Autumn Blue Read Free Page A

is a gift.”
    “Oh,” he said, “and everyone else’s is under specific warranty?”
    “You need to take care of yourself, Dad. That’s all I’m saying.” Once Rita was on a certain track, she was not easily derailed.
     She headed back to the kitchen and he heard her loading this week’s supply of frozen dinners—leftovers from her family’s meals
     divided into sections in plastic containers—onto the freezer shelves. “Which reminds me, Dad. It’s time to get your prostate
     checked again. What was your PSA count last time?”
    He slapped his pen to the newspaper in his lap. So, his life had come to this. “I don’t remember.” Of course, he knew the
     moment the words escaped that they were grounds for suspicion of the onset of Alzheimer’s. “I peed twice today so far. It
     was as yellow as lemonade and I flushed both times. My bowels are regular, blood pressure maintaining at 125 over 80. Is there
     anything else you’d like to know?”
    Rita came out and stood over him, her arms crossed, her face pinched. His pretty little girl was beginning to look middle-aged.
     Her throat had become minutely wrinkled like the pink crepe paper hung for her birthdays back when she was a child and he
     was clearly an adult. Had it been so long since the feet she stomped wore little Mary Jane shoes? She tilted her head defiantly,
     clamping her hands on her full hips. “I’m sorry, Dad.” She certainly was not. “But these things need to be discussed, whether
     you’re comfortable with it or not. If Mom were here, she’d be the one asking, not me. But she’s not here and I’m all you’ve
     got. This isn’t easy for me either, you know. I lost my mother, but I’m not sitting around moping and giving up on life. And
     it’s not like I don’t have anything better to do. I’m in charge of the Girl Scouts craft projects this fall. I’ve got play
     costumes to make, soccer practices, piano lessons, you name it.” She sighed, looking down at him like he was a hopeless cause.
     It was the resigned, dutiful sigh of a martyr bravely accepting her fate.
    Giving up on life. What was there to give up? “Then don’t worry about me,” he scowled. “I told you before that you don’t have
     to dote on me. I can make my own suppers, for Pete’s sake.”
    “But you won’t. You’d live on bologna sandwiches and corn dogs if I let you.” She sat on the edge of the sofa, leaning toward
     him. “As long as you live here in this big old house all by yourself, I’m just going to worry about you, Dad. I wish you’d
     reconsider about going to Haywood House. It’s a nice place. You get your own little apartment, so you’d have your treasured
     privacy, but there are other people just like you there. You can get to know them in the dining room at mealtimes, maybe meet
     some friends that like to play chess or put together jigsaw puzzles. And wouldn’t it be nice to know that there are doctors
     and nurses right there on staff?”
    It would take the self-imposed pressure off her, anyway. He wished she would go now. Leave him before the last hull of manhood
     was shucked away, exposing only a withered pea, a nothing, with no higher purpose than to put together cardboard jigsaw puzzles
     until he returned to the dust from which he came. He already knew this about himself, of course. But it was a truth better
     left untouched, unexplored. It was best to keep to the rhythm of his daily routine, biding away the hours with pleasant distractions
     and the self-imposed orders of the day. His battles were no longer fought against Soviet MiGs, but airborne dandelion seeds
     that dared invade the airspace inside the perimeter of his picket fence. Gone were the glory days of coaching the wrestling
     team at Silver Falls High School over in Dunbar—state champions six years out of ten. Not bad for a hick-town farm-boy team.
     But now his greatest mission was to solve the before-and-after puzzle on
Wheel of Fortune
before