I suppressed a groan. You can get up and do things, too. Stop making me feel bad about it. ‘It’s just not very good timing.’
We faced front. The same Asian woman with the plastic toys barreled through again. A young girl across the aisle bought a hot pink plastic gun. She pointed the gun at her little sister. When she pulled the trigger, a firing noise sounded. My father shifted his weight. ‘I told you about how when I got in that car accident, I looked right into the deer’s eyes before we crashed, right?’
‘Yes. I guess.’
He stared straight ahead, speaking out of the side of his mouth. ‘I actually didn’t realize Kay was hurt when I first saw her. I thought she was just sleeping.’ He let out a small, aching laugh.
I peered at him, waiting. I never knew what to think when he brought up the accident-he only gave little pieces of it at a time, and I never was sure how to read them. The unsettling smell of urine floated through the air, then disappeared. In the next car, a baby began to wail. My father leaned his head on the window and closed his eyes, apparently choosing not to say anything else about it.
It was getting so hot in the car. The train ground to a stop, more people stuffed on, some of them leaning over us with their sweaty armpits to read the subway map. I had the urge to dart through the gaping subway doors, up the stairs, and through the turnstile. Maybe I could run through the streets and hide in a doorway or a dumpster. I could nest by the recyclables. New York was so big and complicated, it would take a while to be found. I pressed my feet more firmly into the floor, ready to stand up and do it. But then the doors wheezed shut, and the subway took off again.
‘So tell me something else,’ my father said after a moment. ‘Tell me about your friends.’
‘What friends?’
‘Your friends from school, I guess. The ones that live in the apartment building in the Village and are all in love with one another.’
I looked at him blankly.
‘One of them is named Monica?’ he reminded me.
I squinted, finally getting it. ‘Wait. Really?’
He nodded, excited.
‘Okay,’ I said slowly, thinking. ‘So…you know the one guy who had that part in that soap opera? Well, this girl started to stalk him. She thought that the soap was real, and that he was the doctor character.’
‘Oh dear,’ my father said, as the train rocked forward. ‘A stalker.’
‘Right. She was pretty nuts. And you know the zoologist guy’s monkey he had to give up? He found out that the monkey is in town because he had a part in a movie. So he went to visit him on the movie set. It was at the Central Park Zoo.’
‘I love the Central Park Zoo,’ my father exclaimed. ‘Did the monkey recognize him?’
‘Y-yes,’ I said, hesitating, not really remembering.
‘Good,’ my father said. ‘I’m glad monkeys recognize people, too. Dogs certainly do. Even if you’re away for a long time, a dog won’t forget you.’
These weren’t people I knew. It was a plot synopsis of an episode of Friends I had watched two days ago. When my father had an earlier incident like this and asked me to tell him something, I’d told him about another episode of Friends, saying it was on TV, but he still didn’t get it. He was TV illiterate, and always had been. I didn’t have the heart to tell him the truth.
A battery, discarded on the floor, rolled from one side of the car to the other. The lights flickered on and off. And then it was Sixty-eighth Street, us. We got off, walked to the stairs, and climbed them.
The Saturday after I learned my father was going to have ECT treatments, I went to a party up at this girl Nadine’s house in the Bronx. Nadine was part of NYU’s biology program, too.
On my way there, I passed a Key Food grocery store. There was a kid on the crimson electronic rocking horse, screaming his head off. He tossed some Game Boy handheld thing on the ground every few seconds, and his mother stooped down to pick it up. When the horse ride ended, the boy whined that he wanted to do it over again. ‘Why don’t you ride the whale?’ his mother suggested, pointing to the lower, smaller whale ride right next to the horse.
‘I hate that whale!’ the kid screamed, and took off into the store. His mother picked up his handheld thing and followed him.