I need to tell you this. I need you to listen and not pass judgment. Can you do that? What can you do anymore but listen? It’s the true item this time. They like me over there, they want me, they’re rooting for me. Damn straight I need it. Twenty years, twenty opportunities ago I needed it. This is different. I need you to appreciate that. Do you think you can do that this once?

Nothing to it? We’d go swimming every summer afternoon. Well, the river was only a few blocks away. We walked over in congregation the six of us, single file, like ducklings. Not Sundays, we didn’t go Sundays. Mother and the six of us in descending rank, like mother hen and her ducklings. Hah!

Chicks. Mother hen and her chicks. Don’t worry about it, it’s only a word. I’d like you to pay attention. This job means a lot to me. I sense your negativity already. Pours off you in a foul sweat–ever since I was a kid. Sour smell of doubt–even in your condition. A glance, certain angle of the chin. You never had to say a word. Don’t sneer. Don’t you dare sneer. Jesus, I hate your sneer.

Me, Jimmy, Paul, Helen, Alice, Hester...not Petey. Petey was too small. We followed along like baby ducks. Lilly wasn’t born yet. Remember Lil? Giggling. Little Lil. You remember our Lil. Let’s see: Jimmy-one, Helen-two, Alice-three, Hester-four, Jimmy-five, Me-six, Petey...not Petey. Jimmy-one--

How many Jimmys does a family need? I can hear Dotty: “For heaven’s sake, Don, give it a rest! You have said the exact same thing six times in a row.” She never did get used to it. I believe she thought you repeated yourself to annoy her. Mind like a steel trap, that gal. No doubt it’s why you married her. Some ironic nip there, huh? Fate’s little mutt! Still, who can blame her? It gets old. Doesn’t seem to bother you any. The thing is, it never did. Nothing new, more drastic maybe. You repeated the same tired fishing stories endlessly, like a professor rehearsing the same worn-out lecture. You insisted, “Hell, Will, people enjoy them.”

All of us...except Petey. Petey wasn’t born yet, Hester either. Did I say Helen? She’s older. Imagine forgetting a thing like that? Who’s born yet and who isn’t. Hah! Nincompoop. Can’t go swimming if you aren’t born yet. That’s the rule. Petey, Helen, Hester, Alice, Jimmy. Not Mother. Mother stood onshore. Dotty did. Did I say Lil? Not Petey. Mother? Did I say Dotty? Craning your head around, seeking her beyond the breakfast bar in the kitchen.

Dotty’s your wife. Jesus, it’s pathetic. Bury her one day, resurrect her the next. Move over J.C. I’d love to hear what she’d have to say about that. Tell me, what’s the rule on aging infants? Sure, we have to forgive your slips now and then. Basic generosity. But I don’t. I remember too well, while you don’t remember zip–unless it suits you. That’s the item. You ask me, they’ve mislabeled the thing. Not memory loss but selective memory loss, your lifelong condition. But that isn’t the issue at hand. We should be able to bury the hatchet, condition you’re in. I’m telling you about this new prospect, position, opportunity. I want you to hear me out. Can you manage that without sibling recitals? I put my bid in. Now we’ll see. Look, I’m stoked about this.

Me! I was born yet. Still yam. Another item: laughing at your own bad jokes. We went every summer afternoon, all six of us. We’d splash about while your mother stood onshore watching the current. No current to speak of that time of year. We’d pile out and dry ourselves, six ducklings in a row. We only had one towel. Frowning, like I have a damn thing to do with it. A minister’s family couldn’t afford luxury. Then we picked blackberries. Remember? Six little Indians covered in blackberry sap. Hah! Not Petey, no. Five of us? Back to counting on fingers again. Seven? Petey, Helen, Hester, Alice, Me...Hester wasn’t born yet. Did I say Petey?

