Requiem for an Old Fool I visit my old man in the old folks home regularly. He is bitter there.

He considers it a prison and forced labour camp. He says hes forced to look at all these old people. The fool: one day the nurse told me that he keeps spending much of his time standing in the bathroom and staring into the mirrors there. He is a funny fellow. Up to the point in time that I would leave the old country, he was the sole supporter of our entire family of five. I have never known how much he earned, but it was in communist Hungary where we lived and salaries had been stringently equalized. A man who commanded all operations of a factory or an airport would have made only three times the salary of a girl in the typing pool in the same concern. But then again, a manager of that caliber would have made almost as much as a street sweeper. Hungary had a low birth rate (or high abortion rate, if you prefer to look at it that way) at the time because it would take two people to earn the money in full time jobs that was enough to keep two people, sometimes three. If the latter, he or she had an excellent job. If the couple had more than three children, you could bet that either he was the ambassador to France or the wife worked as a charwoman. It was a different world then. Anyhow. I do not know what the old man was tasked on his job back there and then, or how much he earned, but he was painfully aware all along that we: his wife and three children, were shamelessly leeching off him. My mother had come from an extremely rich land owner family in the lowlands, and after I was born, the third of their children, she decided she was a lady again and she quit her job and spent all her free time playing with me. My sister and my brother were busy readying themselves for their careers and married lives, so they would just gorge down dinner, and run out again. To the library, to the discotheque. I, on the other hand, had long sessions of existentialist angst already, far surpassing my tender age. I argued with my father that there is no free will, that there is no purpose to life, that there is no way in hell I will clean up my room. Then I would go back to my room to read something or to daydream how I was going to be masturbating when I got older. And he would go back to working on the work he had brought home from work, or he would play Rummy

with Mom for the balance of the evening, since that was all that he could afford to do and stay within his own personal entertainment budget. Now he is in an old folks home. I say hi dad. He says grumble. I say how was your day, he says, the people are too old. I say dont worry about it, its still better than in the concentration camp, aint it? He says why do I need to compare how I live to concentration camps, in order to lull myself into believing I have a good life? He says that only to make me feel worse. He could say, youre right, son. But that would make me feel worse, since I had nothing coming from him in my entire life but feeding of my guilt. Oh, and cash, food, and clothing. And shelter. Oh, and holidays and entertainment. Plus medicare, law, order and peace, and an education. And all the infrastructure of course, such as electricity, phone lines, clean water and transportation. Yet it is still better that he does that and does not stay quiet; that would make me feel even worse. He is gloomy, which makes me feel worse, but if he were happy, it would make me feel worse, because that would tell me that he is humping a wet nurse again, whereas I am here, divorced, with not a bj to show for it that I had not paid for with dad's hard earned cash. Anyway. Last week I went in. The receptionist at the front desk hushed me to a side room, where the best of nursing home psychologists informed me that Dad had passed away in the night, peacefully, in his sleeping gown. The psychologist was one of those emaciated-looking straight-black haired women, who have an uncharacteristically small and pointed nose, no make-up, no breasts to speak of, no hairdo, but have uber-alive black-diamond eyes that you knew could ignite a fire and set a cement block ablaze, could lead any army to winning a war, and could burn a hole in a fraction of a second through the souls of twelve men lined up in a straight line. I enjoyed being with her in the little room. I felt I was on a date with an intelligent woman, who knew my soul and yet did not vomit. It was quite a treat to hear her talk to and look at me in such an empathetic way. I knew the protocol, which I had learned the hard way when a similar

psychologist had informed me of Moms passing away. 1. No asking the woman out for a date. 2. No grinning and laughing stupidly the whole time. 3. No forcing myself on the psychologist. (I know I worded this third point perhaps ambiguously. The imprecision is very much an integral part of the protocol I learned.) That evening we, the remaining and available shards of my family and Dads friends, sat around, ate, and gossiped all night; we buried the old fool the next day; and in the evening I got a call from the psychologist. She was very apologetic, and said that the retirement home had made an administrative mistake. It was not my father who had died that night. She said would I please be so kind and come in and return to her the sympathies, condolences and empathy that she had given me, in their original, re-sellable condition. She also said that a fifteen-percent re-stocking fee will apply. This made me think of her pair of stockings. Therefore I felt a compelling urge to ask her, excuse me, but what's in it for me?