My Favorite Midlife Crisis by Toby Devens Page A

the old chair and switched on the television. She talked in front of him, but he didn’t seem to hear. His attention was locked on the Game Show channel.
    “I don’t know about this,” she said. “This is a new t’ing. The pushing and shoving. He never did do that before. Oh, I don’t like that. We’re in a new phase here. I tell you, I’m not one to put up with physical abuse. I didn’t let a husband do it; I’m not about to let an old man do it. I don’t like this phase. No indeed, don’t like it at all.”
    I was going to London for the conference I’d hijacked from Bethany McGowan. I couldn’t leave my father without coverage and there was no time to find a suitable fill-in.
    “I’m sure you can handle him, Sylvie. I’m sure this is an isolated incident. But just to let you know how much I appreciate the way you care for him. Wait...” I dug through the junk in my handbag, found my wallet, and placed a fifty-dollar bill in Sylvie’s palm, an obvious bribe. I was buying time. Sylvie eyed it suspiciously, then held up to the light. To make sure it wasn’t play money, I presumed.
    On my way out, I checked my eye in the mirror. It would need a steri-strip to minimize the scar, but compared to the gouges my mother left me, it was a nick. When it healed, it would be hardly noticeable.
    ***
    I must have sounded desperate when I called for an appointment because by Monday I was at Covenant Hospital’s Gerontology Department sitting across the desk from Dan Rosetti while my father tried to recite the alphabet for the psychologist in the next room.
    “His shoving isn’t unusual,” Dan said. “Some of my gentlest patients lash out from time to time. We don’t know exactly why. It could be that this acting out marks a further decline. Which is a damn shame. Harald is a sweet guy.”
    Dan Rosetti was also a sweet guy. His eyebrows knit with empathy when he gave me the news that wasn’t really news, and when he talked to my father, it was man to man, not doctor to patient, or worse, doctor to disease. My father adored him and always struggled to climb out of his illness when they conversed. He may have flunked the cognitive tests, but Dad could still manage formulaic small talk with Dan. The superficial patter is the last to go. Dan always seemed touched by the show and he would either ruffle what was left of my father’s hair or rub genial circles on his back as he listened. Geriatricians know that most of their patients don’t get enough physical contact, but Dan was more hands-on than is recommended for physicians in our currently litigious society. Fleur said that was the warm Mediterranean in him.
    It was Fleur who’d suggested we see Dan when my father began showing signs of befuddlement. She liked the way he managed her mother’s osteoporosis. In a trick of fate, Fleur had inherited the big frame and the padding that upholstered it from her Grandmother Broussard. Mother Talbot, on the other hand, was a trim little number who’d never weighed more than a hundred pounds and, now that she had the bends, measured all of five feet. But if her bones were porous, her brain was dense with fully functional cells. “Daniel Rosetti may be Italian,” she’d told Fleur recently, “but he’s not like one of those crude gangsters on HBO saying that awful F-word all the time.”
    “The old girl thinks he’s God and he’ll keep her alive forever,” Fleur said.
    Now Dan scrawled the name of a new drug on his prescription pad and slid it over to me. “This might calm him down, but I can’t guarantee it won’t make him lethargic.”
    “No, let’s just let it go. Next time I’ll remember to duck.”
    “You all right, Gwyn?” he asked. “I know this can’t be easy. There are support groups you might find helpful. If you’re interested, I can give you a few phone numbers.”
    No, no, not another FRESH , I thought. All I said is, “I think we’re okay for now.”
    “If it’s any comfort, they’re