Dad always had a soft spot for Italian restaurants. He even owned one. It came with a slice of the mob.

When I was a kid, Dad opened Pinocchio’s in Chicago, one of his many money-making ventures. He loved to tell the story about the time some guys in tailored suits came in for dinner and asked him to lock the door. They said they needed “privacy” to discuss their business. In return for this “favor,” the guy at the head of the table with the graying hair took him aside and said, “Is there anything we can do for you, my friend?” Dad needed to renew his driver’s license but didn’t have time to stand in the notoriously long lines downtown.

By the following week, Dad’s “little problem” had been fixed. “Don’t worry about it. I know a guy,” Dad’s new friend told him, smiling at the other suits at the red checkered table. “He’s going to take care of you. Just tell him I sent you.” The next morning Dad had his license in under 10 minutes.

The suits became Friday regulars, and Dad began to wonder if a fast license was worth the slow heartburn. What if he forgot their extra pepperoni? Between the fear of disappointing them and a phone ringing off the hook with orders he couldn’t fill, he eventually closed for good.

Despite the demise of Pinocchio’s, Dad’s love affair with Italian food survived. Decades later, retired in Las Vegas, he finds Paulie’s Supper Club, within walking distance of his new rental house. It sits at the end of a strip mall, but once you walk in, you forget where you are. It looks exactly like an old-school nightclub: blue lights, a disco ball, and a spotlit stage, where the band serves up all the classics, especially Sinatra.

The owner, Chef Paulie, is a lounge performer who caught the tail end of the Vegas lounge scene in the 1970s, when hotels like Caesars Palace still had live acts. He inherited his grandma’s recipes “from the old country” and opened a supper club, marrying his love of cooking with a four-piece band he leads three nights a week.

Dad’s number-one bucket-list item seems to be making sure everyone he knows experiences the thrill of his home away from home. Starting with me. Every two weeks I fly down to keep his affairs in order and make sure the caregivers are doing the great job they at least seem to be doing from Oregon. And every other Friday I find myself at the Supper Club. The first few times are fun. By the fifth, I’m mouthing the words to Chef Paulie’s cheesy banter. Even the jokes stay the same. I’m gobsmacked by the band, who always seem to act as if they’re hearing it for the first time. Dad loves being in the know about what’s coming next, but it makes me wish I had invisible earplugs. They could just play a video of it. The sax player’s identical solo, complete with the fake flub that makes his horn squeak at the crescendo. His eyes grow twice their size as he tries the note again and again, feigning surprise and embarrassment. Big laughs. Even from Dad. Every. Single. Time.

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The trouble actually starts on my second visit. The Supper Club has weekly guest performers, and while one of them is doing her best, Dad grins wide and tells me he thinks I can do a better job. That he wants me to sing next time I visit. I close my eyes and take a deep breath. I want to make him happy, but I’d rather be pelted with rocks than perform again. I say I have stage fright. I foolishly think that I just need to remind him, and then he’ll let me off the hook.

“No, you don’t,” he says, laughing, and asks what song I’d pick.

“Dad, I do. It’s why I stopped performing.”

“What about all those songs you recorded?” he challenges.

“They’re recordings. No audience.” Am I really having to explain this?

At some point every night, Chef Paulie works the room, checking in with diners to hear how much they love his food. When he gets to our table, Dad tells him I want to sing with the band next Friday.

My eyebrows leave our zip code. I want to do what?

Paulie tilts his head and smiles at me suspiciously. “You sing, honey?”

I roll my eyes at Dad. “Yeah.”

He glances at Dad. “What do you want to sing?”

“I don’t know. I have stage fright, so I don’t know if I’m going to do it.”

Dad looks at me like I just suggested Paulie add cockroaches with hot sauce to the menu. He waves me off. “No, she doesn’t,” he tells Paulie.

Paulie looks at me. “You wanna do it or not, honey? Nobody’s got a gun to your head, ya know.”

Given Dad’s history with Italian restaurants, I’m not so sure.

I turn to Dad, who looks like a kid watching his ice cream cone toppling to the ground. “Yeah, sure, I’ll do it.” What am I doing? Why am I going along with this? Who am I kidding? Fifty years. That’s why.

I tell Paulie that in two Fridays I’ll sing the jazz standard “Lullaby of Birdland.” He draws back, smirking. “Really?” He looks at Dad again. “That’s not an easy one. There’s a lot going on there.”

“Yeah, I know,” I say, resisting an eye roll.

For the next two weeks I’m so anxious I lose another three pounds. I listen to the Sarah Vaughan version three million times until my earbuds organize into a union and threaten to strike. Before I know it, I’m up there under the spotlight, and to my own surprise, I ace it—even with cottonmouth and a pulse that’s probably setting off alerts on my smartwatch. Afterward, the bassist and piano player come over to our table with big smiles, and tthe pianist writes his email on the paper covering the linen tablecloth so we can do some recording together. On the flight home, I catch myself making a playlist, telling myself it’s not a set list. I am not getting my hopes up about this fantasy. They were probably just being nice. I don’t email them.

Two Fridays later, Paulie asks me what I’m going to sing that night. I’m ready with the same song. He frowns at me—looks at Dad. Apparently, even though he never rotates his set list, Paulie expects a new piece from me every time. I’m annoyed that I was somehow supposed to know this, but I smile instead.

Dad jumps in. “Come on, just let her do it again. She’ll be prepared next time.”

I can feel my internal eyeballs rolling. Thanks, Dad. Yeah, that’s the issue—I’m not prepared. My bad.

Paulie allows it “one last time,” but now I’m nervous. I spend the next 15 minutes hiding in the women’s room, rehearsing, fighting nausea, and hating myself for not saying no. There’s only one stall, and I’d still be in there if it weren’t for a persistent knocker in a birthday tiara. She squints at me as I squeeze past her in the hall.

I barely sit down before Paulie waves me up to the stage. Apparently he’s decided that if I’m going to make him listen to a repeat, it’s at least going to be at double speed. Before I can say “Hold your horses,” the band is off and running, and I’m being dragged behind them like a cattle thief in a Western.

There are a lot of notes in that song, and quite a few words. Getting them all out at this speed is humanly impossible. The result is…not great. I briefly consider going punk rock and setting myself on fire. Instead I sulk back to our table, vowing to never sing again.

But Dad has other plans. He says I have to get back on the horse, which brings back the cattle thief, and I wonder if it’s an omen. Two more Fridays, and between all the emergencies of managing his care, I have zero time to practice, so I sing something I’ve already performed—“Summertime.” I go out into the audience and put my arm around Dad while I sing about how my daddy’s rich. I’m smiling and looking at him. He’s smiling and looking at the band. People at the other tables are quietly smiling over at us. There’s video of all this smiling. What it doesn’t show is the eight-year-old inside the woman singing, still waiting for him to look. I tell myself I’m done.

On the way home, he excitedly tells me I’m going to be a big star. I smirk at him and think, Where the hell were you when I was singing as a kid? As a young woman? He showed less than zero interest. He never came to see me sing. He never encouraged me. We never talked about it. Not once. When I ran away in high school to live with his sister, she called him and said, “You know she sings? She sounds like an angel. How did we not know this?”

When I was making house music records in Chicago in the ’80s, I brought one to his place on the 54th floor.

Years later, when I helped pack him up, there it was, still in the plastic. I told him I was taking it. “Go ahead, I don’t care. I never even listened to it.”

No kidding.

We only pressed 1,000 copies. DJs call it classic house now, and sealed copies go for hundreds. If he’d known it would be worth something, he might have at least kept it.

Over the years I recorded dozens of original songs. When my last album came out in 2014, I told him and his wife, Patty, and asked if they wanted a copy.

“For what?” he said.

“Don’t you want to hear it?” I managed, through tears.

“No offense, it’s just not my thing.”

So now that I’m singing jazz standards, I have his attention. His approval. I hate that I’m thrilled. Why now?

Everywhere we go in Vegas, he asks people to guess my age. They always guess at least 10 years too young. The hair dye helps. So does how thin I’ve gotten from the stress. He bursts out laughing. “Noooo, not even close. She looks pretty good, eh?” When I ask him to stop, he waves me off. “Come on, all women love being told they look younger. You should be happy about it.”

Oh, how silly of me. I’ll work on that.

I’m his trained monkey. Maybe the band will let me have a couple of cymbals.

He starts picking out songs for me and asking what I think, until I blurt out, “Look, Dad, I don’t want to do this anymore. It’s too late. The supper clubs are dead. This is the last one standing. There’s no ‘circuit’ left. Where exactly do you expect me to make it big?”

“What do you mean? There are plenty of contemporary singers doing jazz songs.”

“Dad, it’s more than that. I’m old. The time to start all this was when I was young.”

“You’re not too old,” he says, chuckling. “You’re the perfect age for this. And besides, you don’t look your age. Whatever, I’m not talking about you being a pop star!”

Oh wow, I think. Is this the dementia talking, or just Dad? He actually thinks I’m going to do this. “Dad, I don’t even live here. How is this supposed to work?”

He beams and puts on his most charming voice. “Well, I just happen to have an idea about that.”

Of course you do.

“I’m going to take the money from the divorce and buy apartment buildings that you and Sparrow can manage. Sparrow’s a handy guy, and you can take care of the books and the tenants.”

“What? We already have jobs, Dad. Good jobs. With health insurance. In Oregon. Our grandkids are there. How would that work?”

“You could move here and be near me. You could pursue your music career like you always wanted, and make money with the buildings.”

Blink. Blink.

The buildings?

What I want to say is:

Have I ever shown one iota of interest in managing buildings?

Why are you suddenly showing interest in my music career?

Where were you when I needed your support? For you to show any interest at all?

What I say is: “Well, I’ll have to talk it over with Sparrow and get back to you.”

It never occurs to me that I could push back. Just say no.

I become an expert at deflection. And delay. Because secretly I’m hoping he forgets about this idea. I’m hoping it’s the Lewy body talking, and that by tomorrow it’ll slip through the cracks and even he will wonder what he was talking about.

But pigs don’t fly, so it doesn’t happen. Dad has always been a persuasive guy. And his excitement is infectious. Like the flu, it creeps in until I’m sick with hope. I’m the one starting to wonder if maybe he’s right. I know better, but I want to believe. Not in the buildings. In him. In a different us. The next thing I know, I’m convincing Sparrow we should consider it. And because my husband loves me more than he loves anything, including common sense, he starts looking for properties online. It starts to feel imminent. Inevitable.

But there’s one part of Dad’s plan I can’t go along with: the singing. My body draws the line. His face looks like I just told him I’m putting his puppy up for adoption. Disappointing him feels worse than the stage fright. Almost. What scares me more is feeling like I’ve just blown my best shot at being close to him.

The piano player does finally have something to say to me, but it isn’t about music. He’s worried about Dad when I’m not around. He hopes I can convince him to move to Oregon.

Then Paulie pulls me aside. He’s worried, too.

Mom and my stepdad, Papa John, put it more bluntly: if Dad wants me closer, maybe he should move to us—the people with jobs and other family.

For eight months, he won’t budge. There is “NO WAY” he’s leaving Vegas. Zero chance he’d ever live in such a boring “Lib state” as Oregon. I must be crazy to think he’d move away from “the greatest city in the world.”

Then his toe gets infected, and the doctor schedules it to be removed. Nothing makes a blue state look good like a blue body part. I start looking at independent living places that can transition into memory care when the time comes, and I send him pictures. The only thing he wants to know is whether they have eligible women. By eligible, he means under fifty. Well, sure, I think. Women live longer than men. He’ll have his pick of the litter. I don’t mention that most of them are over eighty. By the time he figures it out, Sparrow will already have all his TVs hung.

