Filling An Empty Space

I am not supposed to be here. That was my thought as I sat down at the chair in my father's room at the "Sunrise Oaks Retirement Facility." It was a small, antiseptic room. It looked more like a hospital room, packed with medical equipment, than the cozy "grandparent's nook" shown in the promotional material. Part of that was probably because there were no personalized touches in my father's room. No photographs or knickknacks. My father had been too far gone for that kind of stuff by the time he moved in here six months earlier. Not that he was much of a decorator before that. Nor had he been much for sentimentality. So I sat in a nondescript brown chair, looking at my father sleeping in his adjustable hospital bed, realizing that I felt absolutely no warmth or familiarity here.

I am not supposed to be here. I thought it again. It was a simple idea, probably something everyone who entered Sunrise Oaks thought at one time or another. But for me, the sense of alienation wasn't just a momentary discomfort. No, I wasn't supposed to be here. And that thought contained multitudes, from the most mundane to the absolutely fundamental.

In the most routine sense, I wasn't supposed to be at Sunrise Oaks because I was scheduled to work today. I was an assistant manager at the Wawa gas station on West Field Avenue. The nice one by the school, not the old by the river bridge. They really didn't like it when I called off on short notice. Or, really, called off at all. If it wasn't for the fact that I told them that father had a bad reaction to some of his meds at the old folks home, I would've gotten in a lot trouble. Instead they just gave me this look like, "Audrey, why are you lying?" even though I wasn't. Sometimes, I thought that people had this unshakable belief that a 29-year-old woman just could not be telling the truth when she said that she had an 84-year-old dad. Unfortunately, I wasn't lying about that either.

And that fact sort of leads to a more central reason that I wasn't supposed to be here: this was supposed to be someone else's job. I am sure that when he thought about this, to the extent he ever thought about it, my father had figured that my mom would be the one to take care of him when he was old. She was his third wife, after all, and they'd gotten married when my mom was 22 and my dad was 48. There was no way he thought she would die first. Hell, my entire life, my dad had been an old man. I just assumed he was going to die first too. And before that, when he was really old, I assumed my mom would take care of him. Two years ago, cancer had disrupted those plans, among other things. She was gone. He was still here, or a little while at least.

Of course, there were other family members who were probably better suited to do this than Audrey, the 29-year-old Wawa assistant manager. My dad had two other families before mine. He had three kids in the first one and a fourth in his second marriage. I think one of his daughters was a lawyer or something. I knew his eldest son was a physical therapists, so you would figure he'd know something about medicine and caring for the elderly. But my father tended to burn bridges when he started a new family. He cheated on his first wife with his second wife and cheated on her with my mom. And he always changed his will to cut everyone out when he started a new family. I barely knew my half-siblings. They hated me and thought I was going to inherit all my dad's money (which, I knew, was basically gone, taking care of my mom and then him the last few years). So, while there were better people who could be here, I was by myself. Even though I wasn't supposed to be.

But really, at the most rudimentary, I wasn't supposed to be here because I just flat out wasn't supposed to be HERE. Like...on Earth. My dad hadn't married a 22-year-old cocktail waitress because he wanted to start a third family. In fact, I could remember when I was a kid, my father had said something to the effect that he had tried to have a family twice and wasn't any good at it. He didn't have any intention of fucking up again. Or so he told his seven-year-old daughter. It was probably the only thing he'd said to me that month.

No, Bill Tilda married Leanne Corker because he wanted the youngest, most well-endowed wife of any of his friends. My mom was fun, she was low maintenance, and she liked the idea of being a kept woman for a guy who owned three car dealerships in two states.

I had been an accident. A "broken condom" as my dad put it to me when I was 12, when my mom went off birth control to take some antibiotics. Now, my mom had always been more than happy to be the trophy wife that my dad had always wanted. I honestly believe that if I had never been born that she would have gone on fishing trips and Vegas jaunts with my dad for the rest of her life, happy. But when she found out that she was pregnant, she was ecstatic. She had wanted a baby, once. She thought it was a dream she'd have to put aside to have the lifestyle she wanted. But then, suddenly, I was there.

