Albert // Leslie Werden

Streets of San Fransisco
Natalia O’Hara

            “One day, you’ll find me dead in this chair, I suppose,” Albert said quietly to his eldest son, David, who was visiting for the weekend for the first time in six months. Albert sat low in the dirty, tan recliner, hunched with his chin close to his chest. Anna, David’s little sister, would know how to respond to their crabby, aging father, but this was one of the few times she wasn’t there. Why had David come by himself? He regretted it now. David looked to his wife Claire for some kind of signal, a slight nod, a shake of the head, something. Claire only stared blankly. She wouldn’t respond, not after her cranky father-in-law had put her in her place several times. Albert had often said to her, “This is my house. I’ll make the coffee as weak or as strong as I like,” when she had tried to be helpful to get the kitchen ready for breakfast. Albert never spoke that way to Anna, so Claire held tightly to the grudge and stopped trying to be helpful years ago. David didn’t say anything either. He dismissed the comment and didn’t bother telling Anna.
            It wasn’t really Albert’s house, but his wife’s who had been dead for four years. Albert and Adelaide had retired to the secluded farmhouse, her birthplace and parents’ homestead, twenty-two years ago. They lifted the original two-room house off its footings, rebuilt the basement, and then added on a bigger kitchen plus an additional living space with a loft above (a place for Anna to paint, Albert had said). Adelaide decorated the walls with framed pictures of their ten grandchildren, large paintings of wildlife, and a few “Grandma & Grandpa Cookie Factory” kinds of hangings. Then she started forgetting who was in the pictures. She would stand in front of a picture and tilt her head to the left, squinting her eyes as if that would help her focus. After a deep breath, she would move on, finding a knick-knack to move from table to credenza or picking up a load of towels to fold. Albert called his children: “Your mom’s not acting right.” From their long-distance, David and his younger brother (by just 14 months) Mark, would suggest a doctor’s visit. Anna, the youngest by eight years, would say, “I’m so glad you’re the one taking care of her, Dad.” None of them could make their mother better.
            After Adelaide walked out of the house twice without Albert knowing it and made it a mile where the nearest neighbor spotted her shuffling along the dusty road, Anna called her brothers to present a united front, and they gently suggested that it was time for Mom to move to a care facility. The married couple had only been retired for ten years. Ten years of planting a garden, canning corn, watching deer and foxes run through the yard. When Adelaide moved to a memory care unit thirty miles away, Albert could only bring himself to visit once a week because he would cry all the way home; he texted Anna that he hadn’t planned to be in retirement alone. He watched the deer and foxes and took pictures of them to send to his grandchildren. He mowed the lawn and tried his best to plant a garden by himself. It was too much work for one person, and it wasn’t fun anymore.
            Summer passed, fall came, and Adelaide died just before Thanksgiving. She had only been out of the house for eight months. Mark and Anna arrived for Christmas with their families, and for a while, the house was chaotic and joyful and full. Eight grandchildren sprawled on air mattresses throughout the house, card games like Whist and Cribbage played every night, and food prep constantly utilized the kitchen Adelaide had loved. They all said their goodbyes before the New Year, Mark and his family hustling out of there to catch a flight back to Chicago. Anna loaded her family in the car and hugged her dad an extra time. “Love ya, Dad.”
            “Love you too, sunshine,” Albert whispered in her ear.  The door closed behind Anna, and silence coated the house like dust on the framed photos.

***

            “There’s nothing on TV,” he messaged his kids in their group text. Anna responded to him in a separate text. She knew her brothers wouldn’t want to be bombarded with pings from the conversation.
            “What about Storage Wars? You like that one,” she would suggest.
            “Boring.”
            “News?”
            “Depressing.”
            “Why don’t you play a game of solitaire?”
            “No interest.”
            When David visited in early March (he couldn’t be there for Christmas because that was the holiday he spent with Claire’s family in Ohio) he found the living room to be fairly clean, but Albert’s bathroom had caked urine all over the floor and a limey film coating the bathtub. There were some ants in the kitchen. He texted his sister that the house probably needed a good cleaning next time she was there.
            “One day, you’ll find me dead in this chair, I suppose,” Albert said. David snapped a picture of the haggard and sallow father and sent it to Anna with a note. “Dad’s not looking good.” The only part of Albert’s body that wasn’t thin were his legs, which looked a little swollen. The refrigerator was empty except for some grapes, a half a loaf of cottage wheat bread, and miscellaneous bottles of yellow mustard, brown mustard, honey mustard, and Thousand Island dressing. David took his dad grocery shopping, and Albert picked out ten Banquet frozen meals: chicken fried beef steak, Salisbury steak meal with mashed potatoes, and the like. He added bananas at the last minute.
            Albert texted his daughter after David left: “I’m not much of a cook, but those frozen meals taste pretty good.” He texted her several times a day because she responded the fastest. She suggested he eat small meals throughout the day and maybe try to pick out some healthier frozen meals. Albert agreed with her.
            “It’s good to have a daughter,” he texted her. “Nobody else cares about us when we get old.”