I feel guilty hiding this from him. But part of me figures if he isn’t sharp enough to notice on his own, he’s probably in no position to be dating anyway. Especially not forty-year-olds.

If it weren’t for Mom and Papa John, Sparrow and I would be in Vegas right now, plunging toilets between sets at Paulie’s Supper Club.

The different us never shows up. Once he’s in Oregon, it gets worse. His paranoia convinces him to have me investigated for five months. That’s another essay. We’re closest when I take him out for expensive dinners, with drinks he isn’t supposed to have. He laughs and jokes and is his charming self, flirting with the server.

I’m still singing for my supper. So is he.

I’m Allegra.

In 2019 I became my father’s caregiver while Lewy body dementia took him apart. I managed his money, his caregivers, his doctors, his girlfriends, and six moves. He had one of his new caregivers report me for elder abuse. We were both very busy.

I wasn’t new to the job. I grew up in a family organized around my brother’s deafness. So I tried to be no trouble. Quiet. Helpful, at the very least. Useful. I got so useful nobody noticed I was drowning, including me.

That’s what Cape Not Included is about: the hidden cost of making yourself indispensable—and what happens when you stop.

I write about caring for my father through dementia, the family that trained me for the job, and learning, at sixty-three, that no is a complete sentence. True stories, told with gallows humor and a healthy side-eye.

Where to begin

Happy Place
They told me to go to my happy place. I went. It was haunted.

What Took You So Long
“If you try to carry him, he’ll take you down with him—and I think he’d let you.”

Adventures in Dementia Care (listen)
Exactly what it sounds like, minus the brochure.

Prefer to listen? I read the essays aloud on the podcast and YouTube.

A little more

I’ve been a radio host, a used-bookstore owner, a school interpreter, a musician with three albums, and a dog mama. I live in southern Oregon with my husband Sparrow and my emotional support bird sanctuary.

Cape Not Included has been featured by Affordable Travel, Living Aloha, and Tears, Tools, and Treasure.”

Subscribing is free. New essays arrive every other Wednesday, along with behind-the-scenes notes on the memoir in progress. When the book is ready, subscribers hear first.

We pull up to the casino. Tiffany hits the button for the side door and Dad yells back to me, “Get my walker, will ya?” His Lewy body dementia means he needs assistance walking. Tiffany sees my side-eye in her rearview. It says only one of us is getting paid right now. She stays in her seat, so I get out to perform her job. I help Dad down and we shuffle over to the curb to wait for her to park the van in the handicap spot fifty feet away.

But then I see her jumping out, putting her platinum hair up into a bedazzled hair clip and smiling at the young valet as she hands him the key.

“What the heck is she doing, Dad? There’s a spot right there.” I point at it, as if he can’t see the big blue sign marking the space.

He chuckles. I roll my eyes.

The casino where we’re seeing the impersonator show has two restaurants. One has sandwiches. The other has white tablecloths. Dad asks us to pick. Knowing he’s paying, I say sandwiches. Knowing he’s paying, Tiffany says tablecloths.

His grin tells me we’ll be hearing tonight’s specials in a minute.

Tiffany is Dad’s kind of gal.

The kind who quit her agency and signed on directly with Dad and Patty, breaking her non-compete contract. Dad suggested it. Of course he did. He told me this like he’d handed David the stone. “So what? They’re a big company. They make too much off these caregivers anyway.”

Dad loves a hustler. He sees himself in her. What else is new.

Tiffany orders the sea bass. I find it on the menu and my eyes go full Marty Feldman. Sixty bucks. À la carte.

Now she’s giggling and batting her eyes at him and asking, “Are you sure it’s okay?” Dad chuckles and raises his eyebrows, looking almost insulted she’d even ask. “I don’t care. Get what you want.” He adds with a smile, “I’m rich.”

You’re what? He loves telling people that. It’s not exactly true, and it’s catnip for grifters.

“Yes, I’ll have the Caesar salad,” I tell the waiter, slowly enough to be a hint and fast enough to pass as a native speaker. It’s the cheapest thing on the menu. I drill my non-batting eyes at Tiffany. She takes it as a cue to call the waiter over.

Oh, good, I think. She’s going to change her order. I sigh with relief.

Apparently she forgot to order a glass of wine.

Château Charlie’s Tab.

I consider pairing my meal with a beta blocker.

She’s a caregiver on the clock. I used to do this job for a living. Maybe they didn’t have time to get to the ethics lesson at the agency before she quit.

Dad glances at me.

Come on, Dad. Say something. This is bananas.

“Is that all you’re having? You want some wine? Should we get a bottle?”

Tiffany’s grin gets bigger.

“Uh, no, Dad. I’m fine.”

A bottle? Someone at this table has to be able to drive. Lewy body is new to me—I don’t know how alcohol will affect him now. And I don’t even trust her with him sober.

Yet somehow my salad is the scandal.

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Sinatra. Cher. Michael Jackson. All the greats are there. On the way out, they’re comparing it to the last show. Wait, the last show?

Out front, while we wait for the valet guy, Tiffany is showing me a picture on her phone of the two of them at the hockey game. “Look, Charlie bought me the jersey I liked! Isn’t he sweet? I sent it to Patty but she hasn’t texted me back yet.”

She seems genuinely surprised that Dad’s wife, stuck in a hospital bed, isn’t thrilled with the photo. I blink at her and can only mutter, “Wow.”

The valet pulls up with the van. Tiffany hands the kid a twenty. Then she turns to Dad and asks him to reimburse her. He says he doesn’t have any cash and looks at me.

“Dad, twenty bucks?” He shrugs.

I hand her a twenty.

My pulse threatens to burst my temples. And for a second, that seems preferable.

While Dad settles into the front seat, I challenge her. “You know, that seems like a lot for this place. We’re not even on the Strip. And the van was right there.” Tiffany, sounding like she’s exercising great patience, explains to Dad that “people like us rely on tips.” People like her know how hard it is to work with the public—she glances at me like I’m Exhibit A—and that’s how she “learned the value of a dollar.”

I see.

She knows about his dementia. It’s the reason she has the job. I don’t know what she’s up to. But I do know what she’s being paid to do.

I exercise my own patience and do not show her what working with the public can really look like: shaking her until her eyelashes fall off.

On the way home they start bickering over the route she’s taking and I’m wincing at how much they sound like Dad and Patty when they argue. Dad blows a raspberry. “Whatever. Do what you want, you always do anyway.” She laughs. “Fine, Charlie! I will!”

Then Dad turns his head in my direction. “Wanna hear a good one?” I say nothing, knowing he’s not waiting for an answer and sensing she’s in for it.

“Tell her the one about massaging guys at gas stations, Tiffany!”

And there it is.

“Oh, come on, Charlie, cut the crap. I told you they were truck stops, not gas stations, and it was a good idea. I could’ve made a lot of money doing that.”

From the back seat, I can see his head slowly shaking back and forth and his shoulders trembling.

Then I hear the strain in his voice. “You’re right about that. You sure could’ve,” he manages, before bursting into a laugh. And then, “A lot of money.”

“Agh! Charlie, you’re so mean. It wasn’t like that. Those guys are driving all day and they’ve got a lot of stress and tension in their bodies. They just need some relief.”

He’s done trying to contain himself now. “Relief. Yeah, I understand. They’re pent up. You just wanted to help them out.”

“Shut up, just stop it. I’m gonna let you out right here if you don’t stop. What is your daughter supposed to think of me now?”

Here I am, in the back seat again. It used to be Patty up front. Now it’s someone he pays. He sounds happier than he has in years. I wish I could have that with him.

We get to Dad’s house and I go straight inside and leave the walker to Tiffany.

When they make it in, she’s frowning and shaking her head at her phone. “I just don’t understand why Patty’s so upset. I think she might be jealous. She keeps texting me asking why we go out so much at night, and now she’s blaming me that Charlie didn’t visit her again.”

He’s been telling me for months he’s waiting for the right time to leave Patty. I’m starting to see what the right time looks like.

She heads off to bed and I realize she’s using the room I usually stay in. The one that has its own bathroom. I mention it to Dad.

“Just use the Blue Room. Tiffany likes your room better. Who cares, it doesn’t matter.”

“Fine,” I say as breezily as possible. “So, she stays here for free?”

“Only on the nights she works. She has an apartment now. I told her I want to make sure she keeps that just in case. I don’t want her living in her car again.”

“Oh. That’s nice, Dad. How much are you giving her for caregiving?”

“What do you mean? The same as we were paying the agency.”

“Wow, that’s a lot!” I blurt out. So much for breezy. “What all does she do? I mean, you have a cleaning service and your groceries delivered, right?”

“She drives me around and gives me my pills and stuff. Don’t worry about it, she does a lot. Why shouldn’t she get the same as what that company was getting? They weren’t doing any work. They’re not entitled to that. Why do you care? It’s not your money.”

No arguing with that. Besides, I’m too tired to try. I roll my suitcase down the hall to the Blue Room, where Patty keeps the portraits of my brother and me—along with other odds and ends that don't have a place in the house. On the wall next to the bed is the headshot from my ’80s dance-music days, taken around when I met Patty. My twenty-three-year-old self watches me unpack.

I leave for Oregon the next day.

Two weeks later, Dad has left Patty.

He and Tiffany are already installed in a fully furnished rental house with a view.

Dad calls to say he needs more caregivers.

“What’s wrong with Tiffany?”

“Nothing. I’ve got her doing more important stuff than caregiving now,” he says, emphasizing the word like it’s giving him indigestion.

“Like what?”

Apparently she knows where all the high-end thrift stores are. During the week she’s scouring them, and on the weekends she’s hitting every Sun City garage sale. No china set is safe with her on the job. They have a plan to resell on eBay and hold “estate sales” out of his rental home. Dad sees big money in his future. “I can’t believe nobody else is doing this yet.”

She’s clearly worth her weight in floral serving trays.

“Are you giving her less money now that she’s not caregiving?”

He’s appalled. “No, why would I do that? She still takes me out at night. Anyway, I need her. She set me up on a dating app and I don’t know how to use it yet. She’s entitled to that money.”

“She’s entitled, all right,” I say under my breath.

When I get there that weekend, Dad says now that he’s on his own, he needs someone he can trust to handle his affairs.

“I don’t trust my brain anymore.”

First order of business: actual caregivers.

I wait until Dad’s absorbed in a game on TV. When Tiffany heads out to her car, I ask if I can sit with her a minute. I tell her that we need caregivers, and the thrift-store runs aren’t part of the job. Would she like to go back to caregiving?

She would not.

What I’m thinking is: you make twice what I do back in Oregon, for a fraction of the work, and Dad’s savings have to last him to the end.

What I say is, “Do you really think you deserve that kind of money for thrift-store shopping?”

She quickly says, “He’s really hard to deal with.”

I blink. “I can give you a good reference.”

He likes her, and I don’t need her hurt, just gone.

Dad is livid that I let her go. “What is she going to do now? She needs that money!”

“She’ll be fine, Dad.” I smile and bat my eyes. “She knows the value of a dollar.”

Really like this one but not ready for a long-term commitment yet?

Buy me a coffee

Lately I've been writing further back—the origin stories, before Dad got sick. They're heavier. That's on purpose: this is where the person who handles everything got made. The caregiving stories are coming back. Dad wasn't done being ridiculous, and neither am I.

I have a favor to ask. I’ve been writing for a while and know almost nothing about who’s reading. Three questions, two minutes, and I read every answer myself—there’s no staff. There’s barely a me.

Tell me who you are.

