Smash the front door in with the pickup, says Dad.

I considers it: a cement step, the sunken garden next to it, the brick around the frame, the new pickup. How about a locksmith?

I built it sixty years ago, he says. It’s pretty strong. But you’re driving, he concedes.

I maneuver the pickup through the drive-through driveway. I park on the street and take out my phone. Who should I call? One of my sisters, the busy brother in Portland, the bad brother who’s responsible for locking his own dad out? Nearly everyone has lawyers at this point, given Dad’s tendency to cause trouble. I call the small town’s bank. The president, please.

My brother has the deed now, I say to the president. It was a gift to avoid estate taxes. Dad never imagined he would be locked out before he was dead. He needs a loan to pay rent elsewhere.

The president clicks importantly (how is that done?) on his computer. Your father’s assets have been frozen by your brother. He has the power of attorney. The only exception is if he goes into an assisted living facility.

Fascinating, I think. I drive my father three hundred miles to my house.

 

Dad is disoriented. It’s not like my house makes him feel at home, he’s never visited. To ameliorate that, I take him on a drive to find the house in town he was born in. We sit in the pickup where the street numbers correspond to his birth certificate back when women reproduced at home, but his memory says clapboard while the numbers say stone.

A lot of that happening these days, I say. Underneath the clapboard is probably brick, or maybe it was clapboard all along, and your memory’s wrong. Too bad the view is ruined.

The park he remembers so well is now obscured by a facilities’ shed, where dandelions riot. I picked dandelions for hours when I was a boy, he says. We made wine and it was strong.

I tried making it once, I say. A gallon of yellow-topped mush and it tasted like grappa. Harsh.

Grappa is close to grandpa, he says. My mother kept him to his dying day, at home. He would have a glass of dandelion wine before dinner.

Dad closes his eyes as if savoring a glass himself.

 

Dad wants a house of his own so we can live together in the style he’s accustomed to, not my style which is thrift store. He’s sure he can talk the banker into a loan and I don’t argue. We drive out of my “very walkable” neighborhood to visit expensive properties on the edge of town. I am quickly lost: the off-ramp curlicues, the sudden traffic surge, my infrequent trips to this lakeside locale, meaning none. He wants to buy the biggest most-bedroomed house on the water for the both of us. You’ll live upstairs, he says. Not too far away but private, he says, I know that’s important.

He’s sensitive, given how his bed abuts mine in my place.

At one end of the tract at least the houses don’t appear to be sliding into the water. We stop. It’s Easter Sunday. He wants me to knock on the door of the owner-for-sale. Surely they’re sitting down to dinner, I say. Ham, asparagus, Easter surprise.

He sighs. I don’t have that much time left, he says as I swing back onto the highway.

Who knows, I say, almost side-swiped by a driver of my own already-decrepit age.

Soon we’re cruising the best street in town, the one with the cathedral getting out. Everyone absolved from their real estate sins, I say.

They can die today, he says. Write down the number of the realtor on the house on the left.

But then we pass the assisted living place.

Did you know, he says, the lion farms of California used horseflesh as food, and any horse within ten miles balked passing the gate?

 

I make him walk four blocks to the movies. I can’t repark, there’s nowhere, even with the wheelchair tag. Come on—you can almost see the marquee from here.

My legs, my legs, he says, lowering himself onto the nearest bench.

At least you’re walking, I say. Last year I wasn’t. I broke my hip, remember? I want him to sympathize, to know there’s only twenty-six years between us.

What is this, a competition? He crosses his ankles and leans back, assessing me.

I uncross mine. Circulation, I say. Use it or lose it.

A bird lands beside his cane. We watch it fool around, inspect the bench for seed, wing off a second later. Did you see that lift? he says. That’s what I need.

I tell him I’ll run ahead and scout out what’s playing and return. I walk as fast as I can with my broken-hip stride, I limp up to the marquee where three elderly bank robbers are billed as a comedy team. At least it’s not Kung Fu.

He rallies with the news and rises on his three points. They’re too old to go to jail, he says and a big smile crosses his face.