You didn’t say squat. Hardly ever. You’d pose incisive questions–as of “incisions,” prosecutor’s sharp knife–sit back, and watch me bleed. Is this anything like that San Francisco deal? You loved that one. Amazed you haven’t asked me yet. What I’d like to ask your quacks: “Is paternal doubt another form of plaque fixed in the brain plasma? All the axons, dendrites, whatever, curled in the same direction?” You need to settle down, Will, and think about your family. Still saying it years after they split. Yeh, I think about them daily...hourly, if you want to know. I’ve made my share of bad choices, that’s established. Bitch of it is, I believe you’re forgetting which questions to ask. Blessings of memory deflation! Goes on long enough, you’ll forget how we’re programmed to relate. Me too. Old cat and dog finally lie down together side by side enjoying each other’s warmth. Your doubt, my rage lost in the neural fog. Finally regarding each other across the moment: you sitting edge of the couch, antsy as always, nubbly synthetic slacks hitched high-water up your ankles, no socks, one cheek stubbled, the other clean-shaven (proof shaving may be habitual but completing a shave isn’t). Your shirt gone sour, I smell it from here. Dotty gave up. Something almost lovable in the way your hair dishevels to the left, as if to counterbalance the perpetual list of your head to the right. Artful asymmetry triumphs in dementia. What the hell! Freud thought all artists demented. What do you see when you look at me? Anything? I sit up straight as Straw Man on a posture fix, shoulders tense. Or throw my legs over the couch arm, determined to prove that I’m easy. Hey! You haven’t brought up my stolen bike yet. You want to know the gospel truth after all these years? Bruce and I got rolled for our bikes. Some toughs knocked us off and walked away with them. I arrived home bikeless, busted elbows and knees, afraid to tell you what happened, knowing I’d let you down again. Nincompoop! getting my brand-new birthday bike stolen. Still, I expected a little empathetic anger for the family team. You smugged chin to chest as now, eyes troubling over. Old Ledge Brow. The best marksmen have gray eyes, did you know? If I’d known as a kid I would’ve laid low, but kids aren’t given to know these things. What was I talking about? Hah! Funny asking you.

So what are you up to these days? How’s the family, Will? Where you working?

Jesus! Your left jab catches me with my guard down every time. All these years and I still don’t know when it’s coming.

Well, I’ve been trying to tell you--

My sister, Helen. Six sisters, three brothers. Not counting Hester. I don’t believe she was born yet. Jimmy either. You puzzle over those many extended fingers, not knowing how to reel them in. We went swimming every Saturday afternoon before church. Church was Sundays. Any nincompoop knows that. Daddy was upstairs working on his sermon, we’d go swimming to keep out of his hair. Daddy was the most patient man I have ever known–except Saturdays. “Look to the Lord on Saturday,” he used to say, “he’ll appear on Sunday.” Honor thy father. Hah! Imagine needing a commandment for a thing like that. I didn’t need any commandment; I loved Daddy dearly. Chiding me a look.

Sure you did. Let me count the ways: his patience, ministerial aloofness, steward’s expression when he sterned you, waxy jowls and chest welded together, gray eyes like God’s own marksmen taking aim under brows. I know the drill, I see hints of it in the mirror. Jesus! Do I subject my son to that? I remember how you deadeyed opponents in court. When people ask me what my childhood was like, I tell them: eighteen years on the witness stand.

Well, Dotty worked Saturdays so she couldn’t come. Daddy did. He swung us by the arms over the ripples, round and round, then he let go. Hah. Kasplash. We loved that. Look at you! Gleeful boy resurrected. Uncle Ragner did. Daddy couldn’t come; he needed a nap after church. It’s not easy wrestling the holy ghost every Sunday morning.

Frankly, I don’t buy into your holy daddy crap. Sure, I loved you fiercely–if awe is love. I couldn’t so much as protest when you decided I’d left my new bike unchained outside the grocery store. Instant historical revision. You should know, you’re the lawyer. What kind of nincompoop leaves his brand-new bike unlocked in front of the store? I wasn’t mugged, no, I posted a notice on that bike inviting someone to steal it: Please take this bike so my old man can tell me what a horse’s ass I am for losing it. Here’s the lock and combination number.

Combinations? I know all ten of them. You begin reciting.

No more recitals, Jesus! You can’t blame Dotty for checking out. “I’m sorry, Willy,” she said at hospital, “but there’s just so much a person can take.” You’ll revise them, anyhow: I am the Lord thy Father. Thou shalt not outperform me. I’ve obeyed that one pretty well. Thou shalt not kill thy wife. How about that one? There are many ways to pull a trigger. You listening? Forget the sibling recital. The woman was ill...barely hanging on. She needed help. Didn’t you realize? There were seven of you, by the by, not nine. Maybe the additional two are the kids you stalked in the park this morning. Did you see their mother’s eyes? Screaming: pedophile freak. Jesus! Made me wonder, really did. I couldn’t pull you away. You see them three blocks away, you’re off and running, down on your knees, petting their knobby heads...Good Lord! If that’s genetic, my balls go first sign. I’ve already made arrangements for the other business. You had–do you realize–a hand on the little girl’s ass. Innocent? No doubt. Ask that Bishop in Boston. Me insisting, “Let’s go, Dad, we don’t know these people.” Instant outrage, like I’d pushed a button. Knocking my hand away and shouting like I wanted your wallet. Scared hell out of me. People gawking. Poor kids clinging to mom’s knees, afraid the Grinch had come to life and no stump-headed green sweetie either, but a nasty, stubble-cheeked, rheumy-eyed, squealing old fart. Dotty warned me about your episodes; I never believed her. You remember any of this? Listen! No selective disremembering.

