Quality Time
Cap stands at the window cursing the wind. Yesterday, it was the clouds. The day before, the blasted sun and the neighbor’s dog.
His fourth wife, Sylvia, distracts him by turning on the Golf Channel, a neat trick learned in their thirty years of marriage.
He’s eighty-six now, cantankerous as a hornet without a nest. Daughter Linda knows her time with him is limited, that he’s mortal. Still, his negativity flattens her optimism, and she counts the minutes down on every visit.
“Let’s look at the digital pictures, Poppa. I made a cool website,” she says, without adding, I’ll show you since you won’t register because you think the Commies or the FBI wants your personal information and will hack into your bank account.
“Wait ‘til the golf is over.” He grumbles and sighs and flips up the foot rest on his recliner. He stares out the window at the blue New Mexico sky, yellow forsythia leaning away from the wind, “Crappy weather.”
“Oh, it’s fine. Come see this when there’s a commercial.”
“Okay.” In ten minutes, he puts the television volume on high so that he’ll know when play has resumed. He stomps into the office.
Linda has her website brightly lighting the computer screen. She points to a faded black and white picture that she scanned in last week.
“Here’s one of you and your mother, Poppa.”
He shakes his head. “That woman was a terror. Did I tell you about the time she locked the door when I was late for dinner?”
“You did. Look at this one. I loved that dog.” She and her brother are lying on the floor, ages two and five, blond heads in hands, studying a newspaper. Their boxer dog is sleeping, paws on paper, beside them. “Wrinkles was a good boy. Too bad we had to leave him in Germany.”
Cap tilts his good ear towards the living room. Still commercials—he’s stuck with his daughter another ninety seconds.
“Wasn’t it funny how he’d help us read the comics?”
“Dumber than a post. He chased motorcycles.” Cap taps the screen. “Now here’s a good picture. Zoom in.”
They both lean in to the computer. Linda is ten, tan and grinning, a little girl Tom Sawyer holding a string of fish. Her older brother is looking away from the camera, his mouth a slash of frown. His father had commanded, “Smile like the village idiot, Knucklehead. You let the biggest one get away again.”
“That picture brings back memories,” Cap says. He appears misty eyed as he does when he remembers those golden days when he was young and the world was his to control.
Linda pats her father’s hand. She hopes in silence: “He’s going to tell me what a sweet and pretty girl I was. That I was smart. How proud he has always been of my independent spirit.” She looks at his red-rimmed eyes, thinking, “I’ll tell him back that I’m lucky to be his daughter, that he has given me so much, that I have tried to walk in his footsteps and make something of myself.”
He points at the picture and smiles wistfully. “Look there. That ’58 Ford. God, I loved that car.”