I suspect for a moment that he has something to do with causing my brother’s coldbloodedness, heredity at least, or that he’s not as helpless as he appears. He sleeps through most of the feature, complains afterwards it’s an old plot. Old guys always flee to Florida, he says. It’s not until I telephone a sibling that I discover he’s seen the movie twice already, sleeping through different parts each time so he thinks it’s new.

 

How about the zoo? I say the next day, digging deep into avoidance. Too deep, it turns out. The train, seen by Dad as having quick overview potential with little walking output, runs only the zoo’s perimeter where trash and rats roam, where a single goat stands behind a fence, chewing on advertising. We disembark and I maneuver his wheelchair up a steep hill promising crocodiles. It’s hard with my hip. For naught, we discover when reading the sign declaring the amphibian at the top hibernating. He starts grumbling about spring, and did I know New Jersey was where most amphibian attacks occur?

We stare at the drain, the sticks and leaf litter.

Reminds me of your brother, he says, then he takes the lock off his chair and coasts down wild.

 

Assisted living’s gates are open. We pull up beside a handi-van beckoning some other elderly orphan. That’s what he declares is his lot, an orphan cast inside the facility with its anti-stain carpets, its carousel of nurses, its tiny treats of forbidden sugar offered to ameliorate the whole predicament. Ameliorate, he repeats with scorn. I need a massage.

I can’t believe there’s a masseuse with time at such short notice but I find one. We drive off. Orphan! I say under my breath.

At the exercise/massage center old people my age wear expensive exercise clothing and can be seen moving their arms and legs synchronously in the gym that he is caning quickly past, anxious to shed his clothing and me. I’ve got plans, he says.

The female masseuse doesn’t want him to take off his clothes.

I’ve showered, he offers. My shoes slip off, he promises. He makes a sad sound and she relents. The two of us remove his socks, shirt, pants, suspenders until he lies beached, eyes closed, already happy.

 

I want to be touched, the masseuse says he said. Then he cried.

 

What will you have? I ask out of curiosity and conversation. He keeps his meal decision secret until the server hovers, pad at the ready, pen poised. Steak and fried shrimp and no salad, dessert later, he says.

You only live once must be written across the menu.

I’ll split it with you, he says, half the calories, he promises. It’s like being on a diet. He laughs, he gulps his water, he calls the server back and orders a double scotch on the rocks. It’s good for the grease, he says. It’s how the French live so long.

I order a glass of wine. He’s not wrong about much.

We chat about mortality. It’s like sex, he says, you can’t talk about it but everybody’s doing it.

I laugh, raising my glass. He says laughing is the only antidote, he’s going to laugh until they slide him into the fire.

Speaking of fire, I ask about his insurance, the policy he still owes on the house with the changed locks.

Cancel it, he says.

I pull out my list. You’re still being billed for the electricity too.

Disconnect it. I can’t live long enough to forget what he’s done.

The server brings our orders and he drops whatever stains the worst down his front, and wherever the napkin can’t reach. Plaid was invented for old men, he says as I wipe him clean.

The Scots hated washing, I say. All those cliffs before you get to the water.

 

This time I park beside assisted-living’s handi-van, now empty of all those orphans. I remember how Dad drove off as soon as I unloaded my stuff at my dorm so many years earlier. I remember how I adjusted. He doesn’t get out of the car. Why don’t you take a class here in botany and find out what spring is really all about? I say.

He says, Yes, that’s a good idea, the birds and the bees, where can I sign up?

You’ll get yourself kicked out of here, talking like that.

It’s a gulag, he says, and I take that turn of thinking as a signal to open my door. With a sigh, he unfolds himself to his feet and steps out, clutching the cane, grasping the car door but nonetheless soon upright and mobile, if teetery. Why do people think old people are so noble? he asks as I grab his arm.

Am I being set up for a joke?

He’s laughing again already.

A man with a TV camera comes rear-first out of the front door, followed by three old ladies and a banner reading 300 years. Well-wishers follow in celebratory file, even the home’s administrator, who’s still gripping a pen. The three 100-year-old ladies have canes and walkers but they make it to the cupola where they smile into the camera, and even start answering questions.

All of them marriagable, I say.

Harumph, he says, just the way it’s spelled. He and I gawk from beside the car, then he marches right past them through the door. They think they’re so special, he says. You just wait.

I have to.