Gradually, Suddenly
October 11th
Hello Hemingway,
You’d like our house, I think. It’s got this gray stone chimney and weathered, wooden siding; one good story, a back deck. And the location! Walk through town, head east, cross the bridge, and boom! Beach. Even better is the sound. The house backs right up to it, and Dad has this plucky motorboat we used to roll down the ramp at the end of the street and take through the inlet to the ocean.
A cleaning lady was finishing up when I arrived. Was I Marie’s sister?
Technically, I said.
She pointed to a red folder on the high table in the kitchen. I missed her by a half hour.
Thank you cleaning lady, thank you God. I took the folder into Marie and I’s old bedroom, a roomy closet crammed with two twin beds, and opened it. Inside were a stapled stack of papers and an envelope with cash; scribbled on a post-it on the first bill was a note to text her when I arrived.
I tipped the lady a hundred from the envelope, and she left. I peeked in Dad’s bedroom; he was asleep. I sat on the couch in the living room and stood up again. You still dominated the bookshelves, and the plastic marlin was still mounted above the fireplace, where any other father would’ve put a TV. And still the framed portrait of kid-me hung on the wall: same firelog eyebrows, same brown, curly fucking hair. That smirk. Tragic. All the hope in the world.
I unpacked a suitcase from my van, enough to last me both weeks: shorts, flops, tanks, undies, a couple hoodies. Camera stuff. But no laptop! This is a real pause. Time with Dad. Dad, who is conked out at four o’clock in the afternoon.
Half a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc was left in the fridge. I poured a glass, walked to the end of our street, and dipped my toes in the water. It was warm for October, no surprise. Another sunny day by the ocean in innocent, invincible Carolina.
Cheers,
Joy
October 13th
Hemingway,
According to Marie, the story is this: Dad was out on his morning walk, the only journey he’s been allowed to venture solo anymore, when a chicken from the Hendersons’ backyard coop escaped and squeezed itself through their hedges until it was perched streetside. Then, perhaps to ponder the old joke, the bird launched itself from its ledge and shocked dad up and out of his sweatpants. He fell, put an arm out for support, and broke his wrist in two places. Mrs. Henderson found him on the sidewalk while looking for her runaway poultry.
Marie had planned to leave the next day, but she decided to stay and organize the doctors, insurance, etc. Then she stayed another week, then another and another. Three months passed. She could’ve hired a permanent service; she can afford it. She’s used it for stretches before and trusts it. But stay she did.
Hence, she purported, her rare call to me. I needed to accept my share of the responsibility for Dad, she said; I needed to take his health seriously. She had managed it alone for too long! She was finished leaving Stephen to manage their kids, finished living in two places. Her life was in Jersey, not Roanoke. What did I have? An accumulation of motel travel rewards? A van that needed an inspection? I was 29: I should grow up!
Guilt is her thing, not mine. And fuck Stephen. But I was in Canada, in the tar sands, and the smoke from the oilfield fires had been going for three days. My chest hurt. The refinery had barred entry for journalists. When I tried to sneak in, one guard wrestled my favorite camera out of my hand and threw it in the Athabasca River, and another pushed me into a sewage ditch. I was tired. So I told the magazine I had a family emergency, ate the broken contract fee, and left. You know how it works.
I thought it’d be nice. It’s been over a year since I visited Dad. I figured we’d get a couple slow weeks together. But the drive down might’ve been the real respite.
The papers in Marie’s folder were instructions. I hate to follow them, but they’re clear and free of bitterness, and I’m not sure I have a choice. I wouldn’t have known to help him into the shower, or to dress him in jeans and one of his navy fishing shirts, or to civilize his nest of white hair, or to fix him oatmeal and OJ for breakfast and bowls of black bean soup for lunch and dinner because they’re easy to chew and swallow. I would’ve liked to rip up Marie’s instructions, but on the first night I was here Dad tried to walk outside without pants on, and I’d rather use them than call her.
We’re on the deck now. The sky is low and gray over the ocean, and it’s humid. Dad’s reading the book I gave him. Holding it, at least. The cast on his hand frustrates him. Still, it’s your Farewell to Arms, which he loves. It’d only be his thousandth reread, if he really is reading it.