“What? No,” I say, smirking. I dare a quick glance over at Patty, who has her arms crossed and is scowling at me because I’m not scurrying over there as I usually do. You’d think I was on the clock. “I have no idea why she called you. Let’s just say she can be a bit dramatic.”

He glances over at Patty, who’s still glaring. “She’s pretty upset. She says he left her for the caregiver. Is that true?”

Stifling a laugh, I look back outside at my dad sitting in the passenger seat of Tiffany’s SUV. “Wow. No. Did she really tell you that? That’s hilarious.”

A stout cop with a gray crew cut is now getting an earful of something from Patty as I excuse myself to go tell Dad what’s going on.

Never in my most fervent prayers did I ever imagine that Dad would actually go through with leaving her. Dad told me she’d banned his sister and nephew from the house. Some family members tried to talk him into cutting his losses. But he was loyal to a fault and “took his vows seriously.”

After his diagnosis of Lewy body dementia in 2018, he couldn’t drive anymore, and Patty didn’t want to go out, so he stayed home. He sat in front of his wall of TVs and laptop for months. When we talked, he sounded flat, low on energy, and complained that the medication prescribed during his psychiatric stay left him too sedated. He went no farther than from his desk to his recliner. I asked why he couldn’t get his grandson to take him out, and he said Patty didn’t want him going out without her.

I’d call every other week, worried he sounded like a zombie, as she corrected him from the other room if she didn’t like what he was saying. If he ignored her, she’d get on the other line and interrupt until we had to hang up. Still, he stayed with her, telling me he just “tuned her out” when she screamed and cried at not getting her way.

He told me she’d spent thousands on QVC—sometimes buying triplicates of things and sending them to her family—but he didn’t challenge her about it. I watched the boxes arrive almost daily when I visited, and privately it drove him crazy: they were living on the sale of the business he’d spent his life building.

He told me he blamed her for “putting him in the looney bin,” and he was waiting for the right time to leave her since he couldn’t trust her anymore.

One morning, Patty called in a panic: Dad’s new doctor had reduced his sedating medication, and now, she said, he was erratic and impossible to deal with. She wanted my backing to get it reversed; I told her I’d be willing to talk to the doctor about it.

On the video call, Dad was wearing a new Polo shirt. He’d lost so much weight the old ones looked like circus tents. Patty insisted he’d become a financial risk and was emotionally abusive. The doctor asked Dad and me for input. “No, doc, I think we can afford shirts,” Dad said, smirking. I pointed out nobody had called it a symptom when she spent thousands on QVC and that they’d been fighting for years.

“Oh my God!” she yelled, crying now. “Everybody’s against me. Nobody cares about the poor cripple girl anymore—now it’s just all about Chaaaaarlie! What about me? I can’t keep living like this!”

In the end, the doctor left his meds alone and offered her a referral for counseling, noting it wasn’t unusual for a spouse to feel overwhelmed under circumstances like theirs.

Then one day Patty fell ill and wound up in the hospital. So they had to hire a caregiver for Dad. Enter Tiffany. Without Patty there to object, Dad had Tiffany driving him all over Vegas to expensive restaurants, to shows, and even to a hockey game, where he bought her a jersey. I can see why this was hard on Patty. She was stuck in a hospital bed, and he barely visited.

Patty told the cops that Dad had left her for “that homewrecker.” The day they picked me up at the airport, Tiffany laughed off a jealous-sounding text from Patty, telling Dad her type was more “firemen with abs”—she’d been eyeing some calendar—than “old guy with dementia and a walker.” That was how Dad and Tiffany were, always ribbing each other.

Dad was having the time of his life. He’d already run the numbers, he told me—he always did, whether it was a point spread or his own life expectancy—and figured he had about a year left. He was off by two. But for once, the odds worked in his favor: he had me and Tiffany willing to help him spend it exactly how he wanted. Living large.

The baby-faced cop leads me to Dad’s “sportsbook room,” where there is a waist-high heap of stuff on the floor looking like it’s waiting for a match and some gasoline. Cue Patty. “Take all this crap out of here and then get a broom and a dustpan!” she barks without looking at me and starts to leave. She has spoken. She expects swift results.

“Are you talking to me?” I say.

She whips her wheelchair around. “What? Uh, YEAH! I said clean up the mess. Hurry up!”

“Why don’t you get one of your caregivers to clean it up?”

“What?” She stops in her tracks, frowning, incredulous. “What did you say to me? How daaaaarrrre you!”

Oh, I see we’re dusting off that old chestnut.

“It’s not my mess, it’s yours. Look, Patty, I’m done taking orders from you. You are never going to be able to tell me what to do ever again,” I say calmly, though my heart thinks I’m out on the Strip running a marathon.

Why am I still afraid of this woman? She can’t keep me from Dad. Not anymore. And yet…

She jabs the control to her chair, shouting over her shoulder to her caregiver as she leaves, “I guess you’ll have to clean it up since his worthless daughter won’t help out as usual!”

Why did I ever try with her? Because the 90 minutes a day I’d spend with my dad whenever I visited was worth it. Almost.

For decades, I kept showing up like a usurper in my own father’s house.

Every night, once she went to bed, Dad and I would pick out a movie, pour some wine, sometimes make popcorn, and talk and laugh until we lost track of the time. That was the only part of visiting that was actually ours.

If we were having too good a time, the static from the intercom would fill the room.

“Excuuuuse me,” she’d say, in a loud voice so saccharine it seemed sarcastic, though I think it was supposed to sound cute. “What’s so funny out there?”

Dad would say nothing at first. Then, “We were just watching a movie, Patty.”

“Oh. It doesn’t sound like a movie.”

Silence. He’d roll his eyes. “What do you need, Patty?”

“How much longer is the movie? When are you going to bed?”

“I don’t know, Patty. Not now. In a little bit.”

Silence.

“Is there anything else?” he’d say patiently, glancing at me.

“No. But don’t stay up too late, baby boy!”

He’d sigh, blowing out his cheeks like a puffer fish, and turn the movie back on.

Message received: no more laughing.

There’s a truer answer, though, to why I kept trying to win her over. There were moments—not many, but enough—that made me believe she actually loved me, or at least wanted to.

She helped me decorate my wedding cake. She framed a photo I’d texted her of my dog and mailed it to me, for no occasion at all. Another arrived of Sparrow and me from the first time he ever visited them, right after we had gotten engaged. She’d text me updates, pictures of Dad, stories about a hummingbird outside her window she’d named Bill. Sometimes we had breakfast together, just the two of us, and it was fine.

Better than fine.

Each one was a drop of hope. They’d collect, quietly, until the next cruelty came along and they evaporated in the Vegas sun. But if she was capable of being that kind to me, why couldn’t she just keep doing it? I used to think it had to be me—that between the failed relationships and living like a starving artist and whatever else, I’d just made myself too hard to understand. Dad said as much once: “I just wish you were more mainstream.” Maybe she wanted a stepdaughter who liked glitter and glam instead of plants and books. I never figured it out.

There was no room for human frailty.

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On one of my visits—back when the only problem with his driving was that he needed new glasses—I came out of my room one morning, dizzy and sick, and found Patty in the kitchen with her back to me, facing the windows.

“Good morning,” I said. Nothing. I thought she hadn’t heard me, so I said it again.

“Ohhhhh, I see you finally decided to get up,” she said, to the glass. “Too late to help, of course!”

“I’m sorry, I was too sick,” I said. “Dad said it was okay, that he could drive himself to the eye doctor.”

“HOW DAAAARE YOU! Just go home. I never want to see your face again. I’m done with you. You’re not welcome here any more!”

She never turned around. I went back to my room and hid. When Dad returned, he told me “she had no right to do that,” but then I was on the next flight out in the morning.

It always felt like she was looking for a final straw—something big enough to tell my dad, “See? I tried.”

I emailed him when I got back, trying to figure out a way we could still visit in the future. Dad wrote:

“[Patty]’s biggest problem is you not driving me around and staying in your room while you could be helping out. I do not agree, but this is the big obstacle in front of you... Email [Patty] and tell her to give you another chance and you promise to be more attentive. Let her know that you didn’t even know you were in trouble and you won’t let this happen again. Let her know you thank her for all of the monetary assistance we have given you... Depending on your email, I think we can get back to square one.”

Love always, Dad.

I called him while she was out grocery shopping and asked if there was another way—any way—to still see him without writing an apology I didn’t mean. There wasn’t. I could say what he’d laid out, or I wouldn’t see him again.

I was furious—not only that he wanted me to apologize for being myself, but that even alone, with her out of the house, he wouldn’t defend me or find another way.

Dad told me often that he liked being generous with me financially, to make up for not being there for me when I was growing up. His idea was to fix it with money. He’d told me once, in my thirties, that if I didn’t find a job that would earn a lot of money, I’d have to marry a rich guy instead—preferably an older one.

His generosity helped, though—for years, his birthday and Christmas money supplemented my income, and I appreciated it, and told him so. It also made me feel ashamed.

What I actually wanted was him. More time. He gave what he could, I told myself—it made the rest bearable.

It took five months to force myself to write the required email. I convinced myself I was giving him ample time to change his mind. To stand his ground. To stand up for me.

So, holding my breath, I finally emailed her. Here’s part of what I wrote:

“I am sorry that you were disappointed with me during my last visit. I actually was ill, and still am...Really, I was just trying to stay out of the way, and also I didn’t know what else to do, as Dad spends most of his time at his desk and you in your room or on the phone. I would’ve done anything you asked me to do, as I think I’ve always done since I started visiting. It warms my heart to help out in any way I can because I love you both and because I feel so grateful for all the financial support I’ve been given...I am hoping that we can put this behind us, as I know neither of us meant to hurt the other...”

Her reply came a few days later. The subject line: WOW. Then two pages, single-spaced, in all capital letters. Here’s some of it:

“...WHAT A WAY TO TURN THE TABLES...YOU GOT OUT OF OUR WAY, SO WE COULD SIT ON THE COMPUTER OR TALK ON THE PHONE??”

“STILL LIVING ON THE BOARDER OF POVERTY AND TRYING TO MAKE IT IN THE MUSIC BUSINESS...”

“THERE IS NO FIXING HOW I FEEL ABOUT YOU...WITH THIS SILLY LITTLE NOTE YOU SENT ME...IT TOOK YOU FIVE MONTHS TO COME UP WITH THIS???”

“SORRY YOU’RE HAVING MEDICAL PROBLEMS...SINCE NOW YOU HAVE AN EXCUSE FOR JUST SITTING THERE...STRUMMING YOUR GUITAR AND FEELING SORRY FOR YOURSELF.”

“THE WICKED STEP MOTHER...HAS BEEN HOLDING BACK, HOW SHE FEELS ABOUT YOU, FOR 24 YEARS!!! JUST BLEW UP.”

Trying to “make it” in the music business? Not exactly, but I hadn’t grown out of being an artist either, and I wasn’t going to apologize for that one. What actually hurt was the last line. Twenty-four years.

Then Dad wrote:

“Although you probably felt cathartic in your letter to [Patty], it polarized you even farther apart. In retrospect I should have had you send me the letter first because no letter would have been better.” And then, in case I was waiting for some consolation: “My life is very complicated and there is no way out.”

Clearly, my truth wasn’t going to get the job done. I sucked it up even more and pressed send.

“Thank you for writing me back and sharing your true feelings. I am sorry for the mistakes I’ve made. I’m sorry you’ve never liked me or respected me for the last twenty-four years. I’ve always loved you, and still love you very much and always will. Thank you for everything you’ve ever done for me.”

I knew there was an edge in that line about the last twenty-four years—it was my private rebellion. I was counting on her taking it at face value.

