The Thief of Lost Time

Chapter 45: My Father's Dog

I'm late caught in rush hour traffic on the parkway. I stop at the supermarket across from Dad's apartment and run in to buy the Lean Cuisine and Stouffer dinners he eats most evenings. "Cheaper than buying everything separate," he says. Not that Dad can't cook. He prepared all meals on family camping trips and later, all meals once Mom stopped cooking.

Sometimes, he'll buy a piece of fresh fish and cook it with frozen vegetables. I hate visiting the apartment when he's frying fish. The smell sickens me. I'm reminded of my revulsion at nine-years-old when taking a fish off the hook and listening to it flopping to death in the bottom of the boat.

Once, I cut my thumb on a gill. It stung like a paper cut, but I wasn't upset until I saw how deep the cut was. A few seconds passed before a red thread on my skin welled into drops. I wanted to put the cut in my mouth, but the fish stink was all over my hands.

I never wanted to catch the fish in the first place. I'd have been happier sitting in the boat bored out of my mind. At least then I wouldn't have smelly fingers and a cut bleeding on my jeans. No wonder I hate the smell of fish.

Dad knows exactly what he wants from the supermarket. I breeze through the store collecting the few items he needs. I'm amazed at the number of ways to package poultry. The photo of the chicken and gravy on one box looks tasty and I'm hungry. I throw in a meal for myself.

***

This morning, Dad called me at work. "Can you stop by and pick up a prescription for me?"

After hanging up, I called Rachel to tell her I'd be home late. "That's ridiculous." "Sheridans delivers prescriptions for a couple of bucks."

"He also asked me to pick up some groceries. He's been under the weather lately."

My wife's right. I'm a little annoyed by his last-minute request. Dad forgets that collecting a prescription adds forty-five minutes to my ride home, but sometimes he needs someone to shop for him, and he looks forward to having a visit. I'll go and be happy to do so. It's the least I can do.

***

After the grocery, a quick stop at the pharmacy. Not the convenient one in the supermarket, but the drug store two miles away where my parents shopped all their lives and where, as a child, I bought cigarettes with a note from my mother. A mom-and-pop store, the building from the turn of the century, has a wooden floor worn down by generations of customers.

The pharmacist is sixty, a little older than me. I vaguely remember him from high school, a year ahead of me. He finds two prescriptions. Do I want them both? No, I want to say. Let me make an extra trip tomorrow. Instead, I smile and thank him for saving me a trip.

I'm shocked at the cost of Dad's medicine. Last March I helped him with his taxes. He had every pharmacy receipt sorted by medicine and date. I expected nothing less than this painstaking precision from an engineer. Leslie and I learned not to ask him for help with math homework because his explanations were always long and detailed.

At his apartment, I don't ring the bell. Dad would get up from his recliner to answer it, and there's no need to risk a fall. To avoid startling him, I rattle my key in the lock as if having trouble inserting it. He must think I'm going blind. I open the door part way. "It's only me."

"Hello, Mark." He calls from the living room. He clears his throat, probably not having spoken since we talked this morning. "Did you find everything?"

"I didn't see your brand of cauliflower." I place the bags on the counter. "The boy stocking the freezer hadn't a clue. I got this instead."

Dad comes out to the kitchen to supervise. "What's the cheese sauce on it?" He picks up the package, tilts it toward the light, and looks over his glasses. "This is fine. I sometimes buy this when the store brand is out. Just as good. Not as cheap, but tasty."