The fact that my mom was happy to have me had two major effects on my life, one good and one bad. The good thing was that she was an amazing mother. If she was the only family that I really had, that was more than enough. She had the time afforded by my dad's wealth to focus on me, and she took it. She was the mom who went on all the field trips, who went to all the PTA meetings. She knew all my friends and we talked about everything. She had encouraged me to go to college, she talked me through man troubles, she was my best friend in the world. Two years after losing her...I still didn't understand how my life worked with her gone.

The downside of my mother's love was my father's jealousy. I don't think he ever really accepted the idea that I was an "accident." After he saw how much my mother loved me, I think he always suspected that she'd arranged for the "accident" to happen. And after I was born, my mom was so dedicated...he'd lost his trophy wife to me. She didn't go on fishing trips anymore. She didn't have time for Vegas. She didn't charm his friends. She loved someone else more.

And dad resented that. I mean, he wasn't exactly subtle about it. From the earliest age, I realized that my dad didn't like me. He ignored me most of the time. I wonder, sometimes, if my mom tried to soften him up when I was a baby and he gave her an ultimatum or something: leave me alone about Audrey or I will divorce you. I don't know if that happened, but I know that by the time I can remember, she didn't even bother him to take an interest in me. Never said "hey, Audrey has volleyball on Saturday, you should tag along." My mom led two separate lives, a loving wife and loving mother, and never the two roles met.

I can remember the realization, as a child, that not every family was like mine. Some of my friends, they had fathers who cared about them. Spending the night at someone's house, having their dad grill everyone hamburgers and ask about the movies we'd rented...at first I thought that was weird. Then I realized that I was weird. Or, my family was.

Something about seeing how other people's family worked made me crave my father's attention. At first, I tried to do what all little kids do: show off for him. Hey dad, watch me jump into the pool! Dad, look I can ride my bike with no hands! My mom would feign interest in those stunts, but my dad wouldn't even look up. As I got older, I tried to take interest in things that interested my dad. I learned cards and asked him to play with me. He declined. I asked him to take me fishing. He declined. He was rarely actively mean, he just looked through me. I was an impediment to the happy life he wanted, but one he couldn't get rid of. Just the barest form of toleration. Nothing more, nothing less.

Eventually, I gave up on engaging with my father in the real world. In high school, I remember, I created a sort of character out of my father. My friends commented that they never saw him at my soccer games or anything else. We won the regional title my sophomore year, but my dad never showed up. So, I made up lies about how maniacally devoted my father was. I told them that he was very overprotective of me, my mom wouldn't let him come because he'd get angry if boys were looking at me. I told dates they couldn't walk me inside, because my dad would march them out with a shotgun. The father I created sounded a bit like a monster, but I desperately preferred that overbearing fantasy father to the real one who ignored me. In reality, I told him when I was 16 that I had a date. He told me, "Well, if you get pregnant, you have to marry him," in a way that almost sounded excited by the idea. I that he sort of hoped I would get knocked up and he could kick me out of the house.

I had always tried to explain to my mom that my trouble with men started there. And I'd had a lot of trouble. Almost thirty now, never a real relationship. I let men walk all over me. I did everything I could to please them. The worse they were, the more I tried to please. My mom had posited that it wasn't my distant father, but my lack of self-esteem that did me in. I told her those were two sides of the same coin. I think she had tried so hard to be two parents when I was a kid, that she couldn't stand to think that she had, in some way, failed. That there were things I needed but that he couldn't give. We hadn't really settled that argument by the time she died. I hadn't figured anything new out with her gone.

So yeah, I wasn't supposed to be here. I was supposed to be at work. I was supposed to be deferring to someone else who knew more about what they were doing. I wasn't supposed to exist. But here I was, sitting in my father's room, looking at him in his bed.

In some ways, he didn't even look like the same man. He was still tall, over six feet. He still had a full head of slicked back white hair. He still had those big teeth. But he had once been a powerfully built man with big shoulders, huge hands, and a prodigious gut. Now he was gaunt, his cheeks hollow. His legs looked spindly. He had always been old. But now he looked...near the end. I realized I didn't know what I thought about that. The idea scared me for some reason. Luckily, the door opened and a nurse walked in before I could think too much about it.

"Ms. Tilda?" the nurse asked, she looked harried. Tired.

"Audrey, yes," I said, rising and shaking her hand. The nurse smiled professionally.