The truth is, I did love her. She was my father’s wife. I believed in family. I still do. But I didn’t respect her. And the way she treated me made me want to chew glass. This was my last chance for access to Dad, though, and I took it, even though it made me hate myself a little. I still believed that if I tried hard enough I could get her to see the goodness in me.

She let me back in. Sort of.

I was allowed to fly out to Vegas again. When we were alone the next morning before breakfast, she explained she “hadn’t meant to press send,” her eyes glued to the bowl of fake lemons on the table the whole time. “It should’ve never happened. It was an accident,” she added. Then she mumbled, “Can we just start over?” When I quickly said, “Yes, of course,” she was already swiveling her chair to leave the room as I quietly said, “Thank you.” Watching her back as she left, I inhaled shakily and closed my eyes—relieved to be allowed in my father’s house again. Knowing I’d be walking on twice the eggshells from now on.

I knew better. Patty was a lot of things. Careless wasn’t one of them. And I’d never heard her apologize for so much as a burp. This was no exception. It was a keyboard malfunction. But I wanted it to be true—especially after Dad’s only reaction was, “Nobody gets back in with her once she’s made up her mind.”

A month later, I addressed her as Mum in an email. Her reply closed the same way. I sat there blinking back tears at the screen, feeling like we finally had a chance to be family.

A year later I offered to have my wedding at their house, to make it easier for her to attend. Another eight years and I’d be telling her to clean up her own mess for a change.

* * *

Back in the sportsbook room, I think of the text Patty sent me earlier that week, saying it was my fault Dad left. I had “taken him away.” I think, “Lady, if I had been capable of that, this would’ve happened nine years ago, after the WOW letter.”

The cops leave after informing me that I’m the only one allowed inside. So I carry the dusty photo albums, the two dozen pens (no casino or doctor’s office would be forgotten), and the rest of the bonfire pile out to the garage, where Tiffany waits to load it into her car. A moving truck will come back for the rest.

Once all that remains is dust and some old sportsbook receipts from Red Rock Casino, I quietly pick up the broom and sweep it all into the dustpan. Before I leave, I find Patty in the hallway, whispering to her caregiver. The house is quiet. I feel empty. Her scowl is gone too. For a moment we just stare at each other. I think this will probably be the last time I’ll ever see her.

“Patty,” I say softly, “I just want you to know that I always loved you, and still do. You’ll always be family to me.”

She huffs and rolls her eyes. “Love! Well, you could’ve fooled me!” Then she rolls out of the room.

I know I could try to be a peacemaker, help them find their way back to each other. Get them to compromise. I choose not to. I want more time with him, which could never happen with her in the picture.

I’ve spent 33 years feeling like the wicked stepdaughter. When Dad finally presses send on the divorce papers, there won’t be a keyboard malfunction to blame it on.

As I squeeze into the back of Tiffany’s SUV, between a bunch of signed photos of football stars and a computer printer, it hits me. The thing I’ve wanted my whole life is finally here. Now I’ll have him to myself. The prospect of becoming his primary caregiver and managing his affairs almost seems easy.

I’ve done it professionally.

Nobody can take better care of him than I can.

I will become indispensable.

He will finally choose me.

All those years will be worth it.

Names and identifying details in this essay have been changed to protect the privacy of those involved.

Where’s Rosie – Pt. 3: The Reckoning

For two weeks Dad swore Rosie wasn’t coming back. But when every morning begins with “Rosie call yet?” instead of “Where’s Rosie?” I know it’s only a matter of time.

The Break.

6am. Dad arrives for the day and trots through the office door, announcing, “Rosie and I are going out to lunch today.”

I’m not smiling. I’m not even breathing. “Wait, you’re not going to let her come back here, are you?”

“No.” He grins, unaware that his body language has other ideas.

“Good,” I say, “because I don’t want to work here if she’s coming back.”

His head tilts like a terrier in a TV commercial. “You don’t like Rosie? Why not?”

I can’t think of anything he would understand. I could tell him: “This is the kind of person who spends weekends selling stuff that’s ‘fallen off the back of a truck’ at a flea market. The kind who got engaged because, in her own words, ‘I always wanted a diamond,’ and then ghosted the guy so she wouldn’t have to give it back. And, come on, she thinks it’s the nineteenth century.”

But I know it’s futile. Hell, it’ll probably make him like her more. Because, like Dad, she finds a way to get what she wants. Nothing can compete with Dad’s favorite selling point: the fact that she puts her job ahead of everything else in her life.

“I don’t trust her.” I know I’ve lost the battle the second the words leave my mouth. I burst out, feeling like a petulant child, “She…she talks too much.”

One of his eyebrows lifts. “Well, she doesn’t want to come back anyway,” he says. “We’re just going out for lunch.”

“Well, good,” I say, and go back to work on the floor, my gut tight. This wouldn’t be the first time he “changed his mind” or I “misunderstood.”

Three hours later he comes back looking ten years younger and smelling like Scotch. He barrels through the office door, practically singing “Guess what? Rosie’ll be here Monday!” I stop typing mid-word. I stare at him, wondering if my face is telling him what my mouth cannot. Nope. I remind him he promised she wasn’t coming back, that I told him I couldn’t work with her anymore, that I’m supposed to be training to take over the business. What I want to say is “How can you do this to me? You said this wouldn’t happen. It was just supposed to be lunch. How can you choose that person over me?”

He frowns, getting louder with every point. Says I don’t get to make that call. That it’s above my pay grade. That’s why he makes the big bucks. If I don’t like it, I can go home. Anyway, he “never said she couldn’t come back.” Besides, “Rosie was the one who left so it was up to her. She chose to come back.” Oh, I see. I misunderstood again. It was her choice. You were just waiting for her to decide. It wasn’t your choice. One thing’s for sure, it was never mine.

But I’m not Rosie. I don’t have showdowns. I don’t win battles. I run away crying like a little girl. As usual.

I pull open my middle drawer and see the gun Freddie—Dad’s handyman, and the only one looking out for me—had given me to store there ‘just in case.’

I slam the drawer shut, yank open the side drawer, grab my purse, and bolt, wishing I could slam the spring door. I’m using my ugly cry voice, yelling “I can’t believe you, Dad! I’m done! I’m never coming back! You don’t even want me here!” But instead of going home, I run down the street—past the burned-out car in front with its motor exposed, past the guy pushing the shopping cart of metal toward the scrap metal shop across the street, dodging the broken Cold Duck bottle, the little empty plastic baggie next to a broken needle, the boarded-up building next door, running to… where? What’s the plan, exactly? I think I expect him to—no, want him to—come out of the building and yell for me to come back. Show me he cares.

Tell me he won’t choose Rosie. Tell me I misunderstood. I didn’t. And he doesn’t.

So, there I am, dodging giant holes in the sidewalk like a drunk, hating my life, hating my cowardice, but somehow never hating him. He always said I was naive. This proves it. What a loser. Blind to reality, as usual.

I get to the busy cross street and see a semi a block away and try to calculate how much of a mess I would make if I stepped out in front of it. This couldn’t be better, actually. It’s the perfect ending. But, then again, would Dad even recognize me? I try to imagine him standing over my body, wailing to the sky, and can’t. I close my eyes and admit that even a B-movie would cut this scene. The truck’s getting closer now. I can see the gold lettering on the guy’s black hat—he’s looking at a map. Good, he won’t even know. It’s not his fault. Whose fault is it? It’s not even about Dad. All my failed relationships–even a marriage that lasted nine months to a man I visited weekly through glass–and now I’m out here blubbering like a little fool, wanting a truck to end it. Of course this is where my life ends. It never really started. I start to step out, and then I hear it. Behind me. Freddie’s deep voice, yelling after me.

The truck speeds by, whipping my hair across my face, and the driver behind it holds up his hands as if to ask, “What the hell is wrong with you?” Good question. I turn and see Freddie standing there and it reminds me that his gun is still sitting in my desk drawer. Sigh. That would’ve been a lot easier. But then, I can’t do that to Freddie. Or Dad, for that matter. “What are you doing out here?” Freddie says, shaking his head. “You should go home, you’re gonna get yourself hurt.” And I think: No, I can’t even do that right. It crosses my mind that I could still use it. I tell him fast, before I change my mind: “The thing you gave me this morning is still in my drawer. I can’t go back in there.”

He walks me to my car. Ten minutes later, hands still shaking, I manage to get my key in the lock, only to realize I have no idea how I got there.

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The Moon.

I lie still in bed for two weeks, wishing I could cry. Wishing I could feel anything at all. I watch the sun make its slow journey across the walls and the moon creep past the skylight, then wait for morning to begin it all again. I lose 10 pounds. My therapist Sant makes a house call after hearing from my new boyfriend, who’s worried I’m having a nervous breakdown. Maybe he’s right, but I convince Sant I’m not suicidal. He doesn’t know about the truck. Nobody does. Well, maybe Freddie.

Aside from the sky gazing, all I do is think about my regrets, starting with the marriage that had just ended—nine months, to Alex, who stole a car in Michigan just to see me in Chicago. What’s a little car theft compared to someone caring about me? I practically owed him loyalty. Right? I rushed off to Michigan to marry him to get him out of jail. In a borrowed dress. Even got him a job at Dad’s shop. The judge was convinced. But not as convinced as I was. That is, until he turned out to be a coke addict and had our apartment robbed to pay the bill. So, yeah, nine months.

And then, because I can’t even have a successful nervous breakdown, I accidentally get pregnant. And though I can’t imagine being a mother right now, I decide this will be my chance to redeem myself. Change my life for the better. I call Dad to tell him I’m not coming back. That I’m moving out of state. He doesn’t fight me on it. Doesn’t ask any questions at all. There’s a second where I think he might, but then there’s just silence on the other end.

The Reckoning.

I hear what happens after I’m gone, in pieces, the way you hear about a war after you’ve left the country. Rosie comes back—of course she does: Dad needs someone who doesn’t hide in the bathroom when he yells. Someone who yells back. And wins. He also hires his brother-in-law Scott to replace me. Dad tells me it worked out better that I left. The shop starts “running like clockwork with Rosie and Scott,” so Dad moves to Vegas and calls in daily to keep his finger on the pulse. Then, one day Rosie decides running it isn’t enough. She wants a bigger cut—she convinces Scott to join forces with her and they threaten to quit if he doesn’t make them partners. He offers them raises, a bigger bonus, but no, they believe they’re indispensable.

They have no idea who they’re dealing with. You corner my father and he will claw the walls down to the studs to build his own window. He sells the business out from under them. And just like that—the man who worked 25 years doing work he hated walks–five years earlier than he ever meant to.

He tells me years later, “They thought they won. You know what’s worse than having a partner in business? Having two. No one backs me into a corner.”

I have my chance right there—to remind him I called it, that I told him not to trust her from the start. I don’t take it. I tell myself it’s because I don’t want to gloat over the wreckage. But the truth is, I often felt like both the parent and the child in our relationship—managing his feelings like it was my job while desperately wanting to know, without question, that I was his beloved daughter. The kind who runs to him, throwing her arms around his neck. The kind who calls him Daddy. Not the kind who manages him from a distance. From the shadows. But you can’t ask for what isn’t there. Not if you don’t want to stare at the sky for weeks. Besides, if Rosie hadn’t come back, I’d still be working there, dying in slow motion.

In the sale agreement, the new owner makes it clear he doesn’t want to keep Rosie. Dad agrees but makes sure Freddie keeps his job before he signs—after 30 years of working side by side, he says it’s the right thing to do. I try to find Freddie after Dad dies. I can’t. He’d be pushing 80 now, if he’s even still around.