Where are you working, Will? You had some kind of deal in San Francisco, sales work. How’s the family? We don’t see much of them anymore.

Here we go. Yeh, I’m selling leases on other people’s children. We’ve got a good market share with brain-dead old men. Problem is, the commute’s a bitch, since I’m living in L.A. Look at you trying to puzzle it out. I work for Disney–okay? I hope to. I doubt you remember a damn thing about this morning, right? When I finally get you away, you’re flushed, angry tears trickling through beard stubble, insisting, “That’s my sister Helen. Don’t I know my own sister?” Apparently not. Mom scurrying her kids away. “I love little Hester...always did.” I’m afraid you’ll chase after, but don’t dare touch you. Then deus ex machina and thank God for it. Your attention caught by the towel they left behind. You coddle it against cheek, we’re off to sibling recital again, your eyes longing off in the direction they’ve gone–for what you already can’t remember. What’s the fascination with kids? You say your sisters all died in the flu epidemic of 1918, with thousands of other innocent children–all doubtless named Hester and Petey. None of you were born in 1918, for crissake. So here I am with their towel, wondering how I’ll get it back to them.

We better go. Dotty has lunch waiting. We always love a hearty lunch after swimming. Remember, Jimmy Boy? Don’t you? We’d all five of us go in. Not much of a river, really. More a stream than a river. Maybe three feet deep. You and Paul and Hester and Alice. Petey wasn’t born yet. Ohhh– clapping hands in delight –how he loved the little fish. Remember? Little bitty guppies. He would splash about on his belly and try to grab them in his hands. Remember that? Or was it Paul?...Petey? I went in first, anyhew. Always did. I ran down from the road and splashed in–oldest, after all. Dotty shouting after me. Wasn’t much of a river, more of a stream. Only one towel between us: red and blue stripes and green. I remember like it was yesterday. Trouble is, I can’t remember a damn thing about yesterday. We didn’t own swimsuits. Preacher’s kids couldn’t afford suits. We wore our skivvies. Yours always hung off your rear end. Hah! Remember? What kind of horse’s ass goes about with undies hanging off his butt? The affection in your voice alarming. Didn’t own a suit between us...minister’s kids. Well, you wouldn’t wear a coat and tie in the water anyhew. Any horse’s ass knows that. You refused to go in; I never did know why. But you loved the little guppies. Remember?

Would you stop asking what I remember? I’m not the one with the memory issue. Not yet. Remember, Swiss cheesehead? Likely, I didn’t go in because I wasn’t born yet– beyond your cheesy memory. It used to be photographic. You recited precedents from case numbers, you recalled depositions word for word in court, spooked your opponents. “A fine mind like that,” Dotty always said, “that’s the tragedy. Such a fine mind.” There you are squaring up like someone whispered in your ear, about to do one of your turnabouts of clarity. Spookier than the muddle.

I can’t remember a damn thing anymore. My memory’s all shot to hell. Not what it used to be. Can’t hardly remember my own name. Imagine that.

Ephemera. That’s all. What’s more ephemeral than the organ which perceives ephemerality? This ephemera itself? Life and its cub reporter, consciousness? Maybe you’re closer to knowing than the rest of us. And the human heart! What’s more ephemeral than that? It isn’t awe I’m feeling anymore, old man, it’s something else. Pity almost. Affection. Give me time; I’ll find a name for it.

To tell the truth, Daddy wasn’t much fun weekends. He was tense. Mother–well she wasn’t my mother, she was my stepmom. You knew Agnes didn’t you, Will? She did her best. It wasn’t easy. Eight children to care for, plus the congregation. A fine, upright woman. Good woman. Not much fun. Who can understand a thing like that? Abruptly puzzled. Standing right there making coffee, right there over the dining bar. Then she isn’t.

