Jane Bloomfield
Exit Through the Resthome
‘Is FOSH a word?’ asked Dad, placing it on the Scrabble board.
‘It is now,’ I said.
FOSHIT. FOSHIN HELL. FOSH, FOSH, FABULOUS FOSH. FOSH UP. FOSH DOWN. FOSHABLE. FOSH OFF. FOSH YOU. FOSH ME. FOSH THEM. FOSH ALL THAT CAREFUL PLANNING FOR RETIREMENT. WHAT A LOAD OF FUCKING FOSH.
I hadn’t seen my Dad for six months, not that he’d remember but I did. A sad kind of guilt had been gnawing away at me. Another kind of family mess had been keeping me away. I knew it would happen one day. I stopped my rental car beside him on the driveway. He’d snuck out for his postprandial, he was crafty when it came to learning the gate-code. His mop of white hair all bouffant in the wind - an Andy Warhol comb-over. His brown brogues wallpapered with different walks of clay, his black bomber jacket zipped tight to the 16 degree Celsius day.
‘Hello Dad!’ I said, lifting my sunglasses and poking my face into the sun.
He looked, he looked hard, his wild brows met in the middle. His face read it wanted to make the right reply but was damned if it could. He had no idea who I was.
‘Hello,’ he said, politely.
I parked and walked back to greet him with a daughterly kiss and offered him my arm. He declined. I was glad to see him out in the spring sun.
‘Did you knot all that flax, Dad?’
‘Yes. It grows too wide. Gets in the way of the cars.’
I liked to think of the action of his hands twisting and knotting endless long flax fronds around the top fence wire. There aren’t many dexterous tasks when you move into a rest-home everything is done for you. No teabags to get out of a box and place in a cup, or spoonfuls of coffee to scoop into a Bodum. Breakfast was always Dad’s chore. All those carefully nurtured fine-motor-skills heading back to base zero, along with everything else. At the end of the drive, Dad halted. He looked up and down the road and at each passing car.
‘You going to hitch a ride to Auckland?’
‘No,’ he said, staring quizzically at his rest home signage. “Dementia Care Centre”. ‘I’m sure it’s very nice. But I wouldn’t want to live there.’
We walked back up the drive and into the dayroom. Suzanne* appeared and pounced on Dad.
‘Hello you,’ she’d said, ‘I’m going to give you a kiss.’
‘That would be nice’, he said, and puckered up.
Bloody hell, I’d heard about rest home couples and the replacing of the absent spouse with someone new. Suzanne slapped one firmly behind his ear. A peck to his pucker. It took me by surprise, Dad is still snowy-haired handsome but he had a partner on the outside. We took up chairs in the dayroom in a heady stench of urine no other TV watchers seemed to notice. I checked my chair for dampness before I sat. Snores rattled nearby while Dad tapped his long fingers on the grubbied arm of his LazyBoy in perfect time to Ravel’s Bolero.
‘Suzanne’s got the hots for you, Dad,’ I said. Hoping it was just was a random act of affection, but Suzanne was in front of us again and had plans. To sit with dad -on his chair.
‘Move over or I’ll have to sit on your bush,’ she shouted.
‘Help’. A nearby nurse got her settled in another chair, then leapt onto the balcony to prevent another resident taking a slash on the wooden deck. Dad took a Turkish Delight from the box Suzanne offered and struggled with its wrapper. The TV composer with a Ronnie Wood mullet heralded in a Johann Strauss waltz.
I snuck out for supplies and later took Dad back to my cabin at the motor camp for microwaved tomato, basil pesto and cream soup. He commented on its spiciness and ate thin slices of brie and nibbles of ciabatta bread. He didn't mention my small abode - the double bed in the corner. We could have been anywhere.
‘This café is very quiet,’ he said.
We hoofed it to the movie Brigit Jones’ Baby in the village. Dad chose a hockey pokey cone, he normally has chocolate. The cinema soon filled with elderly couples clutching parsnip crisps and glasses of pinot gris. Friday night at the flicks. Dad held my hand in the dark. We have similar paws, lean, veiny, long fingers with deep nail beds. His hand was warm and smooth resting with mine on the seat between us. His grip didn’t change over the full two hours three minutes. My hand almost cramped but I held on tight in the dark.
Dad’s always been a hand holder. I thought to periods in my life I felt shy to hold his in public. In my twenties mostly. Thought we’d look like some sort of pervy older man with his young mistress. Dumb really to shun that fatherly affection. I felt evil about it right then. Wished I could erase it.