It’s been four years since Dad died. I miss him. The truth is, I never stood up to him—not about Rosie, not about anything—except once, at the end, when I was his caregiver. By then I’d already spent a lifetime interpreting him—first literally, for my deaf brother, and then for myself, in every other way, trying to assemble the pieces into a picture that never quite made sense. But that’s a different story for another day. It wasn’t about him choosing Rosie—it didn’t start with her. She just magnified reality until I couldn’t look away anymore.

Where’s Rosie? This time it’s me asking, sitting in the front pew at Dad’s funeral 27 years later. I’d tracked her down online after he died that August and sent her a message. She answers eventually, but she’s late. First time for everything.

Hi, app reader! See that heart icon below? That’s not decoration. I’d love it if you’d hit it—takes one second, and it’s the difference between the algorithm overlords showing this to more people or letting it quietly die in the void. Thank you!

If you’re just finding this, Part 3 stands on its own—but [Part 1: Hazard Pay] and [Part 2: Choices] are where the rest of this story lives.

Click here for my virtual tip jar—OK, it’s really for bird seed.

The heavy front door to the shop flies open and slams shut with a loud metallic bang. I hear the locks clicking, followed by some quick, heavy footsteps. In a flash, Freddie’s standing in front of my desk, handing me a huge gun—about the size of a loaf of bread. He turns it sideways. My hands refuse to move and stay glued to the keys of the typewriter. I stare at the matte black metal, unblinking. It’s not the first time I’ve seen a handgun up close, but definitely the first time someone’s tried to give me one.

“Take this.”

I keep my eye on it, as if it might jump out and bite me, and peer up at him whispering, “For what?”

“Just put it in your desk, I gotta go out again.”

“But… I don’t know how to use it,” I manage.

He chuckles. It isn’t up for discussion. Apparently I need to keep it, “just in case” because “there’s some trouble out there today.” I glance at the front door, realizing why he locked it when he came in. Then he’s turning the bolt again on his way out before I can finish explaining that the real trouble isn’t that I don’t know how to use it, but that I can barely lift the thing.

I never tell Dad it’s in my desk drawer. Freddie says to keep it a secret. But it’s more than that—I don’t want it to remind Dad of his own brother. Having the gun terrifies me more than anything else in that building—or out, for that matter.

I understand why Freddie wants me to have protection. But what scares me more is the thought of it landing in the hands of someone who actually knows how to use it. I think about it all day and can’t wait for it to be gone again. It doesn’t occur to me, not once, that I could have just said no. It also never occurs to me that the gun couldn’t have been legal. I trust Freddie more than anyone I know.

Freddie worked for my dad back in the ‘70s, in a different metal painting shop less than a mile from here, where my Uncle Tommy was shot and killed during a robbery. I think Freddie’s worried about having a repeat. He says “Charlie was never the same after he found him. Seemed like it was overnight his hair went from all black to all white.”

Whenever Dad blows up at me, Freddie just happens to appear in the office within minutes. He stands at the door, shaking his head, looking at the floor, around the office, anywhere but at me, saying, “Yeah, that Charlie. He really gets himself all worked up—he don’t mean nothing by it.”

“Yeah, well, he could’ve fooled me,” I say, sniffling.

He looks over at me, smiling a little, “Yeah, I know… you’re just tenderhearted, that’s all. I just walk away when he gets like that. Don’t pay him no mind. I bet he already forgot about it,” he says, chuckling.

In Freddie’s presence I feel my dignity restored. And even for a few moments, being here is worth it.

Shelter.

Back in the early 70s, Freddie was the impossibly cool young man gliding through the shop every morning, still wearing his freshly pressed dress clothes, while the women stopped to watch him and the men called out to ask him how he was doing as he passed by. Freddie always wore that sly grin on his face—like he knew the answer to every question you had before you knew you had it. Like he was putting the world’s problems on hold.

Whenever school was out, Dad would take me to the shop with him, and drop me off at the long wooden table where I was to help the ladies wrap the finished metal parts in paper before packing them into cartons.

They’d always have the little radio tuned to WVON, blasting out soul and R&B—The Staple Singers, Al Green, Joe Tex, Betty Wright. And whenever they saw Freddie coming through, they would turn it down a bit so they could hear him better. He’d nod in their general direction, saying, “Mornin’.” I could see it in their eyes as they followed him across the shop floor—it was as if he were a giant oak in the middle of the desert and they were sheltering in his natural shade. Learning to sing and dance with those sweet ladies while we worked made spending my summer break there tolerable.

Freddie’s got some gray in his hair now, but not much else has changed. The hottest day in August couldn’t make that man sweat. He’s like a cross between Denzel Washington and Billy Dee Williams. The only time I have to manage him is when his girlfriends call—you never know which one it is, and he doesn’t always want them knowing where he is, so I learned to just take a message.

Honestly, I don’t know if I want to be him, have him adopt me, or marry him. What I do know is that his being here makes it possible for me to show up every day. Somehow he manages to make me feel safe. It’s the only kind of safe I don’t have to earn. And it’s got nothing to do with the three-pound hunk of metal taking up most of the space in my desk drawer.

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The shift.

I was eleven, home the day after Thanksgiving because school was out. My mother called my friend’s house and told me I needed to come home right away. When I got there, Dad was sitting in the stuffed chair in the living room with a beer in his hand, staring at the TV. The TV was off. He was always watching some game in that chair—I’d never once seen it off—and the black screen is the thing I remember most, more than anything anyone said.

Mom took me into my room and told me there’d been an accident. My Uncle Tommy had been shot at work. It was the first time fear moved into my life. And it stayed a long time. In my eleven-year-old mind, I thought maybe they would come for Dad too.

We didn’t talk about Tommy again. His wife and kids left town with a guy everyone called “Alabama Jack”—the only name any of us ever knew him by—and I didn’t hear from them again for years.

Dad felt responsible—he was the owner, the one who should’ve been there on a Friday. He’d paid Tommy double to come in on his day off and fix the oven. A guy showed up, wanting money from the safe, but Tommy didn’t know the combination. Dad did. The safe was already empty; everyone had been paid early that week, for the holiday. Dad came back and found him. He kept sending money to Tommy’s kids out of his own pocket for the rest of his life—quietly, without ever bringing it up. By the time I found out how much, I was the one keeping track of what he could still afford.

I don’t remember a time after that when Dad didn’t have a drink in his hand. He was either silent or yelling. I learned to anticipate his needs by watching his moods. I tried to keep the chaos at bay by being useful. And I did this as quietly as possible. The world had become a serious place, and life at home seemed to get smaller to prove it, which suited me just fine.

Rosie.

The first thing Dad asks when he gets to the shop every morning is “Where’s Rosie?” Not hello. Not how are you doing. Not how was your night. Where’s Rosie.

She comes into my office one day, complaining about a guy she’s dating—too old-fashioned, she says, he wants to get married before he’ll sleep with her. “I told him he needs to get into the nineteenth century!” she laughs.

I look up. “What?”

She’s already walking out of the office.

I say, flatly, “He’d have to time travel.”

She stops, turns around. “Huh? Time travel?”

“It’s not the nineteenth century, Rosie.”

She laughs. “What? No…hello?!—it’s 1995!” she yells over her shoulder as the spring door closes behind her.

I don’t correct her.

This is the woman my father has been asking about every morning since she started at West Side Coatings recently. In her interview, when Dad asks why she left her last job, she tells him it was because she wound up in the hospital after wrapping her car around a telephone pole and losing her spleen. She’d been flying through a residential neighborhood, blowing through stop signs, because she was late for work. That’s what sells him. Not that she endangered her life and everyone else’s on the road, but that she almost died trying to get to her job on time. He has her repeat the story to everybody that visits now, like a party trick.

I always find a reason to leave the office rather than endure the laughter—rather than watch Dad’s delighted eyes flit back and forth between her and their rapt faces, waiting for the punchline that proves she’s the kind of worker who’d rather die than be late.

I can’t bear watching the adoration in his eyes. They want the same things. I just wish, and I hate that I wish it, that being myself were enough to earn me that look. Just once.

Maybe it started before I did. It was 1963. Dad was twenty, dreaming of becoming a professional baseball player, and Mom was sixteen, on the honor roll and college-bound. They brought me home from Cook County Hospital on the bus.

Sometimes I feel like I was a burden he didn’t choose. I know he loves me. But if he could choose, it would be her. Rosie.

The War.

One day she gets the pacing wrong on the line and it costs him a lot of money and time. He berates her, like he does everyone, and she quits on the spot. Digs in and puts on a show—complete with creative expletives like she’s George Carlin. She whips out her gigantic balls and tosses them like grenades at his feet, striking him dumb. Practically a miracle on its own.

The guys in the shop stop in mid-motion, the empty conveyor overhead loudly growling on without them, creating a huge gap in the line. At 10:30am, the war has ended with Rosie walking out on a huge job that has to be burned off and rerun. By Dad. So, the air will now smell like a charcoaled Barbie for the rest of the day. At least I won’t smell the diesel from the loading dock.

I’d do almost anything to be the one he’d choose. Almost anything. But being more like her is not one of those things. Being jealous of someone you don’t respect or even like is a strange feeling. It’s like being furious you weren’t chosen to go on a trip to Vegas when you’re the kind of person who prefers Big Sur and the redwoods.

If we were ice cream flavors, Rosie would be triple fudge caramel with marshmallows and rainbow sprinkles. I would be butter pecan, or maybe on one of my wilder days I might be pistachio. One scoop. No cone.

Dad lights up like Christmas morning when Rosie enters a room. She’s the cousin of our driver, a guy everyone calls Tony One Ball—I’ll spare you the soap opera story of how he got that way. Rosie’s father came from “the old country” and she says he’s got “connections,” which only makes her more perfect in Dad’s eyes. They literally twinkle when he brags about it to people. Their relationship is part father-daughter, part electricity.

She’s basically Dad, if he wore full makeup and dyed his hair red. Maybe he just wishes I’d flatter him the way she does. I might, if the feeling were even halfway reciprocal. That’s what she’s got with him. Reciprocity.

Rosie brags that she’s not a reader—it’s boring. What she lacks in education, she makes up for with street smarts and unfiltered ambition. She runs the floor when Dad isn’t there—arguably better than he does, certainly without the meltdowns.

Twenty guys, most of them speaking little or no English, and she doesn’t know much Spanish either, but somehow she gets every one of them to do exactly what she wants. Every time. By charming them.

Rosie has the ability to make every man think her idea was his all along. She’s always cheerful, laughs at every joke he makes.

I can’t do what she does, though secretly I wish I could.

He tells me I’ll take over the business when he retires. I’m supposed to be training for it. Yet, somehow my training looks a lot like being a secretary while Rosie doesn’t need training. Her name could be Charlie Jr.

Rosie won the war two weeks ago. Now every day the first thing he asks is “Did Rosie call?” In the meantime he’s telling me he’s done with her, that even if she shows up she can’t be trusted.

But it’s like he’s the one who’s gone. He tells no jokes. He’s flat. Goes home early every day. Yells at no one—even talks kindly to me. He may be miserable, but I love this gentler version of him. I’m glad she’s gone, and I tell him so. His shoulders slump.

With Rosie gone, I’m doing her job—and mine—running back to the office every time the phone rings on the floor. I hate being out there running the line, but it’s worth it, since I don’t have to watch their private buddy film.

His insistence that she’s not coming back doesn’t make my gut any less clenched. Every time the phone rings, I catch myself worrying that it’s her. I say nothing. I wait. I watch. I spent a lifetime learning stealth.