"Audrey, I am so sorry for the scare. Your father got some new medication today and his blood pressure dropped..." the nurse then listed a whole series of frankly terrifying things that had happened to my father, "I thought it was best to call you. But the doctor arrived, and he had seen that reaction before. By the time you got here, we'd given him additional medication and stabilized him. Your father is fine now. He is resting on his own, not as a result of drugs. I am sorry for the scare. We have marked his chart so we won't give him that medication again." I nodded along with the explanation, even though I didn't really understand it. I only got one takeaway.

"So you don't actually need me here now?" I asked, sounding more annoyed that I'd meant. Still, I didn't like taking shit for calling off work. And now it seemed that I'd done that for nothing.

"Well, as it turns out, no. Though he might be happy to see you when he wakes up," the nurse said. I snorted.

"Not likely," I said and the nurse shrugged uncomfortably. She probably assumed I was bitter about my father's growing dementia, the fact that he didn't recognize some people anymore. How could she knew that he'd never recognized me?

"Well...we have everything under control. You can feel free to leave...whenever," she said. I looked at my watch. My current "boyfriend" if I could call him that, had only dropped me off 20 minutes ago. He'd throw an absolute fit if I asked him to come back now. He'd been going off somewhere to do "something." Which you usually meant buying a lot of pot and then watching daytime TV. He wouldn't want to be disturbed. I sat back down in the chair, let out a long sigh.

"I will wait and see if he wakes up," I said without enthusiasm. The nurse nodded.

"If you need anything, just go to the front desk and ask Linda. She is fond of your father, she'd do anything for him," The nurse explained. I winced. Linda must've had quite the rack for my father to take any interest in her.

"Thank you," I said, and the nurse slipped back into the room. Then I was alone, again, with my sleeping father. The room was absolutely silent, except for my father's somewhat ragged breathing. A life-long smoker, that wasn't surprising. My mind was blank, no longer even trying to figure out what I should be thinking and feeling. I just saw the hands of a clock moving in my mind. Wondering how long I had to wait for appearances sake. How long I had to wait to avoid getting a dressing down from my casual boyfriend.

My father interrupted this countdown by suddenly waking. He started coughing and then his eyes flashed open. He coughed louder, a thick wet sound. I rose from the chair and moved towards the bed. I bunched up pillows under my father's shaking back, pushing him into a sitting position. The coughing subsided and I dropped back into the chair. I realized my heart was thrumming. I'd been worried about him, whether he deserved that or not.

As I sat, I felt my father's eyes looking at me. Piercing blue. Just like mine. The eyes looked clear, unfogged. Focused. I hadn't seen him look so lucid in a long time. And when he was lucid, he never, ever looked at me. I couldn't remember the last time I'd seen those clear eyes.

"You're here," my father said. He'd said that phrase to me a thousand times in my life. Every other time he had emphasized the first word. YOU'RE here, as though to say, why couldn't someone else be here? But this time, he emphasized the second word, hard. You're HERE. Like he was pleasantly surprised. His eyebrows rose as he said. He actually smiled. It was like...he was happy to see me. I almost shrank away from the attention.

"Yeah," I said, "they said you needed me." I said.

"You had to have someone else to tell you that?" my father said, laughing. It was a full, crackling laugh. A laugh I'd really only ever heard from behind doors and drywall before. Hearing it in person threw me off balance. I didn't know what to think.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"Oh come on, I always need you!" My father said. I felt my heart seize. That was, without a doubt, the nicest thing that my father ever said to me. It felt wrong and weird. I couldn't meet his gaze now. Looked down.

"Well that is nice to hear," I said, my cheeks burning. My father shrugged.

"I guess I don't say that enough," he said, stroking his chin as though he was thinking about it, "I guess I just figure you know how important you are to me. I shouldn't have to say it." I couldn't breath now. It was like...it was like my dad had somehow looked into the elaborate fantasies I had imagined when I was a teenager, had read my mind, and then put them directly into action. I had always pretended that this was how my father felt, but I had always known it was bullshit. Hadn't I? But here he was saying it. I didn't even have a gun to his head.

