back, two titanium hips and bad knees – Old, poorly rehabbed or not rehabbed injuries from college sports. When he did walk it was labored and unsteady. But not this evening.
I don’t know how long I watched him. Seemed like a long time but it might have been 10-15 seconds. Then, abruptly, my father looked down and saw me. I didn’t discern any emotion for a moment. Then he smiled. It was a wide grin that I hadn’t seen in a long time. Then he bent down, gently placed Chi-Chi on the floor and proceeded to urinate and defecate in his pajamas.
I spent the next 20 minutes cleaning him up and getting him back in bed. When I was around to say goodnight to him, I always used to pat his hands and kiss him on the head. He was a back sleeper and he would place his hands on his stomach, one on top of the other. This night, he took my hand in his and looked into my eyes. Again, after a few seconds of showing no emotion, he smiled. Then he closed his eyes.
Needless to say, I was very encouraged. For a little while there, although Marta had no reason to lie about my father’s state, I didn’t entirely believe her. And, if I am being honest, I felt somewhat threatened by the idea that my father was expressing himself to her and not me. It’s foolish to think that way, but it’s what I felt, nonetheless.
The following evening, my father and I were having dinner. I was now in the regular habit of excusing Marta early. I paid her the same, but there wasn’t much point in both of us being there with him. My dad wasn’t a whole lot of trouble save for the occasional accident if we didn’t make it to the bathroom.
I was feeding him. I used to cut up pieces of ribeye steak and carrots and put them in mashed potatoes for him. He ate more of this than anything else I served him, so I figured he liked it best. He was eating well, but his head was bowed, and he was basically acting like I wasn’t even there.
Then he cleared his throat and said, “steak’s a little tough”. I nearly fell out of my chair. The funny thing about this is, I would normally buy ribeye, but there was none left at the store that day, so I got NY strip, which is a tougher cut. So not only was my father talking, but he was also discerning differences in the textures of his cut up meat. It was remarkable.
“Dad” I said quietly “do you know who I am?”
“Sammy-baby.”
My eyes welled up. My name is Samuel. I go by Sam. From the time I was a baby all the way up to the time I was a little boy my father called me “Sammy-baby”. I was trying to compose myself. My dad was a tough guy. He certainly didn’t cry much, and I thought somehow my crying would interrupt our progress. I looked up to prevent the tears from falling.
“You need a shave.” my father said looking at my outstretched neck.
“That’s true, dad. I do. How are you?”
“Oh about the same. You’d know as well as anybody how I’m doing.”
“That’s true too.”
“Sammy?”
“Yes dad?”
“Where’s Molly?”
Molly is my mother’s name. In that moment I kind of panicked. My mother had been dead for some time. If I reminded him of this, how would he react? Would he shut down? If he did, would I ever hear him speak again? I decided to half-answer him.
“She’s not here dad.”
“Is she coming back?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so.”
He sat there quizzically. It looked like he was processing what I was saying. Then after some time had passed, he said:
“I’m very tired Sammy.”
I got him ready for bed and tucked him in. As I was reaching to turn out the lamp on his bedside table he asked:
“Will you be back tomorrow?”
“Oh, absolutely, you can count on it.”
“Alright.”
For the next couple of weeks, my father and I talked somewhat regularly. I came to realize he didn’t really remember very much about anything either short-term or long-term. Our conversations consisted of small talk. He absolutely knew who I was. He remembered the names of family members and friends. He remembered he was a doctor. Every once in a while, he would recall a specific event. For example, he remembered a family road trip down to Florida. But he couldn’t recall what we did on the trip. I decided to put the tape recorder away and just enjoy my father’s lucidity while I could.
TWO
One day I woke up in the early morning in my father’s house. I awoke softly, my eyes barely open and blinking very slowly. Then I heard a soft sound. I remember it sounded like a sliding door being opened.
Initially this didn’t alarm me at all. My father, like many elderly people, kept the house on the warmer side which generally led me to keep my old bedroom window open: I was always hearing some kind of white noise from the street or the sound of my window curtains rustling in the wind.
