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He heaved his disobedient body from the couch and climbed the stairs Stairs-that had been a concern for the future What would he do when he could no longer climb the stairs? But it hardly mattered now In the master bath he turned on the shower and stripped to his shorts, standing before thewas, he didn’t look especially sick A little thinner, perhaps There was a tiht of hih those days were long past His line of work, with its attendant dee ied-well, if not to turn heads exactly, then at least to keep himself occupied A series of discreet affairs, everyone apprised of the facts He had prided hied quality of these encounters, but then one day it had all siht have been returned slid past him, conversations that before had merely served as elaborate prea to cheer about He surveyed his reflection, taking stock A square-jawed face that had once looked rugged but had long since sagged at the jowls A scri not quite successfully to conceal the ghostly white presence of his scalp Bags of skin beneath his eyes, a rubbery paunch at the waist, legs skinny and insubstantial looking Not a pretty sight, but nothing he hadn’t accepted as the inescapable degradations of late e

To look at hied into a clean suit His closet contained al else; an understated two-button-dark navy usually but soray with a subtle pinstripe, occasionally khaki poplin in summer-paired with a shirt of powder blue or starched white and a tie as neutral as Switzerland was so closely aligned with his sense of hi his balance, he descended the stairs to the living roo out its parade of bad news Though he possessed no appetite, he heated up a frozen lasagna in thebefore it as the seconds ticked away He sat at the table and did his best to eat, but the diazepauely htness in his throat had not abated, as if he earing a collar two sizes too sested he tryto kiddie food was nothing he could face Froo downhill

He duna down the disposal and checked his watch again A little after nine Well, whatever was happening in theNelson would call if he needed him

He left the townhouse and drove to McLean What lay ahead was a grim duty, but Guilder was the only one to do it The facility was set back fron read, SHADOWDALE CONVALESCENT CENTER At the check-in desk, Guilder presented his driver’s license to the nurse, then proceeded down the s of green fields and summer sunsets The place was quiet, even for the hour; usually there were orderlies around, and patients in the coot soht the place was a toently knocked, opening the door without waiting for an answer

"Pop, it’s me"

His father was propped in his wheelchair by theHis jaw drooped open, the muscles of his face as slack as pancake batter A pendululed from his mouth to the paper bib around his neck Somebody had dressed him in a stained sweat suit and orthopedic shoes with Velcro tabs He gave no sign of recognition as Guilder stepped into the rooed of urine The Alzheinized no one, but still one had to go through the ht, the solitude of theof absence, was nothing new In life-as now, in death-he had been a man of almost reptilian coldness Guilder knew that this was just the way his father had been raised-the son of small-town dairy farhtered their own hogs-yet still he couldn’t bring hi to win the attention of a , a natural thing, what he’d asked of his father, siame of catch on a fall afternoon, a word of praise from the sidelines, an expression of interest in his life Guilder had done everything right The good grades, the dutiful performances in auditoriue and swift ascent into a useful adulthood Yet his father had had virtually nothing to say about any of this Guilder could not, in fact, recall a single instance when his father had told him he loved him, or touched him with affection The man just didn’t care

Hardest of all had been the toll it had taken on Guilder’s mother, a naturally sociable woman whose loneliness had driven her to the alcoholism that eventually killed her In later life, Guilder caht comfort elsewhere, that she had had affairs, probably more than one After his father had been moved to Shadowdale, Guilder had cleaned out the house in Albany-an absolute mess, every drawer and cabinet cra table, a velvet Tiffany box When he’d looked inside he’d found a bracelet-a diamond bracelet Probably it had cost as ineer, hadhe could have afforded, and the box’s location-concealed in the back of a drawer beneath a pile of loves and scarves-had told Guilder what he was looking at: a lover’s gift Who had it been? His al secretary One of the lawyers at her fir? A rekindled roladdened hihten her lonely existence, yet at the same time this discovery had sank him into a depression that had continued unabated for weeks His mother was the one warm memory of his childhood But her life, her real life, had been a secret froht these memories to the surface; by the ti with unexpressed rage, that he could barely think straight Fifty-seven years old, yet still he craved soment

He positioned the room’s only chair in front of his father The old man’s head, bald as a baby’s, was tipped at an aard angle against his shoulder Guilder retrieved a rag from the bedside table and wiped the spit fro sat on a tray with a fli you okay?"

Silence And yet Guilder could hear his father’s voice in his head, filling in the spaces

Are you kidding me? Look at me, for Christ’s sake I can’t even take a proper shit Everyone talking to me like I’m a child How do you think I am, sonny boy?

"I see you didn’t eat your dessert You want so! That’s all they givefor lunch, pudding for dinner The stuff’s like snot

Guilder tucked a spoonful between his father’s teeth Through some autonomic reflex, the old man smacked his lips and sed

Look atinthe news lately," Guilder said, delivering a second spoonful into his father’s ht you should know about"

So? Say your piece and leave ? That everyone was dying, even if they didn’t know it yet? What purpose could this inforht occurred to hione, the doctors and nurses and orderlies? With everything that had happened in the last feeeks, Guilder had been too preoccupied to consider this eventuality Because the city was e out; soon, in weeks or even days, everyone would be running for their lives Guilder remembered what had happened in New Orleans in the aftermath of the hurricanes, first Katrina and then Vanessa, the stories of elderly patients left toin their oaste, to perish slowly of hunger and dehydration

Are you listening todumb look on your face What’s so all-fired important that you came here to telli into his father’s et some rest, okay?" he said "I’ll see you in a few days"

Your mother was a whore, you knohore a whore a whore

Guilder stepped from the room In the vacant hallway, he paused to breathe The voice wasn’t real; he understood that But still there were times when it felt as if his father’s mind, departed from his bodily person, had taken up residence inside his own

He returned to the front desk The nurse, a young Hispanic wo in a crossword puzzle