A year ago, on his 77th birthday, my father sat on the step of his house, like a five-year-old child, waiting for the ice-cream man. When it arrived, he put out his hand for money and my mother counted it out into his palm. The ice -cream man knew him, he was there everyday, and handed him a large vanilla cone with a chocolate chunk set inside it. Dad sat on the step, sucking at the chocolate as the ice cream melted down his arms. He was humming with joy.

He had Alzheimer's. Some days he knew us, some days he did not. On bad days he took me for my mother, (I look like her) and would embarrass me by whispering endearments or by quoting Robert Browning.

Words he used every day would vanish, arbitrarily, from his memory. He could not remember the word for curtains - close those sheets, he said. Or 'toast.' I'd love some bread, cooked. You know what I mean, sweetpea? Brown and cooked. But odd words sometimes cropped up in his conversation. Esoteric, he said, while watching the Celtic/Rangers soccer game.

He could not remember the names of his garden tools, but he could recite huge chunks of Burns, Yeats and Shakespeare.

"Today is called the Feast of Crispian," he would recite to the kids dragging to school on cold mornings. "He that outlives this day and comes safe home..."

The kids laughed. We sighed and rolled our eyes when he did it to us. He would recite Henry V for hours.

He could not remember the name of the Prime Minister. When asked, he gave the name of a dog we had as a pet fifteen years ago.

He seemed clear-headed just before his birthday and when my sister asked what he wanted he thought for a moment and said, clearly, with conviction: "moleskin trousers." We looked at each other, choking. He is a short, round man, as wide as he is high. A humpty dumpy of a man, like one of those toddler toys it is impossible to knock over.

"Moleskin?" my sister whispered, her eyes bright. I was thinking - moleskin is for gay gays on Santa Monica Boulevard, movie stars, for pop singers. Where had he heard of such a thing? Corduroy, my mother intervened. You mean corduroy. He looked embarrassed. When we presented the cord pants to him we said they were moleskin and he grinned, delighted.

On coherent days he was sad and quiet, though when the district nurse, a pretty Irish girl, came to check up on him, he perked up. His hand rose, lingered in the air as if he would like to pat her. "Nice bum," he said once when she visited on a day the whole family was there for tea.

My brothers looked away. My sister and I giggled, helpless, clutching each other as we did as children.

Recently dad had a stroke.

One side is paralysed; they are working on his speech. Some days he tries for sounds, then closes his eyes in frustration.

My sister and I talk of the good old days. Remember when he sat on the step, we say, eating ice-cream, singing and longing for a pair of moleskin pants.

But when his nurse comes, on the side that is not paralysed his hand rises, as if separate from him. It hovers in the air.

I look into his eyes for a spark, a smile. But there is nothing.

Nevertheless. Nice bum, I hear in my mind.

§ § §

Mary McCluskey is a British journalist who alternates between Los Angeles, California and a small Shropshire village in the UK.

Her work has appeared in a number of publications, including Zoetrope's All Story Extra, Linnaean Street, The Pamaunok Review, Exquisite Corpse, Salon, Atlantic Unbound, London Magazine, S Magazine, Sunday Express-UK, Ginko TreeReview and Night Train.

She has completed two novels which are presently under consideration.

She is an Advisory and Contributing Editor of Lit Pot and can be reached at: mary.mccluskey1@btinternet.com

This piece was first published in INK POT #1 - 2003, a literary journal.

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