As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I realized my window wasn’t open at all and everything in the room was still. Then I saw my father standing in the corner of the room. He was barely making any noise, but I could hear the sound of his labored breathing, just perceptible over the silence.
I couldn’t be sure, but I was fairly certain he did not know I was awake. Had he become aware of it, I think he likely would have moved abruptly, perhaps to conceal himself. ‘What is he doing there?’ I wondered.
Then he slowly started making his way towards the foot of my bed. There was something so odd about his movement. First, it seemed like he was walking in slow motion. It was as if someone had filmed him walking and played it at a fraction of the true speed. Second, the old wooden floorboards throughout the house made low deep creaking sounds when you walked on them. This was particularly true of my room and the upstairs hallway. And yet as my father drew closer, the floor made no sound.
I was afraid. I didn’t feel like I was in a room with my father. It felt like I was watching something unnatural, and it filled me with dread.
Now this might sound strange, but once he reached the foot of the bed, I heard the word “Dad” uttered softly, as if I had spoken it. But I don’t know if I actually said it, or if I just thought about saying it and heard it in my mind. But, in that moment, my father became very still. Then his silhouette began to move behind the foot of the bed as if he was crouching down. He completely disappeared from view.
I lay there for what seemed like an eternity. Then, as it became lighter outside, I worked up the courage to slowly get out of bed and make my way around to the front of it. As I did, I was surprised to find my father was no longer there. I carefully got down on the floor and looked under the bed: He wasn’t there either.
I started to consider the possibility I had dreamed everything I experienced. Or perhaps I had half-dreamed it. If I was half asleep, maybe my father was in my room, moving about, but I just registered everything wrong? That must have been it. There was no other way to explain what I experienced.
That day, my father seemed completely normal. He remained so for the next several weeks. I became convinced my mind had been playing tricks on me and I shouldn’t give the experience another thought.
Then one day I awoke again in the early morning, this time abruptly to the sound of something crashing downstairs. Then everything was very quiet. I didn’t hear my father moaning in pain or calling out for me. ‘What the hell happened?’ I thought to myself.
I raced downstairs and looked around the ground floor of the house. Everything appeared to be in order. I made my way to the kitchen. My dad’s kitchen was small. It had a small square table pressed against a wall and three doors: The one I came through, a door leading to the back porch, another leading down to the basement. The door to the basement was ajar, but the basement was dark.
The basement light switch was in the kitchen just adjacent to the basement door. I flipped it on and made my way down the stairs. My father was sitting, Indian style, in the middle of the basement floor. His arms were in his lap and his head was bowed. As I got closer, I realized he was softly sobbing to himself.
I put my hand on him and rubbed his back softly.
“Dad, why are you crying?”
He didn’t say anything for a long time, but the sobbing progressively waned. He seemed to be getting himself under control. He slowly looked up at me.
“I’m thirsty, Sammy.”
“Okay, I’ll get you something.”
“Tea.”
My father loved Earl Gray tea.
“Sounds good. Tea it is.”
I assisted my father up the stairs and sat him down at the little square table in the kitchen. I made his tea and set it down in front of him. It was very hot. I was generally better at getting the temperature just right, but I was preoccupied with him and how he was doing, and I left the water on too long.
He put his hands on the mug, as if to warm them. He took deep breaths and seemed to be calming down.
“Dad…why were you crying?”
He sat solemnly, and quiet. Without lifting his gaze, he said in almost a whisper;
“I miss Molly.”
“Yeah. I know.” I said putting my hand on his forearm as I sat in a chair directly next to him.
He sniffled, then carefully wiped his eyes and nose with a handkerchief he kept in his house coat pocket. He let out a long sigh and swallowed deeply. He looked straight ahead, not at me, and he smiled a little bit. Then he began to talk. And as he talked, he reminded me of his old lucid self.
“Your mother was a radiant, beautiful thing when I first met her. I remember the first time I saw her. I was a resident at the hospital. She worked in the doctor’s pavilion.”