On the phone Marie mentioned he’d gotten worse but didn’t elaborate. I don’t know. I had to help him stand after a shit. I had to use the sixth notch on his belt to keep his jeans up. He asked me, as if he’d never seen them, what the tattoos on my arms were. And, though I’m sure it’ll come up, he hasn’t said my name yet.
Joy
October 15th
Hemingway,
Today I took some initiative. I dressed Dad, schlepped him into the van, and we made it to the inlet harbor before the morning radio shows came on. The foreman told me all the charters for the day were booked, but we were free to wait in case there were any no-shows. As I was walking Dad down the dock, a bearded man with a paunch called Dad’s name and waved us over into the room of floodlight behind his boat.
Apparently this fisherman, Martin was his name, had Dad for tenth and twelfth grade English at Roanoke High. Dad introduced him to William Bartram, Rachel Carson, Mary Oliver—and your flowerier passages, of course. Now Martin himself writes nature poems; he’s even got a few published.
So sad they made him retire, he said. Mr. Kaine, it was Martin, class of ‘03. Mr. Kaine!
Dad gave him an expressionless glance.
Martin sighed and spit into the water. Then he perked up. Were we looking to fish?
We hummed out from the harbor. Then the captain accelerated, and we began to skip across the blank page of the morning. The coast melted into the horizon. The dawn filled the creases in Dad’s face with red light, and I was convinced I saw flickers of a smile. He held my hand tight, and tighter as we went.
We were sharing the charter with another family, a sleepy group of five. The parents became amiable once Martin explained the situation, and after their kids, two teenage boys and one younger girl, had reeled in a dozen tuna, the mom waved us out. They were glad to take turns, she said. It was a good thing I was doing.
Maybe it was; I thought Dad and I were making progress. But when I stood him up, he clung to me as if I were the last branch before a long fall. His smile, if it had been there, retreated behind trembling, pursed lips. And yet: we were out there, on the ocean our home, and he is my father.
Martin helped me walk him over the deck to the fishing chair. He couldn’t fish with his cast, but I’d asked Martin to simulate the experience, give him the feeling he hooked a big one, etc.
The family of five shouted their encouragement. The captain slowed the boat and watched us. Dad’s complexion greened. When we reached the chair, he glared at me. Then he looked surprised. Finally, he vomited on my jeans.
We delivered Dad to the small cabin below deck. Martin got us a towel, expressed his regrets, kindly added that it wasn’t my fault, and left us.
I sat Dad down and made him sip from a water bottle. He had a chunk of oatmeal on his chin. I stared at it for a hard two minutes. I was willing him to realize its presence for himself, to wipe it off himself. I started shaking. But he didn’t move. His eyes, confused and sad, looked off behind my right ear. Then he clicked his teeth together and hung his head. He seemed to be saying: How could this happen? How could you?
After a while, Martin returned to let us know a pair of whales had surfaced near the boat. Did we want to see them?
We helped Dad up the stairs. The family had their phones out and stood pressed against the railing, taking pictures. We joined them. The water was still; then, fifty feet from the boat, two weathered hilltops broke the surface. I held Dad’s hand and pointed. See, Dad?
One of the whales blew a geyser into the sun. It conjured a rainbow. A rainbow. The siblings whooped, the parents kissed. But Dad leaned hard against the railing, so hard I had to pull him back.
I sat him down on the starboard side, and Martin set a bucket at his feet. Better if he stayed in the fresh air, Martin said. Then he asked what my plans were for the storm.
I scanned the horizon. It was spotless. Survive?
Martin gave a sour look. Today was an armistice with the weather, he said. They were calling for a tropical storm.
I clarified: I avoided the news when I could; I hadn’t heard.
He looked at me like he had another question, lifted his hat to scratch his bald spot, then expressed his condolences for Dad. Half the reason he graduated high school, he said.
We watched the waves juggle the sun. Down the deck, the brothers bumped chests in their life jackets. The little girl fell, picked herself up, and took her mom’s hand. They were cute kids.