Where’s Rosie – Pt. 3: The Reckoning

And in case you missed Part 1:

Where's Rosie? — Pt. 1: Hazard Pay

What is that thing? My headlights sweep past what looks like a large, rolled-up rug as I park in front of the building, right behind the burned-out shell of a car that showed up here last month. It’s parked in the wrong direction, so I’m bumper-to-bumper with the engine block briquette. My key pops the lock and I push back the metal accordion fence to the front door. I look back at the rug. It wasn’t there on Friday.

But then a lot of things get dumped here over the weekend.

I push open the door to the shop and turn on the lights since it’s 6am and I can barely see. I turn on the space heater under my desk and go back to lock the front door behind me. I’m not usually the first one here, Dad must be running late. It’s a bit lighter out now and I think I see something sticking out the end of the rug. What the— Against my better judgment, I venture over to the lot next to our building and what I see is not something that registers as real. It’s a guy. A white guy with snow white hair. He kind of looks like Dad. I shudder, glad it’s not him. I see the collar of his white and green jogging suit over a thick serpentine necklace. That gets my attention.

I’m no detective, but if you drop something in this neighborhood, you’re not leaving behind any gold.

This wasn’t a robbery. I back away and go inside and lock the door behind me, and when Dad gets here, we go over there together. He tells me to go back inside. I assume he’s calling the cops. But I never see them. It would’ve been the first time I ever saw them on this street. When I go out for lunch, the rug is gone and Dad says “they must’ve picked him up.” I never question what he means. I’m just glad I don’t have to see the guy again.

The Pace.

1pm. It’s so hot the posts of my earrings are burning and I’m wishing I had remembered to leave them on my nightstand this morning. The conveyor belt drones and roars, a steady, relentless pitch—like standing on a helicopter pad with the bird stuck in perpetual idle. It runs at a pace that makes it impossible for the guys on the line to do anything other than sweat.

The constant drone follows me home at night like jet lag—half expecting to find blood trickling out of my ears. This is one of the reasons Dad says most people in this business become alcoholics. That and the fumes, and the feeling like you should be riding a camel and wearing all white. They’re starting a new job, so Dad stands in the shadow, behind the guy hanging the parts on the line, arms crossed over his belly between gulps of his Miller Lite before tossing it against the metal walls of the oven. He’s gauging how fast the guy can hang the parts before falling behind. The line has to be fast enough to get the job done but slow enough to avoid chaos.

Ultimate efficiency is the goal.

The hanging area is about the length of 5 commercial vans and the next hurdle is the bend in the line before the paint booth where 2 guys “paint” the dangling metal pieces electrostatically with powder coating, swaying like monkeys the whole way there. This requires Dad to do it himself first, to prove it can be coated fully at that speed—he won’t risk a guy being too slow and turning out a “reject.” Mission accomplished, he jumps off the platform, handing off the spray “gun” on the way down.

The little radio—the only thing allowed to sit—is propped up on a stool and has a bent antenna and a busted volume button. It’s either distorted or off. It’s covered in a mix of half-baked paint colors, and is permanently set to 105.1, Chicago’s WOJO, reliably belting out the hits, sounding remarkably like polka with Spanish lyrics.

The Grind.

The ceilings are low, just high enough for the enormous oven, which resembles a car wash from the outside and could bake a strawberry rhubarb pie big enough to feed Rhode Island.

Powder coating is technically better for the environment than wet paint. But in the shop, it’s airborne—because Dad says the filtration system “wastes paint.” If we’re spraying white that day, a fine mist of talc-like haze covers everything, and everyone. The guys holding the guns inside the booth go out to the food truck at lunch dusted head to toe in white, like gingerbread men coated in frosting with cigarettes dangling from their mouths. Keeping every inch of the metal coated as it zooms by isn’t as easy as it looks. Sometimes the line moves too fast and they have to stop it until they catch up.

Even from my office, I know when this has happened.

First, there’s the sound. Or the absence of it. It’s the difference between standing next to a freeway or a trail in the forest. And then… wait for it… the only other sound—Dad screaming at someone for being “stupid.” Or, if the guy just started working there, he might say “estúpido,” just in case the guy doesn’t get the message from his bellowing beet-red face and index finger pointing at him. His friends try not to notice, or make themselves busy somehow so they won’t be next. Somebody finds a broom and starts sweeping. And every time, even though it isn’t my turn, my stomach is a fist, hitting me from within. He thinks he’s embarrassing the guy, but I’m the one who’s sick with embarrassment. For him. For both of us.

The Rats.

From the time I arrive at 6am until the time I head home at 4, I learn to breathe less. If I have to choose, cigarette smoke is the best smell, worlds better than the cumulative sweat of 20 guys who leave their clothes here overnight and put the same ones back on the next morning. Unwashed. Worst offender? The diesel fumes from the loading dock, which has to stay closed during the colder months, giving me a headache by 7am. The old building, built for industrial use, is uninsulated, so we have to leave the water trickling in the winter or the pipes will freeze.

The only ones who can survive a winter night are the family of rats living inside the wall of my office.

When I tell Dad I saw the mother parading her spawn to the back of the filing cabinet, he says he’s going to have Freddie kill them. I ask if we can’t “relocate” them instead—I can’t handle any more sad things in that building. He looks at me like I’ve grown a second nose, mumbles “you’ve got a million of ‘em,” and walks out. When the smell starts to ooze out of the wall a week later, I ask Dad about it. He chuckles, saying “I guess the relocation program didn’t work.” It would become a running joke for years.

The Storm.

Last week I was standing on the floor, watching the guys set the pace of the line. Dad’s at lunch with a buddy—the liquid kind—so I’m in charge. I’d rather have my hair pulled out and made into a bonfire. I’ve worked the line myself, when we’re short-handed, so I know exactly what 2 hours of working at top speed does to your shoulders, your lower back, your feet. Your morale. I don’t call for more speed. I let it run a notch slower than Dad would, knowing I’ll catch hell for it later.

There’s a roll of white packing paper in the corner that’s so heavy that it tips the forklift forward when they put it down. It’s about 4 feet high, big enough that it takes 2½ grown men to get their arms all the way around it. Once the parts are coated and baked, someone has to cut it down into large sheets to pack them in, slicing clean through an inch-thick stack with a utility knife. Which is just a razor blade with a handle.

I never see exactly how it happens—I think it’s from holding the paper steady while they cut—but every so often, the blade goes through someone’s hand instead of the paper.

One time it’s bad enough that they bring the guy straight into my office, a dirty t-shirt wrapped around his hand, blood already soaking through it. I’m a fainter. I can’t even look at him. “I can’t do it,” I tell Dad. “You have to get someone else to take him.” He tells me there isn’t anyone else—everyone else is working. So I drive him to the ER, staring at the road the whole way instead of his hand. He gets 10 stitches. Never says a word.

When I get back I ask Dad why he doesn’t buy the pre-cut sheets so people don’t keep getting hurt. He says I don’t know what I’m talking about, that the problem is the guys aren’t paying attention to what they’re doing. I’m furious, and I tell him so, digging my nails into my hand so I don’t cry. His face turns red and he blurts out, “Look, it’s cheaper.” My eyes narrow. “Are you kidding me?” I ask. Smirking, he calmly says, “No problem, since it’s so important to you, I’ll just take the difference out of your check.” I roll my eyes. He says, “What? You don’t care about them now?”

It’s not the first time I’ve said something. It never changes anything. He blows a raspberry and gives me the same answer every time: when I own the business, I can treat them however I want—run it into the ground, make them all partners for all I care. These guys are not the ones taking a risk, so they’re not entitled to more. Dad’s the one assuming all the risk. The owner has the weight of the world on his shoulders. They go home every day without a care in the world. “You’ve never understood money,” he says. Every time.

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He’s “worked harder than them for 30 years—it used to be a lot worse”—and he’s fine. Well, that’s debatable, I think, watching him struggle to stand up and walk after sitting, hand gripping his lower back for a full 10 yards. So when Dad gets back from “lunch” and sees them working at less than full speed, the yelling carries over the music and the conveyor, and probably all the way to the L train 3 blocks away. “How can you be so stupid? Do you know how much money you just cost me?” Math was never my love language, so I guess he’s being rhetorical. “What the hell is wrong with you? Goddamn it! Just useless. I can’t go anywhere or all hell breaks loose.” The guys look at their feet, or away. There isn’t one of them I’ve ever found to be anything other than kind. What are they doing here? What am I doing here? I think, running past them back to the office to escape the wrath of Khan. Behind me, his bellows grow quieter—he’s oblivious to my exit.

The Mirror.

For the 3rd time that month, I’ve hidden in the bathroom—my haven—the only safe place other than my car. And even though the lock doesn’t work, I know he wouldn’t go so far as to force the door open. At least, not yet. Then the phone starts ringing. It’s wired to ring out across the floor of the shop, so it just rings. And rings. And I know I’m making a statement. And I don’t care. I’m sobbing and not coming out. Not for a phone. Not for anything. Maybe for a fire, but that’s about it. This was before answering machines, before voice mail. In those days you could let the phone ring until the second coming if you were so inclined. I know eventually he will have to deal with it if I don’t.

Even the rats showing up couldn’t get me out of this closet-sized room.

Dad comes barreling through the door. “West Side Coatings,” he half-shouts as he picks it up. When he hangs up, he calls out for me. “Hello?! Where are you? Why aren’t you answering the phone?” I yell over the clunky din of the automatic fan, “Seriously?!” I shake my head, knowing that for him it’s already over. He blows up. No harm, no foul. He’s not holding a grudge. He’s moved on. “You’re in the bathroom again? Ugh. Come on, wash your face and come out here.” “I’m not coming out!” I yell through the hollow-core door, blowing my nose right through the toilet paper, making my hand wet. My heart is pounding, perspiration drips down my neck. I check my reflection in the dim, tiny room that only gets clean if I do it. Which isn’t often since, let’s face it, I’m the only one who doesn’t stand to pee. The floor is usually dark gray and a little sticky, but what isn’t here? There, in the old medicine cabinet, where not even band-aids dare to live, based on how weary I am, I half expect to see an old woman looking back at me. But instead, it’s just a 31-year-old with gray eyes and dark curly hair staring back at me with flaming cheeks and swollen eyes that seem to be begging to ask “Is this the best you can do?” Work in a sweatshop? Not exactly your childhood dream, is it? Where is this headed? I feel as old as dirt. How the hell did I get here? Wasn’t this supposed to be temporary? I think of my comfortable life at home: recording songs at night in a rehabbed apartment in Wicker Park—old construction, new drywall, skylight, ivy up the side and sunsets on my deck in the back.

This is the payoff. I’m making too much money to quit.

On the weekends I disappear into drugs and alcohol too—whatever gets me furthest away the fastest—and call it inspiration because that’s easier than calling it what it is. I paint 50 canvases I’ll never sell. I record 2 albums nobody will ever care about. I tell myself I need this job to live the artist life without the starving part—not that I’m a girl too wired to sleep who counts other people’s payroll for a living. I don’t let myself add up what it’s costing. A few years later my body does the math for me anyway—15 pounds gone without trying, hands shaking, heart racing while I sit still. Graves’ disease. My own thyroid deciding to attack itself, same as I’d been doing, just faster. The only skill I have is sign language and singing. Actually, my best skill seems to be staying in situations that make me deeply unhappy without even registering that I’m slightly uncomfortable—nobody has to attack you if you’re doing it to yourself for free. I don’t know it yet, but I’ll spend the next 3 decades getting better at it—until my title becomes official: Caregiver.

I don’t have an answer for the girl in the mirror. Not yet. For now I just need Freddie. Dad’s “right hand handy man” who fixes things in the shop, including me, apparently. He isn’t going to fix why I stay. He’s just going to make staying survivable, 5 minutes at a time. And the funny thing? I’m positive he has no clue he is my anchor here.

