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Dementia
by Adam Cheshire The gray matter held sturdy through our childhood, save a few cracks that ran jagged along the court’s edges. We didn’t dribble our basketballs there anyway, so it didn’t bother us. Balls in the backyard like a pumpkin patch; my brother and I would pretend as much when dad told us to pick them up so he could mow. We’d toss them into the wilted wooden floor of the swing set, along with sticks and brush from previous summers. The swing set was demolished around high school, the family of branches and balls—now just half-moon husks curled inward, fetal—separated and hauled away, leaving behind a long, dark patch of grass. But the loss opened up an end zone for football, and I doubt we ever missed the rusted swings, or that yellow, molded-plastic one that we had outgrown years ago but still dangled there, all the same. And dad had to’ve enjoyed his Hall of Fame role as all-time quarterback more than the monotony of watching his sons travel back and forth to nowhere or staring at a pile of rotting and useless things. There had been a dog lead attached to the top of the swing set. It had stayed up there long after our first dog had been given away, perhaps for sentimental reasons, but its loss never affected us, and truth be told, that dog had a weird, unhinged vibe. So it was with great relief that when I had no other choice in college but to bring Huck home to my parents that he turned out to be so kind and loving. And since none of my old friends were around town anymore, and my brother off to law school out west, my dad had no use for the football field or his throwing arm, so Huck had a yard of his own in which to flip and wag. Dad would watch him all day with a goofy grin as Huck ran in circles or wiggled his back along the dark grass, as if this land had only ever existed for this and this alone. * No swings, no sticks, no sports—no welcoming barks. Dad and I are looking out the kitchen window. A cold, wet morning. The backyard a dark, dreamy green--the glisten of my daughter’s eyelashes as she attempts to dribble a basketball, smacking at it with arms made stiff by her thick pink coat. “Strange about the grass there,” Dad says. “How much darker it is than the rest.” I bite at a nail. “It’s seen its fair share of wear and tear, wouldn’t you say?” He stares for an uncomfortable moment. “There’s been a lot, huh?” I nod. My daughter is making snowless snow angels. We’d hoped for something sparklier than rain. I look past her to the concrete court, fuzzy from years of fallen things. There have been no sneakered feet cracking through its thick layers, no imprints of youthful summers. I almost forget it’s there. “You know what might be nice for her to have out there?” he says, a giddy idea brightening his clouded mind. An edifice of memories, stacked one on top of the other. That might be nice. Something to hold us up, our terminal minds. “A swing set you thinking?” “Wouldn’t that be something?” He grabs my shoulder, rubs it roughly. I almost tense, wait for a slap on the back, him sending me off to run a buttonhook up the middle of the field. A touchdown in the end zone, for certain. “And maybe I can even call a buddy of mine. Lays concrete. Get a court set up. Have her friends over, huh?” What might come from this? What might she retain from it all? What might I, in time, lose? He’s not here, he’s in the past. “That little yellow bucket thing. You were on it, but you couldn’t move your arms to pump the swing. Or an arm, you had just had one of your shots. A vaccine or something. It was sore, your arm. The teenage neighbor hopped the fence and pushed you. You were so happy, I can see your face as if I were looking at it right now, from this window. She had saved you from the stillness. I can still see it.” He is wide-eyed, transcendent. “You remember, don’t you?” I want to, but I can’t. I’ll try, though, even if I have to make it up. |
Adam is a writer living in Hillsborough, NC.
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