My car is in the dirt parking lot, right where I left it. No ID channel for me yet.
On the way back into town, my sister FaceTimes me. She’s on with my father the grown-up. I pull off the highway onto a gravel side road that dead-ends at a small RV park. It’s twilight, and I smell cooking smells: people making dinner in their mobile homes.
I thank my sister for including me on the call. We’ve been allies through this whole ordeal, and I’m proud of our bond. I’m always telling everyone how well we get along (mostly because it makes me feel superior to people who fight with their siblings during times of family crises; a stupid thing to compare, and not even quantifiable, as I have a nice sister, and god knows what siblings they’re stuck with, but we all find reasons to feel superior to others—very pleasurable—and I’ll take it where I can get it).
I hear “Purple Haze” playing in the background of my father’s hospital room. He’s tapping his hand in time to the music. He waves at me, and I wave back, and it means everything to me: this tapping and waving.
“Dad, are you listening to the playlist?” I ask.
“I think he is,” says my sister.
The playlist is the genial capstone on the only fight we’ve had in five months: an iPad controversy, where my sister decided it was a good idea to buy him the device and I contested that decision.
“The man can’t work an iPad when he’s healthy,” I told her.
“I don’t want him to be bored. He needs activities.”
“He’s on a ventilator! Trying to breathe, that’s his activity.”
She smuggled the iPad in anyway. This was the night before Resuscitation One: the first of two emergencies in which my father coded blue and the hospital had to bring him back with CPR, re-injuring his ribs. I pulled the kinehora on my sister, blaming the Apple product for his near-death experience with a brutal “I told you so!”
I don’t know why I had to be cruel. So she wanted to believe he was in good enough condition to play online solitaire. We all had our fixations (me: the mustache; my mother: getting him into the “Harvard of rehabs”). How else to channel the anxiety of the uncontrollable?
Soon, I rediverted my anxiety into making him the ultimate playlist on the iPad—all his favorites—“Peggy Sue,” “Stagger Lee,” “Operator,” “You’re Sixteen,” “Get Ready,” “Chain Gang,” “Dance to the Music,” “Sunshine of Your Love”: twelve hours of music, sixteen hours of music, I didn’t miss a jam. The nurses called his room “the party room.” The thing was a beast; it kept growing, I couldn’t stop: twenty-four hours of music, twenty-eight hours of music, B-sides, C-sides. I became a hoarder; any song from 1951–1975 was fair game. If I could just keep playlisting forever, then… what? I’d defeat mortality.
“Your sister made me a cassette,” he said one day, pointing to the iPad.
The Stooges’ “Down on the Street” was playing. Iggy Pop was yelling something about a wall.
I prepared to correct him (No, she got you the iPad, but I’m the one who made you the “cassette”). I wanted credit for my masterwork.
He went on, “It’s supposed to be my favorite songs. But I don’t know half the crap on there.”
“Oh,” I said, suddenly glad to be disassociated from the unhinged playlist. “She must have gotten carried away. Here, let me fix it.”
I pruned way back: fourteen solid hours of only Dad-approved hits.
Now there are five of us on the call: me, my father, my sister, Jimi Hendrix, and my sister’s crying baby. The baby is plump and pink. Her whole head is wet with tears. I don’t know how she got tears in her little tufts of hair, but the hair is wet too. My father mouths her name over and over, makes a shhhing sound.
I want the baby to stop crying, to recognize my father. But he’s been in the ICU for most of her life (also, she’s five months old and doesn’t know shit).
I send a telepathic message to the baby: Hey. Act like you’re obsessed with him.
My father is still shhhing. The baby keeps crying.
I send more messages: Do it for Auntie. Auntie doesn’t like babies, but Auntie likes you. Oh, I know you’re your own person capable of making your own decisions. No, I can’t just have my own baby and use that as a weapon against my father’s depression. I considered it, but even I’m not codependent enough for that.
“All right, I’m going to go deal with her,” says my sister.
She gets off the FaceTime. Then it’s just me and my father. And “Ain’t No Woman” by the Four Tops.
“Hi, Dad,” I say.
He gives me a smile. It’s a loving smile, through his small, green eyes. I forgot about that light in his eyes. I remembered the concept: my father—bringer of light—the idea of his light. But not what it actually looks like (first snow) or feels like (a fireplace).
I am glad for the light, the silence between us. It’s that orchestral quiet, music and silence, both, the way the top of the ocean can be rough, while underneath it’s completely serene.
His hand is still tapping (his digging hand and sifting hand). I could sit here forever (do you mind if I just sit here?). As long as that hand is still tapping. The light in his eyes.
My father the grown-up, my father the child. We are falling into the sunset. Falling into the night sky. Maybe the night sky is kind. Forgiving. We have both been forgiven a thousand times. Being human, always new things to forgive.
Forgive me, father.
You are already forgiven.
Forgive me, daughter.
There’s nothing to forgive.