Momentarily, I see her collapse. Dotty? I ask. You had a good lucid run going a minute there. You do that. Momentary clarity, like the sun peeking through cloud cover. Maybe that’s all there is: glimpses of clarity through vagrant cloud muddle. We can’t accept it; we train ourselves to make cohesive sense where there isn’t any. You’re just ahead of the curve. Go on and wash up if you have to, but if Dotty’s making lunch, heaven’s chock full of surprises. Still, it’s always an event when you acknowledge my existence, however vagrantly. Always was. Sure, you were formally aware of me, as a person is aware of their own shadow. At times, it even occurred to you I was your flesh and blood–like the time I got all A’s except a B in music appreciation. For a moment, anyway, before you launched into an oration about how, for Pete’s sake, the family’s gift for music must’ve passed me by. A pity. What gift? When did you ever listen to music? If Dotty turned on the radio, you barked, “Would you turn off that goldarned noise!”

I’m ready. The man arises.

For what? The county fair? An end to capital gains taxes? We’re home–if that’s where you’re going.

Mother will have lunch waiting. How’s about a short walk before we wash up?

How’s about a dip in the river?

He looks puzzled a moment. Either one. I’m easy to please.

Yeh, you are. You killed her with easy to please. Easy to please, where’s my lunch? Easy to please, where’s dinner? (You’d finish one, she said, and want the other, or would go hungry all day and insist you’d eaten. One morning, you polished off a carton of bran bowl by bowl. Bound you up for days.) Easy to please, where’d I put my goldarned glass-es? Wearing them, Don, you’re wearing them. Easy to please, I’m off for a walk. Darn it, Donald, it’s pouring out. Refusing to easy-please yourself into a home where you belong. Give the old gal a break. Didn’t it occur to you Dotty was sick, barely holding on? Heart disease, emphysema, and a three-year-old man to care for. Easy-pleased her to death is what you did. Don’t stand gawking at me. It’s rude. Cheek bristles reflecting patio light, scrappy patches of illumination, your fly open with your mouth. Better let me rebutton your shirt if we’re going out. The Victorians were right: let appearances slide, and we slide right in behind them. You keep staring at me like that, I’m outta here. I don’t want you mistaking me for Petey or one of those damn kids.

Did we already go for a walk, or are we going? I can’t remember a goldarned thing anymore. My memory is all shot to hell. You can’t imagine what it’s like. Embarrassing for Pete’s sake.

Sure I can. I’ve spent a lifetime embarrassed around you. Where do they come from, your brief lucidities–solid land in a universe of water? Weird. You know, I’ve been rethinking the bicycle theft thing. You’re absolutely right: giving a new bike to a nincompoop son is like throwing it away. Absolutely correct, your little remake of history. What’s history anyway but our own twisted perspective, constantly revised to our own ends? They should rename it Allshuman’s Disease, the tie that binds. Trouble is, history is all we have left in the end. Our own little turf of recollection. If that’s wormed full of holes, what is there? Do you mind if I digress from our little tete-a-tete and get back to the main subject? Leave out stolen bicycles, San Francisco, afternoons at the river–which, given your penchant for revision, likely never existed. More likely the holy ghost writing sermons in the attic had you over polishing church pews with your tongues. Look back from tyranny in a family, you’ll find previous tyranny every time, on back to Adam. Who needs infidels when we can hate each other?

How’s the kids? I don’t see half enough of them. We used to go swimming every day. You remember that, don’t you? My grandkids loved it.

I’m telling you about my opportunity. True item this time; I sense it. They’ve had me in to talk, told me I should expect to do some traveling. No problem. Don’t you dare tell me they say that to everyone. Bullshit. I’m stoked about this, I’m the man, I got OFFER written on my forehead. I’ve blown past opportunities. Absolutely. My memoir would be titled Luck Saw Me Coming and Crossed the Street. Better yet: Nincompoop. Hey, I know the score–unlike some present. I blew my marriage, okay. My single regret–I mean this, you old sack of worn out neurons–is that I told you about my affair. I can’t imagine why. So I ball a girl at work, so what? What business is it of yours? Five years after I could still see pews lined up in your eyes when you looked at me. I know how Bill Clinton felt. I still don’t dare mention T’s name. No doubt you never had an affair, not even with Mom. That’s not my fault. Okay, that’s unkind. But it isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, I can tell you. What burns you up is you can’t see your grandkids as much as you’d like. Those are my kids you can’t see, pal. I hardly see them myself. God bless the day–yeah, I’m saying it–that you forget they exist. Hallelujah. All Petey and Helen to you. Jesus! But this thing! I’ve got my teeth sunk in so deep I’ve gone cross-eyed. I can taste the butter on my bread.