Joy
October 16th
Hemingway,
When I was little and Dad gave me my first camera, a cheap digital, he said to treat it like a magic eye. If I used it right, I could unlock its powers: tell stories, capture truth, change minds, make people scream, cry, laugh, remember. But he didn’t tell me I would be its victim, too.
I took a picture of Dad on the porch holding a book, and it made me see him. He’s gone. He’s forgotten me; Marie, too, I’m sure. I should’ve known it when I got here. Just over a year ago I saw him, and we talked to each other. In circles, yes, but we still talked, said I love you, said ‘til next time. That’s all gone.
Even you he’s forgotten. After I took the picture, I dropped all subtlety and read you aloud to him. I read his favorite stories, I read the trout fishing trip in Sun Also Rises, I read your sermon in Old Man and the Sea and jumped on the couch and screamed at him, Destroyed but not defeated, not defeated!
All I got was that same frightened, confused, betrayed look. No recognition. Not of me, not of you. With no one has he spent more time than us, Hemingway. If we can’t bring him back, he’s gone. Maybe Marie would say he’s dependent now, that’s all. But it’s more than that. For him, there’s no future, no present. And his past is probably going like the coast: grain for grain swallowed and then, all at once, the bridges become piers.
Joy
October 17th
Hemingway,
When I was starting out, I scored commissions in Shenandoah, Yosemite, Zion. One trip I brought a boyfriend with me, and I woke early and got a shot of his boxers tented against the backdrop of the forest. I told him I’d send it to the park instead of the bear cubs I’d gotten the day before. Then we negotiated, agreed that I’d delete the picture if he went down on me. What a deal for him, I said, how generous of me!
Those mornings abounded. Nothing was more important back then. The birds sang and sun shone, and there was peace unto men. Peace! Then I take one picture of a wildfire. They like it, they pay for a few more. I call the parks back, but they’ve replaced me. Hadn’t I moved on to serious photography? Well, hadn’t I?
Boyfriends don’t want to come on wildfire trips. They don’t want to search for cormorants covered in oil or fathers and sons canoeing down their streets after a storm. If they click on the pictures later and see me credited, maybe they’ll send a halfhearted text. Usually they decide I’m too much.
Alone in tents, motels, hospitals, I guess I leaned on you. Your template. Dad preached you all my life: alone hath man dignity, alone doeth man right. I must’ve misunderstood somehow, because when I tried to tell him and Marie about what I was seeing, seeing alone, they turned away from me. Horror stories are great in books, from strangers, not from daughters and sisters.
But you seemed to have grasped what I was living. Reading you was like commiserating. Except that was it. You don’t lead anywhere. Books end, and your books end badly, and I’m still here. Of course I don’t know what will happen, but when I think of Dad now, what I might do with him, or how any life might look in a year, I can only see the moving picture of my van shuffling me between circles of hell.
Joy
October 18th
Hemingway,
Marie showed up. Dad and I were on the deck reading you when there was a knock on the sliding door and lo, she was behind the glass, hands on her hips, dressed in khakis and a green blouse, her mouth a grim red line.
I joined her inside. What was she doing here? I had Dad for another week.
I hadn’t answered any of her calls.
I didn’t like to check my phone, I said. And we’d been busy. Also, this was a vacation.
Hadn’t I seen the forecast? she said. The storm—
Before the lecture could get rolling, I cut her off: She’d said Dad had gotten worse. I pointed at him. That’s “worse”?
Marie breathed, then spoke: First, I couldn’t say anything to her about Dad. Who was here all the time? She was. Second, a hurricane was coming. The governor wanted everyone inland by Wednesday.
I told her she could pretend she reigned from above, maybe it was custom in Jersey, but I was nobody’s subject.
It wasn’t about me, she said. We had to get Dad out of Roanoke.
Dad didn’t even know where he was! Or who we were!
Yes he did, Marie said. Maybe he was cold to me. But she’d been here. He knew her.
I threw my book at the marlin on the wall. I wanted to throw knuckles. Instead, I exited through the front door, touched my toes, and walked down to the water. It was colder that it had been. It helped.