BJB is full of f’ing and blinding. And shafting. Dad laughed in all the right places along with all the couples around us. They probably got some later. Dad got reheated corn beef, mash and cabbage, a glass of Syrah and a pottle of pills.
‘What are they all for?’ I asked.
‘No idea,’ he replied, and downed them in one. ‘I’ll go upstairs soon ... I'd like to move that painting.’ He pointed across the empty linoleum to the corner of the dining room. 'Put my ships there.'
It was 8.45 pm, someone had been in Dad’s bed. Maybe it was Suzanne waiting to kiss him goodnight. His biscuit tin was open and telltale Tim Tam crumbs peppered his pillow. I brushed them off, put an escaped biscuit sitting like a frightened mouse on his nightstand, alongside his electric razor on recharge and his permanently in transit navy-blue toilet bag, back in its container. Dad was putting his pyjamas over his clothes. He always complained of the cold. I helped with the buttons, and tucked him in.
Before I left, I changed the wall calendar from an appointment-less June to September. Wrote: Jane visited!!! Smiley face, love heart, smiling Kiwi xxx on the correct squares, and kissed him goodnight.
Night night. Sleep tight. Don’t let the bed bugs bite, we said together.
The next day it was wall-to-wall rain. I made ham and brie sandwiches, looking past the pink and beige caravans to the Whangateau estuary. The tide was in. Neat sets of four, crusts on, wrapped in creased brown paper. His and hers.
We set out for Goat Island Marine Reserve in between showers. Escaping Frida, whose glass eye was wonky, a sightless orb pointing forever upwards. Earlier she’d plopped it out into her hanky. A pirate polishing a cannonball. Ready. Aim. Fire.
Suzanne was quiet that day. She did not follow Dad into the toilet and refuse to vacate as he peed like she’d done the night before. Thank FOSH.
There was no one at the sea side. We couldn’t get out of the car the storm was so wild. An impressive swell surged between the island and the headland. A black shag managed to land in a cross-wind onto its woody basket of a nest.
‘Do you miss the sea, Dad?’
‘Ooh yes,’ he replied.
The salty old sea dog. Ex-naval Commander, lover of ships, the wild blue ocean and the officers’ mess. Now rheumy-eyed, often wiping thick tears with a licked finger.
Back at Leigh Harbour, fishing boats sat in relative calm but no one fished off the wharf. A gannet dived, a hungry arrow barely making a splash. We drove on to Matheson’s Bay - perfect in any tide – Dad’s favourite line. Oddly he never asked to go to his home of thirty years, just around the corner. I’m not sure how I would have handle that if he had. We ate our sandwiches with the windows down, rain speckling the door frames. Dad took a bite out of each one, rewrapped them and stuffed them in the glove box.
‘They’ll do for later,’ he said.
I’d lost my appetite too and fed mine to the seagulls on the bonnet of the rental. They put on an impressive show for us – Cirque du Redbill.
Back at the ranch, it was lunchtime. We sat as a three, Dad ate, and I chatted with resident Tim about dogs. Tim’s canine companion was shut in his room – on a meatless diet. Geoffrey the white Scotch terrier had a skin condition (and a weight problem.)
‘He’s my favourite person,’ said Tim, ‘he is like a person to me.’ Tim unfolded his paper napkin on the window side of his plate and with the stealth of a boarding school pupil on Golden Syrup steam pudding day, he deftly arranged forkfuls of gravy-oozing meaty pie into a neat square, wrapped it swiftly and plunged it into the left-hand pocket of his grey tracksuit pants.
I worried for seepage. Dad was onto pudding. Tim downed his – a bowlful of garish green jelly with soft orange sliced peaches.
‘Time for Geoffrey’s meat,’ he told us, and trotted, head down out of the dining room, clutching that moist pocket.
I thought of Dad's sandwiches jammed in the glove box. He used to love a picnic. FOSH it. I’d just leave them there.
For later.
*(name changed)
Queenstown, New Zealand based writer, Jane Bloomfield, is the author of the Lily Max children’s novels. Her poetry and CNF are published and forthcoming in Tarot, Turbine |Kapohau, Does It Have Pockets, a fine line - NZ Poetry Society, MEMEZINE, Roi Fainéant Press, The Spinoff, Sunday Magazine and more. Find her at Jane Bloomfield: truth is stranger than fiction.