Want to tip me? You can do that here.

Nurses kept telling me to go to my happy place. I went. Turns out my subconscious had other plans. This one starts in a hospital bed after lung surgery and ends up somewhere I didn't expect.

Last week, John invited me to be part of his profile series. His questions made me reflect on the winding path that eventually led to Cape Not Included—from music and books to caregiving and writing this memoir.

Some of you may already have seen the interview on Substack or social media, but I realized many of you primarily follow by email, so I didn’t want you to miss it.

If you’re curious about the story behind the stories, I hope you’ll enjoy it.

https://affordabletravel.substack.com/p/building-community-cape-not-included

Thank you for reading and for walking this journey with me.

With gratitude,
Allegra

He’d just stare at me and hold my hand. Which made me wonder if what actually came out was more like “pleebs-gill-meh.”

The nurses all told us that lung surgery was more painful than open-heart.

“Well, that explains a lot,” I said, wondering if I was speaking English.

They would smile in that patient nurse way and tell me to go to my happy place.

What I wanted to say was: there’s no happy place on earth that’ll get me through this right now. How about you just give me some more of that morphine and we’ll call it even. But I kept that to myself.

The expression “happy place” always made me roll my eyes anyway. Makes me think of ruby red slippers. I mean, seriously? Even as a kid I knew wishing wouldn’t make it so. I don’t care how many times you click your heels together.

Maybe I was too cynical. It just didn’t seem to work for me.

Every breath was a sword through my chest. The machine would beep every few minutes because I would stop breathing to make the pain stop.

“Breathe,” Sparrow would say.

I’d breathe.

Then the sword.

Then I’d stop again for a while.

Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.

My Mom would say, “Breathe, Honey.”

I’d stare at them.

“Pleebs-gill-meh.”

I checked the giant clock. Three hours until my next dose.

On second thought, where were those red slippers when you needed them?

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Nurses were heroes. They were good to me.

I memorized all their names—even the aides. Smiled when they came in. I wanted to win them over.

I would be their favorite patient. Needed them to like me. The person who couldn’t move was going to be their easiest patient. They would go home and talk to their families about what a joy I was. I needed to feel safe. Funny how even with a chest full of knives, my first instinct was to make sure everyone in the room liked me. I was the one who advocated for other people. The one who was vigilant in giving care. If I was going to surrender my body to strangers, I would need to make them my friends first.

“Okay, maybe you’re right,” I’d say. “Maybe I could try again.”

So I’d lie there, sifting through the morphine, searching for the happy in one scene after the other.

There I’d be: eating chocolate.

Lasted one second.

Ah, yes, peanut butter.

Half a second.

Mmmm…Chocolate and peanut butter.

Okay, two seconds.

My dinner plate dahlias showing off in the sun. Moonflowers revealing themselves at night.

About a minute.

My dog Nimoy as a puppy, chasing his nemesis the squirrel.

Two minutes.

Listening to David Attenborough narrate a nature show.

Three.

Riding Japan’s bullet train with Sparrow — who splurged on the luxury car because of my train fetish. He’s making me laugh as farms and villages blur past at 200 miles per hour, while Mount Fuji rises impossibly calm amid all that speed.

I open my eyes. Check the clock. Four minutes.

Stab, stab. Holding my breath. And then…

Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.

“Breathe,” Sparrow would plead.

“Pleebs-gill-meh.”

Clearly I needed something bigger than this.

I reached back further into the archives.

There I was, in the crib, looking through the wooden slats and hearing my young Mom singing—her golden hair shining in the sun from the window, the yellow curtains billowing against the papered walls.

Wonderful. Two minutes. Happy place…

Skipping over the sparkling sidewalks in front of the library—mesmerized by the tiny flashes of light I was stepping on, believing they must be diamonds—just Mom and me, laughing, hand in hand—before my brother was born and everything changed.

Three minutes. I pressed on.

I was thirty-five, standing inside a giant waterfall in British Columbia so beautiful that I stayed there in my tiny black bikini until I shivered and my lips turned blue—my love, already on the other side, laughing and begging me to hurry up and get out. I tried to make that my happy place. But when I go there, I see his eyes—sliding away from mine, again and again, toward whatever was younger walking by.

We had just come down from a mountaintop where he’d told me he’d never loved anyone like this. That I was it. That he was sure. He would be my Shiva and I his Radha. Our eyes locked. His heart beating against mine.

When we hiked back down the mountain, I was still glowing—breathing in the sweet scents from the wildflowers next to the blood red amanita mushrooms. And there, at the end of the trail, a young woman with long blonde hair walked past—maybe eighteen, not even glancing at him. He let go of my hand and his head followed her until she was gone. I kept walking and left him standing there. When he made it back to our tent he asked, “Where did you go? I turned around and you were gone.”

It was as if the mountaintop hadn’t happened. As if I wasn’t standing right there—my empty hand still warm. The girl with the braces in the restaurant booth came later—just the last one in a long parade of anyone other than me. That man broke my heart and took the waterfall with him.

I opened my eyes and checked the clock. Five—extremely long—minutes.

I was sitting under the curly willow I’d planted after losing my son Yogi. I’d done everything right, eaten right, walked every day, given up drinking—even moved from a duplex in Chicago to the middle of cow country. Being his mother was supposed to redeem me. So when I had to leave without him after the morning he was born, I died too. And when we buried him at the tiny Newton Valley cemetery, tucked away in the frozen woods of Wisconsin, I stared down into the small black rectangle in the ground and imagined jumping in on top of his little pine box. I wished so much that I could be buried with him.

My nervous system was fried. I’d moved to an intentional community because I couldn’t do anything else. Forget about getting a job—I couldn’t even drive. Couldn’t think straight. So I planted curly willows. For hours I hid inside its lime green leaves, away from the harshness of the sun and the company of others. It was my secret den. But now I can’t separate the swaying arms of that graceful tree from the aching arms of that young woman who just wanted to hold her only child one last time.

“Happy place, happy place,” I muttered.

For some reason all I could hear was that old song. Put on a Happy Face. Which, now that I think about it, was exactly the problem.

I had smiled at every boss of every job I secretly hated.

Smiled through every relationship I made myself small enough to fit into.

Even after a friend once asked, “Why can’t you just write a happy song for a change?”

I had thought: Happy? I’m not your monkey—and almost sang her the Happy Birthday song. But what I actually said was “Okay, I’ll try,” with a big fat smile on my face.

Even as a girl, being upset wasn’t acceptable—unless I did it in the privacy of my own room. And quietly. Even singing in my room was too much. Apparently it was killing my Dad. And since I didn’t want him to die, I practiced with headphones and taught myself to whisper sing.

There was only one kid who was allowed to act out in our household, and that kid was my brother. Apparently, he had the excuse of being deaf. He didn’t have a language yet.

My job was to be the big sister. And be patient.

He couldn’t understand why when I moved my mouth, I magically got what I wanted. So when moving his mouth didn’t work, he just got loud. And louder, until I ran around guessing what he wanted—anything to make the siren stop. I’d point and ask: hot dogs? Tater tots? Fish sticks? Lucky Charms? Lucky Charms? That one always worked. That kid could have survived on Lucky Charms alone. Luckily for him, that wasn’t my call.

Once he finished off an entire box of cereal after refusing to eat dinner. Mom found the empty box and showed it to him, frowning. He just shook his head while pointing to himself and then pointed to me, nodding, eyes wide. I didn’t even like Lucky Charms. I was a Count Chocula girl.

Another time he broke something and did the same thing. I’d say “He did it, he’s lying.” But nobody ever believed that he could lie. So I’d get in trouble for blaming the poor deaf kid as well.

He’s deaf, he’s not St. Francis, I would think.

The worst part was that as soon as we were alone again, he’d snicker at me and make a pouty face with his little fists turning in front of his eyes, mocking my crying, then silently laugh and point at me when he saw that he had succeeded in bringing me to tears. There were times I actually thought about strangling him.

Great-grandma Norma had Alzheimer’s. She heard his high-pitched wail one afternoon and said, “I think he’ll make a great singer one day.”

What the hell. I was the singer. That was my dream.

I almost imitated him to see if I could get the same response out of her. But I loved Norma and wanted to please her. So I smiled—with fingers in my ears.

That was about the time I started walking through the house at night with the lights off, practicing to be blind—just in case.

I was done. My finger was on the trigger now, ready to call the nurse.

Wait a minute…

Here’s one.

September 2017. I was heading down our driveway, checking my rearview, watching my husband and dog get smaller in a little cloud of gravel dust. I had booked a cheap room on a remote island in British Columbia for my birthday and planned on being there for a month. Alone. To record some songs I’d written.

Just me, the Honda hybrid handed down from my Mom, recording gear, Canadian money left over from my earlier trip with Waterfall Guy, and a map of BC.

The island took two ferries to reach. And as luck would have it, the owner needed to go to Vancouver for a month, so I got the waterfront house to myself. And at fifty-three, I would finally be on my own for the first time in my life.

I made my own fire to keep the house warm. Carried loads of wood upstairs to feed the iron behemoth. In the mornings I’d take my camera and Earl Grey down to the shore. There I’d sit on a damp timber log, sipping the bitter heat, and admire the patterns the birds made against a life-sized Bob Ross painting.

But after the first week, the solitude started to annoy me.

The house didn’t even have a TV—so I couldn’t watch movies to distract myself.

In the nothingness, memories began to surface. And I felt myself starting to unravel. Even my skin felt too tight.

Recording was out of the question—I was too anxious to sit still.

I had kept myself busy and now there was nothing left to do but stop.

And after I stopped moving, they found me.

The stories I hadn’t known were still there.

The ones that had waited the longest.

I stayed still and let them come.

I sat. And sat. Until my heart ached worse than my back.

And then I cried.

And I cried.

And keened until the rafters creaked. “Come on, is that all you’ve got?” I wailed.

Until one morning I was as empty as my tear ducts.

Then I laughed.

Not at anything.

Maniacally.

The kind that would have gotten me committed in an earlier era.

In my bare feet, and swollen eyes, I ran through the house.

Nothing had changed.

The sun was still making patterns on the cold wooden floor. The birds were still calling me outside to witness their new sunrise painting.

So why did everything feel so strange?

I raced to the beach in my nightgown, laughing, singing at the top of my lungs, “I am one with it all.” The wind whipped through my curls and turned my hair into dandelion fluff.

I picked up a black rock with a white ring and laughed at the thought that I was holding Saturn in the palm of my hand.

I plopped down on the cold sand, felt the dampness soak through, and didn’t care. I just sat there smiling like a lunatic. At the tears streaming down my face, making steam on my cheeks. At the waves beating the rocks. At the heartbreak of a young woman. I was smiling at the birdsong—singing mine back to them. Smiling at all of it. The sadness and the wonder both.

I’d planned to record four sad songs. I came home with one.

Spoiler alert: it was a happy song. Damn it.

For a month I didn’t have to smile at all.

And then I couldn’t stop.

All I heard was quiet.

Only the sound of my own heart.

My hand fell away from the call button.

I had no idea what time it was.

And I didn’t care.

The waterfall belongs to someone else now.

But the smile is all mine.

Like this? Buy the birds some seed here.

Freshman year, my life felt like it could be a big life after all.

I won the school-wide poetry contest. The poem was in the newspaper. I was the first underclassman ever chosen for the senior choir.

I was good at something.

Finally seen.

Which was fine.

As long as the world didn’t learn

what Dad had already decided about me.

Then we moved. Again.

From years in various suburbs to the South Side of Chicago. I didn’t know anyone. I kept my head down.

The friends I loved had vanished.

I might as well have moved to the moon.

