Today, my mom calls to tell me that my dad is in hospital. There is an abscess on his pancreas that won’t leave him alone. We hang up, and for a moment I imagine him trying to sleep to escape the pain. But I don’t want to speculate. Instead, I remember.
I spent Saturdays with my dad when I was six years old and my mom worked the weekend shift. We would drop her off in the pale, cloudy light of early morning, park the car, and walk into the store’s toy section. We serpentined the aisles, starting with the glittering pink row of dolls, winding through the blue glimmer of miniature cars, ending up in the neutral matte colours of sports equipment.
By then, the rest of the mall would be open and I’d insist on visiting the pet shop. We’d circle the perimeter of the store; first visiting the fish and lizards in their dark room where aqua light rippled on the walls; then with the rats and guinea pigs digging neurotically through fluffy heaps of sawdust; finally, to the unkempt kittens sleeping heaped together amid chewed cloth mice and ambiguous plastic shapes.
My dad and I would lap the mall and complete our travels in the food court at the centre. We would walk past every vendor and always end up with fried rice, teriyaki potatoes, and tangerine drink. There was a saucer-sized chocolate chip cookie for the trip to the car.
Then we’d drive to the town’s second last movie store and take an hour to pick out two films.
Back at home, we’d make macaroni and cheese from a box and take our bowls to the living room. My dad could reliably mark the exact halfway point of a film by falling asleep. He’d wake up in time to be confused by the closing scene.
If it was winter, he would wander off to the basement to make interminable adjustments to his bikes. I would go to my own world populated by tiny talking horses.
If it was summer, he was teaching me how to play baseball in the park behind our house. Years later, I would make the seventh-grade girls’ team by being one of the few who could dependably hit the ball.
Today, I’m twenty-four and he is fifty-six. I can’t eat cheese or cookies, and he can’t eat fried food. We live in different cities. For every visit I’ve declined to make, he’s cut a phone call short to save money. Our age gap is constant, but we increase other distances between us at greater reciprocal speeds. All those Saturdays stay the same, but new memories pile higher around them.
Today is Tuesday. I’m at work, in the kind of white-collar office he hoped I’d have so I wouldn’t come home every night like he did, dark engine grease immovable under his fingernails. I miss him. It must be because some far old place in my brain still thinks of this as the day of the week when I should be going home from school, eating dinner with my dad in the living room, watching the evening news.