In the center of the oval rug is a creaking wood chair. The back is a slender carved curve, embracing him; it ends in small cat's paws. Arm rests. One of the old spindles rising from the worn seat is broken. The spindles are just for effect; a pair of thin, stiff rods, added in the 1920s, holds the back in place.

In the chair sits an old man, in a drift of plaid felt, pale blue towels, and thinning flannel. His lap holds the center snarl of rubber and plastic tubes, most of them cloudy-clear, one yellow. Each disappear: up a sleeve, into the robe, down then up again alongside a kindling leg. Behind him one hangs from dinged, spider-cracked chrome.

Under the tubes is an open book. When he wakes his hands will bobble, pat and sometimes caress the expensive pages. His skin is hundred-colored: corrugated creams, dull mustards, dotty-spot blacks, pulsing blues. Where an IV is taped to the back of his hand: green bruise, brick-red stain, brown crust. He is feathery paper, wrapped around unreliable rods and bands.

His eyes open at a muffled crash from downstairs. Nothing moves but his hands, and regular as rain they tremble again in the tubes and pages. White hair puffs from the neck of his open pajamas. His beard twines into irregular strands. His head is shaved close.

The bed behind him is open on one side, smooth and neatly tucked on the other. The nightstand on his side has a lamp, and pill bottles fill a large tupperware box, aqua. The other nightstand has just a lamp.

Orange curtains are open, to his left. Midday winter light. The sound of cars carving deep slush. The whuffle-hiss of his oxygen, the low hum of the box strapped to the back of the chair.

A dresser of chipped heartwood looms in the corner, near the bathroom door. On good days, when his daughter walks him in to do his business, he can't unbend enough to look at the pictures crowding the top: the Brighton Beach kiss, the double exposure of Rocky in the woods and on skates, Eliana's big eyes, Molly in Glacier, him in the Soho loft with a can of Marvel Oil.

He wouldn't know them now. No good days in a long time, anyway.

The scrape of neighbor shovel on a sidewalk. The fasss and cram-bam of the radiators. Cabinets closing downstairs. A phone rings there, his daughter's voice, indistinct: "...at five?...not what you said...bring a big box...". A metal spoon strikes something.

The half-hour chimes from the radio clock on his desk near the door. Debussy comes on, too loud. He thinks: Loud. His right hand rises on its own, carries some tubes that slide back into the crook of his arm; he touches below his right eye. Still too loud.

Steps on the landing, stairs. "Papa?" His hand goes into the air. He forgets about it as she knocks and opens the door with her toe, noodges in, tray first. Lap, he thinks. "Hey", she says, and walks to the untouched side of the bed, sets down the tray, breathes. She goes to the radio and turns it way down, steps to him and bends, peers in. Waits for him to move his eyes to hers; he does, approximately. Nothing.

She sighs. "How you doin?" She lowers his hand, then she gently holds his sprocket shoulder, a knob under the loose bedclothes.

"You hungry?" She checks bags, settings, the IV, fusses at the mess of tubes. She turns his hand in both of hers. "That bruise is bigger than this morning."

He looks afraid, tries to grip the book with his left.

"Don't worry! I won't take your book." She mutters something else, presses his arms back, moves the tubes alongside his legs and off the chair arms. Satisfied, she gets the tray and puts it place, twists and wraps the velcro. His arms are trapped underneath. He breathes harder; the oxygen machine hiccups, misses a beat or two: thwump-hiss TOCK hiss. From under the window she gets the upholstered chair, dragging it over the wood floor, lifting the heavy frame over the thick rug edge.

"That was Ellie," she says, while she sets him up, and says other things: about the soup (broth from last night's roast chicken, Deborah-style, with bits of crushed matzoh ball), the predicted snow, the damn radiators. She fusses a towel into his front, wipes the tray clean of some spilled broth. Scratchy, he thinks. His hands try to rise, blocked.

"No," she says, but watches him shift his arms. Agitated.

"OK. You want to try it." Not a question. She plucks at the sleeve, deft pressures here and there, until his right hand climbs out from under the tray. He leaves it at the edge, calms down. Forgets. She presses behind his elbow and the hand comes forward, hovers over the spoon.

"A bad day, eh?"

Lap, he thinks. Book. Soup, he thinks, the steam of it on his grimy glasses. Soup, and at this his shoulders move, he tries to shift, sit up. It looks random.

"You OK?" She puts her hand on his again, lowers it to the spoon. His fingers don't close. His head turns, slowly -- right hand: Hold, Grip, but no signal gets thru -- and tries to look at her, but his head is too low. The left hand is cramping around the fat book, under the plastic tray -- Hand, Hold, SPOON -- and at this a sound comes out of him. Some spit.

She gives up -- "all right then" -- takes the spoon, brings him his first mouthful.

Chew, Hold, SOUP, Swallow. It all falls out. She wipes his mouth and resumes talk, about  the broken burner dial on the stove, her sisters coming over later so she can have a night off. They try again and again until he remembers to close his mouth before he swallows. The heat of it, the chicken oil taste, wake him up; he sits a little taller, his face relaxes some. Grunts.

"Aha. You like this." She smiles at last. After several spoons-full he is breathing harder. She slows, waits. Looks out the window. I need to clean those, she thinks, but sets no time for when. Later, she thinks. She pats his mouth, moustache, beard.

More soup, spoonfuls that teeter in. A horn, from the slow light on Eby. Traffic, returning from lunches, and she thinks about sitting in a restaurant somewhere, bristling from the cold walk across the parking lot, settling into a red leathery booth. Ordering alone, anything she likes.

