While spoon-feeding him with
one hand she holds his hand with her other hand, or rather lets it rest on
top of his, which is permanently clenched shut. When he turns his head
away, she reaches around and puts in a spoonful blind. He will not accept
the next morsel until he has completely chewed this one. His bright squint
tells her he finds the shrimp she has just put in delicious. She strokes
his head very slowly, as if to cheer up each hair sticking up from its
root in his stricken brain. Standing behind him, she presses her cheek to
his, kisses his jowl, and his eyes seem to stop seeing and do nothing but
emit light. Could heaven be a time, after we are dead, of remembering the
knowledge flesh had from flesh? The flesh of his face is hard,
perhaps from years spent facing down others until they fell back, and
harder from years of being himself faced down and falling back, and harder
still from all the while frowning and beaming and worrying and
shouting and probably letting go in rages. His face softens into a
kind of quizzical wince, as if one of the other animals were working
at getting the knack of the human smile. When picking up a cookie he
uses both thumbtips to grip it and push it against an index finger to
secure it so that he can lift it. She takes him to the bathroom, and when
they came out, she is facing him, walking backwards in front of
him holding his hands, pulling him when he stops, reminding him to
step when he forgets and starts to pitch forward. She is leading her old
father into the future as far as they can go, and she is walking him back
into her childhood, where she stood in bare feet on the toes of his
shoes and they foxtrotted on this same rug. I watch them closely: she
could be teaching him the last steps that one day she may teach me. At this
moment, he glints and shines, as if it will be only a small
dislocation for him to pass from this paradise into the next.