I had heard this story many times.
“Everyone wanted her. The docs would stand in a long line to use the copy room. We only had one for the floor. When she would approach the line all the docs used to let her go first. So one day, I am next in line and your mother walks up beside me because she expects me to let her skip the line. She looked at me, then motioned with her head to the copier and said, “May I?”
“And you said, ‘It will cost you’”, I introjected with a smile. That is how the story had been told to me literally dozens of times before.
My father sat up straight and looked at me. He cracked a mischievous sort of smile and said,
“No…I said, ‘I’m not going to kiss your ass like everyone else around here’.”
I chortled. My fathers eyes intensified, and suddenly he was very serious.
“What’s funny?”
I suppressed my laughter and said:
“Well, I have heard that story a million times and I never heard it like that before.”
My father kept his unflinching gaze on me. He seemed almost angry.
“Well that’s how it happened” He said shortly and very matter-of-factly. “I took her out a few times and we fell in love. I was completely head over heels. I was considering asking her to marry me. We had only been seeing each other for about a month, but I didn’t care. I wanted her.”
Suddenly, my father grew somber and quiet.
“I came to find out through my roommate, Ned, that your mother was seeing one of the other doctors at the time. We had never talked about being exclusive, but I just figured, the way things were going…”
He took a long pause.
“I became very upset. I went to her apartment unannounced to talk things over, but I kind of blew it. I got pretty agitated, and I guess I lost my temper. She told me that she didn’t want to see me at that very moment, and she thought I should leave. I did. I walked for an hour back to my apartment. Ned wasn’t home and I was completely distraught. Did I ever tell you Ned dealt drugs?”
“No. You always told me Ned did a bunch of odd jobs.”
“He did. He was the super at our apartment building and he was pretty handy. But he also dealt drugs. He kept them in a big shoe box on a shelf in his closet. Well, like I said, I was a wreck. I was mad at your mother, and I wanted to send her a message. Ned had a large vial of morphine in that shoebox. I could have gotten morphine from the hospital, but…”
My father took another long pause.
“I pumped myself with enough of that shit I thought I would be gone for sure.”
I was absolutely shocked. My father pressed on:
“But I didn’t die. I woke up in the hospital a few days later, and your mother was there. She felt responsible. She told me she wanted to start over. So we did, and we were married six months later in her mother’s back yard.”
My father and I sat there for a while in total silence. He not looking at me, and me not looking at him. Then he said something I will never forget as long as I live.
“See Sammy, the thing about your mother was, she was a real pain in the ass. She was a spoiled little pig. She had this effect on people. She knew she did, and she didn’t care. She only thought of herself.”
I saw my fathers features changed. His teeth clenched. His eyes intense and bellicose.
“She needed someone to teach her how low she really was, and boy did I teach her. The moment we were married I set my mind to breaking her spirit. Your mother couldn’t say or do anything right as far as I was concerned. That bitch didn’t do a thing, didn’t say a word unless I allowed it. If she stepped out of line, I let that little gutter bitch have it so bad she thought long and hard about ever doing it again.”
Another long pause. I was in complete shock.
“After a while, around the time you kids were born, I got kind of sick of toying around with her. See, once you break a person, they’re broken. That’s it. There’s nothing left to break.”
I reflected for a moment. My mother was a very troubled woman growing up. Severe depression. Never got out of bed. I thought she was always this way. And my father was a stern man. Some would call him cold. But not this. I never thought it was like this.
“It’s getting late, Sammy.”
My father pushed back his chair and shuffled towards the door leading to the upstairs. As he walked from the kitchen through the dining room, Chi-Chi jumped up and down with excitement at his feet. He scooped her up and pet her. Then he turned around and looked at me. That wry mischievous smile again.
“You thought I said ‘I’ll make you pay’…That’s funny…You’re funny.”
He walked up the stairs to his room and closed the door.