I was sitting in my van to calm myself when Marie came out with suitcases. I rolled down my window and asked where she was going. Not back to Jersey?
Yes, she said. They had decided to move Dad into one of their spare rooms.
Who decided? I said; who “they”?
She and Stephen. Who else? After the storm they would come back for his valuables, then sell the house.
I got out of the van. Did I get a vote?
I was homeless, Marie said. I wasn’t on the committee.
Then why had she asked me here!
Marie glared at me, put the suitcases in the trunk of her SUV and closed it, then returned inside.
I followed her and knocked on the door frame. I want to take him, I said.
Where would I go? Marie said. I had nowhere to go.
I corrected her: I could go anywhere. I’d give him the adventures he always wanted. Marie was the trapped one. I was free.
I had no money, she said.
I’d chosen other things, I said. Same as Dad. I would give him a year of life, of living.
Apparently, I didn’t understand how Alzheimer’s progressed. Dad needed full-time care. Yes, he could still walk and use the bathroom now, but soon he would be stuck in bed. He would need expensive equipment, monitoring, doctors who knew him. He couldn’t live out of a van.
Did she want to prolong this? I said. Why? As revenge for his disapproval?
Was I an insane person? she said.
She wanted to prove to him she’d made the right choices, I said. Unlike our mother, she stayed with her kids, took care of them, and now, also unlike our mother, she would take care of him, too! Conflagration in the real world, but she would keep up the charade of order by keeping Dad on a ventilator!
Someone had to keep it together, she said. Someone had to assume responsibility. Did I think being town crier for the apocalypse was helpful? Had I changed anything, really? Stephen—
Fuck Stephen!
Stephen worked in climate finance. He was a good dad. He had a sense of duty to other people. All I did was scream revolution. Why? To avoid putting my life together or thinking for five minutes about the future, mine or Dad’s? I was just a tourist in his life; I’d been so obsessed with living out his favorite books I’d forgotten he was a real person. But she knew.
The future! Did she think I faked my pictures? In fifty years Roanoke would be gone, I reminded her; the ocean or a storm would obliterate it. Maybe even this one! Ships with refugees from heat and flood and famine would start smashing into American ports, and people like Stephen would hire men to guard their castles, shoot anyone who asked for help, and call it defending families and freedom! Even that wouldn’t last; crops would fail and—
Did I hear myself?
I heard myself! Was I wrong?
She turned away, exhaled, then faced me again. I couldn’t take Dad, she said.
I’m taking him, I said.
Stop, she said. We would talk in the morning before she and Dad left.
What?
In the morning, she said. Then she shut the door, to our home, in my face.
Cunt.
Joy
October 19th
Hemingway,
Here’s what kills me: it’s one in the morning, I can’t sleep, and I wish I were inside with Marie. Making pasta, reading in silence, anything.
I just don’t get her. I don’t get her decisions. Before she met Stephen, she had plans, will, talent. Six o’clock news anchors were going to announce: Because of a deal arbitrated by Marie Kaine, tomorrow a pipeline will begin delivering potable water to a host of southwestern states on the verge of bla, bla, bla.
Marie and Stephen met her junior year at Yale. He came from money. He graduated and began to work in money. Some bank. They got engaged. Afterward, they came to visit for a few weeks. I was a senior in high school then, and I was happy for them. What did I know? But one day, Stephen was out golfing, and I overhead Dad tell Marie what he thought. He said Stephen wasn’t ambitious like she was. Marie wanted to work; Stephen wanted to get paid. He was after appearances, prizes. He was boring. Dad requested she reconsider.
But they went through with it. She worked a while for a district attorney, it was a crushing job, and she quit when she got pregnant. They had the money, and she had always wanted to be a mom—a superlative mom. So the kid came, then another, and Stephen bought a mansion in New Jersey. It became her life.
I say this as if it’s his fault. She’s free, she wouldn’t deny it. But with every year, when we did talk, it seemed she understood or recognized the fact less and less.
