From “Memory Book,” which was published in the ninth issue of HEAT Series 3.
The evening nurse calls to say he’s had a fall. That phrase. I was out with Mum when the call came. Mum, who had that very afternoon moved her entire life from Cronulla to my town of Castlemaine. Dad doesn’t fall ever, and then the day she skips town after forty years—unbeknownst to him, who no longer knows where he is or that he is separated from her or that they sold their house—he falls. It’s been like this the past few years: the thin veil of symbols and correspondences fluttering over our lives. The best part of it all has been an absurd and mean humor among we the living. I didn’t know a little streak of meanness could run through loving care like that.
It becomes clear to me that since the hospitalization I have become a sort of archetypal Cassidy female to my dad. I can be three or four in quick succession, like a flip-book of family photos. Sister, teenage daughter, adult daughter, niece. I am never Mum. I am never his wife. His text messages usually begin with a salutation to me, followed quickly by his younger daughter’s name. I play soccer, I surf, I am a woman, a girl, I am the most beautiful, the most wonderful.
Three weeks ago Dad walked out of the ward to the local train station, boarded a train to Cronulla, presumably ticketless, and walked to his and Mum’s recently sold house. Four times.
Now, though, the home inside him has also shifted. The geriatrician asks him where he lives. With Mum and my sister. He hasn’t lived with his sister since he was a boy. But for a few days I fall into the slippage of the other word. He and I have the most authentic conversation we’ve ever had, in which he expresses terrible remorse for having left Mum behind at home while he ran around doing whatever he liked.
I’ve not met my half sister B but since Dad entered the hospital we have talked on the phone a couple of times. It is a cautious but grateful entry into a relationship he had prevented us from having with each other. She tells me of her recent visit to our dad, how as she got up to leave he said, Can you take me to the station? She faltered. None of us has inherited his knack for instant fabrication. Before she had a chance to reply, he scratched the thought. No, you’re not going that way, are you.
We’ve had to make an incident report, the nurse says buoyantly, but no one’s been harmed.
I text C. Oh my fucking lord! We’ll never get him a place if they think he’s a sex pest. The family of the other patient could sue him! We agree that Mum doesn’t need to know about this one. As in life, so in dementia, I say. Eventually C tells Mum anyway. Lock him away, she responds dryly.
But I keep seeing the tender little scene, not violent at all, of one body seeking the heat of another. The collapsing of a female presence into something like home, like comfort. And then I pull back from the scene in disgust.
A new phase of his communication revolves around explaining why he is absent from the outside world. He is aware, then, that loved ones are elsewhere—and that he is not with them. He is aware that he wants to be or should be with them. But here’s the thing: his chronic compulsion to fabricate is alive and well. The latest messages fall back on familiar tales. Wish I could be there but the car engine is playing up or So sorry I can’t get there. The car’s been stolen and the police say I shouldn’t hold out hope of it being found. I tell T how amazed I am that this capacity for deceit is still functioning, since it requires insight. What makes you think he’s lying? T responds.
The latest texts have become increasingly agitated, first asking for times and places to meet; then day by day, hour by hour, more irate exclamations of frustration. Despite the synaptic fails, he is bored and lonely. Such feelings aren’t only expressed antagonistically; sometimes they come as a torrent of almost euphoric affection.
It’s this affect that seems to trouble the Broca’s area; it’s in these moods that he has most trouble finding the words for the feelings. Spelling breaks down in an imaginary flood of oxytocin. His loving message is almost sexual in its panic. The clutter of vocabulary becomes a row of hearts, a rose, a little woman, a rainbow, a little man, a meditating person, kissing lips, a dog, a cat, a clown, a pumpkin, a ghost.