THREE
During the day I never had an issue with my father. All of these bizarre little episodes were happening at night. I asked my father’s doctor about the things he had said. He told me they were likely delirious ramblings. He wouldn’t presume to tell me what happened between my father and my mother many years ago, of course. It just seemed so unlikely that my father could have been so cruel to my mother for so long and I never would have picked up on it. I chose to dismiss what my father said as nonsense.
My father was starting to fade again. He talked less and less. Then after months he didn’t talk at all. It became more difficult for him to move. He seemed not to register my presence most of the time. When he did register me, I am not sure he knew I was his son.
Marta was coming around less and less. I don’t know if my father even registered it. I started talking to Marta about reducing her hours and paying her part time. She agreed.
Given my father’s rapid decline at this stage, I sensed the end was approaching.
One day I was reading to him, and I heard his sheets shuffle a bit. I looked up and he was reaching his hand out to me. I took his hand in mine. He was very calm. Peaceful, even.
I awoke in the early morning to the sound of my father crying. I quickly got out of bed and made my way to his bedroom. When I opened the door, he was not in bed, but I could hear the sound of his cries very distinctly. ‘It must be coming from downstairs’, I thought.
I made my way down the stairs and flipped on the basement light. The light came on intense for an instant and then went out. The small basement was illuminated by one flood that must have been due for replacement. I grabbed a flashlight from the utility cabinet in the kitchen and flipped it on. It was an old flashlight. The small halogen bulb burned very dimly.
As I made my way down the stairs, my fathers cries grew frantic, panicked. It sounded like he was struggling. I cast my light in the corner of the room and saw my father. He had his back turned to me. He appeared completely still, and yet I heard his cries and the sound of frenzied, panicked movement. Then I realized something. My father wasn’t crying at all.
I keep my distance from my father and adjusted myself so I could see around him. He was standing at a waist-high wooden table. His tools were hung on the basement wall. As I changed my vantage point I could progressively see more of the table. First, I saw his hands. I couldn’t see what he was doing with them. I thought he might be hurting himself. But as I rotated around the room and got a better look, my blood ran cold.
For a second, the noise seemed to wash out. I heard an intense ringing in my ears and the cries grew distant as if I was hearing them underwater. Blood geysed from the table and spattered on the wall and floor. I saw brown hair matted red and wet; wide screaming scared eyes. My father was crushing Chi-Chi’s head in a vice.
I lunged at my father and grabbed one of his arms. With his free arm he backhanded me sending me reeling across the room. As I attempted to come to my feet, he kicked me in my side. I couldn’t breathe. I rolled onto my back. My father was standing over me. He had a large object in his hand. He drew it over his head. I saw a brief glint of metal. He was holding a mallet. I closed my eyes and covered my face.
There was a loud bang. A flash of light. My father was still. He stood limp. Then he collapsed on the floor. I tried to catch my breath. My eyes burned and watered. I looked up and saw Marta. Her outstretched hand trembled. She was clutching a pistol. My father had been shot.
Marta drew her other shaking hand to her mouth very slowly and then shrieked as she laid her eyes on the poor wretched creature on the wooden table. She collapsed on the floor. I made my way over to her. She buried her head in my shoulder, and we sobbed.
FOUR
My father was dead. Marta shot him through the heart.
A neighbor called her and told her they heard crying and a struggle inside the house. Marta told police this was ten minutes before she arrived. My phone was on silent. I had many missed calls from her.
Marta also called the police on her way to the house. Marta told police she always carried a concealed weapon. When she was driving to the house, she expected to have to use it on an intruder or me. Marta had developed great affection for my father and felt an impulse to protect him. She became suspicious of me when I started spending more time around the house and reduced her hours.
Police determined my father had done unspeakable things to Chi-Chi before Marta and I came upon the horrible scene in the basement. She eventually succumbed to her injuries. I hope she is at peace.
In the basement, in a metal cabinet once used for propane storage, police found a trove of depraved pornography. They also found a journal that belonged to my father. The police have not contacted me to ask questions or verify any information contained in it.
I haven’t spoken to Marta since the incident. This was 6 months ago.
Since the incident I have lost interest in pretty much everything.