I can’t change things for her, I know. But I do wish I had her in my corner again. Every summer until I left for college, she and Dad and I would sit reading on the beach. The tide would creep up to our toes, and when it reached us Dad would whistle a strong, vibrato whistle. That was the signal. We’d pull our chairs back a yard, Dad would keep reading, and Marie and I would walk north or south to the next pier, or one further, if we were really talking. Usually we were.
Joy
Hemingway,
Marie’s fist on the van woke me. Hey! she shouted. What’d you do?
I slid open the side door. Good morning, I said.
Dad was missing, she said. The front door had been open when she woke up. Where was he?
Missing?
Marie rejected my ignorance and punched the van again. This was calming for me, somehow. I assured her it wasn’t that bad.
Yes, she said, she’d only lost our senile father in an oncoming hurricane.
Roanoke was a small island, I said. Small-ish.
She grunted, pursed her lips, then fixed her hair. She was wearing sweats and a USA Peace Corps t-shirt. It’s wild, how much she looks like me when she’s not dressed up. The thick eyebrows, curly hair, angry ayes and lack of hips; the coiled posture, like a human mouse trap. I’m her, but shorter and tattooed.
She unlocked her car and ordered me to stay at the house. In case he came back.
I threw on shorts and exited the van. The wind had picked up and was rattling the few pines on our street. I was coming with her, I said. If she found Dad, she was just going to drive away.
I was paranoid, she said. Had I used the money she’d given me for therapy?
Had therapy helped her?
Marie ignored this and got in her SUV, a spaceship with leather and lights and a TV in the dash. I locked my van and joined her.
If I were Dad, I said, I’d want revenge on that chicken. We should drive his old walking route, then call the Hendersons.
We wouldn’t be asking the Hendersons anything, Marie said. They kept a petting zoo in their backyard.
We did drive his walk, though: toward the high school, right, right, right again. Soon after we started, the radio confirmed Marie’s statement about the evacuation: they’d upgraded the tropical storm to a level three, then four hurricane. Everyone is supposed to be off the island by noon tomorrow. Cars swamped the streets to the bridge inland; when traffic froze completely, I popped out and took pictures of the swollen cars and the bikes, boogie boards, and beach chairs strapped to their roofs.
They were just cars, Marie said.
They’re symbolic, I told her.
We checked every big street on the island’s north side. We checked the high school football field and its parking lots. Then we inched through traffic to the bridge and turned east, toward the beach. Marie told the cop in a poncho directing traffic that we were picking someone up, and he shrugged and let us through.
Marie drove slowly along the main beach drag, scanning both sides of the road. Her finger kept tapping on the wheel. The air in the car would break your teeth. So, I started to talk. I got rolling and couldn’t stop. I told her about the drive down from Canada, about Martin’s poems and the whales; our attempt at fishing and how sick Dad had been the whole time, as if he didn’t want to be there, or anywhere.
She said Dad was just going through a bad stretch. But her finger kept tapping.
Then came relief. I pointed to a speck of silver at the mouth of a pier ahead of us. As we neared, I saw that Dad was talking with someone, or being talked to. Then the cop car came into view.
Marie pulled into the pier parking lot. She would handle it, she said.
I got out. Dad!
A gust off the ocean seized us, and the cop hunched over and held his sheriff’s hat down on his head. Were we the Kaine sisters? he shouted.
Marie confirmed. Had our Dad mentioned us?
No. But the cop had recognized him and met us once or twice when we were little—his nephew had been in Marie’s grade. Then he asked if Dad was alright. He seemed out of it. And his hand?
He was fine, Marie said, just a little confused. The hand had been an accident.
After another gust the cop explained he’d been scanning the beach for storm tourists and found Dad holding on to one of the legs of the pier. Then he shook his head. It was lucky he had seen him, he said. It was a long walk from Roanoke.
Marie thanked him. We’d take him now. We were sorry for the trouble. She beckoned to Dad: Would he come with us, now? Be good and get in the car?
Dad turned to look at the cop, then the ocean. Marie repeated her order in the same puppydog voice. The cop’s face scrunched up. He’d help us out, he said. He took Dad by his good arm, I opened the back of Marie’s car, and the cop and I helped him in and shut the door.
