What Remains in the Bowl

The assisted living facility smelled of antiseptic and despair—two things my father had spent seventy years avoiding. He sat by the window, watching a nonexistent baseball game through streaked glass, his hands moving in the familiar pitching motion that had once made him legendary on the high school diamond. Now his mind was unwinding like a cheap clock, each day losing another gear.

"They're up by two," he said, not turning around. "Bottom of the ninth."

There was no game. There hadn't been a game since 1987. I set the container of spinach salad on his tray—he'd hated greens his whole life, but the doctor said his iron was low, so now he forced them down with the grim determination of a man accepting his own mortality.

"Dad, you need to eat."

He turned finally, and I saw it—the thinning hair that had once been thick and dark like mine, now wispy and white. His eyes found mine, and for a terrifying second, I couldn't tell if he knew who I was. Then his expression softened into something like recognition, or perhaps he was just being kind.

"Your mother loved spinach," he said. "Hated it, actually. But she ate it every day when she was pregnant with you. Said you were worth the suffering."

On the nightstand, his goldfish swam in endless circles, its orange scales flashing in the fluorescent light. He'd bought it the week after Mom's funeral—something alive in the house, he'd said. Now it outlasted them both, swimming through its tiny prison while he drifted through his own.

"I sold the house," I said, and watched something break behind his eyes. "The market's good. You'll be comfortable here."

He nodded, still watching the imaginary baseball game. "Your hair's getting long," he said. "You need a cut."

I reached up and touched the curls she had loved, the ones he had cut for me every summer until I left home. "I know."

The goldfish rose to the surface, mouth opening and closing in silent desperation. My father picked up his fork, poked at the spinach, and finally took a bite. I watched him chew, this man who had taught me to throw a curveball, to drive, to be a man—now reduced to this room, this meal, this slow fading of the light.

"They won," he said. "I told you they'd win."

"Yeah, Dad," I whispered. "You told me."