Hold your horses. She’ll call us in a minute. Tiffany and her are probably talking about the new drapes. Her and Tiffany, I mean...Tiffany and she...she and Tiffany? Both of them, anyhew. Spooky the way you remember a name out of the blue.

My ex-wife and your dead one! Tiffany hasn’t come with me for ten years, you realize. No, you don’t. Blissful irrecollection. Things in place you wish to have there, forgotten if you don’t. Better than religion. Talking to yourself again? Who needs testy listeners when you can converse with yourself? The garden again. I don’t recall you growing a garden. To hear you tell it, you ran home between clients to weed onions. You fed the neighborhood, the state, hungry Africa. My kids helped you weed, even though they weren’t born yet. What the hell. All your life you were mostly in conversation with yourself. Maybe we all are. Is that a precursor to the ailment? Solipsism? I live in this world alone, hiding out finally inside my head, kicking out a bigger and bigger hole in the brain til there’s nothing left but a den for the self to squeeze in. I’m alerted, taking mental note to halt all self-dialogue. Can’t hurt to take precautions. Still, it’s ironic, I finally get my break, and you’re too near brain zero to know it. Ah well, you wouldn’t recognize me turned about on my axis anyway. Best I can hope for is to be tucked away as “Nincompoop” in the safe neighborhood of the past, gone on retreat with you into your mental cave. You rise and stretch.

Did Dotty go out? One of the girls must be making breakfast. Damned squirrels–looking out at planters on the patio–they keep tearing up my rhodies.

Squirrels don’t eat rhododendrons, Dad.

Mine do.

What? Now you own the squirrels?

Mine are. Smiling at your little joke.

Who knows, maybe they’re beyond us. They’ve assembled the populace of a lifetime together in the mind, and it’s a busy, crowded, bustling place in there. Maybe the brain’s capacity, which we use but a fraction of in earlier years, is fully tapped in its last gasp. Like that mythic instant before we die, whole lifetime packed in a moment number, only this stretched to span years. Within it, you reexperience every moment of your life. What leaks out is but a trifle of the entire progeny within, an anomalous hint. We can’t begin to imagine. All people time places jammed together indivisibly in a splendid, fully engaging menage. Think of it! You move freely among them, through time, smiling, mumbling to yourself–agitated at times, sure. Who wouldn’t be? It’s from this last gleeful state of all-experiencing dementia that we have taken our notion of heaven.

When you turn, those marksmen’s eyes seem to have taken aim at themselves and scored direct hits, shot through with blood. How to tell you Dotty is dead? We buried her yesterday. There will be no more lunches in the dining room facing the golf course. No one to button your shirt, or iron it, or explain you are already wearing two hats, you don’t need a third. I can’t bring myself to tell you. Do you think me that cruel and unforgiving? Jesus! How to explain if I don’t get this job, there’ll be no choice but to take you home to California with me? Live, the both of us, in my hole in Pomona on my part-time wages and what pittance you have left. Five siblings with Alzheimer’s: Helen, Jimmy, Paul, Lilly, Alice...not Petey, he wasn’t born yet, still isn’t. Forty thousand bucks a year times five these past four years; who knows how much before. Stock market bust. A generous man. Except with me. Just a word now and then, pat on the back, good Daddy hug. Why couldn’t you bring yourself to do it? You had to follow in your daddy’s footsteps? What’s so fucking toxic about a son? Hey, it’s not me bequeathing you the foul inheritance. But then I suppose you aren’t bequeathing it to me either, having inherited it yourself. If only once someone could break the pattern.

You stand nodding at me, a funny little smile growing on your lips, the dying light silvering your hair. Then befuddlement moves like a shadow across your face. So how’s this supposed to work? How to manage the transition into Good Joe’s Nursing Home without a straightjacket, needles, however they do it? How to manage the transition into my life without bloodshed? You preoccupied with shards of the past, me with its resentments. How do we keep from doing injury to each other, old man? How do we undo injuries already done? How do we learn to forget?

He totters, like a child, more loveable than I’ve ever known him. No judgment in his face at all as he looks at me. No bunched chin or lip curled up one side. Something like amusement or pleasure in his eyes as he appears to recognize me. “Whad say, Willy Boy, you ready for some lunch?”