The cop retreated a step and said he was sorry to see Dad like this. He’d known him as a kind man with a lively mind. It wasn’t easy caring for a person in his state, he knew—his stepmother…
I nodded. He nodded. Then he urged us to head inland. We were taking Dad, right?
We were. Marie thanked him one more time.
The cop touched his hat. He was glad we’d found him.
Marie and I got in her car and pulled away. I deflated in my seat: a total sigh. We’d found Dad. A relief, yes?
No. Marie erupted: Didn’t Dad understand a hurricane was coming, was here already? What the fuck was he thinking? She turned over her shoulder and screamed: What the fuck!
That’s when I hit her. Thwack! across the jaw. She braked, we lurched forward, Dad hit my headrest, something splintered.
He didn’t know!
Marie looked at me. He did know, she said.
What!
Behind us, a car honked. Marie drove on and locked her eyes on the road. I reached around my seat and pulled off Dad’s glasses. The bridge had snapped. He wore again that confused, scared, betrayed expression. Good on you for leaving, I wanted to say. At least one of us still had initiative.
We rode in silence. Traffic thickened. It seemed an infinite number of people were evacuating. Some stared out their windows at the charcoal sky; most heads were down, lit slightly by their phones. The tourists, they would complain about this, it would be an anecdote they bored coworkers with.
Marie parked in front of the house. I brought Dad inside and set him on his bed. Marie hadn’t followed us, so I returned to the car and got in again. Her hands were still at ten and two.
He was gone, I said. It’s nothing we could fix.
She shook her head, but this time, when I opened my door, she opened hers, too. We walked inside, and she sat on the couch in front of the marlin. Then I made coffee. I’d photographed pop-up camps after floods and mudslides, and the calmest people always seemed to be giving out coffee.
We looked at the ceiling and drank it while the house shivered against the wind. Through the glass doors the clouds over the ocean looked close enough to smother you. After a time, Marie mumbled something about a nap and disappeared into our bedroom. Dad had already fallen asleep in his.
So, it’s just you and I again, Hemingway. Though there are a few pictures on the walls I’ve been avoiding. One of them, of Marie, I took when I was fourteen. I won a county photography contest with it. We were out in Corolla, there’s a park out there in the dunes with wild ponies, horses, and we befriended one of them. We got it to kneel, then lay down, and we framed the shot to look as if the horse were laying on Marie and crushing her legs. But in the picture, she’s smiling. She’s wearing an emerald gown, and we arranged her hair, much longer back then, to spill over her shoulder. She looks radiant, coquettish, like she’s daring you to doubt this is the end.
We staged it for fun. Back then we shared projects all the time. But this picture in particular we framed and showed to Dad. He adored it. After Marie left, a sustained look at it made him cry. Then, without telling me, he submitted it to the county competition. He said he’d known I had something.
Joy
Hemingway,
I’m here now just to breathe before we go. The storm is here. But we’re packed, and we’ve got a plan.
After a few hours, Marie came out of our bedroom, walked to the glass doors, looked out at the ocean, then sat crisscross on the carpet.
She did it, she said. Not the Hendersons. She pushed Dad, that’s how he broke his wrist. She wanted him to rescind his judgments, to give her a key to her old self somehow; by caring for him she wanted to elicit it from him without asking, but it never came. It felt like he was punishing her. And in a flare she pushed him.
She admitted I was right: Dad had forgotten us. He was gone. He faded right in front of her, like dusk; gradually, suddenly, night arrived. How long had she been lying to herself, looking backward, pretending he still remembered her, and waiting for him to restore what only she could change?
I went and sat beside her. Rain crackled against the glass behind us, and we both turned to watch.
What are we going to do? she said.
We, we, we. I guess it’s the only question, Hemingway, one I think you never asked, not with conviction. Marie and I are sisters, we have memories to draw from like a well of sunlight, and they protect us in a way, but it’s that question like a stake through both our hands that binds us.
Joy
Matt Fleck is a writer and editor based in Washington, DC, and the co-founder and editor-in-chief of Topograph Journal. You can find more of his work at matt-fleck.com.
Published January 15 2024