***

Feeling Fancy
Katsunori Baba // photography

            When Albert hadn’t texted for a few days in mid-April, Anna, who lived six hours away, texted her cousin who was only twenty minutes from the farm. “Can you check on my Dad, please? He’s not texting.” Calvin found Albert asleep in the tan recliner. He texted Anna that Uncle Albert was fine and left.
            Anna wanted to check on her dad herself, so she took some time off work, which wasn’t easy to do as only one of two dental hygienists in the small practice owned by a husband and wife, and drove the six hours to see her dad. He was asleep in the chair when she walked in but perked up when he heard the door shut behind her. He tried to get up but didn’t quite make it and plopped back down. “My legs are a little weak, I guess,” he said.
            Anna squatted down next to his chair and patted his shin. “Hi, Dad — thought I would surprise you with a visit.” He hadn’t shaved and she thought he looked like a gray skeleton except for his legs, which were swollen. Images she had of her father superimposed this current elderly frame: the official photo from his Air Force days, a snapshot of 22-year old Albert in a white t-shirt and jeans leaning against his ‘57 blue and white Ford, a newspaper clipping of the new tech school instructor in 1966 working with young men in an electronics class.
            “Good, good. Let me go to the bathroom then we can make some dinner.” She helped him stand and he limped his way to the bathroom, saying, “Arthritis in my hip is pretty bad today,” as he went. In the kitchen, she found a box of whole wheat pasta and a glass jar of Three Cheese Prego she had purchased during Christmas. There was a molding head of lettuce in the fridge, which she threw away and opted for a can of green beans instead. Ten minutes had passed and Albert was still in the bathroom. Maybe she wouldn’t have a year ago, but now she called for him – “Dad, how’re you doing?” — he answered back he was just fine.
            Albert arrived just as Anna was putting a pot of water on the stove to boil for the pasta. “I should really check on the…the…in…” he said and gestured to the front door.
            “Dad? What do you mean?”
            He swayed a little and closed his eyes. Anna grabbed at his arm but wasn’t quick enough or strong enough to catch him as he crumpled to the floor.
            “Dad! Dad!” He was breathing and had a pulse, but she couldn’t wake him. She called 911 and texted Calvin, who got there before the ambulance did. Calvin loaded Anna into the passenger seat of his Chevy truck, and they followed the ambulance fifteen miles to the hospital. She texted her brothers.

***

            “Congestive heart failure,” the doctor said.
            “How long has he had that?” Anna asked.
            “Hard to say. But he will have to make some changes to his diet and exercise. The heart won’t improve, but lots of people live with this condition for a long time if they take the right steps.”

***

           Anna called her brothers to suggest it might be time to move dad to assisted living. David said he would be there the next morning but could only stay one night. Mark said he would look for flights out of Chicago then rent a car in Fargo, three hours away. He wouldn’t get there until the afternoon or late evening.
            “There’s my sunshine,” Albert said when Anna walked in the hospital room. “Thank goodness for daughters!” Only then did Anna cry.





Author:

Leslie Werden is a Professor of English and the Chair of the Humanities  Department. She received her BA from The University of Minnesota, MA from Winona State University, and PhD from The University of North Dakota. She is the Faculty Advisor for Omicron Delta Kappa, is active in community theatre in Sioux City, and is mom to three teenage boys.




Artist:

Natalia O’Hara is a junior at Morningside, majoring in Arts Administration and Photography. Her passion for photography started in high school because of her teacher, Jon Cochrane, and it has grown tremendously since!




Katsunori Baba studies Theater and Music at Morningside. He grew up in Japan and traveled in Europe, Southeast Asia and the United States. He enjoys music, the art, traditions and nature of any country. He would like to introduce others to these from Japan, his home country.