"Who would drive in this?" She stops. He is worked up about something. She pats his arm, he makes a sound, tries to move his left arm out. "OK! Just a minute!" She moves the soup first, to the dresser's bare edge. A picture falls flat behind it. "Damn." No glass break sound. She returns and undoes velcro, lifts the tray. His hands are slow-mo starlings, rising into each other. He is crying again; makes some fricative sound, not quite a word. Then his breathing slows, he closes his eyes. She watches him, listens to the thwump-hiss of the oxygen. His eyes stay closed, his hands floating before him.

"Are you asleep?" She lowers them both, his dry palms under crabbed fingers atop arabesques of damn tubes over that damn book. She pulls at the side of her bra through her shirt, crosses her ankles, leans back. Watches him. His eyes flutter, but stay closed.

She sighs again. Watches him a long while. He isn't sleeping yet, She leans forward, looks at the small puddle of skin around his collarbone, the veined nose, the thick old hairs entangling his jaw, chin.

"You need a beard cut." His eyes open. She gets the blue handled scissor and black rubber comb from the bathroom cabinet and returns, pulls the towel from his pajama neck and unfolds it, drapes it over his chest and lap.

Moves in, louder: "I'm gonna trim your beard." Yes, he thinks; she wants me to Yes. He is frightened, excited. "Yuhh," he gets out.

"Hey, we're having a conversation here!" She scoots to the edge of the soft chair, starts to comb out bits of soup, breakfast, dried drool.

"I'm going to trim this, OK?" She moves slowly with the scissors. His eyes don't follow. She puts a set of fingers between the blades and his chin, clipping what she captures. The wiry hairs fall everywhere, spring away from each ccc-thik, ccc-thik.

"Much more better-er."

She raises him up, two knuckles under his chin, his neck skin folding under her touch; corduroy velvet. She is suddenly sad; her palms murmur to the skin above her knees, then she feels it in the soles of her feet. She stacks them, slides them together, rubbing down the socks. She waits for it to pass.

He slowly turns and meets her eye. The former steely blue-grey is now a smear of beige, the whites are shot with red.

She remembers, again: holding his hand, crossing 23rd Street, his other hand gripping his big portfolio. As always she can't quite remember the words; something about the Flatiron building and that flat black case, as big as her and twice as wide. The building and the case both flat, the artful way he slid it into the crowds, to part the way, avoid collision, protect them both. She tries, as always, to remember the words, and they dance nearby, out of reach, what they said to each other that day, exactly.

But she recovers the feeling, it seeps into her: the way the sun snapped through the side streets, her father's firm hand, the laughing and talk between them on their walks, about delis and mountains and sewer steam, and that one day, right there, on Broadway going south, the leathery box slapping against his legs, shielding her, what was it? the big flat building seemed like his case, guarding her, and the whole of it, the city itself, was suddenly keeping her safe, her father arranging it all, and the garden of dominos that frightened her fades away forever: HER city now, watching over her, staying the bad winds, every building a case-full  of clever design and good works, everyone in them on their way to somewhere good, and they said Something Wonderful to each other that day, and she gripped his hand tight.

She smiles at him. He looks at her. Nothing. His mouth closes a little, the corner wet. He swallows. When she moves her hand from under his chin, holds his cheek for a moment, his head slowly descends.

She thinks: when she was tired he always lugged her up, her head against his collar, all the way from PS 41 to the the river end of Horatio Street. Even with his portfolio and two bags of groceries in tow, figs and macaroni and apple juice, up four flights of stairs to the tiny apartment.

He pats his book.

She carefully refolds the towel, brushes away the hairs from his shoulders. Next door, through the window, a light goes on; a bright pindot in the dark winter gray.

He sits in a half-circle of rubbed wood, on the oval rug in the middle of the small back bedroom. She has two more hours before her sisters come over, so she slips the comb and scissor into the fold of the towel, sits back, settles in, waiting for him to tire and nod off, so she can tuck him back into bed. Chopin, low, on the radio. Outside the sander goes by. Someone shouts, faint thru the glass. She closes her eyes.

She dreams.

He sits in his chair, in the small room, illuminated by all he has done, all he has learned. She knows this. He does not have to say what is what, or teach anyone anymore; no one is under his care, and he is a different man, her father but without Father, just the man he always was, freed from what she finally understands as the deliberate part. It is a dream; she is not frightened. They face each other, see each other, unbroken by the accident of time, the necessities of what they owe.

She sees the man who might have lived more quietly, not required to explain or instruct, filled with elfin joy at the self-evident and ordinary greatness of his good life, his good decisions.

It is a dream so now he is both at once, the Father she knows, the man he always was.

The room is exactly the same, the same low light. Chopin becomes Scriabin. He stands; the IV stand topples. He is wide awake, his eyes clear; he finds her startled look. Blood runs from one nostril. He grins.

-- Let's take the N Train and get herbed chicken and honey sauce on the way home.

-- I love you , Papa.

-- We'll play UNO tonight, yes?

-- Let's play Go Fish instead.

-- And I will make hot cocoa. I bought little marshmallows this morning after I took you to school.

-- Do you have to work tonight?

// he looks at the dresser, around at the room //

-- After you go to sleep, sweetie.

-- You'll read me a book tonight? How the mosquito got his buzz.

// he takes in everything: the pills, the tubes, the machines, the pictures,  he turns to her again, and his eyes are bright, brimming, alive //

-- Thank you

// he whispers //


She wakes, to the urgent dwee of the machine, the tockTOCK of the stopped oxygen, the dark of the room, and the sounds of her sisters coming upstairs.