I felt the kind of lonely that makes you say yes to things.

A grown man offered to take me out for ice cream on my fifteenth birthday. Instead, he tried to bring me to a bar. The bartender took one look at me and threw us out. I thought it was my fault for looking too young. So when he offered the joint—my first—I didn’t hesitate. It was laced with PCP.

I couldn’t see straight, so he led me by the hand to a neighborhood garage. He was a mechanic. He had keys.

After that I stopped wanting to be seen.

I just wanted to get smaller.

I ate less. A lot less.

I started partying.

Smoking cigarettes.

Sneaking out at night to be with a boy who hurt me.

Cheating my way through tests by taping the answers inside the hem of my plaid uniform skirt.

Until the day I forgot to do it.

I tried to copy from the paper of a dark-haired, soft-spoken girl with bright eyes.

She caught me.

Shielded her paper.

Gave me the side-eye.

When the bell rang, I followed her to the staircase and shoved her from behind.

She stumbled down some steps before catching the banister.

Turned around and stared up at me.

Her dark eyes, lined with thick black lashes, weren’t filled with anger.

Only dread.

Like a doe staring down the barrel of a hunter.

Then she picked up her books and walked the rest of the way down. Never looking back. Head held high. Dignity intact.

I stood there frozen.

Nauseated.

Aware of how close it had been.

For both of us.

I was shaking.

And late for class.

Who the hell am I?

I wasn’t trying to steal her answers.

I was trying to steal her life.

Her easy belonging.

The worst part was that she never told anyone.

I was never called to the office.

Nobody confronted me.

No consequences.

Even doing something horrid, I managed to stay invisible.

And it haunted me for years.

But two nights before surgery, I took inventory.

When I woke up, the first thing I saw was her face.

I couldn’t even remember her name. How was I supposed to make amends?

I dug out my yearbooks.

I reached out to Ed, a former classmate.

He found a relative.

But I had waited too long.

Lisa was gone.

I had outlived her.

At least Ed remembered that she loved sugar cookies.

I wish I had something better.

But I don’t.

All I have is this story.

And her name.

Her name was Lisa.

It smelled like our garbage in the middle of summer when the truck skipped our house—raw meat gone bad, blue cheese nobody wanted. Even the dogs steered clear.

“Oh stop it, Gallagher! You’re being a drama queen. That doesn’t hurt,” she said, clipping and scraping away.

“What the hell are you talking about? You’re killing me! Agghhhh!” His eyes like slits, peeking, then squeezing shut again, face going red like a dashboard warning light.

I’ve always been squeamish about stuff like this. I can deal with pain, as long as it’s mine.

I’m behind him, his feet up in the stirrups, my arms wrapped around his chest, doing my best impression of a buoy. My tears soak his tragic white hair, the humid heat of his scalp under my cheek. My eyes squeezed shut against the horror show, I croak: “You’re going to be okay, Dad. I’m so sorry. It’s almost over.”

Why hasn’t she given him any anesthesia? Maybe she could give some to me.

She shakes her head, smirking, rolling her stool closer to his feet, poking at it with the scraper. “Come on, that tissue is dead. There’s no way you’re feeling that—there’s nothing left. I could snap this toe off with one hand.”

My eyes flip open like a doll’s. Dad stops mid-howl, sits up, shrugging me off and points at her. “You’re a real sadist, aren’t you?”

“You know it.” She glances up at him between scrapes, the metal clicking in her hand. “How did you get like this, buddy? Didn’t you notice anything happening?”

“I’ve got diabetes. I can’t feel my feet.”

Her eyes roll. “And the smell didn’t give it away?”

“You’re a real ball buster, aren’t you? Am I gonna lose it or not?”

“Lose it?” She snorts. “You’ll be lucky if you don’t lose the whole foot with this amount of infection. If it’s gotten into the bone, Gallagher, you’re in real trouble. Why did you wait so long?”

He had turned off his phone and snuck off to visit my brother’s family—Vegas to Arizona—no change of clothes, no meds, nothing but a blister on his toe and plans for mini golf in 110-degree heat. They sat him down and poured ice water down his back when he went bright red and started to swoon.

He was soaked to the socks. His feet marinated for two days, the toe quietly going bad in the dark.

I got a text in Oregon three weeks later. Not from him. From a caregiver. A close-up picture first. It looked like a ransom—like someone had worked him over with pliers and wanted me to wire money or they would move on to the other nine. Then: “There’s a smell. He told us not to tell you. He didn’t want you to cancel the cruise.”

I stared at the text. No need to tell me. He clearly had it handled.

Dad shifts on the table, paper crinkling under him. “Yeah, well, I was busy,” he says, no longer wincing or moaning.

“Obviously.” The podiatrist shoots a look at me while bandaging what’s left of the toe, the gauze already staining through. “I’m scheduling you to get this removed.”

He crosses his arms. “That’s not going to work for me. I’m going on a cruise.”

I look down at the back of his head. The same tragic white hair. I was keeping my mouth shut.

“No you’re not. Not unless it’s headed for the hospital.” She tosses the scene-of-the-crime remnants in the trash. Then turns to me. “Would you come with me, please? I need to go over some things before you leave.”

Her office walls were lined with signed team posters from professional sports teams she’d treated over the years.

Dad had obviously done his homework. Only the best.

“You’re Charlie’s daughter?”

“Yes,” I say, aware of my hands, how still they are at my sides, wishing I had pockets.

“He’s going through something new these days, yeah? Something’s changed. He’s more intense than he usually is.” She peers over her glasses. “Not easy to do.”

I glance down at my feet, wishing I hadn’t worn sandals.

“Yeah, he’s been diagnosed with Lewy body dementia,” I say, feeling like I’ve been sent to the office.

Her mouth gets tight. She nods. I get the feeling she already knew. “Look, his path is his path—not yours. You can’t help him with this. He has to figure it out for himself and he may not make it. I’ve seen this before. His pain will be your pain. If you try to carry him, he’ll take you down with him—and I think he’d let you. You can’t sacrifice your life for him. You’ll have your own stuff to deal with. Do you understand?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I wanted to say.

But I didn’t understand.

She was wrong.

He needed me.

It was my job.

I was good at it, damn it.

I was a good person.

A wonderful daughter.

So I kept trying to carry him, save him from himself. Lewy body had taken his reasoning, but not the image of himself as the smartest guy in the room. We were on a sinking ship—me bailing water with a coffee can while he drilled new holes for speed.

Years later, I still think about those framed jerseys. All those signatures. And I wonder if any of it was ever about feet.

Now, with my own lung surgery in two weeks, a tumor they’ll have to cut out, I keep doing the math—stress, years, the slow accumulation of someone else’s emergencies—like there’s a ledger somewhere, and the numbers have finally caught up with me.

And I hear her voice again, scraping clean:

“What took you so long?”

I stare down at my feet.

“Yeah, well, I was busy.”

Or, just stopping by and really liked this essay?

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She’s a Chihuahua–Pomeranian mix. Or at least I think so. What it really means is she doesn’t take her job lightly.

She’s a taskmaster.

Sure, she’s 16. But does she have to constantly mock me with her NASCAR-level ability to go from zero to snoring in under three seconds?

Add separation anxiety to the mix, and it means I can’t simply lie down in my own bed unless the sun goes down.

You might ask: why can’t you just ignore her? She’s not the boss of you.

That’s adorable. But no.

Retreating to my bed would only prompt her to rap on my door so loud you’d swear a family of raccoons had moved in.

But how, you say? She only weighs ten pounds and doesn’t even have thumbs.

I know. Let’s move on.

Since my bed is out of the question, the only sane option is to recline on the sofa next to her and wear noise-canceling earbuds.

Why?

Because she snores like a 300-pound gorilla on a bender. And because I’m a terrible napper. All it takes is a butterfly flapping its wings somewhere in the Congo and I’m wide awake.

Then there’s the timing issue.

Attempting shut-eye between 3 and 4 p.m. is impossible.

That is the official din-din time.

And if I were brazen enough to try to sleep through that window, the result would be a firm, persistent tapping on my arm until the food appeared.

You might say, just feed her later. Take charge!

But then, you haven’t met this boss lady.
I’m pretty sure she was born with a Swiss watch in her chest. No one, and I mean no one, keeps better time.

6:30 a.m.: wake up and feed me!
1 p.m.: walk!
You already know dinner.
And then there’s the 9:30 p.m. CBD treat,
and then it’s off to bed.
For everybody.

And if you’re not ready?

She’ll just make herself comfortable at your feet and beam her black button eyes directly into your pathetic human soul until you realize that maybe you are feeling a little tired after all.

None of this was supposed to be mine.

She’s from the streets of Las Vegas, dodging the feet of staggering drunks and grabbing the attention of late-night snackers.

At the Vegas animal shelter, she went by Blossom. She was a five-timer. Like on SNL, but without the fanfare or jacket.

When my dad saw her do her begging dance — rearing up on her hind legs, both front paws up to her chest and paddling at the air like a reindeer mid-flight — that was it. He was in love.

Completely taken down by a ten-pound con artist.

He adopted her on the spot, of course, and renamed her Eliza, after Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady. He liked to think he was elevating her from street urchin to princess status.

Dad had just been diagnosed with Lewy body dementia and had decided he needed an emotional support dog. His wife was against it.

He knew this. I did not.
He lived by the rule: better to ask for forgiveness than permission.So of course it was the perfect time to get a dog.

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It was late when we got home. We carried little Eliza in to meet her new family and immediately found ourselves running back out, screams following us down the hallway like an English police siren — complete with Doppler effect.

“HOW DARE YOU!…”

The next day, she plotted to get rid of Eliza.

What she didn’t know was that Dad was plotting to get rid of her instead.

After she drew the line in the sand and refused to let Dad go out and live his last years in a blaze of glory, he simply moved out, bringing Eliza with him.

The perfect plan.

Except Eliza couldn’t go to the casinos.

So she stayed home.
Alone.
And redecorated.

Garbage cans overturned. Shredded Depends and tissues in every room.

I suggested maybe not leaving her alone all day.

His solution? Leave the patio door open.

That worked.
For about four hours.
Then I got a call in Oregon from the landlord.
The neighbors were threatening to report the barking to the HOA.

Eliza didn’t survive the streets by being complacent.

She was going to get her way. Dad had met his match.

She was already a senior dog when he found her, and he liked to brag she was practically free since they were “both old-timers.”

There was another reason she kept getting returned.

Her mouth smelled like two sewers joining forces to take down a small city.

Just don’t sniff her face, you might suggest.

Great plan. If she weren’t a licker. And if you didn’t mind attracting rats with your hand odor.

There was nothing for it. The teeth had to go. Just like my dad, her precious forever person.

They would’ve been pretty cute together, had he lived to see it. A match made in heaven.

And speaking of heaven.

Before he passed, my dad told me he wanted her to be buried with him.

“You mean like the pharaohs? I think she’d have to be dead first.”

“I don’t care. I want her. She’s mine.”

“Anyway, I thought you wanted to be cremated.”

“She’ll be dead by then. Dogs don’t live as long as humans.”

Apparently, he didn’t know what I know now: he had picked the wrong dog for the job.

After Dad died, Eliza came to live with us. We call her Lil Sue now. She’ll answer to anything if there’s food attached to it.

I’m pretty sure the way she’s running me, she’ll be training the next human in no time.

The worst part? I’m not even her person. Sparrow is.

She figured that out in about a week. All it took was the begging dance — her tiny fringed paws paddling the air — and he was handing over masticated pretzel treats like she’d earned them.

My dad thought he had rescued her.
I thought I was just taking the dog.
Lil Sue is the only one who ever knew exactly what she was doing.