"I never knew..." I said, my voice catching in my throat. My father's eyes softened, his head tilted to the side. He reached one bony hand towards me. I felt his fingers brush against my cheek. His fingers felt weak, the skin paper. But it smelled like him. This was better than my dream.

"Oh don't say that!" My father said, "I am not an easy man to live with. I never pretended to be anything other than an ass. But how could you not know how I felt? Do you need me to say it explicitly? You're the most important person in my life."

I felt the tears now, slipping out of me unbidden. My mind was whirring. This was more than I'd ever expected. I couldn't make any sense of it. My father was telling me how he felt about me. And he wasn't being resentful. He was caressing my cheek, soothing me when I cried. The only thing that I could figure was that my father had had some sort of near-death experience that morning. He had seen his life passing before him, seen me there on the periphery. He sensed the pain that he had put me through. What's more he saw me, the last few years without my mom, struggling to support him. He knew that I was a good daughter. He felt bad about what he'd done to me. He wanted me to know that he always cared for me. That he appreciated it. Here it was: the (near) deathbed confession and repentance that I hadn't ever allowed myself to believe was possible. He wasn't saying "sorry" out loud, but I could tell that that was what he meant.

And it happened so fast...I didn't know how to handle it. This was the absolute last thing I had been expecting when I walked into the room. It was a sort of...storybook ending that I hadn't really thought ever happened. The tears came out faster now, dribbling down my chin. This one little gesture...my father speaking the truth to me...it was enough to forget everything. Everything else. I just wanted to be on good terms with my father now, at the end.

"I love you D...da..." I tried to bumble out but the tears were too intense. My father was rubbing my shoulders, cooing soothingly.

"It's okay," he said, "I love you too Leanne." My stomach lurched. My mind reeled. My mother's name.

"Leanne...?" I asked. At first I told myself that I had heard wrong. He had said something that sounded like 'Leanne.' But what sounds like 'Leanne'? He said it. What did that mean? Had my father just misspoken? My euphoria lurched into a weird confusion. My emotions swirling.

"Sorry, I meant Lea," he said, almost like it was a response to my question, "Is that really what you want to be called? You know I think it is a little strange to pick out your own pet name!" he said.

"Yeah," I said for no reason, my head swimming. I could vaguely remember my father calling my mother 'Lea' on a couple of occasion. Usually, when he spoke to me, he called her 'your mother.' He never had any nicknames or pet names for me. I was about to ask him some questions, to hear him say 'Audrey.' I wasn't sure what I was going to say. But he cut me off before I had a chance.

"Oh, that reminds me," my father said, slapping his forehead, "Rhonda came by earlier when you were out. She had Hank are going to be at the shore next weekend. They want to know if we can walk Rex. I said I wouldn't do it, but you probably would..." And then my father went on to detail a conversation that he had with his former next door neighbor Rhonda Richter (who had died in 2003) and her husband (who died in 1999). I realized that my father wasn't lucid. He thought this was 25 years ago. He thought I was my mother.

I guess that sort of made sense. I mean, beyond the fact that he was senile. Everyone always commented about how much I looked like my late mother at a similar age. My mother was a short woman, around 5'2. She had very long, very dark (almost jet black) hair that was somewhat thin and very straight. Always pulled back in a ponytail. She had glistening eyes and a small, slightly upturned nose. Her cheekbones were high and her cheeks were full, her lips fuller. She had a long throat and narrow shoulders. Her breasts were large for her height, her arms long but thin. Her stomach was flat, waist very narrow. She had wide hips, yoga-tight thighs, and small feet. That description also happened to fit me to a T. I was the same age my mother was when I was born and looked almost just like her. The only difference was my mother's eyes were brown. Mine were my father's piercing blue.

Still, knowing that there were reasons for my father's mistake didn't make the realization any easier. It was crushing. Worse than crushing. I felt like I had been ground up into a fine pulp and then flushed down the toilet. All of those lovely things that he said...they weren't directed at me. My senile father was talking to a ghost. He was thinking about a time before I was born maybe, a time when he didn't resent my mother. It was humiliating. To have all of that relief and gratitude, and realize that it was all...nothing. My 'fantasy' father had existed just long enough to rip open all of the old wounds that I thought had scarred over and then he had disappeared again. And now I was bleeding out in the chair in this shitty retirement home.